The Flanders Panel

Munoz cocked his head slightly to one side. His lips were pressed tightly together and his gaze wandered absently over the faces of the people they passed. Julia noticed that he seemed unwilling to reply.

“Technically,” he said at last, “it could have been her. She knows all the game’s possibilities and she plays well too. Very well, I’d say.”

“You don’t seem convinced.”

“It’s just that there are certain details that don’t fit.”

“But she comes close to the idea we have of him. She knows the game in the painting inside out. She has enough strength to kill a man or a woman, and there’s something unsettling about her, something that makes you feel uncomfortable in her presence.” She frowned, searching for the word that would complete the description. “She just seems such a nasty person. What’s more, for some reason I can’t understand, she feels a particular antipathy towards me. And that’s despite the fact, if we’re to take what she says seriously, that I’m what a woman should be: independent, with no family ties, with a certain amount of self-confidence… Modern, as Don Manuel would say.”

“Perhaps that’s exactly why she hates you. For being what she would like to have been but couldn’t. I don’t remember much about those stories you and Cesar are so keen on, but I seem to recall that the witch ended up hating the mirror.”

Despite the grim circumstances, Julia burst out laughing.

“That’s quite possible. It never occurred to me.”

“Well, now you know.” Munoz had managed a half-smile. “You’d better avoid eating apples for a few days.”

“And I have my princes. You and Cesar. Bishop and knight. Isn’t that right?”

Munoz wasn’t smiling any more.

“This isn’t a game, Julia,” he said. “Don’t forget that.”

“I won’t,” she said and took his arm. Almost imperceptibly, Munoz tensed. He seemed uncomfortable but she kept hold of his arm as they walked. In fact, she’d come to admire this strange, awkward and taciturn man. Sherlock Munoz and Julia Watson, she thought, suddenly full of immoderate optimism that only faded when she remembered Menchu.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked Munoz.

“About the niece.”

“Me too. The truth is, she’s exactly what we’re looking for. Although you don’t agree.”

“I didn’t say that she might not be the woman in the raincoat, just that I don’t see her as the mystery chess player.”

“But there are things that fit perfectly. Doesn’t it strike you as odd that such a mercenary woman, only a few hours after the theft of an extremely valuable painting, should suddenly forget her indignation and start calmly talking about chess?” Julia let go of Munoz’s arm and looked at him. “She’s either a hypocrite or chess means much more to her than you’d think. Either way, it looks suspicious. She could have been pretending all along. She’d had more than enough time since Montegrifo phoned to prepare what you would call a line of defence, working on the assumption that the police would question her.”

Munoz nodded.

“She could indeed. After all, she is a chess player. And a chess player knows how to make use of certain resources. Especially when it comes to getting out of compromising situations.”

He walked on for a while in silence, studying the tips of his shoes. Then he looked up and shook his head.

“I still don’t think it’s her,” he said at last. “I always thought that I would feel something special when I came face to face with ‘him’. But I didn’t feel anything.”

“Has it occurred to you that perhaps you idealise the enemy too much?” asked Julia. “Couldn’t it be that, disillusioned with the reality of the situation, you simply won’t accept the facts?”

Munoz’s narrowed eyes were devoid of expression.

“It had occurred to me,” he murmured, looking at her in his opaque way. “I don’t reject that as a possibility.”

Despite Munoz’s laconic reply, Julia knew there was something else. In his silence, in the way he put his head on one side and looked without seeing her, lost in hermetic thoughts that only he was privy to, she felt certain that something else, which had nothing at all to do with Lola Belmonte, was going round in his head.

“Is there something else?” she asked, unable to contain her curiosity. “Did you find out something in there you haven’t told me about?” Munoz declined to reply.

They dropped by Cesar’s shop to tell him the details of the interview. He was waiting for them impatiently and rushed to greet them as soon as he heard the bell on the shop door.

“They’ve arrested Max. This morning, at the airport. The police phoned half an hour ago. He’s at the police station in Paseo del Prado, Julia. And he wants to see you.”

“Why me?”

Cesar shrugged, as if to say that, whilst he might know a lot about blue Chinese porcelain or nineteenth-century painting, the psychology of pimps and criminals in general was not one of his specialities, thank you very much.

“What about the painting?” asked Munoz. “Do you know if they’ve found it?”