The Feng Shui Detective Goes South

by Nury Vittachi

  Wong had risen to his feet. It had not been easy, since his bones were old and the seats in the coffee shop were like sponges. ‘Must go. I think Mrs Mirpuri will be ready to meet me soon. You can stay.’

  ‘Wait,’ said Joyce. ‘I haven’t finished yet. I haven’t finished my muffin and I haven’t finished my story. Sit down, please. This is really interesting, I promise you.’

  Wong reluctantly sat down again. ‘I do not pay you to eat,’ he said.

  ‘I’m an intern. You don’t pay me at all. You employ me. Mr Pun pays me.’

  The feng shui man had no answer to this. ‘So what you want to tell me?’

  Joyce, speaking with a mouthful of chocolate sponge, said: ‘I got talking to the girl who was looking at you? Her name is Maddy. She’s from Hong Kong. She said she’s met you? She knows some of the same people I know in Hong Kong.

  She hung out at Insomnia and Le Jardin in Lan Kwai Fong just like me. She scored eight and a half on a ten-metre pike at a diving contest at my school pool year before last. She knows this guy Lenny I used to know—before he got busted for drugs.

  Anyway, I was friendly enough but I didn’t pay her that much attention. I wanted to find out what people knew about Dani.

  I was working really hard all last night.’ She stopped for a moment. ‘Can I get expenses for what I spent at the club?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okay, just thought I’d ask. Anyway, about two o’clock in the morning, I decide it’s time to go home? I’m just saying goodbye to the gang, when this girl Maddy comes up and grabs my arm. She’s like, “Can I go with you? Can I talk to you?” It’s a bit strange, but I’m like: “Sure.” She says that I was so concerned about Dani being missing that I must be a nice person. She said she didn’t have any friends and wanted a friend like me, who cared about whether she disappeared or not. It was a bit strange, what she was saying. I gave her my phone number and my email and my Skype handle. Anyway, we’re walking along and she steers me into one of those late-night noodle shops you get up on those roads past Kilimanjaro on Boat Quay, you know? I’m trying to make conversation, so I’m like: “You got a boyfriend, then?” She’s like: “Yes. And he wants me to die.” Ever so casual.’

  ‘Young people, they get drunk, they say silly things. Is not real.’

  ‘Maybe. Maybe it was just the drink talking. But she told me she’s got this boyfriend? Actually, fiancé. He’s a lot older than she is, like ten years or something. I think she said he was like thirty-something. Anyway, she told me she went to the cheap flophouse where he stays yesterday, and found he was out. She managed to get into the room—she didn’t say how. She decides to wait for him. While she’s there, to pass the time, she starts reading the papers and letters and stuff on his desk. The letters are boring stuff, invoices and things. But there are some papers tucked away. She finds that he has taken out an insurance policy on her life. She keeps reading. He has insured her life for like two million ringgits. Then she finds another insurance policy, also made out in her name. Then there’s a third one. Basically, she finds that her fiancé has taken out loads of life insurance in her name. Like millions. I don’t know what that is in real money, but I bet it’s a lot.’

  ‘This is normal. People get married, they get insured.’

  ‘I don’t think so. She said that there was no insurance coverage in his name. All of it was coverage for her, with him as the—as the—ben . . . ben . . . you know what I mean.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Wong. ‘The benny-something. Know what you mean. Benny factor?’

  Joyce wrinkled her brow. ‘It’s on the tip of my tongue.’

  ‘What is?’

  ‘Beneficiary.’

  ‘Beneficiary.’ Wong was pleased he knew the word. He must find a way to use it in his book.

  ‘Yeah. Anyway, he’s going to make an absolute fortune if she dies. And the most suspicious thing of all: he hasn’t said one word about all this to her. It’s his little secret. It’s suspicious, isn’t it? Go on, CF, admit it. It is suspicious.’

  Wong stood up again. ‘Maybe so. But Joyce, I want you to remember one thing. We are not comic hero. We are not Superman. We do not save the world. We are not good guys. We are consultants. We are businessmen. When people pay us, we do things. At the moment, Mrs Mirpuri will pay us rack rate plus fifty per cent for express service. Dentist will pay us big money, I will make up outrageous big number for them.

