The Feng Shui Detective

by Nury Vittachi

  The homicide investigator, a detective by the name of Gilbert Kwa, found Madam Fu difficult to deal with. She was illogical, confused and constantly contradicted herself. Wong found himself increasingly called upon to interpret what she said.

  Kwa quickly started using Wong as a go-between to speak for, or get information out of, Madam Fu-a role to which the geomancer did not object, since his usual curiosity in such cases was piqued.

  Later that day, the officer asked Wong to visit the police station. He asked him about the history of objects being dumped in the old woman’s garden. Wong explained that it appeared to be a symptom of the geography of the area. ‘It looks like a rubbish dump. So people put rubbish there.’

  ‘A body is not rubbish.’

  ‘True. Confucius said how to treat a dead body was a conundrum. You treat it like a dead thing. People say you have no heart. You treat it like he-she still a live person. People say you have no brain. Cannot win. Confucius in the Li Chi-’

  ‘We discuss Confucius another day, okay?’

  ‘Okay. Are you soon fingering a suspect?’

  ‘This is Singapore. We do not do such things.’

  ‘No. This is colloquial English phrase. Means finding the miscreant.’

  ‘Oh. I see. Well, already we got him,’ said Kwa.

  ‘Wah. So soon? Very good.’

  The officer explained the full story. The dead man was Carlton Semek, an Indonesian businessman who had moved to Singapore four years ago. His business partners had put him in the taxi on the corner of Tanglin Road after a meeting the night before his body was found.

  His colleagues, a Singaporean named Emma Esther Sin and an American named Jeffrey Alabama Coles, said he was fine at the time they last saw him, except for having had a few drinks-not a huge amount, but perhaps three glasses of wine, which was enough to make him slightly tipsy. They put him into a taxi and waved goodbye. Both of them recalled that the taxi driver was an Indian-looking gentleman of indeterminate age. ‘He had black hair and a moustache,’ Emma Sin had said.

  ‘That narrowed it down to a shortlist of tens of thousands,’ Kwa said.

  Fortunately, another part of the police team had been watching traffic and other security videos in the area, and came out with a number of vehicles which were in Katong and the Meyer Road area at the right time-including three taxis.

  The drivers had been traced, and one appeared to fit the bill. Ms Sin and Mr Coles separately picked out the same photograph. The suspect’s log book showed a pick-up at the corner of Tanglin Road and Orchard Road at almost exactly the time when the murdered man’s colleagues said they put him into a taxi. The taxi driver was questioned by one of Mr Kwa’s colleagues and quickly confessed to dumping the body of the businessman over the wall of Mrs Fu’s house.

  It sounded like a straightforward case. ‘Man gets in taxi alive,’ said Wong. ‘Man leaves taxi dead. Taxi driver killed him, right? Finish already.’

  ‘Ye-es,’ said the detective, and Wong heard the discomfort in his voice. ‘But not finished. It’s the details I need to wrap up. Contents of the man’s bag are gone. Money, yes, but also other stuff, scientific stuff he had on him. What did Motani-that’s the driver-do with that? How come got no murder weapon? We turned Motani’s flat upside down. Found nothing. Still long way to go before I close the book.’

  ‘Why so hurry?’

  ‘I like to get these things sorted out while a case is hot.’ He suddenly let his tense shoulders fall to a more comfortable position. ‘Also I’m supposed to be going on a golfing holiday, to Genting Highlands, at the weekend. Need to wrap up fast.’ He smiled.

  ‘Understand.’

  ‘My colleague Superintendent Tan tells me I should let you speak to the man. I’m inclined to do that. What do you think, Sifu?’

  Wong knew this was as near as Gilbert Kwa would get to a direct plea for help, so he agreed to have an interview with the driver, a 27-year-old man named Nanda Motani, who had been working in the taxi business for a year.

  ‘I didn’t do it, I tell you I didn’t do it,’ said Motani with a pathetic note of pleading in his cracked and hoarse voice, even before Wong had sat down.

  The feng shui man carefully changed the angle of his seat before lowering himself slowly into it. ‘Mr Motani, I do not say that you did anything. My name is C F Wong. I am consultant. I want to know the real truth. Please to tell me exactly what happened. Start from when you saw Mr Semek. Finish when you left him. Go slowly-lah.’

