The Exile (33 page)

‘That's a great idea. I have to see Luisa in a few minutes but I'll be back by twelve. Can I buy you lunch?'

‘You certainly can. Reading always gives me an appetite.'

As Galíndez left for her meeting with Profesora Ordoñez, she paused in the doorway for a moment, looking back at the students as they worked on the piles of letters, wondering what Isabel was talking about. They didn't remind her of anyone.

Claudia looked across the table, noticing Isabel hunched over a letter as she tried to find an appropriate code on her sheet. ‘Are you are OK there, Izzy?'

‘I think I'm OK, thanks, I'll let you know.' Isabel picked up the letter and studied it again.

The letter was addressed to the Bishop of Madrid.

23/Febrero/1993

Estimado Señor Obispo

I write to humbly request your Excellency's assistance with a matter of terrible injustice. I gave birth to a little girl in February of this year in La Clinica Sanidad GL in Fuenlabrada. After the delivery, I saw my daughter for only a few minutes before one of the nuns took her away while the doctor put in some stitches. Half an hour later when I asked to see her, I was told she had died. My husband and I were terribly upset but we were even more distressed when the head of the clinic told us the child had already been buried in order to spare us any further pain.

When we insisted on seeing her grave we were told she was in an unmarked plot in the Almudena Cemetery. We were then asked to leave the clinic. I wrote several letters to Sanidad GL without them giving me the courtesy of a reply. We have seen similar things reported in the news and we now think our child didn't die at all but was stolen and given to someone else. As your Excellency will understand, every day we suffer the agonies of the Cross thinking of our baby being brought up by strangers.

We beg you, Señor Obispo, as a Christian, as a priest and as a fellow human being, for the love of God, help us find out what happened to our child.

Humbly,

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 feeling 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.