The Feng Shui Detective's Casebook

by Nury Vittachi

  ‘Yeah,’ Eric said, taking a piece of chewing gum out of his mouth. ‘Everyone in the playground’s gossiping about what happened. But they managed to keep it out of the papers. Old Waldo sent a letter home to the parents saying that a “small localised incident of violence by a student against a teacher had occurred” or something like that.’ He mocked the head teacher by speaking in an absurdly deep voice, over-enunciating all the consonants.

  ‘Neat. You’re good at taking off Mr—Old Waldo.’

  ‘Waldo was really pompous at assembly: “The matter is in police hands and it will do no good to the school community for anyone to gossip about it or inform the media.”’

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘No one’s seen her for days. She’s been charged by the police.’

  ‘No. I meant the teacher. I heard she’s been paralysed.’

  ‘Yeah. It’s pretty serious. Probably will never walk again, they say.’

  ‘What actually happened?’

  ‘You really wanna know?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Hang on a minute. I’ll get an actual witness for you.’

  Eric called over to a small group of young people. ‘Bug. Bug. Bug! Come here. I want you to meet someone.’

  A girl with acne on her large forehead and a shiny nose propping up large, round red-rimmed glasses joined them. She eyed Joyce suspiciously.

  ‘Edna was in the class,’ Eric explained. ‘She saw everything. This is . . . ?’

  ‘Joyce.’

  ‘Joyce is like investigating what happened. In Ms Ling’s room, you know?’

  ‘Police?’ Edna’s voice was low and suspicious.

  ‘Nah,’ said Joyce. ‘I’m a feng shui expert. We’re just checking out the bad vibes, make sure the classroom is okay for when you guys are allowed back into it. That’s all.’

  ‘Oh.’ Edna still looked uncomfortable.

  Eric said: ‘Can you tell her what happened?’

  ‘What does she want to know?’

  Edna directed all her comments at Eric. Joyce desperately wanted the girl to be on her side. ‘I heard the headmaster—Old Waldo’s version. It would be really neat to have your version.’

  Edna looked down at her feet. ‘Okay. Well it was simple. We’re in room 208. At the back of the room is the art area. It’s another big space, and we open the sliding doors if we want to make the classroom bigger. But Ms Ling also uses it as a detention area. If anyone is behaving really badly, she makes them go and sit in the art space and shuts the sliding wall thing on them.’

  ‘Like a prison?’

  ‘Yeah, I suppose.’

  ‘So what happened on Monday?’

  ‘Ms Ling said that Sasha was being cheeky. Sasha was being a bit cheeky, but not that bad really. Anyway, Ms Ling is in a bad mood, all nervous and fidgety. Eventually she marches across the room, grabs Sasha by the shoulder and marches her into the art room.’

  ‘Putting her in detention?’

  ‘Don’t know really. Just taking her back there to give her a good talking to, I think.’

  ‘Did she shut the door?’

  ‘Yeah. She takes Sasha into the art space and pulls the sliding door shut. Only it doesn’t really shut. We’re all just sitting there, a bit quiet, you know stunned by what a bad temper Ms Ling was in.’ Edna paused.

  ‘And then . . . ?’ Joyce prompted.

  ‘And then Sasha really lost it. She grabbed Ms Ling and threw her out the window.’

  ‘The window of the art space?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘How did you see this, if the sliding doors were shut?’

  ‘They weren’t really shut. Not fully. We could see them struggling. Ms Ling suddenly goes: “No, no, put me down!” The two of them fight and they end up near the window. Then she throws her out the window.’

  ‘You saw it?’

  ‘Not from where I was. But I heard it. I heard a scream and a thud.’

  ‘That was the sound of Ms Ling’s body hitting the playground?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Did anyone actually see it?’

  Edna picked her nose thoughtfully. ‘Yeah. Simone Waldo. She was sitting right by the crack where the sliding wall was open. She saw everything.’

  Joyce turned to Eric. ‘Is Simone Waldo —?’

  ‘Yeah. The head’s daughter. Simone,’ he bellowed.