  ‘I didn’t kill him,’ said the driver. ‘He was dead already when I looked back.’

  ‘Please to tell me the full story,’ Wong said, trying to be reassuring but firm.

  The man scratched his hairy cheeks, sighed, and then began. ‘So many times I have said this already. I turned into Orchard Road about 10.30, maybe a bit earlier, maybe a bit later. I saw these three on the street corner. They had come out of a bar. I could tell. The man in the middle was leaning against the woman, who was laughing loudly. The other man, the tall foreigner, was holding on to the man in the centre. I think they had all been drinking. They waved to me and I stopped. Technically it is not allowed to stop there. That I know. And if you want to arrest me and charge me for that, I will plead guilty. I will plead guilty a hundred times for that, just do not charge me with this… with this thing I did not do.’

  ‘Please continue. You stopped the car. And then…?’

  ‘I stopped the car. The tall foreigner put the bags in and helped his friend in-the drunker one, while the woman was outside. Then he told me the address.’

  ‘Who told you the address?’

  ‘The tall one, the American one. “Katong, East Coast Road, near the Red House,” he said.’

  ‘Red House? Ah, you mean the old Katong bread shop?’

  ‘Yes, you know, the bakery. The drunk one was slumped a bit and the American reached into the car and sort of like patted him. “Bye, old buddy.” Something like that, he said. I did a U-turn into someone’s driveway-and if you want to arrest me and punish me for that, you can, please-and then I went down Orchard Road -’

  ‘East.’

  ‘Yes, east, you know, then down Stamford Road, Raffles Avenue, across the bridge. Then I took a wrong turn somewhere. I don’t know that side so well. I stopped, asked another driver which way. He told me, and I got to the Katong very fast, just only a few minutes later.’

  ‘Passenger say anything or not?’

  ‘No, he was too drunk. He repeated the address. I think I asked him something, made conversation, you know, I’m a very friendly guy, nice guy, I say something about Katong being a nice place to live, but he didn’t answer.’

  ‘He say anything?’

  ‘He sang a bit.’

  ‘What did he sing?’

  ‘I don’t know music, I have no time for music. I only know Tamil movie songs. He sang one of those old Western pop songs, you know, something about America or something, I don’t know.’

  ‘And then what happened?’

  ‘Nothing. Nothing at all. I just drove him, in the dark, to East Coast Road. I turn left into the road and I heard a noise behind. I looked in the mirror, couldn’t see him. I stopped, and saw that he had folded up, fallen over, partly into the foot well, partly on the seat. I drove on.’

  ‘Why you drive on? Did he not look sick?’

  ‘I tell you, Mr Policeman…’

  ‘I am not a policeman.’

  ‘I tell you, kind sir, when you are a taxi driver and you work the late shift, you many, many times take home people who fall asleep or who get drunk and unconscious. This is not unusual. You just take them home and when you get to their address you wake them up. This happens many times, ask any Singapore taxi driver.’

  ‘Okay. Then you came to his address?’

  ‘Correct. That’s when I tried to wake him. Anything I said, it didn’t work. I reached over and shook him. It didn’t wake him. He felt funny, loose. Then I got out of the car and went to the back to take him
out of the car, leave him on his doorstep. I’ve done that before. But that’s when I saw the stain on the coat. I thought he had been sick. But it was black.’

  ‘It was blood?’

  ‘Yes, I guess it was blood, but it looked black in the dark night. There was not much light there. When I realised he was sick or dead, well, I nearly screamed. I didn’t know what to do. I just wanted to get him out of the car, but what could I do? It felt like there were a hundred windows all round, all looking at me. I couldn’t take the body out, in front of the windows. I thought about calling the police, but no one had had anything to do with this man except me. I thought the police might think I was… I was the killer. Which I wasn’t. I wasn’t, I wasn’t, I wasn’t. I tell you he was dead when I looked back.’

  ‘Then you did what?’

  ‘I closed his door, got back into my seat, and drove as fast as I could.’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Don’t know. Just drove. Eventually, I found myself out in Meyer Road area, you know? I went down a dark lane near there, around the corner, and threw the body over a little wall. Also his bags. Briefcase and heavy bag.’

