The Feng Shui Detective Goes South (38 page)

‘What is it?’ the police officer asked, shuffling his seat close to the table and sniffing deeply.

‘It’s slices of Australian natives. Apparently everybody eats them down there. It’s allowed. They are known as arboretums.’

‘Sounds yummy, but perhaps I go for something more familiar,’ said the Superintendent, pushing the dish away and reaching for a dish of
char kway teow.

The police officer suddenly stopped, mid-grab. He looked over at Joyce. ‘Before I forget, I just want to say I’m sorry about your friend, Joyce. The girl who died in Australia?’

‘Poor dear Clara,’ Madame Xu said.

‘Madeleine,’ Wong said.

‘It’s a terrible thing but I knew she would die the moment I saw the picture of her hand,’ the fortune-teller said. ‘It was tragic but it had to be.’

‘Er, thanks.’ Joyce quickly wiped the smile off her face. ‘It was, er, very sad. But I think she’s in a better place sort of thing?’

Madame Xu put her hands together prayerfully. ‘A paradise where there is no more laughter and no more tears.’

‘Yeah. Whatever.’

There was little conversation for the next fourteen minutes, and the members of the investigative advisory committee of the Singapore Union of Industrial Mystics did justice to the creations of Ah-Fat, the night market’s best chef. Despite his protestations, Superintendent Tan consumed most of the kangaroo, which had been cooked
rendang
style.

Only when all appeared to be reaching a point of satiety did thoughts turn to matters of work.

‘Now,’ said Gilbert Tan. ‘What do we have to report?’

He looked from face to face.

‘I want to hear Wong’s story about the dentists,’ said the fortune-teller. ‘So what happened? I am all on tenterhooks. Is the ghost exorcised?’

‘Hmm?’ Wong looked up from his journal, in which he had started scribbling again. ‘It was quite simple. But I had to put some different things together.’

‘I helped,’ said Joyce proudly. ‘In fact, if not for me, he might not have been able to solve the thing, right, CF?’

The geomancer gave her a sidelong glance. ‘The problem was not too difficult. Simple mathematics. A matter of putting one and one together.’

‘Two and two.’

‘What?’

‘Two and two,’ said Joyce. ‘The phrase is, putting two and two together. Not one and one.’

‘Same-same.’ The geomancer turned to Madame Xu. ‘You see, it was easy for someone like me, who always has pen and paper and is scribbling. I wrote down the times of the visit of the ghost. Saturday at one afternoon, Monday at nine morning, Tuesday at six afternoon, Wednesday at four afternoon. You see?’

Sinha jotted it all down. ‘No, I can’t see any pattern. No, wait, hang on . . . Yes. No. No, I don’t get it.’

‘I cannot do sums,’ said Madame Xu. ‘Concepcion does all the household accounts for me. I don’t know where I would be without her.’

‘Aha!’ This was Sinha, who had continued to scrawl in a tiny hand. ‘I’ve got it. The ghost was on a timer. It went off every eleven hours. So it
also
went off, let me see, at 11 p.m. on Sunday morning, 10 p.m. on Sunday night, 8 p.m. on Monday night, 7 a.m. on Tuesday morning and 5 a.m. Wednesday and, and, 3 a.m. Thursday, but no one was there to hear it at those hours. Those not being office hours.’

‘Yes,’ said Wong. ‘Regular yet not regular.’

‘Suspiciously regular for a ghost,’ said the Indian astrologer.

‘Or to put it another way, suspiciously irregular, since the ghosts I know prefer to appear at the same time every year. Certainly not in 11-hour cycles.’

‘Can I tell them my contribution now, CF, please?’ said Joyce excitedly.

‘Okay.’

‘Well, it was like this, see? We were in the airport in Sydney and he was telling me all this about the ghost arriving and the fact that it seemed to be on an 11-hour cycle. We noticed from his notes that the time from when the ghost started moaning to his last groan was always an hour and fourteen minutes. You know what lasts exactly an hour and fourteen minutes, don’t you? Only one thing in the world.’

There was silence.

‘The last act of
La Boheme
?’ offered Sinha.

‘Part one of
The Sound of Music
?’ suggested Madame Xu.

‘No. Do you give up?’

