The Flanders Panel (23 page)

“That’s utter rubbish. You know perfectly well the kind of relationship we have.”

“Do I indeed?”

“Oh, go to hell. You know very well…” She stopped and snorted, irritated with herself. “This is absurd. Every time you talk about Cesar, I end up trying to justify myself.”

“Because, darling, there
is
something murky about your relationship. Remember, even when you were with Alvaro…”

“Now don’t start in on Alvaro. You’ve got Max to worry about.”

“At least Max gives me what I need… By the way, how’s that chess player you’re keeping so quiet about? I’m dying to get a look at him.”

“Munoz?” Julia couldn’t help smiling. “You’d be very disappointed. He’s not your type. Or mine, for that matter.” She thought for a moment, since it had never occurred to her to consider how she would describe him. “He looks like an office worker in some old black-and-white film.”

“But he solved the Van Huys problem for you.” Menchu fluttered her eyelashes in mock admiration, in homage to the chess player. “He must have some talent.”

“He can be brilliant, in his own way. But not always. One moment he seems very sure of himself, reasoning things out like a machine, the next he just switches off, right before your eyes. You find yourself noticing the frayed shirt collar, how ordinary he looks, and you think I bet he’s one of those men whose socks smell.”

“Is he married?”

Julia shrugged. She was looking out at the street, beyond the window display consisting of a couple of pictures and some painted ceramics.

“I don’t know. He’s
not
much given to confidences.” She considered what she’d just said and discovered that she hadn’t even thought about it before. Munoz had interested her less as a human being and more as a way of solving the problem. Only the day before, shortly before finding the card, when they were about to say good-bye, only then had she caught a glimpse of his life. “I imagine he’s married. Or was… He seems damaged in the way that only we women can damage men.”

“And what does Cesar think of him?”

“He likes him. I imagine he finds him amusing as a character. He treats him with somewhat ironic courtesy. It’s as if Cesar feels a pang of jealousy every time Munoz makes some particularly brilliant analysis of a move. But as soon as Munoz takes his eyes off the board, he’s ordinary again, and Cesar feels better.”

She stopped talking, puzzled. She’d just noticed, on the other side of the street, parked by the kerb, a car that seemed familiar. Where had she seen it before?

A bus passed, hiding the car from
view.
Menchu saw the look of anxiety on her face.

“Is something wrong?”

Disconcerted, Julia shook her head. The bus was followed by a delivery van that stopped at the light, making it impossible to see if the car was still there or not. But she had seen it. It was a Ford.

“What’s up?”

Menchu looked uncomprehendingly from Julia to the street and back. Julia had a hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach, an uncomfortable feeling she’d come to know all too well over the last few days. She stood absolutely still, concentrating, as if her eyes, through sheer force of will, could be capable of seeing straight through the van to the car. A blue Ford.

She was afraid. She felt the fear creep gently through her body, felt it beating in her wrists and temples. After all, it was quite possible that someone was following her. That they’d been doing so for days, ever since Alvaro and she… A blue Ford with smoked-glass windows.

Then she remembered: it was double-parked opposite the offices of the messenger service and had jumped a red light behind them that rainy morning. Why shouldn’t it be the same car?

“Julia.” Menchu seemed genuinely worried now. “You’ve gone quite pale”

The van was still there, stopped at the light. Perhaps it was only coincidence. The world was full of blue cars with smoked-glass windows. She took a step towards the gallery door, putting her hand into the leather bag she wore slung over her shoulder. Alvaro in the bath, with the taps full on. She scrabbled in the bag, disregarding cigarettes, lighter, powder compact. She touched the butt of the derringer with a sort of jubilant sense of comfort, of exalted hatred for that car, hidden now, that represented the naked shadow of fear. Bastard, she thought, and the hand holding the weapon inside the bag began to tremble with a mixture of fear and rage. Whoever you are, you bastard, even if it is Black’s turn to move, I’m going to show
you
how to play chess. And to Menchu’s astonishment, Julia went out into the street, her jaw set, her eyes fixed on the van hiding the car. She walked between two other cars parked on the pavement just as the light was changing to green. She dodged a car bumper, ignored a horn sounding immediately behind her and, in her impatience for the van to pass, was on the point of taking out her derringer when, at last, in a cloud of diesel fumes, she reached the other side of the street just in time to see a blue Ford with smoked-glass windows and a numberplate ending in the letters TH disappearing into the traffic ahead.

