Connor reached into the drawer a final time and produced a knuckleduster. It was solid brass, polished to a high shine, and ithad the word LOVE engraved across the top of it. He slid it onto the four fingers of Vidal’s right hand.
Vidal looked at himself in the mirror mounted at the end of the counter, and then he began to laugh.
He laughed until he had to brace himself against the glass with both elbows and until Mick, who had been pretending not to listen, was openly grinning at the counter beside him. “Beauchamp, you must take a photograph. I need a record of this transformation. I need to send it to —”
“Sir. No.”
“Beauchamp, I am not going to —”
“Sir, with respect, I am not photographing you in a brass knuckleduster for the purposes of you posting this image on any platform that’s going to be viewed by more than one person.”
Vidal pressed the back of his hand against his mouth and visibly pulled himself together.
“Beauchamp. My darling Major. I swear to you, on my grandmother’s grave beneath the cathedral altar, that the photograph will not leave my mobile. It is for me, for the day, twenty years from now, when I look back upon this morning and I need proof that it really happened. Will you do this for me, please?”
Beauchamp took the mobile out of Vidal’s outstretched hand.
He framed the shot. Vidal had thrown one heavy gold-laden arm around Connor’s shoulders and arranged his face into the kind of glowering scowl Beauchamp had seen on the covers of the rap albums his lance corporals used to play in the back of the Land Rover. Connor, beside him, matched his energy, holding up two fingers in a peace sign.
Beauchamp took many photographs. Even the one where Vidal got his arms around Connor from behind and was attempting to strangle him with the longest of the gold chains. He handed the mobile back for Vidal’s review.
Vidal scrolled through the photographs with his entire face lit up, holding the mobile at arm’s length on account of being unable to bend the fingers of either hand. He passed it back to Connor so that Connor could look as well, and the two of them stood behind the counter with their heads bent together over the screen.
Beauchamp stood against the back wall, with his hands folded behind his back and his eyes on the front door, and he thought, very clearly and very distinctly:Fuck.
His stomach clenched.
What do I do here?
The job was to keep Vidal alive. Not to monitor the people he fucked. This was, by any reasonable security assessment, a significant complication.
“Right.” Connor closed the drawer and began divesting Vidal of his accessories one ring at a time. “Sandra’s expecting us at quarter past. Major, you ready?”
“Always.”
Connor’s eyes met his for a beat over the top of Vidal’s head. “Right. Let’s go feed the prince.”
Chapter Sixteen
Thefootball was on, and Vidal had taken up his usual position at the front edge of the sofa cushion, leaning so far forward that Beauchamp had begun to wonder whether he would actually slide off onto the rug if Atlético gave up another corner.
“Què fa aquest àrbitre?What is he doing? What is hedoing?Beauchamp, did you see that? The man on the right, he was a full metre offside, a full metre! I have measured it with my own eyes, and the linesman is asleep, the linesman is in an apparentcoma!”
Beauchamp, who had been quietly enjoying the match from the armchair with a glass of beer balanced on his knee, took a sip and said nothing. United were two-nil up against Atléticoin the Champions League, his team were having their best week of the season, and Vidal had been screaming at the television in three languages for the better part of an hour. It was, by some considerable distance, the most pleasant evening he’d had since moving into the second bedroom.
A slow private smile crept across his mouth, and he made no particular effort to hide it.
A cushion hit him in the side of the head with surprising velocity.
“You aregloating, Beauchamp! Do not think I cannot feel it from here, your smug English face is generating its own weather system. My team is beingrobbedin front of a global audience, and you are sitting there like a man who has won the lottery.”
“They’re playing well, sir.”
“They are playingcriminallywell, Beauchamp, and I will not have it acknowledged in this room. Pour yourself another beer and at least have the decency to —”
His mobile, which had been sitting face down on the arm of the sofa, lit up with a flurry of pings that came in so fast they ran together into one continuous trill. Vidal flicked his eyes down without breaking off his rant. His words trailed off mid-sentence as he reached for it.
He thumbed the screen alive even as he kept one eye on the TV. The sound he made then was soft and wounded. It brought Beauchamp upright in the armchair before he had consciously registered why.
