Chapter 1

I’m a veteran detective. Over the years, I’ve worked more cases than I can count.

Yet the one I have never forgotten is the first case I encountered when I joined the force.

Not because it was particularly bloody or sensational, but because it was so profoundly sad that, for a time, it shook my faith.

On an ordinary autumn day in 2014, an accident on Tân Giang Road in Ngô Từ made headlines online.

A domestic worker fell, accidentally dropping a four-year-old girl into the river.

Rescuers searched for three days without success. The nanny was charged with causing death through negligence.

At her first trial, she received a seven-year prison sentence.

The victim’s family rejected the verdict and appealed, alleging intentional homicide. The case was referred to criminal investigators.

…

I leafed through the file.

[Trương Mai, forty-eight, primary-school education. Has spent years working away from home. Joined the Tôn household as a nanny a year ago. Good performance throughout; no previous mistakes.]

[September 13: took the child out to play. While crossing Nguyên Giang Bridge, slipped on the rain-slick pavement. The child in her arms was thrown over the bridge and fell into the river…]

“Have they found the child?” I asked the colleague beside me.

He shook his head.

“It rained for days. The Nguyên Giang was running fast. We might not have found an adult who fell in, let alone such a little girl.”

In other words, the body had not been recovered.

I could understand her parents’ feelings. When a guardian’s carelessness led to a child’s death, the absence of intent did little to make the loss bearable.

There had been a similar case online before. A nanny, distracted by her phone, failed to watch a child, who fell to their death from a high floor. After sentencing, the parents had challenged the verdict and appealed.

But…

“However you look at it, this was an accident. She’s already received the maximum sentence. Why appeal? And why accuse her of intentional homicide?”

My colleague was an experienced detective who understood far more than I did. He gave me a meaningful look.

“You don’t know the Tôn family? Their business is one of the city’s biggest taxpayers. They’re the kind of people who regularly dine with the top two city officials.”

I frowned.

“What has that got to do with anything? If someone commits a crime, the law punishes them. Are you saying some people still have special privileges before the law?”

He smiled, shook his head, and patted my shoulder.

“Young Mạnh, you’ve got a lot to learn.”

I hated that tone from people who considered themselves worldly. As though a few extra years automatically entitled them to lecture everyone.

Later events would prove that, at the time…

I really had been too young.

We followed the procedures and investigated.

Every piece of evidence—surveillance footage, purchase receipts, messages, and witness statements—indicated that it truly had been an accident.

The bridge footage was particularly clear.

Trương Mai was carrying the child across. The little girl wore a hooded coat, her head resting on the nanny’s shoulder, apparently asleep.

Halfway across, Mai lost her balance on the wet pavement and pitched forward. The child slipped from her arms and struck the railing. Mai reached to catch her, but was too late.

The girl fell from the bridge.

However we examined it, it looked like an accident.

Mai herself had cut her head open in the fall. Afterward, she beat her chest and stamped her feet, distraught with remorse.

Meeting her only strengthened my belief that she was a simple rural woman incapable of murder.

The weight of a life was too great for her. It could break her back.

“I didn’t mean to… I didn’t, I didn’t…”

She raised her gaunt face. Dark circles shadowed her bloodshot eyes. She was in a terrible state, coughing from time to time.

“It was all my fault… Why wasn’t I more careful?

“If I hadn’t fallen, Tiểu Huyên… she wouldn’t have gone over.

“I’m to blame. I shouldn’t have gone out that day… cough…”

Like the endlessly grieving Xianglin’s Wife in the story, she kept repeating her self-reproach and remorse.

“Why did you go out that day? And why cross that bridge?”

Though I felt sorry for her, I continued the routine questions.

She raised her head and stared at the wall ahead, an odd look on her face.

“Tiểu Huyên wanted to go out and play. We were nearly out of formula, so I took her with me.

“After buying it, we went to the playground. Then I realized I’d forgotten to pick up the tin. The driver went back for it, and I stayed with Tiểu Huyên at the playground.

“But after a little while, she wanted a cake from Lạc Ký. It was just across the river, not far, so I carried her over.

