‘Okay, I will. You see, the Chairman’s, er, latest, er, wife, comes up with a new idea. She says they were stolen by mystical means. Black magic. Wacky stuff. Anyway, the amazing thing is that the Chairman takes it seriously. So He says He will sort it out by Himself. The next thing we know was half an hour ago, when the Chairman’s secretary calls me to tell me that some feng shui masters are on their way. They’re going to solve the problem for us. That’s you guys. So go on then. You better get started.’
Wong was worried. He slowly shook his head. ‘Finding stolen cars is job for police, not for us.’ He was concerned that the outrageous fees he was planning to charge would become contingent on the cars being recovered—and finding stolen property was much harder than simply doing a reading of a car park.
Puk seemed to read his mind. He said: ‘We’re not expecting you to find the cars, I think. I think the Chairman is just covering His, er, just anxious to cover all possibilities. You just need to make sure that no more cars are stolen. If anyone tries to drive one out, I’ll stop them. But if anyone tries to take one out through, er, mystical means, that’s your job—to prevent it, I mean. To make sure that mystical means cannot be used to steal cars in the future? See what I mean?’
Wong felt reassured. His income, in that case, might be safe.
The heavy security guard rose awkwardly to his feet, signifying that their briefing was over. ‘Come,’ he said. ‘We’ll give you the tour.’
The four of them walked up the ramps that took the cars between the various levels. Puk explained that there was a staircase they could use, but they would get a better feel of the place by using the vehicle access routes.
It was immediately apparent that the garage was a hot and unpleasant place. There was no cooling system, although there were extractor vents that took some of the fumes out of the air. The place smelled of cars and gasoline, and you couldn’t spend five minutes there without feeling damp and uncomfortable.
As they slogged their way up the slopes, Wu gave them a run-down of how the garage worked. The three levels had different functions. The ground floor was used for the cars Nevis Au Yeung used most often—four or five luxury sedans, a stretch limo, a couple of sports utility vehicles and a few two-seater sports cars. The middle floor and half the upper floor were used for cars belonging to other members of his family, plus the staff cars and minivans. The rear half of the upper floor housed the tycoon’s collection of classic cars. On the east side of each floor, there was a cluster of rooms. The small ones on the ground floor were the car park management offices. The tiny, windowless ones on the middle floor were used for storage. And the large, sticking-out ones on the third floor were staff quarters for Allie Ng, the night guard, who was the only employee who lived on the site.
Wong wrote everything down in a notebook, and asked several questions about the flow of cars through the building.
Wu, surprised and thrilled to find someone interested in car park architecture, spoke at length about construction details, boasting about how the building had been completed in a record fifteen weeks. ‘When you build a car park, you start off with some basic questions. Do you want two-way flow or one-way flow?’
The feng shui man nodded. ‘Same with ch’i. Flow very important.’
‘People assume that straight lines, quick in and out, is the best. But in fact, that would result in the vehicles moving too fast. Quite dangerous. So we actually deliberately build in a few twists and turns to slow people down.’
‘Movement of ch’i energy just the same. Must flow, but not too fast. Just the same.’
‘How interesting. Another issue is the angle of the actual car park lots. There has been a big fashion for angled spaces, but as you can see, I’ve opted for ninety-degree spaces in this car park. I find that angled spaces confuse drivers, and if you go for a one-way flow, you can’t risk that. Someone drives the wrong way around a one-way system and—crash!’ He clapped his hands together for effect. The sound echoed in the hard-surfaced space.
Warming to his subject, Wu spoke in detail about the particular challenges of accommodating his employer’s car collection. ‘In the old days, car parks were for junior architects. Every slot was 2.4 metres by 4.8 metres. A monkey could do it. But these days . . .’ He shook his head sadly. ‘You wouldn’t believe how complicated it can be. The traditional luxury car, like a 230 Mercedes-Benz, would just about fit into a standard slot. But now His children keep buying these fancy four-wheel drive cars—you know what I mean?— which are almost two metres wide. Stick two of them next to each other and neither can open their doors. And the Chairman bought a Jaguar XJ8 last year. It’s even wider than an SUV and has a turning circle of 11.5 metres. That means a major change in the way we design the ramp entry points.’
