At 7:18 on a Tuesday morning, Major Yên Linh was already at her desk in the offices of PC02, the Criminal Investigation Department of Cần Thơ City Police.
The department was beginning to wake around her.
Doors opened and closed along the corridor. Telephones started ringing. Somewhere nearby, a printer was struggling with a document that had probably been sent to it a few minutes earlier.
Major Yên Linh ignored the noise.
A brown file lay open on her desk.
PHONG.
She had seen the name too many times.
Phong was a young Vietnamese man who had disappeared without a body, without a confirmed destination and without a convincing explanation of what had happened to him.
The investigation had produced fragments.
A mobile phone.
A cloned SIM card.
Several conflicting accounts of his last movements.
A possible route towards the Cambodian border.
And a black Hiace-type van carrying a false Đồng Tháp registration plate.
Nothing had been enough to establish what had happened to him.
Not yet.
Major Yên Linh turned another page.
A photograph had been attached to the vehicle report.
The image was poor quality, apparently taken from a roadside camera. The van was some distance away, partly obscured by another vehicle.
Black body.
Dark windows.
A shallow dent along the right-hand side, near the rear wheel.
Major Yên Linh stopped.
She leaned closer.
There was something about the damage.
Something she had seen before.
Not in the Phong investigation.
Years earlier.
She closed the file.
For several seconds she remained still.
Then she opened the bottom drawer of her desk.
Beneath several current investigations was an older brown folder.
She knew exactly what she was looking for.
HÒA BÌNH.
The name belonged to a young Vietnamese woman who had worked as service staff at GhostO Restaurant & Bar on Nguyễn Trãi Street, near Cái Khế Bridge.
On her days off, Hòa Bình had often gone to the Mekong Restaurant, where she practised English with the expatriate regulars.
She had spoken particularly often with Juan, who had taken a protective, almost fatherly interest in her.
Then, in July 2023, Hòa Bình’s body had been found in the Rạch Cái Khế canal, close to the restaurant where she worked.
There had been no obvious explanation for how she had ended up in the water.
No one had ever been charged with her death.
Major Yên Linh had led the investigation.
The case had stayed with her.
Not because it had been the most complicated investigation of her career.
Because it had never been finished.
She opened the old file.
The first photographs brought the memory back immediately.
The canal.
The bridge.
The grey light before the city had fully awakened.
Hòa Bình’s body in the water.
Major Yên Linh turned the pages.
Witness statements.
The GhostO staff.
The regulars at the Mekong Restaurant.
Several men who had been questioned and whose movements had eventually been accounted for.
Several false leads.
And, buried among the reports, references to a black Hiace-type van seen in the area around the time of Hòa Bình’s death.
Yên Linh found the photograph.
She removed it from its plastic sleeve.
Then she placed it on the desk beside the photograph from the Phong investigation.
For several seconds she said nothing.
The two vehicles were not identical.
They could not be.
The photographs had been taken years apart and from different angles.
But the damage was there.
Right-hand side.
Near the rear wheel.
The same shallow deformation.
Yên Linh reached for a magnifying glass.
She examined the older photograph.
Then the newer one.
Her expression tightened.
“No.”
She said it quietly.
Two vehicles of the same model could have similar damage.
She knew that.
A similar dent was not evidence.
But there was something else.
The old vehicle had carried a false registration plate.
She opened Phong’s report.
The same was true there.
Different registration number.
Same province.
Đồng Tháp.
Yên Linh sat back.
She looked at the two photographs again.
Then at the dates.
Her eyes narrowed.
She checked them a second time.
Hòa Bình had been found on the 15th day of the fifth lunar month.
Phong had disappeared on the same lunar date, exactly one year later.
The coincidence had disturbed her from the beginning.
But coincidence was not evidence.
She had spent enough years in police work to know the difference.
Yên Linh reached for the telephone.
“Phúc.”
“Major?”
It was Captain Vũ Minh Phúc, head of Field Investigations for PC02.
“I need the complete vehicle history from the Hòa Bình investigation.”
A short pause.
“The Hiace?”
“The Hiace.”
“I’ll get it.”
“And the original photographs. Not the copies.”
“Understood.”
She put the phone down.
For a moment, Major Yên Linh looked at the two files.
Hòa Bình had died in 2023.
Phong had disappeared in 2024.
Two separate investigations.
Two different victims.
Two different years.
Or, more accurately, two cases for which no convincing explanation had ever been established.
Yên Linh opened the Hòa Bình file again.
Near the back was the report concerning telephone evidence.
She remembered it immediately.
Cloned SIM cards.
Disposable numbers.
Telephone activity that had disappeared as quickly as it had appeared.
At the time, the evidence had suggested deliberate attempts to conceal movements and identities.
Lieutenant Nguyễn Hoài Nam had found that the same technique had appeared in the Phong investigation.
Different numbers.
Different devices.
But the same basic method.
Yên Linh picked up a pen.
She wrote three words on a sheet of paper:
Vehicle. SIM. Date.
