“Bats are largely blind, sir.”
Vidal tilted his head to receive this information with the appropriate level of dignity.
“They navigate by echolocation,” Beauchamp added, in the same tone in which he had announced the figure for moped incidents in Marylebone. “Their visual acuity is generally poor.”
“Beauchamp.”
“Sir.”
“You are telling me I have got the metaphor the wrong way round.”
“Yes, sir.”
“That is…” Vidal pressed a hand to his chest. “That ishumiliating, Beauchamp. I have been saying that for years! I said it to the French ambassador in 2022. He did not correct me. He must have thought I was anidiot!”
“I’m sure he didn’t, sir.”
Beauchamp got up and crossed the four feet to the bench, leaving an appropriate distance between them. Vidal slid along the wood until their shoulders were almost touching, and craned his neck to see the screen.
A grainy piece of CCTV footage played on screen, taken from somewhere above a shop. A man in a coat was walking along the pavement at an unhurried pace. Then a moped came up behind him on the pavement itself, with two riders on it, the second onealready half-dismounted. What happened next was over before Vidal could catch it.
“Oh,” he said. “The poor man! And his poorcoat. Did you see how they…yes, yes, of course you saw, you have shown me the film. Play it again.”
Beauchamp played it again.
“There, you see, the second one is not even properly on the moped when they take it. He is hanging off the back like a…Beauchamp, this is choreography! This is aballet. A grotesque ballet of social disorder. Where is this?”
“Sloane Street, sir. Two months ago.”
“Sloane Street.” Vidal sat back from the phone, frowning. “I have been to Sloane Street. I have been to Sloane Street with yourKing, Beauchamp. We went to look at a shop that sold something James was very excited about. I cannot remember what, because it was several years ago, and James gets very excited about a great many things.” He levelled a finger at the side of the Major’s face, the side currently studying the screen with great concentration. “Show me more. I must learn!”
“Sir, I don’t think —”
“Beauchamp. Another. I am beingeducated. You cannot stop in the middle of an education.”
The morning, Vidal thought distantly, somewhere underneath the part of him now studying the technique by which a Hatton Garden jeweller had laid out a man with a single well-placed umbrella, had become something he had not expected when he put on his shoes at five and walked out to outrun his racing thoughts. He had not, in any of his calculations, considered that he might be quietly outflanked by a man in a most ordinary grey suit.
Chapter Two
Beauchamphad installed Vidal on the sofa with a pot of coffee, a plate of the almond pastries Conceição 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’tunderstand 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 forin a moment, and continued.
“Sir.”
“Un moment, Major.”
