The Feng Shui Detective's Casebook Read online

  PRAISE FOR NURY VITTACHI

  AND THE FENG SHUI DETECTIVE BOOKS

  ‘Unsurpassable mixture of humor, wisdom and whodunnit.’

  The Crime Forum, Germany

  ‘A very funny book. Dangerously so at times.’

  That’s Beijing

  ‘Wacky and hilarious whodunit—you just have to dig in and hold on for the wild ride.’

  Asian Review of Books

  ‘An international bestseller whose unlikely sleuths appear to be heading for cult status.’

  Herald Sun, Melbourne

  ‘Totally engrossing and very, very funny.’

  Radio 3AK, Melbourne

  ‘If Hollywood wakes up...’

  The Australian

  ‘One of the most droll, attractive and unusual of modern amateur detectives.’

  The Bulletin

  ‘To many, he is Asia’s funniest, most pungent columnist and author. To others, he is a subversive threat who must be watched like a hawk.’

  Herald Sun, Melbourne

  ‘The story is populated by a stream of eccentric characters and amusing examples of Singapore’s polyglot, multiethnic culture... a tasty smorgasbord of modern Asian life.’

  Japan Times

  ‘Does for the flow of ch’i what Sherlock Holmes did for cocaine.’

  South China Morning Post

  ‘The man who made Lee Kuan Yew laugh.’

  The New Paper, Singapore

  First published in Australia in 2006

  Copyright © Nury Vittachi 2003

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10% of this book, whichever is the greater to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

  Vittachi, Nury, 1958– .

  The feng shui detective’s casebook.

  1st Australian ed.

  ISBN 978 1 74114 780 3 (pbk).

  ISBN 1 74114 780 8 (pbk).

  I. Title.

  895.152

  Cover and text designed by Design by Committee

  Typeset in 11/13.5 pt Adobe Garamond by Midland Typesetters, Australia

  Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Contents

  Author’s note

  Prologue: A quick bite

  1 The case of the fishy flat

  2 Fit for life or death

  3 The cars that flew away

  4 A little computer trouble

  5 Bad marks at school

  6 The adventure of the offstage actors

  7 The case of the late news columnist

  Epilogue: Letters from friends

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The feng shui techniques in this book are mostly from the flying star school and the form school of East Asia. The vaastu principles are from the northern Indian school. The ancient Chinese philosophy, stories and quotes from Confucius and other sages are largely genuine and come from texts up to 2,500 years old. The extracts from Some Gleanings of Oriental Wisdom are by CF Wong, with spelling and grammar corrections by J McQuinnie.

  Prologue: A quick bite

  The tiger loping through the supermarket had blue eyes. It blinked them slowly as it languidly scanned the goods on the shelves.

  Huge, muscular, and almost twice the length of a man, the 240-kilogram tigris panthera sumatrae paused. It appeared to be trying to choose between the Betty Crocker Super Moist Lemon Cake Mix and the Pillsbury Creamy Supreme Chocolate Fudge Frosting. It swung its massive head to the other side of the aisle to examine the First Choice Thai Fragrant Rice and the Golden Noodle Mee Goreng. Then it moved on again, heading inadvisably towards the Kraft Macaroni Cheese Dinner.

  Spying an opening to the left, the beast impulsively powered its heavy body through the gap and found itself trotting down an aisle marked BREAKFAST CEREALS AND MILK PRODUCTS.

  The tiger, an adult male with the white skin and dark stripes of a zebra, came to a halt. Slowly it surveyed the scene, its haughty, down-turned lips giving it the look of a jaded royal wine taster. Apparently bored, it hung its head slightly, making the bones of its shoulders stick up through its shiny white silk pelt.

  In the corner of its vision there was movement.

  A glow came from a glass cabinet containing fresh-chilled cold cuts, 20 metres away at the end of the aisle. A mother with a pushchair approached the fridge. The baby stirred in its sleep.

