The salesman knew the number before the bulletin

Previously: the inspector gave Celso Larrauri 21 days over the benzopyrene and comes back on Thursday the 28th. He has ten schools left.

On Friday the 15th Celso Larrauri was left with nine schools and made the last delivery of twelve years, both things in the same morning.

At a quarter to eight he was on the concrete slope of the Santa Bárbara, with the metal shutter half down and the eighty loaves in the crate. Amalia Resano, head cook at the school, counted them as she did every day.

—Eighty.

—Eighty.

She signed the delivery note against the shutter, tore off the pink copy and handed it to him through the gap, the same as every morning of twelve school years. Then she ran her finger along the box for the weekly total and wrote two letters beside it.

—What are you writing?

—"End". So that whoever comes after me knows where your column stops.

—They start on Monday.

—They start on Monday. —Amalia Resano left the empty crate on the step—. Celso, this crate has been yours since 2014 and I've nowhere to put it. Take it with you.

Celso loaded it into the van, on top of the others, and went down the slope in first gear so as not to burn the clutch.

The five schools down in the town took him from eight until ten to nine, because they are on two streets and he goes in through the kitchen at all five. At ten past nine he drove into the bakery yard and the laboratory van was already there, engine off and back door open.

Donato Lerga, courier for the laboratory in Logroño, comes on Fridays to collect the samples for the self-monitoring plan: one of water, one of flour and a tub of dough.

—Morning. Have you got them?

—My daughter has them, she's on her way down. Donato, a question.

—Go ahead, but quickly.

—When you take a sample away, what's written on the tub?

—The label. —Donato took one out of the box and showed it to him—. Company name, date, time, what it is. And if the sample is tied to a case file, the case file number.

—And does anybody else see that?

—Whoever opens the box at the laboratory sees it, and I see it, because I'm the one who signs for the collection.

—And before I hand it over? Before you get here, are you already carrying something of mine?

—I'm carrying the sheet. —Donato tapped his clipboard twice—. They print my route sheet in Logroño before I set off, with the day's stops and what I have to collect at each one. If a collection comes with a case file, the number is printed on my line, because that isn't something I write by hand. The laboratory sends it.

—Since when have they been printing it?

—Since January. —Donato shut the back door with his hip—. Before, the sheet came with the stops and I wrote the rest in the van, pen in my mouth and the box on my knees. Collections got lost, tubs got swapped, there was a right mess in October with two samples from two cheese dairies. Now they give me everything printed, with the numbers filled in, and I only sign. It's better for everyone.

—And you carry the sheet on you all day?

—I carry it in the clipboard. And I leave the clipboard wherever they let me leave it, Mr Larrauri, because I unload with both hands.

Izaskun Larrauri, twenty-nine, office manager at the bakery and Celso's daughter, came down with the three samples in a bag, signed for the collection, kept the copy and filed it in the delivery-note folder without looking at it.

At twenty to ten Celso drove up to the Erreniega, the highest school in the district, two hundred and ten children and the only road he climbs with snow chains three days a year. He did not ring ahead, because at the Erreniega you have never needed to ring ahead.

Milagros Beunza, cook at the school for eleven years, was waiting for him at the kitchen door with her overall on and would not let him unload.

—Leave today's and don't come back up.

—Milagros.

—Don't come back up, Celso. And it isn't me saying it: the school board said it yesterday at five in the afternoon.

—The school board met about the bread?

—It met about three other things and the bread came in sideways, because a mother brought a piece of paper.

—What paper.

—A paper with a case file number and a sentence underneath. The sentence said that the bakery that supplies us has an open public health case file for a contaminant in the bread. In those words. And she read it out loud in front of fourteen people and the head teacher.

—The case file says I'm to keep supplying all eleven until the twenty-eighth. I signed it myself on Thursday the seventh.

—You've told me that just now. There, yesterday, at five in the afternoon, there was nobody there to say it.

Milagros Beunza put her hands in her apron pockets and took out a sheet folded in four.

—And before you ask: the mother left it on the table and I kept it.

Celso unfolded it. It was the same letter he had been carrying in his apron since Tuesday: the same blue letterhead with the ear of wheat, the same second paragraph, the same case file number written out in full. The only difference was at the top.

—This one is dated the eleventh.

—That's the one the mother brought.

—Mine is the eighth. A cook at the San Jorge gave it to me.

—Well, they're handing them out in order, then.

Celso put them both away, one in each pocket.

—Milagros, one last thing. The May rolls.

—I know.

—It's four hundred of them and they're ordered in April.

—I know, I've ordered them eleven years. —Milagros picked up the day's crate and carried it into the kitchen herself—. Yesterday the head teacher asked me to write a note to the families explaining the thing about the bread. I haven't written it and I'm not going to, because I don't know what that paper says and I'm not signing what I don't know. But if this isn't closed by May, somebody else writes the note.

—By May it's closed.

—Tell me that on the twenty-ninth.

At twenty past eleven, in the office, Izaskun had the speaker on and the Logroño laboratory on the other end.

—…so what you're telling me is that you print the case file number on the courier's sheet.

—On the collection order. —The voice belonged to Edurne Ilundain, quality manager at the laboratory—. It's what lets us tie the result to the proceeding, Mrs Larrauri.

—And who can see that order?

—The courier, who carries it on him, and us, who get it back. And you, who sign your line.

—Does the courier make other stops?

—Of course he makes other stops. You don't build a route for one client.

—And at those stops, does the sheet sit on a counter?

There was a short gap at the other end, the kind that doesn't get filled.

—That I can't answer for you.