  A tall, thin girl with bleached-blond hair and a bad complexion turned to look at him from the other side of the playground. ‘What?’

  He beckoned with a short, sharp movement of his head.

  She slowly walked over to join them, looking curiously at Joyce.

  ‘She’s a kind of investigator,’ Eric explained. ‘Your dad booked her. She wants to know what you saw. In Ms Ling’s room, that day.’

  Simone smiled and inflated her flat chest. Clearly she was enjoying her moment of fame. ‘Yeah, I saw everything. Absolutely everything. It was like sooo traumatic. I gotta go to a psychiatrist. The school’s paying. I might be traumatised for life, they say.’ She was thrilled at the prospect.

  ‘Tell me in your own words,’ said Joyce, recalling a phrase that she had heard television detectives use.

  ‘Well,’ said Simone. ‘Old Ling takes Sasha Briggs to the art space. They start fighting. Sasha goes crazy. She’s a bit mental. That’s what they say. She picks up the teacher and pushes her over to the window. Then she heaves her up to the windowsill. Old Ling screams. But Sasha refuses to let go. Sasha pushes her out of the window. She’s got this crazy look in her eyes. She’s actually mad. That’s what they say.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Then Sasha comes out, all distraught. Then she runs through the classroom and runs out, crying.’

  ‘Did she say anything?’

  ‘Sasha?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Simone thought about this for a moment. ‘I don’t think so. I don’t remember.’

  ‘Did she say anything while they were fighting?’

  ‘Yeah, she was calling Ms Ling names, “You’re bloody crazy” and things like that.’

  Edna agreed. ‘I heard that too.’

  Joyce said: ‘Then what happened?’

  Simone continued: ‘We were all shocked. Somebody went and called another teacher. We all had to wait there. And then the police arrived and interviewed us all individually. It was horrible. We thought Ms Ling was dead. She wasn’t moving. Just lying on the playground with her head at a funny angle.’

  Joyce thanked Simone and Edna for their help. Time to sit down and make some notes.

  She started to walk away and was pleased to see Eric accompanying her. Actually, he wasn’t that bad looking, if you didn’t look at the acne on his forehead. It would clear up one day . . .

  ‘Who’s that?’ she asked, pointing discreetly at the girl standing by the wall.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That girl by herself.’

  ‘Oh, Becky. That’s Rebecca Smiley.’

  ‘Her name doesn’t suit her.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Never has done. She’s always been a bit of a loner. She used to hang out with Sasha Briggs a bit. Now Sasha’s been expelled, she’s got no friends.’

  They walked along in silence for a while. Joyce decided to keep Rebecca Smiley as the topic of conversation. It was a safe subject, and would show how compassionate she was. ‘I feel kinda sorry for her. I was really shy when I was at school.’

  ‘Yeah. I’m shy myself.’

  ‘Rubbish!’

  ‘No, really. I used to be, anyway. When I was like fifteen.’

  ‘That was only like a couple of years ago, probably, am I right?’

  ‘Two and a half, please.’

  She laughed at his nitpicking, and then abruptly stopped laughing. Mustn’t be too friendly. This boy was maybe a year younger than she was. A whole year. He was a child. A boy. A baby. She was a working woman with an office—well, a desk, anyway.

  ‘What are you going to
do now?’ Eric said.

  ‘Find a quiet spot and like write down what those girls said while it’s still fresh. And you?’

  ‘Thought I might get something from the canteen.’ He paused, apparently working up the courage to ask her something. ‘Have you . . . ? I mean, have you, like, had lunch or anything? Would you like to . . . ?’

  She was impressed that a seventeen-year-old schoolboy would invite her—a real eighteen-year-old executive working woman with a real job—to lunch. ‘I might. Anything good at the canteen?’

  ‘No. It’s all crap.’

  They both laughed again.

  Oops, thought Wong. We did the wrong room. The principal’s home was straightforward and unremarkable in feng shui terms, but the man’s office was a whole different story. How on earth could he work in a room like this? This was the place that was really in need of urgent examination and adjustment.

