I mean, I’d prefer not to be wanted by the police, and for Mr Bowling Ball to have no idea who I am. But things could be worse.
No alarms go off at Heathrow, either, which is the second nice thing about today. That’s something. I bless Freddy for his passport, and for not upgrading to the biometric variety so I get through without being spotted with the wrong face. I’m going to try really hard to return it to him.
We walk through the airport masked, board the Piccadilly Line, and change at King’s Cross for Highgate. Em’s got a missed call from her sister and a voicemail, but we want to surprise them by turning up with the answer to all our prayers, so we hurry onto the next Tube.
At the other end, we stroll towards 17 Balfour Villas, chatting happily as we go. Like an idiot, I still don’t see anything wrong as we pass through the gate.
It’s not until we’re at the front steps that we realise the door is hanging wide open, the hall slicked with the rain that fell earlier and an air of abandonment about the entire place.
I breathe in to shout Jonny and Elle’s names, but Em’s a step ahead, because she grips my arm and whispers, ‘No.’
The wind rustles the foliage at either side of the house. We stand there, panicking, trying to work out if we’re about to be arrested. Or worse.
We mask up on the porch, for what little good it will do us, and hurry back to the street.
‘Where now?’ I whisper.
‘I don’t know. Let’s just go.’
Oh God. Bowling Ball must have turned up when we were away. He’s got Jonny and Elle somehow. He got them and he’s been waiting for us to turn up, and now he’s going to get us too. We pace along the street, back towards the station, not really thinking about anything at all.
Em gets her phone out and dials her voicemail, to hear the message Elle left.
‘I’ll never forgive myself if … I can’t believe …’ She stops and listens. ‘They’re … Oh, God.’ She stops walking, reaches out and flaps at me to stop.
‘What?’ She hangs up and walks out into the middle of the road. ‘Em. Where are you going?’
‘Thirty-four … thirty-six …’ She squeezes through another set of iron gates, left just a crack open.
Elle and Jonny are standing in the doorway of 38 Balfour Villas, looking like proud homeowners.
‘Hi!’
‘We set up a camera,’ says Jonny. Em runs up the steps and hugs her sister for about twenty seconds, while Jonny and I say hello, then wait for them to finish. Number 38 is even grander than 17, from the exterior.
Eventually Em pulls away from her sister. ‘Youhaveto text telling me you’re safe the next time you pull something like that.’
‘Sorry. Jonny said I couldn’t. He used the term OPSEC a lot and I didn’t like to ask.’
‘Operational security,’ Jonny murmurs. Em hugs Jonny too, then stands back.
‘How was your trip?’
She looks around, and even though we can’t be seen from the street, she shoos the others into the house. ‘No. Not after what you’ve just put us through. First we get a drink.’
Two hours later, it’s mid-morning. So the clock says, anyway. My body’s been jet-lagged then briskly de-lagged twice in the last forty-eight hours. My circadian rhythm is thumping pretty far off the beat.
Number 38 is much blingier than the semi-abandoned 17. Right now we’re in a tiled room decorated to look like the Alhambra. Jonny says the house belongs to a famously thick mobile phone entrepreneur who just happened to be in the right place (Britain) at the right time (the late 1980s), and who is definitely in the Caribbean now, based on his social media feeds, perhaps on Nevis. According to Jonny, it’s genuinely possible he’s forgotten about this place.
‘Amazing,’ says Jonny, fiddling with the metal strip on the floppy disk. ‘Genuine nineties shit.’
‘That’s great, Jonny. Any progress?’
Ten minutes ago, a young man from the internet turned up on an electric Chopper bike, dropped off a disk drive and took £50 away with him.
‘Give me a minute.’
‘Whathappenedto you two, though?’ says Em.
