by Antonio Hill
Héctor took his hand off the wheel and sought hers. He couldn’t help it. Lola didn’t take hers away.
“Héctor—I left Barcelona, I got over us little by little; I forced myself to stop envying Ruth, to forget you.”
He wanted to kiss her. Park the car on some corner and embrace her. Go to her hotel and undress her slowly. Caress her until those seven years apart were erased. She looked him in the eyes and understood.
It came out softly, but firmly. “No nostalgic fucks, Héctor. They’re hideously depressing. There was a time when I wouldn’t have been able to refuse. But now I can. And you know why? Because there is only one truth and I don’t want to deceive myself. You had a choice and you made it. I lost and Ruth won. The match ended there.”
Had it been Martina or even Leire, they would have noticed that the boss was in a foul mood just from seeing him come in. But, logically, Roger Fort lacked feminine intuition and didn’t have a huge dose of the masculine equivalent either, so he waylaid Inspector Salgado as soon as he passed his desk.
“Inspector, can we talk?”
Héctor turned to the agent with a look that would have been frustrating for anyone not so excited. Fort, thought Héctor, has the principal quality of superheroes and madmen: he is impervious to disappointment.
“Of course,” he answered. “Talk to me.”
“I’ve finally tracked down a waitress who saw Sara Mahler having dinner with someone on Reyes in a restaurant near the metro station where she died. We hadn’t spoken to her before because she was on vacation. She remembers her, her and her companion, because they seemed a curious pair: one blond, one dark.”
“Blond? A woman?”
“Yes, sir. The waitress doesn’t remember much more—it was Reyes and there were a lot of people. Just that she was young and blond.” Fort dared to add, “It might have been Amanda Bonet.”
Damn, thought Héctor. He’d hoped that Sara’s mysterious companion would contribute some information to this puzzle.
“Another thing, sir,” Fort continued. “Señor Víctor Alemany has called a number of times asking for you. He was pretty angry. He wanted to speak to the superintendent—”
“He can go to hell!” Héctor exclaimed. Fort had to force himself not to take a step back. “They can all go to hell. They think they can give us the runaround, then scare us with phone calls. It’s run out.”
“Run out?”
“My patience has run out, Fort.” The shine in Salgado’s eyes was definitely one of rage and not just exasperation. “I’m going to destroy this group. Tomorrow you and I are going to Alemany Cosmetics and we’ll make a few arrests. Just to question them. Right there, in front of their colleagues, so everyone hears about it.”
Fort remembered the stories that went around the station about Salgado, but he thought it was within his rights to ask: “Who are we going to arrest, sir?”
“The strongest and the weakest, Fort. The lady who acts like a queen and Manel Caballero. And I swear I’ll get the truth out of them even if I have to question them nonstop for twenty-four hours.”
36
I shouldn’t have agreed to this meeting, thought Leire when the taxi left her just at the entrance to Los Jardines de la Maternidad in the area of Les Corts. She’d had a bad night and slept fitfully, overwhelmed by unsettling dreams in which Ruth and Dr. Omar appeared, talking in low voices. In the end, sick of nightmares, she’d risen around seven, a little queasy. She ate breakfast with no appetite and a while later, despite having promised herself she wouldn’t, she picked up her cell phone and called the number that the stranger had given her the night before.
And here she was, in these gardens that might be beautiful in summer but in the month of January had the gloomy air of a decaying mansion. It was eleven o’clock, although it could have been six in the evening judging by the sky. An insidious cold, with no wind or rain, was ravaging a city little accustomed to extreme temperatures. Nervous, not knowing why, she waited at the gates of the park; she supposed the man who had to see her would recognize her, because she hadn’t the least idea of his appearance.
Standing by the railings, she wondered why this person had chosen this particular place. “Better somewhere in the open air,” he’d told her. “That way we can speak more freely.” She agreed: as a general rule open spaces didn’t bother her, but just then, off-color despite the huge overcoat she was wearing, she wished she’d suggested any café where she could at least sit down to wait.
She didn’t have to wait long. At five past eleven, a man in his thirties turned the corner and moved directly and unhesitatingly toward her.
“Agent Castro,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m Andrés Moreno.”
She put out her hand and felt relieved. There was nothing sinister about this guy; on the contrary, his medium stature and friendly face, almost too friendly to be attractive, seemed to dispel any trace of distrust. He was carrying a rucksack slung on his shoulder, which repeatedly slipped down the sleeve of his brown leather jacket.
“Apologies for calling at your house last night,” he said to her, “but I leave tomorrow and didn’t want to go without seeing you. Shall we walk?”
She nodded, although as soon as they went through the gate she sought out a bench. She found one and went toward it. There were few people in the gardens, and the old buildings, bathed in that winter light, had an almost ghostly air.
“Mind if we sit?” she asked, in the same informal manner. “I weigh too much to move a lot.”
Smiling, he nodded. Opposite the bench there was a statue of white stone: a young mother with a child in her lap. Although the buildings now fulfilled other needs, years back this group of pavilions had been a hospital where mothers gave birth. Leire caressed her bump as she sat down. Abel seemed to be sleeping; as lazy as the day, she thought. He certainly took after his father.
