Twenty minutes to get out a clock that isn't his

10:52. Encarna Zubieta, on-call locksmith, writes it up: commercial premises, euro cylinder, eleven minutes. Out on the pavement, wrapped in a removal blanket, there is a weight-driven wall clock lying face up.

10:31. 'That one isn't mine,' says Bautista Ferreiro, watchmaker, forty-one years at number 14. 'It's Mrs Sanz's. She brought it in in 2019, I fixed it, she never came back for it. If it stays inside, the bank keeps it.'

Encarna checks the time on her phone. She has six more jobs and the next one is at a quarter past eleven, right across town.

'Twenty minutes,' she says.

10:04. Bautista lifts the clock down with both hands and rests it on the counter. It weighs what its weights weigh: nearly nine kilos. Encarna holds the door with her foot so the draught doesn't close it.

09:12. Encarna parks the van outside number 14 forty minutes early and looks in through the glass. Inside there is a weight-driven clock stopped at twenty past four. She opens the boot and takes out the removal blanket.