The Feng Shui Detective's Casebook (20 page)

Wong, McQuinnie and Sinha had been summoned to investigate the explosion because the Bodwali Building was one of a portfolio of south and central Indian offices owned by a property developer named Nawal Ajit Kishore, a Singaporean Indian. Kishore served on the board of East Trade Industries in Singapore, and had decided to exploit the connection to augment the work of the local police.

Wong had agreed to the challenging assignment on the basis that Mr Pun pay a larger-than-usual daily stipend and cover the cost of their being accompanied by Dilip Sinha, who had spent a significant portion of his childhood in Hyderabad.

And he had always enjoyed curries. But not on this trip.

Sinha went to talk to some Hindi-speaking witnesses while Wong and McQuinnie trekked across town to see the munitions specialist used as an expert witness by the police department of Hyderabad for all incidents involving explosions. They found him in a back office of a glass-walled building near the Osmania University. Despite the modern exterior, his office was in a musty suite of rooms with lines of old wooden desks.

Finding the right room after some difficulty, they discovered that the expert was a surprisingly youthful man named Subhash Reddy. He was a slightly chubby geek of about twenty-six, with thick hair, a solid moustache and a twinkle in his eye. His lashes were so thick Joyce wondered whether he was wearing make-up.

Reddy had been educated for five years in the United States, and he and Joyce immediately hit it off together. The young woman declared that she loved New York and Subhash explained that he hated it—and somehow the conversation brought them together.

‘I just hated Central Park,’ said Subhash. ‘And those uptown buildings where the rich live.’

‘Yeah. It’s such a majorly cool place. We saw John Lennon’s house.’

‘And those silly tourist types who think it’s cool to go round in a horse-drawn carriage.’

‘Yeah. My sister and me went twice. It was so neat.’

‘New Yorkers are just all really weird.’

‘Totally. We had the greatest time.’

Wong impatiently dragged them back to the question at hand. ‘Please tell us about explosion in Pallakiri town.’

Reddy reluctantly took his gaze off Joyce and twirled his seat around to open a cabinet and find a file on the case. He flicked through the sheets and pulled out a typewritten report. ‘It was plastic explosive, tightly packed in a small metal container. He opened the container and the thing exploded. Simple as that.’

‘Biscuit tin?’

‘Smaller, maybe just three or four inches high. More like a tin of tomatoes or something. But not tomatoes—there would have been traces.’

‘No tomatoes?’

‘No. There were traces of some meat we haven’t been able to identify yet. Possibly pork, possibly beef.’

‘Religious motive?’

‘Maybe. Maybe not. We also found some silver foil that could’ve come from a chocolate bar wrapper, and some peanuts. The impression I got was that he had been having breakfast or lunch at his desk when he opened the tin containing the bomb.’

‘His food kills him. Very not nice,’ said the
feng shui
master. He had Cantonese blood, and the idea of an exploding meal deeply upset him.

‘Not nice. Bombs are never nice,’ said Reddy. ‘Presumably you have some questions for me?’

Joyce looked at the man’s dark eyes. ‘Yeah—are you wearing mascara or are your eyelashes natural?’

‘I am quite convinced that Delhi belly is all in the mind, Wong.’

An hour had passed, and they were taking a lunch break in a small restaurant. Lazy ceiling fans sent down waves of air that mussed their hair rather than cooled their heads. Sinha had ordered a large repast, much to the annoyance of his digestion-challenged colleague. Within ten minutes of ordering, an aromatic array of six curries was spread in bowls across the table.

Sinha waved his large hands around as he spoke. ‘Foreigners expect to get upset stomachs here, so they do. Now look at Joyce. She’s young. She has not yet acquired the prejudices of adulthood. So her stomach is fine. Yet what has she eaten? She has surely eaten exactly the same things as you have. The same airline food, the same hotel dishes, the same breakfast. If there were germs in it, you would have the same germs. As for me, I have never felt better in my life.’ He took a deep breath, waving his hand theatrically, as if to wave more air towards his large nose.

‘Amazing colours,’ said Joyce, staring at the neon-vivid curries on the table. ‘Like, totally psychedelic.’

She put a tiny portion of each one on her plate and tried to guess what they were. She particularly relished some soft lumps presented in a creamy, lemon-yellow sauce.

‘That is a humble potato.’ Sinha was filled with pride. ‘What a bland and uninteresting vegetable the potato is. No taste, no texture and no visual appeal. Yet curry a potato in the correct sauces and it becomes a succulent, delicious, melt-in-the-mouth treat which is perfect, pressed gently into basmati.’

‘Mm-
mm
. How’d you make it?’

‘Easy. You simply curry the potato with red onion, dhania powder, mango powder, garam masala, sugar, ginger, jira, dhania, tomatoes, chilli, curry leaves, fennel, all that sort of thing, and gently simmer it for a long time. It turns into what we call a white curry.’

‘But it’s yellow.’

He was momentarily taken aback. ‘We mean white in a metaphorical sense. It has an extremely
subtle
taste. A white taste.’

His eyes went out of focus again. ‘In all parts of India, the potato is revered. In Hindi—and also in Oriya and Punjabi, we call it
aloo—
that’s the name you’ll see on the menu at Indian restaurants around the world. In Malayalam and Tamil, they talk of
urula kizangu.
In Bengal, they celebrate the
gal alu
, while the people who speak Telungu talk of the
alu
gaddalu.
The names have one root, but many rich associations. So many titles for one vegetable.’

‘And French fries. And chips. Those are names for potatoes.’

‘They are? I often wondered what they made those disgusting things out of. Poisonous, I believe.’ He pressed a lump of potato with his fingertips into the rice and expertly turned it into a little ball that he lifted to his lips. ‘Can you guess what the other dishes are?’

