The Feng Shui Detective Goes South

by Nury Vittachi

  To get back to work, he first had to clear himself of all distracting notions. It shouldn’t be difficult. The room was quiet. The clock on the wall didn’t work (something he would never allow to happen at the premises of a client, a stopped timepiece being an intolerably negative feng shui omen). The air conditioner hummed and clanked distressingly loudly, but after four years it had stopped being an obtrusive sound. The water cooler normally dripped—but it had been turned off, since the office manager had not refilled it for two weeks. Perfect peace and stillness descended.

  The thoughts of his favourite sage, Mo Ti, started to flow into Wong’s head. It was as if he could hear the quiet but clear voice of the great thinker over the chasm of two and a half millennia of history.

  For a few glorious moments, the only sound in the room was the scratch of Wong’s pen on the paper.

  Which was the moment Winnie Lim chose to arrive.

  ‘Aiyeeaah,’ she screeched in her rasping voice, pushing the door so hard that it bounced against the wall and returned back to slam against her still outstretched palm. There was a splintering sound and a bright, gleaming crack appeared in the frosted glass.

  ‘Aiyeeaah!’ said Winnie again. ‘GLASS BREAKING. Cheap glass. I SUE YOU.’

  ‘I sue you for coming to work late,’ rejoined Wong.

  ‘I sue you for always putting me in bad mood.’

  ‘You can’t sue for that.’

  ‘Can. I get American boyfriend. American can sue for ANYTHING.’

  Wong considered this for a moment and then decided that it was true. He lapsed into defeated silence as Winnie threw her handbag onto her chair and then disappeared for her first job of each day: to spend five minutes in the toilet checking her make-up—a redundant task, since she spent most of the day reapplying it in various styles.

  She slammed the door again on the way out. The empty water cooler rattled.

  Wong closed his journal and slipped it into his drawer. He was unlikely to get any more writing done this morning.

  When the office administrator returned to the room, Wong decided that he had to at least attempt to take command of the situation. ‘I am ver’ busy today. Plenty work. You must do all the letters, postings, filings, phone callings. I must do urgent work on my book. Nearly finish,’ he lied.

  She froze and turned her head towards him, fixing him with an icy glare. She said nothing.

  Determined to tighten his grasp on the initiative with which he was grappling, Wong sat stiffly upright and glared back at her. He decided he would write her a detailed list of instructions to make sure she actually achieved some useful work today.

  The staring contest continued for a few seconds, and then Winnie, bored, sat down and started busying herself at her desk.

  The feng shui master watched uncomfortably over the top of a piece of paper. He pretended to concentrate on reading a letter for a while, his irritation preventing him from actually taking in any words.

  The phone rang. And rang again. And continued to ring.

  ‘Pick it up,’ Winnie barked. ‘I’m busy.’ He glanced over and noticed she was applying tiny sticky-backed images of Canto-pop singers onto vermilion and cerise fingernails.

  He picked up the handset. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Good morning. Who is speaking?’ said a voice.

  ‘You are speaking,’ replied the geomancer, who had grown up without modern appliances and had never mastered the intricacies of telephone etiquette.

  ‘Is it Mr Wong? I thought you had a secretary. When I call before.’

  ‘She is busy. Putting pictures of music people on her fingers.’

  ‘Oh,’ said the caller.

  ‘Who are you?’ The voice seemed familiar.

  ‘I am Mrs Tsai-Leibler.’

  ‘Oh. Mrs Tsai-Leibler. How are you? You are okay? Better now? Very shocking, what happen on Saturday. Okay now?’

  ‘Okay. Can I talk now, is it okay?’

  ‘Okay. What do you want to talk about?’

  ‘The fire. On Saturday. I know who did it. I know for sure.’

  ‘Ah, Mrs Tsai-Leibler, very interesting. But I think better you not tell me. Better you tell police. Fire is very serious. Very criminal. Very police matter. Not for me. I am only feng shui master.’

  The woman on the phone sighed. ‘Mr Wong, I need to talk to somebody. Can I talk to you in Cantonese?’

  ‘Hai-ah,’ he replied.

