He half-turned his head to look at her.
‘You’re a feng shui expert?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Oh.’
Joyce took this as an insult. ‘What do you mean, “Oh”?’
‘Nothin’.’
‘I’m probably the youngest feng shui expert in town. And our consultancy gets the most exciting cases, too. That’s because we specialise in crime scenes. We’ve done murders,’ she said, deliberately using the word without dramatic emphasis, as if it was a term she had to use constantly. Murders, ho hum.
This time he stopped walking, freezing so abruptly that she bumped into him.
‘Murders? Well, if you’re an expert in scenes of crime, you shouldn’t be doing the headmaster’s quarters. You should be doing room 208A.’
He looked hard at her. She assumed he was sizing her up, trying to decide whether she was telling the truth. Then his head tilted to one side, as if he was thinking about something. He snorted but said nothing.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘Nothing.’
He started walking again, turning suddenly to sprint up a staircase.
Joyce followed with difficulty, her bag getting heavier by the minute. Why did schools always have so many staircases and so few elevators?
When she reached the top, she saw that Eric Chan had slowed down, and was again throwing curious glances her way. ‘So does this feng shui stuff really work?’
‘Course it does. Otherwise the police wouldn’t use it, would they?’
‘Police use it?’
‘Yeah. I know loads of officers. I work with them. I know their first names, like. Some of them. Inspector Gilbert Tan for example, who I know as Gilbert, and, oh, loads of others . . .’
‘Oh.’
‘So what happened in room 208A?’
‘Nothin’.’
‘Don’t tell me then. I don’t care. Schools are such boring places. Nothing interesting ever happens in school. I am sooo glad I’m out there in the real world with a real job. Real life is way more interesting. This is like living in a bubble. I pity people like you, stuck here . . .’
Inflamed by the challenge implicit in her words, he sneered at her: ‘Huh. There’s a lot of real life in here. You’d be surprised.’
‘Like . . . ?’
He stopped in his tracks and turned to face her squarely. ‘Like this, for starters. One of our students got so pissed off with her teacher that she picked her up and threw her out of the window.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. That interesting enough for you?’
‘Geez. Violent school, is it?’
The boy considered the question. ‘Not really. Just sometimes things blow up. You know how it is. That’s where it happened.’
He pointed down a corridor to one of a string of doors.
Joyce slowly nodded. So that must be room 208A.
He turned and started walking again. Minutes later, t hey turned a right angle and he pointed to another staircase. ‘The headmaster’s flat is up there. Students aren’t allowed up those stairs. There’s a bell. Just press it when you get to the door.’
He turned to go, but she put her hand on his arm to stop him.
‘Hang on a minute.’
‘What?’
‘Why have I been called to feng shui the headmaster’s place if someone’s been murdered or something in that classroom?’
‘The teacher wasn’t murdered. Just broke her neck.’
Joyce wasn’t sure how to reply to this. ‘That’s bad enough. But was the headmaster involved?’
‘No. I don’t know why you’re doing his place. Ask him I guess. Gotta go.’ He raced off.
Lawrence Angwyn Waldo was a tall, charismatic man. He was old, but handsome in a craggy, wrinkly, Clint Eastwood style. He shook Joyce’s hand firmly and invited her in as soon as she had announced who she was. If he was surprised or disappointed that she wasn’t the usual elderly male Chinese brand of feng shui practitioner, he didn’t show it.
‘Come in, come in. What can I do to help you?’ His voice was low but crisp, and his accent was refined in a southern-United States kind of way. Something about the precision with which he spoke made her stumble clumsily in her speech.
‘Er, nothing thanks! I just need like a little space you know—a table?’ Without Wong, she felt out of her depth.
‘Will this do?’ He pointed to a large, hardwood dining table on one side of a spacious, elegantly decorated apartment. ‘Can I get you a drink?’
‘No thanks, a bit early for me, ha ha!’ She was immediately annoyed with herself. Why had she said that? Made it sound as if she thought he was trying to get her drunk. And that stupid laugh. Why on earth did she do it all the time?
