Jonny doesn’t want to come either – he’s still trying to access Davy’s laptop, which is apparently unbelievably hard to crack. He’s tried about fifteen tricks so far, with zero luck, and the fact he’s been failing all this time makes him think there must be something significant in it, especially as Davy didn’t seem the type to bother with strong security.
But he does produce a list of the properties that haven’t been resold since the date in Davy’s ledger, and an itinerary of the fastest route between them. We’ve got our cover story in place, and our petticoat story beneath that in case the first one blows away.
And, fuelled with nothing but toast and nerves, off we go.
The first place is in Chalk Farm. There’s a square near the Tube station that is honestly ridiculous. It looks like the sort of place they’d film a Paddington movie, or any other heritage Brit culture to trick the world into thinking London’s a nice place to live. It’s exactly that kind of dependable Georgian brickwork, trussed up with wisteria lingerie. I’m just relieved we started at a reasonable hour and have beaten the Instagrammers to it.
Number 33 is the prettiest of the lot. Sky-blue door, delicate iron balconies, and at least five storeys on the inside. I’m willing to bet the basement is one of the iceberg jobs (enormous, cold and lifeless. The owners are often similar, with the added similarity that they’re more dangerous than you think). The places on this square all have that weird stonebridge from the street to the front door, with spiky railings on either side, good for keeping the outside world that little bit further away.
We’ve dressed smartly enough – nothing too fancy, but the sort of thing that might make you think we were from Harcourt and Wallace, London’s premier boutique super-prime property agency.
We ring the bell, and step back a few paces.
There’s a long wait before the door opens, and when it does, the woman inside is clearly unthrilled to see us. She’s East Asian, still in what looks like a proper silk dressing gown. Behind her, I get a glimpse of some expensive-looking art on the wall, and children’s voices are shouting happily in the back.
‘Yes?’
‘Hi there. We’re from Harcourt and Wallace, the estate agent who sold this home five years ago. We just have a few questions for you. It’s a long-running customer satisfaction survey, we can offer a substantial reward for taking part, and …’
… and I’m talking to sky-blue wood. At the word ‘survey’, the woman shook her head and softly closed the door.
‘Nice one.’
‘Come on. There’s no combination of words that would have opened her up.’
Two floors up, as we step back to the street, there’s a movement in the window, but by the time I’m looking, I can only see reflected sky. The woman would have to have been an Olympic hill-runner to get up there in time. Maybe she is. Butit seems likelier that someone else was observing us from within.
‘Strange.’
‘Yeah,’ says Em. ‘Well, that’s one off the list. We have about twenty more. Good to get the rubbish talkers out of the way. Maybe we’ll have done ten by lunch and then we can knock off for a drink.’
If only we’d known how the morning would go, we would have gone to the pub right then.
I’m not going to say exactly how many times the exact same scene plays out over the next few hours. But it’s a lot. Nobody tells usanything. Here’s the playbook:
We walk to the door, looking smart, presentable and – yes – a little flirtatious. We knock.
Someone opens the door. This might be an attractive young woman in yoga gear, a tattooed man restraining a bulldog, a skullcapped butler, an impatient Sub-Saharan imam, an Englishman, a Scotsman, an Irishman … doesn’t matter. They vary, is my point, in the kind of way you only get in a few cities of the world. The one thing they all have in common is that they look like they’re doing all right for themselves.
They listen to whichever of us is pitching, and after about fifteen seconds they shake their head and the door drifts shut. We try everything. We try naming the firm. We try naming Davy. We try holding up apictureof Davy. We try pretending we are his grieving children, collecting evidence for his memorial.None of it works.
Nobody has heard of the companies that own the properties. We start mentioning them halfway through the list, thinking we’ve got nothing left to lose. If anything, when people hear the name Tritone ALM or Phoebus Moonbase Partners, or whatever, they close the door even faster.
As we leave – and this happens particularly in the places where we’ve named the company that owns the building – we get the queasy feeling of being watched.
By 3 p.m., we’ve knocked on the doors of – at a conservative estimate – £100m-worth of central London. We’ve gone without lunch, we are in South Kensington, and we are furious with each other and ourselves. I’ve observed that Em isn’t selling our line quite right, and she’s observed that I’m a condescending twat. Eventually we give up and get crêpes.
‘This is hopeless.’ I nod agreement, and Em keeps thinking aloud. ‘What does it mean? Does it prove we’re on to something?’
‘Doesn’t matter if it does prove that if nobody’s talking. Just means we screwed up our chance to find out what’s going on.’
‘I keep having a horrible premonition that Mr Bowling Ball’s going to be behind the next door.’
‘Me too.’
‘Ugh.’ Em sighs and spears her galette. ‘What do we do next?’
‘Don’t know. Davy’s got this other meeting tomorrow.’
