The Flanders Panel (16 page)

“What’s the next step then?” asked Julia.

Munoz regarded the pieces with a resigned air.

“A long, painstaking examination of the six black pieces that are off the board. I’ll try to find out how and where each one was taken.”

“That could take days,” said Julia.

“Or minutes, it depends. Sometimes, luck or intuition lend a hand.” He gave a long look at the board and then at the Van Huys. “But there’s one thing I’m sure of,” he said after a moment’s thought.

“Whoever painted this picture or thought up the problem, had a very peculiar way of playing chess.”

“How would you describe him?” asked Julia.

“Who?”

“The absent player. The one you just mentioned.”

Munoz looked first at the carpet and then at the painting. There was something like admiration in his eyes, Julia thought. Perhaps the instinctive respect a chess player always feels for a master.

“I don’t know,” he said in a low voice, as if unwilling to be pinned down. “Whoever it was, he was very devious. All the best players are, but this one had something else: a particular talent for laying false trails, for setting all kinds of traps. And he enjoyed doing it.”

“Is that possible?” asked Cesar. “Can you really judge the character of a person by the way he behaves when playing?”

“I think you can,” replied Munoz.

“In that case, what do you think of the person who thought up this game, bearing in mind that he did so in the fifteenth century?”

“I’d say” - Munoz was looking at the painting, absorbed - “I’d say there was something ‘diabolical’ about the way he played chess.”

Of Chessboards and Mirrors

And where is the end?
You’ll find that out when you get there.
Ballad of the Old Man of Leningrad

Since they were double-parked, Menchu had moved over into the driver’s seat by the time Julia got back to the car. Julia opened the door of the small Fiat and dropped into the seat.

“What did they say?” Menchu asked.

Julia didn’t reply at first; she still had too many things to think about. Staring into the traffic flowing down the street, she took a cigarette out of her handbag, put it to her lips and pressed the automatic lighter in the dashboard.

“There were two policemen here yesterday,” she said at last, “asking the same questions as me.” When the lighter clicked out, she held it to her cigarette. “According to the man in charge, the envelope was delivered to them that Thursday, first thing in the afternoon.”

Menchu’s hands were gripping the wheel hard, her knuckles white amongst the glittering rings.

“Who delivered it?”

Julia slowly exhaled.

“According to him, it was a woman.”

“A woman?”

“That’s what he said.”

“What woman?”

“Middle-aged, well-dressed, blonde. Wearing a raincoat and sunglasses.” She turned to her friend. “It could have been you.”

“That’s not funny.”

“No, I know it isn’t.” Julia let out a long sigh. “But it could have been anyone. She didn’t give her name or her address, she just gave Alvaro’s details as sender. She asked for the fast delivery service. And that was it.”

They joined the rest of the traffic. It looked like it was going to rain again and a few tiny drops were already spattering the windscreen. Menchu crunched the gears and wrinkled her nose with displeasure.

“You know, Agatha Christie could have made a blockbuster out of this.”

Julia gave a humourless smile.

“Yes. But it has a real death in it.” She imagined Alvaro naked and wet. If there was one thing worse than dying, she thought, it was dying grotesquely, with people coming to look at you.

“Poor devil,” she said out loud.

They stopped at a pedestrian crossing. Menchu cast a glance at her friend. She was worried, she said, about Julia’s being embroiled in such a situation. She too felt uneasy, so much so that she’d broken one of her golden rules and installed Max in her home until things were clearer. Julia should do the same.

“What, install Max in my apartment? No thanks. I’d rather go to rack and ruin on my own.”

“Don’t start that again. And don’t be obtuse.” The light changed to green, and Menchu shifted gear and accelerated. “You know perfectly well I didn’t mean him. Besides, he’s a sweetheart.”

“A bloodsucker.”

“Well, at least it isn’t just my blood he sucks.”

“Don’t be vulgar.”

“Oh, so now it’s Sister Julia of the Holy Sacrament.”

“And proud of it.”

