The Flanders Panel

The policeman adopted an expression doubtless intended to dissuade her from going too far.

“I only mention that as a possibility. The initial inspection and the first autopsy, generally speaking, confirm the theory of accidental death.”

“Generally speaking? What are you trying to say?”

“I’m trying to tell you the facts. There are certain details, such as the type of fracture, the position of the body – technical details I would prefer not to go into – which give rise to some perplexity, to certain reasonable doubts.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“I’m almost inclined to agree with you,” he said, the Mexican moustache taking on the form of a sympathetic circumflex. “But if those doubts were confirmed, the situation would look very different: Professor Ortega would have been killed by a blow to the back of the neck. Then, after undressing him, someone could have put him under the shower and turned on the taps, to make it look like an accident. A new forensic study is being carried out to look into the possibility that the dead man was struck twice, not once; a first blow to knock him out and a second to make sure he was dead.” He sat back in his chair, folded his hands and looked at her placidly. “Naturally, that’s only a hypothesis.”

Julia stared at him, like someone who believes herself to be the butt of a practical joke. She couldn’t take in what she’d heard; she was unable to establish a link between Alvaro and what Feijoo was suggesting. A voice deep inside her was whispering that this was obviously a case of the wrong roles being given to the wrong people; he must be talking about someone else entirely. It was absurd to imagine Alvaro, the Alvaro she had known, murdered, like a rabbit, by a blow to the back of the neck, lying naked, his eyes wide open, beneath a shower of icy water. It was stupid, grotesque.

“Let’s assume for a moment,” she said, “that the death wasn’t accidental. Who would have wanted to kill him?”

“That, as they say in the films, is a very good question.” The policeman bit his lower lip in a gesture of professional caution. “To be honest, I haven’t the slightest idea.” He paused and adopted an air intended to convey that he was placing all his cards on the table. “In fact, I’m relying 0n your help to clear up the matter.”

“On my help? Why?”

The Inspector looked Julia up and down with deliberate slowness. He was no longer being nice, and his look revealed a certain crude self-interest, as if he were trying to establish some kind of obscure complicity between them.

“You had a relationship with the dead man… Forgive me, but mine is an unpleasant job,” he said, although, judging by the self-satisfied smile that appeared beneath the moustache, he didn’t seem to be finding his job particularly unpleasant. He put his hand in his pocket and drew out a box of matches bearing the name of a four-star restaurant and, with a gesture intended to be gallant, lit the cigarette Julia had just placed between her lips. “I mean an… um… affair. Is that correct?”

“That’s correct.” Julia exhaled, half-closing her eyes, embarrassed and angry. An affair, the policeman had just said, summing up with great simplicity a piece of her life whose scars were still raw. And no doubt, she thought, that fat, vulgar man, with his ridiculous moustache, was weighing up the quality of the goods. The victim’s girlfriend’s a nice bit of stuff, he’d tell his colleagues when he went down to the canteen for a beer. I wouldn’t mind doing her the odd favour.

But she was more concerned about other aspects of her situation. Alvaro was dead, possibly murdered. Absurd as it might seem, she was in a police station, and there were too many unknowns. And not understanding certain things could prove dangerous.

Her whole body was tense, alert, on the defensive. She looked at Feijoo, who was now neither compassionate nor kindly. It was a question of tactics, she said to herself. Trying to remain calm, she decided that there really wasn’t any reason the Inspector should be considerate towards her. He was just a policeman, as clumsy and coarse as the next one, merely doing his job. Anyway, she thought, as she tried to see the situation from his point of view: she was all he had, the only lead, the dead man’s ex-girlfriend.

“But that’s ancient history,” she said, letting the ash from her cigarette fall into the pristine ashtray full of paper clips that Feijoo had on his desk. “We stopped seeing each other over a year ago… as I’m sure you know.”

The Inspector put his elbows on the desk and leaned towards her.

“Yes,” he said, almost confidentially, as if his tone were irrefutable proof that they were old acquaintances now and that he was entirely on her side. “But you did have a meeting with him three days ago.”