Four ten: the grey box starts spitting out 2023

Previously: on Saturday, Benjamín Cardus showed Ruth the receipt that awarded him the van for 90 euros on the 9th and reminded her, without underlining it, that Bruno decides her contract.

At four ten on the morning of 9 October, Ruth Anglada shouldered open the side door of bay 12, holding with both hands a twenty-four-kilo truck jump-starter that Yeray Cardó had taken that afternoon from his cousin's workshop. Five days had passed since Cardus's visit, but the van no longer had a deadline: the crane was due in four hours and fifty minutes.

Yeray Cardó, mechanic at the Nou Alcoraya workshop on Avenida de Elche, thirty-one years old and two daughters, taped the door shut from the inside so it would not slam. He wore a red caving headlamp, the kind that does not kill night vision, and in the pocket of his overalls, three 57-mm thermal-paper rolls that Chelo Alcaide, bank teller and counter supervisor since 2007, had left in the drawer on Friday without a word.

«That's the one,» Ruth whispered, jerking her chin at the white van in bay 214. A Renault Trafic reefer, plate covered by a tarp, flat tyres, a year, three months and twenty-six days idle.

They popped the bonnet with a universal key. Yeray hooked the battery clamps straight onto the reefer wiring terminal, bypassing the engine. The grey box of the recorder was bolted behind the passenger seat, half hidden by a moving blanket; twelve volts were enough to wake it and the van did not need to start.

«Here we go.»

A dry click, the tick of a small motor, and a two-line LCD lit up in toasted amber. On the first line, six digits: 04:11:38. On the second, a simple message: LAST RECORDING 09/07/2023 09:40 KEY 01 SHUTDOWN.

«That was the day the tow truck brought it in,» said Yeray, without taking his eyes off the display. «Ninth of July, nine forty. The complaint came in at the same minute.»

«Matches the intake sheet,» said Ruth. «And key one is Óscar's.»

Yeray pressed the right-hand button three times. The box answered with a low buzz and the screen said: PRINT FULL HISTORY? YES PRESS OK. He fed the first roll into the head, closed the lid and pushed OK with his thumb.

The thermal printer started up with the beep of a 1998 fax and began to feed paper millimetre by millimetre, one line at a time, in reverse chronological order. Ruth crouched and pinched the strip between two fingers so it would not fold. First came events from 8 July, from 7, from 6: short door openings, two shutdowns and starts, key 01 on all of them. Óscar Pomares unloading the day's fish crate. Routine.

«Keep going,» said Yeray.

Entries came out for June, for May, for April. Always KEY 01, always SHUTDOWN at nine in the evening. Deliveries, rear-door openings of four seconds, three, five. The slowness of the paper thickened the silence in the bay; a closed tap dripping, the far-off engine of a motorbike on the avenue.

«How far back does the memory go?» Ruth asked in a low voice.

«Two years exactly. If nobody cuts the power, it loses nothing. Here, with the battery on, it gives you everything from day one.»

At four thirty-eight the 15th of February 2023 came out. At four forty-one, the 12th. At four forty-five, the 10th. Ruth laid the roll on her lap and kept reading backwards, towards the 9th of February 2023, the day Encarna Sirera was run over. Yeray stopped looking at the display and looked at the strip.

09/02/2023 21:14 KEY 01 START.

09/02/2023 21:28 REAR DOOR 3 s.

09/02/2023 21:52 KEY 01 SHUTDOWN.

«That's where Óscar's route ends,» said Yeray. «Normal delivery, drop-off, shutdown.»

09/02/2023 22:31 KEY 02 START.

Ruth stayed with the strip pinched between thumb and forefinger, not breathing. Key two was not Óscar. Key two had started the van at ten thirty-one on the 9th of February 2023, thirty-nine minutes after Óscar had switched off the engine in his garage, and that same key had switched off the recorder at two fourteen on the morning of the 10th, eleven minutes after the kilometre where Encarna Sirera crossed Calle Poeta Vila.

Yeray started to say something and could not. The LCD gave another beep: REMAINING MEMORY 41 CENTIMETRES.

At four fifty-five in the morning, while Ruth was working out how many centimetres the box had left and how long it would take to print an entire year, the eight fluorescent tubes on the ceiling of bay 12 came on at once with the flat buzz of the industrial starter. From the back, next to the counter door, the voice of Chelo Alcaide said, calmly and without a question:

«Ruth Anglada, leave the paper on the counter.»