The Feng Shui Detective Goes South

by Nury Vittachi

  ‘No,’ said the bomoh. ‘You ruin everything. Must stay out here. Until it happens.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Joyce, suddenly excited. ‘I know this market in Sydney where you can get really cool stuff. And it’s cheap.

  Better than Clarke Quay. Come on. I know Sydney really well.

  I’ll take you to the Paddo Village Bazaar. It’s on tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m going with her,’ said Madeleine, shaking her shoulders out of Ismail’s grip.

  ‘No,’ he shouted.

  ‘Get your hands off me. I’m going with my friend.’

  Twisting downwards and yanking herself out of his grip, she quickly scuttled out of his reach and started to carefully track on her hands and feet over to where Joyce sat.

  ‘NO!’ shouted Ismail. He leapt to the side and grabbed her, his arms wrapping themselves around her upper body. She lost her balance.

  Wong and Joyce both reached forwards at the same time—but neither of them could reach her.

  Maddy screamed as Ismail held her tightly and pulled her away from them. The two of them started to slide slowly down the roof.

  ‘Let her go,’ Wong shouted. ‘You’re falling.’

  Ismail placed his feet apart and managed to arrest their descent. He roughly shuffled away from them, keeping the young woman in his arms, his forearm around her throat. ‘Get away. Get away from us!’

  The geomancer started to move towards them, moving sideways like a crab.

  ‘Get away,’ said Ismail again.

  Wong continued to approach.

  ‘Stop,’ said the bomoh. ‘Stop or I throw her down. I’ll do it.’

  ‘Amran,’ gasped Maddy, breathing with difficulty. ‘Let me go.’

  ‘I throw her down,’ he repeated in a furious growl. ‘I will. I drop her. Take one more step closer to me only and she goes down. She dies.’

  The geomancer stopped moving.

  ‘Amran!’ Maddy screamed.

  Wong crept forwards again.

  ‘Stop. I drop her,’ Ismail said. ‘You move one more time, she dead already.’

  ‘Amran!’ the young woman shrieked. She stopped kicking. She turned her face to his. ‘I thought you loved me?’ She spoke in a dreamy voice, suddenly a child. ‘They’re telling the truth, aren’t they? You are the danger.’

  ‘Shut up.’

  Ismail continued to gradually move away from Wong and McQuinnie, dragging his victim with him. ‘I’ve won. I’m sorry, but I have. She’s going to die and then all finish.’

  ‘We’ll tell on you. We’ll tell the police,’ shouted Joyce, the schoolyard phrases sounding odd as soon as they had left her mouth.

  ‘Police don’t like you. Think you are chi-seen,’ said Ismail.

  ‘They like me better. I think they believe me, not you. I tell them all your fault. I tell them I try to save her. Officer Gallaher—he is my friend.’

  ‘Let her go, you beast,’ said Joyce.

  Ismail turned his forearm and looked at his watch. ‘Almost time,’ he said. ‘Almost time to say goodbye.’

  ‘I thought you loved me,’ repeated Maddy in a thin, high voice. ‘I thought you were going to save me, not kill me.’

  ‘I do,’ said Ismail. He looked down at her face and the granite hardness in his eyes disappeared. ‘I do love you. But no one can change fortune. No one can. The only thing is make the best of it. Everything I do is for you.’

  ‘You lied to me.’

  ‘I am like a doctor who not tells patient that she is dying. I bluff you because I want you to be happy.’

  ‘I saw the papers. I saw them on your desk.’

  ‘Papers?’

  ‘The insurance. You took out all that insurance. You will make money if I die. You love money, not me.’

  ‘No!’ Ismail was suddenly furious. ‘No. Don’t love money instead of you.’

  ‘I saw the insurance papers.’

  ‘You are going to die. No one can change your fortune. No one. Not me, not Joyce’s friend, no one. Very sorry. Insurance

  I got so something good comes out of your death only. Is for memorial to you, understand or not? When I got the money I will use it to start a foundation-lah. To help young people.’

  ‘Zahra? And the kids in your home?’

  ‘Yes. Zahra will be first. She must got surgery. Very expensive. My pak-mak no money. I need money to send her to Singapore, get good hospital. The other children too. All need money. They will pray for your spirit.’