Sinha put his fingertips together. ‘We do not. Let me think. The exchange of vows at an Indian wedding? A business lunch at Raffles? A taxi drive from Tampines to Sentosa during rush hour?’

‘No. Now do you give up?’

‘I do,’ said Madame Xu.

‘I most certainly do not,’ said Sinha. ‘I can never resist a challenge and I will never give up. Let me think. Oh, I don’t know. I give up too. Do tell.’

‘A minidisc,’ said Joyce, clapping her hands together with glee. ‘You know. Seventy-four minutes?’

There was silence.

‘A minidisc,’ repeated Joyce. ‘You know, the recordable disc players from Japan? Like CDs but small, teeny things, squarish?’

The astrologer looked at the fortune-teller. ‘This thing.’ She fumbled in her bag and handed over a square of metal.

‘We used to call these pocket transistors,’ said Sinha.

‘Yes, but they don’t call them radios any more,’ said Madame Xu. ‘Concepcion’s daughter has one. They call them Walkie-Talkie-Men or something, right?’

‘Er, sort of,’ said Joyce, ‘Anyway, the discs that you get with these machines, they are always seventy-four minutes long. So we worked out that the ghost was made of one of these things hooked up to an 11-hour timer. It was buried in the wall. Wired up to the electricity supply.’

Madame Xu was confused. ‘But why did the sound come from the middle of the room when it was really from a machine in the wall? CF said that the moaning came from just above the chair.’

Wong explained: ‘The machine was hidden away. Two speakers were buried in the wall. One on one side, one on the other side. Special effect. If you stand in the front of the room, sound seems to come from in between. New invention.

Called stereo.’

‘It’s not a new invention. My dad’s had a stereo for years,’ said Joyce. ‘It must have been invented at least ten years ago.

Anyway, there’s this thing called stereo imaging. They’ve had it years, only these days they do it better and with smaller speakers. My dad’s—’ ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand,’ sighed Madame Xu. ‘I am really far too old for all this.’

‘Here,’ said the young woman, pulling a magazine from her sack. ‘I bought this from the airport bookshop to explain it to CF. There’s an article in here which will explain.’

Madame Xu looked at the magazine: ‘
Rocksoff.
I don’t think I subscribe to this particular journal.’

‘You should. You’d really like it. There’s a column on page 62 called High End Audiophile. It’s about spatial imaging and all that stuff. You should read it. It’s a good magazine. My dad gets it. I’ll lend that one to you if you like.’

‘That’s really very generous of you, dear.’

Wong interrupted to interpret. ‘The sound comes from both sides, two speakers. But if you use correct speakers, correct volume, from some parts of the room it sounds like sound comes from middle of room. Between speakers instead of from speakers. Very clever. Special effect.’

‘Ah. I see,’ said the fortune-teller.

‘But who did it?’ asked Sinha. ‘The American I suppose?

Wanted to scare off his Singaporean partner and nab the business for himself?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Wong. ‘I am only feng shui man. Not police man. Superintendent Tan is looking at the case. He will tell us in good time. It was not Dr Leibler who organise the ghost, I think.’

‘CF and I talked about this on the way here. We reckon it might not have been the dentists at all,’ said Joyce. ‘It was probably that woman Amanda Luk, who was killed last week. Sorry to speak ill of the dead and all that. Thank God I never met her. It would be awful to meet someone who died. But she redecorated the office, remember? Before they moved in. She got her friends to install that sound equipment there while they did the place up. Maybe.’

‘What was the motive?’ asked Sinha.

‘We don’t know,’ said Joyce. ‘She wanted to get rid of Dr Liew. Scare him off. That’s what I think.’

‘But do you have any idea why she did it?’

‘Dunno. My theory is that she had something going with Dr Leibler, but Dr Leibler won’t divorce his wife and marry her because he doesn’t have enough patients. Not enough income. Getting divorced is the most expensive thing you ever do in your life—that’s what my dad says. So I reckon Amanda Luk cooked up this scheme to get rid of Dr Liew, so Dr Leibler gets all the patients at that practice, marries her and they live happily ever after?’

‘So who or what killed Amanda Luk?’ This was Madame Xu.

‘Don’t know,’ said Joyce. ‘But I know it wasn’t a ghost. Maybe it was Dr Liew. Or maybe the other woman assistant at the surgery did it.’

