The landlord, the tenant and the agent

Eric had known Shoreditch for over forty years. ‘Back then, you couldn’t give it away and believe you me,’ he’d say, ‘I tried: year rent-free, twenty-five year leases, with no rent reviews. Still no takers!’

He’d seen all the changes – the city moving up Bishopsgate, getting closer every year, not that it was far away to begin with – the lofts for sale at fancy prices, the toffs buying up the old furniture workshops and button works, the hipsters flat-whiting the hell out of it, and the IT start-ups fighting over leases and paying fat rental deposits. ‘Make hay whilst the sun shines,’ was Eric’s mantra to his greedier landlord clients, who sniggeringly ignored his supplementary warning to ‘Remember, the value of your property can go down as well as up’.

Leon had inherited a tidy portfolio of Hackney properties from his father, whose own father had bought up abandoned warehouses in Shoreditch and Huguenot houses in Spitalfields. He marvelled at how rents had rocketed since his granddad had supposedly squandered the family’s meagre funds on speculative investments in bombed-out buildings all his friends considered well dodgy.

Along with those treasured family assets, Leon had inherited Eric and his ‘safe pair of hands who’ll keep your feet on the ground’ –  in his father’s words – and they worked well as a team. 

Eric could walk round Shoreditch and point out buildings with the kind of who-owned- what information that made him a Land Registry on legs. He looked after Leon, gently dissuading him from rash decisions and trying, mostly in vain, to urge caution in buying new freeholds.

Shitty Shoreditch had given way after the 1990s to gritty Shoreditch and then witty Shoreditch, all in the space of twenty years, and Leon was doing well. Eric had no difficulty finding tenants for all the buildings he managed and could afford to be extremely picky in selecting the best long-term prospects.

What could possibly go wrong?

‘There’s only one white van in the whole of Great Eastern Street,’ Eric reported to Leon one Monday morning during the first Covid lockdown, as he strolled from his flat for his daily dose of permitted exercise. ‘The whole of Shoreditch is as dead as a dodo. Nobody in any of the offices. The cafes, restaurants, pubs and shops all ruddy well closed. A bloody disaster for business.’

‘Don’t worry, Eric. We can weather it,’ Leon said. ‘It will soon blow over and things will get back to normal. We’re in it for the long-term. Isn’t that what you’ve always told me?’

What could possibly go wrong?

Working from home, hybrid working, office downsizing, company liquidations, lay-offs, shop and hospitality closures all took their toll, and Leon and Eric swapped places, so to speak: Leon desperate to find new tenants, Eric advising him to sit it out. ‘But I’ve got the rates to pay on all this empty space, Eric. Just find me any old tenant at a knock-down rent to tide us over. That’ll see us through.’

What could possibly go wrong?

Eric marvelled at how the wheel had come full circle. Once upon a time, an office in Shoreditch was more difficult to market than a hot drink to an alcoholic. Now, those times were back.

There were very few enquiries and all from people whose entrepreneurial ventures were way outside Eric’s experiences. Leon tried to pretend he was up with the times and tried to gee Eric along by throwing phrases out from time to time that sounded to anyone listening like he was playing a game of buzzword bingo. 

Blockchain. Crypto. AI. NFTs. Bots.

Eric had received short shrift when he tried to ask for an explanation of NFTs. ‘They’re non-fungible tokens – haven’t you got any yet,’ was what he was asked when Leon announced that he was thinking of buying some.

‘You’ve got to get with it, Eric,’ Leon had said. ‘Our tenants in Shoreditch are wild and wacky these days. Don’t be frightened of them. They’re the future. And ours!’

What could possibly go wrong?

From time to time, Leon bounced in and out of Shoreditch House in the old Tea Building on the corner of Bethnal Green Road. To Eric it was where the poseurs went up in the lift and up themselves.

One evening, Leon had ‘rocked up’ as he said later, with his tech pal Louis who introduced him to a guy called Hugo Iono. 

‘He wants a thousand square feet and can move in straight away with a cash deposit,’ Leon informed Eric.

‘But who is he?’

‘Always so suspicious. God, you’re like a bank manager. He’s got a company with two or three millionaire entrepreneurs working in the Amazon ecosystem providing analytics, algorithms, and data mining services in the social media and digital marketing world of online trading and finance.’

‘Yes, I get the technobabble direction of travel, Leon. It’s just I don’t understand it. Sounds like bullshit to me. And, why, if they’re so hot, do they want a small office in what, after all’s said and done, is Hackney?’

