The Flanders Panel

They checked the tyres. There was nothing odd about the two on the left. Julia walked round the car and checked the two on the right, which also seemed fine. But just as she was about to drop the can on the ground, she noticed that the valve on the back tyre was missing its cap. In its place was a bubble of white paste.

“Someone’s pumped up the tyre,” said Cesar, after staring at the empty container. “Perhaps it was punctured.”

“It wasn’t when we parked it,” said Julia, and they looked at each other, full of dark presentiments.

“Don’t get in,” said Cesar.

The seller of religious images had seen nothing. There were always a lot of people around and, besides, she was busy with her own affairs, she explained, laying out sacred hearts, statuettes of San Pancracio and sundry virgins. As for the alley, she wasn’t sure. A couple of locals had been past in the last hour, possibly a few other people.

“Do you remember anyone in particular?” Cesar had taken off his hat and was bending towards the seller, his overcoat over his shoulders and his umbrella under his arm. The image of a perfect gentleman, the woman must have thought.

“I don’t think so.” She wrapped her woollen shawl more tightly round her and frowned as if struggling to remember. “There was a lady, I think. And a couple of young men.”

“Do you remember what they looked like?”

“Just young men, you know the type: leather jackets and jeans…”

An absurd idea flitted across Julia’s mind. The limits of the impossible had, after all, broadened considerably in the last few days.

“Did you see someone in a navy blue jacket? A man about thirty with his hair in a ponytail?”

The seller did not remember having seen Max. She’d noticed the woman, though, because she’d stopped for a moment as if she were going to buy something. She was blonde, middle-aged and well-dressed. But she couldn’t imagine her breaking into a car; she wasn’t the type. She was wearing a raincoat.

“And dark glasses?”

“Yes.”

Cesar looked at Julia gravely.

“It’s not even sunny today,” he said.

“I know.”

“It could have been the same woman who delivered the documents.” Cesar paused and his eyes hardened. “Or Menchu.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Cesar shook his head, glancing at the people walking past.

“No, you’re right. But you yourself thought it might be Max.”

“Max… is different.” Her face darkened as she looked down the street, as though Max or the blonde in the raincoat might still be around. What she saw froze the words on her lips and shook her with the force of a blow. There was no woman answering the description, but amongst the awnings and the plastic sheeting of the stalls was a car, parked near the corner. A blue car.

From where she was standing, Julia couldn’t tell if it was a Ford or not, but the jolt of emotion she felt propelled her into action. To Cesar’s surprise, she left the seller of religious images, walked a little way along the pavement and then, skirting a couple of stalls, stood staring over at the corner, on tiptoe in order to get a better look. It was a blue Ford, with smoked-glass windows. Thoughts crowded into her head. She couldn’t see the numberplate, but there had been too many coincidences that morning: Max, Menchu, the card on the windscreen, the empty spray can, the woman in the raincoat and now the car that had become a key element in her nightmare. She was conscious that her hands were trembling and she thrust them into her pockets at the same moment she felt Cesar’s presence behind her.

“It’s the car, Cesar. Do you know what that means? Whoever it is, is inside.”

Cesar didn’t say anything. He slowly took off his hat, perhaps thinking it inappropriate for whatever might happen next, and looked at Julia. She had never loved him so much as she did then, his lips pressed together, his chin up, his blue eyes narrowed and in them a rare glint of steel. The thin lines of his meticulously shaven face looked tense; his jaw muscles twitched. His eyes seemed to say that, man of impeccable manners with little inclination for violence he might be, but he was no coward. At least not where his princess was concerned.

“Wait for me here,” he said.

“No. Let’s go together. You and me.” She looked at him tenderly. Once, when she was a child, she’d kissed him playfully on the mouth. At that moment she felt an impulse to do so again; but this wasn’t a game they were playing now.

She put her hand in her bag and cocked the derringer. Very calmly, Cesar put his umbrella under his arm, went over to one of the stalls and, as if he were selecting a walking stick, grabbed a huge iron poker.

“May I?” he said, pressing the first note he found in his wallet into the astonished stallholder’s hand. He then looked serenely at Julia again and said: “Just this once, my dear, allow me to go first.”