Following the map on my phone I walked a few blocks along major streets busy with busses and trucks, then turned down a calmer, narrower street that was lined on both sides with squat, late Victorian row houses. Flowers sprouted from window boxes and each house had a narrow, walled area in front where the garbage cans, bikes, and scooters were kept. Two small apartment buildings squatted amongst the row houses on the block, the first one I passed matched the address Ashna had given me. I scanned it as I walked by. It was fairly new construction but sought to match the houses on the street with a brick facade, paned windows, and chunky pediments. There seemed to be one main entrance. I glanced in as I passed and saw a small lobby with two rows of eight mailboxes. So, sixteen apartments in the building. I didn’t know which one was Bathmore’s. His unit number was fourteen so I guessed second floor. Probably even numbers on one side of a central hallway and odd on the other. No way to tell whether Bathmore’s faced the street or the rear of the building without getting inside.
I kept walking until I saw the address of the house I would be staying at. It was just like the others on the street. I rang the bell and a sharp nosed woman with a toddler on her hip answered after a short wait.
“Hello. I’m Justin. Checking in to the rental.”
“Oh! You’re a bit early but it’s okay. I’ll show you up.”
“Sorry, just got off the plane.”
“Don’t worry. The place is ready. I’ll just get the keys.” She turned and rummaged through the drawer of a table in the entry hall. The toddler peeked around her mother’s arm, giving me the eye. I smiled at her and she smiled back, her mouth sticky with strawberry jam from a piece of toast she was mammocking.
“Here they are. This way.” The woman edged past and led me around to a set of covered steps outside. The steps climbed up steeply to a small landing and a door near the top of the house where she paused, fumbling with the keys. Finding the right one at last, she fitted it into the lock. “I’m Murial, by the way,” she said, turning as she pushed the door open. “Come on in.”
The place looked fine—more or less what I expected from a garret apartment in a middle class borough of London. The pictures online had, as they always do, made it look larger. Mid-morning light filled the tiny living room, angling in through a window overlooking the street. A tiny kitchen with a window overlooking the neighbor’s roof was next, then an even smaller bedroom and bath. The furniture gave off a strong thrift shop vibe. The floor was hardwood painted a bizarre shade of green and mostly covered by rag rugs.
“Staying a few days?” Murial hovered in the doorway.
“Yes, just in town for business.”
“Great. Well, let us know if you need anything. We’re just downstairs.”
She left and I got myself situated. The view of Bathmore’s building was not terrible actually. It was up the street but I could see the main entrance. I had a feeling that just watching the building was not going to give me much data though. I needed to get inside and search Bathmore’s apartment and I needed to do it soon. I got a glass of water from the little stainless steel sink in the kitchen, pulled a chair up to the window, and sat, thinking and watching the entrance to the building. An elderly woman left with one of those rolling carts every elderly woman in Europe seems to have, going to visit the shops on the high street. A young man arrived, trudging like he was coming home from an overnight shift. I empathized with him. My overnight shift had involved a lot of sitting on an airplane but I was feeling the time change and lack of sleep.
A moment or maybe an hour later I started from a half-sleeping daze, unsure for several seconds where I was. Someone was walking away from the building entrance. I focused my eyes. A man, mid-height, dark hair, with a long, prognathic British face. It was Bathmore. Ashna had forwarded me his driver’s license photo. I roused myself, grabbed the key the landlady had left, and darted down the stairs. By the time I got down to the street, he was gone. I followed anyway, walking in the direction he had been headed. At the end of the block I reached Hammersmith road. I guessed he was headed to the tube station so I turned and walked that direction, scanning the street ahead. The sidewalks were crowded with office workers heading out for their lunch breaks. I couldn’t see Bathmore in the throng. Up ahead, a Starbucks occupied a corner retail space. I looked in the windows as I passed but saw no sign of him. I had lost him and I wasn’t sure following him would help much anyway. I gave up and turned right at the next intersection.
It was a quiet residential street I found myself on, parallel to and one road over from the one I was staying on. Halfway down the block there was an apartment complex with a driveway leading around to a lot in the back. I could see the rear of Bathmore’s building in the break between the apartment block and the next row house. A wall separated the properties but Bathmore’s building backed right up to it and, furthermore, a fire escape ran up the middle of the building with emergency exit doors at each floor. I hesitated for a moment. Careful planning had always been my method. But ever since Valerie’s missing painting had shifted my trajectory, setting me on my current course, I had found myself in more situations requiring immediate, unplanned action. I knew Bathmore was out and had just left. Assuming he hadn’t just run out for a coffee or groceries, I should have some time to search. Planning was good but I was never much of a waffler or hesitator either. The desire to just get it done defeated my more conservative impulse and I started up the driveway.
