Fraudulent Fertilisation

“Friends... Thank you very much, that’s all I can say to you, I can’t think of any­thing else... Hav­ing your friend­ship has been, and is now, in­valu­able... I sug­gest a toast for my sup­posed son... That boy will have a lot to thank you for...”

Ac­cept­ing Rober­to’s offer, they all raised their glass­es and gave a happy, “Cheers!” to cel­e­brate the suc­cess of the search. Rober­to had con­vened those re­spon­si­ble for the tri­umph at his house; there were his three un­con­di­tion­al friends, Fer­nan­do Ri­den­ti, Adol­fo Bernard and Fed­eri­co Lizter and also his dear and ef­fi­cient lawyer, Rocío Bareilles.

Adol­fo com­ment­ed, “I can’t for­get Álvez, you should have seen him, he looked like a traf­fic light! He changed colour every so often, al­though red was the pre­dom­i­nant colour... He didn’t know what to do, his world came tum­bling down.”

“He de­serves that and a lot more be­sides,” said Rober­to. “What he did is un­for­giv­able. We mustn’t think it’s all over. I’d like some­one to tell me what we’re going to do now?”

“Wait a bit,” said Fed­eri­co, “that is, for the crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings. We have to check that the sam­ple de­posit­ed in the lab­o­ra­to­ry is your semen; if it is, I think the cir­cle will close once and for all. Álvez won’t be able to jus­ti­fy cus­tody of your sperm. I would rec­om­mend tak­ing max­i­mum pre­cau­tions, make sure the ma­te­r­i­al does not de­te­ri­o­rate or get lost. If you don’t ob­ject, to­mor­row morn­ing I’ll go to the court with a spe­cial­ist in ge­net­ics and ar­ti­fi­cial in­sem­i­na­tion. He knows how to con­serve the sperm prop­er­ly; he could even ad­vise the judge. Of course, af­ter­wards an of­fi­cial test will be done, but in the mean­time we can move on. Is that OK?”

“It can’t do us any harm,” said Adol­fo, “there’s no harm in re­peat­ing it. There’s no doubt that the de­posit is the dose of sperm ob­tained by Ali­cia...”

After men­tion­ing the girl’s name, Adol­fo re­gret­ted it, it wasn’t the right mo­ment, with Rocío there, but it was too late...

Rocío Bareilles was too clear-sight­ed not to no­tice, and she felt oblig­ed to speak:

“Well, you can’t deny the girl made up for her mis­take, let’s face it.”

She smiled at Rober­to and he re­spond­ed with an af­fec­tion­ate gaze.

“She de­serves our re­spect,” she went on say­ing, “mean­while, let me make it clear: I haven’t got any­thing against her... To be hon­est, we might have some­thing in com­mon,” she added, ca­ress­ing Rober­to’s right hand.

She smiled again, sur­prised at her own frank­ness. She felt like a new woman, more un­der­stand­ing, more human. In­ad­ver­tent­ly, she had grown af­fec­tion­ate to­wards Rober­to’s friends; it was grat­i­fy­ing to be hon­est be­fore them.

Fer­nan­do Ri­den­ti said, “The first thing we have to do is to hurry up the car­ry­ing out of the bi­o­log­i­cal test, the one Doc­tor Zim­brein is doing. To­mor­row we’ll have to phone him; he said he’d have the re­sult on that date; it’s fun­da­men­tal, the boy might not be Rober­to’s...”

“That would be a laugh,” said Burán, “it’s un­be­liev­able, but at this point I wouldn’t like it if they said he wasn’t my child. In a way, I’ve grown af­fec­tion­ate to­wards Agustín, he hasn’t got a mid­dle name, has he? Even if the fa­ther was some­one else, in a way he al­ready be­longs to me. Do you un­der­stand?”

“Of course, Rober­to,” said Rocío, “you’re an ex­em­plary dad. The im­por­tant thing now is that Zim­brein pass­es judge­ment be­fore the dead­line to ten­der a plea. I’d like to pre­sent Doc­tor Bis­son with a com­plete overview of the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion.”

“What’s your idea, Rocío?” asked Fed­eri­co.

“To tell the truth. That’s al­ways the best pol­i­cy, with­out ex­ag­ger­at­ing of course. We won’t say we gave Es­tela Cáceres in­cen­tives, that would be child­ish. We’re aware that we acted in good faith; the judge is not stu­pid, she’ll know which party is lying... I think we should stick to our plans. We don’t have to con­tra­dict our­selves at all, for­tu­nate­ly... Sup­pos­ing that Zim­brein’s test is pos­i­tive, we’ll ac­knowl­edge pa­ter­ni­ty and the rights it im­plies.”

“Will you try to take the child away from Juana Ar­ti­gas?” Fer­nan­do asked her.

“Of course, that has been our steady ob­ses­sion ever since Rober­to de­cid­ed he want­ed to as­sume the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of fa­ther­hood... I think it’s pos­si­ble; after our plea, we’re going to take ac­tion against Ar­ti­gas. I hope to de­prive her of cus­tody of the baby once and for all... This is not going to be de­cid­ed now, of course, it will have to go through a lengthy process. But mean­while, I’ll re­quest the sus­pen­sion of the ex­er­cis­ing of cus­tody of the moth­er; we’ve got solid el­e­ments that will weigh heav­i­ly in the re­quest.”

Adol­fo said, “That means Rober­to...”

“Ex­act­ly,” said Rocío, guess­ing his ques­tion, “Rober­to will have cus­tody of the lit­tle one. If nec­es­sary, we’ll offer to take him sev­er­al times a day so he can be breast fed.”

“It would be an em­phat­ic vic­to­ry,” com­ment­ed Fer­nan­do.

