Ten thousand euros landed the day before the confession

Previously: Ruth works at the vehicle pound in Alicante. Nobody collects the van in bay 214. Aitana pays €80 every 3rd of the month.

Thirty-seven days left until 14 October. At nine twenty in the morning, Aitana Pomares lays a ring binder open on Ruth Anglada's counter.

—This is the sheet I mentioned on Thursday —she says—. Ten thousand euros paid into my mother's account on the eleventh of February two thousand and twenty-three.

Ruth looks at the deposit slip. Cash paid into the current account of Amparo Torres Gomis, mother of Aitana and Óscar. Payer: Frigoríficos Cardús, S. L., registered address at the Cid industrial estate, Novelda. Reference field left blank. Branch stamp at nine hours and fourteen minutes. Amparo appears nowhere in file 214/2023.

—And what does this prove —says Ruth.

—It's what my brother was paid for confessing.

Ruth opens the public sentences database on screen. She types the driver's full name, the year and the word hit-and-run. The judgment comes up in four seconds: eighteen pages of pdf, signed on 4 September 2023.

—On the ninth of February, at half past ten at night, Encarna Sirera, sixty-one, a cleaner at the Sercotel hotel, was on her way home along the CV-84 —Ruth reads—. A white Berlingo with a refrigeration unit hit her from behind and did not stop. On the twelfth of February, around midday, her brother walked into the police station in Novelda together with the barrister don Ismael Amorós Puig, of the Alicante bar, and made a statement in which he admitted the offence.

Ismael Amorós has been in practice for twenty-three years. Ruth has seen his name before on the papers of other vehicles impounded after serious accidents. The judgment states, without comment, that the barrister appeared with the confessed driver and that there had been no prior arrest.

—Do you know what Amorós charges for defending manslaughter by recklessness? —says Aitana—. Six thousand euros a trial. My brother makes one thousand one hundred and eighty a month delivering fish. I know that because his bank is my bank. He has never had six thousand euros to hand.

Ruth goes back to the pdf and looks for the exact time Óscar walked into the station. It comes up in the second paragraph: twelve forty on the twelfth of February.

Then she looks at the deposit slip again. Eleventh of February, nine hours fourteen, payer Frigoríficos Cardús. Ten thousand euros for Amparo Torres.

—The deposit is from the eleventh —she says—. The confession is from the twelfth.

—At a quarter past nine in the morning of the eleventh —says Aitana, turning the sheet so Ruth can see the time stamped in the margin—. The confession, the next day at midday.

Chelo Marimón looks up from the far end of the counter.

—What are you two talking about?

—About Frigoríficos Cardús —says Aitana, keeping her eyes on Ruth—. They sell frozen fish to half the restaurants in the district. And my brother did not deliver for them.

Ruth opens a third register, the vehicle records office. She types the tax number of Frigoríficos Cardús. Four vans come up in the company's name, none of them with the Berlingo's cold unit, none registered in 2022, which is when Óscar bought bay 214.

—So that ten thousand was not theirs —she says.

—It was the price —says Aitana—. Somebody was driving and somebody paid my mother so that my brother would say it was him.

—And why would your brother sign that?

—Because my mother was in treatment. Because the rent was going up. Because they told him it would be two years and he came out with three years eight. Because he is twenty-nine and does not know how to sign a contract, but he does know how to sign a statement.

Aitana closes the folder with both hands and presses it flat against the glass.

—I need somebody to open the grey box in the van. Inside it says which key number started bay 214 at ten twenty-eight on the ninth of February. If it's number two, it wasn't my brother.

Chelo puts the highlighter down on the receipt book.

—There's a meeting at two in Bruno's office. They're going to talk about the decontamination schedule. The ninth of October.

Ruth writes in the margin of the file, below the three earlier notes, with the same blue ballpoint Chelo has used for nineteen years: consult before 9 October; Cardús deposit 11/02/2023 filed in the file folder.

She hands Aitana a yellow form.

—Fill this in and leave me a copy of the slip. As an interested party, you go on the file. And this piece of paper stops living only in your folder.

Aitana signs on the bottom line in small, neat writing. Before she leaves she slides the whole slip into the envelope Ruth gives her.

With Aitana gone, Ruth looks at the screen again. Eleven fourteen on the eleventh of February. Twelve forty on the twelfth. Twenty-seven hours.

—He was paid before he confessed —she says to herself, and closes the file.