Fraudulent Fertilisation

Álvez be­came rigid and tried com­plain­ing:

“But, Doc­tor San­ti­ni, don’t you think it’s too much?”

The mag­is­trate didn’t an­swer, they all went in again and, going into the doc­tor’s bed­room, they start­ed check­ing the car­pet care­ful­ly, but they didn’t find any­thing. Adol­fo and Fed­eri­co were on the way out when the judge stopped them.

“Wait a mo­ment, help me move the bed.”

When they did so, the judge saw that in the wall, just be­neath the head­board of the bed, there was a small space with­out any skirt­ing board. Al­though the floor was cov­ered in car­pet, it had not been stuck down at this point. He put his hand in that sec­tion, and no­ticed that the par­quet and part of the false floor had been re­moved. He found a small cav­i­ty, a square of ap­prox­i­mate­ly six­teen inch­es across, and in­side found a brown en­ve­lope. San­ti­ni took it, while Álvez blushed and sweat­ed, show­ing the des­per­a­tion that was in­vad­ing him. He want­ed to com­plain, he protest­ed be­tween stam­mers, but then chose to re­main quiet. San­ti­ni opened the en­ve­lope. It was large. In­side were sev­er­al pa­pers. He said aloud:

“Gen­tle­man, no­tice is here­by given of what we have found. Take note, please, Doc­tor Guer­ri­no... Here we have a will signed by Ms Ar­ti­gas... Doc­tor Álvez is the ben­e­fi­cia­ry in case of the death of the woman, it des­ig­nates him as guardian of her son. Note every­thing down.”

Adol­fo and Fed­eri­co em­braced, over­come by emo­tion, while Álvez vis­i­bly crum­bled. The judge took out a sec­ond in­stru­ment and said:

“We also have a pro­fes­sion­al re­port from the Suárez-Medellin-Dick­in­son legal prac­tice, which con­sists of twen­ty sheets... It is ad­dressed to the en­gi­neer Eu­lo­gio Farías, about a spe­cif­ic con­sul­ta­tion made by him. The mat­ters cov­ered are: fil­i­a­tion ac­tion, rights of the child, bi­o­log­i­cal tests, par­tic­u­lar­i­ties in the case of ar­ti­fi­cial in­sem­i­na­tion. Are you writ­ing down al the de­tails, Doc­tor Guer­ri­no?”

“Yes,” an­swered the sec­re­tary.

“Good, write,” he or­dered as he took out a third doc­u­ment, “it’s hand­writ­ten let­ter, a pri­vate one. It’s ad­dressed to Es­te­ban Álvez, Miss Ali­cia San­drel­li is the sender, she asks the doc­tor to per­form an abor­tion on her sis­ter, who is a minor.”

Then he took out a lit­tle note­book, in which there were notes made in Álvez’s hand­writ­ing. The mag­is­trate said, “I here­by give no­tice that there was a per­son­al note­book with hand­writ­ten notes. Ap­par­ent­ly it is the mon­i­tor­ing of a preg­nan­cy, start­ing with an ar­ti­fi­cial in­sem­i­na­tion. The pa­tient is called Juana... I think that’s all. No! There’s some­thing else, a lit­tle piece of paper... It’s an in­voice from the González-Bouchez lab­o­ra­to­ry. It records the de­posit of a sam­ple de­scribed in quo­ta­tion marks as ‘on­co­log­i­cal’, of ‘con­fi­den­tial’ char­ac­ter, to be con­served in ni­tro­gen...”

The mag­is­trate looked at his watch and di­rect­ed an order to his sec­re­tary:

“It’s seven o’clock, they should still be open. Here’s the ad­dress, go im­me­di­ate­ly, Doc­tor Guer­ri­no, there’s not a mo­ment to lose. If they don’t want to at­tend you, delay them a bit, I’ll fin­ish the pro­ceed­ings. Don’t let them close the es­tab­lish­ment until I ar­rive. Any ques­tions?”

“I’ll go im­me­di­ate­ly,” said Doc­tor Guer­ri­no obe­di­ent­ly.

Álvez re­act­ed at that mo­ment, say­ing, “I’m going, Doc­tor San­ti­ni: this is now of­fen­sive.”