  ‘Did you open?’

  ‘No. Didn’t touch. Only touched outside of bags, to carry them.’

  ‘And after?’

  ‘Then I took the car back home, cleaned, cleaned, cleaned it all night. I cleaned it and then repeated cleaning it and then did it again. I finished cleaning it at 6 a.m. in the morning and then went to sleep, slept for only a couple of hours. I was too scared to go back to work, so just sat at home, staring at the wall. I did that, for, I don’t know how many hours. I did that until the police knocked at my door. They brought me here. I have been here ever since. That’s all I know. Please believe me. Please, I ask you, beg you.’

  ‘I believe you,’ Wong found himself saying. ‘But must ask some questions. Car windows open or not?’

  ‘No, the windows were shut. I have air-conditioning. Don’t want to waste. Keep the cold in, you know?’

  ‘You hear Mr Semek open window? Hear any sound like him opening window or door or anything?’

  ‘I think no. I wish I could say something different because it would indicate that someone came in and killed him, which is what I believe happened. But I am a good Hindu man, Mr Policeman, and I do not tell lies, so I say I did not hear anyone opening any windows or doors, because that is the truth. Please, please, I hope you-’

  ‘Okay, finish-lah,’ said Wong.

  The geomancer sat in the police canteen with a cup of green tea, studying copies of the paperwork of the case. Joyce arrived, carrying his books of astrological charts. He told her the details of the case, to see whether she would ask the right questions. ‘Weird,’ she said. ‘Who killed the guy if the driver didn’t? what happened on the journey that we don’t know about? The key is: what effect did the guy’s death have, right? Any inheritance or anything?’

  Wong nodded. Correct question. It was one he had asked Kwa earlier that day. Semek had an ex-wife in Indonesia, and some children at college somewhere who would inherit his money-but no relatives in Singapore or Malaysia. The inheritance was not large, and as far as the police knew, there was no life insurance. As for business deals, Semek, Sin and Coles had just signed a development deal for a technical product. Something to do with ore analysis for use in mining in Kelimantan. Semek was a scientist, on the technical side of the deal, with Coles and Sin handling the business side, respectively being specialists in financing and marketing functions. The partners, who were badly shaken by the murder, had agreed to freeze the deal until after the funeral, when everyone involved would meet again and restructure it.

  ‘Like, anything interesting on the body of the dead guy?’

  ‘What is interesting is what was not on the body. He was carrying two bags when he got into taxi. One small briefcase. But also one big bag. Doctor-type bag. This contained rock samples, machine bits, foreign currency.’

  ‘And that’s gone?’

  ‘Not gone. The bag was still there. With the other one. Both in Madam Fu’s garden. But big bag was full of bricks. Like from building site.’

  ‘Ah, the switcheroo.’

  ‘Switch…?’

  ‘It’s kind of a law in American movies. Old ones. You had to have a switcheroo. One bag with valuable stuff and another bag which looks the same, only has junk in it. The bag gets switched. They still have it sometimes. Dumb and Dumber.’

  ‘Yes. American movies dumber and dumber.’

  ‘So who took it? The driver, right?’

  ‘Maybe. Or if he stopped somewhere… Maybe there is something he is not telling us.’

  ‘What about the other bag?’

  ‘Full of usual businessman stuff, you know. Here’s the list.’

  Joyce examined the sheet. Semek’s briefcase contained a huge number of pieces of paper, mostly technical documents to do with soil and rock analysis, the remnants of a doughnut in a paper bag, a Michael Crichton novel, a copy of Penthouse and a bag of peanuts from a SilkAir flight.

  In his pockets the police had found a Finnish mobile phone, a local laundry ticket stamped with the word PAID, a bank ATM stub from a machine in Orchard Road, a dictaphone and a spare tape.

  ‘Did they play the tape?’

  ‘Yes,’ Wong told her. ‘Were two tapes. One had business letters on it. The other one had him singing.’

  ‘Singing?’

  ‘He liked singing. One tape starts with part of a business letter, Kwa says. Changes to him singing ‘ New York, New York ’. He was karaoke singer, understand or not?’

