Zabalza

Zabalza is a subinspector in the Elizondo police station whose role in the investigation is defined by patient, practical police work and a personal understanding of domestic violence. He helps Amaia Salazar trace a network of hospital connections, recognizes the danger facing Beñat Zaldúa, and acts to get the boy to safety. His own account of being beaten by his father gives that intervention a history beyond procedure.

Identity and Work

At the Elizondo station, Zabalza works alongside Iriarte and Fermín Montes. When Amaia arrives on the second floor, she passes a group of male officers gathered by the coffee machine, with Zabalza and Iriarte enjoying Montes’s animated story. The conversation stops as she greets them. Later, Zabalza addresses her as chief, but his voice drops almost to a whisper. The scenes establish their working hierarchy while showing him in both informal camaraderie and formal deference.

His investigative contribution is often methodical rather than dramatic. When Amaia orders a search for everyone who treated or had contact with Rosario Iturzaeta Belarrain during her admissions or emergency visits, she assigns Zabalza records from the Virgen del Camino hospital, the Comarcal hospital in Irún, Santa María de las Nieves, and the University Hospital. He warns that the request covers a great deal of information. The difficulty lies not only in the number of records but in identifying people whose work brought them into several institutions.

Recognizing Beñat’s Abuse

Zabalza encounters Beñat at the station with his father. The boy is strikingly pale, with dark hair falling over his eyes and a bruise around one cheekbone. His father’s greeting is muddled by the smell of alcohol, and Zabalza notices that Beñat trembles in pain when lightly touched on the shoulder. Those visible injuries prompt an immediate response: Zabalza goes to Iriarte’s office and reports both the father’s condition and the boy’s apparent injuries, stressing that Beñat nearly collapses when his shoulder is touched.

Later, while driving Beñat and his father to a farmhouse outside Arizkun, Zabalza observes the tension between them. The father gets out and walks toward the house; Beñat stays in the car, looking toward it and unable to decide whether to follow. Zabalza stops the engine, switches on the interior lights, and turns to face him. He tells Beñat that he too had problems with his father at the same age, then explains that his father used to beat him severely. This disclosure is brief and specific: rather than offering a general reassurance, Zabalza meets the boy’s silence with a painful precedent from his own life.

Tracing the Hospital Connections

The search Zabalza undertakes becomes a laborious comparison of staff lists. He identifies a cleaning company that held contracts at all three hospitals under review and begins cross-checking its employees. He also finds orderlies who worked at the different centers, doctors who visited more than one, and nursing staff who had trained in multiple institutions. Temporary appointments and substitutions enlarge the pool, so he tells Amaia that the work will take time. His findings turn a broad search for Rosario’s contacts into a concrete problem of overlapping employment and access.

When Amaia approaches his desk, Zabalza is partly hidden behind his computer screen. He switches off the monitor in a quick movement before speaking with her. The narrative does not explain the gesture, and it should not be treated as proof of what he was viewing. His subsequent conduct is direct: he takes down Rosario’s full name and begins the hospital inquiry. Later, while Amaia watches heavy rain from a station window, she sees him go outside to confront the driver of a car that has stopped at the entrance. Zabalza opens the driver’s door, argues with the person for about a minute, then shuts the door forcefully and returns inside. The driver leaves shortly afterward; the episode’s cause remains unstated.

Protection and Investigative Judgment

When Amaia learns from Montes that Antonio Garrido has said he should kill his father, she immediately calls Zabalza and orders him to take a patrol to Beñat’s home and remove the boy before he might act on that threat. Zabalza replies with thanks. By the next report, he has taken Beñat out of the house with social services and spoken to a cousin in Pamplona who appears willing to care for him. The intervention answers the immediate danger with a practical arrangement beyond the station: Beñat is removed from the household and a relative may take responsibility for him.

Zabalza’s investigative work continues alongside that protective action. He completes the hospital-list comparisons and sends Amaia the names that recur across the records, although he has found several matches rather than a single obvious connection. When the team considers Garrido’s insistence on the passage of time and the possibility that his promised later statement is a delaying tactic, Zabalza proposes that the timing must be connected to Amaia. She considers the theory and allows that it may be right. His contribution is tentative, not presented as a solved conclusion, but it helps redirect attention from Garrido’s interview toward the possibility of an action elsewhere.

Connection to the Investigation’s Revelations

The recurring names in Zabalza’s lists have consequences beyond the hospital inquiry. Among them is Doctor Berasategui, whose name appears at least twice. Montes recognizes him as the therapist who treated him during his leave and led his anger-control therapy. The discovery links the suspect’s name to a member of the investigating team through a professional relationship that had not been apparent in the search’s early stages. Zabalza does not make that connection himself in the scene, but his cross-checking supplies the evidence that brings it to light.

Across these episodes, his work joins acts that might otherwise seem separate: recognizing the signs of Beñat’s abuse, using his own history to reach the boy, carrying out an extensive records search, and supplying leads that shape the team’s understanding of the case. The book does not give Zabalza a final resolution of his own. Instead, it shows his importance through concrete interventions and information: the threatened boy is removed from the house, and names buried in institutional lists become relevant to the investigation.