On the first day of March, Strike finishes his ‘afternoon’s tedious surveillance’ of Mrs Two-Times, and heads to House of Computers on Tottenham Court Road (Chapter 97).
House of Computers is one of several similar stores on that stretch of Tottenham Court Road. They sell laptops, PCs, gaming equipment and all manner of other electrical goods.
The shop also advertises itself as a ‘spyshop’ selling bugging devices, covert cameras, bug detectors, body worn cameras, vehicle trackers, body armour, CCTV and nightvision equipment. As we have no alternative information as to where the Strike & Ellacott Agency buy their surveillance equipment, I think we can consider this shop a likely source.
Strike buys a new laptop at the shop, and takes it down the road to The Flying Horse. He calls Spanner, who gives him instructions on how to install an anonymising browser on the new device. He has a burger and chips whilst he is there, and then heads back to the office.
Later that evening, after Robin has gone home, he configures the new laptop. He uses it to access the dark web, as he doesn’t want traces of his searches on the office computers.
You can visit House of Computer’s website here:
https://houseofcomputers.co.uk/?srsltid=AfmBOoouB6hTI9ZJdeGt3JcRfT-k2H0yhmt-QC4rz0UBeSMakINuLadv
Their ‘spyshop’ website is here:
House of Computers can be found on the map below.