Chapter Two
Beauchamp had installed Vidal on the sofa with a pot of coffee, a plate of the almond pastries Conceic?o had pressed into his hands on her way out, and a clear instruction not to leave the building for the remainder of the morning.
He’d accepted all three requests without protest, which ought to have been Beauchamp’s first clue that something suspicious was going on.
Instead, Beauchamp had taken it as evidence that the events of the previous night were finally catching up with the man, and had retreated to the kitchen to answer the seven increasingly urgent emails from the Private Secretary’s office, each of which opened with a variation on the same sentence: please clarify what in God’s name happened this morning.
He was halfway through the third draft of his reply when he registered the sound coming from the living room.
Beauchamp had loved a theatre geek for eighteen years; he could recognise a character voice being put on when he heard one through a wall.
Vidal was speaking in Catalan, so he couldn’t understand what was being said, but the prince’s voice was pitched in a far lower, sombre register than his natural one.
Immediately suspicious, Beauchamp set down his mobile and walked to the drawing room door.
Vidal was standing at the tall sash window with his mobile propped against a stack of art books on the side table, angled up at his face.
At some point, he’d changed out of his linen suit and into a dark green silk dressing gown, under which Beauchamp had a strong professional suspicion he wore nothing at all.
There was a moustache drawn on his upper lip in what looked like boot polish.
It was recognisably Aleix Ferrer’s moustache, which had been on the front page of every newspaper in Europe for a fortnight.
Vidal had drawn the thick black handlebar on with more enthusiasm than accuracy, his right fingertips still smudged black.
Beauchamp closed his eyes and sought out patience. “Your Serene Highness…”
Vidal didn’t look round. He held up one finger in the universal gesture for in a moment, and continued.
“Sir.”
“Un moment, Major.”
“Sir, I need you to stop.”
“I am,” Vidal said, still in character, “in the sacred act of returning eight hundred years of stolen sovereignty to the Cardonan people. One does not interrupt a man at his historic work, Major. Even you English must understand this.”
Beauchamp crossed the drawing room in four strides and plucked the mobile off its stack of art books. It was still recording, the red dot blinking in the corner of the screen.
“Beauchamp.”
“Sir.”
“Give it back.”
“No, sir.”
“That is my mobile.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You cannot simply take a man’s mobile from him in his own home.”
“I can, sir, and I just have.”
Vidal turned to face him properly for the first time, and Beauchamp noticed that his silk dressing gown was showing signs of wanting to open.
“Beauchamp.” Vidal’s voice had dropped. “Give me my mobile.”
“Sir, I’m going to ask you to sit down, and I’m going to explain to you why I can’t do that.”
“I am a grown man.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I am twenty-six years of age.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I have a degree.”
“I’m aware, sir.”
“From Cambridge, Beauchamp. HSPS. My dissertation was on the anthropology of the Mediterranean state banquet and it received a starred first.”
“Congratulations are in order, then, sir.”
“So you will kindly explain to me,” Vidal said, advancing, “on what authority a man of the Household Division has taken it upon himself to confiscate the personal property of a guest of His Majesty the King, in the guest’s own residence, on what I can only assume is some sort of misguided paternal —”
“Sir, that is Aleix Ferrer’s moustache.”
Vidal stopped talking. His silence lasted long enough for Beauchamp to watch him choose a new angle of attack.
“It is a homage. A loving, affectionate homage, Beauchamp, to the greatest political huckster of our time.”
“Sir, the man staged a referendum to remove your family from power a fortnight ago.”
“I am aware of that, Major, I was there. I tasted the betrayal in the air, and it was as salty as Marmite.”
“Then you are also aware that a video of you in this residence, dressed as him, mocking him in Catalan, would be on the front page of every newspaper from Barcelona to Brussels by lunchtime if it went anywhere near the internet. The Private Secretary’s office would be fielding Foreign Office questions by teatime.
I would personally be explaining to a four-star general why I allowed a twenty-six-year-old in a silk dressing gown to start a diplomatic incident on his second morning in the country. ”
“I was not going to post it,” Vidal said. “I was going to send it to James, Bash, and my brothers.”
