The Flanders Panel (22 page)

a danger we can avoid by taking their pawn with the white pawn on e4.“

“Right,” said Cesar. “That’s fine as far as the moves go. But I don’t see what all this has to do with us. What relationship is there between those moves and reality?”

Munoz looked noncommittal, as if they were asking too much of him. Julia noticed that his eyes again sought hers, only to slide away a second later.

“I don’t know exactly what the relationship is. Perhaps it’s a prompt, a warning. I have no way of knowing. But the next logical move by Black, after losing his pawn on d5, would be to put the white king in check again by moving the black knight on d1 to b2. In that case, there would be only one move White could make to avoid check whilst at the same time maintaining his siege of the black king, and that’s to take the black knight with the white rook. The rook on b3 takes the knight on b2. Now look at the position on the board.”

The three of them, still and silent, studied the new positions of the pieces. Julia would remark later that it was at that moment, long before she understood the meaning of the hieroglyphics, that she sensed the board had ceased to be simply a succession of black and white squares and become instead a real space depicting the course of her own life.

And, almost as if the board had become a mirror, she found something familiar about the piece of wood representing the white queen on e1 so pathetically vulnerable to the threatening proximity of the black, chessmen.

But it was Cesar who was the first to understand.

“My God,” he said. And those words sounded so strange on his agnostic lips that Julia looked at him in alarm. He was staring fixedly at the board, the hand that held the cigarette holder apparently frozen a few inches from his mouth, as if the realisation had been so sudden it had paralysed a gesture only barely begun.

She looked again at the board, feeling the blood beating silently in her wrists and temples. She could see only the defenceless white queen, but she felt the danger like a dead weight on her back. She looked across at Munoz, asking for help, and saw that he was shaking his head thoughtfully, the furrow between his eyebrows deepening. Then the vague smile she’d noticed on other occasions flickered briefly and humourlessly across his lips. It was the fleeting, rather resentful smile of someone who finds himself obliged, most reluctantly, to acknowledge his opponent’s talent. And Julia felt an explosion of intense, dark fear, for she understood that even Munoz was impressed.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, barely recognising her own voice. The squares
on
the board swam before her eyes.

Exchanging a grave look with Munoz, Cesar said: “It means that the white rook’s move threatens the black queen. Isn’t that right?”

Munoz gave a lift of his chin.

“Yes,” he said. “The black queen, who before was safe, is now under threat.” He stopped. Venturing along the path of non-chess interpretations was not something he felt at ease doing. “That might mean that the invisible player is trying to communicate something to us: his certainty that the mystery of the painting has been resolved. The black queen…”

“Beatrice of Burgundy,” murmured Julia.

“Yes, Beatrice of Burgundy, the black queen, who, it would seem, has already killed once.”

Munoz’s last words hung in the air without expectation of any response. Cesar reached out a hand and, with the meticulousness of someone who desperately needs to do something in order to remain in touch with reality, delicately flicked the ash from his cigarette into an ashtray. Then he looked around as if he might find the answer to the questions they were all asking themselves in one of the pieces of furniture, one of the pictures or objects in his shop.

“You know, my dears, it really is an absolutely incredible coincidence. This just can’t be real.”

He raised his hands and let them fall in a gesture of impotence. Munoz merely gave a gloomy shrug of his shoulders.

“This is no coincidence. Whoever planned this is a master.”

“And what about the white queen?” asked Julia.

Munoz moved one hand towards the board where it hovered over the piece in question, as if not daring to touch it. He pointed to the black rook on c1.

“There’s a chance she could be taken,” he said calmly.

“I see.” Julia felt disappointed. She thought she would have felt more of a shock if someone had confirmed her fears out loud. “If I’ve understood you correctly, the fact of having discovered the picture’s secret, that is, the lady in black’s guilt, is reflected in that move of the rook to b2. And if the white queen is in danger, it’s because she should have withdrawn to a safe place instead of wandering around making life difficult for herself. Is that the moral of the message, Senor Munoz?”

“More or less.”

“But it all happened five hundred years ago,” protested Cesar. “Only the mind of a madman…”

“Perhaps we’re dealing with a madman,” said Munoz with equanimity. “But he played, or plays, damned fine chess.”

“And he might have killed again,” added Julia. “Now, a few days ago, in the twentieth century. He might have killed Alvaro.”

Cesar, scandalised, raised a hand, almost as if she’d made an improper remark.

“Now, hang on, Princess. We’re getting ourselves tied in knots here. No murderer can survive for five hundred years. And a painting can’t kill.”

“That depends on how you look at it.”

“Don’t talk nonsense. And stop mixing things up. On the one hand there’s a painting and a crime committed five hundred years ago… On the other hand there’s Alvaro, dead.”

“And the sending of the documents.”

“But no one has yet proved that the person who sent the documents also killed Alvaro. It’s even possible that the wretched man cracked his own head open in the bath.” Cesar raised three fingers. “Third, we have someone who wants to play chess. That’s all. There’s nothing that proves there’s any link among the three things.”

“The painting.”

“That’s not proof. It’s just a hypothesis.” Cesar turned to Munoz. “Isn’t that right?”

Munoz said nothing, refusing to take sides, and Cesar gave him a resentful look. Julia pointed to the card on the table next to the chessboard.

“You want proof, do you?” she said suddenly, for she’d just realised what the card was. “Here’s a direct link between Alvaro’s death and the mystery player. I know these cards all too well. They’re the ones Alvaro used in his work.” She paused to take in the significance of her own words. “Whoever killed him could have taken a handful of his cards.” The irrational sense of panic she’d felt only minutes before was already ebbing away, to be replaced by a more precise, more clearly defined feeling of apprehension. She said to herself, by way of explanation, that the fear of fear, of something dark and undefined, was not the same as the concrete fear of dying at the hands of a real human being. Perhaps the memory of Alvaro, of his death in broad daylight with the taps turned on, helped to clarify her mind and free her of superfluous fears. She had quite enough on her plate as it was.