“Look. Maybe Max is what you say he is, but he’s also so gorgeous that I get dizzy every time I look at him. The way Madame Butterfly felt about Lieutenant Pinkerton… in between coughing fits. Or was it Armand Duval?” She swore at a pedestrian crossing the road and, honking indignantly, skidded into a tiny space between a taxi and a bus belching fumes. “But, seriously, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be alone. What if there really is a murderer and he decides to get you?”

Julia shrugged irritably.

“What do you want me to do about it?”

“I don’t know. Move in with someone else. I’ll make the ultimate sacrifice, if you like. I’ll send Max away and you can come and stay with me.”

“What about the painting?”

“You can bring it with you and continue working on it at my place. I’ll get in plenty of tinned food, coke, dirty videos and booze and we can hole up there, the two of us, like in
Fort
Apache
,
until we can get rid of the painting. Oh, and two other things. First, I’ve taken out extra insurance, just in case.”

“What do you mean, just in case? The Van Huys is perfectly safe in my apartment, under lock and key. The security system cost me a fortune to install, remember? It’s like Fort Knox, without the gold.”

“You never know.” It was starting to rain harder, and Menchu switched on the wipers. “The second thing is: don’t say a word about all this to Don Manuel.”

“Why not?”

“Are you mad? It’s just what his little niece, Lola, needs in order to ruin this whole deal for me.”

“So far no one has linked the painting with Alvaro.”

“Heaven forbid. But the police aren’t exactly tactful and they might have got in touch with my client. Or with his bitch of a niece. Oh, well. It’s getting horribly complicated. I’m tempted to hand the whole problem over to Claymore’s and just take my commission and run.”

The rain created a procession of blurred grey images through the windows, so the car seemed surrounded by a strange, unreal landscape. Julia looked at her friend.

“By the way,” she said, “I’m having supper with Montegrifo tonight.”

“What!”

“You heard. He’s got some business he wants to talk to me about.”

“Business? He’ll probably want to play mummies and daddies too.”

“I’ll phone and tell you all about it.”

“I won’t get a wink of sleep until you do. He’s obviously guessed that something’s going on. I’d stake the virginity of my next three reincarnations on it.”

“I told you not to be vulgar.”

“And don’t you go betraying me. I’m your friend, remember. Your best friend.”

“Trust me, and don’t drive so fast.”

“I’ll stab you to death if you do. Like Jose in Merimee’s
Carmen.”

“OK. Look, you went through a red light just then. And since the car is mine, I’ll have to pay any fines you get.”

She glanced in the rear-view mirror and saw that another car, a blue Ford with smoked-glass windows, had jumped the light with them, but it soon disappeared off to the right. She seemed to remember seeing mat same car parked - double-parked like them — on the other side of the street when she came out of the courier service. But it was difficult to say for sure, what with the traffic and the rain.

Paco Montegrifo was the sort of man who decides, as soon as he’s old enough to make such decisions, that black socks are strictly for chauffeurs and waiters and opts instead for socks of only the darkest navy blue. He was dressed in a made-to-measure suit of dark and impeccable grey, a suit that could have walked straight off the pages of a high-fashion magazine for men. This perfect appearance was topped off by a shirt with a Windsor collar, a silk tie and, peeping discreetly out of his top pocket, a handkerchief. He got up from an armchair in the foyer to greet Julia.

“My word,” he said as he shook her hand, his white teeth gleaming in agreeable contrast to his tanned skin, “you look absolutely gorgeous.”

That introduction set the tone for the first part of the meal. And he’d expressed his unqualified admiration for the close-fitting black velvet dress Julia was wearing even before they’d sat down at the table reserved for them by the window with a panoramic night-time view of the Palacio Real. From then on, he deployed a repertoire of looks - which managed to be intense but never impertinent - and seductive smiles. After the aperitifs, and while the waiter was preparing the hors d’oeuvres, he began plying Julia with questions that prompted intelligent replies to which he listened with his chin resting on his clasped fingers, his lips slightly parted, and a gratifyingly absorbed expression, which at the same time permitted little gleams of light from the candle flames to sparkle on his perfect teeth.

The only reference he made to the Van Huys before dessert was his careful choice of a white Burgundy to accompany the fish. To art, he said, with a vague look of complicity, and that gave him the opportunity to launch into a brief discourse on French wines.

