I watched Bathmore’s door for two hours as the street began to come alive. I saw the neighbors put out garbage, walk dogs, leave for work on foot or by vehicle. The sky was clear and the sun, once fully risen, was bright on the roofs of the cars still parked along the street. I watched for another hour, then two. My eyes were blasted. My brain drifted off into unrelated musings. I had set out to wait all day if necessary but now I was consumed with doubt. It snuck up on me and I didn’t realize what was happening until suddenly I found myself thinking about why I was in London, what I thought I was doing, why I had taken on this job. I felt like a fake. Self-doubt was an old companion of mine. It attacked when I was bored. Sometimes it spurred me to action without regard for consequences. I just needed to do something instead of sit. The sunlit street outside began to go white like an overexposed photograph. Objects had halos. I had been staring out the window for too long. I was on the verge of giving up. I had decided to go to Bathmore’s office, break in, and see what I could find when the door of his building banged open and there he was. Without thinking, I jumped up, grabbed my backpack, and was out the door within seconds.
I crouched on the steps, watching him go by, then darted down and followed. He turned the corner in the direction of the tube station. I stayed right behind him this time. His black jeans and a bleu de travail French worker jacket blended into the muted colors of the weekday crowd on the street but he also had a burgundy backpack which I was able to track visually as it bobbed along, momentarily hidden then appearing again in a flash. As I had suspected, he was headed for Hammersmith station. I followed him down. On the platform there were double benches with a tall sign in the middle advertising the station name in the instantly recognizable blue and red bullseye logo of the London underground. I lurked behind one of the benches, trying to watch Bathmore unobtrusively. There were two buskers further down the platform, one with a violin, the other an accordion, playing a slow, sad klezmer tune in a minor key. Bathmore seemed oblivious. He stared blankly at an advertisement for vodka. When the train arrived, I boarded the same car but from the rear door. It was crowded but I could see him, legs braced, swaying with the movement of the train, still staring into space with that glassy expression.
Bathmore rode the Piccadilly line to Holborn station, transferred to the Central line, and got off at Bethnal Green station in Hackney. He had to be going to his office. I pushed my way through the press of human bodies and followed him up, out of the station. Out on the street it was bright, hot and dusty. City smells filled the air—diesel, urine, spicy food, sewer gas. Plane trees rustled overhead. The sidewalk was crowded. Ahead of me, a woman in a long black burqa maneuvered a stroller around a fruit stand. A skateboarder shot past me with inches to spare and nearly crashed into a crate of watermelons. I stuck to Bathmore’s back, watching his pack bob through the throng of humanity. Small shops, hole in the wall restaurants, pubs, and grocers lined the street. The buildings were two or three stories, old brick and graffitied concrete. He turned off the main street after maybe half a mile and I dropped back, trailing him from a distance on a smaller, less populated road that paralleled a canal. Houseboats were moored along the closer edge of the waterway and others puttered up and down. The smell of the canal reminded me for a moment of the China Basin inlet back home. Bathmore reached another, larger street and turned right, away from the canal. I hurried to catch up. Only a couple of blocks farther on, he stopped abruptly in front of a doorway sandwiched between a bookshop and a bakery.
The building was a boxy, three story brick edifice with stone lintels over the square windows. I loitered across the street, watching as he dug in his backpack and pulled out a set of keys. The entrance was up a couple of steps and recessed to form a narrow vestibule. Bathmore unlocked the door and stepped inside.
Now my job was waiting, again. I didn’t want to loiter in the street or try to sit in a pub and watch the building. My jet lagged brain was not alert enough for that and I wanted to be closer so I could see if Bathmore had visitors—maybe even close enough to hear if he made phone calls. That meant getting inside. I walked back up the street, turned down a side road, and circled around to the back of the building via a narrow alley. Twenty feet along the alley, it opened up and there was a parking area big enough for six cars and a dumpster. The building had a fire escape ladder up the back and a door at ground level probably used by people assigned parking spots. Only two of the spots were occupied, one by an ancient Mercedes sedan, the other by a tiny Ford van with Mulgrew’s Plumbing stenciled on the side in elegant burgundy letters. The door was propped open with a brick, probably by the plumber. That made things easy.
Inside, I found a long central hallway with doors opening to both sides. Gray linoleum, waxed a thousand times, stretched away, edges converging toward a distant spot of daylight. The walls were
