The name makes it all sounds a bit supremacist, but it doesn’t take much to discover that it’s actually an industry in which ‘good’ hackers find flaws in the website or security systems of companies. They are either hired directly by companies to find holes or they do it off their own back in order to claim bounties. Some bloke made millions by finding an iPhone exploit and telling Apple about it. As well as making money, these types of people help protect the public from having their details stolen. It makes sense, but is the first I’ve known of this kind of job. I’ve always heard ‘computer hacking’ and thought it was a bad thing.
I can’t find out for certain whether the LinkedIn Harry Smith is the same as my Harry Smith. The only real clue is that Bright White Enterprises has an office based on an industrial estate a few miles away. Either there are two Harry Smiths who both work locally in internet security, or it’s the same person.
I take a few minutes to check on Billy and he’s almost back to his old self. He has finished one bowl of water, so I lay him down another. When he paws at the door, I take him down to the green at the back of the building and wait until he’s done his business. All the while, a thought is beginning to seed that’s so clear it’s hard to dismiss: could Harry have hacked into my computer?
He sent the first contact via our dating app – but part of the appeal was that we seemingly had so much in common. But what if he was able to make it appear that way because he had access to my emails, my social media and everything else? He knew what I liked and so turned himself into the ideal person for me?
There are a few issues around this. Not least an inflated sense of my own ego. Why? I live in a flat with one room. Two, if the shower is counted separately. I have no savings and barely anything to my name. I offer little except myself – and do I really believe I’m so dazzling a companion that a stranger would go to such lengths?
Secondly, if it was Harry who dropped the money into my bag on the bus, what does he get from it?
I finally reply to Harry’s previous text, the one with a selfie in which he asked what I thought of his war wound?
How are the injuries now?
I’ve barely sent it when a single-word reply pings back:
Recovering!
I take a moment or two to think about a response and then go for:
Do you fancy lunch?
He texts back almost immediately:
Can’t. Got things to do. Catch up soon.
There’s a sad face and then a smiley face. I’m not sure what to think. I could ask something far simpler – whether he gets the same bus as me; whether he knew me before we met at The Garden Café – but they don’t feel like the type of questions I can fire off in a text message.
Before I know it, I’ve taken Billy back upstairs and am hurrying back out of Hamilton House alone in the direction of Harry’s apartment building. It’s one o’clock, but the day seems to be getting colder. Clouds have started to close ranks, bringing a stinging breeze that fizzes between buildings and whips fallen leaves into a swirling frenzy. I was in such a rush that I forgot to pick up a proper jacket.
It takes an hour until I eventually reach the spot where the taxi dropped off Harry and me the morning after he’d been attacked. It felt different in the dark; emptier and quieter. In the middle of the day, it’s brighter and more vibrant. There is an express supermarket on the corner that I’d missed when I was last here. People are streaming in and out, carrying sandwiches, pastries, bottles of water and coffees.
I follow the road to his apartment block and then realise I have no idea which specific flat might be his. There’s a screen built into the wall outside, with a list of numbers and names of who lives within and the buzzer number. It is presumably to help couriers get hold of people they’re delivering to – and far more advanced than anything in Hamilton House. There, the postman leaves everything in our hallway.
I scroll through the list but there’s no ‘Harry Smith’ or ‘H Smith’. There’s nothing that’s close – although there are a handful of empty spaces in the list of occupants for the thirty flats.
As I’m looking through the names, a woman comes out of the building with a little dog on a lead. It’s one of those animals that’s a cross between a rat and a canine. The sparkly pink collar is more or less the only giveaway. The dog tugs its way over to me, probably smelling Billy on my clothes.
‘Sorry,’ the woman says. She’s wearing sunglasses for a reason that’s probably best not to ask about. She’s either a celebrity, a cataract sufferer or a lunatic.
‘Do you live here?’ I ask.
She glances back to the apartment block and then me. ‘Yes…’
‘Do you know someone named Harry who lives here?’
I can’t see her eyes, but her forehead wrinkles. ‘Should I?’
‘I guess not…’
She gives a dismissive shrug and then hurries away with her dog. It’s only when she’s gone that I remember Harry telling me that his building doesn’t allow pets. It’s an eerie moment as I walk back to the road and turn in a circle, wondering if I’ve somehow come to the wrong place.
I haven’t – it was definitely here that Harry stood outside and told me that he was going to get some sleep… He then walked around the back of the building. I never actually saw him go in. I head back to the main doors and then follow the path around to the side in the way he did. There’s a garden at the back with a grubby sandpit nearby. There is a door through which people could enter – but it’s hard to see why they would. I stand and watch the stream of cars on the far side of the road, wondering if Harry said goodbye to me, rounded the building and then disappeared off to wherever he actually lives.
I eventually do a full lap of the building and end up back where I started. As I reach the main doors, a man is exiting with a football under his arm. He holds the door open for me with a smile and, without thinking, I take the offer and head inside, giving a quick ‘thank you’ as if this is all perfectly normal.
The lobby to the building has a large unoccupied desk off to one side, two lifts opposite the main doors and a bank of mailboxes on the other wall. A slim tab accompanies each box, with a name of a person for each flat. I scan through them all twice, but there’s no ‘Smith’. If Harry is living with someone, then he never mentioned it. Otherwise, why wouldn’t his name be on either the directory? Or the mailboxes?
I hang around the lobby for a minute or so, not sure what to do. There’s nothing conclusive, not yet… but it’s disturbing. I search for him on my phone again and re-find the LinkedIn profile. There are no pictures, no significant details about past education or the like – only the name and ‘Bright White Enterprises’.
There’s a local phone number attached to the company listing, so I call it. The three rings take an age, but then a man’s voice sounds a chirpy: ‘Bright White.’
‘Could you put me through to Harry, please?’
‘Who?’
I feel certain the man on the other end can hear my heart pounding. ‘Harry Smith? I think he works there.’
‘Don’t think so. Are you sure you’ve got the right company?’
‘Is that Bright White Enterprises? You’re in internet security?’