The Feng Shui Detective Goes South

by Nury Vittachi

  He couldn’t write one more word. He had to investigate. Lowering his pen, he grabbed a tiny ceremonial sword, faintly ashamed to be using such a device as a talisman to ward off evil spirits in which he didn’t really believe. He started to walk carefully around the room.

  ‘Unnh . . .’

  The husky groan appeared to come from the meditation room. He approached it carefully and looked through the glass window. It appeared to be empty. He listened at the door. He heard a third gently voiced moan. It was in there.

  The geomancer opened the door with infinite care and carefully moved his head inside.

  Something white moved in the shadows, low on the floor. A ghastly pale face with angry red eyes materialised suddenly before him.

  ‘Aiyeeaah!’ he gasped, dropping his talisman.

  A replica of an old-fashioned phone, inlaid with cloisonné and mother-of-pearl, trilled prettily three times. Bejewelled fingers picked up the handset.

  ‘Yes?’ chirruped Madame Xu.

  ‘Madame Xu?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Good morning, Chong Li. I hope you slept well. It’s me.’

  ‘That’s right. I knew that it was you, Dilip Sinha. Even before I picked up the phone.’

  ‘I knew it was me, too. We seem to be in general agreement on that point. That’s a good start.’

  ‘I suppose it is.’

  ‘Now listen, my dear. I could hardly sleep at all last night. I don’t know why, but this week my spirit can’t seem to settle at all. I’m sleeping badly. So many worries. Last night, I kept thinking about that unfortunate young couple. The girl, only a mere slip of a thing at fifteen or nineteen or whatever she is, and her heartbroken boyfriend . . .’

  ‘Fiancé, actually.’

  ‘That’s right. Well, what struck me most painfully last night was the sheer impossibility of anyone doing anything about this except us. I mean, think about it. If young Ismail takes her to the police and tells them to lock her in their strongest cell for safety, they will think he is mad, and lock him up instead. If he goes to doctors, they will tell him that there is nothing wrong with her, and they will be correct. Medically speaking, there is nothing wrong with her. She’s young and fit.’

  ‘He could go to the government. There must be a department to deal with this sort of thing. Underage death.’

  ‘I don’t think so. If he goes to any sort of higher authority— government officials, or academics, or judges or what have you, they will merely think that this is a load of mystical tomfoolery. And perhaps some of it is—I mean, some of Ismail’s stuff, like the chicken blood and the soles of the feet stuff—it all seems frankly irrational. But our own readings, which we ourselves trust and know to be reliable, confirm so much of what he has said. So we have to take his fears seriously and act upon them. It is clear to me that we are the only people who are going to listen to this problem, and also the only people who are going to be able to do anything about it. We are running out of time.’

  ‘But what can we do?’

  Sinha sighed. ‘That’s just it. I don’t know. I’ve been struggling with it. I mean, each of us has, in his or her armoury of mystic techniques, certain remedies for ill fortune. I spent several hours last night going through my books looking for the right remedies for this situation.’

  ‘I spent several hours last night doing the same thing.’

  ‘Of course you did. That is because you and I are deeply concerned about this. But I am not confident that we can solve the problem. The remedies seem so . . . inadequate, somehow. Last night, I got my friend Arun Subramaniam, who is a tarot card reader, to read the cards of poor Clara. He doesn’t like to do what he calls “remote readings” without the subject present, but he agreed to do one for me. He turned up the card of death at all significant points. Of course, as you know, in tarot readings the death card does turn up regularly and is often interpreted to mean things other than death. But even Arun was shocked at the regularity at which it turned up in the readings for this particular young woman—and how negative the other cards were, too.’

  ‘Dilip! It sounds to me as if you broke your vow to not tell anyone else about the case.’

  ‘I didn’t tell him what it was about. I told him as little as I could. I didn’t tell him the name of the girl. I just gave him the basic details he needed to know to do the reading. But anyway, this final confirmation of doom led me to another thought: the pillars of destiny.’

  ‘Ah. Mr Wong.’

