The Exile

by Mark Oldfield

  Sonia & Jorge Luis Perez

  ‘God, how awful,’ Isabel muttered. ‘Do you think they would ever get over it?’

  Claudia shrugged. ‘I can’t imagine how you could get over something like that.’

  ‘It’s a shame we can’t see how they’re doing now. That’s what we used to do on my radio show: try to look for the happy ending to show how people got over adversity.’

  ‘That must happen sometimes,’ Claudia agreed. ‘Like if they won the lottery. It wouldn’t bring the child back but it might brighten up their lives a little.’

  Isabel looked at the letter in front of her, thinking Claudia was right. Maybe things did change for the better for some people, despite the tragedy of having their baby stolen. She imagined a headline: After the Heartache: Life’s Still Worth Living, Say Parents of Stolen Child. A little clichéd maybe, but a few pieces of good news would at least add some warmth to what was likely to be a depressing report.

  She entered the names of the parents into Google, adding some extra terms to narrow the search: Fuenlabrada, Stolen Children, Perez, Sonia, Jorge Luis. A string of hits with numerous references to Sonia and Jose Luis Perez. Headlines from local papers, one from a national daily.

  Claudia looked up from her keyboard. ‘Isabel?’ She hurried over to put an arm around Isabel’s shoulders. ‘Izzy, que te pasa? Why are you crying?’

  ‘I’m being silly,’ Isabel said, dabbing her eyes. She pointed to the screen. ‘It’s just so unfair after losing their child like that.’

  Claudia saw two pages from ABC dated 6 May 1996. The first carried a photograph of the swearing in of the new prime minister, José María Aznar. The second was a black and white picture of a burned-out apartment. Firefighters’ ladders leaned against the walls beneath shattered windows with dark scorch marks on the brickwork above them.

  Tragic Parents Die in Fire

  Less than a year after the sad death of their newborn daughter, fate again struck a terrible blow as Sonia and Jorge Luis Perez perished in a fire in their apartment in Fuenlabrada, Madrid last night. Official sources say the fire started accidentally, probably the result of faulty wiring.

  Neighbours said Señor Perez was a keen DIY enthusiast though they were not sure whether he had undertaken any electrical work recently. A municipal police spokesman said they were treating the deaths as a tragic accident.

  ‘These things happen, Isabel,’ Claudia said, trying to comfort her.

  ‘It’s the injustice of it,’ Isabel sniffed. ‘They’d already suffered so much.’

  ‘Coincidence is pretty scary.’

  ‘That’s what it is, I know: coincidence,’ Isabel agreed. ‘I could take any other letter off that pile, look it up and there’re be no mention of the parents dying.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Pass me another, will you?’ She took the letter and glanced through it. ‘Same thing, different hospital. Eduardo and Belén Castillo. Their son was born on the sixteenth of January 1982. He was taken out to be washed. An hour later, they were told he’d died and been buried in an unmarked plot.’

  ‘Look them up, it’ll put your mind at ease,’ Claudia said. ‘I bet there’s nothing.’

  Isabel entered the names into Google and watched as the list of hits appeared.

  ‘I’ll get you a coffee.’ Claudia got up to go to the vending machine in the hall. She stopped. ‘Isabel? You’ve gone white.’

  Isabel stared at the screen. ‘Twenty-ninth of June 1992,’ she whispered, struggling to control her voice. ‘The bodies of Eduardo and Belén Castillo were recovered from their car yesterday in the Sierra de Gredos. Both were killed instantly after their car left the road and plunged down the side of a steep hill. The accident was discovered by a passing...’ She looked up. ‘I think we’ve got some checking up to do, don’t you?’

  ‘OK.’ Claudia shrugged. ‘Let’s look at some more and see.’

  ‘There you are, Ana María. I thought you’d got lost.’

  Galíndez closed the door behind her, smoothing her shirt. ‘It can be a bit of a struggle talking to Luisa.’ She noticed Isabel’s red eyes. ‘Look at that. You must be allergic to the dust on these letters. Why don’t we go out for some fresh air?’

