Chapter 2
Edward Quan ·
The manager lowered his head.
“A group of rich young men.”
“Were Tôn Đại Quyền and Tiền Thông among them?”
He gave a small nod.
…
The room went silent.
A chill spread through me.
If he was telling the truth, Mai’s reason for killing Tiểu Huyên might not have been money.
It might have been revenge.
“Where did Hiểu Nguyệt go afterward?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“Nobody knows.”
“Was it reported to the police?”
“Yes.”
“And the result?”
“They didn’t find her.”
Lý suddenly asked:
“Was she still alive then?”
The former manager shuddered.
Sweat broke out on his forehead.
“I… I don’t know.”
“Or do you know, but don’t dare tell us?”
“…”
He did not answer, but his reaction said enough.
…
On the drive back, I sat in the car with a heavy heart.
The clues seemed to be coming together.
Eight years earlier, Hiểu Nguyệt had disappeared.
Đại Quyền and Tiền Thông had fallen out.
Thông had used something to blackmail Đại Quyền.
Chu Viện had left the Hoàng Đình Club.
Now Đại Quyền’s daughter was dead.
And Hiểu Nguyệt’s mother was responsible.
“Sir…” I looked at Lý. “Have we found the motive?”
He gazed out the window.
Only after a while did he answer.
“A motive is only a theory.”
“What we need is evidence.”
“What I want to know is what really happened back then.”
“And…”
He paused.
“Whether Hiểu Nguyệt is still alive.”
I suddenly thought of Chu Viện.
That woman clearly knew something.
Her reaction to Hiểu Nguyệt’s name had been nothing like that of an uninvolved person.
Perhaps she held the key to the case.
At that point, we still had no idea that what we were about to unearth was more than a murder.
It was a secret buried for eight years.
When we asked about Đại Quyền and Tiền Thông, the staff said they had heard of them. They had once been VIP guests but no longer came.
At the names Chu Viện and Hiểu Nguyệt, almost everyone shook their head.
I asked management for staff lists from previous years.
The manager looked uncomfortable. Many servers had been part-time workers, he said, and the records were sketchy. Too much time had passed to retrieve them.
For the next two days, the entire investigation team worked overtime.
At last, we found several people who had worked at Hoàng Đình eight years earlier.
Their reactions were strangely uniform.
The moment we mentioned that year, they all fell silent.
That unprompted giveaway virtually confirmed that something had happened there.
Ordinary people struggle to withstand rigorous police questioning.
With a little pressure, they began talking one after another.
There had indeed been an incident eight years earlier.
They had accepted hush money. Soon afterward, all had left, some voluntarily, others under pressure.
Feeling close to the truth, I struggled to contain my excitement.
“What exactly happened?”
Fear appeared in the witness’s eyes. They began trembling.
“I don’t really know… Only that someone seems to have died.”
…
Someone had died at the Hoàng Đình Club.
Đại Quyền, Thông, and others had been involved.
Afterward, everyone connected to it had been silenced.
What roles had Chu Viện and Hiểu Nguyệt played?
A terrible foreboding rose inside me, but I dared not follow it further.
Eight years had passed.
All the evidence had been destroyed.
Who, apart from those involved, knew the truth?
Did Mai know?
And how much did Chu Viện know?
Just then, Lý came over and tossed me a file.
“Arrest Chu Viện.”
I jumped up.
“What?”
He tapped the file.
“She wasn’t telling the truth when she said she barely knew Mai and her daughter.”
“She’s Mai’s accomplice. They planned the whole thing together.”
I could hardly believe it.
Yet the more I thought about it, the more sense it made.
At Chu Viện’s rented room, we found the door unlocked. A gentle push opened it.
Inside was pitch-dark, apart from a little light through the window.
She sat before a candle.
At the sound of our arrival, she did not turn.
“Do you know what day it is?”
“Today is the anniversary of Hiểu Nguyệt’s death.”
Her voice was quiet.
I frowned slightly, scanned the room, and found the light switch.
Slowly, she turned.
The candle behind her left her face in shadow.
“Today…”
“I’ve waited so long for it.”
“The day I could tell the truth.”
Click.
Light flooded the room.
The moment we saw what was inside, everyone froze.