“Well,” said Leire. “I’m intrigued.”
Andrés Moreno smiled.
“I suppose so. And the fact is, now I have you here I don’t really know where to begin.”
“You told me you had something to tell me about Ruth Valldaura. I think that would be a good place to start.”
He placed the rucksack on the bench between them, opened it and was going to take something out, but thought better of it and stopped. Instead, he asked a question that took Leire completely aback.
“Have you heard of the stolen babies?”
“What?” She recovered from her surprise immediately. “Of course, who hasn’t?”
It had been some time since the news, the scandal, had circulated in newspapers and on television programs. Babies separated from their mothers at birth, believed dead by their real parents and given in shady adoptions to families who believed they were taking in unwanted children. What had begun as a consequence of the war, involving mothers on the losing side who according to the morality of the time were unworthy of the name, had evolved into a plot, a business maintained for many more years: cases of children born in the sixties and seventies now desperately seeking their biological parents; biological parents who until recently were convinced they had lost a child and suddenly discovered the grave was empty; adoptive parents horrified to discover that they had unknowingly been part of an immoral criminal scheme. The subject was spine-chilling and its ramifications implicated midwives, nuns and doctors, although in the majority of cases the law could do very little. The statute of limitations of the crimes added to the difficulty of irrefutably proving they had been committed.
While Leire thought about it all, the snippets of information heard and discussed, Andrés Moreno took some papers and photos from his backpack.
“I’m a journalist and I’ve spent months delving into this subject. As you already know about it, I won’t go into detail. I’ll just say that there are many cases to be discovered, to be brought to light. But the names of some implicated doctors come up again and again, as do the names of an uncharitable religious woman, to call her by an
other name.”
Leire nodded, although she didn’t know what all this had to do with her and Ruth Valldaura.
“As you’ll see, there are few traces of these illegal adoptions. The method varied. Some biological mothers gave birth in hospitals and were told after the birth that their babies had died. They even had the body of one— Forgive me.” He stopped, seeing that Leire was becoming pale.
“No, it’s all right,” she lied.
“Fuck, now I think about it, it’s not very appropriate to speak to you about this. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry. You’ve started now. Go on.”
He took a deep breath.
“There were other sorts of cases. Single mothers who sought refuge in religious institutions where the same method, or worse, was followed. They simply informed them they didn’t deserve to be mothers, that their babies would be better off in the arms of a family as God orders. If they objected they were threatened: sometimes with taking the other children they already had … In any case, the babies were handed over practically at birth and the adoptive parents registered them as their own. What is clear is that money was involved.”
“Yes,” said Leire. “From what I know, in the form of donations, wasn’t it?”
“In the case of religious institutions, of course. And that’s what I’m getting at.”
Andrés Moreno opened the backpack and took out a red file, so old it looked as if it were about to fall to pieces.
“This was one of the refuges for single mothers at that time.”
He showed her a black-and-white photo. Some young nuns posing in front of a house and large gardens. Everyone was smiling for the camera.
“It was the Hogar de la Concepción in Tarragona and it was run by a nun whose name has come to light in more than one file. Sr Amparo. This one.”
There was little to mark her out from the others: the uniforms served their purpose and gave them all the same appearance, docile gray doves.
“I say ‘was’ because it no longer exists. Neither does Sr Amparo, at least in this world. She died four years ago. The Hogar closed at the end of the eighties and its archives must have gone to another institution, or were destroyed. It seems there were few nuns left, but one of them managed to take away some documents with her.”
“What for?”
“Well, let’s say she’d seen certain things there and wanted to keep proof.” Moreno lowered his head and added, “I can’t tell you anything else about her. That was the condition she placed on giving me the information. This information.”
He took out further papers from the file: no doubt they were photocopies of other older ones, which weren’t very legible. Leire took them and studied them carefully.
“They are donations. You can see that the quantities varied, but all of them are very high. We’re talking about millions in the seventies, when six hundred was a lot for normal people. Look at this one in particular.”
According to what was written there, on October 13, 1971, one Ernesto Valldaura Recasens had donated ten million pesetas to the Hogar de la Concepción.
“What are you telling me?” she asked, although her furrowed brow indicated that she’d already guessed.
“It’s obviously not proof of anything. Anyone can donate money to whomever they please. But I started investigating—not him, but all the names that appear here. Although there aren’t many, they were difficult to track down. I was lucky with Ernesto Valldaura. This is his daughter’s birth certificate.” He showed it to her. “Ruth Valldaura Martorell, born October 13, 1971.”
Leire looked at both papers with something akin to vertigo.
“This means …?”
He shrugged.
“It’s not proof of anything. At least not legal proof. As I said, Señor Valldaura had all the right in the world to make donations as generous as he wished and to the center he pleased. But it’s a meaningful coincidence, don’t you think?”