The Moat at the East Gate

ACHILLES: What happens if you then find a picture
inside the picture which you have already entered… ?
TORTOISE: Just what you would expect: you wind up
inside that picture-in-a-picture.
Douglas R. Hofstadter

“That really was a bit over the top, my dear.” Cesar was winding his spaghetti round his fork. “Can you imagine it? A worthy citizen happens to stop at a traffic light, at the wheel of his car, which just happens to be blue, when a pretty young woman transformed into a basilisk appears, quite without warning, and tries to shoot him.” He turned to Munoz, as if seeking the support of a voice of reason. “It’s enough to give anyone a nasty turn.”

Munoz stopped playing with the bail of bread he was rolling about on the tablecloth, but he didn’t look up.

“She didn’t actually get that far. I mean, she didn’t shoot him,” he said in a calm, low voice. “The car drove off first.”

“Of course it did.” Cesar reached for his glass of rose wine. “The light had changed to green.”

Julia dropped her knife and fork on her barely touched plate of lasagne, making a noise that earned her a pained look from Cesar over the top of his wine glass.

“Listen, stupid. The car was already parked there before the light turned red, when the street was empty… Right opposite the gallery.”

“There are hundreds of cars like that.” Cesar put his glass gently down on the table, dabbed at his lips and composed a sweet smile before adding, in a voice lowered to a sibylline whisper, “It might well have been one of your virtuous friend Menchu’s admirers. Some heavily muscled would-be pimp, hoping to oust Max.”

Julia felt a profound sense of irritation. At moments of crisis Cesar always slid into his vicious viper mode, aggressively slanderous. But she didn’t want to give way to her ill humour by arguing with him, least of all in front of Munoz.

“It might also,” she replied, feigning patience after mentally counting to ten, “have been someone who, on seeing me come out of the gallery, decided to make himself scarce.”

“It seems very unlikely to me, my dear. Really it does.”

“You probably would have thought it unlikely that Alvaro would turn up with his neck broken, but he did.”

Cesar pursed his lips as if he found the allusion an unfortunate one, at the same time indicating Julia’s plate.

“Your lasagne is getting cold.”

“I don’t give a damn about the lasagne. I want to know what you think. And I want the truth.”

Cesar looked at Munoz, but the latter, utterly inscrutable, was still kneading his ball of bread. Cesar rested his wrists symmetrically on either side of his plate, and stared at the vase containing two carnations, one white, one red, that adorned the centre of the tablecloth.

“Maybe you’re right.” He arched his eyebrows as if the sincerity demanded of him and the affection he felt for Julia were waging a hard-fought battle. “Is that what you wanted to hear? Well, there you are; I’ve said it.” His blue eyes looked at her calmly, tenderly, stripped of the sardonic mask they’d worn before. “I must admit that the car’s being there does worry me.”

Julia threw him a furious look.

“May I know then why you’ve spent the last half-hour playing the fool?” She rapped impatiently on the table with her knuckles. “No, don’t tell me. I know already. Daddy didn’t want his little girl to worry, right? I’d be far better off with my head buried in the sand like an ostrich. Or like Menchu.”

“You won’t solve anything by hurling yourself on people who just happen to look suspicious. Besides, if your fears are justified, it might even be dangerous. Dangerous for you, I mean.”

“I had your pistol.”

“I hope I don’t come to regret giving you that derringer. This isn’t a game, you know. In real life, the baddies have pistols too. And then play chess.”

As if Munoz were doing a stereotyped impression of himself, the word “chess” seemed to breach his apparent apathy.

“After all,” he murmured to no one in particular, “chess is essentially a combination of hostile impulses.”

Cesar and Julia looked at him in surprise. What he’d just said had nothing to do with the conversation. Munoz was staring into space, as if he’d not quite returned from some long journey to remote places.

