Chapter 4 — Shrimp Street Without Name

The provincial court records storage room is located in a row of four-level buildings behind the headquarters, where the smell of old paper and mold blend together to form the typical atmosphere of places where the past is stored. Hai Yen went there the next morning, using the excuse of needing to look up precedents for handling food safety violations in the seafood industry for the audit report, a reason that was reasonable enough for no one to ask further questions.

The person in charge of the archives room, an uncle named Bay in his sixties, flipped through a thick index book, his fingers tracing each line of case codes. "Do Van Tien case, Kenh Ba cooperative, that year? Let me see."

Hai Yen nodded, trying to maintain the expression of someone who was just doing a normal search, even though her heart beat much faster than normal when she heard that exact name read out loud, in the middle of a strange room, from the mouth of someone who had no connection between her and that name.

“Yes, code HS-2016-0417.” Mr. Bay pulled out a discolored cardboard file and placed it on the table. “But look carefully, I remember that back then, the files on this case were a bit... lacking.”

"What's wrong, uncle?" Hai Yen asked, trying to keep her voice calm while her hand was on the clipboard.

"A while ago, there was an inventory review and it was discovered that some original documents of some old cases were missing, including this case, apparently. It happened a long time ago, before I came to check in to this room." Mr. Bay shrugged his shoulders, his voice was nothing special, as if he was recounting a normal story of document storage for decades. "You just open it and take a look. If there's anything missing, write it down in the file loan record and I'll report it to my superiors."

Hai Yen opened the file, her hand turned each page slowly, both out of caution and because each page was like a small impact on the memories she had been trying to repress for ten years. The indictment, the testimony record, the first instance verdict — all are still intact. But when she got to the technical evidence appendix, where there should have been the original test results performed by the provincial laboratory, she only found a blurry copy, stamped "Backup", no original signature, no red stamp of the laboratory.

"Uncle Bay, where are the original test forms in this case? There are only photocopies here."

Mr. Bay moved closer, put on his glasses, looked closely, and scratched his head. "Ah, it's exactly what I said earlier. This case is in the group of files that lost the original technical appendix. At that time, there was an inventory record recorded, let me find it for you to see to be sure."

He searched in another drawer, and it took nearly ten minutes to pull out a set of archive inventory records, dated seven years ago - that is, just three years after her father was convicted. In the list of files "lacking original documents in the appendix", there are exactly five cases related to food safety in the province's fisheries industry over the past decade. Her father's case is one of them.

“It's only five cases, but they're all related to seafood,” Hai Yen said, trying to keep her voice as if she were making a random comment. “Do you know why?”

"I can accept that, ma'am. Back then, this warehouse leaked in a heavy rain, mold and damage damaged many documents, people say so. But to tell you the truth, I've been doing this job for a long time, and I see documents being lost this way and that way, sometimes due to natural disasters, sometimes..." Mr. Bay paused, as if he suddenly remembered he was talking to a stranger, then laughed it off. "Okay, just write down the loan report, just ask me if you need anything."

Hai Yen copied down the entire list of five cases where original documents were lost in her notebook, along with the file number, year of occurrence, and name of the unit involved in each case. Three of the five cases were directly or indirectly related to small shrimp farming cooperatives that dissolved during the same period of Kenh Ba cooperative's collapse: one case at Rach Goc cooperative, one case at Dam Cung cooperative group, and the case of Kenh Ba itself. The remaining two cases involve small processing facilities, it is unclear whether they have the same supply chain or not. She didn't know if the cooperative names had anything to do with each other, but such a coincidence in time and industry was enough to make anyone working in the inspection profession ask questions.

She further asked Mr. Bay if he still remembered anything about the other two cooperatives, even though she knew that the possibility of him remembering was very low after all these years. He scratched his chin and pondered for a moment. "Rach Goc and Dam Cung... let me remember. It seems that both land was bought back at a cheap price after dissolution. I vaguely remember hearing people complain at that time, but the story is too old, I can't be sure of the exact information." He added that if you want to know the details, you may have to ask the district cadastral office, where land transfer records are kept, but that is another door, requiring a more legitimate reason to ask for access.

Hai Yen noted that suggestion on a separate page, reminding herself that she would return to the land issue of the other two cooperatives when she had enough time and a more reasonable excuse not to attract attention.

Before leaving the archive room, she asked permission to take photos of all of her father's case files, citing the need to compare legal precedents for the audit report. Mr. Bay agreed without any doubts, just told her to sign the file book before leaving.

Arriving at the parking lot, Hai Yen sat in the car for more than half an hour, scrolling through each file photo, stopping the longest at the page recording her father's testimony. The tone in the testimony record was cold and dry in accordance with legal format, but through each recorded answer, she still recognized her father's familiar voice, the way he often used short, firm sentences without beating around the bush.

"I signed and approved the shipment according to the test result sheet provided by the laboratory. I did not know that the shipment contained banned substances."

That answer was repeated almost verbatim in three different passages in the minutes, each time questioned by the investigator in a different direction to find loopholes, and each time her father kept the same answer like a person who told himself the only truth he knew. Hai Yen remembers the years after the trial, when the whole family lived in heavy silence, her father rarely mentioned the case. Only once, when his illness got worse in prison, he sent a short message to her mother through an acquaintance: "Tell Yen, I didn't do that."

Didn't do that. Not “I am innocent”. A small difference in the way words are used, but now, sitting alone in the car with the entire case file spread out before her eyes, Hai Yen begins to feel that it is heavier than she thought. What is that? Was it the whole crime he was convicted of, or just part of it?

She pushed that question aside, reminding herself that it was too far to speculate without enough data taboo in the inspection profession. Instead, she focused on what was verifiable: the five original test sheets that were unusually missing, focusing precisely on the period and sector involved in the collapse of many small cooperatives. If this is not a coincidence, then someone has the power to tamper with the provincial court records archive, something that is not easy to do with a single individual.

Her phone vibrated, it was Kien's number - the port inspection officer whom she had just met the day before when she checked in at the container yard. She was a bit surprised because he had her number, then remembered that she had left a business card for the port to contact when additional documents were needed.

"Miss Yen, I'm Kien here at port customs. Do you still remember me?"

"Remember? Why did you call?"

"I... have something, not necessarily related to the shipment you're auditing, but hearing you ask about the old farming area code yesterday, I suddenly remembered something. Are you free to meet me this afternoon? At the cafe near the port, not in the factory."

The last sentence, especially the way he emphasized "not in the factory", immediately caught Hai Yen's attention. She looked at her watch, then looked back at the stack of her father's case files still open on the passenger seat, and realized that this morning, in just a few hours, she had had two more unexpected clues: a list of five unusually missing files, and now an appointment from the only person in this land who seemed willing to talk to her outside the scope of official business.

“Okay. What time?”

"Is four o'clock okay? I'll be off work then."

"Four o'clock. I'm coming." Hai Yen hung up the phone, looked at the file on the passenger seat one last time before putting it neatly in her briefcase. She didn't know what Kien was determined to tell her, but her professional intuition told her that this afternoon's conversation would not be simply a social conversation between two new acquaintances.