Izaskun hung up and stood looking at the chalk wall, where her father writes down the temperatures of every batch of the week, with the 3.1 from the Tuesday ten days ago and, under the line, a nine.

—Aita.

—Tell me.

—There's something that doesn't add up and it isn't the thing we were looking for.

—Go on.

—Zacarías Urdiain, the Duero salesman, showed Benigna the case file number on Friday the eighth. We knew that already. But the number is in three places: here, at public health and at the laboratory.

—You said that on Tuesday.

—I said it on Tuesday and I was missing half of it. —Izaskun turned the screen round, though she knew her father was not going to read it—. The case file number is on the report you signed on Thursday the seventh. The three point one is not on that report: the three point one is in the laboratory's analysis, which is a different piece of paper and arrived by email on Tuesday the fifth.

—And what does that give us?

—It gives us a way of knowing what each of them has seen. Whoever goes around quoting the number may have seen the report. Whoever also says three point one has not.

Celso sat down on the office chair, which is where he never sits.

—Nobody has said three point one.

—Not yet.

Zacarías Urdiain turned up at the bakery at quarter past one, without ringing first, with a folder and a mid-season coat, and asked Celso for five minutes.

—Four —said Celso.

—Four will do. —Zacarías Urdiain, thirty-eight, salesman for Panificadora Duero, put the closed folder down on the marble, beside the two loaves standing on edge that had been there since the week before—. I've come to offer you something nobody else has offered you.

—Go on.

—We take the schools. The nine, the eleven, whatever's left on the twenty-eighth. And you carry on baking here.

—Baking for whom.

—For us. Wood-oven line, village bread, its own label. You put four hundred loaves a day our way and we swallow the canteens, the invoices and the inspections.

—And the oven?

—The oven is yours. Nobody is going to touch your oven.

Celso wiped his hands on his apron, though they were dry.

—And why are you offering me this today and not next month?

—Because next month you've nothing to sell. —Zacarías said it without raising his voice and without smiling—. Look, Mr Larrauri, I haven't done anything that anybody else wouldn't do. I've rung eleven kitchens. Seven picked up. Two said yes and one is about to. That's my job.

—And you showed all eleven a piece of paper with my case file number on it.

—I haven't shown anything that isn't going to be public.

—The bulletin comes out on Thursday the twenty-first. The inspector told me so with the report on this marble. Today is Friday the fifteenth.

—Then it'll come out on Thursday.

—Your letter to Benigna is dated the eighth. And the Erreniega one, the eleventh.

Zacarías opened the folder at last, not to take anything out, but to close it again.

—Mr Larrauri, a case file with three point one of benzopyrene in the crust, in bread for school canteens, isn't a secret you can keep for three weeks. Everyone was going to know.

And there he stopped, one second later than suited him.

Celso did not move. Eulogio Satrústegui, the dough man, who had spent since nine cleaning the trough with his back to the two of them, put the scraper down on the marble, and the scraper made the noise a scraper makes.

—Three point one —said Celso.

—That's what it says.

—Where does it say it.

—In the case file.

—The case file gives the number, the date and what they're making me do. The three point one is in the Logroño laboratory's analysis, which is a different piece of paper and doesn't appear in any bulletin. —Celso took Zacarías's coat off the chair back and handed it to him—. Your four minutes.

Zacarías Urdiain put his coat on slowly, thanked him and left his card on the marble, face up: blue letterhead with the ear of wheat.

—Think about it anyway —he said at the door—. On Monday I have to ring the Sagrado Corazón.

When the car left the yard, Eulogio spoke without turning round.

—The wood came in yesterday.

—I know.

—Paulino put his fingers in the ash from your chamber, smelled them twice and said beech doesn't leave that. And then he asked you what wood you burn, and you said beech.

—I said beech.

—Celso, I signed the wood delivery note from February two years ago, because you were at the doctor's. I can't read an analysis, but I know what I signed.

Celso stood there with Zacarías's card in his hand.

—And what did you sign?

—What the paper said. And the paper didn't say beech.

Izaskun came down with the delivery-note folder at ten to two and opened it on the marble, between the two loaves and the card.

—Aita, here's the flour, the yeast, the salt, the ice, the chamber maintenance and the diesel. The wood isn't here.

—I handle the wood.

—Since when do you handle the wood.

—Since I handle it.

—That isn't a date.

—No, it isn't a date.

Izaskun closed the folder without arguing, which is what she does when she decides she is going to come back to something, and took that morning's collection copy over to the table by the window, where the light is, to file it.

She read it because she was filing it, not because she was looking for it.

—Aita. Come up.

Celso came up with his apron on. Izaskun had Donato Lerga's sheet in front of her, a three-copy form with the route printed along the bottom in eight-point type.

—Read our line.

Celso does not read that size without his glasses, and his glasses were downstairs, so she read it herself, slowly and in full.

—Obrador Larrauri. Collection: self-monitoring, three tubs. Case file, your number. And behind it, on the same line, the antecedent: crust, three point one.

—That's printed.

—That's been printed since January, aita, on every sheet, and Donato doesn't write it. —Izaskun put her finger on the line below and left it there—. Now read the route. Route 4, Friday. Leaves Logroño at half past six. First stop, Panificadora Duero, Berriozar industrial estate, at ten to eight. Second, Lácteos Garro. Third, us, at ten past nine.

Celso leaned on the table with both hands.

—The first Friday our sample travelled with the case file on it was Friday the eighth, the day after you signed the report —said Izaskun—. That morning Donato left Logroño at half past six with our number and our three point one already printed on his sheet, and at ten to eight he was unloading in the Duero yard, clipboard in hand and an hour and twenty ahead of us.