She stared at them.
Then added:
Cambodian border.
That was the point where the two cases had always seemed to diverge.
Hòa Bình had been found in Cần Thơ.
Phong had disappeared on a route leading towards Cambodia.
There was no proven connection between the two.
Only suspicion.
Only fragments.
Only the same uncomfortable shadow that had followed both investigations.
The memory brought back another piece of the Hòa Bình investigation.
The anonymous poem.
It had been found during the case, printed on cheap paper in ordinary black ink. No fingerprints. No name. No explanation of who had written it or why.
Major Yên Linh still remembered the opening lines:
In Cần Thơ’s serene embrace, a tale unfolds,
By the bridge where Cái Khế and Ninh Kiều meet,
A young soul named Hòa Bình, beauty untold,
Sought refuge from life’s burdens, bitter and deep.
She had read those lines many times.
At the time, they had seemed almost sentimental. A strange poem about a young woman whose body had been found in the canal near Cái Khế Bridge.
But the poem had contained other names.
Among them were several foreign regulars from the Mekong Restaurant.
And Juan.
That was where the case had acquired one of its strangest unanswered questions.
During his interview, Juan had quietly repeated part of the poem.
A line that had never been released to the public.
Lieutenant Lê Thị Hạnh had noticed it immediately.
How could he have known?
They had never found an answer.
Yên Linh looked down at the old file.
Since Hòa Bình’s death, the poem had remained an unexplained piece of evidence from a case that had gone nowhere.
Now, with Phong’s disappearance, the old words seemed to have acquired a different weight.
Not an explanation.
Not yet.
But perhaps another clue.
A knock came at the door.
Captain Phúc entered carrying a thin folder and a larger envelope.
“I found the original vehicle report.”
He placed them on her desk.
Major Yên Linh opened the envelope.
The original photographs were inside.
She spread them across the desk.
Captain Phúc looked at the two images.
Then at her.
“You think they’re the same vehicle?”
“I don’t know.”
“The damage is similar.”
“Very.”
He studied the older photograph.
“The plate?”
“False.”
“And the Phong vehicle?”
“False.”
Captain Phúc frowned.
“Could be coincidence.”
“Yes.”
Major Yên Linh looked at him.
“But how many coincidences do you need before you stop calling them coincidences?”
Captain Phúc did not answer.
She returned to the photographs.
“Check every sighting of this vehicle from the Hòa Bình investigation.”
“I’ll start with Cần Thơ.”
“Start everywhere.”
Captain Phúc nodded.
“Understood.”
He turned towards the door.
“Phúc.”
He stopped.
“Don’t enter it as a connection yet.”
He understood immediately.
“No conclusion until we have something solid.”
“Exactly.”
He left.
Major Yên Linh remained alone.
She looked at the sheet of paper.
Vehicle. SIM. Date. Cambodian border.
The words sat there like pieces of a puzzle that had no right to belong together.
She added one more.
Juan.
Then she stopped.
She did not underline it.
She did not circle it.
She simply left it there.
The telephone on her desk rang.
Yên Linh answered.
“Major Yên.”
It was Lieutenant Nguyễn Hoài Nam.
“Major, I’ve checked the preliminary digital records.”
“What did you find?”
“The SIM information from Phong’s case isn’t identical to the Hòa Bình file.”
Major Yên Linh waited.
“But?”
“There are similarities in the way the numbers were activated and abandoned.”
“Technical similarities?”
“Yes.”
“Enough to establish a connection?”
“No.”
She almost smiled.
The same answer again.
Not enough.
“Send me everything.”
“I will.”
“Nam.”
“Yes, Major?”
“Go back to the Hòa Bình records.”
A pause.
“Look for anything that was dismissed as technical noise.”
“Understood.”
She ended the call.
The room seemed quieter now.
Major Yên Linh looked at the two photographs.
A dead woman.
A missing man.
Three years between the first case and the present investigation.
Two false Đồng Tháp plates.
Two cloned-SIM trails.
One vehicle with a distinctive dent.
And the same lunar date.
None of it proved anything.
But together, the fragments had become difficult to ignore.
She picked up her pen.
At the top of a fresh page, she wrote:
HÒA BÌNH — PHONG
Below it, she drew a single line connecting the two names.
She stared at it for a long moment.
Then, beneath the line, she wrote:
NOT YET A LINK.
She put down the pen.
Outside, PC02 was fully awake now.
Phones rang.
Officers moved quickly through the corridors.
Somewhere, Captain Vũ Minh Phúc was already making calls.
Lieutenant Nguyễn Hoài Nam was going back through old digital records.
And somewhere in the files of an investigation that had been considered finished, there were photographs, reports and statements that had been waiting for someone to look at them differently.
Yên Linh closed the Phong file.
She did not return it to the drawer.
The Hòa Bình file remained on her desk.
For the first time in two years, she was looking at both cases together.
The first crack had appeared.
Now she had to find out how deep it went.