  Already I have done some work for them. This will be good week for our finances. Very necessary to have good week from time to time. But this girl Maddy is not our assignment. We cannot help her. We are too busy. Must earn crusty bread, as the English say.’

  He marched angrily out of the coffee shop. ‘Always we waste time,’ he mumbled.

  Joyce scooped up the remains of her breakfast and ran after him. ‘Wait,’ she said.

  She caught up with him and swallowed the foamy dregs of her coffee before speaking again. ‘Listen, CF, I was just coming to that. Maddy, the girl in the disco, is one of your clients, sort of. Her full name is Madeleine Tsai. She’s the cousin of one of your clients. You know. She was in the apartment that nearly burned down with you in it on Saturday. Maybe the ghost wasn’t trying to kill Mrs Tsai-Thingy. Maybe the fiancé was trying to kill Maddy.’

  Wong stopped dead in his tracks.

  The office door crashed open. The crack in the glass lengthened.

  ‘Hell-ooo!’ said a cheery voice. ‘Mr Wong?’

  Madame Xu poked her head into the office. ‘Ah, Winnie, my dear. Is Mr Wong at hand?’

  Dilip Sinha appeared behind his friend. ‘Good afternoon, Winnie. How are you? We are here on a little surprise visit to your employer. Is he around?’

  Winnie, who was in the middle of a lengthy private phone call in which she was trying to find out whether she could prosecute her employer for forcing her to work in a room without an air conditioner, sighed at the interruption. ‘Not here,’ she barked.

  ‘He’s not here,’ Madame Xu echoed, disappointed.

  ‘Oh dear,’ said Sinha. ‘Well, never mind. We’ll see him later, I’m sure. Is he expected back shortly? Should we wait?’

  ‘No,’ said Winnie.

  The two visitors were stumped. They waited for Winnie to invite them in and offer them ching cha while she phoned around to find out where her boss was. They waited in vain.

  ‘Well, what can we do?’ Madame Xu sighed. ‘We can’t enlist him in this battle to save this poor young lady if he is not here to be enlisted, can we? We’ll just have to talk to him another time.’

  ‘We don’t have a lot of time. The unfortunate girl may no longer be with us by Friday evening,’ Sinha said. ‘It’s already Wednesday. Really, this case is the most troubling one I have had to deal with for many years.’

  ‘He must have gone out with Inspector Tan to deal with the ghost at the dentists’. That did sound like a fascinating case. Is he at the dentists’, Winnie dear?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ snapped Winnie. ‘Talk later,’ she said into the phone, reluctantly ending her call.

  Madame Xu decided to take control of the situation. She pulled Joyce’s chair over to the corner of Winnie’s desk and sat down heavily in it. ‘Listen, my dear,’ she said to the office administrator. ‘Can you give a message to Mr Wong when he comes back? It’s very important.’

  Winnie made no move to pick up a pen or paper.

  ‘We need Mr Wong to urgently find a remedy for a person of a certain birth date who is facing a major problem on a certain date which is very close. Do you understand?’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘Can you deliver such a message?’

  ‘Okay,’ Winnie barked, without attempting to hide her irritation. ‘Which person?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that.’

  ‘Which date?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that either.’

  ‘What problem?’

  ‘I’m afraid that, too, is confidential.’ The older woman gave the secretar
y an apologetic smile. ‘I know it’s all really very difficult, but you have to bear with me. I swore on some chicken gravy.’

  ‘Gravy?’

  ‘So you see how serious it is.’

  Winnie’s brows knitted themselves together to show her exasperation. ‘Don’t understand.’

  Dilip Sinha cut in. ‘I think, my dear, if you would simply tell him to contact us urgently on a matter of great importance, that would suffice. Where will we be, Chong Li?’

  ‘Let’s go back to my house. Your one always smells of curry.’

  ‘It does, I confess. One of the reasons I’m fond of it. We’ll be at Madame Xu’s house. Sago Street. Mr Wong knows.’

  ‘We’re going now,’ Madame Xu said, creakily rising to her feet. ‘You don’t mind being left all your own in this office?’

  Winnie rolled her eyes to the ceiling.

  The pair left the office. As they walked down the stairs, Madame Xu said to Sinha: ‘Actually, I had this feeling that he wouldn’t be there. I didn’t want to say, but I had a strong premonition that he would be out.’