…
It was a small room.
All four walls were covered with photographs.
Thousands of them, densely layered, enough to make your skin crawl.
Every one had been taken secretly.
Some were marked in red ink.
I removed the photograph at the center.
It showed Đại Quyền leaving the Hoàng Đình Club.
Someone had drawn a large red question mark over his face.
I turned and studied Chu Viện for a long time.
“Did you do this to take revenge on him?”
She gave a faint smile.
She was strangely calm.
“Why would we want revenge on him?”
“…”
I could guess the answer.
But everything required evidence.
No living person had been found.
No body had been recovered.
For the first time, I began to understand what she and Mai had done.
It was still outside the law.
Chu Viện was handcuffed and taken away.
Several colleagues and I stayed to collect the evidence.
There were so many photographs that we needed two cardboard boxes.
One fell to the floor.
I bent to pick it up.
On the back was a handwritten line:
“Equality may be a human right, but no one can make it a reality.”
“Chu Viện, why did you lie?”
Under the white interview-room lights, her face looked pale.
I watched her with conflicting emotions.
Clearly, this woman had a history.
Now she wore the weary, weathered look of someone who had let everything go.
“Give me a cigarette.”
She raised her wrists.
Her red-painted nails reflected the light.
I looked at Lý.
He said nothing, only tilted his chin.
Silently, I lit a cigarette and handed it to her.
She drew deeply, her expression distant.
“Officer, I know what you want to ask.”
“But my answer is the same.”
“You say Aunt Mai and I wanted revenge on Đại Quyền.”
“Why?”
“What was our motive?”
I frowned.
“Didn’t you say you wanted to tell the truth?”
“You’re at the station now. Tell us what you know.”
She looked up at me as though I were a child who had never seen the world.
“Officer Mạnh.”
“You haven’t been a policeman long, have you?”
My frown deepened.
I felt a surge of resentment.
“If telling the truth were that easy…”
“There would be far fewer miscarriages of justice.”
I was about to argue when Lý tapped the table and stopped me.
“Chu Viện.”
“You and Mai have kept in touch all along.”
“You joined the domestic-service agency to get her into the Tôn household.”
“And that agency wasn’t your only job.”
“You’ve had quite a varied career.”
He laid the documents out one at a time.
“Bar worker.”
“Shopping-center sales assistant.”
“Convenience-store employee.”
“App-based driver.”
“Even delivery work.”
“Doesn’t all that keep you exhausted?”
Holding the cigarette between two fingers, she smiled faintly.
Being exposed did not unsettle her at all.
“Officer.”
“Life has never been easy for people at the bottom like us.”
“A little exhaustion is nothing.”
“What frightens me is working yourself to death without ever seeing a glimmer of hope.”
Lý nodded sympathetically.
“It certainly isn’t easy.”
“For a woman like you to follow and investigate men like Đại Quyền and Thông…”
“It takes more than time and effort.”
As he spoke, he spread photographs across the table.
“Tôn Đại Quyền.”
“Tiền Thông.”
“Triệu Hòa Bình.”
“Trịnh Cửu Tắc…”
“Seven men altogether.”
“You spent a full year gathering information.”
“Then you chose to begin with Đại Quyền and Thông.”
“Was that because they played the main roles in what happened at Hoàng Đình?”
Her smoking hand stopped.
After a moment, she smiled.
“Officer.”
“How much have you found out about Hoàng Đình?”
Lý answered casually.
“Everyone who knew has left.”
“The few people we found don’t know much.”
“What happened back then…”
“We may only learn if Đại Quyền and the others admit it themselves.”
Bang!
Chu Viện slammed the table and sprang up.
“How could they possibly admit it?”
“Scum!”
“Filth!”
“Bastards!”
“They committed all those crimes, then thought they could wipe everything away by throwing money at it!”
“How would they ever dare admit what they did?”
I couldn’t hold back.
“What exactly did they do?”
She abruptly calmed down and sat.
“Isn’t investigating crime your job?”
“But I can give you a hint.”
“There’s a box under my bed.”
“It contains a few things and a piece of paper.”
“There’s a name and address on that paper.”
“Find that person.”
“She’ll tell you a few things.”