‘This one’s like lentil soup?’ Joyce offered.

He nodded. ‘Sambar. We call it sambar.’

‘And this is okra?’

‘More commonly known here as bhindi or lady’s fingers.’

Joyce correctly identified the chicken dish and a fish dish, but was baffled by a lumpy, dark brown meat which was rather too chewy for her taste.

‘Beef?’

‘Certainly not. This is India. Hindus cannot eat beef. Although many historians believe that the real reasons for the non-consumption of our bovine brothers and sisters were actually more practical than religious. In the fifth century, the number of cows in India was diminishing fast, and it was decreed that the value of a live cow, as an active year-after-year producer of ghee and so on, was far more than the value of a dead cow, as a short-term meal of beef.’

‘Is it lamb?’

Sinha shook his head.

‘I don’t know, then. Is it something rare?’

‘Rare in Singaporean restaurants, yes.’

‘Crocodile? Tiger? Elephant?’

He shook his head again.

‘I give up. It’s an unidentifiable meatal substance. Hippo? Rhino? Ostrich?’

Sinha smiled. ‘You would call it goat. We call it mutton.’

‘I thought mutton came from sheep?’

‘In the West, I believe mutton does refer mainly to sheep. But in most of Asia, sheep and goats are considered brethren. In Chinese, I believe they say
yeung
for both. Correct?’

They looked at Wong, but he sat glazed, out of the conversation. He had not made a move to touch any of the food Sinha had piled onto his plate. Indeed, he seemed reluctant to even look at it, as he sat half-turned, staring out of the window.

The Indian astrologer gestured at the mutton. ‘Oh come on, try a little
yeung
, Wong. Or “unidentifiable meatal substance”, as Joyce calls it.’

Sinha dipped his fingers into the lemon-water bowl, wiped them carefully with a serviette, and placed them under his chin. Joyce correctly surmised that he had paused to make another speech.

‘The question is often asked by visitors to India—often, I say, but in truth it is probably not asked as often as it should be, visitors being too likely to accept what they are told without even a modicum of intelligent curiosity these days— anyway, a question which
should
often be asked is this: why is it that a largely vegetarian country can produce such fine meat dishes?’

She sat tight, knowing he would provide his own answer.

‘The answer is this. In the period known as the Vedic times, which ran from three-and-a-half to about two-and-a-half thousand years ago, long before your Western spiritual man Jesus Christ was even born, our communities had a thriving and active religious life. The priestly castes energetically sacrificed animals to the gods, and then ate what was left over, so as not to waste it. So there were meat-eaters here for a long time. But then we saw the rise of Buddhism and Jainism —movements which were against any sort of violence to any sort of sentient being (movements which presaged your Western animal liberation groups by millennia). So then, in the fifth century BC, India became the largest vegetarian nation in the world—as it remains today. Because we ate only vegetables, we developed a wonderful range of sauces and creams to enliven them.’

He pointed to a creamy, pale-brown dish. ‘But to me, it was the Muslim influence that turned an interesting vegetarian cuisine into the most varied and flavoursome in the world. Arabs visiting India cooked the barbecued meats from the Middle East in the rich sauces and gravies that were common in Indian food. The result was Mughlai cuisine. The final touch: To the cream and ghee of Indian food were added spices, cashews, raisins and almonds. We ended up with meat in rich gravies adorned with aromatic spices and nuts. It was enchantment on a plate. The British fell in love with Indian food and took their addiction back home and it spread round the world. Today, anywhere around the world, just the aroma of an Indian meal instantly fires up the most jaded appetite. It never fails.’

A glance at the
feng shui
master suggested that this last point was not entirely accurate. Wong remained statue-still in front of his untouched plate, his eyes closed and his brow wrinkled with pain.

The others moved on to dessert.

Sinha remained in lecturing mode, although he ate at good speed as he spoke. ‘The entire concept of dessert, as you know, came from the Arabic world.’

‘It did?’ Joyce asked absently, her mouth full of kulfi.

‘Of course. Where do you think it came from?’

‘Dunno. Häagen-Dazs?’

‘The Arabs came to India and to China, and demonstrated their techniques of crushing almonds and rice, and then sweetening the resultant paste with sugar. Lastly, they added a touch of rose water for scent. The result was the first dessert.’

Suddenly Joyce dropped her spoon onto her plate.

‘I’ve got it.’

Wong, his attention caught by the clang of the teenager’s cutlery hitting the plate, looked up. ‘You got Delhi belly too?’

‘No. I know what killed that Jacob guy.’

Sinha said: ‘We know what killed him. A bomb killed him.’

‘Yeah,’ said Joyce. ‘But I know what the bomb was in. And I bet I know what job he did too.’

Wong opened his eyes. ‘Tell.’

‘He was a spammer. Sitting there with all those computers. And servers. Getting killed by a tin of unidentifiable meat. Remember Subhash said that there were traces of meat?’

The others looked blankly at her.

‘The munitions guy. They found traces of unidentifiable meat and a small tin. He was a spammer so someone killed him with a tin of Spam. With a bomb in it. Get it?’

Sinha and Wong looked at each other for aid in comprehension, but found no help.

Joyce raced off to the phone to call Inspector Muktul Gupta.

‘She appears to be suggesting some sort of cannibal act?’ asked Sinha.

‘Cannibal?’

‘He was a Spammer and was killed by a tin of Spammer meat, she said. Where do Spammers come from?’

‘Spam?’ mused Wong, his forehead wrinkled in thought. ‘Is a country in Europe. I think.’

‘Ah,’ said Sinha. ‘Now I understand. We call them “Spaniards” here.’