‘Cup of tea? Coffee? Juice? Water? Milk?’
‘No, thanks, ha ha,’ she said, and then regretted it. A drink provided you with something to do with your hands during the first awkward few minutes of meeting someone. Also, had she agreed to a drink, he would have gone off to the kitchen and allowed her to get settled and comfortable with herself.
Having missed that opportunity, she did the usual polite thing of looking around the apartment and making admiring noises. ‘Wow. Nice flat!’ One of the advantages of being in the feng shui business was that you could be nosey about someone’s apartment without coming across as rude. ‘Pretty cool!’ In fact, the apartment was decorated in a way that she would have described to people her own age as Standard Boring Adult.
‘What information can I get you?’ Lawrence Waldo asked.
‘Er, nothing really! Well, I need to know when you were born and stuff. If you don’t mind, that is, ha ha.’
‘When was I born? Having just met you, I would say: several decades too late. Ah, but such is life. We move on and others move in and there is never any time for regrets.’
She smiled and laughed, although she hadn’t understood what he’d said. He wrote down his birthday and place of birth on a piece of paper and handed it to her. ‘There you go. As you can see, I am very, very old indeed.’
‘Yeah!’ said Joyce. ‘Wow, you really are! Thanks. Ha ha.’ She took the piece of paper. Her smile remained frozen to her face, although she realised that she had said the wrong thing. She knew she should have said: ‘You’re not old,’ or, ‘Goodness me, you weren’t really born in 1953?’ or, ‘Gosh, you’re so well-preserved, what’s your secret?’ She wondered if it was too late to come out with such a comment, and then decided that it was. Why was small talk with some people so difficult? ‘It’s a great flat!’ she said, trying to compensate. ‘Now I gotta get my stuff out!’ She buried her hands in her handbag, looking for her lo pan.
One-and-a-half hours later, Joyce had finished her preliminary readings of the principal’s flat. It was a medium-sized apartment and there were no unusual influences in it except for a small west-facing extension (good for enhancing income) and a southern balcony with unpleasantly knife-shaped railings (bad for incoming ch’i linked to fame and passion).
Her mobile phone rang. CF Wong called to say that he had arrived at school and was on his way up to the flat.
Lawrence Waldo, who had disappeared into his office in the main school building for most of the intervening period, returned to the flat. ‘Tea break?’ he asked. ‘Nearly done?’
‘Yes, just about! My boss Mr Wong should be here in a min —’
The doorbell rang.
‘That’ll be him, ha ha.’
‘Right on cue. You must be psychic,’ the head teacher said, and took two steps with his long legs from the middle of the living room to the front door. He opened it to let the feng shui master into the apartment.
‘I am Mr —’
‘Mr Wong. Ms McQuinnie’s boss. Yes. She told me.’
The geomancer entered the room looking a bit worried. ‘Everything is okay? Ms McQuinnie do good job, I hope? Not hurt your fish or anything?’
Waldo, looking slightly baffled at this query, tried to
put him at his ease. ‘Ms McQuinnie has been very efficient. She has produced vast numbers of sheets of paper covered with notes, which she will no doubt interpret for me when she is ready. Unless that is your role, of course.’
‘Ah. Good.’
Joyce was determined to keep control of the assignment for as long as possible. ‘This is all very straightforward,’ she said. ‘It’s a neat place.’
‘Nothing bad, then?’ Waldo asked.
‘Well . . .’ Joyce looked deeply concerned and slowly sucked her breath in.
The principal became concerned. ‘Is there something bad?’
She picked up her charts and pretended to examine them closely. ‘I can’t see any major shars in here, I’m glad to say. But I feel some negative energy coming from outside. From the school block over there. From the direction of . . . It’s hard to say.’
She stepped out onto his balcony and Waldo followed.
Wong stayed in the room, wondering what Joyce was up to.
