The first thing Amina asked him was whether he was recording the call.
“No.”
“Good. Ask before you do.”
She was sitting outside a low building with a faded noticeboard behind her. The connection blurred whenever someone walked between her and the doorway. Yanchuan had arranged his own desk carefully, then felt foolish when she glanced at something off screen and said she had twenty minutes.
“I’m sorry to trouble you.”
“You aren’t troubling me. You are using my lunch break. Those are different things.”
He showed her the two report headers. She recognized the test date and asked him to enlarge the revision field rather than the graph.
“This copy says final.”
“Was it?”
“When I left that evening, there were outstanding items. I signed the attendance sheet. I did not sign acceptance.”
He leaned forward. “Did my brother?”
“Not while I was there.”
“Was he frightened?”
Amina looked away from the screen. A truck reversed somewhere nearby, its warning sound cutting across the call.
“He was asking questions. He was tired. He wanted a copy of a record I couldn’t release myself. I cannot tell you what he felt.”
Yanchuan had prepared a page of questions about Yansheng’s last movements. He now saw how many of them asked her to supply the meaning he needed.
“What happened with the record?”
“I requested authorization. It wasn’t granted before he left.”
“Left the site?”
“Left the office where we were talking. I finished my shift later. Don’t make those the same.”
He corrected the line on his page.
Amina took a drink from a metal bottle. Behind her, a woman in work boots crossed the yard and raised a hand. Amina answered her in another language, then returned to him.
“Your brother wasn’t the first person to question that test,” she said. “A technician did. Before the demonstration.”
“Who?”
“I need his permission before I give you a name. He was injured later that month. His family is dealing with it.”
The room around Yanchuan seemed to contract. “Injured during the test?”
“I didn’t say that.”
He stopped himself. She had not said it. He had connected two events because the connection was terrible and useful.
“Is he getting help?”
“Some. Not everything he needs.”
He asked whether he could contribute to the costs. Her expression changed, though he could not tell how.
“Speak to the family through someone they trust, if they agree. Help isn’t the price of a statement.”
He felt his face grow hot. “I didn’t mean that.”
“Then don’t arrange it that way by accident.”
For a while she described the site without giving him a map to places he had no right to enter. A logistics yard. Cold storage. Equipment supplied through several contractors. People moved between employers more easily than obligations did. When something failed, a worker could spend weeks discovering which company’s form would allow him to be injured.
Yanchuan listened. He had imagined his brother alone in a hostile place. Now there were other people in the picture, each with a bus to catch and someone waiting at home.
“Why are you helping?” he asked.
“Because a man is missing. Because an unfinished test has become a finished report. And because I still work in the world that report describes.”
Her phone sounded an alarm. She silenced it.
“I can ask for permission to share the test extract. If it comes, you get only what it covers. Not passwords. Not access to the site network.”
“Understood.”
“Also, if you come here, you don’t arrive and ask me to leave my work without notice.”
“Send me a time that works.”
She did: a Saturday morning, at a café near the bus stop. By then he expected his travel arrangements to be complete. She gave him the address, then asked for An’s contact details so the family would not depend on him alone.
After the call, he sent An his notes. She added Amina to the correspondence with her agreement. The next message was addressed to both of them.
Please correct the summary, Amina wrote. One signature was absent from the version I saw. I do not know whether it was absent from the original.
Yanchuan corrected it. Then he read the whole page again, looking for the places where his brother had crowded everyone else out.