“No!” an­swered the judge, “you’re stay­ing here.”

“Of­fi­cer! Ar­rest Doc­tor Álvez! Until we fin­ish the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, he will re­main under your con­trol, is that clear?” In any case, come with us now, then take him to the po­lice sta­tion.”

“Yes, your ho­n­our,” said the po­lice­man re­spect­ful­ly, “leave it to me.”

Fif­teen min­utes later they had ar­rived at the lab­o­ra­to­ry; Doc­tor San­ti­ni asked to speak to the man­ag­er of the com­pa­ny. They were at­tend­ed by an old man with a very re­spectable ap­pear­ance who, de­spite show­ing his sur­prise, did not stop treat­ing them cour­te­ous­ly. The pres­ence of a crim­i­nal judge im­posed re­spect.

“San­ti­a­go Díez,” said the man, “how can I help you?”

San­ti­ni showed him the in­voice for the de­posit, ask­ing him, “Do you recog­nise this?”

“Of course,” an­swered the old man who was at­tend­ing them, “it’s from our com­pa­ny, it’s no se­cret.”

“In that case,” asked the judge, “could we have ac­cess to this ma­te­r­i­al now?”

“No, that’s im­pos­si­ble, look care­ful, it says that it’s con­fi­den­tial... I can’t do it with­out a court order...”

“I’ll write it right here,” said the mag­is­trate and, tak­ing a blank piece of paper, rapid­ly pre­pared the search war­rant.

A few min­utes later, San­ti­ni hand­ed the order to San­ti­a­go Díez and said, “As you see, I stip­u­late that this busi­ness be searched; I place it on record that it is car­ried out out­side the per­mit­ted timetable be­cause a delay could be dan­ger­ous. You can­not refuse to com­ply with this order.”

“What do I have to do?” asked Díez.

“We wish to see the sam­ple that Doc­tor Álvez left you,” ex­plained San­ti­ni, “we’ll leave it here duly sealed. It’s fun­da­men­tal that it be con­served in good con­di­tion, no one should touch it, I will hold you per­son­al­ly re­spon­si­ble for any de­te­ri­o­ra­tion or change that the ma­te­r­i­al suf­fers. I imag­ine that you re­alise what re­spon­si­bil­i­ty this im­plies, don’t you?”

“But it’s not fair to put me in such a po­si­tion,” said Díez, show­ing his op­po­si­tion, “it’s got noth­ing to do with me...”

“If you like,” of­fered San­ti­ni, “ I can have an of­fi­cer placed here, order him to stay all night to make sure no one touch­es the sam­ple. It’s a greater guar­an­tee for you, how does that sound?”

“I’ve got noth­ing against it,” an­swered the old man, “that way I’ll be more re­laxed.”

“Me too,” said the judge.

Every­thing point­ed to the ma­te­r­i­al de­posit­ed by the gy­nae­col­o­gist being Rober­to Burán’s sperm. Things had come full cir­cle. Adol­fo and Fed­eri­co left there burst­ing with en­thu­si­asm, they felt like shout­ing out with joy. Mean­while, Álvez was gripped by anx­i­ety. Sud­den­ly, his sin­is­ter plan had col­lapsed. He was not a man of law, but he didn’t need to be in order to un­der­stand that the ev­i­dence against him was over­whelm­ing. With his head bowed, he hid his fail­ure and shame.

San­ti­ni said to Es­te­ban Álvez, “Doc­tor, you’re under ar­rest; you must make a state­ment in the case against you for fraud and you will be in­com­mu­ni­ca­do. Of­fi­cer, ac­com­pa­ny the doc­tor to the po­lice sta­tion, tell the su­per­in­ten­dent that he should be ab­solute­ly in­com­mu­ni­ca­do, that I per­son­al­ly will ver­i­fy that this order is obeyed. I’ll phone him later, and go to the po­lice sta­tion per­son­al­ly to take his state­ment. Doc­tor Guer­ri­no, please en­sure that po­lice of­fi­cers are sent quick­ly to the lab­o­ra­to­ry. I also re­quest that you order the ar­rest of Juana Ar­ti­gas; this must be done im­me­di­ate­ly. In­form me of the re­sults, please.”