‘Flow at corners very important,’ Wong agreed.
‘Two-way flow systems achieve more turnover, but turnover was not my prime interest with this particular project. My dream was to achieve the most flexible car park possible within the limitations set.’ Wu’s eyes filled with passion as he spoke.
Joyce watched the two men with wide eyes. She found it astonishing that people could possibly become so enthusiastic about anything as boring as a car park.
Fortunately for her, an exhaustive tour didn’t take long. On the ground floor and the middle one, there was not much to see—after all, a car park was a car park. But then they reached the top floor, and could feel both Puk and Wu start to become tense.
‘And here we have His pride and joy,’ said Puk. ‘The classic collection and the vintage collection.’
Before them were more than a dozen cars which looked like they had come straight out of a museum. There were boxy vehicles on thin, spindly wheels from the beginning of the 20th century. There were curved, gangsterish cars from the 1930s. And there were over-sized, angular sedans that evoked America in the 1950s.
‘Phoo! These are sooo cool,’ the young woman said.
‘Yeah. And wait till you see the last one,’ said Harris Wu. ‘It’s fabulous. It was built before 1920. A royal blue Alfa Romeo 24. Gorgeous.’ He pointed to an enclosed area with a heavy metal shutter lowered over the entrance—a garage within a garage. ‘It’s in there. I’m sure the Curdy boys won’t mind. It’s a dust-free climate-controlled area. Probably the most hi-tech garage in Singapore.’
Security guard Puk held up his hand. ‘No. The Alfa 24 is a very valuable car. We keep a record of every time that door is open and closed. We can’t just open and close it when we feel like, just to show visitors. I think —’
Wu threw up his fingers in surrender. ‘Hey. I’m cool. You can see it another time. Perhaps when the Curdys are finished for the day.’
The dispute, although trivial, somehow raised the level of tension in the group. The thread of the conversation broken, the sound of the birds outside and the scraping of the cicadas suddenly seemed curiously loud.
Joyce decided to break the awkward silence. ‘These ancient cars are like so amazing. I mean, do they like actually work? Does old Nevis, I mean, your chairman-geezer, drive around in them?’
Wu thought about this. ‘Well . . . yes, they do work, but, no, He doesn’t drive around in them. He used to. Usually what happens is that He gets one, and He’s very excited, and drives around in it for a day or so, and then He puts it in here and more or less forgets about it. Then He goes off on his travels, and gets busy with other stuff.’
‘What a waste.’
‘Yeah. But when He’s in town, or has guests, He likes to come up here and look at the cars. He strokes their hoods. He talks to them. They’re nice to have. And they’re an investment. They accumulate value. The cars in this building are worth almost as much as a decent-sized skyscraper.’
Wong was prowling around the floor. ‘What are in those rooms?’ He pointed to the doors on the east side of the building.
‘Those doors lead to the stairs, and those lead to staff accommodation,’ said Puk. ‘On the second floor, we have some rooms—we ke
ep junk in there. There’s a laundry room with spare uniforms and stuff, and a storage area where we keep car parts and that sort of thing.’
‘I need somewhere to work,’ said Wong. The feng shui master had subcontracted his afternoon appointment and those of the following days to a fellow practitioner named Sum, so that he could concentrate on Nevis Au Yeung’s garage for as long as needed. ‘I need a room to work from, small table, two chairs, good light.’
Puk looked dismayed. ‘There are no rooms with decent light in this building. There are just the cubby holes we use for offices downstairs . . . I know—you can use the table in Allie’s flat. We play mahjong on it sometimes.’
He led them over to a door that appeared to have been badly painted with leftover grey primer. Puk hammered on it. After two minutes, a thin, small man in striped pyjamas appeared. ‘Morning, Puk,’ Allie Ng said, his voice thick with sleep. ‘Or afternoon, is it?’
‘These are feng shui people,’ Puk said. ‘They’re going to use your table for their work for a couple of days, can or not?’
