He drew the long curtains across each of the drawing-room windows and checked the latches. He stood in the middle of the room and considered the line of sight from the building opposite, which struck him as less than ideal, so he made a note to raise it with Young. The kitchen window onto the mews was already shut. He checked it anyway, tested the handle, and drew the blind down.
He found Young at the kitchen counter, kettle just coming up to the boil, and waved him off it before he could reach for a mug.
“Leave that. I want a full sweep done of the building. Every point of entry and egress needs to be checked, front and back, the mews gate, the service stairs, the lift shaft. Talk to the porterabout the CCTV on the square side. I want to know what angle it’s holding and whether it’s been serviced this year.”
“Sir.”
Young was on his feet before Beauchamp had finished, which he was glad of. He liked Young, insofar as he permitted himself to like any of the men he worked alongside. Young was serious without being grim, the sort who could stand at a doorway for six hours and remain sharp throughout, then still be a laugh when they nipped out to the pub afterwards.
When Young had let himself out, Beauchamp went back through the flat and started over from the beginning. He tested every window latch along the front elevation. He walked the length of the service corridor and satisfied himself that the back door was bolted top and bottom. Then he examined the sightlines from the drawing room a second time, from three separate angles.
Around half past eleven he went into the kitchen and made up a plate. He piled on strips of jamón ibérico, a slice of the sharp manchego Vidal had pronounced acceptable on Tuesday, and a few torn pieces of the good sourdough. He added a small pile of olives from the jar on the counter, because a plate without olives would be received as a moral failure and sadly attributed to his Englishness.
He carried it down the corridor, set it on the floorboards outside the bedroom door, and knocked once.
“I’ve left some lunch out here for you, sir.”
Through the afternoon he kept an eye on the corridor between his other tasks. At one, the plate was where he’d left it. At half past three, the olives had begun to sweat and the food had still not been touched.
The buzzer for the front door went off at around four, sustained and insistent. Beauchamp crossed to the intercom.
“Hello?”
“I’d like to see my son. Open the door, please.”
Beauchamp scanned the screen beside the intercom, confirmed that the face turned up towards the camera was in fact Her Serene Highness Princess Anne of Cardona, and buzzed her in. He was at the top of the stairs by the time she came round the landing.
She arrived in a cloud of expensive scent and the soft rustle of a camel cashmere coat. A navy handbag was tucked into the crook of her elbow and a string of modestly sized pearls sat at her throat. Her hair was as dark as Vidal’s, pinned up off her neck.
“Major Beauchamp. Where is he?”
“In his bedroom, ma’am. He’s been —”
“Vidal.” She swept past him into the drawing room. “Come out, please, darling. Now.”
The bedroom door was flung open. Vidal came through the archway at close to a run, crossed the drawing room in three strides, and threw himself at her with the abandon of a much younger man. She absorbed the impact of his weight. Her arms folded round him as Vidal pressed his face into the side of her neck.
“Mama.” His voice came out muffled against her coat. “Mama, you cannot believe, you haveno idea. I have been in such a state. I cannot breathe in this flat. Papà was so angry, and the Major —”
“Yes, my darling.”
“— the Major has been walking round and round the flat testing thelatches, Mama, as though someone were about to come down the chimney like the Grinch. I have been locked in that bedroom for hours,hours, with nothing but Mercè and my own dark thoughts, and she has not been good company. She’s been sulking because I would not take her into the garden a second time.”
“Yes, my darling.”
“And I have not eaten, Mama. I cannot eat at a time like this, my stomach is inknots, my career as a serious political voice is over before it has begun.”
Princess Anne let him run his mouth. She held him through it, her hand moving in a slow even circle between his shoulder blades, and she let him spew his grievances against the shoulder of her cashmere coat without interrupting once. When he finally paused for breath, she eased him back by the shoulders and looked at him.
“Vidal. You’ve done something very stupid.”
His mouth opened to protest.
“No. Listen to me, please. You filmed yourself delivering a political rant. You posted a video of yourself online that gave forty million strangers a look at your home and its surroundings, and you did it because you wanted the view count.”
“Mama, we need people to understand what’s been done to us!”
She lifted one hand and set the pad of her thumb against his cheekbone, holding his face in place the way one held the face of a distractible child. “You’ve exposed yourself. And you’ve made a good man” — her eyes cut sideways to Beauchamp and back without her head moving — “spend his morning being shouted at by people that he’ll need to continue working for long after he’s left this post with you.”
