“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.”

“Are you sure?”

“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. Rumor 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.