‘Yah, sure, no problem,’ said Ng. His nostrils suddenly whitened, and it was clear that he was trying to suppress a yawn. ‘’Scuse me,’ he said to the visitors, putting his hand to his mouth. ‘I’m a shift worker.’
‘Poor you,’ said Joyce. ‘What hours do you work?’
‘I’m on from six in the night to six in the morning six days a week.’
‘That’s terrible,’ she exclaimed. ‘Is that allowed? That’s— er—let me see—seventy-two hours a week. Don’t you have unions and stuff?’
‘I don’t mind,’ said Allie Ng, yawning again. ‘Especially in a difficult situation like now, with the cars disappearing.’ He put his arm on his colleague’s shoulder. ‘We are in this together. We are brothers.’
Puk turned to Wong. ‘Allie and I are in this together. The Chairman said that if one more car gets stolen, we’re both going to lose our jobs.’
‘Why don’t we let the poor guy go to bed?’ Joyce said.
The diminutive night guard ushered Wong and McQuinnie into the three-room flat. His wife Suma had gone out to the playgroup with their child, so the living room was empty. A small table about a metre square was cleared of plates and toddler playthings for them to work on. Then he went back to his bed.
Wong began the long process of examining the floor plans and mapping the directions of the influences. He started by making notes on the structure with the help of Harris Wu. The garage was well designed, with a total floor area of 4,500 square metres on four floors, including the roof. It had two hundred and forty vehicle spaces, plus the large enclosed workshop for the Alfa 24, staff accommodation, and some small offices on the ground floor. It was steel framed with a façade of mesh panels, architectural bracing and insulated cladding. The floors were pre-cast concrete, covered with a watertight membrane. The roof deck was covered with mastic asphalt.
The geomancer thanked Wu for his help, and the architect bowed once and left the room.
Looking at the floor plan, Wong noted with approval that Wu had cleverly managed to minimise the use of columns— not only were these irritating to drivers, but they sometimes chopped up the flow of ch’i into awkwardly small tributaries.
The structure was basically very simple—each floor was a rectangle of just over 1,000 square metres, with parts of the east and north sides closed off for other purposes. There was a 40-square-metre set of rooms used for offices on the ground floor, 25 square metres of storage rooms on the second level,and 42 square metres of space used for staff accommodation on the top floor. Wong calculated that the flat in which he was sitting was a thin rectangle, having a frontage of about 12.5 metres and a depth of about four metres. The living space in which he sat was four metres wide, and contained a kitchenette. The main bedroom next to it was also four metres wide, part of which had been hived off to form the unit’s only bathroom. Then there was a small room about one-and-a-half metres wide, which housed the baby’s cot.
Wong smiled as he noticed that Allie Ng’s flat was facing due south. It wasn’t an ideal location, but it was better than Nevis Au Yeung’s accommodation, which faced northeast, precisely the wrong direction for a tycoon born in the year of the rat, 1940.
Joyce, quickly bored, made a token effort at helping her employer, and then went for a walk. Allie Ng’s flat was airless and filled with the rank odour of sleep-breath and the sour milk smell of babies.
At first, she had no idea what to do. They were stuck in a car park for the entire day—perhaps for two days or more. There were no shops, no people, no coffee bars. Why on earth did no one have the idea of putting CD shops or boutiques into car parks? To her, that would be such an obvious thing to do, and what was really needed to brighten up the place. Perhaps she should suggest it to the tycoon? He might be really grateful to her for the idea.
She wandered around aimlessly for a while, not knowing what to do with herself. Then an idea came into her head. Suddenly she knew exactly what she was going to do—sneak a peek at that rare car that Harris had talked of.
She looked behind her guiltily as she turned a corner towards the back of the third floor—and walked straight into Harris Wu.
‘Oh. Sorry.’
‘No harm done,’ said the architect. ‘Where are you off to? Can I help you?’
‘I was just—I was just wandering around a bit, you know, getting a feel for the place.’ She gave an involuntary glance at the shuttered workshop.
He smiled at her, a grin that said he knew exactly what she was doing. ‘You want to have a look at the Alfa 24? It’s really quite something.’
‘Can I? Will we get into trouble? Have you got the key?’
