Eight days left and the number turns up printed on some boxes

Previously: Ruth asked in writing to open unit 214. Bruno refused by e-mail and brought the auction forward to 9 October. Eight days to go.

The paper archive at the impound lot fills two metal cabinets at the end of the corridor, locked with a key that is handed over every morning with the shift. There are 8 days left before the 14th and Ruth has only one legal route: read the files one by one. She starts with 2023.

She looks up the entry sheet for unit 214. She opens it and it doesn’t say what she expects. The tow order of 3 July 2023 wasn’t placed by the local police or the Guardia Civil, as in 90 % of the files in the archive. It was placed by a private person, by phone, at 09:40 that morning, reporting a white van ‘badly parked in a loading and unloading zone in Calle Duque de Zaragoza’. In the field for the caller’s details, the operator Alfredo Barea, retired since 2024, wrote what he was told: a first name, ‘Miguel’, and a phone number, nothing more. The municipal tow truck went out at 10:12. The van came into the warehouse at 11:47 that same 3 July. Behind the file number, a pencil note: ‘owner notified, does not pick up’. Signed Chelo.

Ruth dials the number from the counter’s landline, though she knows it’s not entirely by the book. A company voicemail answers. ‘Frigoríficos Cardús, customer service, if you know the extension you may dial it now.’ She hangs up.

She goes into the warehouse under the excuse of the weekly stock check. At the back, unit 214 is where it has been for 1,158 days, with the yellow tarpaulin rolled up against the bumper. Beside it, stacked, are twenty polystyrene boxes for Cardús Warehouse — Alcoy, unopened. Ruth walks up. On a corner of each box, printed in black ink on a white sticker, is the same phone number she has just dialled from the counter, with no spaces and the town’s area code in front. Next to the number, a contact name: ‘Miguel Cardús’.

At 12:20 she goes back to the desk. Yeray Sarrió, refrigeration technician, has been waiting for her sitting on the green vinyl chair with his hand in the pocket of his blue work jacket.

‘Well?’ says Yeray. ‘It was Cardús,’ Ruth replies. ‘The person who reported the bad parking was Cardús. A Miguel, going by the surname.’ ‘Cardús like the ones on the boxes?’ ‘Cardús like the ones on the boxes.’ ‘Which means where he hid the van was here.’ ‘Here,’ Ruth says. ‘A municipal impound lot. A place where for 1,158 days no one but you can open it, not the family of the man in prison, not a court without a formal warrant. And the person who can pay the monthly fee keeps it here at €80 a month.’

Yeray stands up and runs his hand down his neck.

‘And he’s got exactly a week before the tow truck takes it to the crusher.’ ‘Without anyone being able to touch it,’ Ruth says. ‘And with a payment of €10,000 on 11 February 2023 into the account of Aitana’s brother’s mother. Sender: Frigoríficos Cardús.’

On the desk, on top of file 214/2023 opened at the page of the tow order, Ruth writes with her blue Bic the line that sums up the whole archive: ‘Caller 03/07/2023: Miguel Cardús’.

Then she closes the file, puts it back in the cabinet, turns the key, and at 12:37 she strikes off Bruno’s red list a clean line through car 213: a 2004 hatchback that nobody is coming to reclaim any more. She has sixty cars left and eight days. And she knows that the safest place to hide a van was exactly where she sits down to sign.