The Flanders Panel

The policeman looked away. No doubt his throat still hurt from the bawling out he’d given the two policemen for letting themselves be surprised. “Idiots!” he’d screamed at them. “Bloody amateurs! You’ve really dropped me in the shit this time and, believe me, you’re going to suffer for it!” Cesar and Julia had heard it all while they were waiting in the corridor at the police station.

“As for that…” he began now, after waging what had obviously been a hard battle in his mind between duty and convenience, and crumbling before the weightier demands of the latter. “Given the circumstances, I don’t think that… I mean that the pistol…” He swallowed again before looking at Cesar. “After all, it is an antique, not a modern weapon in the real sense of the word. And you, as an antiques dealer, have the correct licence.” He looked down at the desk, doubtless remembering the last piece, an eighteenth-century clock, for which, only weeks before, Cesar had paid him a good price. “For my part, and I’m speaking here for my two men involved as well…” Again he gave that treacherous, conciliatory smile. “I mean that we’re prepared to overlook certain details of the matter. You, Don Cesar, may reclaim your derringer as long as you promise to take better care of it in future. As for you, Senorita, keep us informed of any new developments and, of course, phone us at once if you have any problems. As far as we’re concerned, there never was any gun. Do I make myself clear?”

“Perfectly,” said Cesar.

“Good.” His concession over the gun seemed to give Feijoo some sort of moral advantage, so he appeared more relaxed when he spoke to Julia. “As for the tyre on your car, I need to know if you want to make a complaint.”

She looked at him, surprised.

“A complaint? Against whom?”

The Inspector waited before replying as if hoping that Julia would guess his meaning without recourse to words.

“Against a person or persons unknown,” he said. “On a charge of attempted murder.”

“Alvaro’s, you mean?”

“No, yours.” His teeth appeared beneath his moustache again. “Because whoever is sending you those cards has something more serious than chess on his mind. You can buy an aerosol like the one used to fill your tyre, once he’d let the air out, in any shop selling spare parts. Except that this particular aerosol was topped up with a syringeful of petrol. That, with the gas and the plastic stuff already in the container, becomes highly explosive above certain temperatures. You would only have had to drive a few hundred yards for the tyre to heat up sufficiently to produce an explosion immediately underneath the petrol tank. The car would have burst into flames with both of you inside.” He was smiling with evident malice, as if his telling them that was a minor act of revenge. “Isn’t that terrible?”

Munoz arrived at Cesar’s shop an hour later, his ears sticking out above his raincoat collar and his hair wet. He looked like a scrawny stray dog, Julia thought as she watched him shaking off the rain at the door. He shook Julia’s hand, an abrupt handshake, without warmth, a simple contact that committed him to nothing, and greeted Cesar with a nod of the head. Doing his best to keep his wet shoes away from the carpet, he listened unblinkingly to what had happened in the Rastro, moving his head every now and then in a vaguely affirmative gesture, as if the story about the blue Ford and Cesar’s poker held no interest for him whatsoever. His dull eyes only lit up when Julia took the card out of her bag and placed it before him. Minutes later he had laid out his small chess set, which recently he’d never been without, and was intent on studying the latest position of the pieces.

“What I don’t understand,” Julia said, looking over Munoz’s shoulder, “is why the empty spray can was left on the bonnet. We were bound to see it there. Unless the person who did it had to leave in a hurry.”

“Perhaps it was just a warning,” suggested Cesar from his leather armchair beneath the stained-glass window. “A warning in the worst possible taste.”

“It was a lot of trouble to go to though, wasn’t it? Preparing the aerosol, letting the air out of the tyre and then pumping it up again. Not to mention the fact that she risked being seen while she was doing it… It’s pretty ridiculous,” she added, “but have you noticed how I’m referring to our invisible player in the feminine? I can’t stop thinking about the mystery woman in the raincoat.”

“Perhaps we’re going too far,” said Cesar. “When you think about it, there must have been dozens of blonde women in raincoats in the Rastro this morning. Some might have been wearing dark glasses. But you’re right about that empty can. Leaving it right there on the car, in full view. Really grotesque.”