  ‘That’s right. We must have another try to get CF Wong involved with this. He can read the earthly pillars and heavenly what-is-its for Clara for tomorrow and Saturday, assuming she might be at various destinations. It strikes me that he, if he has all the information at hand, may be able to specify a location where she may be likely to be safe. I think the only thing that can save her is a combination of our arts. Putting her in a safe place would seem to me to be a perfect start.’

  Madame Xu assented with a genteel grunt. ‘Hmm. Yes. It would be very nice to have CF involved in this. I mean we did try yesterday.’

  ‘Also, he has an uncanny knack of looking at things from curious angles and seeing solutions where the rest of us see nothing. It has happened several times. Remember the murder in the hotel kitchen where there was no murder weapon?’

  ‘Yes, I do. You’re right. Let’s try to see him again this morning. He might be at the dentists’, trying to exorcise the ghost.’

  ‘Not this early. The dental surgery wouldn’t even be open. I phoned him at home, there was no one there. I also tried his office. You know he often goes to the office at the crack of dawn. But no answer there, either. He must be on the road somewhere. Anyway, I propose we call a Code Red lunch meeting of the committee.’

  ‘Code Red! We haven’t done that for a long time. Two meetings of the committee in one week would be unusual.’

  ‘We haven’t. You’re right. But this is an emergency. It’s Thursday already. Clara may be dead by the end of tomorrow. It’s a more urgent business than the ghost that Wong is dealing with. The ghost, after all, is already dead. It can’t get any deader. Whereas our young lady can.’

  ‘True. And if we don’t do something for poor Clara, we may have another ghost on our hands by tomorrow night,’ said Madame Xu.

  Sinha was twirling the phone cord in his hand. ‘Odd that CF is neither at home, nor at his office. I wonder where he can be?’

  ‘Geez. You Singaporeans eat all the time. That’s all you do: eat, eat, eat. It seems you can’t talk or meet or do anything without eating.’ Joyce held her head in her hands. She stared at the empty dishes in front of her. She didn’t dare even look at the stuff Wong was eating. Just the knowledge that it was there, glistening with pork fat, was enough to make her feel sick.

  ‘I bet I look like death warmed up,’ she said, her voice a low croak.

  ‘A cake?’

  ‘No. I was just saying that I must look terrible.’

  ‘Yes. You look terrible.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Is okay.’

  She noticed that there was a mirror in the corner of the room by the door and she made a mental note to look the other way when she passed it. She knew full well that she would be starting this new day looking absolutely hideous and did not want to be reminded of it. She could feel that her eyes were half-closed, bloodshot and puffy, and she knew her face had gone limp. Her hair shot out in all directions. Her midnight blue make-up, she realised, would be smudged in broken circles around her eyes, and her dark maroon lip-gloss would probably have vanished, although bits of black lip-liner may still be in place.

  ‘You are hanged-over,’ Wong said sternly.

  ‘A bit,’ she agreed. ‘But I didn’t really drink that much? It’s just staying up so late that did it. Third night in a row. But it was an interesting night. I’ve found out loads of interesting things to tell you.’

  ‘Tell,’ he sighed, knowing that she would.

  ‘I will. When the
guy brings me some water. My throat really hurts.’

  A bottle of mineral water eventually appeared and Joyce drank nearly all of it before she started to feel a little less queasy.

  ‘Feel better?’ said Wong, not unsympathetically, when she lowered the bottle. ‘Now want some food?’ He offered her the last piece of something shiny and glutinous.

  ‘No, thank you,’ she said, quickly looking away.

  He wolfed it down greedily with his mouth open.

  Joyce screwed up her painful eyes and concentrated on imparting information. ‘I’ll tell you what happened last night. I went home to change first. Then I went out to happy hour. My first stop was Wong San’s on Mohamed Sultan. I know Maddy often starts her evenings there. But no sign of her. So I go on to Dan T’s Inferno. She’s not there, but there are loadsa people I know there, and it’s early, so we hang out there for a while. Then, about eleven o’clock, we all traipse down to Pop Cat in Chinatown? No sign of her there. But we ask around, and there’s like another of her friends there waiting for her. A girl called Ally, who met her on her first night in Singapore, a few days ago? This girl says that she’d been waiting an hour for her. Ally had assumed that Maddy had decided to stay home tonight. Now I had Calida Tsai-Thing’s phone number in my bag, so I called the number. Mrs Thing’s away, as you know, so the domestic helper answers it. The helper’s like, “Maddy hasn’t been home all day” and she reckoned that she must be down in one of the nightclubs. So basically she’s missing. Oh thank you,’ she said as Ah-Ooi brought a second bottle of mineral water for her.