  The geomancer had gone to visit Lawrence Angwyn Waldo to give a preliminary report on their findings about room 208A. Joyce McQuinnie had disappeared without trace.

  The head teacher’s office was filled with mementoes of visits to other countries. There were spears and shields from Irian Jaya, an antique musket of some sort, probably from the United States, and some sort of curious bamboo thing with ropes and a sharpened end. Wong couldn’t work out whether it was a musical instrument or a weapon. He decided, after staring at it for some minutes, that it might be a headhunter’s tool from northern Borneo. The entire room was full of spiked or pointed objects, most of which were associated with violence.

  The room was terribly cluttered, suggesting that the user was not a clear thinker, and the piles of papers on the filing cabinet indicated that it was not a productive working environment. Some drastic changes were needed. If he were doing this room, first, he would . . .

  His thoughts were interrupted as the door swung open and Lawrence Waldo stepped in. He swung nimbly into his large, leather chair. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting. Departmental staff meeting. Bane of my life. Never mind. Where’s the young lady?’

  ‘Er, not sure. Maybe she is having long lunch break.’

  Waldo pressed a button on his intercom. ‘Amanda, Mr Wong’s assistant has gone AWOL. Can you ask the usual suspects if they’ve seen her? And then get her sent to my room?’

  The secretary’s voice came out of the speaker: ‘I think she’s in the student canteen. I saw her going in with one of the sixth-formers.’

  ‘No problem,’ said Waldo. ‘I’ll get her myself.’ He leapt out of his chair and trotted out of the room, moving remarkably quickly for someone so large.

  To pass the time, Wong mentally rearranged the room. First, he would throw out all the junk—every last bit of paper and decoration. Then he would move the furniture so that the principal was sitting in the northeast of the room, facing east. The ch’i energy of the northeast would motivate the man to get his life in order, and the freshness of the eastern energy would inspire him to make a new beginning. The telephone should be moved to the southeast, to enhance communication. The objects of violence would be reordered so they could keep out negative influences.

  Less than four minutes later, the principal returned, gently pushing Joyce along with a hand in the small of her back.

  ‘The wanderer has been found,’ the head teacher said.

  Joyce had a big-eyed, surprised look on her face, but was silent.

  Again, Waldo threw himself into his seat, and then asked curiously: ‘So tell me. What do we have to do? Do we need to install a magic goldfish or something in 208A?’

  ‘Magic goldfish?’

  ‘No, I’m joking. I shouldn’t be flip about all this. It’s a serious matter. Tell me, do I need to do something to minimise the effects of that ghastly event last week?’

  ‘There are some strange things about this incident,’ said Wong. ‘First: the four pillars of destiny for Ms Ling and Ms Briggs are both negative for that day.’

  ‘That’s not strange, surely? Both of them suffered very negative outcomes from what happened that day.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the geomancer. ‘But not so straightforward as that. There’s a shar by the window of room 208A.’

  Joyce, suddenly coming to life, decided to insert a footnote at this point. ‘A shar is an area of bad fortune. Like I pointed out when I was in your flat?’

  Waldo nodded. ‘It seems rather obvious that the window did prove to be a point of bad fortune for Ms Ling on that day.’

  ‘But the shar is a shar of two. And that is the negative number for Ms Briggs, not Ms Ling. The shar for Ms Ling is at the other side of the room.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ said the head teacher. ‘What are you getting at?’

  Wong shook his head. ‘I don’t know. Conclusion is very strange. But I think each of the two women—it is like each one has the birthday of the other one.’

  ‘What? I’m not following this.’

  ‘I think maybe the two birthdays got mixed up in the files,’ the feng shui master said.

  Waldo smiled. ‘That is the conclusion you came to? Very odd. Well, I’ll ask Amanda to check. That’s my secretary. Sometimes the files do get mixed up, although we keep teachers’ records and pupils’ records separately, so I don’t see how that could have happened.’

  ‘I explain it in detail,’ the geomancer said.

  Waldo looked less than excited at the thought, although he said nothing.