‘Come.’
As they walked towards the enclosed area, he patted his pocket. ‘There’s no key. The only way you can open it from the outside is with a dedicated remote control device. The front door works like a shutter, but it’s four times as thick — I designed and installed it myself. Impossible to break through.’ He pulled a pair of small metal devices out of his jacket. They looked like miniaturised television remotes.
She expected them to go to the shuttered front, but when they reached the walled-in area, Wu beckoned to her to move past the door and round to one side. ‘The Curdy boys are doing some work in there today. Replacing something on the dash. They’re very temperamental about being disturbed. The air in that room is kept at a certain temperature and all that. Let’s just have a look through the window.’
He led her around the side of the enclosed area where there was a window, about two metres long, set into the wall. Peering in, she saw that everything was a bright orange-yellow colour, as if at the bottom of a sea of artificial fruit juice. She saw a slightly blurred image of Dick Curdy sitting in a car which looked as if it was a century old.
‘Why is everything orange?’
Wu said, ‘The Curdys installed a yellow filter to protect the paintwork against fading. The Chairman looks after this car better than He looks after His children or His staff, if you ask me. Don’t tell anyone I said that. The inside of this particular garage has its own climate control station—cost more than fifteen thousand dollars.’
‘Sing?’
‘US.’
‘Geez.’
She peered through the glass again. As her eyes got used to the scene inside the orange sea, she could locate both men. Dick Curdy was adjusting the left side headlamp, while younger brother Petey was in the passenger seat, with his arm half-buried in a hole in the dashboard. Petey turned and saw her looking at him. He gave her a smile and a wink.
Joyce was astonished. Cheeky! She decided not to respond. But somehow her face had its own ideas. Before she could stop herself, her mouth opened to reveal a bright, toothy smile, and her right eye winked back.
Petey lasciviously licked his lips with the tip of his tongue and then puckered them in her direction.
Joyce, shocked, again decided that she wouldn’t react. But still her fe
atures appeared to be in a state of mutiny. She heard herself laugh, and her lips drew themselves together and blew him a kiss back.
Amazed at herself, she blushed painfully and raised her hand to cover her mouth. Her face was burning. She hoped that her red cheeks wouldn’t show through the tinted window. Why on earth had she done that? And in front of a witness, too! She thanked Wu and fled to the safety of the room in which her boss was working.
The following day, Wong arrived at the car park early in the morning. It was a hot, glaring morning, and the building was baking when, a little after 9:45, he was handed a written message from Alyn Puk. It had been faxed to the security guard’s office from Winnie Lim. ‘Friend of Joyce came yesterday afternoon to try to fix stain on wall with stain remover,’ it said. ‘He made it worse. Now big red splodge on wall. Splodge is shape of cow.’
‘Aiyeeah.’ Things in his office were going from bad to worse.
Meanwhile, Joyce McQuinnie arrived at work at 10:30 am in a state of acute embarrassment at her exchange the previous afternoon with Petey Curdy. She found it hard to even think of yesterday’s encounter without blushing. Yet at the same time, she could think of nothing else. It was so strange. She had barely swapped two words with the guy in her whole life—and he had blown her a kiss. Was he saying that he had fallen madly in love with her? Or was he just teasing her? And what on earth had she been thinking of, blowing him a kiss back?
She spent the rest of the morning carefully avoiding the sealed workshop, walking long distances around it when she went out to take measurements, and using the stairs at the north end of the building when she needed to change floors.
But as noon approached, Joyce started to question whether she was taking the right approach. She tried to visualise what her older sister—a spectacularly successful tormentor of the male sex—would do in such a situation. Melanie certainly wouldn’t skulk around in a state of abject embarrassment.
Joyce asked herself why she should feel cowed. She was a single adult, and so, presumably, was Petey. There was absolutely no reason at all to be ashamed about a mildly flirtatious exchange. The truth was, Petey might well be very attracted to her. She was an attractive young woman, after all. Her dad always called her ‘Beauty’ and ‘Princess’. You couldn’t blame men for fancying a young woman like her. It was biology.
The Feng Shui Detective's Casebook Page 10