‘That’s right, Eric. Sell it, why don’t you? Don’t be so coy! Prime space in Shoreditch. A short walk from Liverpool Street. City on the doorstep. Nightlife that never stops. Surrounded by dudes who ply the same trade chained to their screens all day and gaming all night. That’s what we offer for them. But look, if it makes you feel better, do a bit of due diligence. He’s offered to send over his business bank statements and you can always do a search, online, at Companies House. I’d be shocked if you found anything. He seems so confident, I wouldn’t even bother to even waste my time looking at his financials. I’d just go with the hype.’

‘Where are they working from now?’

‘A little short-term let round the corner from Shoreditch House where they do most of their business, according to Hugo.’

‘Well, that’s where I’ll start, by getting a reference from their landlord.’

What could possibly go wrong?

Eric did some sleuthing. The existing landlord told him that they paid the rent on time, no bother, but wanted something a little bigger and he didn’t have anything. He commented that there were only ever one or two of them in the office at any one time, so why they wanted more space puzzled him. And, he said, they kept very weird office times according to the cleaner, but when challenged, Hugo had told him that it was because they operated their global business in multiple time zones. Fair enough.

The bank statements were, at first glance – a Leon glance – impressive. Sizeable deposits and impressive balances. But looked at more closely in an old-fashioned Eric way, the entries were odd, to say the least. Huge sums in dollars. The same amounts moving from offshore to onshore and back again elsewhere. Tax haven based companies paying and receiving dollops and dollops of dosh. Unusual transactions way out of line for Hugo’s type of business.

The same for the websites. Quite professional-looking at first, but examined more closely, several of them looked fake, describing services Eric couldn’t grasp. And, were the ‘Our People’ sections actually real? The photos looked artificially generated even to Eric and he was no expert. Based in several jurisdictions, the faces smiled out, offering client confidentiality in a results driven, performance based, high profit, fully digitised suite of services to their many clients, who – strangely – weren’t listed.

But several things stood out for Eric.

‘Look, Leon,’ he said over their skinny cortados, ‘I’m no forensic accountant, but it’s all a bit odd to me.’

‘Let’s just take the money, Eric. Stop worrying. If they pay, they pay. How they make their money is no concern of ours. Hell, I don’t think much of the ethics in the City. That’s where all the dirty money is spun round and where the lawyers defend the oligarchs and protect their anonymity. And look at the scandal of offshore ownership of British property. Why are we suddenly expected to be the Salvation Army of the corporate world?’

‘OK. I take your point. If they sign the lease and pay, let’s just roll over. I felt it my duty to you and your late father, to do things by the book.’

What could possibly go wrong?

Leon ‘rocked up’ again to Shoreditch House, this time with Hugo to celebrate signing the lease.

After a few mojitos, he felt bold enough to raise Eric’s doubts. Hugo smiled. ‘This comes as no surprise, my friend. I’ve always thought you and your agent were out of the ark, but man, I can see that you’re both totally out of your depth in this new brave world of ours. Who dares wins. Right?’

This annoyed Leon, whose personal pride was strong and whose loyalty to Eric was historical and total.

‘Actually, I did take a look, myself at the bank statements, Hugo.’ One entry had intrigued him amongst all the hirings of Ferraris, airbnbs, hefty overseas expenses and distinctly personal sounding items of expenditure.

‘You actually wasted your time looking, bro. God, you people amaze me. Wake up and take the money. If you’re getting cold feet, just say so and we’ll line somebody else’s pockets.’

‘No, no, no. Nothing like that. I just wanted to ask you about the payments to various Russian clients you seem to have and the many yacht transactions with them which seem a long way from your digital marketing services.’

‘Leon, mate. Stick to being a property magnate and milking your tenants. Leave the real world to me. Now, get the mojitos in. You said you’d be in the chair tonight and you’re getting very dull and boring.’

What could possibly go wrong?

Leon was a young guy. It was odd when he started looking and being so ill. He was hospitalised and deteriorated rapidly. The doctors at first were puzzled and investigations showed he’d been poisoned by some kind of nerve agent. Despite care in a specialised unit, he died.

MI5 were involved and searched Leon’s home and, through Eric, all his offices. Traces of radioactivity were found in Hugo Iono’s office. There were no traces of him.

They searched the addresses provided at Companies House. Evidence of nerve agent was found, but, again, none of the whereabouts of Hugo or his associates. The bank accounts were investigated. International agencies were alerted. 

Enquiries were ongoing. The rent wasn’t paid.

‘It’s novichok that killed him,’ Eric was told.

‘What’s novichok,’ he’d asked.

‘It’s Russian for “Goodbye”!’