  Smelling fresh meat, the tiger stared from a distance. Its tail, almost a metre long, twitched. It lowered its haunches to the ground. Its belly muscles tightened and its spine arched. Then it started to move, its powerful muscles shifting under its skin like zephyrs through a cornfield as it raced forwards, preparing to pounce.

  ‘Wong-saang! Wong-saang!’

  Madam Lin’s cracked, piercing voice sang out over the noise of trucks reversing into a garbage depot nearby.

  ‘Wong-saang. Here!’

  It was likely that there were several people called Wong within earshot of her penetrating yell, so a thin man of fifty-six hunched his head into his shoulders and tried to scurry away, praying that she was aiming her comments at one of the others. He recognised the voice as belonging to an irritating local landlady he had once encountered when he had done a feng shui reading for a community hall. On that occasion, he had been aghast to find she had placed a figurine of a plastic phoenix in a place where a newborn would have known that the only suitable animal was a rosewood turtle.

  ‘Wong-saang Feng shui lo,’ she shrieked.

  Aiyeeah! There was no avoiding it. CF Wong turned his head and feigned surprise. He pointed to himself, his index finger aimed quizzically at his nose. The expression on his face said: Me? You want me?

  ‘Come. Faidee-la!’ She beckoned him Chinese-style, with her palm down.

  Pausing to let a taxi rumble past, the stick-thin feng shui master stepped into the road and reluctantly approached the opposite pavement, where Madam Lin Pui-yen, a woman of fifty in a black pyjama suit which stopped 20 centimetres above her ankles, was hopping with excitement.

  ‘Come. Need you,’ she barked.

  ‘Hello, Lin-taai. Ver’ nice to see you. Eat rice yet?’

  ‘No time for chit-chat. Come. They have a white tiger in Sing Woo. Can you believe?’

  ‘White tiger?’

  ‘Yes. In Sing Woo supermarket.’

  Wong rolled his eyes upwards. ‘Must never put white tiger inside building. Wrong-wrong-wrong. Only outside, small statue only, on west only.’ He shook his head in despair. Truly, the depth of ignorance displayed by the masses was bottomless.

  The two of them walked towards a ragged store bearing the name Sing Woo Western and Oriental Supermarket and Property Agent. The front window was almost totally obscured by peeling hand-written posters in English and Chinese offering discounts on bak-choi and other grocery items.

  ‘Tang should know,’ Wong continued, a ton
e of severest disapproval in his voice. ‘Never put white tiger statue inside. Will bring bad fortune only. You tell Tang: I can change for horse statuette, very nice, very clean. Only ninety-eight dollar for big one, running horse pair in rosewood. Or have standing horse, imitation jade, 25 centimetre, only sixty-five dollar, special price.’

  They reached the front of the store and Wong was surprised to see that it was deserted. Manager Wilfred Tang, who was normally found at the cash desk morning till night, was nowhere to be seen.

  The geomancer stepped inside and peered curiously down the empty aisles.

  ‘Tang is where? Lin-taai?’ He was even more taken aback to notice that Madam Lin had not accompanied him into the shop, but was loitering nervously outside. He turned around and called out a question. ‘Tang is where? And where is feng shui tiger?’

  Madam Lin shook her head. Not feng shui tiger,’ she called out. ‘White tiger. Can you get me some gai-laan? One catty.’

  ‘Oh.’ Wong was intrigued. Good white jade—if it was genuine—was expensive. Had Tang really invested in such a pricey ornamentation for this grubby, run-down store? Could he be persuaded to hand over a tiger of white jade for a cheap rosewood horse? Wong smelt profit.

  His spirits lifted, the geomancer happily strolled along Canned Meats, looking for the supermarket manager. He turned left past Fresh Fruit and Vegetables, slipped along Coffee and Tea and then turned right into Babycare and Tissues. Baffled to find not a single living soul in the shop, he started to stride more quickly.

