Chapter 52 — Shrimp Street Without Name

While waiting for developments in Phu's case, Hai Yen returned to an old clue that she had temporarily put aside many weeks ago: two cooperatives, Rach Goc and Dam Cung, which also collapsed in the same period as Kenh Ba, the land was sold off at cheap prices soon after. With official support from the investigation agency, Kien can now legally access cadastral records, instead of having to ask around and around like before.

“I found a full list of households that sold land in both areas during that period,” Kien said, spreading a thick stack of documents on the table during a meeting with Hai Yen and lawyer Hoang. “A total of more than fifty households, with a transferred land area of up to hundreds of hectares, were all acquired by a chain of satellite companies in less than two years.”

Lawyer Hoang looked through the list, her face showing seriousness. "This is a much larger scale than we ever estimated. If it can be proven that this entire purchasing process was pre-arranged, using the collapse of cooperatives as a tool to suppress prices, this will be key evidence for accusations of organized land market manipulation."

Hai Yen proposed to directly meet some of the old households on the list, those still living in the neighborhood, to collect more direct accounts of the circumstances that forced them to sell their land. Among them, one name caught her special attention: Ms. Sau Nhan, who used to be vice president of Dam Cung cooperative, still lives locally.

The meeting with Ms. Sau Nhan was emotional. The woman in her seventies recounted, her voice filled with bitterness, how her cooperative also encountered an unusual "quality check", leading to many farming households being refused to buy products, pushing them into heavy debt in just a few months.

"At that time, someone came to offer to buy land. Although the price was low, it was enough to repay the debt. Many houses had to be sold," she said. "I also sold it, but I couldn't sell it. I was in debt to the bank. Looking back now, there was definitely something unusual, but back then everyone was worried about their families, so there wasn't time to suspect anything big."

“Do you know which company bought your land?” Hai Yen asked.

Ms. Sau Nhan rummaged through an old box and took out a yellowed copy of the transfer contract. Hai Yen immediately recognized the name of the company on it - one of the satellite companies that had appeared many times in their investigation files, along with a chain of affiliated companies leading to the Coastal Mien Hai Group.

“This is the piece we need,” Hai Yen said to Kien after leaving Sau Nhan's house, her voice filled with determination. "Not only Kenh Ba, but also a chain of cooperatives in the region were targeted according to the same scenario. These are not isolated incidents, but a calculated campaign, carried out systematically on a large scale."

They spent the next two days finding six more households on the list, each story had its own details but shared a scary pattern: a sudden crisis, often related to product quality or unexplained epidemics, pushed farming households into debt, followed by the timely appearance of land buyers at prices that were low but attractive enough to solve the previous difficulties. eye.

One of the households, Mr. Ba Do, who once had the largest pond in the Dam Cung area, recounted a detail that especially caught Hai Yen's attention. "I remember, the person who came to buy land at that time, although representing a different company, but the way he talked and negotiated was exactly the same as someone I met at another land sale a few years ago, in another place, in another province. At that time, I thought it must be a coincidence, but now that I've heard you tell it, I wonder if it could be the same person."

Hai Yen immediately asked more closely about that person's identifying characteristics, carefully recording them in her notebook. Mr. Ba Do describes a middle-aged man, with a small scar in the corner of his left eye, a luxurious dressing style, but his voice has a slight Central accent, completely different from the local accent.

“This may be one of the key intermediaries of the entire network,” lawyer Hoang commented when listening to Hai Yen's report. “If we can identify this person, and prove he appeared in many suspicious land transactions in different provinces, it will be strong evidence that this is an organization operating across provinces, with clear role assignments.”

Kien proposed sending this identification description to Minh Khang, who could compare it with the documents he had collected from the incident in Quang Ngai to see if there was any match. Just a day later, Minh Khang called back, his voice full of excitement.

“Mr. Tu Hanh also remembers a person with exactly the same characteristics who appeared in negotiations to buy land in his village seven years ago,” Minh Khang reported. “We may be finding one of the most important links, the person directly carrying out suspicious land purchases across the country, on behalf of the Coastal Region Group.”

Hai Yen felt a wave of excitement spreading in her heart, mixed with the caution of someone who has learned not to rush to celebrate each new discovery. But she also understands that this is the most important step in connecting all the individual cases into a unified picture, enough to convince any investigation agency of the true scale of the criminal organization hiding behind the legal appearance of real estate investment projects.

That evening, she reported all the new developments to the lieutenant, who confirmed that he would include the identification description of the man with the scar in the official investigation file, and coordinate with the police of relevant provinces to verify whether anyone had recorded images or more specific information about this character.

“This may take time,” the lieutenant warned. "A professional middleman is usually very careful, rarely leaving a direct trace that can be traced. But with multiple sources of information confirming the same identity, I believe we are getting closer to determining his true identity."

In the evening, when sitting alone after a long day full of important discoveries, Hai Yen reopened the map she had drawn many weeks ago, now adding new places: Rach Goc, Dam Cung, Quang Ngai, and possibly many other places that she did not know about. Each place is a story, a traumatized community, all bearing traces of the same invisible hand that has been silently operating for many years.

She thought of people The man has a scar at the corner of his eye, wondering who he is, how many lands he has traveled through, and how many families have had to sell what they have been attached to all their lives in exchange for a small amount of money compared to the true value later. She told herself, no matter how difficult the road to finding his identity is, she will not stop, because every step closer to the truth is also a step closer to justice for all the people who have been forgotten in this great story.

She remembered Mr. Ba Do's words about how that man negotiated skillfully, knowing exactly when to be soft and when to be tough to force the price down as low as possible. That's not the type of person who acts on impulse, but a professional, well-trained for the job of exploiting people in the most miserable circumstances of their lives. She recorded all of these details in her notebook, under a separate section she named "The Middleman", knowing that this would be one of the important keys to opening the final door to the whole truth. She turned off the light, but still lay awake for a while longer, her mind constantly piecing together pieces of information, trying to imagine the face of that mysterious man, who had silently spread suffering across the coast for more than a decade without anyone ever knowing of his existence, until today, when the disparate pieces from all over the country began to find their rightful place, piecing together a picture that she believed, sooner or later, would reveal its shape. The real face behind all the suffering that so many families have had to endure over the years, in every region of this S-shaped strip of land.