  ‘It’s not an allergy,’ Isabel sniffed. ‘There’s something you need to see.’

  ‘OK, go ahead.’ Galíndez sat down next to her.

  ‘It’s bizarre,’ Isabel began. ‘I started thinking about how sad these letters are and wondered if something positive might have happened to the couples later on. A happy ending, you know?’

  Galíndez nodded, keeping quiet as she realised how upset Isabel was.

  ‘I searched the net for one couple.’ Isabel’s voice trembled. ‘They died in a house fire.’

  ‘That’s tragic, but it’s just random chance, Izzy.’

  ‘After that I did a search for another couple and found they’d been killed when they drove over a cliff in broad daylight.’

  ‘It’s a big data set, you get those kind of results now and then. It doesn’t mean there’s a connection. Correlation isn’t the same as causation.’

  ‘Sometimes, Ana María, you sound like one of those talking weighing machines.’

  ‘I know you’re upset,’ Galíndez said quietly, ‘but this is common in research. If you compare the guardia civil’s use of horses over the last fifty years with the crime rate for the same period, you find the fewer horses they have, the more crime there is. But no one believes giving up mounted officers leads to more crime. We call it a spurious relationship.’

  Isabel looked at her, red-eyed. ‘You’re telling me horses commit crimes?’

  ‘I’m saying there’s no connection between the two things, it just appears that way.’ She put a hand on Isabel’s arm. ‘You found two cases. There are thousands of letters.’

  ‘Don’t be so dismissive,’ Isabel snapped. ‘After I noticed those first cases where the parents were killed, Claudia helped me check some more. ‘Ana, I looked up thirty cases. In twenty-one, the parents died in accidents or as the result of violent crime.’

  Galíndez’s face clouded. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘That doesn’t feel like coincidence.’

  ‘So what now?’

  Galíndez opened her laptop. ‘Have you got all those cases together?’

  Isabel pushed a pile of letters across the desk. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘We need to incorporate parental death into the data collection,’ Galíndez said. ‘Then we can use it as an outcome variable.’

  ‘Translation please.’ Isabel frowned.

  ‘It’s a piece of information that measures whether something happened or not,’ Galíndez explained. ‘In this case, whether the parents died or not. We can then calculate whether other items of data appear to influence the likelihood of dying. And you know what? I think that the hospital where they had their child stolen from is going to be a key predictor. Because if those deaths weren’t accidental, who had most to gain from their deaths?’

  ‘The thieves,’ Isabel said. ‘With the parents dead, there’d be no more complaints, no one making trouble with the authorities. Case closed.’

  ‘Exactly. And it’s likely that the thieves were working in those hospitals, so we’ll ask the students to check each case online to identify any parents who died after their child was stolen. Then they can record it with the other information.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Isabel wiped her eyes. ‘I don’t usually let things get to me like this.’

  ‘It’s not surprising, Izzy. This whole thing is a tragedy. But look on the bright side, when we’ve identified the hospitals with the highest rate of thefts, maybe we’ll have enough evidence to make arrests.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘How about some lunch?’

  ‘We’ll have to hurry,’ Isabel said. ‘I’m meeting that parents’ support group later.’

  ‘Would you mind if I came along? Maybe we could get a drink afterwards?’

  ‘Good idea.’ Isabel nodded. ‘I’ve a feeli
ng we’re going to need one.’

  MADRID 2010, SALA DE REUNIONES, CENTRO SOCIAL, CALLE COLOMER

  Galíndez sat in the meeting room of a chilly municipal building near Las Ventas bull ring, giving the parents an overview of her investigation. The parents listened politely. They’d met others like her over the years. They came and went, their interests changing in response to the availability of funding and shifting trends in academic interest. Many felt there was no reason to think Galíndez would be any different.

  Before she introduced Isabel, Galíndez offered to answer any questions the parents might have about the project. Unexpectedly, one woman asked about the explosion at Guzmán’s comisaría the previous year. Taken by surprise, Galíndez started to say she didn’t like to talk about it but stopped herself, realising how ironic that would be when she was asking these people to share the most traumatic event of their lives. Instead, she described how her determination to uncover Guzmán’s crimes had nearly got her killed. That broke the ice. These parents had been obstructed and fobbed off by officials for years. Hearing a researcher willing to put her life on the line to discover the truth got their respect. Now the parents were more receptive, Galíndez decided it was time to introduce Isabel.