The young woman closed her eyes and advanced one hand in classic mystic style. She reached out in the general direction of the block to their left. ‘I feel a lot of negative energy coming from that direction. From the area of the second floor. Maybe kinda over there . . . room . . . two-zero-something or thereabouts sort of thing, you know.’
Wong decided that his assistant had gone mad. ‘Er, Joyce maybe I take over and —’
The head teacher interrupted. ‘That’s interesting. We have had some very specific problems with room 208A just a few days ago. What sort of feeling do you get from there?’
‘I’m not sure, but it’s very negative. A bad feeling. As if there was some violence there recently?’
The principal sat down. ‘I’m very impressed. We managed to keep it very quiet, kept it out of the press and so on. Did someone from school tell you about it? Be honest.’
‘It’s amazing what feng shui can tell you,’ said Joyce, not wanting to tell a direct lie.
The full story came out over the next twelve minutes.
Lawrence Waldo began by telling them at great length about what a wonderfully well-managed and happy school he ran. Then he revealed that ‘in a rare—very rare—instance of school violence’, a student attacked a teacher last week. ‘It was awful. She was not a big girl, but she was sturdy. She somehow managed to pick up the teacher—who was also not a big person—and pushed her out of the window. Poor Ms Ling.’
‘Aiyeeah!’ said Wong. ‘Teacher killed? What floor?’
‘Thankfully not,’ said Waldo. ‘The classroom was on the second floor. She fell only three or four metres. But she was hurt, quite badly. Unfortunately.’
‘I felt there was some violence coming from that direction,’ said Joyce, who was enjoying her role as a mystic seer. ‘Like someone breaking their neck or something like that.’
‘She may or may not have broken her neck,’ said Waldo. ‘Hopefully not. But she landed on her head and was paralysed. Had to be taken away on a stretcher. Very traumatic for all of us. Doctors are not sure if she will ever be able to walk again. Fortunately for her, there were some old PE mats piled up against the wall in that quarter of the playground, and she partly landed on one. If it hadn’t been for that, she could easily have died.’
Joyce turned to look at her employer and saw that he was tense and excited. His skinny chest was stuck out and his eyes were bright. She knew that look—it was the expression of a feng shui master who has suddenly discovered a factor that could dramatically increase his earnings for a site visit.
‘So you like us to do that room too?’ he asked casually. ‘Fee for today’s work already covered. But that room—that sort of investigation a little bit more expensive, but I can give you good price.’
The principal, who was sitting in an old, shiny Chesterfield armchair, linked his fingers together and leaned forward, leaning his forearms over his long legs. ‘Mmm. I don’t know. We’ve occasionally had feng shui people look at the living areas and the general design of the school, but never in relation to a specific incident like that. Do you think it would do any good? We’re not expecting any copycat crimes or anything.’
Wong nodded. ‘Of course. If there has been a big problem like attempted murder or something, maybe is something seriously wrong in that room. Must be dealt with.’
The head teacher wrung his hands, indecision apparent in his brow. ‘Maybe I should get you guys to look in there. What harm could it do?’
‘Give you special discount. Thirty per cent.’
‘Okay.’ Having come to a decision, the head teacher sat up straight, smiled and gave a damn-the-cost wave with his arm. ‘Fine. Do it. Send us an invoice. The classroom has not been in use since the, er, incident, so you can do it whenever you want.’
‘We start now. Why not? Is it okay?’
‘Done.’
Lawrence Waldo rose to his feet, and his two guests followed him up as if there were strings tying their heads to his. ‘Thanks.’ He held out a huge hand.
Room 208 was a far bigger classroom than anything Joyce remembered from her past. In place of the rows of ink-stained school desks and cheap plastic chairs, there were seats made out of metal tubes, with individual, gently sloped writing surfaces built into them. In place of a blackboard was a white screen. A video projector hung from a pole in the ceiling in the middle of the room, a complex, robotic-looking device that appeared to her to be a prop out of Star Wars.
