The Feng Shui Detective's Casebook (22 page)

‘Always hungry,’ Wong explained to Gupta. ‘Always asks for cake.’

‘Young people always want sugary things,’ the officer replied, with a distant look in his eye. ‘Mind you, so do I.’

The three visitors from Singapore arranged to meet Subhash Reddy the following morning at X=Coffee, but had no idea how to proceed. Sinha ate crab curry for breakfast, while Joyce ate a small, pale-yoked egg. Wong nibbled at some dry toast. Little conversation flowed. The problem they were facing seemed insurmountable.

Where to begin? There was no obvious application of
feng
shui, vaastu
or astrological lore. There were no clues. And there was a host of impracticalities in starting any sort of investigation. They were here only for a few days. No way could they interview all the people who confessed to the murder. The list had been closed at one hundred and fifty at 10 pm the previous night. And that was only because Inspector Gupta had passed an instant and arbitrary law saying that with regard to murder confessions, no more than one hundred and fifty were allowed, and would-be confessors from any murder from now onwards would be served on a first-come, first-served basis. Any murderer who confessed to any killing after the police-set deadline would not have his confession accepted.

The silence gradually became oppressive as the four of them peered into their tumblers of tea.

‘I’ve got the full list of one hundred and fifty confessors here,’ Sinha said. ‘Muktul had it sent around to my room this morning.’

They passed it around, surveying it gloomily. How could one identify a murderer when all one had to go with was a list of names and dates of birth?

‘Why don’t we hang it up and throw a dart at it?’ Joyce said. ‘How on earth can we find out who did it? I can’t even pronounce most of these names. And I don’t fancy trying to produce one hundred and fifty birth charts.’

‘Same-same,’ Wong agreed.

The young woman ran her index finger down the list and stopped. ‘Hey. There are some, like white people.’

Wong looked over her shoulder. ‘
Gwailo?
’ he asked. ‘Here?’

Subhash Reddy shook his head. ‘No. This is south India. There are lots of names here that come from the West. It’s a historical relic. In Kerala, for example, many people are carrying the name George. In Cochin, there is a district called Jewtown. A typical south Indian name might be Minnie Matthew. India is a very mixed place, with all sorts of cultural roots.’

Joyce ran her finger down the list. ‘So a guy with a name like, here’s one—David George—isn’t a foreigner? He’s a real Indian?’ she asked.

Subhash nodded. ‘He’s a real Indian.’

Wong took the paper and stared at it. ‘Any Chinese names?’

Subhash looked at it. ‘Not on this list. But there are Chinese in India. There are lots in Calcutta. Lots in the tanning business, since Indians don’t like to handle cowhide.’

The
feng shui
master looked to Dilip Sinha. ‘Can we do anything with this list?’

The Indian astrologer put his fingertips together under his chin and thought. ‘I don’t know. Like Joyce, I believe intellectual thought is not going to give us an answer in this instance. We need a different method. But something based on chance, like Joyce suggests, is not a good answer. It would be in better keeping with our traditions to look for a mystical route.’

The
feng shui
master pondered. ‘Why so many people want to confess to being murderer? So crazy. Why so many people not like Spaniards?’

‘It
is
crazy. But I guess the only conclusion is that he was hated. I think it is not Spaniards. I think it is Spanners, right, Joyce?’

‘Spam
mers
. With an M.’

‘Spammers. With an M. I see. I must practise. Why are Spammers so hated?’

‘I don’t know. Well, I do. They fill up your inbox with junk.’

Wong nodded. ‘They fill up your inbox with junk. I see. What sort of junk? Old bed?
Lupsup?
Old shoes?’

‘Not that sort of junk. I mean computer junk.’

‘Oh,’ said Wong. ‘Old computers. Broken screen, like that?’

‘No, not broken screens. I don’t mean like physical junk. An inbox is like a computer mailbox.’

‘Mailbox? Like on ground floor of YY Mansions?’

‘
No.
It’s a folder you get on your screen. And they put junk in there. I mean, they put email letters telling you to buy stuff. Advertisements mostly.’

‘But why people get so angry?’

Joyce shrugged her shoulders, not knowing how to explain. ‘It’s—it’s really irritating. I mean, I’ve wanted to murder Spammers before now. You see, you click on the little envelope thing on the corner of your screen, and you think, yay, I’ve got mail! One of my mates has written to me! You feel all happy. A little number pops up in a box on the bottom left of your screen and says you’ve got, say, ninety-nine new emails. And you think, cool, because you think they are all letters from like guys or your buddies or your mum or chatroom people you’ve been talking to or whatever. But then it turns out that ninety-five of them are junk mails telling you to buy stuff. Only four of them are from people you know. It’s really annoying. I can’t explain how annoying it is. And they are
such
liars—that’s the worst thing.’

As she spoke, she became increasingly strident. Wong watched with undisguised fascination.

‘The spanners—I mean, the Spammers—really are utter bastards. They have this little thing at the bottom and it says if you click it you won’t get any more email, and poor little old ladies who don’t know any better click it, and instead of taking them off the list, they send them more and more and more junk mail. Hundreds of pieces a day. They are truly
evil.
’ Wong was still not absolutely clear what the problem was. ‘But if you see advertisement in newspaper, you don’t get upset. So why you get upset if you see advertisement in your box?’