Vauxhalls, Volkswagens, and weird Ford models not available in the states were scattered around the lot. A row of trees grew along the wall. Casually, sensing more than intellectually knowing that no attention was currently turned my way, I moved behind one of the trees and quickly scaled the wall. It was brick and concrete block with easy hand holds. At the top I balanced for a moment then jumped the narrow gap, feet hitting a rung of the fire escape and hands wrapping around the edges. I clung to the ladder, feeling the reverberation of my landing humming in my palms. Once the vibration died out, I made my way up to the roof. It was unlikely that anyone in the other building would be looking out their window just at that moment. It was even more unlikely that they would call the police even if they did. People were alarmingly likely to give unusual situations the benefit of the doubt, resistant to get involved.
The top of Bathmore’s building was flat and had a four foot parapet around the perimeter. In the center was a four by six foot enclosed space with a door and a steeply raked roof. It had to be where a set of stairs terminated, giving access from inside the building. I tried the door but it was locked. I had a set of picks in my wallet. I kept them in a thin metal business card case behind a few of my cards. The TSA hadn’t found them yet and were not likely to in the future given their almost total failure rate at detecting hidden items in tests carried out by federal agents. They weren’t the best picks but would do in a pinch. I took them out and worked the lock for a few minutes. The sun was hot on my back and I started to sweat. Finally, the tumbler turned and I pushed the door open. As I had suspected, a set of stairs led down, switched back, and down again, all the way to the ground level. At the second floor landing I could see a door probably leading to the main hallway.
I climbed quietly down to the landing and listened for a moment. Hearing nothing, I pushed the door open and strode out into a corridor carpeted in green with a burgundy floral motif. Frosted glass sconces threw light up at the ceiling and the doors to the apartments were dark wood. Each door was recessed about two feet to create a little entryway. Two doors down I came to number fourteen. It had a bolt lock and a knob set lock. I tried the door and could tell by the give in it that only the knob was locked. I crouched, fitted my tension wrench into the lock, raked the pins, and almost immediately felt the cheap lock give way. I heard a door open down the hall just as I pulled Bathmore’s closed behind me. A man’s deep voice, muffled through the walls. Footsteps. Then the door to the stairwell swinging closed.
I locked both the knob and bolt locks the
n turned and surveyed the apartment. The place smelled stale, like unwashed clothing and linens and trash in need of emptying. I was in a short entry hall. A door led into a bathroom on my left. To the right a doorway opened into the kitchen. I poked my head in and saw dishes piled in the sink and take out containers on the counters. A bit farther and the hallway opened into a living room with windows facing out toward the apartment complex I had cut through from the next street over. There was one more door on the left which I imagined must lead to the bedroom. The best place to start looking would be wherever Bathmore kept his papers. Most people had a desk or a filing cabinet. If he had Wolhardt’s notes, the most obvious place would be with his other papers. I doubted I would be that lucky, but it was worth looking.
I walked forward and checked the living room. Sofa, coffee table, armchair, television, sand colored wall to wall carpet in need of vacuuming. No art on the walls. A green tiled breakfast bar and a pass through to the kitchen. Across the room a sliding door led out to a small balcony. I opened the door and looked down. Below was an identical balcony and then, farther down, the narrow walkway behind the building and the wall I had climbed. I turned, leaving the door open. If Bathmore returned I could be out the door and over the balcony railing before he had the bolt unlocked. Crossing the room again, I opened the bedroom door. The stale smell was stronger here. The blinds were drawn. I couldn’t see much so I flipped a switch on the wall. A ceiling light glowed then brightened, revealing an unmade bed with gray flannel sheets and, against the wall under the window, a desk with a decrepit looking PC, a file cabinet, and a pile of papers next to the keyboard. I crossed the room and started with the pile of papers. They were mostly bank statements and bills: utilities, credit cards, the usual. One bill caught my eye and I paused on it. It was for a leased office space. The cost was £248 per month and the bill was for the current month plus two months past due. A handwritten note was scrawled at the bottom of the page:
Mr. Bathmore, You must pay the past due amount at once. Otherwise, we will be forced to begin eviction proceedings.
I snapped a photo of the page and put it back in the pile. I tapped the keyboard on the computer and its hard drive whined as it spun up. The screen flickered, then showed a windows login screen. I didn’t want to spend time trying to hack into the computer so I clicked the sleep icon and the computer fell back into its idle state. Next I went through the file cabinet quickly. There was a file folder marked ‘employment’. Inside I found a signed contract for a position as personal assistant at a company called Greenbriar Industries dated from several years before. I took a picture of the document and returned it. I found a copy of Bathmore’s diploma for a bachelor’s degree with a dual major in music and mathematics from Oxford University. There were other folders full of paystubs, paid bills, personal letters, and old papers from college. I didn’t have time for a full analysis so I left them alone. Remembering something, though, I went back to the stack on top of the desk, dug through, and found Bathmore’s most recent credit card statements. He had several credit cards and all were nearly maxed out. Two of the statements showed activity up until two weeks before. As I had suspected, there was a group of charges from locations in and around Los Angeles at about the time Wolhardt’s notes were stolen. I put everything back and began searching for secret hiding places. I looked under the bed, in boxes on the top shelf of the closet, behind the hanging clothes, bottoms of dresser drawers. I searched every location I could think of but found nothing except dust bunnies and a two pence coin. Bathmore seemed to live a Spartan existence. He had very little in the way of personal possessions and what he did have was generic. Even the food in his refrigerator seemed to lack any personality. I had spent too long already in the apartment so I gave up, closed the balcony door, and slipped out the front. Bathmore’s place was a desultory crash pad. I had a feeling that the notes were not there. Call it intuition or a hunch—I had put my faith in intuition many times in the past and had not been disappointed. Something about the psychological portrait that could be deduced from Bathmore’s flat told me he wouldn’t do anything important there. The discovery that he had an office space was intriguing. If I was going to find the notes, I was fairly sure it would be in Bathmore’s office. I just needed to break in before he got evicted.
