Enigma Variations

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