“My dear friend,” said Cesar, somewhat peeved by the interruption “far be it from me to doubt the blazing truth of your words, but we’d be most grateful if you could be more explicit.”

Munoz continued rolling the ball of bread round and round in his fingers. Today he was wearing an old-fashioned blue jacket and a dark green tie, but the ends of his shirt collar, crumpled and none too clean, curled upwards as usual.

“I don’t know what to say.” He rubbed his chin with the back of his fingers. “I’ve spent the past few days going over and over it all.” He hesitated for a moment, as if searching for the right words. “Thinking about our opponent.”

“As has Julia, I imagine. As have I. We’ve all been thinking about the wretch.”

“It’s not the same thing. Calling him a ‘wretch’ presupposes a subjective judgment… That won’t help us at all, and it could even divert our attention from what is really important. I try to think about him through the only perspective we have at the moment: his chess moves. I mean…” He passed a finger over the misted surface of his wine glass, from which he had drunk nothing, as if the gesture had made him lose the thread of his brief speech. “The style of play reflects the personality of the player. I think I’ve said that to you before.”

Julia leaned towards him, interested.

“You mean that you’ve spent the past few days seriously studying the murderer’s
personality
?” Do you think you know him better now?“

The vague smile appeared, fleetingly, on Munoz’s lips. But Julia saw that he was deeply serious. He was never ironic.

“There are many different types of player.” His eyes were looking at something in the distance, a familiar world beyond the walls of the restaurant. “Apart from style of play, each player has his own peculiarities, characteristics that distinguish him from other players: Steinitz used to hum Wagner while he played; Morphy never looked at his opponent until the final moment of the game… Others mutter in Latin or in some invented language. It’s a way of dispelling tension, of keeping alert. A player might do it before or after moving a piece. Almost everyone does something.”

“Do you?” asked Julia.

Munoz hesitated, embarrassed.

“I suppose I do.”

“And what’s your peculiarity as a player?”

Munoz looked at his fingers, still kneading the ball of bread.

“We’re off to Penjamo, one j no aitches.”

“We’re off to Penjamo, one j no aitches?”

“Yes.”

“And what does
‘’We’re off to Penjamo, one j no aitches‘
mean?”

“It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just something I say under my breath, or else think, whenever I make an important move, just before I actually pick up the chess piece.”

“But that’s completely irrational.”

“I know. But however irrational your gestures or idiosyncrasies are, they reflect your way of playing. They tell you about the character of your opponent too. When it comes to analysing a style or a player, any scrap of information is useful. Petrosian, for example, was a very defensive player, with a great instinct for danger. He would spend the whole game preparing defences against possible attacks, before his opponents had even thought up such attacks.”

“He was probably paranoid,” said Julia.

“You see how easy it is? The way someone plays might reveal egotism, aggression, megalomania. Just look at the case of Steinitz. When he was sixty, he was convinced he was in direct communication with God and that he could beat Him, even if he gave away a pawn and let Him play White.”

“And our invisible player?” asked Cesar, who was listening attentively, his glass halfway to his lips.

“He’s good,” replied Munoz without hesitation, “and good players are often complicated people. A chess master develops a special intuitive feel for the right move and a sense of danger about the wrong move. It’s a sort of instinct that you can’t explain in words. When he looks at the chessboard he doesn’t see something static; he sees a field crisscrossed by a multitude of magnetic forces, including the forces he himself contains.” He looked at the ball of bread on the tablecloth for some seconds before moving it carefully to one side, as if it were a tiny pawn on an imaginary board. “He’s aggressive and he enjoys taking risks. For example, the fact that he didn’t use his queen to protect the king. The brilliant use of the black pawn and then the black knight to keep up the pressure on the white king, leaving the tantalising possibility of an exchange of queens. I mean that this man…”

“Or woman,” put in Julia.

Munoz looked at her uncertainly.

“I don’t know about that. There are women who play chess well, but not many. In this case, the moves made by our opponent, male or female, show a certain cruelty and, I would say, an almost sadistic curiosity. Like a cat playing with a mouse.”