  Isabel was a revelation. Most of the people in the room were familiar with her radio show and were only too pleased to tell their stories. She handled each contribution with consummate skill, asking questions that frequently brought tears to her respondents’ eyes yet left them feeling validated, grateful she’d touched on an aspect of their lives that had been ignored until now. When some of the parents got upset, Isabel consoled them with a perfectly judged comment that gave the right level of empathy and understanding without seeming patronising or dismissive. At the end of each contribution, Isabel reflected on the salient details of what they’d said, highlighting key points she thought the authorities ought to address and repeatedly emphasising the central issue: the need to bring to justice those who had taken part in the theft of thousands of children following the Civil War. At the back of the room, Galíndez sensed the audience bonding with Isabel as she raised new points and questions, quickly moving on if things became too painful.

  And things were painful, because at the heart of this was the same ghastly story: parents going to a clinic or hospital, nervous and excited by the imminent arrival. Finally seeing an end to the waiting and false alarms as the baby was delivered. Tears of laughter, marvelling at the tiny bundle in the mother’s arms as she rested, thinking dreamily about the future. Not knowing the ordeal was just beginning as nurses or nuns took her baby away to be cleaned up. Relaxing as she waited for the infant to be brought back, the afterglow turning to disquiet at the length of time it was taking. The sudden apprehension as a doctor or priest appeared to announce the baby was dead. The strange callousness as the heartbroken parents were ushered from the hospital, unable to understand why their child was already buried in an unmarked grave.

  It went on for so long. Thousands of lives blighted by those they trusted: doctors and medical staff, nuns and priests, their crimes assisted by countless officials for whom corruption was a part of their organisational culture. In Spanish society, authority had been respected – feared even – following the Civil War. Calling the word of medical professionals into question was difficult and reporting them to the police a waste of time, since often they had been bribed. In such a moral vacuum, the risks were small and the profits enormous.

  The demand for children was constant and to meet it, the child thefts evolved into an industry that would outlive Franco. It preyed on those least able to pursue the matter: the poor, unmarried mothers, or sometimes anyone about to give birth whose baby could be sold to someone willing to pay the price of a small apartment for an infant.

  Niños robados – stolen children. A crime disguised by those involved as one of life’s tragedies. Until the rumours began once democracy was re-established, fuelled by the mounting suspicion of bereaved parents. The slow emergence of cases where parents were reunited with a long-lost child, the news spreading disquiet as thousands of other parents realised what might have happened to them.

  Hearing the testimonies at first hand was raw and brutal. The woman talking to Isabel broke down, unable to continue. In the shadows at the back of the room Galíndez found herself dabbing her eyes with a tissue as she listened to the woman’s grief.

  It was getting late. Isabel saw the janitor waiting by the door, ready to lock up the building, and brought the meeting to a close, thanking the parents for giving voice to their suffering, explaining how the investigation would make politicians aware of the issues and, hopefully, pressure them to act. It was a moving speech and the audience rose to their feet, cheering Isabel as their new champion. Many rushed forward to embrace her, others waited, more reserved, wanting to thank her with a few private words.

  When all the parents had gone, Isabel strolled between the lines of chairs to the back of the hall, her eyes flashing, pleased at a job well done. She was beautiful, Galíndez thought, watching her. A beautiful person in every sense.

  Isabel saw the tissues in her hand. ‘Did it upset you, Ana?’

  Galíndez looked down, composing herself. ‘It makes me so angry.’

  ‘You know what they say,’ Isabel said. ‘Don’t get mad, get even. Find the people who stole those babies.’

  ‘You were brilliant,’ Galíndez said, getting to her feet. ‘They loved you.’

  ‘It made them feel better for now but the effect will soon wear off. I just hope we can track down some of the people responsible.’