At the back of the room was a plastic concertina wall that opened up to reveal an extra working area, which they discovered was designated 208A. They learned that the classrooms were designed so that there was a ‘shared area’ between each pair of rooms. Most teachers referred to it as the art space, since it was used for activities that didn’t need standard chairs. The shared space contained a row of easels, a potter’s wheel, a computer and scanner, and a chest of drawers full of art equipment.
Wong saw that the room faced west and had several obviously negative factors—a painting of a burial mask hung on one wall, a full-length plastic skeleton stood at the back of the room, and a papier mâché sculpture of a sword hung from the ceiling.
Joyce sat and helped him for a while, but she found herself strangely affected by the sounds of the school. When bells rang, or running feet clumped down a corridor, or there were shouts from the playground, she found herself becoming emotional and unable to concentrate. Again, she could feel her heart thudding in her chest, and wondered if it was doing what she had read was called ‘palpitations’.
The worst moment was when a group of children started singing in the room below them. She recognised the song as something she had sung herself, in junior school. What was it called? Morning Has Broken.
After the two of them spent an hour working in 208A, a bell rang and the sound of steps in the corridor became thunderous and continuous. It was lunch break. Young people started hooting and jeering and laughing and shrieking. She heard a girl’s voice cackle. She heard strident male voices shouting.
Hormones raging, Joyce felt herself simultaneously repulsed by and drawn to the playground beneath them. She eventually decided to slip out of the classroom and wander around the school.
She trotted down the stairs, took a deep breath, and stepped into the throng. She felt as if she stuck out a mile, but nobody noticed her. Again she found herself casting her eyes around to see if the right sort of guys were looking at her. She found no likely candidates. All way too young. Babies. She decided that there must be a separate area for older students to take their break. After all, in theory, there must be some students who were the same age as she was, or even older. In Singapore, schools often had young people aged nineteen or twenty, who still wore school uniform.
A little more aimless wandering led her to another playground adjacent to the sports field. There she found several groups of older teenagers, some of whom looked to be her age. Off to one side was a low building with plate-glass windows, through which she could see lanky youth
s lying around, some doing bits of homework, others reading pop magazines. She strolled over and pushed the door open.
No one looked up as she entered. She suddenly felt desperately alone—the scene powerfully reminded her of her own school days. Her father’s constant travelling meant that she had always seemed to be the new girl, the one who didn’t belong to any of the cliques, the person wandering around with no one to talk to.
Finding herself embarrassingly tearful, she marched quickly to the edge of the upper playground, where she could stay sheltered by a wall and observe the teenagers move from cluster to cluster.
A few metres away, she noticed one shadow-eyed, dark-haired girl of about fifteen leaning against a wall by herself. She was holding a book and pretending to read, but her eyes were looking into the middle distance over the top of the book at nothing in particular. Joyce immediately recognised a younger version of herself. She wondered whether to go over and talk to her, but what would she say? Don’t worry, it’s all right to be a total loser when you’re that age. Some of us are just bad at making friends. I was just like that and look at me now. I gotta office and a desk and stuff and I actually get paid . . .
There was an explosion of laughter from a group on her left near a water fountain. She turned and spotted a familiar face. Eric Chan was leaning against a wire fence, entertaining a mixed group of friends with some stories. She waited till he finished talking.
‘Yo, Eric?’ she called out, a little too quietly. She repeated it more loudly. ‘Eric?’
He looked over and smiled. The young man made brief excuses to the people to whom he was talking, and languidly strolled over to where she stood. ‘Hi, feng shui master—or is it mistress? How’s old Waldo’s flat?’
‘Fine,’ she said. She felt absurdly grateful to him for being there. And she was also thankful that he had given her information she had used to impress the head teacher—but of course she couldn’t say that. ‘We’re doing room 208A too, now. That’s serious business. Criminal charges and all that. Maybe attempted murder.’
The Feng Shui Detective's Casebook Page 17