‘Inbox.’

‘Yes, in box.’

Joyce thought for a moment. ‘Well, unless you have a fast connection—and that costs big bucks—it takes a lot of time to download emails. Doesn’t it, Subhash?’

The young man agreed. ‘Joyce is right. It really drives you mad if your precious time and money are being wasted downloading a lot of junk. Some people who are really poor . . .’

The young woman interrupted. ‘Yeah. When I lived in Hong Kong, we had to pay this surcharge called PNETS for every minute we were on.’

‘Peanuts?’

‘Not peanuts, PNETS. Spelt P-N-E-T-S.’

Wong was looking confused.

Subhash raised his hands to show that he could explain it simply.

‘Getting on the Internet is not usually free. It costs money. Usually there is a charge to the telephone company, and also there are tariffs set by the TRAI—Telecom Regulatory Authority of India.’

Wong was intrigued. ‘Ah, this is interesting.’ He faced Subhash. ‘Can I ask you question? Is it possible that someone only has few minutes every day to download email. And he get very upset because his few minutes taken up by junk emails from the Spaniard, not real emails from lovers.’

‘You mean
loved ones
,’ Joyce said. ‘Not
lovers.
’ She suddenly felt herself blushing.

‘Sure,’ Subhash said to the
feng shui
master. ‘There must be loads of people like that.’

‘On this list?’

‘Yes. Dozens,’ the young man said. ‘I think at least half the people on this list don’t have their own computers. They use computers at school or college.’

‘What if they have no school or college?’

Subhash thought about this. ‘Well, then they’d go to Mag-Auntie’s.’

‘Who’s that?’ Sinha asked. ‘Is it an Internet cafe?’

The young Indian frowned thoughtfully. ‘I would say more of an Internet chapatti house, or Internet bhajji house. We call it a short-eats house, you know? It’s an
e-choupal
in Hindi slang. It’s the place to hang out in Pallakiri.’

Sinha translated: ‘Short eats—like a snack bar, or bakery café or something.’

Subhash nodded. ‘Yes. The old ladies in this village like to go to Mag-Auntie’s. That way, they keep in touch with their children overseas. She lets them use her computers. She charges money. I think at the moment you pay maybe two rupees a minute.’

‘So that’s not expensive, then.’ This was Joyce, returning to the conversation, now that she had got over the embarrassment of having used the word
lovers.

Subhash sighed. ‘I’m sorry to disagree with you, my dearest sister Joyce, but that
is
expensive.’

Joyce blushed again. She tried to ignore her burning cheeks. ‘A couple of rupees a minute? What’s a rupee worth? Like a few cents?’

‘For these old ladies, that’s very expensive. Some of them have a budget of a few rupees a
day
to live on.’

‘I want to meet Mag-Auntie,’ the
feng shui
master said.

Mag-Auntie was nowhere to be seen. She had disappeared. Her restaurant, an open-air eatery where a dozen people lazily picked over short-eats and tapped at computers, was being run by her grandnephew Arti. An enticing smell of charred chickpeas and fried onions gently wafted from a counter laid with trays of curries gradually getting cold.

Arti, a blotchy-faced youth of about twenty nursing a bottle that looked like Coke but had
Thums Up
written on it, took a shine to Joyce.

‘Hi pretty girl, you ’Merican?’ He grinned, showing two missing teeth. ‘I show you Internet, good price. Hot pictures.’

Subhash’s face darkened. ‘Leave her,’ he said.

Joyce was thrilled. Could it be that Subhash was jealous?

But then the young man’s expression changed. He smiled and spoke to Arti in the local dialect. As they chatted, Joyce was aware of the grandnephew sending lascivious glances her way. She squirmed uncomfortably and moved to stand behind Wong, who was trying to avert his eyes from the unappetising food.

Subhash walked over and spoke quietly into her ear: ‘I told him that if he tells us where Mag-Auntie is, you’ll give him your personal email address.’

‘I will do no such thing.’

‘I know that and you know that. He doesn’t.’

Half an hour later, they were walking through a rural area.

They left the main road and followed a dirt path through a grove of trees towards a clearing. They climbed a small hill, turned through a field of foxtail millet crops, and moved through a row of semul silk-cotton trees into a small clearing at the foot of another hill.

There was something almost magical about the grassy paddock in which they found themselves. It lifted their spirits, and all four of them were suddenly laughing for no reason. The sun glinted through fairweather clouds and a light northeastern breeze flicked forelocks off foreheads.

The glade was astonishingly beautiful. A huge variety of trees lined the clearing, with teak, casuarina, Acacia nilotica, Albizia lebbek and neem jostling together. From behind them, a clump of giant bamboo stalks leaned into the scene, and almost hid a tiny creek that trickled over a natural watercourse.

A small, white, single-storey house stood in the middle of the clearing, with a steep hill to the right and a stone hillock on the left.

On arriving at the spot, both Wong and Sinha were stunned. They gazed at the house, the hill, and the surrounding trees with what could only be described as awe.