  ‘Anyway, so we all go down to Kilimanjaro about one, where she likes to get a snack. None of the guys at Kilimanjaro’s have seen her. So we go back to Dan T’s, and then to Blue Cow and then to The Mitre and then to someplace that Karim knows. By this time, it’s about three o’clock in the morning. She’s nowhere. She’s definitely missing. I wondered about phoning the police. But then I thought they’d laugh at us. Besides, I’m officially too young to be in these bars anyway, so I didn’t really want to talk to the cops?’

  ‘Maybe she went to different restaurant. Maybe she go and see boyfriend. Maybe she go to movie.’

  ‘As if. She’s like obsessed with herself. Always tense. Utterly. Can’t relax. Can’t see her going to a movie. And her boyfriend: she thinks he wants to kill her. I told you. Before. She’s hardly going to want to go and hang out with him—not by choice, anyway. Something’s wrong. I’m sure of it. Really.’

  ‘Too bad,’ said Wong, sympathetically.

  Joyce let out a long, slow yawn before continuing. ‘So anyway, by the time we’d finished like scouring the whole of Singapore, it’s past four o’clock in the morning. I decide I’m not going to trek all the way home, only to have one or two hours of sleep and then trek all the way back to the office. So I decided to come here and start my day’s work early. But by the time I got there, I was so tired, I decided to have a little lie down in your nap room—’ ‘

  —The meditation room.’

  ‘Yeah. So I just went in there. Must have fallen fast asleep. Until you woke me up, prowling around in the dark. Scared me stiff.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Wong.

  She finished half the second bottle of mineral water and the colour started to return to her cheeks. The sun was rising and the day outside was becoming bright. ‘I’m feeling a bit better,’ she said. ‘But I still can’t eat this stuff. Do you think any other restaurants will be open now?’

  ‘Not many,’ said the geomancer, looking at his watch. ‘Ah-Chow’s on Smith Street may be open now.’

  ‘No, I mean Western food. I can’t eat dim sum and noodles for breakfast. I need pancakes. Or eggs and bacon. I need a nice cup of tea with lots of sugar.’

  ‘I think there is 24-hour McDonald’s on Orchard Road.’

  ‘That’ll have to do. Let’s go. By the way, what happened to you yesterday at the dentists’?’

  ‘I found the ghost.’

  ‘You found the ghost?’ Joyce jerked upright. ‘Tell me tell me tell me. What happened?’

  ‘I heard it. Was in the chair.’

  ‘That is so cool. Did you exorcise it?’

  ‘No.’

  She rose to her feet. ‘What was it like? Could you see anything? No, tell me at McDonald’s. This mineral water is not doing it for me. Maybe a Diet Coke is what I really need.’

  ‘I think not good for you.’

  ‘You’re right. Rots the teeth. Never mind. We’re going to the dentists’ later this morning, aren’t we?’

  ‘I am going to the dentist,’ Wong corrected her. ‘You go home and change clothes and wash face. You look terrible.’

  Wong arrived at the Liew and Leibler Dental Surgery on Orchard Road just after nine o’clock to find the door to the offices shut. Cheung Lai Kuen was sitting on the waiting room sofa, weeping. Dr Liew was holding her hands and comforting her. Dr Leibler was on the telephone.

  As he entered, he heard Dr Leibler cancelling an appointment. ‘I’m sorry Mrs Tam,’ he was saying. ‘All appointments are being cancelled today, including urgent operations. You will not be charged anything, of course. If you want advice on an alternative location for emergency treatment, we can advise you. If it’s not an emergency, someone from this office will call you shortly to make a new appointment. It’ll be next week. We’re shut for the rest of the week. No, I’m sorry, I can’t record a new appointment just now.’ He put the phone down.