  ‘Odd, but so did I,’ said Sinha. ‘I knew it would be useless coming here.’

  ‘Well, why didn’t you say so? You could have saved us a journey.’

  ‘Well, you didn’t say so either.’

  ‘You didn’t ask.’

  They bickered affectionately down four flights of stairs.

  Wong, as usual when he was concentrating, retreated into his shell. After running out of information to deliver to him about her investigation into Danita’s love-life, Joyce asked him several times what he had discovered about the coded letter, but he said nothing, merely continuing to mumble to himself in Cantonese as he strode briskly through the crowded mid-morning streets. He made marks in a Singapore map-book as he walked.

  ‘This way,’ he said out loud after jaywalking briskly across a road. ‘I think down here.’

  Joyce had expected him to lead her to a kidnapper’s den. But instead they found themselves at the Hair Today Salon, a rather tacky beauty shop fronted with dark glass, its frontage liberally sprinkled with Christmas lights.

  ‘Well, Mr Wong, what do you think?’ said a large, dark-skinned woman decked in a silk sari and heavy jewellery who was waiting for him on a sofa at the entrance. ‘I think we find her quite soon,’ said the geomancer, shaking her hand as they stepped out of the shop.

  ‘No. What do you think of my hair I am asking,’ she snapped in a low alto.

  ‘Ah, very nice, Mrs Mirpuri,’ said Wong. ‘Very . . . black.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Mrs Mirpuri. ‘Now what were you saying about Danita? Have you found her? Is she with that awful policeman?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ the geomancer replied. ‘But I think she is really kidnap. Not run away.’

  Mrs Mirpuri looked momentarily discomfited by this news.

  But the expression on her face was more one of irritation than distress. ‘Really kidnapped? You think so?’

  ‘Yes. Not run away.’

  The woman looked into the middle distance. She appeared to be attempting to come to terms with this idea. She turned to Wong. ‘I don’t know which is worse. To run away with unsuitable boy. Or to be really kidnapped. Both are equal bad news, no?’

  Joyce was annoyed. ‘Of course it’s worse to be kidnapped. I mean, they may hurt her or something.’

  ‘Who is this person?’ Mrs Mirpuri asked Wong.

  ‘My assistant. Ms McQuinnie.’

  ‘It’s different in our culture,’ the Indian woman explained to the teenager. ‘In your tradition you girls just go with anyone you like and then switch every day. In our tradition we have this thing called marriage. We take relationships seriously.

  Much better.’

  ‘We have marriage too,’ snapped Joyce. ‘We invented marriage.’

  ‘No, you did not,’ snarled Mrs Mirpuri. ‘That’s ridiculous.

  We invented marriage.’

  ‘Rubbish,’ said Joyce.

  ‘You invented divorce,’ Mrs Mirpuri barked at Joyce.

  The feng shui master held up his hands. ‘Please. Must hurry.’

  ‘Mr Wong, tell your assistant that we invented marriage.

  Westerners hardly ever do it even now. Look at Madonna.’

  ‘She’s married,’ said Joyce.

  ‘Of course she isn’t—’ ‘Truly, I don’t know about any Donna,’ said Wong. ‘I do research first. Provide written answer at later date, is it okay?’

  He started marching at a brisk pace along the road, pulling the older woman by the arm. ‘We go to find your daughter. On the way, please to tell me about policeman boyfriend and other boyfriends.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Mrs Mirpuri. But I warn you, Mr Wong. It’s a rather bizarre story, truth be told.’

  Mrs Mirpuri repeated much of the story that Joyce had told Wong, about a wayward daughter who had been playing different boyfriends off against each other—and then, as the anger and passion and jealousy had mounted, had suddenly disappeared.

  ‘We told her to choose one. We thought we liked the crazy rich one better, but then heard that the police officer had reasonable prospects. The stockbroker was useless—he was unemployed, and a bit of a conman, as all stockbrokers are. Anyway, I had this note on Monday morning from the kidnapper, and then a call yesterday morning. He said he had Danita and wanted money so they could run away and get married. He sounded crazy. I asked to speak to her, but he said that was not possible. I began to think that maybe this wasn’t some silly lovers’ thing, but something serious. So I phoned you.’

  ‘But you didn’t want us to come yesterday. Why is it?’