  ‘We will.’ Galíndez glanced at her watch. ‘It’s getting late. Can I get a lift back to the university to get my car?’

  ‘Why not come back with me and let me cook you something? We can drive in together in the morning.’ Isabel slipped an arm around Galíndez’s shoulders. ‘You look like you could use some cheering up.’

  Galíndez leaned against her, feeling the warmth of Isabel’s breath on her hair, the soft weight of her hand on her shoulder. She closed her eyes, seeing an image of herself, buried in the smoking rubble of Guzmán’s comisaría. She pulled away. ‘Don’t touch me.’

  Isabel looked at her in surprise. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘This,’ Galíndez muttered. ‘We’re colleagues. It’s not professional.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to offend you.’ Isabel’s voice was brittle. ‘I’ll drop you at the campus.’

  They walked to the car without speaking. Around them, the city throbbed with the noise of traffic.

  Isabel sat behind the wheel, staring ahead.

  ‘Look, it’s not you—’ Galíndez began.

  ‘God, don’t talk to me in clichés,’ Isabel cut in, ‘I made a mistake.’ She reached for the ignition key. ‘I won’t make it again.’

  The university grounds were hidden in shadow as Isabel pulled up by the entrance to the faculty car park. As Galíndez got out, she leaned back into the window. ‘The thing is—’

  ‘No, Ana María, I got the message the first time,’ Isabel said. ‘Forget it.’ She accelerated out of the car park, scattering loose gravel into the darkened shrubbery.

  Slowly, Galíndez walked to her car. Behind her, she heard a screech of tyres and turned, thinking Isabel was coming back. But it wasn’t her, just a pale blue people carrier heading towards the centre of the campus.

  She climbed into her car and sat for a while, trying to think how she could explain things to Isabel. But these were things she couldn’t explain to herself. It was best not to try. There was no room for anyone else in her life. She bore his mark now, that long pale scar down her left side: Guzmán’s brand, indelible and contaminating.

  She leaned forward and opened the glove compartment, reaching for the plastic tube of painkillers. She shook a couple of tablets into her hand and swallowed them. Slumping back in her seat, she looked out into the warm night, seeing the shadowy campus, its paths and kerbs illuminated by pale slanting light.<
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  She sat quietly, resting her hands on the wheel, wondering if these feelings would ever pass. In the mirror, she saw the dark tower of the faculty building. The cleaners were turning out the lights and as she watched, the detail of the building was gradually erased, floor by floor, until only the small emergency lights in the stairwells were visible.

  17

  FRANCE, OCTOBER 1954, ST JEAN DE PIED DE PORT

  Guzmán slowed as the bend ahead revealed another vertical drop behind a flimsy wooden fence.

  ‘That’s the road to St Jean on the right,’ Ochoa said, glancing at the map on his knee.

  ‘About time.’ Guzmán gave him a dark look. ‘You’re not still worrying about us crossing the border, I hope?’

  ‘It was you who said we had to keep a low profile, jefe.’

  ‘And we are,’ Guzmán said. ‘But since I’m in command, we’re doing it my way.’

  ‘Going into France after a bunch of smugglers isn’t going to be low profile if the French authorities find out.’

  Guzmán hunted in his jacket for a cigarette. ‘I want to know why the Çubiry have been supplying arms to El Lobo. If that’s all right with you, Corporal?’

  Ochoa stayed quiet, looking at the passing sprawl of white houses, their red-tiled roofs glowing in the early morning sun. Soon the clusters of buildings grew more numerous and, in the distance, against the green mass of the foothills, they saw St Jean de Pied de Port, an uneven line of rooftops shrouded in mist.

  ‘What’s our plan for today, sir?’

  Guzmán slowed, seeing a large crowd a couple of hundred metres further on, walking towards the village. ‘I’ll see what I can find out about the Çubiry from the locals. There’s bound to be someone in need of a few pesetas.’

  ‘They use francs here.’ Ochoa saw Guzmán’s expression and wished he’d kept quiet.

  ‘Peasants are peasants, Corporal. They want money no matter where it comes from and if I want a lecture from you on the currency of effeminate European countries, I’ll ask for it.’