Amaia Discovers Tabese Is Markina's Father

Amaia’s discoveries connect two apparently separate investigative problems: the geographic reach of Nurse Hidalgo’s work and the concealed identity of the doctor known as Tabese. The first finding expands the search for suspicious infant deaths beyond the Baztán River; the second establishes that Tabese was Xabier Markina, the father of Amaia’s Partner Markina, and sends investigators toward his burial place in Hondarribia.

Following Nurse Hidalgo’s trail

After leaving the station, Amaia stops at a computer shop on the outskirts of Pamplona to buy two USB drives, then returns to the house on Mercaderes Street to review Jonan Etxaide’s files on Nurse Hidalgo. Alongside a search warrant and basic personal information, the files contain her employment history. Amaia already knows that, after her brother’s death, Hidalgo had the opportunity to work at other hospitals. The records show that before retirement she worked at the Hospital Comarcal de Irún and, earlier, at two private clinics: Virgen de la Manzana in Hondarribia and Río Bidasoa in Irún. In each workplace, she was a midwife.

The list matters because of its recurring reference to the Bidasoa. Amaia recognizes why Jonan Etxaide had singled out those workplaces: the Baztán River does not end where the investigation’s existing map seems to stop. It is called the Baztán River only as far as Oronoz-Mugaire; farther along, from Doneztebe, it takes the name Bidasoa as it crosses into Guipúzcoa and eventually reaches the Cantabrian Sea. The change in name marks a change of province, not a different river. Amaia’s inference is that if Hidalgo recruited parents in connection with the practices under investigation, her work could have carried that activity beyond Navarra and into places where she had been employed.

Broadening the investigation

Amaia telephones Fermín Montes and asks him to have Zabalza extend the search. The inquiry should no longer be limited to girls in Navarra whose deaths had been classified as cot deaths; it should include comparable cases in Guipúzcoa, with particular attention to children who lived near the Bidasoa. The move follows a specific chain of reasoning: Hidalgo’s employment records locate her on both sides of the river’s changing name, and her work as a midwife gives those locations relevance to the investigation of infant deaths.

The discovery therefore changes the investigation’s boundaries rather than supplying a completed explanation. It does not establish that every death near the river is connected, or prove Hidalgo’s role in any individual case. Instead, it identifies a reason to search a wider area and a more precise geographic pattern. Jonan Etxaide’s attention to the employment records becomes legible to Amaia only when she reads the hospital names together with the river’s course.

Identifying Doctor Tabese

A separate breakthrough comes when a colleague reports that the Madrid medical association has confirmed the existence of a Clínica Tabese in Las Rozas. The clinic operated through the 1970s and 1980s and into the middle of the 1990s. Its proprietor, publicly known as Doctor Tabese, had been popular with Madrid society for decades, enjoying considerable prestige for treatments imported from the United States. He had retired from public life and from the practice of psychology, and had settled in Hondarribia, where he was buried after his death. The exact date of his death remains unknown.

The explanation for the investigators’ earlier failure to find him is an assumed name: Tabese had adopted the name of his clinic for his medical practice. His actual name was Xabier Markina. When the colleague places an enlarged black-and-white photograph before Amaia, she recognizes the surname and learns the crucial family connection: Xabier Markina was the father of Amaia’s Partner Markina. The photograph resembles the younger man in an older form, giving a visible confirmation to the otherwise startling identification.

From recognition to a new lead

The revelation contradicts nothing Amaia had previously been told about her partner’s family, but it gives that account new investigative significance. Amaia remembers being told that his father worked in medicine and died not long after his mother. His mother had been admitted to a psychiatric institution after repeated suicide attempts and remained there until her death; his father, Amaia had understood, was consumed by grief. The newly established identity connects that remembered family history to the retired psychologist and clinic proprietor called Tabese.

Amaia acts on the identification immediately. She calls Iriarte and asks whether investigators have reached Hondarribia. She then requests a discreet search of the municipal records for Xabier Tabese’s burial, allowing that the grave may instead be registered under his real name, Xabier Markina. She specifies the death certificate and cemetery burial record as well as the location of the grave. The discovery thus turns an alias into a traceable person and directs the inquiry toward a particular public record and burial site. Its force lies in the conjunction of professional history, concealed naming, family identity, and place of burial: a name that had obscured the doctor now provides the route to finding him.