Chapter 4

He could be considered a direct witness.

At last, Lý nodded.

“Go and arrest them.”

Đại Quyền and the others were taken into custody.

But to convict them, we still needed more evidence.

Most importantly…

We had to find the body.

What had begun as a nanny negligently dropping a child into a river had become a case involving seven men who had raped a young woman to death.

A mother’s revenge.

A child paying for her father’s sins.

It had caught the attention of the whole of society.

Everyone sympathized with Mai.

They cursed Đại Quyền’s group and said they deserved to die.

But some also said that, whatever revenge she wanted, she should not have hurt an innocent child.

Yet as the case grew clearer, I felt no joy.

For one thing, Đại Quyền was a hard man to break.

He refused to reveal where the body was buried.

For another, once Hiểu Nguyệt’s case was resolved, Mai and Chu Viện would face punishment themselves.

I knew I shouldn’t sympathize with them.

They had killed an innocent child, after all.

But I could not shake the feeling that it should never have come to this.

They had been the victims.

All they had wanted, for years, was justice.

How had it ended this way?

Victims had to bear too much.

Their lives were heavier burdens than those of the people who hurt them.

I remembered the words on the back of the photograph:

“Equality may be a human right, but no one can make it a reality.”

Everyone is equal before the law.

Wasn’t that the very reason the law existed?

To protect justice.

To set things right.

Wasn’t that why I had become a police officer?

Then why, now that the door to justice stood open before us, could the people who had suffered so terribly not step through it?

Đại Quyền was stubborn.

Thông was not.

If convicted, Đại Quyền could expect only death.

Thông still had a chance at leniency.

In exchange for a reduced sentence, he finally revealed the burial site.

After eight years, an innocent victim reduced to white bones was at last brought back into daylight.

Forensic testing confirmed that the remains belonged to Hiểu Nguyệt, missing for eight years.

The traces left on her bones gave some idea of what she had endured before she died.

At the sight of the remains, Mai embraced the bones and wept until she fainted.

Hiểu Nguyệt’s case was closed.

Mai and Chu Viện were about to stand trial for murder.

At the last moment, however, Chu Viện changed her statement.

She said calmly:

“Aunt Mai didn’t kill anyone.”

“The child isn’t dead.”

I sprang up.

“What did you say?”

“You didn’t kill Đại Quyền’s daughter?”

“Then who fell into the river?”

“No one.”

“It was only a dummy.”

I was stunned.

For a long time, I could not respond.

I had watched the bridge footage countless times.

Always concentrating on whether Mai’s fall had been deliberate or accidental.

I had scarcely noticed the child in her arms.

Wait…

I suddenly stopped.

In the video, the child wore a hood.

The entire time, she had rested motionless on Mai’s shoulder.

I had assumed she was asleep.

But when Mai fell and the child was thrown out of her arms, there had still been no movement.

Everything happened so quickly.

The clothes were so thick.

No one had noticed anything unusual.

But a real person, even a child falling from a bridge, would at least have woken up, cried out, or struggled.

I frowned deeply.

“At the playground, Mai was still holding Đại Quyền’s daughter.”

“When did you switch them?”

Before Chu Viện could answer, something came back to me.

“Before leaving, Mai took the child into the toilets.”

“Was that when you made the switch?”

“Yes.”

Suddenly, everything made sense.

Even the date had been chosen deliberately.

It had rained for days.

The river was running fast.

A child—or anything else—that fell in would be difficult to recover.

And a fall on rain-slick pavement was perfectly ordinary.

It would reduce suspicion.

I slammed the table, furious at having been deceived.

“Where have you hidden her?”

Chu Viện only smiled, unafraid of my anger.

“Don’t worry.”

“She’s fine.”

“I only asked a friend to look after her for a few days.”

She gave us an address and phone number so we could collect the girl.

I looked at her with conflicting emotions.

For a moment, I didn’t know what to feel.

After a long silence, I finally asked what had been troubling me all this time.

“If you knew the truth from the beginning, why wait seven years to tell Mai?”

Had she known earlier, perhaps none of these elaborate detours would have been necessary.

Perhaps we could have convicted Đại Quyền’s group sooner.

Chu Viện’s gaze deepened.

After a long pause, she gave a mocking laugh.

“Because…”

“I’d become rotten too.”

She told me her own story.

What follows is her account.

…

My family was desperately poor.

There were six children.

Five of us were girls.

So after half a year of middle school, I left and followed people from my village to find work.

I was too young for a decent job.

Even factories wouldn’t take me.

I washed dishes.

Carried bricks.

Took every kind of casual job that didn’t require identification.

Then a man from my village approached me.

He said he could find me work.

He was a distant uncle of mine.

He took me to the Hoàng Đình Club and got me a job as a server.

The pay was high.

Food and accommodation were included.

I knew nothing then.

I honestly thought I’d found a good opportunity.

I was so grateful to him.

In my first month, I went through exactly what Hiểu Nguyệt did.

I was a little luckier.

They didn’t torture me to death.

No…

Perhaps dying then would have been the lucky outcome.

Afterward, I tried every way I could to escape.

But I had no identification.

No money.

And they watched me closely.

I managed to get away twice.

Both times, that uncle caught me and brought me back.

He even told me to work hard.

Half my wages went to him.

The other half went home.

I secretly sent my family a letter, asking them to come and take me away.

They never came.