  ‘You want money more than me.’

  ‘No choices are left. You must die. Is it better you die only? Or better you die and Zahra lives? Other children also?’

  ‘Amran. I don’t want to die.’

  ‘You must. No choice only. Not just me saying that. Joyce’s friend say the same thing.’

  Ismail suddenly looked over at the feng shui master and his assistant, clutching the roof four metres away.

  ‘Tell her,’ the bomoh shouted. ‘Tell her she must die today. You say you know her fortune. I went to see a feng shui man in Singapore myself: Eric Kan. He told me that she is a wood person. At five o’clock today, metal and fire and water converge on her sign. Very bad. Here and now. True or not? Come on, true or not?’

  The feng shui master looked at them, but said nothing.

  ‘True or not?’ Ismail repeated as a shriek.

  ‘Is true,’ said the geomancer. ‘But feng shui does not predict time of death. Only bad factors and bad times. You can do things, you can fight bad fortune.’

  ‘See?’ the Malaysian crowed to Madeleine. ‘Metal and fire and water. Death. He knows the truth. All finish now. Go quietly. I make sure they will remember you. The Maddy Tsai Foundation I call it.’

  The latter words in Ismail’s speech were difficult to hear. Suddenly the wind had risen to a deafening volume. The roof started to shake. There was a rumbling sound. There were shouts from below. A ship’s foghorn sounded. The roar of air traffic seemed to be all around them. Vibrations made it difficult for them to continue holding on to the ridges.

  Ismail’s eyes darted from side to side. He tightened his grip on Madeleine. Tremors ran through the roof.

  Wong struggled to maintain his grip on the shuddering surface beneath him. ‘Earthquake?’ he said to Joyce.

  ‘This is it,’ said the bomoh. ‘The end is here.’

  There was an ear-splitting roar as a helicopter appeared over a ridge on the curved landscape of white ridges that surrounded them.

  ‘It must be the police,’ Joyce shouted into Wong’s ear. ‘Brett must have phoned them.’ She looked suddenly distraught. ‘Oh no,’ she said, her chin beginning to quiver. ‘Officer Gallaher.’

  Ismail froze. Madeleine Tsai pulled away from him and grabbed Joyce McQuinnie’s outstretched hand. The three of them raced off the roof at high speed, scuttling crab-like across flatter areas and scrambling down a set of ridges used by the Opera House’s window cleaners. The bomoh stayed where he was. He appeared traumatised, unable to keep up with events. ‘Come back,’ he yelled. ‘Must come back. Few minutes left only. ’

  Minutes later, Wong, McQuinnie and Tsai were racing down the steps and then down the promenade, heading desperately for the street where Kilington had parked his car. Joyce was running the fastest, her terror of the police officer lending speed to her blurred feet. The deafening, fluttering roar of the helicopter appeared to be following them. Instead of disappearing into the distance as they raced away, it got steadily louder.

  ‘No good,’ Wong shouted. ‘Following us. Helicopter will get in front of us. Cannot escape.’

  Within minutes, all three had stopped running as the aircraft passed over their heads and then spun round, lowering itself gently between them and the only way out of the Bennelong Point extension.

  As the helicopter gently touched the ground, a sob broke from Joyce’s throat. ‘I can’t—I can’t—I don’t want to be arrested again. By that man. He said he’d lock me up.’

  ‘It’s okay
, Joyce. I’ll talk to them,’ Madeleine shouted. ‘They’ll help us. I’m sure they will. They’re okay with me.’ She lowered her head and stepped with difficulty towards the cabin of the shuddering craft, leaning forwards into the gale-force air that still blasted them.

  As she reached the helicopter door, it swung open.

  Smiling, Jackie Sum reached out and cut off her scream with a gloved hand before tugging her into the craft and ordering his pilot to lift off again.

  The feng shui master moved forwards to help her, but he was too late.

  The triad leader, a broad smile below his thick sunglasses, shouted a single word down to Wong through the open door: ‘Thanks.’

  Madeleine screamed again as the door was slammed shut.