  ‘Yes. There were a couple of reasons for that. First, I thought I would leave it one more day, just to see if it all resolved itself. You never know with Danita. She’s a silly girl. Second, I had a lot of things planned yesterday. I was scheduled to help my sister choose a trousseau for her daughter. This is a big event in Indian society. I couldn’t just cancel that.’

  ‘And this morning? Why did you go and get your hair cut?’ asked Wong.

  ‘I was thinking, if this is a real kidnap, then I shall surely end up on television and in the Straits Times. And Mr Wong, I know this is not important for a man like you, but it is vital for a woman—your assistant might understand, although it is probably not the same for Westerners—but it is particularly true of a woman of a certain age, such as me—that she looks her best. I have not had my hair done for several weeks—’ ‘Was it the policeman’s voice on the phone? Or the rich kid?

  Or the stockbroker?’

  Mrs Mirpuri’s brows knitted. ‘Not exactly. It was a distorted voice. It sounded like a robot. He was speaking through some machine to change the tone of it. But I am assuming it was the policeman. He was always into drama, so he would have been the one to set up something like this.’

  She reached into her handbag. ‘I’ve been very efficient. I knew you would ask me about her boyfriends, so I have brought photographs of them all.’

  ‘Let me see,’ said Joyce.

  ‘This is Ram Chulini, the rich kid. See that funny look in his eyes? A bit odd. And this is Mak Kin-Lei. Everybody calls him Kinny. He’s the police officer. And this one, Winterbottom, is the stockbroker. He’s tall, quite good-looking.’

  ‘I bet I can sort this out,’ said Joyce. ‘The first one’s a dog. Forget him. I’ve met him. I went to a party with Danita and him ages ago. Maybe two weeks. Didn’t rate him. This guy, Kinny, is all right. I’d give him a seven. I think I’ve seen him down at Dan T’s. I’m not sure. But this guy Charles—he’s got weird eyes. And no chin. Only a five, or maybe less. I’d go for Kinny Mak. He’d make a good son-in-law.’

  ‘You think so?’ Mrs Mirpuri looked at Joyce, evidently trying to decide whether her opinion was worth anything.

  ‘Sure. Not that I’m an expert on guys. But my sister is. If she were here, she could just look at those pictures and instantly tell you all about these guys, what their
strange habits are, what’s good or bad about them, all that kind of thing. She’s really amazing.’

  Suddenly, the feng shui master came to a halt at a junction. ‘Your daughter is close here, I think. On this road. Joyce, I want you to go to that shop, pretend to buy something, have a look round. See if you can see one of the boyfriend. Mrs Mirpuri please wait. She will come back here after one-two minutes. Or maybe not.’

  Joyce refused to move. ‘How do you know we’re in the right place? Did you break the code? What did the message say?’

  ‘No time for that now.’

  ‘I’m not moving until you tell me.’

  Employer and employee stared at each other.

  ‘Okay, okay, I show you,’ said the feng shui master, backing down. ‘But I think you should hurry.’

  He carefully got out the note, which was folded in his pocket—and also the envelope in which it came, which he had found under Winnie’s desk.

  ‘Here is message.’

  Joyce stared hard at it, giving it one more chance to give up its secret.

  Mrs Mirpuri reached into her bag and got out her reading glasses.

  Jr;[@@@@ O

  Br nrrm lofms[[rf/ O

  , om s fstl tpp, om s nio;fomh eoy j

  {ptyihirdr=dyu;e

  g;ppts yjtrr pt gpit ,omiyrd gtp, Jplorn Dytrry/

  Gomf ,r/ Ithrmy@@@ Fsmo/

  ‘Is not an alphabet code,’ said Wong. ‘Is not a code at all.’

  ‘What is it, then?’ asked Joyce.

  The feng shui man smiled. ‘Is bad typing.’

  ‘What?’ This was Joyce. ‘What do you mean bad typing? It must be really bad typing—I mean, if you can’t even read a single word of it.’

  Wong pointed to the first word. ‘If you type a letter but your fingers are on wrong buttons—one button too far right—then this is what happen. You want to press ‘h’ but you get the next letter, is ‘j’. You want to press ‘e’, but you get next letter, which is ‘r’. You want to press ‘1’, but you get next letter, which is ‘dot-and-comma.’ And so forth and so fifth.’