Chapter 2 — The One Who Counts Bridges

The Infrastructure Department's email arrived at 7:12 a.m., with the subject line "Unifying information before working with the press." Linh An read it in the fish noodle shop opposite the cooperative, amid the sound of the ladle hitting the bottom of the pot and the sound of motorbikes exploding on the sidewalk.

The email requested all units not to speak about the death of engineer Le Quoc Thinh, not to use unconfirmed field data, and not to arbitrarily copy project records. The last line states that Thinh's account has been locked to "preserve data for investigation".

Linh An closed the phone. The shop owner put down the bowl and asked if she wanted more rolls. She shook her head, realizing she had read the email three times without touching her chopsticks.

At the cooperative, Ms. Diem, the server in charge, was wiping a coffee cup with a striped towel. “Did you see the notification?”

"See. I need to open the data copy Thinh used."

"Impossible."

“I didn't ask for the password.”

"No need to ask. Your rights have been limited since this morning."

Diem rotated the screen to show her the list of permissions. Bridge data layer, previously Linh An could download historical version, now only view mode. Thinh's account disappeared completely. Not labeled "locked", but removed from the user list.

“The key is to have a name,” Linh An said.

“I know.”

“Who deleted it?”

"The server records the administrator account. The person sitting at the server is not necessarily the person who clicked."

Diem said that sentence so softly that there was almost no sound. She worked in network infrastructure for the cooperative for ten years, rarely letting her emotions touch the answers. Today she lightly tapped her index finger on the table, a habit Linh An only sees when there is a data loss incident.

“Did you see this memory card in my phone last night?” Linh An asked.

Diem looked at the anti-static bag but did not reach out to receive it. “Where did you get it?”

“There is someone delivering at the Old Ben Bridge.”

“Have you opened it yet?”

"Okay, the device is offline. There is sound."

“Is there a virus?”

"I don't see it. But there is a part of my mother's voice."

Diem looked up. Linh An tells about the coordinates file, photo of counting marks and the man's saying. She listened without interrupting, only when Linh An mentioned the sound of the cassette player did she pull the screen back.

“I need to give this card to the police.”

“If I give it right away, I won't have any copies left.”

“That's why the record has to be made.”

“What if the person who gave it to you was expecting you to check something else?”

Diem exhaled. “An, you're turning an unknown object into a reason to break the process.”

"What process? The process that just deleted a dead man's account before his family received his belongings?"

The sentence came out stronger than intended. Diem turned to face the window. The cooperative is located in a row of old houses, overlooking the corrugated iron roof of the material market. On the opposite wall is a map of the Moc River pinned with colored nails. Linh An counts according to habit: seven intersections are highlighted in green, one is a dashed line, there is no bridge connecting to the mudflats.

“I didn't tell you to ignore it,” Diem said. “I told you not to turn yourself into evidence.”

An hour later, Linh An arrived at Thinh's apartment in the Hoang Lam apartment complex. The building has twelve floors, the management board placed a plastic table in the lobby to record the names of people entering and leaving. Thinh's wife, Phuong, sat behind the desk with sleepless eyes. She said the police took her computer, phone and some notebooks. The remainder will be handed over after the minutes are issued.

“Did Mr. Thinh mention me?” Linh An asked.

Phuong looked at her. “He said you are the only person at the cooperative who is still willing to look at satellite images with the naked eye.”

“Does he know I will inventory the Old Ben Bridge?”

"I know. Two days ago he called me and asked me what your working hours were. I thought he wanted to ask you something."

“Did he say he was afraid of anyone?”

Phuong pulled the edge of the tablecloth, her fingers digging into a frayed spot. "He didn't say he was scared. He just said if anyone asks about the map, don't give him the yellow paper copy."

“Which paper?”

"I do not know."

On the lobby wall there is a notice board with pieces of paper stuck on top of each other. A lock repair advertisement covers most of the old notice. Linh An gently removed the corner of the paper. Below is the residents' meeting schedule about the plan to dismantle a walkway next to the bridge. Proposal signer: Cau Moc Joint Venture. The meeting date coincided with the day Thinh sent the recording to someone.

Phuong saw her looking. "He didn't like that project. Not because it was a new bridge. He said the preparation documents forced everyone to look at the new bridge, so as not to see the old water line."

“Do you know where the old water line is?”

"He used to draw on paper. But before yesterday, he burned one."

"Why?"

Phuong was silent longer. “He said the paper was not safe.”

Linh An asked permission to use the bathroom, but she turned into the hallway behind the lobby, where the electrical cabinet was located. On the cement floor there is a trail of dry mud, the edge of the trail forming a semi-circle shape. She bent down to take a picture. An access card lies at the foot of the cabinet, on the back is written in pencil: “B09 — count again from the bottom.”

When she turned around, Phuong was on the phone. She nodded, then told Linh An that the police needed her to sign to confirm that she had visited. She signed, but before returning the pen, asked who the caller was.