  ‘Following the flying stars school of feng shui, I made these charts.’ Wong pulled out two sheets of paper covered with lines, arrows and tiny Chinese characters. ‘Number one, indicating blood, located in west. We also find number six in same square, indicating head. Blood and head. In west of room 208A, where window is. We also have a two, which means someone is not well. Two is shar of sickness.’

  The principal peered down his long nose at the unintelligible scribbles. ‘If that’s really what that chart says, it seems to have got the fate of Ms Ling down pretty accurately.’

  ‘Yes. But this is not chart for Ms Ling. This is chart for Ms Briggs.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Wong warmed to his theme. ‘Numbers on birth charts give us a lot of information. Number seven, metal, indicates a young girl. Also associates with eyes. But number nine, fire, links to eyes. Now if we look at this chart —’

  Lawrence Waldo looked at his watch. ‘That’s fascinating, Mr Wong. I hope you get to the heart of it. I’m running late this morning, and I do have a lunch appointment with the chairman of the school trustees board, so I am going to have to run. Anything else I can help you with?’

  ‘No,’ said Wong. ‘I will do some more work in 208A in the afternoon.’

  ‘Fine. I hope you’ll . . .’ The head teacher began to say something in a more serious tone, but then his voice trailed off.

  ‘Yes?’

  The man stood up and placed his knuckles on the desk. He spoke with gravitas. ‘I hope you’ll help me get things back to the way they were. I am very fond of both Sasha Briggs and Alma Ling, and value them both as members of this school community. Ideally, I would like to turn the clock back to where it had been at the beginning of last week. But if that cannot be done, I need above all to make sure that this school continues its unblemished record as a school of peerless standards. Do you understand? The school comes first. The greater good of the majority . . . That’s what’s at stake, here.’

  Both visitors nodded.

  Waldo shook hands with them and rushed off to his meeting.

  Wong turned to Joyce. ‘You okay? You very quiet just now.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she replied. ‘I was just thinking . . .’

  He rose to his feet and picked up his case.

  ‘You know, CF . . . When Mr Waldo came to get me just now?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘He came to the canteen where I was sitting talking to a guy, and then he escorted me up the stairs and over to here. The odd thing is . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Wel
l, just as we turned the corner to come in here, he patted my bottom.’

  ‘Oh.’ Wong wasn’t sure how to react to this. He knew that sexual harassment was considered a serious offence these days, but there was no way he would allow a complaint by Joyce to get in the way of a deal with a paying customer. He spoke tentatively. ‘You want to complain or something?’

  ‘No,’ said Joyce. ‘It wasn’t a big deal. But it just made me think. I mean, he comes across as such a good man. But that’s not what you expect a headmaster to do, is it? Pat a girl’s bottom?’

  Wong was relieved that she wasn’t taking it seriously. ‘You’re right. Now I go back to 208A.’

  ‘I’m going back to the playground.’

  ‘You’re Rebecca Smiley, aren’t you? Can I call you Becky?’

  ‘Go away.’

  ‘I only want to —’

  ‘I said, go away.’

  Joyce suppressed a sigh. What could she say to make Rebecca understand that she was not the enemy? She had gone back to the playground to find that the former friend of Sasha Briggs had disappeared from her wallflower spot in the upper school playground.

  But it hadn’t taken Joyce long to find her. Having been a loner herself, it was easy for her to scan the school playgrounds and see the natural places to which someone with a lack of social skills would gravitate. There was a small seated area to the left of the main playground, where some quiet kids were reading books. There were also some benches in front of the school tuck shop. And there was a small alley with a park bench behind the bike sheds. It was in the last of these that she found Becky Smiley, sitting alone with her book.

  ‘You don’t have to talk to me. But do you mind if I talk to you? There are things about this thing with Sasha Briggs that have me kinda worried.’

  ‘I’m not listening.’

  ‘I’m not a policewoman. Really, I’m not. Do I look like a policewoman?’

  ‘I don’t care.’

  Looking away, Joyce mused out loud: ‘Hey: You know what this whole awful situation reminds me of?’

  Becky didn’t move.

  Joyce continued: ‘Track three of That Guy’s Belly’s third CD.’