“Is that why they killed Valls?”

Leandro nodded.

“Hendaya?” asked Victoria.

He shook his head. “Hendaya is just a foot soldier. We’re looking for the person pulling the strings behind him.”

“And who is that?”

“I think you know.”

Victoria shook her head slowly, confused.

“Maybe you’re not aware of it right now.”

“If I’d known, I would have ended up in the same cell as Valls.”

“Then perhaps we can find out together, with your help and our resources. You have already suffered enough and put yourself in enough danger. It’s our turn now. You and your sister were not the only ones. You know that. There are many, many more. Many don’t even suspect that their life is a lie, that everything was stolen from them . . .”

She nodded.

“How did you find out? How did you come to the conclusion that you and your sister hadn’t been the only ones?”

“We managed to get a list with document numbers. Numbers of birth and death certificates that had been forged by Valls.”

“Who did they belong to?” asked Leandro.

“To children of the prisoners who’d been locked up in Montjuïc Castle after the war, when he was the prison governor. All disappeared. Valls would first jail and murder the parents. Then he kept the children. He made out a death certificate at the same time as he forged a birth certificate with a new identity for the children, and then sold them to well-positioned families in the regime in exchange for favors, money, and power. It was a perfect plan, because once the new parents had accepted the stolen children, they became accomplices, and had to keep their mouths shut forever.”

“Do you know how many of these cases there were?”

“No. Ignacio suspected there may have been hundreds.”

“We’re talking about a very complex operation. Valls couldn’t have done all that on his own.”

“Ignacio thought he must have had an accomplice, or various.”

“I agree. In fact, I daresay that Valls was possibly only a cog in the machine. He had the access, the opportunity, and the greed. But I find it hard to believe that he could devise such a complex plot.”

“That’s what Ignacio said.”

“Somebody else, someone we still haven’t uncovered, is the brain of this whole operation.”

“The black hand,” said Victoria.

“Excuse me?”

She smiled weakly. “It’s from a story my father used to tell me when I was a child. The black hand. The evil that always stays in the shadows and pulls the strings . . .”

“You must help us find him, Ariadna.”

“So do you think that Hendaya is receiving orders from Valls’s partner?”

“That’s the most likely thing, yes.”

“That means it must be someone inside the government. Someone powerful.”

Leandro nodded. “That’s why it’s so important not to rush into anything and act very cautiously. If we want to capture him, we must first know the whole truth, with names, dates, and details, and discover who knew about this matter and who is implicated. Only if we find out who was in the know will we be able to get to the bottom of all this.”