Chapter 13 — The Journey of the Missing Bronze Drum

"Van," Hai repeated the name, sitting absent-mindedly in the car as Diem recounted the entire conversation with Ta Bach Son. "Are you sure he didn't lie, or tell half the truth to protect himself?"

"I'm not absolutely sure about anything in this case," Diem replied, "but his reaction when he mentioned that name, and even when I told him about the tracking device attached to my car, was not like someone who was acting. He was really scared."

Hai started the engine, but did not start the car immediately. He pulled out his phone and opened a set of documents he had quietly collected over the past few days through indirect channels - transaction statements of a number of accounts related to Vu Bach Long that he applied for through a professional coordination order, without the need for an official subpoena because it was only at the preliminary review level.

“I have a detail that might match yours,” he said, scrolling through the screen. "In the transaction statement of a sub-account in the name of Vu Bach Long's wife, there is a periodic transfer of money, once a quarter, to another personal account, with the general content of the transfer being recorded as 'support for equipment maintenance costs'. The amount is not large, small enough to not attract attention in the automatic money laundering monitoring system, but has been suspiciously regular for six consecutive years."

"Whose account is it?"

Hai enlarges the screen. "A shell company, registered for interior design consulting services, headquartered in Hanoi, the legal representative is a different name, not Vu Bach Long, not Ta Bach Son. But the business registration address of this shell company," he paused, looking at Diem, "coincides with the address of the accounting office that handled the books for Hoai Co Duong in the first three years Mr. Son opened the gallery, before he changed to another accounting company."

Diem felt a cold current run down her spine. "So the money flow does not flow directly from Long to Son. It flows through an intermediary layer, enough to hide the direct connection if there is a normal investigation, but still leaves a trace for anyone patient enough to follow."

"Exactly. And if you're right about 'Van' being the contact alias, I think we can cross-check with the phone records." Hai opened another data set. "I obtained - through legal channels, let me be clear - a part of the call history of a spam phone number that contacted the Hoai Co Duong office at the exact times before each periodic transfer I just mentioned. That junk phone number, although it has been deactivated for two years now, was first activated in the area near Vinh Sa port, within a few hundred meters radius of Toan Hai Phat headquarters."

Diem closed her eyes for a moment, letting all the disparate pieces of data — Ta Bach Son's account, the money flow through the shell company, the spam phone number activated near the port — rearrange themselves into a complete shape in her mind.

"Vu Bach Long is Van," she said, her voice more certain than ever. "It's no longer a guess based on intuition. We have the money flow, the contact trace, and the indirect testimony from Ta Bach Son. Enough to connect the three most important pieces: the young warehouse manager in the past, the person who operates the current line, and the person who used the debt of a collector's father to control his cooperation."

"There's still one piece of the puzzle we haven't touched yet," Hai said, his voice low. "The night my teacher died."

Diem opened her eyes and looked out the glass window, where the afternoon light was fading on the rooftops of Hanoi. "I need to review Vu Bach Long's entire shift that night and compare it with the old crime scene investigation report. If Mr. Khoat still keeps the full copy, it may contain a detail that twelve years ago no one had enough clues to understand its true meaning."

Hai nodded, put the car in motion, and headed straight towards the suburbs, where Mr. Khoat was waiting, even though they had not been informed about what they had just discovered.

On the way, Diem called him, saying only briefly that they needed to review all the timekeeping records and shift schedule the night Teacher Trac's father passed away - not mentioning Van's name over the phone, a cautious habit she had learned from the last pages of her teacher's notebook.

When they arrived, Mr. Khoat had already placed another stack of documents on the table, the type of documents he had never shown to Diem during their first meeting - detailed time sheets of all employees at station No. 4, including shift start and end times, and signatures confirming each day of the month in which the incident occurred.

"I kept this to myself," he said, his voice somewhat heavy, "because I always suspected there was something unusual about this very timesheet, but could never prove it."

Diem arrived on the right day and followed the line named Vu Bach Long. The shift time must be clearly recorded and fully signed. But the shift start time, unlike every other day throughout the month, which is always recorded exactly to the minute, only contains a single, handwritten phrase: "leave early, have personal matters", no specific time, and no confirmation signature of the shift manager.

"The only night in the entire month that didn't have an exact shift start time," Diem said, her voice so soft it was almost a whisper, "was the night my teacher died."

Mr. Khoat sat down opposite, his hands trembling as he poured more tea even though neither of them really wanted to drink it. "I remember asking about the timesheet at that time, but the shift manager at that time explained that there was a small incident that night in another area of the port, causing records to be disturbed, not just Long's shift. I believed that explanation, because at that time I had no reason to doubt a young seasonal warehouse manager any more than I doubted the port's lax management system at that time."

"Do you remember the name of that shift manager?" Hai asked.

"Remember. But he also passed away, four years ago, of heart disease." Mr. Khoat sighed, his eyes distant. "It seems like every living clue in this case has disappeared over time, leaving only papers and an old woman nearly seventy years old trying to preserve her memory."

Diem placed her hand on his shoulder, a rare gesture of comfort. "You're still here, and your memory just helped us connect an important piece of the puzzle. That's no small thing."

He nodded, but his eyes were still heavy. "There's one more thing I want to tell you, even though I'm not sure if it's related or not. A few weeks after Mr. Trac's funeral, someone calling himself a reporter, asking about the case, then suddenly asking if I intended to 'reopen' the case. I answered that I had no intention, just doing my duty as a normal official. After that call, I never heard from that person again, and when I tried to look up the newspaper number again, there was no one. No newspaper would admit to having a reporter with that name working for them."

Diem and Hai looked at each other. "An exploratory call," Hai said. "See if you're a threat that needs to be dealt with."

"Maybe so," Mr. Khoat said. "And perhaps your answer, even though it was just an innocuous sentence, saved you from becoming the second victim of this case."

Diem sat quietly for a moment, looking down at the scrawled words "out early, personal business" on the yellowed timekeeping page, trying to imagine that night in the order that might have happened: Mr. Trac received a source of information, drove down to the port alone, without time to alert anyone, entering the exact corner between the two camera coverage areas - an area that she now believes was not a coincidence. And there, perhaps, he met a young warehouse manager who was working overtime, not recording the exact time off shift.

"We don't have any proof that you two actually met that night," Hai said, as if reading her thoughts. "Flawed timekeeping and a suspicious phone call are strong circumstantial evidence, but the court needs more than that to conclude anything about the cause of death twelve years ago."

"I know," Diem replied, closing the file as carefully as if she was folding up a part of her life. "But for the first time in twelve years, I no longer feel like I'm alone holding on to an unfounded suspicion. I have facts. I have someone to trust and listen to. And that, Mr. Khoat, is a start I wouldn't have dared to dream of a week ago."

Mr. Khoat looked at her, his eyes shining with a fragile ray of hope that he had hidden for more than a decade. "So what are you going to do next?"

Diem stood up, packed the documents into her bag, her eyes returned to her familiar decisive look. "Next, you need the only thing missing to turn all these pieces into a real arrest: the exact number of the container carrying the bronze drum."