  ‘Ho,’ she said, switching into their vernacular. ‘Then we can understand each other better. Mr Wong, the person who tried to kill me and my family on Saturday also tried to kill you.

  This matter involves you, too. You are involved. You cannot avoid it.’

  ‘Yes, yes, true, true. But still, I repeat, arson is a criminal matter for the police to investigate. You have a suspect, you should tell the police. Not me.’

  ‘I have told the police,’ she said, a tone of despair in her voice. ‘They weren’t interested.’

  ‘No, no, I am sure they will be very interested.’

  ‘I’m telling you they weren’t interested.’

  ‘Why not? Some problem?’

  ‘Well, you could say that. The man who tried to kill us was a man named Joseph Hardcastle Oath. He used to be one of my husband’s patients.’

  ‘Oh, good. If you know name of suspect, makes it easier to find. You know where he lives, too?’

  ‘Yes I do. In the deepest part of Hell. He died two years ago.’

  CF Wong wasn’t sure how to reply. ‘Ah. Understand. Police don’t like to investigate crimes committed by dead people.’

  Calida Tsai-Leibler talked to CF Wong for almost an hour. By the end of the period, she had convinced him of two things. First, that it was hopeless for her to continue trying to interest the police in her theory that a ghost had set fire to her apartment two days earlier. She had tried, and they had told her firmly that they didn’t want to know. And second, he realised that she was not going to get off the phone until he had agreed to commit himself to take some action to investigate her claim.

  Mrs Tsai-Leibler was convinced that the ultimate target of the arson attack was not her husband or herself—but their six-year-old daughter Melody. ‘When this man Oath had a big fight with my husband, he was always bringing Melly into it. Oath had a son who was a patient of my husband,’ she explained. ‘This was a long time ago, almost three years, in Hong Kong. My divorce had just come through and Gibson and I had just got engaged. Melly was three. There was a problem with the anaesthetist. The man turned out to be a substance abuser—apparently this is quite common among anaesthetists. They spend all day with strange substances, so they cannot resist the temptation to try them out on themselves. Anyway, the anaesthetist gave Oath’s son the wrong stuff. My husband was removing four of the child’s teeth to insert a brace. The child never woke up. He died. It was a terrible, terrible thing.’

  Wong did not want to hear any of this. ‘But—’

  ‘It was in all the newspapers. Oath started a malpractice lawsuit against my husband and the anaesthetist—whom my husband had recommended. But before the case came to court, the anaesthetist died of a self-administered overdose of something. Oath had no one left to blame but my husband, who was blameless in the whole affair. He used to phone up and curse us—tell us to imagine how we would feel if our child had died. Melly was three. So innocent! Can you imagine cursing a three-year-old? Shortly after the hearing started, Oath died. His wife did not wish to continue the case. That, we thought, was the end of it. But I have long felt that a malevolent spirit has been wanting to cause harm to my poor child. The ghost of Mr Oath. Now I’m convinced it’s true.’

  She had gone on to explain how a series of bad omens had left her convinced that an evil presence was causing harm to the family. And then, to Wong’s surprise, the tiny, mild woman had become belligerent, threatening to get ‘powerful friends in Hong Kong’ to come to Singapore to look after her family, if no one here would take any interest. ‘I can get hum
ans dealt with,’ she had said. ‘But I don’t know anyone who can take out a ghost.’

  Wong had listened patiently, knowing from experience that many clients or would-be clients simply wanted someone to whom they could tell their problem. When she had finally paused for breath, he had tried to convince her that it was not the job of a feng shui master to deal with dead spirits. Some feng shui practitioners did not even believe in ghosts, he said. But he explained that he was in regular touch with a group of people—the investigative advisory committee of the Singapore Union of Industrial Mystics—that did include individuals who had an interest in such matters.

  The conversation ended with Wong agreeing to put Mrs Tsai-Leibler in contact with Superintendent Gilbert Tan, a senior police officer who was likely to be more willing to take her complaints seriously than his colleagues in the force. Tan acted as a liaison man between the Singapore police and the local mystics. He also referred her to Madame Xu Chong Li, a Chinese fortune-teller who frequently dealt with paranormal events and who would be happy to discuss the case in detail.

