AMONG THE MANY adventures hidden in the heart of Barcelona, there are unassailable sites, and forbidding chasms. But for the truly fearless, there’s the Civil Registry. Vargas faced the ancient structure, covered in soot, and sighed. Its veiled windows and its resemblance to a vast mausoleum seemed to warn the gullible not even to attempt the assault.
Once he’d negotiated the large oak door that kept mere mortals at bay, a heavy-looking counter loomed before him. Behind it, a little man with owlish eyes watched the world go by without even a hint of cordiality.
“Good morning,” was Vargas’s peace offering.
“It would be if these were opening hours. As the notice on the street clearly specifies, we open from eleven a.m. to one p.m. Tuesdays to Fridays. Today is Monday, and it’s eight thirteen in the morning. Can’t you read?”
Vargas, practised in the art of dealing with this sort of petty tyrant – which many a public servant armed with an official stamp carries inside him – dropped his friendly expression and planted his badge two centimetres from the receptionist’s nose. “But no doubt you can read.”
The little man gulped, swallowing a month’s worth of saliva and his bad temper. “At your service, Captain. Please forgive this misunderstanding. How can I help you?”
“I’d like to speak to whoever is in charge here, if possible, not a cretin like you.”
The receptionist quickly picked up the phone and asked for someone called Señora Luisa. “I don’t care,” he murmured into the receiver. “Tell her to come out right now.”
He put down the receiver and straightened his jacket. Once he’d rearranged himself, he looked at Vargas.
“The director’s secretary will be with you right away.”
Vargas sat down on a wooden bench without taking his eyes off the receptionist. Two minutes later a small woman with penetrating eyes appeared. Her hair was tied back and she wore rimless glasses. She raised an eyebrow, clearly realizing what had just happened. “Don’t get angry with Carmona. He does his best. I’m Luisa Alcaine. How can I help you?”
“My name is Vargas, from police headquarters in Madrid. I need to check some certificate numbers. It’s important.”
“Don’t say it’s also urgent. That brings bad luck in this house. Let’s have a look at those numbers.”
The policeman handed her the list. Doña Luisa took a quick look and nodded. “The arrival or the departure numbers?”
“Excuse me?”
“These over here are death certificates, and these other numbers are birth certificates.”
“I’m always sure. My short height is just to mislead people.” Luisa gave him a cunning catlike smile.
“Then I’d like to see both, please.”
“Everything is possible in the miraculous world of Spanish bureaucracy. Follow me, if you’ll be so kind, Colonel,” Luisa said, holding a door open behind the counter.
“It’s just Captain, I’m afraid.”
“Shame. After the fright you gave Carmona, I thought you’d have a higher rank, to be honest. Don’t they give you titles according to your height?”
“I’ve been shrinking for a while now. It’s the mileage.”
“I understand. I came here looking like a ballerina, and look at me now.”
Vargas followed her down a seemingly endless corridor. “Is it me, or does this building seem bigger inside than out?”
“You’re not the first person to notice. It grows a little every night. Rumour has it that it feeds on civil servants who are on leave and on legal clerks who come here to look up files and fall asleep in the consultation room. If I were you, I wouldn’t drop your guard.”
When they reached the end of the corridor, Luisa stopped in front of a huge door that looked like the entrance to a crypt. Someone had hung a piece of paper from the lintel with these words:
ABANDON ALL PATIENCE
ALL YE WHO VENTURE BEYOND THIS DOOR . . .
Luisa pushed open the door and winked at him. “Welcome to the magic world of official forms and two-peseta stamps.”
A dizzying beehive of shelves, ladders and filing cabinets spread out in a vast Florentine tableau under a vault of pointed arches. Something akin to a piece of stage machinery with lamps exuded a dusty light that hung like a ragged curtain.
“God almighty,” murmured Vargas. “How can anyone find anything here?”
“The idea is not to be able to find it. But with a bit of ingenuity, a little persistence, and the expert hand of yours truly, one can find anything here, even the philosopher’s stone. Show me the list.”
Vargas followed Luisa to a wall stuffed with numbered files soaring up to the heavens. The director snapped her fingers, and two diligent-looking staff members appeared. “I’m going to need you to bring down the books from sections 1 to 8B from 1939 to 1943 and 6C to 14 from the same period.”
