The deli on Marylebone High Street was the one Vidal had sent him to. He’d gone every time without complaint and brought back exactly what was on the list thrust into his hand. The shop was twenty minutes on foot from his flat.
The man behind the counter recognised him on sight and didn’t comment on the fact that he wasn’t wearing a suit today. He took down a bottle of Fonte di Foiano without being asked and set it on the counter between them.
“And bread,” Beauchamp said. “A loaf of that sourdough. The one with the seeds.”
“Which size?”
“The big one.”
“Anything else?”
He looked along the counter. There was a bottle of balsamic vinegar near the till, the proper kind, aged in something that wasn’t a stainless steel vat in a warehouse, Vidal-approved. He pointed at it. The proprietor added it to the bag.
He paid in cash and carried the bag home with the bottle braced upright against his ribs the entire way.
Back in the flat, he tipped the failed salad into the bin without ceremony, rinsed the bowl, and built a fresh one with new leaves and a sliced tomato this time rather than chunked. He whisked a fresh vinaigrette in a clean bowl, balsamic and Fonte di Foiano in the proportions Vidal had drilled into him when he had stood at Beauchamp’s elbow to critique his technique.
He poured a small amount of the oil into a saucer. Then he added a thumb’s worth of balsamic to the centre of it, watched the dark drop bloom against the gold, and finished the dish with a pinch of the flaky salt he kept in a tin above the hob. He tore a piece off the end of the loaf, dragged it through the saucer, and put it in his mouth.
The oil was peppery at the back of his throat, the way Vidal had told him good olive oil had to be. He tore off another piece, dipped it, and ate it.
He got through about a third of the loaf before he registered that he hadn’t sat down. The Doctor was still paused on the television in the next room, frozen mid-grimace at his ventriloquist’s dummy.
He took the saucer and the bread and the bowl of properly dressed salad through to the sitting room, set them down on the side table, and unpaused the Doctor before he sat down. Tom Baker carried on from where he’d left off, and it was not Vidal’s voice, but it filled the room so that the silence didn’t press down quite as heavily on him.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Theflat had emptied out by Sunday lunchtime. Vidal was on the sofa in his stockinged feet, with Mercè across his thighs and his sling loosened at the collar. Mama and Pare had been driven to Heathrow on Saturday evening by the Geneva detail: two men in Swiss-cut suits and an unmarked Audi that had been waiting on the kerb since dawn. Fidel and Maria had left for McLean that morning at six, with Adelina asleep in her carrier and a US Embassy car at the door. Jordi and Aina had been the last to go, at noon.
Wallis had been a wonder throughout it all. He had loaded cases into cars, confirmed flight numbers, and handled the minor crises of lost passports and last-minute baby spit-ups.
“Will there be anything else for today, sir?”
“No, Captain. Thank you.”
“I’ll be off, then. Sergeant Knowles is on the door downstairs until ten. Ring me if you need anything before then.”
“I shall.”
Wallis closed the door behind him with a click.
Vidal sat on the sofa and looked at the cushion at the far end of it, which still held the dent Pare had made over four days of newspaper-reading. He looked at the rug where Fidel had playedEl cant dels ocellswith Connor on the second night.
He gave it twenty minutes for the sake of dignity. Then he eased Mercè off his thighs onto the warm patch he had left behind, picked up his keys, and went down two flights in his stockinged feet.
? ? ?
Connoropened the door in a white T-shirt, jeans and a streak of flour across the inside of his wrist. He took one look at Vidal in the doorway and stepped back to let him through.
“Come on in, sweetheart. I’ve got the radio on.”
The flat smelled of butter and rosemary. The radio was tuned to a station playing light classical music. Connor put a glass of water in his hand before he had finished sitting at the counter. “Drink that. You look peaky.”
“I am not peaky, Connor, I ambereft, which is a different and far more elegant condition.”
“Humour me and drink the water anyway.”
Vidal drank the water. Connor went back to whatever he had been doing at the hob, which involved a saucepan and heaps of garlic going into butter. He worked without commentary, tipping in a handful of green herbs, stirring, then tasting his creation off the back of the spoon.
