The second inspection walks in at ten past seven

Previously: Celso Larrauri told his daughter he swapped beech for pallet offcuts in February 2024. The inspector comes back today.

The forty loaves of seven oh two were not for any of the six schools Celso Larrauri had left. It was Thursday the twenty-eighth and nobody was going to buy them: he had mixed them himself before dawn, separately, so that the inspector would have bread to look at without touching the bread for the canteens. Forty, which is exactly what he has been setting aside and throwing into the skip out the back every day since Tuesday the fifth. Fourteen working days at the bakehouse, forty loaves a day, five hundred and sixty loaves in the bin. Izaskun had it counted in the column of her notebook.

"Two hundred and forty-one," said Paulino Garisoain, retired oven man, eighty-one years old, who had the pyrometer rod pushed into the chamber and the dial in his hand. "And rising evenly. Load."

Celso Larrauri, master baker and owner of the bakehouse, pushed in the peel and spread them over the whole hearth, from the mouth to the back, a hand and a half apart.

The bread for the six schools was downstairs, on the cloths, waiting its turn: four hundred and sixty-four loaves and one thousand and fourteen rolls. Today it was not going out at a quarter past seven but before eleven, because Izaskun Larrauri, the bakehouse administrator, had rung on Wednesday the three people who decide in those six centres and all three had said yes. The first was Tránsito Chamorro, head cook of the Virgen del Puy group, which is four of the six.

"One day," she had said. "One, and because I'm the one asking. My kitchens serve at one o'clock and I can wait a morning. What I can't have is you telling me tomorrow that the oven was cold when she walked in."

Begoña Carrascosa, public health inspector for the area, forty-four years old, came in through the yard door at ten past seven with the oven lit and forty loaves inside. The first thing she did was look at the clock on the wall and then at the mouth.

"Good morning. What time did you load?"

"Two minutes past seven."

"Then I'm arriving at minute eight." She set her case down on the brick bench. "May I have the chair?"

It was the same chair as twenty-one days ago, and she put it in the same place, two metres from the mouth.

At eleven minutes she looked up. Celso did not move from the marble.

"You're not turning them?"

"There's no need now."

"Say it to me in the words you used the other time."

"The other time I told you I turned the trays twelve minutes into every batch, four batches, forty-eight minutes a day, so that the bread would come out even. Today I haven't turned anything and it is going to come out even. That is what I believe. We'll know in half an hour."

Begoña wrote it in the small notebook. Then she opened the folder and took out two stapled sheets.

"Before it comes out, I'll read you something. Do you remember what I scraped off the base of that loaf?"

"The ash."

"The ash. I said it was going to a different laboratory, to look at what was burning, and that it took as long as the crust. It reached me yesterday afternoon." She put the sheet on the marble, beside the two loaves standing on edge from Tuesday the fifth and Paulino's brick, which were still there. "Resins, glues and traces of varnish. And particles of galvanised iron, which is what pallet staples give off when they burn. It isn't beech, Mr Larrauri. It hasn't been for two years."

Eulogio Satrústegui, dough-maker, fifty-two years old, thirty-three of them in this house, stopped scraping the trough.

"I've had it in front of me since yesterday," she went on. "So now I'll ask you the only question I have left: do you tell me, or do I read it to you?"

Celso wiped his hands on his apron, although they were dry, and went to the delivery-note cabinet. He took out the elastic-band folder and put two invoices on the marble, one beside the other, exactly as Paulino had put them in front of him on Monday the eighteenth and as he had put them in front of his daughter on Monday the twenty-fifth.

"This one is from January two years ago. Beech. One hundred and fifty-eight euros a tonne. This is the next one, the third of February: twenty thousand kilos of pallet offcuts for burning, thirty-eight euros a tonne. Twenty tonnes a year. Two thousand four hundred euros of difference."

"Who decided it?"

"I did. I made the call to Noáin myself at eleven in the morning, I negotiated the price myself and I took the decision on my own. At five in the afternoon the first lorry came into this yard."

"And did you sign the delivery note?"

"He signed it." Celso did not point at Eulogio; he said it looking at the inspector. "I was at the doctor's and I told him on the phone to sign whatever the man from Noáin brought. I didn't tell him what he was bringing. The rest I signed myself, every one."

Eulogio took three steps and stood at the marble.

"Madam, my signature is on that paper and I have two daughters."

"And I have the whole folder and I can read a signature." Begoña wrote that down too. "You signed for a delivery. The one who chooses what goes into the firebox is the owner."

"There's another thing," said Celso. "Burning that in a food oven isn't just stupid. It's waste wood and it's forbidden before anybody looks at the crust. Paulino told me so with the invoice in his hand and he was right. I'm telling you before you tell me."

Begoña took as long to answer as someone takes deciding how much of what she knows fits into a report.

"That isn't mine. I'm here about the benzopyrene in a crust. Waste wood is seen by another service, and I'm going to tell you exactly what will happen so you don't spend the month imagining it: I pass it on this morning, you will get a formal request to prove that the fuel changed and on what date, and you prove it with the delivery note for the first beech load. That is all they will ask you for, and with that it ends."

"I understand."

"And what is going into that firebox now?"

"Beech. I ordered it on Tuesday the nineteenth and it came in on the Thursday. No pallet goes in there again."

Paulino got up from the stool, took the brick from the marble and carried it over to her with both hands, because it weighs four and a half kilos.