Wong winced. ‘You must not say such things. This is libel and slander. Very bad. Cannot say without proof.’

Madam Xu nodded. ‘He’s right, Plum Blossom. It is libel and slander. You mustn’t say these things.’

‘Let me ask you a professional question, C F.’ This was Sinha. ‘Could you really locate that recording machine so precisely behind the plaster purely by using your feng shui equipment?’

‘Well, not just the feng shui compass. I also read the magazine of Joyce.’

Joyce beamed.

‘
Rocksoff
,’ said the astrologer, picking it up and looking with grave distaste at the sweaty guitarist on the cover.

‘Well, this proves one thing, in my book, anyway,’ said Joyce. ‘Vega was right. There’s no such thing as ghosts. It’s all just mumbo-jumbo. I don’t know how people can seriously believe such dumb stuff. People are like soooo gullible. I wonder if Seth can teach me how to do channelling?’

The geomancer lowered his chopsticks and caught the eye of the police officer.

‘I have a suggestion,’ said CF Wong. ‘Just a idea. Unofficial.’

‘All our discussions are unofficial, you know that.’

Wong pulled at the straggly hairs on his chin. ‘We think ghost was organise by assistant, Amanda Luk, who died.’

‘Yes.’

‘Remember how Dr Leibler had lawsuit from man named Joseph Oath? But Mr Oath died just after lawsuit started?’

‘I do.’

‘I think maybe you ask your friends in Hong Kong police force to open old file about Mr Oath. You see, this happen little while after Cady Tsai-Leibler married Dr Leibler. She thought she marry a rich man. Successful dentist. But then she find that he faces lawsuit, maybe will lose all his money. Too bad. Then problem solve itself. Man with lawsuit dies.’ Wong leaned forwards. ‘That’s the story. But now we know something that before we do not know.’

‘Which is?’ Tan smiled expectantly.

‘That Mrs Tsai-Leibler is involved with triad groups. Death of Joseph Oath may be happy coincidence for her. Or maybe not. I think you reopen old files. Ask some questions. Maybe interesting. Maybe not. Don’t know.’

‘I understand.’ The police officer scribbled down some notes. ‘When you put it that way, it does sound like something that needs to be looked into.’ He finished writing and scanned their faces again.

Wong continued: ‘Then another person make trouble for Mrs Tsai-Leibler: Amanda Luk. She meets her husband in hotel when he is staying here. They make friends. He gets her a job as receptionist in his dentist surgery. She maybe wants to have affair with him. Maybe she already has had affair with him. I don’t know. Then she dies too.’

‘Interesting,’ said Sinha, who was picking a sliver of kangaroo
rendang
out of the crevice in the middle of his teeth with a toothpick. ‘Seems that people who cross swords with Mrs Tsai-Leibler soon get put out of action.’

‘I’m with you,’ said the police officer. ‘Thank you, Mr Wong. I shall pass these extremely interesting deductions to the gentlemen in my office in charge of this case. I shall, as usual, take full credit for them myself. Anything else to report?’

Sinha leaned forwards. ‘But if Mrs Tsai-Leibler was the evil person behind the deaths of Mr Oath and Ms Luk, that still leaves one crime unaccounted for. Who tried to burn the house down and kill Mrs Tsai-Leibler. Was it really the ghost of Mr Oath, as she said? It surely wouldn’t have been Ms Luk?

I can imagine a young woman having a fling with someone’s husband—but it’s a big jump to go from that to burning down a house with the whole family inside.’

‘I think it was not Ms Luk,’ said Wong. ‘I think Jackie Sum sent agent down to kill Madeleine Tsai. When house-burning failed, Jackie comes down himself to finish the job.’

Joyce put up her hand, a school habit she had yet to lose.

‘Yes, little lady?’

‘I went down to The Hole with Danita last night and she told me something interesting. That horrible fat man who locked her up? Well, you know he turned out to be this guy who had like seen her once or twice in the shop and really, really fancied her and all that and decided to kidnap her?’

‘Yes,’ said Superintendent Tan.

‘He may know who you are talking about but we don’t,’ said Madame Xu.

‘Well, he was the kidnapper. Remember on Wednesday we rescued this girl?’ Joyce said. ‘Well, he worked in this photo studio and he locked her up in his darkroom?’