“It would,” said Rober­to, vis­i­bly emo­tion­al.

“But there’s some­thing we mustn’t for­get,” added Fed­eri­co, “the prob­lem doesn’t end with the gain­ing of cus­tody... We must demon­strate the guilt of Juana and Álvez. We must fol­low the law­suit through to its final con­se­quences.”

“Do you think they could save them­selves?” asked Fer­nan­do.

“I hope not,” an­swered Fed­eri­co, “there’s lots of ev­i­dence, every­thing co­in­cides with our ac­cu­sa­tion, even Ali­cia’s let­ter... Álvez won’t be able to pro­vide a co­her­ent ex­pla­na­tion for it. If it wasn’t con­nect­ed to the in­sem­i­na­tion, why did he keep it there? The des­ig­na­tion of him as guardian by Juana is also sig­nif­i­cant, al­though its legal ef­fi­cien­cy could be dis­put­ed.”

“Why?” ex­claimed Rober­to in sur­prise.

Fed­eri­co ex­plained:

“Be­cause if she dies, you’ll be left; in that case you’d have the right to your son. That Juana has des­ig­nat­ed Álvez as guardian wouldn’t have been much use to him. But it’s great for us: it demon­strates that the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the doc­tor and his pa­tient is very sug­ges­tive. There’s no need to say that her will would no longer be rel­e­vant. A mag­is­trate who didn’t no­tice the fraud would men­tal­ly my­opic. For­tu­nate­ly, Doc­tor San­ti­ni isn’t like that, and nei­ther is Doc­tor Bis­son.”

“Let’s not for­get there is more ev­i­dence,” said Adol­fo, “the desk diary is sub­stan­tial­ly im­por­tant. It gives de­tails of the mon­i­tor­ing of Juani­ta’s preg­nan­cy from an in­sem­i­na­tion. A cal­lig­ra­phy test would eas­i­ly iden­ti­fy Álvez’s hand­writ­ing, there’s no way out for him... He won’t be able to deny his au­thor­ship, it’s im­pos­si­ble to ex­plain, it’s too ob­vi­ous. Mean­while, there isn’t a sin­gle con­tra­dic­tion be­tween our state­ments and the el­e­ments found, every­thing demon­strates that our ver­sion is true.”

“Now then,” said Fer­nan­do, “there’s still the fun­da­men­tal piece of ev­i­dence, the ma­te­r­i­al de­posit­ed in the lab­o­ra­to­ry. If we demon­strate that it’s Rober­to’s semen, Álvez is done for.”

“To think that we were al­ready on our way out,” re­called Adol­fo, “San­ti­ni did well, he was great! I don’t know how the penny dropped; ev­i­dent­ly ex­pe­ri­ence helps. All be­cause the car­pet was brand new... What’s more, find­ing the apart­ment was a defin­ing mo­ment, Es­tela Cáceres saved our skin.”

“Def­i­nite­ly,” said Rober­to, “Álvez never imag­ined that we could find out he rent­ed a flat there. Es­tela saw the ex­pens­es in­voice by pure chance. Re­mark­able, isn’t it? An ap­par­ent­ly ir­rel­e­vant slip-up by Álvez was his un­do­ing.”

“And he was well pre­pared!” said Fer­nan­do. “He’d emp­tied his safe. No doubt he was sus­pi­cious; if he’d been a bit smarter he would have de­stroyed every­thing that re­ferred to the fraud.”

“Or he would have kept it in a safer place,” said Adol­fo. “A safe in a bank, a friend’s house, I don’t know, some­where un­touch­able.”

“There’s no such place,” stat­ed Fed­eri­co. “Lads, let’s be hon­est, we were in­cred­i­bly lucky... What hap­pened was al­most mirac­u­lous.”

“You’re for­get­ting some­thing,” added Rocío.

“What?” asked Fer­nan­do.

“The pro­fes­sion­al rul­ing,” she an­swered, “I’ve got some news for you, I’ve known Doc­tor Dick­in­son since I was a lit­tle girl, he’s a great friend of dad’s. His sig­na­ture is on the re­port that Álvez was hid­ing, do you re­mem­ber? Well, I went to the trou­ble of phon­ing him at home. He re­mem­bered the case per­fect­ly, be­cause it struck him as strange... Ap­prox­i­mate­ly a year and a half ago, an in­di­vid­ual pre­sent­ed him­self and iden­ti­fied him­self as Eu­lo­gio Farías, an en­gi­neer. He re­quest­ed a very thor­ough analy­sis of his sit­u­a­tion, iden­ti­cal to that which Rober­to went through, even in the tini­est de­tails. He want­ed to ex­haust the mat­ter, re­gard­less of the price. It’s clear that Álvez knew what he was doing; the legal part held no se­crets for him, that’s why he was so con­fi­dent. But that’s not the end of it, I asked him what Farías was like and he gave me a faith­ful de­scrip­tion of Álvez: there’s no doubt, they are one and the same per­son. Dick­in­son as­sured me that he would recog­nise him in any cir­cum­stance... An­oth­er of the part­ners and an em­ploy­ee can also at­test to the same thing. Álvez adopt­ed the name of Eu­lo­gio Farías in order to leave no trace. I sup­pose he will have saved Dick­in­son’s work to re­mind him­self of the legal as­pects of the mat­ter. As you can see, our friend is in the pil­lo­ry, what do you think of that?”

Rober­to stood up and gave her a noisy kiss on the cheek, which made her blush in spite of the in­ti­ma­cy she felt.

“That de­serves an­oth­er toast,” pro­posed Adol­fo, “to Rocío!”

In uni­son, they all re­peat­ed:

“To Rocío!”