Chapter 2

Viet answered, “We told him! Long ago. We even asked whether he wanted to apply for permission to attend the funeral. He refused.”

“If you don’t believe me, come to the office. I’ll show you the interview record.”

“What?”

I was stunned.

What was going on?

A moment ago, I had thought the detention center was at fault for failing to inform him.

Now it seemed he had fooled me.

If he already knew Trieu Ngung Huyen was dead, why pretend ignorance?

Was he trying to deceive me for some purpose?

But that didn’t make sense either.

The officers’ handbook specifically required records of conversations under its ten mandatory interview categories.

Tu Luong should know I could easily discover he had been informed.

What did pretending achieve?

I was about to ask Viet to bring him out again when my phone rang.

Trieu.

With Viet beside me, there were things I couldn’t conveniently say, so I declined the call.

Trieu called straight back.

I smiled apologetically at Viet and moved aside to answer.

“What’s so urgent? I’m at the detention—”

Before I could finish, his choked voice came through.

“Lam, something’s… something’s happened. Come quickly. My wife… she…”

6

“What? Don’t panic. I’m coming.”

Ha Nha Vinh had come to harm.

Combined with Tu Luong’s strange behavior, twenty years of investigative experience told me this might be a long-planned murder. Every nerve tightened.

I confirmed the location: Tu Luong’s home.

Then I hung up, hurried back to Viet, and asked him to watch Tu Luong and report anything unusual.

Only then did I drive away.

Three police cars and an ambulance stood outside the building. Residents gathered nearby, talking.

I greeted the officer keeping order at the elevator and went straight to the top floor.

As I emerged, Trieu, crouched outside the apartment, grabbed me and howled.

“It was Tu Luong! That bastard! My wife… she only came to collect some of Huyen’s things…”

He had barely lost his daughter before losing his wife too.

He was almost beyond control.

After a little reassurance, I asked the officers examining the apartment what had happened.

The responding officer happened to be Ly, deputy chief of Jiangyin station, another acquaintance.

He drew me aside and spoke quietly.

“Captain Lam, could you take your friend away? We can’t work with him like this.”

I understood his position.

This was his jurisdiction.

He had also attended Huyen’s death.

There was a procedure: local police went first. If they found signs of possible homicide, they notified criminal investigation. Otherwise, they handled it themselves.

Huyen’s death had been attributed to an old gas hose and mistakes while cooking.

Ly classified it as accidental, so neither informed our team nor opened the case Trieu wanted.

That had sent Trieu from the station to the bureau to make a scene, and finally to me.

Now, before he had recovered from losing his daughter, his wife had died in the same place.

Of course he was distraught.

I didn’t need to imagine how he had treated Ly on hearing the news.

I glanced toward his cries at the door and gave Ly an apologetic smile.

“Bear with him. He’s had it hard. What exactly happened?”

Ly rolled his eyes helplessly and pointed toward the balcony.

“An accident. From the scene, I’d say she was taking down laundry when the motorized drying rack fell and hit her head. The apartment’s deteriorated, wiring came down too, and the metal rail happened to conduct…”

He patted my shoulder.

“You’re the technical man. Go and look for yourself.”

7

I did head the technical team.

That didn’t automatically mean I had more experience than local officers.

In fact, I had already made a brief survey on entering.

Ha Nha Vinh’s body was still on the balcony under a white sheet.

Nearby lay several items of clothing and two drying rails, each hanging down at one end.

The motor housing had fallen from the ceiling and shattered.

Where it had been mounted, unprotected red and blue wires hung more than half a meter.

I trusted Ly’s assessment.

Perhaps it really was an accident.

Trieu said she had come to collect her daughter’s belongings.

A mother seeing her dead child’s clothes still hanging outside would naturally want to bring them in.

Perhaps the rail fell and struck her while she was taking them down. In panic, she accidentally pulled the housing loose, the wires dropped onto the metal, and she was electrocuted.

Yet twenty years of experience kept insisting something was wrong.

But where?

8

Under Ly’s teasing gaze, I borrowed gloves and shoe covers and approached carefully.

First, I lifted the sheet and compared the wound on her forehead with the rail that had struck her.

Nothing unusual.

Next, I examined the rack’s retracting steel cables.

As I understood it, these normally lasted as long as the motor housing itself. They were unlikely to snap midway through their life unless someone subjected them to excessive force.

Who would buy a product that might break at any moment?

If this was murder rather than an accident, I believed the killer must have tampered with the cable, housing, wiring, circuit, or fuse in the electrical box.

The inspection disappointed me.

The eastern cable’s break was covered in rust. Long exposure to sun and rain appeared to have weakened it.

The housing’s mounting screws showed no problem either. They were still attached.

As Ly had thought, the deteriorated ceiling couldn’t bear the load. When the rack fell, it pulled the housing down too.

The wires followed and happened to land on the metal frame.

Everything looked accidental.

The only questionable detail was that the electrical protection hadn’t cut the power when she was electrocuted.

When I mentioned it, Ly shook his head.

“Everything’s fate. Not a bit of it in our hands.”

“What do you mean?”

He sighed and pointed to the kitchen, still wrecked from the earlier explosion.

“After the explosion and fire, the firefighters and I shut off the electricity, water, and gas. Today, she probably couldn’t find the clothes pole, so she turned the breaker back on to lower the rack with its remote.”

“But it should still have tripped.”

He took me to the electrical box and produced a small black hair clip from an evidence bag.