  Joyce McQuinnie watched transfixed as the triads’ helicopter lifted itself gracefully into the air. Wong stood baffled under it, buffeted by waves of air.

  Within seconds, a group of four on-site security guards and two police officers arrived at the spot. The young woman instinctively recoiled from them, but soon realised they were interested only in the escaping aircraft. To them, she was only one of several dozen open-mouthed passers-by watching the scene.

  The helicopter, angled slightly nose-down, turned in the air and then started moving towards the building.

  Joyce’s heart was in her mouth. She turned to the feng shui master. ‘What are they going to do to her? Are they going to . . . ?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Is there anything we can—?’

  ‘I think no. Can call police. But police already know.’

  The helicopter skimmed the top of the Opera House before moving over the water to the north-east of the structure. A tiny figure standing on the roof of the building watched it sail past.

  Joyce sniffed, overcome by disappointment and helplessness.

  ‘We tried, didn’t we, CF? We really tried.’

  The geomancer put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Yes.

  We tried.’

  As they watched, they noticed the helicopter rocking slightly. It veered to the right and then pulled sharply to the left.

  Brett, his puffed out pecs hoisted proudly in front of him like a shield, trotted up to where the two of them stood. Now that nothing obviously illegal was going on, he was happy to rejoin them. ‘Amazing. Like something out of a bloody movie. Looks like your friend is putting up a bit of a fight,’ he said, pointing high in the sky. ‘See how the whirlybird is rocking?’

  The fluttering aircraft jerked suddenly to one side and then righted itself. As they continued to watch, they saw the door of the helicopter swing open. Then a body fell out.

  ‘Bloody bastards!’ said Brett, shocked. ‘The buggers have thrown her out. Geez, what a way to go.’ Joyce put her fist to her mouth.

  The body seemed to fall forever. All three of them held their breath.

  Then it hit the waters of the harbour with a splash they could see but not hear.

  ‘I can’t believe it,’ said Brett. ‘Pushing her out.’

  ‘No,’ said Joyce. ‘I don’t know. Maddy was on the swimming team at school. I think she jumped.’

  Joyce’s inclination was to race towards the water to see if Maddy could be rescued but the others persuaded her that she had landed much too far away.

  ‘The police’ll get there long before we do,’ said Brett. ‘She’s landed near Circular Quay. I hope she doesn’t get run over by one of the ferries. That would hurt.’

  The young Sydneysider told them that while they had been on the roof, he had sat down and read through some of Wong’s book about the Opera House. He was fascinated to report that the geomancer had been right—it clearly had been a place of great negative energy. The history of the Opera House was one of constant arguments. The original architect had stormed off the project and his replacements had found that no part of it could be brought into being on schedule and within budget. Even after it had been opened, the performance spaces within it had been a matter of dispute, with some rooms changing designation repeatedly. ‘You were bang on,’ Brett conceded.

  Wong’s attention was still on the harbour, as he anxiously waited for Madeleine’s head to bob up out of the water. Without looking away from the scene, he accepted Brett’s compliments, and then graciously pointed out that the millions of visitors who had visited the Opera House over the years would have done a great deal to alleviate the building’s negative energy and leave it with a positive air.

  The mutual back-patting session was interrupted by Joyce. ‘Excuse me, guys,’ she said with infinite sadness in her voice. ‘The police are coming this way. I think it’s our turn to be arrested again. Oh dear.’

  The next series of interviews with the Sydney police took a little over five hours—from just after 5.27 p.m. that day until almost 10.30 p.m. They were described by officer Denton Gallaher as ‘debriefing’. Although neither Wong nor McQuinnie were familiar with the word, it was clear that they were no longer seen as sources of trouble. Instead, they were perceived to be key sources of information regarding a highly unusual disturbance at the Opera House.

  Gallaher’s face was white and set. He was in a state of shock. He found it hard to accept that the group of inconsequential weirdos he had held in his office that afternoon had suddenly become an item on the television news.

