I’ve never interloped anywhere quite this bad.
The next time you hear someone talk about the ‘north London elite’, they’re probably not talking about this bit. We’re in one of the grubbier outskirts. On the way here, I’ve passed wrecking yards, mothballed factories, and all sorts of dodgy mews. These are not like the traditional inner-city mews, where a two-bed goes for £5m and your next-door neighbour is the Duke of Rutland. They’re more the old-fashioned kind where stolen cars get surreptitious spray-jobs by day and johns get unenthusiastic hand-jobs by night. Nobody here readsMews of the World.
Just to give you a bit more context, I’m holding a clipboard and wearing a hi-vis vest. These are probably the only reason I’m alive to type these words now.
The others are all in a cheap café near the station that has no CCTV, facing away from the door and wearing masks. Lucky bastards. I’m in a cramped, horrible street, making my way towards 139 Endersby Road. The whole area is somehow pulling off the trick of being simultaneously low-rise and crowded; the houses are small and cheap, but rammed together. That won’t change any time soon. No developer in their right mind would think this place, even inside the M25, could ever appreciate in value. It has a distinct ‘built on anancient Anglo-Saxon burial ground’ feeling of cursedness about it. It was the closest property on Davy’s list, hence us starting here. Now, I really wish we’d picked the second closest.
Number 139 is an end-of-terrace. The only property adjoining it, 141, is a burned-out husk, with scorch marks at the windows, and you can see right through from the front to the back, which has been creatively remodelled by a bad house fire.
In the distance, a weapon dog barks.
Number 139 itself used to be a two-storey place, now extended at the top by a dodgy dormer. I slow down as I approach. The brickwork is old and grimy, the front garden stinks of fox scat, and the tiles between the squeaking gate and the peeling front door are losing a battle against triffid-esque weeds. The rooms look dark – even if they weren’t, grubby net curtains are shielding all activity within.
What the hell would Davy want to sell this place for? And who would want to launder money through it?
The only life around is a man shuffling along across the street who has clearly clocked me as new to the area. He’s got stringy hair, and he’s wearing an old leather jacket covered in sewn-on patches of bands older than I am. After his second suspicious glance, I keep walking, past 139, until I round the corner it sits on, and he heads in the other direction. Once he’s gone, I return.
I’m a long way from my preferred interloping beat. My comfort zone is either in Kensington, with luxurious properties where you can hardly see the front door from the street, or in the suburbs, at the end of a driveway, like Mr Lethbridge’splace. In my whole career, I’ve never lock-picked a door so visible from street level. Rule 18:Avoid passing trafficisn’t an option.
Good news, though – no smart doorbell. Nor is there a box advertising a burglar alarm. There’s no security of any kind, as far as I can tell. And from the look of it, the deadlock is open, meaning there might well be someone home.
Rat-a-tat-tat.
Thirty seconds go by. Sixty.
Rat-a-tat-tat.Just to make sure. People have naps, or shuffle slowly down the stairs. Some ignore a knock at the door completely, because it’s only ever bad news.
Another minute, glancing back to see if I’m being observed from a window opposite.
Zip. Zilch. Bupkis.
I fish out my tools, and within half a minute, the door is open before me.
‘Hello?’ I say to the empty hall. ‘Gas company here.’ It just about passes muster. This place looks like the sort that might be behind with its bills. Some rogue utility firms still use enforcers to squeeze a bit more money out of their valued customers, even though they claim not to.
I’ve put the snib up on the door in case I need to leave fast, and it gums shut behind me.
There’s a door on my left – classic three-bed terrace design; this will be what the Victorians called the downstairs parlour – so I open it.
My first impression is darkness. The net curtains are backedby some heavy blackout lining, and no natural light gets in. The second impression is noise, a huge humming sound, and the darkness is interrupted by some winking lights. I get my phone out, noticing my hand is shaking a bit, and turn on the torch.
The whole room is full of computer servers.
Six rows of black cabinets, full of whatever makes these computers run. They’re connected by that thick ribbony fibreoptic cable, and they’re chittering away to each other in the dark.
What thehell?
Above me, I notice three extremely professional-looking security cameras. They’re the kind that are actually monitored, rather than the dummies on most high streets, and – even worse – the kind that produce crisp 4K images rather than the old-fashioned ‘blur in a hoodie’ variety. At least I’ve kept my mask on throughout this whole process. I back into the hall, assuming I don’t have long left to look around before someone turns up.
Upstairs, or back to the kitchen? This feels like one of those old choose-your-own-adventure books, the ones where almost every option leads to a grisly death.
No matter what this place is for, you’d usually keep the kitchen operational, so it’s probably just a kitchen. Upstairs it is.
I climb, pausing and panicking at each creak, and at the first-floor landing go straight to the bedroom at the back of the house. This one has daylight, at least. As I open the door,I see two pairs of bunk beds on either side of the room: unoccupied. There’s also a small desk that has on its surface a pile of paperwork, a tablet computer, and a shredder half full of word spaghetti.
I lean over the documents, and they’re all in a language I don’t recognise. I don’t understand any of it, of course, but I grab my phone and photograph the top few sheets, before I hear a little noise from downstairs.
That, it turns out, was the sound of the relaxing part of today ending.