“Oddly enough,” he explained, while waiters were still bustling round the table, “it seems to be something that changes as you get older. You start off as a staunch supporter of white or red Burgundy: the best companion until you’re into your thirties. But then, though without renouncing Burgundy completely, it’s time to move on to Bordeaux: a wine for adults, serious and even-tempered. Only in your forties can you bring yourself to pay out a fortune for a crate of Petrus or Chateau d’Yquem.”

He tasted the wine, signalling his approval with a lift of his eyebrows, and Julia sat back and enjoyed the show, quite happy to play along with him. She even liked the supper and the banal conversation, concluding that, in different circumstances, Montegrifo would have been agreeable company, with his low voice, his tanned hands and the discreet smell of eau de cologne, fine leather and good tobacco that wafted about him, and despite his habit of stroking his right eyebrow with his index finger and snatching sly glances at his reflection in the window.

They continued to talk about everything but the painting. When she’d finished her slice of salmon a la Royale, he was still busy, using only a silver fork, with his sea bass Sabatini. A real gentleman, he explained, with a smile that emphasised that the remark was not to be taken totally seriously, would never use a fish knife.

“But how do you remove the bones?” Julia asked.

The auctioneer held her gaze unflinchingly.

“I never go to restaurants where they serve fish with bones.”

After dessert, and before coffee, which, like her, he ordered black and very strong, Montegrifo took out a silver cigarette case and carefully selected an English cigarette. Then he leaned towards her.

“I’d like you to come and work for me,” he said in a low voice, as if afraid that someone in the Palacio Real might overhear.

Julia, who was raising one of her own untipped cigarettes to her lips, looked into his brown eyes as he held out his lighter to her.

“Why?” she asked, with apparent disinterest, as if he were talking about someone else.

“For several reasons.” Montegrifo had placed the gold lighter on top of the cigarette case, aligning them carefully dead centre. “The main reason is because I’ve heard nothing but good things about you.”

“I’m pleased to hear it.”

“I’m being serious. As you can imagine, I’ve asked around. I know the work you’ve done for the Prado and for private galleries. Do yon still work at the museum?”

“Yes, three days a week. I’m working on a recent acquisition at the moment, a Duccio di Buoninsegna.”

“I’ve heard about the painting. A difficult job. I know they always give you the important commissions.”

“Sometimes they do.”

“Even at Claymore’s we’ve had the honour of auctioning a couple of works that you’ve restored. That Madrazo in the Ochoa collection, for example. Your work on that meant we could up the auction price by a third. And there was another one, last spring.
Concierto
by Lopez dc Ayala, wasn’t it?”

“It was
Woman Playing the Piano
by Rogelio Egusquiza.”

“That’s right, that’s right, forgive me.
Woman Playing the Piano,
of course. It had been badly affected by damp, and you did a wonderful job on it.” He smiled, and their hands almost touched as they dropped the ash of their respective cigarettes into the ashtray. “Are you happy with the way things are going? I mean, just working on whatever comes up.” He flashed his teeth again. “As a freelance.”

“I’ve no complaints,” said Julia, studying her companion through the cigarette smoke. “My friends take care of me, they find me things. And besides, it means I’m independent.”

Montegrifo looked at her intently.

“In everything?”

“In everything.”

“You’re a fortunate young woman then.”

“Maybe I am. But I work hard too.”

“Claymore’s has a large number of projects requiring the expertise of someone like you. What do you think?”

“I don’t see any harm in talking about it.”

“Wonderful. We could have another, more formal chat in a few days’ time.”

“As you wish.” Julia gave Montegrifo a long look. She felt unable to suppress the mocking smile on her lips. “Now you can talk to me about the Van Huys.”

“I’m sorry?”

Julia stubbed out her cigarette and leaned slightly towards Montegrifo.

“The Van Huys,” she repeated, carefully enunciating the words. “Unless, of course, you intend taking my hand in yours and telling me I’m the loveliest woman you’ve ever met, or something equally charming.”

Montegrifo took a split second to recompose his smile but he did so with perfect aplomb.