She put a cigarette to her lips and lit it, hoping the men would interpret this as a display of self-control. She exhaled the first mouthful of smoke and swallowed. Her throat felt unpleasantly dry. She urgently needed a vodka. Or half a dozen vodkas. Or a strong, silent, good-looking man, with whom she could find oblivion in sex.

“Now what do we do?” she asked, mustering all the calm she could.

Cesar was looking at Munoz and Munoz at Julia. She saw that Munoz’s eyes had become opaque again, devoid of life, as if he’d lost all interest until the next move claimed his attention.

“We wait,” said Munoz, indicating the board. “It’s Black’s turn to move.”

*        *       *

Menchu was very excited, but not about the mystery chess player. As Julia told her what had happened, Menchu’s eyes grew round, and if you listened carefully, you could have heard the clatter of a cash register ringing up totals. The fact is that, when it came to money, Menchu was always greedy. And at that moment, happily calculating future profits, she most definitely was greedy. And foolish, added Julia to herself, for Menchu had seemed almost unconcerned by the possible existence of a rnurderer with a taste for chess. True to her nature, her favourite method of dealing with problems was to act as if they didn’t exist. Disinclined to give her attention to anything concrete for any length of time, perhaps bored with having Max in her home in his role as bodyguard - thus making other sexual encounters difficult - Menchu had decided to look, at the whole business from a different angle. For her, it was now just an odd series of coincidences, or a strange, possibly harmless joke, thought up by someone with a peculiar sense of humour, whose motives were too ingenious for her to grasp. It was the most reassuring version of events, especially when there was so much to be gained along the way. As for Alvaro’s death, hadn’t Julia ever heard of judicial errors? Like the murder of Zola by that chap Dreyfus, or was it the other way round? And Lee Harvey Oswald and other such blunders. Besides, slipping in the bath could happen to anyone. Or almost anyone.

“As for the Van Huys, you’ll see: we’re going to make a pile of money out of it.”

“And what do we do about Montegrifo?”

There were only a few customers in the gallery: a couple of elderly ladies chatting in front of a large classical seascape in oils, and a gentleman in dark clothes who was flipping through the portfolio of engravings. Menchu placed one hand on her hip as if it were the butt of a revolver and said in a low voice, theatrically fluttering her eyelashes:

“He’ll fall into line, sweetie.”

“You think so?”

“Take my word for it. Either he accepts or we go over to the enemy.” She smiled, sure of herself. “With your track record and this whole fabulous story about the Duke of Ostenburg and his harpy of a wife, Sotheby’s or Christie’s would welcome us with open arms. And Paco Montegrifo is no fool.” She seemed suddenly to remember something.

“By the way, we’re meeting him for coffee this afternoon. Make yourself pretty.”

“
We’re
meeting him?”

“Yes, you and me. He phoned this morning, all sweetness and light That bastard’s got an amazing sixth sense when it comes to business.”

“Look, don’t drag me into this.”

“I’m not. He insisted that you come too. I can’t think what he sees in you, darling. You’re nothing but skin and bones.”

Menchu’s high heels - the shoes were handmade, extremely expensive, but the heels were just half an inch higher than strictly necessary - left painful marks in the beige carpet. In her gallery, amongst all the indirect lighting, pale colours and large open spaces, there was a predominance of what Cesar used to call “barbarian art”. The dominant note was provided by acrylics and gouaches combined with collages, reliefs made from bits of sacking and rusty monkey wrenches or plastic tubing and steering wheels painted sky blue. Occasionally, relegated to some far corner, you would find a more conventional portrait or landscape, like an awkward guest, embarrassing but necessary to justify the supposedly catholic tastes of a snobbish hostess. Nevertheless, Menchu made money from the gallery; even Cesar had (reluctantly) to recognise that, at the same time nostalgically recalling the days when every boardroom would have contained at least one highly respectable painting, suitably mellowed by age, set off by a heavy gilt wood frame, not the post-industrial nightmares so in keeping with the spirit - plastic money, plastic furniture, plastic art - of the new generations who now occupied those same offices, decor courtesy of the trendiest and most expensive interior designers.

As it happened, Menchu and Julia were at that moment contemplating a strange amalgam of reds and greens that answered to the portentous title
Feelings.
It had sprung only weeks before from the palette of Sergio, Cesar’s latest romantic folly, whom Cesar had recommended, although he had at least had the decency to keep his eyes modestly averted when he mentioned the matter.

“I’ll sell it somehow,” said Menchu, with a resigned sigh, after they’d both looked at it for a while. “In fact, incredible though it may seem, everything gets sold in the end.”

“Cesar’s very grateful,” said Julia. “And so am I.”

Menchu wrinkled her nose reprovingly.

“That’s what bothers me. That you justify your friend the antiquarian’s silly games. It’s time the old queen started acting his age.”

Julia brandished a threatening fist in front of her friend’s nose.

“You leave him alone. You know that, as far as I’m concerned, Cesar’s sacred.”

“Don’t I just. For as long as I’ve known you, it’s always been Cesar this and Cesar that.” She looked irritably at Sergio’s painting. “You ought to take your case to a psychoanalyst; he’d blow a fuse. I can just see you lying down together on the couch, giving him that old Freudian sob story. ”You see, doctor, I never wanted to screw my father, I just wanted to dance the waltz with Cesar. He’s gay, by the way, but he absolutely adores me.“ A real can of worms, darling.”

Julia looked at her friend without a trace of amusement on her face.