Five days before the 14th, van 214 leaves the depot

Previously: Chelo gave them 25 minutes and two rolls of type-57 thermal paper. Ruth and Yeray were left alone in the depot.

At 5:03 the recorder printed the line 00:47 DOOR CLOSED and kept going. Five days remained before 14 October, the date when the new company would clear the warehouse; Ruth Anglada, twenty-two years old, three weeks into her contract, had more than enough time for everything except thinking.

Yeray Fabra, maintenance technician, handed her the second roll and reconnected the battery to the grey box screwed behind the passenger seat. The strip fell to the floor like a long curl, printed above in double letters:

01:12 IGNITION KEY 02 01:33 DOOR CLOSED 01:34 ENGINE OFF

"That's the last one," said Yeray. "Key 02 shut the engine off at one thirty-four. After that there's nothing until the tow drag."

Ruth let the strip keep falling until it stopped. Forty-one centimetres. She measured it with the counter's ruler. She cut it at the mark that separated the last line from the blank and folded the strip twice, carefully, without creasing it, and slid it into one of the small envelopes the office uses for keys. Into another envelope she put the copy of the intake sheet from 3 July 2023 that she had pulled from the paper archive on day 1: the one printed in the top left corner with the telephone number of the fish crates of Frigoríficos Cardus.

At five twenty-eight they closed the bonnet, switched off the battery and returned the side door to its position. Yeray picked up the battery from the floor. At five twenty-nine they wrote on the checklist on the bonnet, in the small handwriting of the blue pen from the counter: BAY 214 · INSPECTED · READY FOR TRANSPORT.

Chelo Marí walked in at five thirty on the dot with her keys hooked over her thumb. She looked at the warehouse, looked at the bonnet, looked at Ruth. She signed next to the annotation without asking. She poured what was left of the coffee from the thermos into the counter's mug and sat down to wait for the morning.

At nine the tow truck came in. The driver was Bautista Cerdà, the same man who had brought the van to the depot thirty-eight months earlier. He didn't recognise it. He hitched it, pulled it and dragged the 214 out of lane fourteen without looking inside. At nine fifteen, Benjamín Cardus signed the scrap lot at the counter with a heavy fountain pen. Ruth passed him by mistake the blue pen from the bonnet and he returned it with a polite smile. He signed three times, took his copy and walked out through the street door. The 214 was crushed at ten forty in Almoradí.

At ten fifty Ruth handed the two envelopes to Aitana Pomares at the door of the office, saying nothing beyond the address of the practice of the lawyer Pilar Vidal, calle Girona 4, second floor. Aitana did not open them there. She slid them into the transparent plastic folder she carried under her arm and signed the release form for a radio set in her mother's name, which was what she had officially come to collect.

At eleven twenty Bruno Segarra passed by the counter with a mug in his hand and told Ruth that the contract renewal wasn't going to happen: the company was reorganising staff because of the merger with the new concession, which came in on the 14th. He held out his hand and wished her luck. Ruth shook it. Bruno took his mug away. The conversation lasted a minute and eleven seconds.

Ruth stayed at the window. She knew, because the work had taught her, what the list of things about to happen looked like. On 3 November, day 3 of the month, no 80 euros would arrive at file 214/2023 and nobody would reject them: the file simply wouldn't exist anymore. The teller at the bank on the corner would tick the line off her list and move on to the next number. Twelve days later a witness summons would arrive at the office on calle Reyes, addressed to Ruth Anglada Marí, calle Rioja 22, Alicante, for 12 January from ten to eleven, courtroom two of court number three, and the envelope would be signed by Chelo with her short flourish and left on the desk that had been hers, propped against an empty glass.

Aitana boarded the one-oh-five bus with the folder under her arm. Ruth went back to the window, opened file 214/2023 and wrote below Che's round handwriting