“On the matter of what you will wear. Not the regimental kit. I know, I know, it is how he first saw you, and there is a logic there, but it is also a great deal of pressure on him to live up to. You do not want him sitting across from you in his nice shirt thinking,my God, he has come from a parade. You want himthinking,here is a man who has made an effort for me, on a Saturday evening. I would suggest —”
“Sir, I am not going to receive dressing advice from my principal.”
“You are, Beauchamp.” Vidal patted his forearm. “You are, because I will continue to give it whether you receive it or not, and you will find that my taste isunimpeachable. You will wear a dark blue shirt. Open at the throat. No tie. The navy suit you have been wearing all week isperfectly adequate, if you leave the jacket open. And for the love of God, the brown shoes, not the black. Black shoes are for the office. Brown shoes say,I have not yet given up on the prospect of love.”
Beauchamp walked on, stiffly, with Mercè while Vidal walked beside him, the flow of his words unceasing.
“The question of the kiss at the end of the evening is a complicated one, Beauchamp, and I will not presume to direct you on it, because men of your stripe have instincts about these things that must be respected. But I will say —”
“Sir.”
“— that a first kiss on a first evening is a gamble that pays off about sixty per cent of the time, which is not bad odds, but you must read the room. Trevor has had a terrible year. Trevor is looking for a man who will not rush him. If you sense a hesitation you must honour it. A hand on the small of the back at the taxi door is often quite sufficient, and it leaves him thinking about you in a way that a clumsy kiss will not. Are you listening, Major?”
“To every word, sir.”
“Good. Because there will be a test. On Sunday I shall expect a full debrief. Every detail. I shall be taking notes.”
“There will be no debriefing, sir.”
“I shall be takingextensivenotes on the debriefing, Beauchamp, and I shall be making recommendations for thesecond date. I do not want you letting this slip through your hands because you have grown complacent. A man of your age who has been out of the field for however long you have been out of the field, needs to move with some deliberation. I am here to help. This is a service I am providing to you out of personal fondness, and Mercè obviously agrees with me.”
Mercè, hearing her name, opened one eye against Beauchamp’s lapel and closed it again.
They had reached the door of the building. Beauchamp produced the key from his inside pocket with the hand that was not holding the dog, and pushed the door open. Vidal sailed through it ahead of him, triumphant and still talking.
Chapter Eight
Beauchampcame in with the coffee and found Vidal hauling a tripod into position in front of the long windows that overlooked the street. The ring light came out of a padded case next, unsheathed with the reverence one might accord a relic from the Louvre.
“Major.” Vidal was in a loose cream linen shirt open three buttons down, the gold crucifix swinging at his throat. His hair was loose around his shoulders and there was a high colour in his cheeks. “A small favour, when you have a moment. The smallest thing.”
Beauchamp picked up the tray. “Of course, sir.”
“My brother Fidel’s wife is eight months gone with their first, and they are in McLean, Virginia, which is a long way from any of us who love her. She has been…how shall I put it? A littleweepy, on the telephone. The baby is due soon, and the thing of the matter is that none of us can be there for her because my mother cannot fly and my father cannot leave Geneva, while I am — well. Here.” He gestured vaguely at the flat around him,indicating the wider catastrophe of his circumstances. “I thought I would record her a message. Cheer her up. Show her Mercè, who is her favourite. I wish to send her my love in a form she can watch on a bad afternoon. But I cannot do the angles myself, Major, I have tried, and every time I attempt it I look as though I am filming a hostage video.”
Beauchamp set the tray down on the console in the hall. “Of course, sir.”
“You are an angel, Major. A saint. Maria will weep. I mean this literally, she weeps atadvertsat the moment, it is her condition.”
Vidal fussed with the tripod. He moved Beauchamp an inch to the left, then one inch back again, with both hands on his shoulders. He connected to a Bluetooth speaker through his mobile and filled the drawing room with the kind of Spanish pop that had haunted Beauchamp’s only experience of a package holiday in Benidorm as a lance corporal on leave in 2012. After that mistake, he’d dropped his principles against letting his father pay for the better sort of holiday that involved villas in Mykonos and ski lodges in Val d’Isère.
“For Maria,” Vidal explained over his shoulder, rolling his hips into the beat. “She adores this song. We danced to it at her wedding in 2021, Fidel and I were both so drunk that Fidel fell into the fountain.”
“It sounds like it was quite the night, sir.”
“When I nod, you begin. When I dothis,” Vidal made a regal flick of his right wrist, “you stop. When I dothis…” He did a different flick, from the left, “you change to the other angle, the one with the bookcase behind me. Can you manage that?”
“The nod starts it. Right flick stops. Left flick changes angle.”
“You are a treasure, Major. I shall remember you in my will.”
Vidal returned to his mark in front of the windows, shook out his hair, crossed himself once, and nodded.
Beauchamp pressed record.
Vidal launched into a torrent of Catalan at a volume that would have reached the back row of an opera house. His arms were everywhere. He pointed at the ceiling, pressed a hand to his heart, and at one point made an elaborate gesture above his upper lip that seemed to involve the miming of a very large moustache. Beauchamp, whose briefing pack had included basic Catalan terminology from which he had retained a smattering of words, stood behind the tripod and filmed. He caughtCardona. He caughtFerrer. He caught what sounded very much likebigoti, which he was almost certain meant moustache. This tracked with the earlier gesture, though not with the stated audience.
The wrist flicked, so he changed angles. Vidal carried on, pacing now between the bookcase and the window, pausing to deliver what was unmistakably a punchline and throwing his head back in theatrical despair, which struck Beauchamp as a curious thing to do in a message designed to cheer up a pregnant woman. But then he had not met Maria, and in Beauchamp’s experience of Vidal, every emotional register was pitched three octaves above the one English people would have used for the same content. Perhaps that rang true for the whole Montcada family. He filmed the punchline and the despair both.