  His colleagues had contacted him with a string of bizarre revelations. The Malaysian man he had shared tea with earlier that day had refused to come down from the roof of the Opera House for several hours and appeared to be in a demented state. A group of visitors from Hong Kong had hired a helicopter and landed it at the approach to the building—and then had used it to abduct the young Chinese woman who was allegedly ‘destined by the stars’ to die on that day. She herself had then jumped or been thrown out of said helicopter from a great height into the water, and was missing, presumed dead. She had not emerged from the water, nor had her body been found.

  The helicopter had eventually landed on a small airstrip north of the city and the individuals inside detained. None of them was being in the least bit helpful. A Cantonese-speaking police specialist in international triad activity had been summoned back from an organised crime conference in Melbourne to help question them.

  Meanwhile, initial witness statements appeared to indicate that the people he, Gallaher, had identified as the real troublemakers—Wong, McQuinnie and Kilington—had not committed any specific crimes. Indeed, there was some evidence to suggest that their behavior had been exemplary. Witnesses said they had appeared to be attempting to talk the Malaysian man and his Chinese fiancée down from the Opera House roof, and Wong had later been seen by several officers trying to stop the helicopter abduction of the young woman.

  Gallaher found the whole thing almost impossible to take in. Not a day goes by without police officers encountering lunatics making ridiculous allegations. Such claims have to be dismissed. Normal police business couldn’t proceed otherwise. But wacko predictions aren’t normally fulfilled almost immediately afterwards.

  He decided he was ultimately livid with God/Destiny/Fate for having played such a vile trick on him. The fact that the accusations made by Wong and McQuinnie turned out to have been right was just one of those huge, horrible coincidences that showed that whoever ran the universe had a sense of irony the size of Uluru.

  In the end, after hearing the entire bizarre tale a dozen times over, Gallaher came to his own conclusions. The weirdos from Singapore were convinced that Madeleine Tsai would die today.

  By spreading this fear around, they somehow managed to bring it about. It was all explicable by normal, scientific means. It was a prediction that had fulfilled itself thanks to group hysteria.

  But although the troublesome visitors had brought it all upon themselves, they had—unfortunately for him—not done so in a way that enabled him to charge them with specific offences, except very minor ones, such as trespass.

  It was infuriating, but it looked as if he would have to let
the crazy old Chinese guy and his mad young assistant go.

  ‘I’ve never been so tired in my whole life,’ said Joyce, as a police car dropped them back at their hotel at 10.41 that night. She gave a yawn that was so large it hurt her jaw and made her close her eyes. ‘Dear God,’ she said. ‘Poor us. Poor me. Poor Maddy.’ She sniffed and her red eyes filled with tears again. ‘She was only a year older than me. Can’t we go and help them look for her? She was a champion swimmer. She told me. I really think she could have jumped deliberately.’

  ‘I think better we decide that Madeleine Tsai is dead. Sydney coroner will probably write down open verdict, presumed dead.

  Most bodies in harbour waters are recovered. Some are not. But if she is officially dead, that means that triads will not come find her. Jackie Sum will not look for her. This is good. Old Man Tsai will not come find her. She doesn’t like her father. This is good. Australian immigration officers will not come find her. Also good. No one will come find her.’

  ‘But if she is still alive . . .’

  ‘If she is alive, she can start again. Fresh. Clean. New. New country. She is young, clever. She knows how to look after herself.’

  ‘Will that horrible guy get the insurance money? Her boyfriend?’

  ‘Don’t know. Maybe. He said he wants to spend it on sick children. Maybe he is telling the truth. Spending money on sick children is good.’

  As they stepped into the elevator, the young woman said: ‘If like she’s officially dead, then it all works out fine for everyone, in a way, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Not fine for everyone,’ said Wong. ‘No one to pay me.’

  Monday:

  With human

  hands

  The ghost groaned, right on cue at seven, o’clock. It was a sad, whimpering exhalation: ‘Unhhh. ’

  ‘There it is,’ gasped Joyce McQuinnie, standing in the doorway.

  ‘I’m going home,’ said Lai Kuen, grabbing her handbag and trotting stiffly out of the office on her high heels.

  The two dentists stood in the waiting room, while Lai Kuen waited in the corridor, trying to cram her fist in her mouth. They had all come back to the still-shut surgery on Monday evening to watch CF Wong deal with the ghost.