Lot 27
Willie Wilde’s grandfather plays a game with her after he’s dead
THE note said simply, “don’t open it”. It was dated and signed W. Sirté. The paper had faded blue lines and a single pink margin line. It looked torn from a notepad, the kind you don’t see anymore.
Don’t open what? Willie looked inside the envelope. It was empty. She re-read the attached letter from the offices of Backwell and Percy. It read:
Dear Ms. Wilde,
I am writing to notify you that in the last will and testament of our client Mr. E. J. Wilde, you are to receive Lot 27. Please find enclosed.
As executors of Mr. Wilde’s will, we thank you for your attention.
Her grandpop’s face came to mind, old and lined, framed by his big battered ears. He’s sitting at his long desk, wearing one of his suits — she could feel the heavy, rich texture of the tweed between her fingers — surrounded by his many books, filling the rooms across his big old house on the hill.
What had Sarah gotten? A sour taste filled her mouth. Her sister was probably taking her children to Mass even now.
Willie rolled over throwing the letter on the floor. The sunlight warmed her back as she lay on top of the duvet, stretching and arching her body, toes touching the back of her head. She remembered her grandpop, Ernie Julius Wilde, teaching her to play poker when she’d stayed with him that first summer.
He was sat in his big armchair, young Willie perched on a low coffee table. “Now look ‘ere. Don’t you bet on nothing less than a good pair.” He leaned over, huge clouds of smoke billowing from him as he puff-puffed on his cigar between life lessons. His eyes had these black bits in them. It wasn’t blood, but something he’d been born with he’d told her. People found it hard to look him in the eye. And he didn’t mind using that on them. “Willie, you gotta use what the Gods don’t give you right.”
Fuck it. Shower, coffee and work she told herself. Picking up the note from the floor, she placed it back in the envelope marked Lot 27 and put it on the mantelpiece. A large ornate mirror rested on the mantelpiece with several postcards stuck in the frame. One said, “All I Got Was This Postcard”. Willie’s reflection left the mirror.
Sounds from the street spilled across the room through an open sash window. Beside her unmade bed, a large thick mat covered strewn with clothes took up most of the available floor, leaving only a small strip bare for a simple kitchen standing between two doors. One door led to a cramped bathroom and the other led outside to the stairwell. Opposite the mantelpiece, on the other side of the thick mat, was a floor to ceiling set of shelves. It held many books with the odd nook here and there, stuffed with papers and envelopes.
Willie’s studio apartment was on the fifth floor of a building overlooking a run of shops that had seen better days. Two were vacant and boarded up. One had the best sign she’d seen in ages. It read “Cheap Drinkz”. She’d found it to be true. Or cheaper than anywhere else.
Standing in front of the small machine in the little kitchen run, waiting for it to fill her metal mug, she pulled on her other boot.
Twenty minutes later, unfinished coffee gone cold, her first ride of the day was waiting on the wrong side of the road. She slowed her car down, turned in a gap in the traffic and pulled up alongside him. She’d seen him checking her number plate against the one on the app.
He got in. She said hello and he only nodded and opened his laptop. OK then.
Five hours later, shift over, she was parked outside her apartment and heading back inside. She had a simple rule: no less than five and no more than 10 rides per shift. She liked being her own boss but knew that for the lie it was.
Kicking off her boots, she stripped and pulled on a pair of shorts from the pile on the floor. Lying down on the mat, she began to stretch, warming up her muscles. She’d been taught the routines as a child and saw no reason to stop using them.
Moving through the routine s— one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, four one thousand — she tried to lose herself, but Lot 27 came unbidden. Questions distracted her. How many lots were there? Why was she 27th? Which lot was her sister’s? Or lots?! Maybe it had simply been alphabetical.
Standing, hands clasped in front of her, she stretched and leaned forward. Counting again, she held the pose. Who the hell was E. Sirté? Sweat began to collect on her forehead and lower back.
Breathing hard, she suddenly stopped.
It couldn’t be that simple could it? She grabbed her mobile and typed in Sirté. The top results all related to a small city on the coast of Libya. Famous as the birthplace of Gaddafi, she read. A memory stirred. Her parents anger at the news on their TV.
She was suddenly back at her Grandpop’s farm as a small girl. She’d come in from playing outside in his hot, dusty garden. There were these men standing there in suits like big dark blocks, with her grandpop, holding a leather-clad book. Standing by the door, she watched them. They too kept smoke clouds around their heads, like her Grandpop. Hands were shaken and big men looks passed between them. She’d fancied them to be some kind of secret gang. She found out years later she wasn’t far wrong.
The men filed out and passed her silently. Grandpop saw her and smiled. The front door closed behind her and he said “Willie I reckon it’s time we played a new game. The best one.”
They sat in his lounge, among his many books and he opened the leather-clad book. In this book were lines and lines of letters and numbers written in a language she’d never seen. His fingers moved across the pages as he spoke. And then she saw it. That pink margin line.
No fucking way! Grabbing the envelope, she pulled the piece of paper from it. Pink margin. She re-read the words carefully: Dont open it. There was no apostrophe. How had she missed that? Everything had meaning to her Grandpop.
Dont open it, would mean open it, unlock it. Of course! His strange eyes came to her and that ghost of his smile, like a Cheshire Cat wreathed in his smoke cloud.
But what was the cipher? Willie grabbed a bill off the shelf and sat down on the mat, legs splayed out. Turning over the paper, she wrote out the letters at the top of the blank side: DONT OPEN IT.
She wrote it out backwards: TINEPOTNOD. Nod to a tin pot. Smiling, training routines forgotten, she wrote out the alphabet below this:
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
She tried some of the options he’d taught her:
cnms nodm hs (a left one letter cipher)
epou pqfo ju (a right one letter cipher)
She played with various letter combinations, but nothing. She continued to try more decryption combinations but to no avail. Nothing made sense. She looked up. It was dark outside. Her watch said 10.03. She was feeling hungry but she didn’t want to quit.
Fuck yeah, takeout. She grabbed her phone, pulled up the number for the chicken place downstairs and demanded their finest bucket of chicken.
“Yes I want a whole bucket Antonia and no I won’t be sharing it”. Willie listening briefly to Antonia, then cut him off. “Just tell me how long chicken boy”.
Laughing when she got off the phone, she realised this was the most fun she’d had in ages. She looked at her watch. 10.10. She caught herself in the mirror. Why are you always looking at your watch? chiding herself.
She looked again at her watch. And then back at the reflection. Fuck you…she looked again — numbers!
Grabbing another piece of paper, she sat back down again. She wrote down DONT OPEN IT as numbers:
3 14 13 19 14 15 4 13 8 19 (each number the letter’s position in the alphabet)
And stared at the numbers. She pulled up a cryptography website and divided the numbers up into the two fields she needed. After seven attempts it came up. Oh grandpops!
Latitude: 31.4131914
Longitude: 15.413819
It was just off the Costal Road, west of the city of Sirté, the birthplace of Gaddaffi. And it also read nod (to a) tin pot (dictator).
She stared at it on a map. There was some sort of farm there. Grandpop!
Her door pinged. Chicken boy had her bucket.
Read more on Willie Wilde and others in London nights:
Author’s notes:
1. My favourite book on encryption is Simon Singh’s The Code Book. I found it a great starting point for exploring the history of encryption and decryption. There’s even ten encryptions at the back of the book to try. From simply shift cyphers like in my story, through to PGP level encryption.
2. For the beady eyed, 3 14 13 19 14 15 4 13 8 19 number combination is actually one letter to the left. It gave a better mapping location. I hope you allow me this artistic licence.