  It was then that he recalled the look on Madam Lin’s face as she stood shouting to him from outside the store. She had been biting her lower lip and there was a network of tension lines around her eyes. It was almost a look of fear.

  But what was there to be scared of?

  CF Wong turned a corner into Breakfast Cereals and Milk Products, looked towards the Cold Cuts section, and found out.

  Six minutes passed, during which he barely moved. Wong remained frozen to the spot, showing no more animation than the shoulder-high display of Buitoni Marinara Pasta Sauce to his right.

  Standing next to him was a bespectacled woman, also as still as a statue. At their feet was a pushchair containing a sleeping baby.

  In front of them, no more than three metres away, a large white tiger sat on its haunches. It was a Sumatran male and weighed at least twice as much as all three of its human companions put together. It was attempting to eat a packet of Spinelli’s Spicy Chicken Poultry Sausage, tearing at the packaging and spitting out pieces of plastic.

  The tiger was astonishingly beautiful. Its fur was short, creamy white, and had a reflective lustre that would have done a shampoo advertisement proud. The stripes running vertically along the length of its body were the deep, slightly purple black of East India Rosewood.

  But it was not the lack of yellow fur that was startling about the beast, but the omission of the characteristic marmalade hue in its eyes. The orbs were unexpectedly large, and at the heart of the pupils were ovals the deep blue of summer skies.

  The tiger glanced up and its audience tensed.

  CF Wong was not an heroic man. Although motionless, he was having great difficulty in controlling outbreaks of shivers that kept starting at the top of his spine and running down his back and the length of both arms. His eyes remained so firmly locked on the head of the beast in front of him that his vision kept going in and out of focus.

  The tiger looked down again at the difficult-to-open packet of chicken sausages.

  The feng shui master’s eyes darted around, looking for an escape. The only opening on this side of the building was a door-less archway about 4 metres to the right of the tiger, apparently leading to a storage area.

  The tiger, the doorway and the individuals trying not to be eaten formed an elegant triangle. The geomancer’s brain worked at a feverish pace, fired by adrenaline. Can we reach the doorway? Which way will the tiger move? Or should we aim for the store entrance instead? Do we form an isosceles triangle or an equilateral triangle? Where is Tang? Has anyone called the police or the fire service or the zoo?

  At the moment, he knew their only hope was to stay where they were. As long as they could keep absolutely still and silent, there was a chance that the tiger might leave them alone until help arrived.

  At that moment, the baby woke up.

  She stretched two tiny arms over her head and started to moan: ‘Uhhhn.’

  ‘Shh!’ the mother whispered.

  ‘Mama!’ shouted the child.

  The tiger looked up and stared at the baby.

  Wong knew that they needed to move immediately. ‘I think we go that way,’ he whispered to the woman, a kebaya-wearing nonya in her twenties. She had high heels and a row of bracelets, absurdly over-dressed for grocery shopping. Her hair was in a bun and her lower lip was trembling. His eyes pointed to the storage area.

  ‘Cannot,’ she replied, her voice trembling. Her eyes focused on a sign above the doorway. ‘Staff Only.’

  Aiyeeah! All Singaporeans were idiots! Rather be eaten by a tiger than break a rule!

  Wong continued: ‘I distract tiger. Maybe. You take baby, run to staff area.’

  The woman shook her head. ‘Too far. I think he will chase us. I think he can jump very far.’

  The geomancer nodded. He too had noticed the tiger’s long, muscular legs—if they tried to make a break for it, it would be on top of them in two, maybe three easy steps.

  Wong strained his ears for the sound of arriving police cars, zookeepers, people with tranquilliser guns—but there was no sound from the front of the shop. Had that idiot woman Madam Lin even thought of calling the police? She was probably still standing outside the shop, angry with him for not returning with her catty of gai-laan.

  It started to dawn on him that they had better assume that they would have to solve this problem entirely by themselves. But how?