“Infrastructure Department,” Phuong replied. “They asked Mr. Thinh if he left any documents for her.”

“How do you answer?”

“I said I don't know.”

“Do you know who else they asked?”

“I don't want to know.”

Linh An understands. People often think that silence is a void, but in apartment buildings like this, silence is a way to add an extra lock.

At noon, she picked Khai up at a pump repair workshop behind the wholesale market. He was using a rubber hammer to tap on a rusty joint, each beat evenly and lightly. The workshop smelled of hot rubber, diesel and wet wood.

“I used to work with Thinh,” Linh An said.

“Sit in two meetings.”

“He asked about the number in the appendix.”

"Asked more than once. Then removed from the scene."

“Because of the quality of work?”

Khai wiped his hands. “Because of the quality of the questions.”

He opened the drawer and took out an old color photo. In the photo, six people stand under a bridge girder, behind the words "additional survey of Bridge Number Seven". Thinh stands on the left edge, younger than now and pointing to a dark space under the abutment. Next to him is a man with gray hair and a faded safety vest.

“Mr. Bay Nhuan,” Khai said. "Old maintenance team. People often mark bridges."

“Is he still working?”

"No longer accepts official work. He fixes lights, replaces chains, whoever calls, he goes. There is a book that counts bridge spans, but no one knows what standards he records."

“I want to meet him.”

“He doesn't meet strangers.”

"I'm not a stranger. I'm Nguyen Van Hoa's daughter."

The rubber hammer slipped from Khai's hand and fell to the floor. He didn't ask how she knew he had met his father.

“You probably want to mention that name under the bridge huh?”

“My father's name is already in the collapse records. I want to know if Mr. Bay remembers anything else.”

Khai pulled the workshop door halfway down, causing the noon sunlight to be divided into lines. “There is no data manipulation.”

“You know?”

“I was on his team that day.”

“So why was my father blamed?”

“Because he was the last person to sign the measure. And because the last person to sign is always easier to put on record than the first person to give orders.”

Linh An heard that sentence from her mother, from neighbors and from people who did not remember her father's name clearly. But Khai spoke as if describing a cracked beam: no scolding, no pity, just determining the location of the break.

“Did he save the original?”

“There is a copy.”

"Where?"

Khai pointed towards the river. “If there is, it will be in a place where no one will consider it a record.”

That afternoon, Linh An returned to the cooperative and used an offline computer to open the coordinates table on the memory card. The points are not the positions of the ten bridges, but small dots on their undersides: manhole covers, chain locks, technical compartments, lamp bases. When connecting the points in order, they form a zigzag line along the Moc River, ending at the market under Bridge Number Seven.

In the corner of the table there is a column "total number of actual spans". B09 records 10. B07 records 12. B03 records 8. There is no signature, but the numbers are recorded in the same format: two digits, a dash, a triangle symbol.

Linh An took the measuring tape on the screen. If the points are placed to guide the way, the final path does not go to Mr. Bay's house. It went to Mrs. Van's restaurant, right under the Old Ben Bridge.

She called her mother. The bell rang four times before she heard it.

“Do you know Uncle Bay Nhuan?”

"Know."

“Did he ever give the papers to you?”

On the other end of the line, the sound of dishes clashing was heard. “What are you asking?”

“I asked about the bridge.”

“Every bridge is a bridge. Don't think that if you count just one more beat, the truth will naturally appear."

“Mom just said the exact words of the person on the tape.”

Silence lasted for a long time. Linh An heard her mother breathing very softly.

“What do you hear?”

“A meeting. There was a voice of someone calling me An.”

“Not your father.”

“Who do you know?”

“Go home.”

“Mom answers first.”

“Not on the phone.”

The call ended. The screen shows 12 hours and 38 minutes. Linh An sat looking at the coordinate column for a while longer and then saved three copies to a removable hard drive. She did not send the file to anyone. Also don't delete it.

When leaving the cooperative, Ms. Diem was standing at the door, holding a copy of the report.

“The Infrastructure Department wants you to hand over all the crime scene photos from yesterday.”

“What reason did they say?”

“Data warehouse standardization.”

“Do you give them?”

“I'll give you a time-stamped copy. Do not give original files.”

Linh An looked at her sister, feeling for the first time that day that she was not alone. But underneath that feeling was a cold streak running down her spine: Thinh's account had been deleted, the historical map was locked, and people from the Infrastructure Department knew about the photos before she even reported them.

On the way home, she received a text message from an unnamed number.

“Don't look for Mr. Bay. People who count prayers don't count living people."

Linh An stopped the car at a red light and reread the message twice. In the distance, on Bridge Number Seven, a figure was using black paint to add another stroke under the railing.

She didn't know if it was a warning or an invitation. But when the light turned green, she turned toward the bridge instead of home.