“And the King will no doubt welcome this video between his Privy Council meetings and oncology ward visit. But I’m going to hold on to the mobile for the next half an hour while I establish whether the file has been uploaded anywhere, and then I’m going to return it to you, after you wash your face. ”
“Wash my face!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Beauchamp, I am a grown man —”
“I’d never suggest otherwise, sir.”
In fifteen years of service, Beauchamp had never been struck by a principal. Vidal went very still, and his eyes darkened. Beauchamp saw, with the calm of a man watching a lorry come through a red light, that the streak was about to end. Then Vidal lunged for the mobile.
What followed was not a fight. It was an undignified grappling match between a man in a dressing gown and a man in a three-piece suit, conducted in near-silence on an extremely expensive rug — Beauchamp holding the mobile above his head, Vidal making three separate attempts to climb him, a lamp going over somewhere behind them, until Vidal got one hand on Beauchamp’s lapel and pulled hard enough that the seam popped.
“Sir, if you tear this jacket I am putting it on my expenses claim.”
Vidal laughed, and it was just the opening Beauchamp needed. He got one hand between them, slid sideways, and was out of the drawing room with the mobile in his pocket before Vidal’s face had finished rearranging itself.
“I am going to have you court-martialled.”
“Yes, sir.”
“By the King.”
“I’ll look forward to it, sir.”
He took the service stairs down to the garden two at a time and let himself out into the cool April morning.
? ? ?
The building’s garden was tiny and invisible from the street. Beauchamp walked the length of it twice before his pulse came down. Then he found a bench pushed back against the far wall, sat on it, and held his head in his hands.
Three weeks ago he had stood in his CO’s office, and he had already decided to say yes before the briefing started based on what little he already knew of the assignment. An off-the-books posting. A VVIP royal. He’d been a personal recommendation from the Princess Royal herself.
You’d be doing us a favour, Beauchamp. The Principal is — well, he’s an interesting individual… His CO had let the word interesting sit in the air. He should have cottoned on then that this wasn’t just in reference to manageable, minor eccentricity.
Beauchamp lifted his head as he heard the garden door opening. A man stepped out carrying a green watering can. He was enormous, absolutely packed with muscle, all packaged in an impeccable, classically cut three-piece charcoal suit.
Beauchamp sat up straighter on the bench. The traitorous part of him that he’d been keeping muzzled for the eleven months since Julian had packed the last of his books into the back of a hire car outside their Marylebone flat and kissed him on the mouth like a friend, perked up.
Oh, said the traitor, that’s nice.
The man walked past him without a glance, went to the first of the terracotta pots lining the garden wall, and began watering a largely dead geranium.
Beauchamp watched him move to the second pot, which contained something that might once have been a lavender, and water it with the same careful attention, holding the spout close to the soil.
“They’re dead, mate,” Beauchamp heard himself say.
“Might not be.” The man didn’t look up. “Give it a week.”
The man’s accent didn’t come from anywhere near Mayfair.
It was the kind of voice you heard on a building site in Plaistow at six in the morning, or in the front of a black cab at two.
Beauchamp reassessed the suit, the watch, and the tie pin against it, and found his whole picture of this silver fox had shifted.
“You’re optimistic,” Beauchamp said.
“I like a project.” The man moved to the third pot. “I’m Connor, by the way. I’m in flat three.”
“Beauchamp.”
“D’you live here, Beauchamp?”
“I work for the chap who’s just moved into the top floor flat.”
Connor paused in his watering and looked up for the first time. His eyes were a piercing pale blue.
“Work for him how?”
“Security.”
“Right.” He took that in without blinking. “Let me guess. He’s a Russian oligarch, or the son of one.”
“No.” The one-word answer was a Household Division speciality. Connor watched him for another half-second, didn’t push, and went back to a ficus that was probably beyond saving. “Fair enough.”
“The geraniums will come back if you deadhead them,” Beauchamp said. “Pinch them off just above the first healthy leaf node.”
“That right?”
“My mother keeps a garden.” He stood up from the bench, taking one last look at the way Connor’s shoulders stretched the bounds of the suit. “I should get back to my principal. Good luck with the ficus.”
“Ta.”
Beauchamp strode back to the service door. Vidal’s mobile bumped against his ribs inside his jacket with every step, a reminder that his morning wasn’t finished yet. Three floors up, a window was open, and he could hear Vidal singing to Mercè in Catalan.