Navarre Foral Police

Navarre Foral Police is the regional law-enforcement body represented by the investigators pursuing the novel’s linked deaths and suspected crimes. Its work is shown chiefly through homicide chief Amaia Salazar and her colleagues: they move between crime scenes, forensic reports, records, and maps, testing individual clues against wider patterns. The force’s reach is substantial within Navarra, but its inability to act independently across the boundary into Guipúzcoa becomes a practical obstacle to the inquiry.

Identity and Operational Remit

The narrative gives the force no detailed institutional chart; instead, it defines its role through the work of its homicide investigators. Amaia Salazar directs inquiries, receives forensic findings, assigns follow-up tasks, and presses for the documents and warrants needed to test her suspicions. Inspector Iriarte and other colleagues contribute records checks and regional case data, while police work is coordinated with specialists and other authorities when evidence or jurisdiction requires it.

That remit is visible when Inés Ballarena and her daughter find the flowers on the Esparza family grave disturbed and report their suspicions. The police respond to the possible desecration, and Inspector Iriarte calls Amaia to return to Elizondo. The episode places ordinary local reporting at the entrance to a much wider investigation: a family’s observation prompts examination of a grave and its contents as potential evidence.

Forensic and Documentary Investigation

The force’s inquiries depend on treating physical traces as questions to be resolved, not as immediate proof. In the death of Valentín Esparza’s daughter, the forensic report confirms asphyxiation. The pressure mark on the child’s forehead matches the nose of a teddy bear, and white fibers at her lips are identified as fibers from the toy. Saliva traces belong to the child and Esparza, but a third trace remains unexplained. Amaia notes that the grandmother had bathed the child before putting her to bed, complicating the suggestion that the unexplained saliva was simply left by a parent. Subsequent testing finds that the foul-smelling fluid resembles saliva but is not human; its unusually high bacterial content leaves its source unresolved, and the forensic specialist offers a Komodo dragon as a possibility rather than a settled identification.

The same cautious scrutiny applies to documentary claims. Investigators establish that Ainara Martínez Bayón’s birth certificate records a home birth at Argi Beltz, in Orabidea, and bears Doctor Hidalgo’s signature. They can find no corresponding death certificate or record of a death in England, no autopsy record supporting the reported stroke, and no entry in the family record showing her death. Amaia’s team also checks the practical implications of the family’s account, including the embassy’s expected notification and the travel permissions then required for a child. These absences do not by themselves settle what happened, but they make the official story increasingly difficult to sustain and give the investigation a concrete path forward.

Mapping a Wider Pattern

The inquiry expands from single deaths through the methodical comparison of cases. Jonan Etxaide’s files include addresses of previously investigated infant deaths and material concerning Amaia’s own sister. When Amaia plots the cases, she first considers whether a major road might explain their distribution, then revises the map: excluding the Ainhoa cases produces a line that follows the Baztán River. The pattern runs through Erratzu, Arraioz, Elbete, and Elizondo, and continues toward Oieregi. The map turns a collection of separate tragedies into a testable geographic hypothesis rather than a conclusion about who caused them.

The team broadens its comparison beyond the initial cases. Four deaths of girls beside the Bidasoa in Hondarribia are first identified; checks of baptism records reduce that group to two relevant cases, excluding a German child who died while her parents were on holiday and another child who had been baptized. A larger search of Navarra finds additional cases in settlements adjoining the river: one in Elizondo, one in Oronoz-Mugaire, one in Narbarte, and two in Doneztebe, alongside the two retained Hondarribia cases. The map is then extended along the river from its source toward its mouth, adding older cases including the girl from Argi Beltz, Amaia’s sister, a child in Lesaka, and others in Elbete and Erratzu.

Investigators compare geography with family circumstances rather than treating proximity as proof. The cases under review involve girls; several families were in poor financial circumstances when a child died and later experienced improved fortunes. In some cases, including those of Yolanda Berrueta and Esparza, a parent had said that matters would improve after the child’s death. The team uses these recurring details to develop a behavioral profile, while recognizing that they still need evidence capable of confirming their suspicions.

Jurisdiction, Procedure, and Institutional Tension

The river pattern crosses administrative boundaries, exposing a limit on the force’s independent authority. Investigators find relevant deaths in Guipúzcoa, but Amaia’s team does not have jurisdiction there; further action would require a request to a judge in Irún. Amaia directs colleagues to assemble the family information before deciding whether to seek that step. Baptism records also require laborious parish-by-parish inquiries, since the information is held by parish priests and can be accessed only during their office hours. The expanding investigation is therefore constrained not just by missing evidence but by the time and legal process needed to obtain it.

Procedure also creates tension within the force’s own work. Amaia says she has already sent information to Internal Affairs and Inspector Clemos, yet argues that photographs remain relevant to the homicide case and that compliance with rules should not halt the investigation. The photographs of the Ainhoa tomb reveal three coffins; although the children of Yolanda Berrueta are confirmed inside, Jonan’s close examination of a smaller coffin identifies its supposed ashes container as a sugar packet. That discovery sharpens the suspicion that the apparent burial record conceals a substitution, even though investigators cannot obtain permission to reopen the tomb and verify the suspicion directly.

The force’s narrative significance lies in this repeated movement between what can be observed and what can legally be established. A mark, fiber, missing record, disturbed grave, or point on a map can redirect an inquiry, but each remains subject to alternative explanations, jurisdictional boundaries, and the need for corroboration. Navarre Foral Police is thus depicted not as an omniscient institution, but as a working investigative body trying to turn scattered clues into defensible knowledge without mistaking a compelling pattern for proof.