  ‘Yeuucchh. Yeah, I know karaoke. Where people murder songs in public.’

  ‘Don’t like? Dead man liked karaoke. Ms Sin said he often went to karaoke clubs.’

  ‘Any messages on the phone?’

  ‘None.’

  The young woman picked up the list of personal possessions and suddenly whistled. Wong looked over. Had she spotted something important?

  ‘Wow. What happens to all his junk?’ she asked. ‘Do the police ditch it? I quite fancy the Dunhill lighter. Not that I smoke. And I could do with a new Walkman, and his tape machine is hot. Extra bass, built-in speaker, auto-reverse. I mean, if they were going to throw the stuff away.’

  ‘No. They give to family members.’

  ‘Oh yeah. I suppose that’s only fair. So what now? Pack the old bed pan and go feng shui the taxi?’

  ‘Not bed pan. Lo pan. What is bed pan? Anyway, compass no good in a car. Car always changes, south, west, north, east. Car has no direction itself.’

  ‘Mine does. Daddy bought me a 1989 mini to learn in a couple of months ago and I lost the keys and it was like, stuck on the side of the road for weeks. You know what a station wagon is? We used to call my car the stationary wagon. That’s a joke.’

  ‘With this case we need no lo pan. Only lo shu charts, pillars of destiny. First, Mr Semek.’

  He opened his dusty volumes with enormous satisfaction and started reading through pages of Chinese characters. Mr Semek’s day pillar was fire and he was born in late spring, at a season of wood, the geomancer explained. He would get strength from fire and wood. Just like in a real fire, if you add more wood and more flames, the fire gets bigger. But if you add water on it, the fire will go out. If you put metal objects or earth on it, it will be difficult for the fire to burn.

  The night he died was a day of metal, Wong said. Each element is associated with a part of the body. Mr Semek was shot in the chest. Metal is associated with the respiratory system. In this case, the astrological indications came true in the most literal way. A metal bullet went into his respiratory system.

  Motani is also a fire person. However, there was only one wood element in his four pillars, but three metal elements. So he was not a strong fire person…

  Gilbert Kwa strode over to the table. ‘Got anything?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s obvious, isn’t it, chief?’ said Joyce with smile.

  ‘It is?’ The
police officer sat down opposite her.

  ‘Driver’s innocent. Someone shot the guy through the window of the cab. Long-range gun. Sniper style. With a silencer. Like in that movie The Jackal, you know? Remake of The Day of the Jackal. Good film.’

  ‘But the driver says the window was shut.’

  ‘Naah,’ said Joyce. ‘The driver said he stopped to ask directions. How do taxi drivers do that? Well, they wind down the window and shout, right? That’s when someone shoots the guy. The bullet whistles past the driver and kills the guy without the driver even noticing. Waddaya think?’

  ‘I think you watch too many movies,’ said Kwa, with a smile. ‘For a start, he wasn’t shot. He was stabbed. We saw the hole and the blood and no knife, and we first assumed a gun… but the doctor says he was definitely stabbed-by something like a kitchen knife or fruit-paring knife, short but sharp. We are searching Motani’s house again. Trouble is, could have thrown the thing out of the car window anywhere along the route.’

  ‘Oh. Does that change your theory?’ Joyce asked Wong.

  ‘No. Metal in respiratory system. Bullet, knife, the same.’

  The young woman sat back and bit her index finger nail. ‘You know, I’ve got another idea. How about this? There was someone hiding in the trunk. He stabs the guy right through the back seat, yanks the knife out, then when the car stops, he jumps out and runs away. The car doors are never opened. Waddaya think?’

  Kwa smiled. ‘Still you watch too many movies,’ he said. ‘Nice idea, but the victim was stabbed in the front. Right through the heart. Not the back.’

  ‘Well, at least I’ve got some interesting theories, which is more than you guys have,’ she said.

  ‘The answer is not in your movie ideas. Is somewhere on this desk,’ said Wong. He picked up the paperwork, opened his book of charts, and slotted the sheets in. ‘I go to my office. Sit quietly. Draw four pillars of fortune for each person. Must do the investigation properly.’ He stood up.