  ‘Mr Tan is used to listening to unusual explanations for things,’ the geomancer explained. ‘I will give you his phone number now. After you talk to him, you call Madame Xu. She is very helpful. She will offer consultancy service on the matter at competitive price. Money back guarantee.’

  As he put down the phone, he was startled to find that Winnie Lim had marched over to his desk and was standing glaring at him.

  Winnie handed him a piece of paper.

  ‘Take,’ she said.

  He was flustered for moment, not knowing whether to look at the sheet of paper or Winnie’s unsmiling face.

  ‘I have to go out. Very busy. Here is list of things you do while I am out,’ Winnie said.

  ‘Where do you go?’

  ‘Out. Very busy.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Number three and four on list very important. Much overdue. Don’t forget.’

  ‘Number three-four,’ he repeated mechanically.

  He was so astonished at her insolence that he sat frozen in his chair, unable to move. Winnie Lim calmly picked up her handbag and strolled out of the room, humming a Jacky Cheung pop tune.

  Only when the sound of her footsteps tripping down the stairs faded did mobility return to his limbs.

  ‘Aiyeeaah,’ he breathed, looking at the list of tasks she had left him. Number three was ‘Buy New Clock’. Number four was ‘Order Water Refills’.

  In an old flat decorated with red and gold flock wallpaper in Bussorah Street, Kampong Glam, a mauve plastic telephone in a style fifteen years out of date jangled noisily.

  Dilip Kenneth Sinha snatched up the receiver. ‘Ye-es?’ he said, drawing out the word into a poised and elegant sentence.

  ‘Hello?’ said the caller.

  ‘Ye-es?’

  ‘Is that Dilip? It’s me.’

  ‘Well of course. I knew it was you. I always know these things,’ he said grandly. ‘I knew you were going to call even before the phone rang, Madame Xu.’

  The caller gave a short, dismissive laugh. ‘Ha! No need to try to impress me with such skills, Dilip. You know there is no one more psychic in this town than I am.’

  Sinha smiled. ‘Maybe so. But I was merely giving my own powers a little exercise. Knowing who’s on the telephone has been a specialty of mine since childhood.’

  This was evidently not the right thing to say. The telephone delivered the sound of a woman taking a deep breath and raising herself up to her full height, which he knew to be in the region of 1.5 metres. Madame Xu Chong Li apparently saw his assertion as a deliberate challenge to her own reputation as a person of peerless paranormal powers. She replied, with an icy edge to her voice: ‘I myself knew that I was going to speak to you on the telephone this morning several hours before I actually did.’

  ‘But that’s because you decided to phone me,’ Dilip said.

  She was unmoved by this argument. ‘And,’ she continued, her voice becoming increasingly severe, ‘out of all the four million people in this city, I knew that it would be you who would pick up the phone.’

  ‘Madame Xu: The other three million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand inhabitants of this blessed conurbation do not share my telephone—although sometimes I feel like they do,’ he said, thinking back to the days before his younger daughter’s wedding four months earlier.

  ‘Are you making light of my well-documented paranormal abilities, Mr Sinha?’

  ‘Certainly not, Madam Xu. I am second to none in the fervency of my admiration for your celebrated powers, which I believe can only be accurately described by the use of words such as “legendary”.’

  ‘Mmm,’ she said, somewhat mollified.

  ‘I was once told by my father that I picked up a ringing telephone at the age of 15 months and said “Hello Mama” even though there was no way of knowing who was calling. There were no little screens or caller-ID services in those days. I was very proud of this story and repeated it to many people over the years as proof of the early manifestation of my psychic powers. However, I stopped using this anecdote after I had my own first child. That was when I realised that “Hello Mama” is what all 15-month-old children say. It is more or less the sum total of their vocabulary. These days I am only impressed if a baby points to a ringing telephone and says something like, “A man named Terence L Gunasekera is calling in an attempt to sell you shares in a vacuum cleaner company.”’

  ‘Very amusing, DK.’