“What else did the nun tell you? The one who gave you all this …”
“Not much. That there were mothers who came back to the Hogar demanding their children, there were many ‘difficult’ labors, and that Sr Amparo ruled the place with an iron fist and coffers always full.”
“When … when did you receive these documents?”
“At the end of last year.”
Ruth had already disappeared by then, thought Leire.
“When I finally tracked down the Valldauras and the birth certificate, I did a quick search for their daughter’s name. And I found out what had happened to her, some months later.”
“Did you go to see them?”
“The Valldauras didn’t want to see me. I suppose they thought I was one more journalist interested in their daughter’s case, and in fact I didn’t insist too much. What were they going to tell me? Talking to them about the donation and the suspicions this could arouse seemed out of place when they had to face the disappearance of that daughter. So I focused on investigating Ruth Valldaura, although to tell the truth I haven’t achieved much. My only lead over the last few days has been you,” he said, smiling. “I admit that I’ve been following you to see if you were also interested in her.”
“But—”
“I no longer have any resources, or time. I thought I might discover something … I even considered the possibility that Ruth’s birth and end might be linked somehow, however improbable it seems. I also thought about approaching Ruth Valldaura’s ex-husband, but hearing about his ‘violent tendencies’ I backed off.”
She smiled. Poor Héctor, some sentences pursue the accused for life. They are the worst—a trail of rumors that refuse to fade and against which the accused can’t fight.
“I’m not from Barcelona,” Andrés Moreno continued, “and now I can’t stay here any longer. The rent has to be paid and I have nothing to publish. Also …”
“Yes?”
“To be honest with you, I don’t know if I want to keep going with this. It’s a dirty business, marked by a cruelty that I sometimes find unbearable. I’m getting married in the spring, I want to start a family …”
Andrés Moreno blushed. The sentence hung in the air, but Leire understood what he meant perfectly.
“A favor,” she said.
“You want the documents? I’ve brought you copies. Use them as you see fit, but—be careful. It’s a matter that will reach the courts someday, although at the moment it’s buried under tons of bureaucracy. And there are many people who want it to remain so. Lots of those implicated have died or retired, lots of the babies are now adults who don’t know the truth. There are many others, of course, seeking justice, embarking on a struggle against oblivion, but I fear that time will dishearten them, keep them quiet, make them disappear …”
Like Ruth, thought Leire. Her outrage and indignation had overtaken all feeling of nausea or fatigue. Like Ruth.
Montserrat Martorell opened the door of her house to her that same day, a little before two. Leire had gone to see her on impulse, and on this occasion the somber expression of Ruth’s mother made little impression on her.
“Here again, Señorita Castro?”
She wasn’t in the mood to beat around the bush, so she put the photocopied document under her nose, barely giving her time to see it. “I think we need to talk.”
Señora Martorell directed her to the same little sitting room she’d received her in the last time, but she didn’t bother to pretend she was welcome. She must have seen she was tired, or upset, because she invited her to sit and Leire accepted.
“Explain this to me,” said Leire. “Please,” she added.
Ruth’s mother put on some small glasses that hung around her neck on a delicate chain and glanced at the paper. Then she took off her glasses and focused her attention on her unexpected visitor. Leire stared once again into Señora Martorell’s gray eyes, intense despite her age.
“I don’t know what you want me to explain. My husband made a donation to this place almost fort
y years ago. He had a stronger faith then. Time, and life, cure that.”
Leire observed her, unable to decide if this woman was aware of what this document could mean. She decided to get to the point.
“Did you adopt Ruth?”
Señora Martorell folded the sheet of paper and spoke slowly in a voice trying to be cold but not quite managing it.
“Señorita Castro—”
“Agent Castro, if you don’t mind!”
“Don’t raise your voice to me. I’ve been very patient with you, but now you’re going too far. Let me remind you that you are investigating my daughter’s disappearance, not her birth. And I doubt that, thirty-nine years apart, there is any link between the two events.”
Leire was going to answer, but just then Abel decided to enter the conversation and did so in a painful way, almost as if he were protesting.
“Are you feeling all right?”
“Yes.” She took a deep breath. “I think so. This time he moved more forcefully …”
“Why don’t you do yourself a favor? Go home, have your baby. Honestly, I tell you this as a mother: nothing is more important. When he is born, everything that seems important now will simply fade away. You’ll think only about caring for him, feeding him. Protecting him.”
“I know,” said Leire. Her voice was trembling. “I’ll take care of him, feed him, protect him—but I won’t lie to him. I won’t invent a romantic story about his father, or the relationship I have with him. Maybe we won’t be the perfect family, but we won’t pretend to be. My son will know the truth.”
“The truth!” Montserrat Martorell made a gesture of annoyance. “Young people have an obsession with it that’s almost naive. Do you think the world could work on the basis of truth? I’ll tell you something, Agent Castro: honesty is an overrated concept these days. And there are others that lamentably have lost their force, like loyalty, obedience. Respect for rules that have functioned, for better or worse, for years. No, Agent Castro, it’s not the truth that sustains the world. Think about it.”
“I think the world to which you’re referring no longer exists,” Leire replied, almost sadly.