The two minions set off in search of ladders, and Luisa invited Vargas to sit down at one of the consultation desks in the middle of the hall.
“Nineteen thirty-nine?” asked the policeman.
“All these documents still have the old numbering. The system changed in 1944, with the introduction of the national identity document. You’re in luck, because a lot of the prewar files were lost, but the period between 1939 and 1944 is all here in a separate section that we finished putting in order a couple of years ago.”
“Do you mean to say that all these certificates are from shortly after the war?”
Luisa nodded. “Stirring up the past, eh?” the civil servant hinted. “I applaud your bravery, though I’m not so sure about your prudence. There aren’t many people who have the interest or the desire to rummage around there.”
While they waited for the return of the two assistants with the requested books, Luisa studied Vargas with clinical curiosity. “How long since you last slept?”
He checked his watch.
“Just over twenty-four hours.”
“Shall I ask for a coffee? This could take a while.”
Two and a half hours later, Luisa and her two assistants had navigated through oceans of paper and finished the voyage by placing a small islet of volumes in front of Vargas, who could hardly keep awake.
He considered the task ahead and sighed. “Would you do the honours, Señora Luisa?”
“But of course.”
While Vargas drank his third cup of coffee, Luisa sent her assistants away and proceeded to organize the registry books into two slowly increasing piles.
“Aren’t you going to ask me what all this is about?” Vargas enquired.
“Should I?”
He smiled.
After a while, Luisa let out a sigh of relief. “Well, it should all be there. We’ll go through the list again. Let’s see.”
Checking the numbers, she selected one volume after another. As she examined them, Vargas noticed that she was frowning.
“What?” he asked.
“Are you sure these numbers are correct?”
“They’re the ones I have . . . Why?”
Luisa looked up from the pages and gazed at him in surprise. “No, nothing. They’re all infants.”
“Infants?”
“Children. Look.”
Luisa placed the books in front of Vargas and compared the numbers, one at a time.
“Do you see the dates?”
Vargas tried to decipher that numerical mishmash. Luisa guided him with the tip of a pencil.
“They go in couples. For every death certificate there is one birth certificate. Issued on the same day, by the same civil servant, in the same division, and at the same time.”
“How do you know?”
“Because of the control code. See?”
“And what does that mean?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is it normal for the same civil servant to issue two documents simultaneously?”
“No. And even less normal when they’re from two different departments.”
“What could have caused such a thing?”
“It’s not standard procedure. At the time, certificates were noted down by districts. These were all processed in the central registry.”
“And is that an irregularity?”
“Very much so. Moreover, these documents, if what is written down here is true, were all issued in a single day.”
“And that’s odd.”
“Odder than two left feet. But that’s just the start.”
Vargas looked at her.
“All the deaths are certified in the Hospital Militar. How many children die in a military hospital?”
“And the births?”
“In the Hospital del Sagrado Corazón. All, with no exception.”
“Could it be a coincidence?”
“If you’re a man of faith . . . And look at the ages of the children. They’re also in pairs, as you can see.”
Vargas took a closer look, but exhaustion was beginning to cloud his understanding.
“For every death certificate, there is one birth certificate,” Luisa once again explained.
“I don’t understand.”
“The children. Every one of them was born on the same day as one of the deceased.”
“Could I borrow all this?”
“The originals cannot leave the premises. You’d have to ask for copies and that would take at least a month, and only by pulling strings.”
“Couldn’t there be a faster way—”
“And more discreet?” Luisa completed.
“Also.”
“Move to one side.”
For the next half an hour, Luisa took paper and pen and wrote down an extract with the names, dates, certificate numbers and codes of each document. Vargas followed her neat, elegant handwriting, trying to find the clue that would tell him what all of it meant. Only then, when his eyes were already drifting through the endless list of words and numbers, did he notice the names Luisa had just written down. “Just a minute,” he interrupted.
Luisa moved to one side. Vargas looked back among the certificates and found what he was looking for.
Luisa leaned over the documents the policeman was examining. “Two girls. They died on the same day . . . Does that mean anything to you?”
Vargas’s eyes slid down to the bottom of the certificates. “What’s this?”
“The signature of the civil servant who issued the document.”
The strokes were clean and elegant, the handwriting of someone who knew about appearances and protocol. Vargas formed the name silently with his lips and felt his blood turn to ice.