Chapter 11
Meetings in High Places
July 1: London
Walking out the front door and straight to my rental seemed like it might have the potential to arouse suspicion so I went back out the way I came in, relocking the roof door behind me and climbing down the fire escape. The leap from the ladder to the top of the wall was not as simple in reverse—there was nothing to hold on to. I wobbled for a moment but managed to stick my landing, then hopped down, emerged from behind the trees, and headed back through the parking lot of the neighboring building. A couple of high school aged teens were sitting on the hood of a car in the lot, passing a blunt back and forth. Their smoke hung in the still air, smelling of sweet, flavored tobacco and pot. French rap music thumped and clattered from their car’s speakers. They didn’t seem to find it strange when I emerged from behind a tree. Adults are often more or less invisible to teenagers.
I walked a couple of blocks out of my way, looking for a grocery store. Near the station, I saw a large white building with a brutal red logo that screamed supermarket and stopped in for supplies. I had some thinking, some napping, and some research to do. Breaking into Bathmore’s apartment had been easy but I didn’t want to keep trusting to luck. I needed to make my next move based on solid information rather than intuition alone.
Back at my rental, a big tabby cat with the battered ears of a fighter followed me up the stairs. He meowed at the door like he owned the place so I opened it and stepped to the side as he pushed past me. I followed him in and watched him closely as he roamed the apartment, afraid he might decide to spray something. But he just went sniffing around for a few minutes, checking the international aromas of my suitcase, the dusty musk of a throw pillow, then finally settled in a sunspot on the sofa. I left the door open so he could get out if he wanted, put away the groceries, then sat back down in my chair by the window. A nap was the first order of business. I gazed out the window, letting my eyes grow unfocused, thinking over what I had found in Bathmore’s flat. There was something weird about the place, beyond the messiness and lack of any gesture toward personality or comfort—Bathmore was a musician but I hadn’t seen a single instrument and no stereo system. Maybe he had pawned them.
I woke up an hour and a half later. The cat was snoring. Stretched out, he took up more than half of the small IKEA sofa—a big fellow. I had never really owned a pet but I didn’t have anything against them. Growing up, I had lived on a farm. The animals there were not pets. I wondered if this cat belonged to the family below. Maybe he was tired of the toddler and just wanted some peace and quiet. I was fine with him hanging around.
I got up and made myself coffee and a sandwich, then settled in with my laptop at the tiny table in the kitchen to do some research. First, I wanted to get some information on Bathmore’s office. I pulled up the photo of the bill on my phone and then googled the address. It was on the border between two boroughs called Tower Hamlets and South Hackney about forty-five minutes away by train. I researched the area a bit. Tower Hamlets appeared to be fairly rough. It was the poorest borough in London and had a majority Muslim, immigrant population. Interestingly, at its southern end, along a meander of the Thames, the borough also encompassed the Isle of Dogs which was one of the fancier districts of London, with glittering skyscrapers providing luxury offices and housing to the wealthier residents of the city. Hackney seemed to be more gentrified but still ethnically diverse and lower middle class. Bathmore’s office was close to the Bethnal Green tube station in a two-story brick building on a street called Broadway Market. I wondered what Bathmore was doing with an office space in that part of London until I went back to my search results and came across several other busi
nesses at the same address. They were all music teachers. Apparently the offices were set up as practice rooms. So Bathmore was teaching music to make ends meet. What, then, was the deal with the employment contract I found in his desk? I went back to the photos on my phone and looked at the contract again. The company was called Greenbriar Industries. I googled it and found the website.
Greenbriar was in the business of international real estate holding and development. They acquired land and built large subdivisions, apartment complexes, and resort hotels. The list of properties was long. I clicked through to the About page and found a list of top level managers as well as the board of directors. The CEO and Chairman of the board was named Morgan Jutting. Balding, maybe in his sixties, with a face like one of the thuggish, late Roman emperors—Titus, maybe, or Vespasian—he stared imperiously at the camera as if he was willing it to explode. I could easily imagine him carved in marble and scowling down from a tall plinth. Something about his name resonated. It pinged around in my brain, sinking down and then ricocheting back up attached to a memory: Julian Wolhardt, halfway across the planet and eight days in the past, explaining to me why someone might have gone to the trouble of stealing his notes. An English billionaire had offered a reward, Wolhardt had told me. The billionaire’s name, maybe not so coincidentally, was Morgan Jutting.
Enigma Variations Page 11