  The tiger ripped another large piece of plastic from his package. Wong was unable to prevent his imagination visualising the creature stripping skin from a human victim. It tried to bury its snout in the pink meat of the torn sausages, but had difficulty: they were double-wrapped. Its eyes kept returning to the baby.

  ‘Give me your phone,’ Wong whispered, assuming that every Singaporean woman had one.

  The woman, tears flowing freely down her face, slowly reached into her handbag and pulled out a tiny Nokia.

  The geomancer tapped out the number for his friend Dilip Kenneth Sinha.

  ‘Ye-es?’ came a deep and elegant voice.

  ‘Sinha!’

  ‘Ah, hello, Wong. Are you already there? I’m just entering the compound and should be at our table in just a minute or —’

  ‘Emergency! Please go to Sing Woo supermarket. Very urgent.’

  ‘Sing Woo?’

  ‘Near junction. Next to Long Kee’s Pig Organ Soup. Don’t come inside supermarket. Find Wilfred Tang, give him phone. Urgent.’

  ‘I hear you.’

  With a jerk of his head, the tiger abandoned the impenetrable packet of sausages and tossed it to one side. Then he started looking for an alternative meal.

  ‘Ma-ma!’ complained the baby, hands in the air, wanting to be picked up.

  The woman, still crying, slowly bent down towards her child. She cringed as the safety buckle on the stroller opened with a loud click.

  She lifted the child to her breast and began to breathe again.

  The tiger gazed at parent and child. The baby went back to sleep, chin stretched over her mother’s shoulder. Wong held his breath, looking at the tiger’s blue eyes and trying to anticipate its movements.

  For two long minutes, the beast merely examined the three humans in front it.

  Then the phone came back to life. ‘Wong-saang? Are you inside?’ It was manager Tang. ‘Where are you? Tiger with you, is it?’

  The geomancer could hear several voices murmuring behind Tang. He assumed Madam Lin was bringing Sinha up to date with what was goi
ng on.

  ‘We are in the back,’ Wong whispered. ‘Me and lady and one baby.’

  ‘Can’t hear you. Can you talk louder?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can you distract the tiger until police come?’

  Wong gritted his teeth. ‘Are there any other ways out back of shop?’

  ‘Only through side storage area. I think.’

  ‘You sure? Any door on other side? Tiger is in front of storage area.’

  ‘Don’t know-lah. I am not owner-one. Manager only.’

  ‘Any windows or back-side door?’

  ‘No. Don’t think so.’

  Wong was silent for a moment, thinking. ‘You see any feng shui item in this place? When you start work as manager, you ask this is what sort of dwelling?’

  There was silence from the phone except for the sound of Tang’s breath. ‘Did not ask. Sorry-ah.’

  ‘Did owner tell you it was Chi’en or Hum dwelling?’

  ‘Aiyeeah, did not ask, if owner say anything, do not remember.’

  Exasperation and amazement fought for control of Wong’s face. How could anything but a stone take no interest in such an important piece of information?

  He pressed on. ‘See any feng shui item hanging up?’

  ‘Er. Let me think.’ A scraping noise suggested Tang was scratching his cropped head. ‘Yes. There were some stuff. Turtle picture on outside front wall. Small dragon in warehouse next door, on dairy products side. More, don’t remember.’

  ‘Any red phoenix?’

  ‘Felix is what?’

  ‘Bird. Any red bird picture or statue?’

  ‘Yah, is red bird picture hanging back-side back shed where rubbish go.’

  The feng shui master’s eyes widened. ‘Thank you.’ He rang off.

  Wong turned to the woman. ‘Feng shui master who read this building decide shop frontage was really back wall of terrace.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘It means there is opening towards red phoenix.’ He pointed towards what was now the rear of the shop.

  ‘Where?’

  Wong pointed to a wall on their left hidden by tall shelves of canned meats. ‘Maybe there.’