  Dr Liew spoke to Wong without looking up. ‘I’m sorry, Mr Wong. We don’t need you any more. The investigation is being transferred to the police. We will pay your bill in full.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Wong looked at Gibson Leibler and noticed that his face was ashen. There was a deadness in the muscles under his eyes.

  ‘Some problem . . . ?’

  ‘You could say that,’ the surgeon said. ‘Anyway, good bye.’

  Clearly, no further information was going to be forthcoming.

  Wong nodded politely at him and started to back out. ‘I send invoice later,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

  Which was when the chubby figure of Superintendent Gilbert Tan came out of the surgery. ‘Wong. Thank goodness you’re here. I need you to sit down and tell me everything that happened last night.’

  Leibler bridled. ‘Surely we don’t need a feng shui man for this? Hasn’t this all got rather too serious for that sort of thing?’

  ‘We need him more than ever,’ said the Superintendent. ‘The Singaporean police are peerless in most things but have a poor record of catching ghosts.’

  ‘What happened after we left last night?’ Dr Liew asked, suddenly becoming interested in Wong’s presence.

  ‘First, what happen this morning?’ asked Wong.

  Superintendent Tan took his arm and pulled him into Dr Liew’s surgery. He shut the door behind them. He turned around and Wong noticed that he had donned his most serious expression. ‘I’m sorry to report that one of the staffs of this surgery, Ms Amanda Luk, was found dead in her bed this morning.’

  ‘Dead. Oh dear,’ said the feng shui man. ‘What . . . ?’

  ‘Did she die of? Come on, Wong, you are joking, is it? You know I’m not allowed to say anything like that until after the autopsy-lah.’

  ‘Yes. I know. But also I know you tell me anyway usually.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said Tan. ‘Well, don’t tell the world, and definitely don’t tell any press, but I do have some interesting initial observations. I understand from the officer who was in charge of the investigation that there were no surface wounds on the body of any sort. There were no obvious, outward signs of poisoning—you know, swollen tongue, odd-coloured pupils, that sort of thing. But of course, that doesn’t mean anything. She could have been poisoned.’

  ‘And . . . ?’

  ‘What do you mean, and?’

  ‘What do you think? How she died?’

  The police officer rubbed the tip of his nose with his forefinger. ‘I don’t k
now. If we wanted to be melodramatic, we could point out that she had an expression of terror on her face. Maybe our ghost followed her home and scared her to death. I don’t know. But that’s a bit airy-fairy for a nice tough policeman like me. I am going to subscribe to the poisoning theory or perhaps a heart attack until the coroner tells me something different.’

  There was a knock on the door.

  ‘Come,’ said Tan.

  The two dentists entered the room. ‘We’d like to know what happened last night in this surgery,’ said Liew.

  ‘We’re entitled to know,’ said Leibler. ‘We’re paying him.’

  The police officer looked at Wong. ‘Sure. Do tell. I, too, would like to know. I’ll ask you to do a proper statement later, but my curiosity is killing me. Let’s just pretend this isn’t happening. A detailed, but unofficial version, please.’

  ‘The ghost continue paining, on-off, on-off, for a long time,’ said Wong. ‘Poor ghost. Very unhappy. One hour over.

  One hour and a quarter nearly. Moan-moan-moan. Then he goes. I did some more measurements. Then I left the office too.

  Go home. Went to bed early.’

  ‘The ghost usually stays about that long,’ said Dr Liew.

  ‘Where do ghosts go when they go?’

  ‘What’s the relevance of the length of time?’ asked Dr Leibler.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Wong. ‘Tell me, is there a dentist operation that takes one hour and fourteen minutes? That was how long he stayed.’

  Dr Liew rubbed his chin. ‘Well . . . , not really. I mean, most people need a combination of treatments. Most individual treatments can be done within the hour, but it would not be unusual to do a treatment that could stretch to that long. A complex crown, for instance. Or the removal of several wisdom teeth in a single operation. Or an operation that needed a short period of anaesthesia.’