On Friday evening, Beauchamp came into the drawing room at the end of the day with his coat folded over his arm.
“Your Serene High — ”
The slip went through the room like a dropped glass. Pare, on the sofa, did not look up from the newspaper. Mama, in the armchair, took a quiet sip of her tea. Fidel, on the rug with Mercè, busied himself with the dog’s ear.
“Mr Montcada.” Beauchamp’s voice came back down clean. “I’ll be off for the evening. Captain Wallis will be back at six tomorrow morning to take over the day shift. I’ll be in at seven for the final handover. Anything you need before I go?”
Vidal looked up at him from the sofa. “No, thank you, Major.”
“Sir.”
Beauchamp gave a nod to Pare, another to Mama, and let himself out of the flat. The latch clicked behind him with the soft decisive sound that Vidal had heard him make a hundred times now.
Pare turned a page of the newspaper.
“He is a very good man, that one.”
“Yes, Pare.”
“You are fortunate to have had him.”
“Yes, Pare.”
His father did not look up. Vidal kept his eyes on Adelina, who had fallen asleep against Maria’s shoulder across the room.
? ? ?
Theflat emptied by stages. Jordi took himself off to the Connaught on Friday night after a long argument that he eventually lost to Pare. Maria went up to the spare room with Adelina at half past nine. Fidel followed her at ten, with Mercè under his arm, on the basis that the dog had grown attached and could not be deprived of her overnight rights. Mama and Pare retired to Vidal’s bedroom at a quarter past eleven, after Mama had pressed three separate kisses to the top of Vidal’s head and Pare had held him at the door without speaking.
The flat went quiet.
Vidal sat on the sofa in the lamp-lit drawing room and listened to the silence settle. The fig candle was burning down on the side table. His sling itched at the elbow and he could hear the occasional soft creak of the floor as someone walked the length of the spare room.
He thought about going down to Connor.
It would be a kindness to himself. Connor would let him in and lead him through to the kitchen to pour him something he should not be drinking on the painkillers. Connor was very good at not asking questions.
After a long time, he got up off the sofa and went down the corridor in his bare feet, past his own bedroom door into the spare bathroom that had been Beauchamp’s domain, though there was nothing of him left in there.
Beauchamp’s shaving things were gone from the shelf above the basin. His green toothbrush wasn’t in the cup, and the citrusy smell of the body wash Beauchamp favoured had been replaced by the scent of Fidel’s toiletries.
Mercè came down the corridor, summoned by some private signal of Vidal’s unhappiness, and pressed her nose against his ankle. He bent and picked her up with his good arm. He held heragainst his face, her warm bald flank against his cheek, and felt the heat arrive behind his eyes.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Thehandover finished at twenty past eleven on the Saturday morning. Wallis had the binder under his arm and the keys to the flat in his pocket, and Beauchamp had nothing left in his hands at all that linked him to the Mayfair flat or Vidal.
Carlos was on the sofa with the Telegraph and an espresso cup. Anne was in the armchair with Mercè across her knees, working her thumb behind the dog’s right ear, and Vidal kept to his place at the window in a pale shirt and his navy sling. He had an envelope in his left hand.
“Major.”
“Sir.”
Vidal crossed the rug. He held the envelope out at arm’s length between them. “With my thanks. For everything you have done for me over the last three months.”
Beauchamp took the envelope. It was heavy cream stock, and hadMajor H. R. Beauchampacross the front in Vidal’s hand. The flap was tucked in rather than sealed.
“Thank you, sir.”
