Arturo Perez-Reverte - The Flanders Panel

She emerged from the bathroom wrapped in a bathrobe, her wet hair dripping onto her shoulders. Lighting yet another cigarette, she stood in front of the picture while she dressed: low-heeled shoes, a brown pleated skirt and a leather jacket. She gave a satisfied glance at herself in the Venetian mirror and then, turning to the two grave-faced chess players, she winked at them provocatively. Who killed the knight? As she put the photographs and her report into her bag, the phrase kept going round and round in her head as if it were a riddle. She switched on the electronic alarm and turned the key twice in the security lock. Quis necavit equitem. One way or another, it must mean something. She repeated the three words under her breath as she went down the stairs, sliding her fingers along the brass-trimmed banister. She was genuinely intrigued by the painting and its hidden inscription, but there was something else, too: She felt a strange sense of apprehension, the same feeling she’d had when she was a little girl and used to stand at the top of the stairs trying to screw up enough courage to peer into the dark attic.

“You’ve got to admit he’s a beauty. Pure quattrocento.”

Menchu Roch was not referring to one of the paintings on display in the gallery that bore her name. Her pale, heavily made-up eyes were trained on the broad shoulders of Max, who was talking to someone he knew at the bar of the cafe. Max was six foot tall, with the shoulders of a swimmer beneath his well-cut jacket. He wore his hair long and tied back in a brief ponytail with a dark silk ribbon and he moved with a kind of indolent flexibility. Menchu gave him a long, appreciative look and, with proprietorial satisfaction, sipped her martini. He was her latest lover.

“Pure quattrocento,” she repeated, savouring both the words and her drink. “Doesn’t he remind you of one of those marvellous Italian bronzes?”

Julia nodded half-heartedly. They were old friends, but the ease with which Menchu could lend suggestive overtones to even the most vaguely artistic remark never failed to surprise her.

“An Italian bronze, one of the originals, I mean, would work out a lot cheaper.”

Menchu gave a short, cynical laugh.

“Cheaper than Max? I should say.” She sighed ostentatiously and bit into the olive in her martini. “Michelangelo was lucky; he sculpted them in the nude. He didn’t have to foot their clothes bill courtesy of American Express.”

“No one forces you to pay his bills.”

“That’s the whole point, darling,” Menchu said, batting her eyelids in a languid, theatrical manner. “That no one forces me to do it, I mean. So you see…”

She finished her drink, keeping one little finger carefully raised; she did this on purpose, purely to provoke. Menchu was nearer fifty than forty and was of the firm belief that sex was to be found everywhere, even in the most subtle nuances of a work of art. Perhaps that’s why she was able to look at men with the same calculating, greedy eye she employed when assessing the potential of a painting. Amongst those who knew her, the owner of Gallery Roch had the reputation of never missing an opportunity to appropriate anything that aroused her interest, be it a painting, a man or a line of cocaine. She was still attractive, although her age made it increasingly difficult to overlook what Cesar scathingly referred to as certain “aesthetic anachronisms”. Menchu could not resign herself to growing old, largely because she didn’t want to. And, perhaps as a kind of challenge to herself, she fought against it by adopting a calculated vulgarity in her choice of make-up, clothes and lovers. For the rest, in line with her belief that art dealers and antiquarians were little more than glorified rag-and-bone merchants, she pretended a lack of culture that was far from the truth, deliberately bungling artistic and literary references and openly mocking the rather select world in which she conducted her professional life. She boasted about all this with the same frankness with which she had once claimed to have experienced the best orgasm of her life masturbating in front of a catalogued and numbered reproduction of Donatello’s David, an anecdote that Cesar, with his refined, almost feminine brand of cruelty, always cited as the only example of genuine good taste that Menchu Roch had ever shown in her life.

“So what shall we do about the Van Huys?” asked Julia.

Menchu looked again at the X-ray photos lying on the table between her glass and her friend’s coffee cup. She was wearing blue eye shadow and a blue dress that was much too short for her. Julia thought, quite without malice, that twenty years ago Menchu must have looked really pretty in blue.

“I’m not sure yet,” said Menchu. “Claymore’s have undertaken to auction the painting exactly as it stands… We’ll have to see what effect the inscription has on its value.”

“Just think what that could mean.”

“I love it. You’ve hit the jackpot and you don’t even realise it.”

“Ask the owner what he wants to do.”

Menchu put the prints back in the envelope and crossed her legs. Two young men drinking aperitifs at the next table cast furtive, interested glances at her bronzed thighs. Julia fidgeted, a touch irritated. She was usually amused by the blatant way Menchu contrived special effects for the benefit of her male audience, but sometimes the display struck her as unnecessary. She looked at the square-faced Omega watch she wore on the inside of her left wrist. It was much too early to be showing off one’s best underwear.

“The owner’s no problem,” Menchu explained. “He’s a delightful old chap in a wheelchair. And if the discovery of the inscription increases his profits, he’ll be only too pleased… His niece and her husband are a pair of real bloodsuckers.”

Max was still chatting at the bar but, ever-conscious of his duties, he turned round occasionally to bestow a dazzling smile on Julia and Menchu. Speaking of bloodsuckers, Julia said to herself, but decided against putting the thought into words. Not that Menchu would have minded – she showed an admirable cynicism when it came to men – but Julia had a strong sense of the proprieties which always stopped her from going too far.

Ignoring Max, she said: “It’s only two months till the auction. That’s not nearly enough time if I have to remove the varnish, uncover the inscription and then revarnish again. Besides, getting together the documentation on the painting and the people in it and writing a report will take time. It would be a good idea to get the owner’s permission as soon as possible.”

Menchu agreed. Her frivolity did not extend to her professional life, in which she moved with all the cunning of a trained rat. She was acting as intermediary in the transaction because the owner of the Van Huys knew nothing of the workings of the art market. It was she who had handled the negotiations for the auction with the Madrid branch of Claymore’s.

“I’ll phone him tomorrow. His name is Don Manuel Belmonte, he’s seventy years old, and he’s delighted, as he puts it, to be dealing with a pretty young woman with such a splendid head for business.”

There was something else, Julia pointed out. If the uncovered inscription could be linked to the story of the people in the painting, Claymore’s would be sure to play on that to up the asking price.

“Have you managed to get hold of any more useful documentation?”

“Very little,” Menchu said, pursing her lips in her effort to remember. “I gave you all I had along with the painting. So you’re going to have to find out for yourself.”

Julia opened her handbag and took longer than necessary to find her cigarettes. At last, she slowly took one out and looked at her friend.