Aitana pays €80 a month for her jailed brother's van

Previously: Ruth works at the municipal vehicle pound in Alicante. Nobody collects the van in bay 214, and someone pays €80 every month on the 3rd.

At five past twelve, coming back from the bank, Ruth saw a girl hanging on to the pound's chain-link fence, phone held up, photographing row fourteen.

—There's nothing to see in there —said Ruth.

—There is —said the girl—. Second van from the right. White. With the fish sticker.

Her name was Aitana Pomares, she was twenty and she stacked shelves at a supermarket in Novelda. On the 3rd of every month she worked the morning shift, caught the quarter past ten bus, paid eighty euros in cash at the branch across the street and photographed the Berlingo through the fence before going home. Thirty-eight times, counting that morning.

—The one in bay 214 —said Ruth.

—My brother's.

Ruth was not supposed to discuss a file with anyone but the registered keeper. She discussed it.

—The towing company changes on 14 October. The council has ordered the yard emptied. There are sixty-one vehicles on the list and yours is number forty-one. The eighty euros stop working that day: every one of those files gets closed at once.

Aitana sat down on the kerb with a folder on her knees and spent a while doing sums under her breath. Thirty-eight times eighty. Three thousand and forty euros. Three years of extra Saturdays.

—My lawyer told me that as long as there was movement they couldn't touch it —she said—. He told me that in 2023. He didn't tell me there was a date.

—The date is 14 October.

—How many days is that?

—Forty-one.

Óscar Pomares was twenty-nine and was serving three years and eight months in Fontcalent prison. On the night of 9 February 2023, at kilometre six of the CV-84, a white Berlingo hit Encarna Sirera, sixty-one, a hotel cleaner cycling home after the afternoon shift. The van did not stop. Three days later Óscar walked into the police station with a lawyer and said he had been driving.

—He confessed —said Ruth.

—He confessed.

—Then what do you expect to find in there?

The van was registered to Óscar. He had bought it second-hand in 2022 from the company he delivered for, because to get the delivery work you had to bring your own vehicle; the refrigeration unit was fitted by the company and stayed the company's. After the sentence the van was seized against the civil damages: two hundred and fourteen thousand euros for Encarna Sirera's family. Even if Aitana paid the four thousand two hundred and something, she could not take it out, or sell it, or scrap it. There was exactly one thing she could do with it: keep it out of the crusher.

—I don't want the van —she said—. I want somebody to open it in front of a judge.

She opened the folder. Inside were thirty-eight photographs printed on plain paper, one per visit, all from the same angle, clipped together in date order. In the most recent ones, taken with a better phone, you could see the inside through the passenger window: the seat back, a folded orange hi-vis vest and, bolted behind the seat, a grey box the size of a book with a narrow slot along the bottom.

—The company put that in when they fitted the cold unit —said Aitana—. It's the recorder. It logs the temperature, it logs every time the rear door is opened and it logs every start-up. And it doesn't log a name: it logs a key number.

—And what does that prove?

—There are two keys —said Aitana—. My brother is number one.

Ruth looked at the photograph for a long moment. Then she looked at row fourteen, thirty metres away, where the Berlingo sat in exactly the same position as in all thirty-eight photographs.

—So which key logged in that night?

—That's what's inside —said Aitana—. That's why I pay.

Aitana caught the five past one bus with the folder under her arm. Ruth went back to the counter, opened file 214/2023 and wrote underneath Chelo's round handwriting: family member located, do not write off without notice. Then she looked for bay 214 on Bruno's list to check something she already knew. It was on line forty-one. The same number as the days left.