Adaptively smoothed 0.4–1.3 keV XMM image of the NGC 4424 with the HI contours (from Chung et al. 2009) superposed. Bright X-ray point sources outside of the galaxy are masked. No soft X-ray enhancement is observed in the position of the HI tail. The two arrows at the north and south of the galaxy point towards the centre of Virgo cluster A and B, respectively. Their length is proportional to the distance to M 87 and M 49. The zoomed-in region at the upper right shows the Chandra 0.5–7 keV image of the galaxy, with the Hα contours (as in Fig. 2) superposed. The small blue circle with a radius of 2″ shows the putative nuclear position without a corresponding X-ray source. An obscured X-ray source 4.9″ to the south-east of the nucleus (PS1) is detected by Chandra.