“Who could have known… that this would happen? Cough… It’s my fault. I knew the ground was slippery. I should have been more careful…”

She covered her face, choking on her tears.

I sighed inwardly.

An accident like this was unbearable for everyone.

Following her statement, I checked the formula shop, playground, and bakery.

She regularly took the child to all three places. The staff confirmed that everything had been normal that day.

Her account was true.

On the existing evidence, causing death through negligence was the most serious charge she could face. Her cooperative admission might even qualify her for a lighter sentence.

The Tôn family, however, was deeply dissatisfied with our findings.

Tôn Đại Quyền and his wife came to the station in person and demanded a new investigation.

“She did it on purpose!

“She deliberately killed my daughter!

“Investigate properly! I want her sentenced to death!”

He pounded the desk, speaking with fierce aggression.

People instinctively sympathize with the weak.

Faced with his bullying manner and Mai’s pitiful vulnerability, most of us unconsciously took her side.

“That’s wrong.”

Old Lý, the veteran detective mentoring me, glanced at me.

“Remember that you’re a detective. Don’t decide which side you’re on before you investigate.”

“But, sir, it’s obviously an accident. The Tôn family simply won’t let go. They want revenge on her.”

The case should have been straightforward, but nannies and young children were both sensitive subjects in the news. It attracted enormous attention.

Online opinion split into two camps.

One argued that the nanny’s negligence had cost a child her life, so she must be held responsible.

The other agreed she was at fault, but maintained that accidents were unforeseeable and punishment under the law should be enough.

When people learned that the family rejected the verdict and wanted a murder charge, opinion shifted again.

More and more people sympathized with Mai.

Some resourceful internet users dug into the Tôn family’s background.

Conspiracy theories proliferated.

Some claimed the family was framing the nanny.

Others said they had abused her and she had deliberately retaliated.

I skimmed them and dismissed them as nonsense.

Đại Quyền kept pressuring the bureau. Reporters, sensing a story, waited outside our gates every day.

The atmosphere grew tense.

I had never imagined an apparently ordinary case of a nanny negligently causing death could create such an uproar or drag on so long.

I couldn’t help feeling irritated.

“This is nothing.”

Old Lý cradled his thermos and slowly sipped his goji-berry tea.

He had taken a few days’ sick leave for back pain. When he returned and reviewed the file, he remained perfectly calm.

“Sir, do you mean the chief will give in if Đại Quyền keeps applying pressure?”

Turning a simple case into a complicated one like this was a waste of police resources.

Lý looked up.

“No. I mean the case itself.”

I glanced at the file on the desk and frowned.

“It’s already clear. What else is there to investigate?”

“Is it?”

“Sometimes, the clearer things look, the more reason there is to question them.”

I assumed it was another stale lecture from someone who thought experience made him superior.

Then, two days later, Đại Quyền’s wife, Ngô Hồng, came to the station.

“I have evidence that Trương Mai committed murder.”

Until then, Đại Quyền had constantly shouted that Mai should be executed and pay with her life. Everyone’s first impression had been that he wanted revenge.

By contrast, the child’s mother, Hồng, had remained grief-stricken and quiet throughout.

Lý and I began investigating the Hoàng Đình Club, only to discover that most of its staff, from management to servers, had been replaced.

Only one former manager who had left remembered a little of what had happened.

The moment we asked about Tôn Đại Quyền and Tiền Thông, his expression changed.

“I… don’t know much about that.”

“Don’t know, or don’t dare say?” Lý set his thermos on the table.

The former manager remained silent for a long time.

Finally, he sighed.

“It’s been years. I thought it was buried long ago.”

He told us there had been an incident at the Hoàng Đình Club eight years earlier.

A young woman had disappeared.

Her name was Phạm Hiểu Nguyệt.

Lý and I exchanged a look.

That was Mai’s daughter.

“She worked here as a server. Quiet, well-behaved. Such a pitiful girl.”

“What happened?”

“Then…” He swallowed. “One day she went into a VIP room to serve the guests and never came out.”

My heart thudded.

“Who were the guests?”