  Pleasantries over, there was a brief silence as Dilip Sinha waited for her to continue.

  She said nothing.

  ‘Always good to hear from you,’ he proceeded. ‘Even on a delightfully sunny Monday such as this, you add a special touch of brightness to the day.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Nice to have a chat.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Another silence.

  Since she seemed to be waiting for him to continue, he asked: ‘Now what exactly did you wish to speak to me about, Madame Xu?’

  ‘You’ve got this all wrong. I think it must be your age.

  I think you must be getting a bit Celine or something.’

  ‘Celine?’

  ‘You know. Celine. When your mind goes.’

  ‘Clearly a fashionable new phrase which I have not yet encountered, or which has passed me by entirely. Anyway, proceed. What have I done to deserve the accusation that I have become, as you so interestingly put it, Celine?’

  ‘Well, you know. You are asking me what I have to speak to you about. In fact, you have something to talk to me about.’

  ‘I do? And what might that be?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know. How would I know that? I am not a mind reader, Dilip Sinha. Well, or at least I haven’t been for five years, except when any of my ex-husbands come round.’

  As a practitioner of many Ayurvedic sciences and various types of Indian astrology, Dilip Sinha was used to dealing with irrational and even deeply disturbed people. But for some reason, he was finding it particularly difficult to follow Madame Xu’s train of thought today.

  ‘Let’s start at the beginning,’ he said with the voice of a patient schoolteacher. ‘You phoned me. That is where this discussion started, it is not?’ Surely she could not disagree with that?

  ‘I disagree. It all started when an image of you intruded itself into my mind much earlier this morning, while I was preparing myself for the day. I was not even properly dressed! I knew you wanted to talk to me about something, but what it was, I couldn’t begin to guess. So I replied to your summons by phoning your number. I am relying on you to tell me.’

  ‘Ahh,’ said Sinha. ‘Now I understand. So neither of us know what I want to talk with you about. That does make this conversation rather difficult.’

  There was another silence on the phone, but it was not a particularly uncomfortable one—the two had been friends for long enough to be able to spend time thinking silently while aurally linked to
each other.

  ‘I have an idea,’ said Madam Xu. ‘I’m expecting a visitor today, but I’ve got a gap in my timetable tomorrow morning. Why don’t I just pop into your flat for a cup of tea, say ten o’clock? By that time, you may have remembered what it was that you wanted to tell me.’

  ‘That sounds like a perfectly splendid idea. I’ll have the kettle on. Darjeeling?’

  ‘Of course. Afterwards, we could take the bus to Fort Canning, and have a walk, like we did last week.’

  Dilip Sinha smiled as he put the phone down. She probably just needed of a bit of company. At his age, he found the attention flattering—after all, he was 62 and she was just a spring chicken, somewhere in her mid-50s.

  He went to the kitchen to make some tea for himself and settle to work on a knotty problem that had arrived on his lap earlier that day.

  Sinha had nominally retired. But these days he found himself busier than ever. Now he was no longer a Singapore civil servant, his hobbies had grown into a full and active second career. His first book, published four years earlier, had given him some fame among Singapore’s large Indian community.

  Although he was ostensibly a specialist in Indian astrology, the book had been filled with tidbits on other philosophies, ranging from Ayurvedic medicines to the importance of using ghee instead of butter when cooking curries.

  His second book, published a year ago, had been ‘positioned’ by the publisher as A Guide to New Age Secrets From India, and had sold well to several of the communities in Singapore, being particularly popular among women from the United States.

  The initial excitement of that book launch culminated in Sinha’s finding himself profiled in The Straits Times and being invited to give a talk at a rotary club.

  He then found himself besieged by parents of Indian origin wanting advice on getting their children married off to the ‘right sort of people’, a topic touched upon briefly in the last chapter of the book. This tiresome business came to a spectacular end when his own daughter jilted the pitifully dull Punjabi import–export man her parents had chosen for her, and married an up-and-coming Chinese veejay. Sinha had initially been angry, but was delighted by the subsequent event—his reputation as a marriage expert collapsed. He found himself happy enough to pay for the rebel daughter’s wedding to her spiky-haired beau.