"This is the other thing we owed you. You wanted to know where the ash was coming from. It was coming from two places, not one, and the first is mine."

He showed her the upper face: Paulino Garisoain, May 1974, scratched with a twenty-penny nail. Then he turned it over and showed her the long face, the one that sat against the brick next to it.

"Read."

"'Mouth closed with building mortar. Temporary. Until there is money.'"

"I wrote that at thirty years old and I signed it so that whoever opened this would read it. We opened it on Saturday the twenty-third and he read it." Paulino pointed at Eulogio with his chin. "Building mortar does not take seven hundred degrees. It went to sand from the first summer. The joint at the mouth never opened, madam: it was never closed. And while the chimney drew with beech, air went in through there towards the flues and nothing came out. When the smoke came out cold, it started coming out through the only hole that floor had."

Izaskun came down with two folders and opened them on the marble without being asked.

"You have it all written here, and in the same order. The Refractarios Ordoiz estimate, the works completion certificate signed by Gaizka Ordoiz on Wednesday the twenty-seventh, the delivery note for the twenty-two firebricks, the camera report for the two lengths of flue, the beech delivery note of the twenty-first and the two invoices you have just seen. What isn't in any folder my father has just said out loud and you heard him."

"Twenty-two bricks? The estimate you're showing me talks about row one."

"Six from the row and sixteen from the bed under it. Underneath there was a course that had gone to pieces and nobody knew. It cost no more money and not a day more of work, and it's in the certificate with the date."

The batch came out at seven forty-four, forty-two minutes after going in.

"Don't you choose," said Begoña. "One from the mouth side and one from the back, and you take them out in that order."

Celso pushed in the peel, drew out the first and stood it on edge on the marble. He went in again to the back and drew out the second. He put them side by side, which is exactly what he had done on his own at twenty to six in the morning on Tuesday the fifth, when he hadn't told anybody yet.

The two were the same colour.

Begoña got up from the chair, took the one from the mouth side, turned it over and ran her finger along the base. Then she took the other and did the same. She got out the spatula and the zip bag, scraped both bases just as she had on the seventh and closed the almost empty bags.

"I'm sending these too. Not because I can see anything: because on the seventh I could, and I want both sets."

Then she cut crust from both and from a third she chose herself from the back, and labelled the jars with the date, the time and the side.

"This is the second sampling the report calls for. Three weeks. It reaches me on the eighteenth of April."

"The eighteenth of April," Celso repeated.

"And until the eighteenth of April you go on baking, but not because of the paper of the seventh, which runs out today. Because of the one I'm about to write you." Begoña put the folder on the marble and took out the form. "And you load in the meantime; I haven't come to stop your oven."

It was thirteen minutes past eight. Celso pushed in the peel and loaded the first batch for the six schools: two hundred and thirty-two loaves, the whole load, turning nothing and setting nothing aside. Forty-two minutes.

Begoña wrote standing up, leaning on the marble, and read it out whole, as she had on the seventh.

That the company has submitted a technical explanation of the origin of the contaminant and has supported it with documentation: a joint in the hearth floor closed with non-refractory mortar in 1974 and a treated-wood fuel introduced in February 2024. That the corrective measure has been carried out and verified during the visit itself. That the asymmetric browning and the ash deposit on the base are not observed in today's batch. That the second crust sample is taken. That the owner has declared the use of waste wood of his own accord and that the matter is passed to the competent service. That no suspension is in order and that supply continues without restriction.

She turned the form round on the marble and Celso signed it beside the two loaves, which today were twins.

"And the paper?"

"This is the paper. I'll sign you two copies and put my number on it." Begoña signed it twice. "I can't sign you an analysis I don't have. I can sign you what I have seen this morning with the oven lit, which is what I came to see."

Izaskun photographed it at forty-six minutes past eight and sent it. The reply came in at eight fifty-two and had two lines: "Received. Mondays start on the first, as signed."

Begoña picked up her case. Before leaving she stopped in front of the chalk wall, beside the wood store, where the numbers for the week's batches are written in a column.

"On the seventh there was a three point one here under the temperatures."

"I wrote it."

"And that six at the bottom?"

"Those are the schools I have left," said Celso. "There were eleven."

Begoña looked at the column a little longer than she needed to.

"I can't fix that, Mr Larrauri, and I'll be honest with you: the paper I've just signed can't fix it either. All that paper does is stop another one falling."

Izaskun walked her out to the yard and handed her a folded sheet before she opened the car.

"It's the route sheet of the courier from the Logroño laboratory, the one from Friday the eighth. Look at our line and look at the first stop of the day."

Begoña read it right through, standing, with the door open.

"This isn't mine either. But I know whose it is." She folded it and put it away. "I'll keep a copy and I'll tell you who I gave it to."

The car left the yard at five to nine. Eulogio already had the thousand and fourteen rolls in the van — he makes them in the two-deck electric oven and has done since the electric oven existed — and the crates for the six schools numbered in marker pen. There was one batch left and time to spare before eleven.

Izaskun went up to the office and opened the notebook at the column she had started on Tuesday the fifth, the one for the schools that kept falling away. Under the fifth line, the Hilarión Eslava, she drew a rule with a ruler and beside the rule she wrote a date: the eighteenth of April.

Celso stayed in front of the mouth with his face hot, which is where he always stays.

He pushed in the peel, drew out the first batch for the six schools and left it to cool uncovered, which is how bread cools when there is no hurry.