We pass through small towns with quiet railway stations, and the world looks more like Nottingham outside the train than New York.
In the Volvo that night, on the way to Biggin Hill, I kept low in the back seat covered with a blanket.
At the airstrip we drove straight to the hangar. The hangar doors were closed. I was taken out of the car and carefully placed inside a large reinforced suitcase on wheels. I was then loaded into the Gulfstream along with other matching pieces of luggage. The customs official in London, by now almost a friend of Kandee’s, checked the passport of him and the two pilots, and wished them a pleasant flight.
It was dark and strange inside the suitcase but it was not unpleasant. I had rarely experienced that much adrenaline; neither before nor since. The feeling of getting away with it. A free jet ticket to the United States. Completely off the grid.
Two more stops on this train until I get off.
We’re close to the ocean here. I can see gulls flying against the breeze.
Once we were airborne, James unzipped my case and let me out to stretch. He never allows the pilots to walk around or open the door to the main part of the plane, and I expect that’s because he wants them to assume he’s busy having sex with the attractive girls he sponsors, rather than sitting on his chair with his phone while they sit on their chair opposite, staring out of the window. When we were due to land I got zipped back inside my case and stowed in the rear bedroom of the aircraft along with his other matching bags.
One stop left. My ticket gets checked.
When the plane came to a halt at Teterboro I could hear the pilots open the cockpit door and talk to James. I could hear them walk down the steps, and I could hear a customs official board the aircraft for a five-second glance around. Passports were checked. Bags, including me, were offloaded into a Suburban. And then we drove straight out of the airport on to Route 17.
This is my stop.
Two before Stanford.
One before Rye.
I’m on my way to Greenhaven. One of the most expensive and prestigious suburbs north of the city. A district known for its waterfront properties and its coastal beauty. An area with excellent schools. This place is home to eminent bankers and industrialists, gallery owners and patrons of the arts.
It is also home to Professor Eugene Groot and his family.
Chapter 32
It takes me forty minutes to walk from Harrison railway station to Groot’s house in Greenhaven. The houses get larger and grander, the maintenance standards higher, the lawns greener and the cars more discreet. There are no Ferraris or Lamborghinis here, not that I can see, anyway. But there are brand new Audi SUVs and Jaguars. One man – I’m not sure if he’s the householder or a member of staff – buffs and waxes a vintage Porsche with all the skill and care you might expect of a specialist historian restoring an oil painting in a museum.
I don’t walk to Groot’s family house, but I manage to position myself one street away. I’m almost three minutes behind schedule. I have no phone and I have no notes. All the facts are engraved in my hippocampus, neocortex and prefrontal cortex. The location of the ideal park bench, as identified on Google Maps, specifically the satellite photo mode. The house and garden, again gleaned from Google, this time in 3-D mode. I know where Groot’s trees are, where he parks his car, where his wife parks her car, where the front door is situated, where the back door is situated. They bought the house two years ago and the main listings on Sotheby’s Realty are now gone. They’re also missing from three compiler sites – sites that exist to aggregate the listings from individual estate agencies. But I found them eventually, via a blog based out of New Jersey. A blog linking to interesting or luxurious houses. They had the link, but they also had screenshots and photos and some extra information about the area. So now I know this house inside out.
I walk round the block to ascertain exactly where Groot’s cameras are and where his neighbour’s cameras are. I also want to see who is home.
The houses are immaculate. The leaf-blowers have been out at work and the paintwork is flawless. Imagine the house in Home Alone, except more historical. Each building on its own acre plot. Mature trees and fine landscaping.
Seeing this life, this way of living, is eye-opening to me. My first instinct this morning, before I reprimanded myself, scolded myself, was to hire a driver to take me to Greenhaven. I have almost all of my fifty thousand dollars left, after all. I have forty thousand hidden in four separate locations in my room, one thousand as decoy in the safe, and eight thousand seven hundred on my person. Left shoe, right shoe, bra, inside zip pocket of my coat, wallet for muggers. The at-risk money is in the safe. You walk into a fancy hotel room and you think the safe is safe. Let me tell you: the safe is never safe.