“This was wedged into the breaker. My guess is the explosion damaged the kitchen circuit. It kept tripping whenever she switched it on. She wanted the clothes badly enough to jam it with this. So the protection couldn’t cut the power…”

The tiny clip left me feeling helpless.

An accident?

Nothing else could explain the scene as a murder arrangement.

After all, Ha Nha Vinh had put the clip there herself. No one forced her.

Even if someone had set everything up, this supposed murder disguised as an accident couldn’t happen without the victim’s own ignorant cooperation.

I sighed.

It seemed Trieu was wrong. This wasn’t Tu Luong plotting to kill his wife over their broken marriage.

Unless there was something else I didn’t know.

Remembering his baffling behavior and uncanny gaze at the detention center, I suddenly caught Ly’s arm.

“You attended the gas explosion too, didn’t you? Tell me about it again.”

I gripped too hard.

He pulled free.

“Haven’t you read the file?”

“I want to hear it from you.”

I looked at him urgently.

With a helpless expression, he led me into the kitchen.

The explosion had been followed by fire, forcing firefighters to use high-pressure hoses.

The room was a chaotic mess of burns and water damage.

He pointed to the stove.

“The fire started here. From the remaining traces, we believe she was stewing pork ribs before she died.”

He rolled his eyes.

“She probably couldn’t cook. Put the ribs straight in without blanching them. All that bloody foam would push the lid up.”

“She must have heard it boiling over and rushed in to lift the lid.”

“By then, the foam had spilled onto the stove. You can imagine the rest. The greasy foam didn’t put out the flame. It ran down onto the hose below and burned through it…”

Then he leaned close and lowered his voice.

“Lam, I don’t know whether I should say this. I’m not trying to overthink it. But two deaths in three days… How can I not? Do you really think it’s just an accident?”

My pupils tightened.

If I alone felt that way, perhaps I was oversensitive.

Now even the officer who had attended both deaths shared the thought.

Things had become more complicated.

“What are you thinking?” I asked quietly.

He pointed down.

“This is a new complex, isn’t it? Things shouldn’t deteriorate so quickly. But look…”

He opened a cabinet and indicated the gas hose.

“Normally these last years. The gas company checks annually and warns people if they’re aging.”

“Why did this one deteriorate faster than the others?”

“I asked the company. They inspected last June. Everything was normal.”

“Only ten months. How did it get like this?”

He lifted the stove’s heat shield.

“And this. Normally, water getting into the burner holes should put the flame out. But this heat-concentrating ring…”

He held up the separately fitted ring.

“It’s nothing like the usual ones on sale. It has a specially made drainage feature underneath. That was a major reason for the fire and explosion.”

Back on the balcony, he pointed to the former mounting point.

“You saw how badly this has deteriorated too. But the complex isn’t even five years old. However much the developer cut corners, surely the ceiling should support a motor housing?”

He kept muttering.

“One accident can happen. So can two. But two so close together—are they still accidents?”

“Honestly, I’d rather not get involved. The scene rules out murder. Trying to open an investigation without evidence would only make trouble and add work.”

“But it’s strange. Look at it…”

He regarded me gravely.

My scalp prickled too.

Two accidental deaths in three days, in the same apartment.

Both looked perfectly consistent with accidents, with no apparent possibility of homicide.

That in itself was extraordinary.

But to open a case—

Where was the evidence?

There was a complete process, not a matter of wanting to.

Especially here, where both victims had made mistakes and the equipment really did show deterioration.

“Deterioration” was a broad term without a fixed schedule. Circuits, hoses, and ceilings aged differently according to use, humidity, temperature, and other conditions.

More importantly, if someone had arranged all of this, what was the motive?

Even accepting the troubled marriage as the explanation, how had Tu Luong done it?

He was in detention.

He couldn’t hold a knife to their throats and force Huyen to leave ribs unattended or her mother to jam a breaker with a hair clip.

That was what frustrated me most.

Suspicion everywhere, but no evidence sufficient to open a case.

Ly and I looked at each other for a long time.

Finally, I patted his shoulder.

“Carry on. I’ll go back and discuss it with Commander Chu.”

I went out and took Trieu downstairs.

Driving him home, I deliberately asked more about the marriage.

He couldn’t explain much.

His daughter had been spoiled growing up, headstrong and willful, and rarely confided in her parents.

He knew only that after the wedding, she and Tu Luong frequently clashed.

Neither told him why.

Tu Luong preferred working at home and didn’t like visits from his in-laws.

If Huyen hadn’t died, Ha Nha Vinh wouldn’t have come to collect her things and suffered this accident.

Trieu still insisted Tu Luong was responsible.

Asked why, he called it a man’s instinct. A father’s instinct.

I shook my head, speechless.

Instinct…

Sometimes a man’s instinct was uncannily accurate. Eight or nine times out of ten, what he suspected proved true.

But police work required evidence.

We couldn’t investigate on instinct alone.

I could only take him home, urge him to rest and stop tormenting himself, and say we would discuss things after I spoke to Commander Chu.

I hurried back to the brigade and explained both deaths to Chu Hoa.

He spread his hands.

“You’ve said it yourself. Not enough evidence. Both scenes fit accidents caused by the victims’ own mistakes. On what basis do we open a case? Tell everyone we’re forcing an investigation because you know the deceased?”

He handed me a cigarette.

“Lam, strictly speaking, you should recuse yourself from this.”