The Feng Shui Detective's Casebook (24 page)
They were at the Hyderabad Airport departure lounge. Mukta-Gupta had come to see them off. Wong explained that they had failed to locate which of the names on the list of one hundred and fifty was the murderer, and had sadly decided to abandon the chase and leave. ‘Very sorry.’
But Gupta, bright-eyed, had refused to accept the apology. He replied that he was no longer looking for a murderer.
‘You have found one?’ Sinha asked.
‘I found too many, so I decided that they cancelled each other out.’
‘Oh,’ said Wong. ‘Nice plan. Is it legal?’
‘Well, it would have been ridiculous to charge one hundred and fifty people. So I went to a judge and told him the situation. He said that the man was clearly so unpopular that his death was probably a great service to the community.’
‘This is true. Judge is wise. Law in India very flexible.’
Gupta grunted his assent. ‘In this case, yes. So we dropped all charges. Official reason is lack of evidence. Everybody has been cleared.’
‘So the case is over?’
‘Yes, only . . .’
‘What?’
‘People are still coming to confess. Everybody wants to take credit for the murder. I have put a sign up in the police station at Pallakiri: NO MURDER CONFESSIONS. But I am a bit worried about it, to be honest.’
‘A bit irregular.’
‘Correct.’
‘But never mind. The law always has grey areas. Grey areas are very important. Isn’t that right, Wong?’
The
feng shui
master, who felt hungry for the first time in days, was distracted, having smelt a whiff of curry from the airport café. He replied: ‘Grey colour not bad. But you have excess of water influence, Inspector Gupta, so you should use red colour in your office.’
The policeman looked at his potbelly. ‘I have excess of something, but I don’t think it’s water influence. I think it is Navelli’s Sponge Cake.’
Twenty metres away, Joyce and Subhash were talking intently to each other.
‘Here’s my email,’ she said, handing him a small card.
‘Thanks. I’ll write to you very soon. I mean, like, as soon as I get home. Like in half an hour.’
‘That’ll be nice. I’ll reply straight away. I mean, I guess I won’t because I’ll still be on the plane. But as soon as I get to a computer.’
He looked as if he was thinking about kissing her, but nothing happened. Wong beckoned her, and she awkwardly shook Subhash’s hand.
Joyce, a lump in her throat, caught up with Sinha as they strode towards the doors leading to immigration. The question that was ricocheting around her head burst out of her lips. ‘DK. Why didn’t he kiss me?’
‘This is India. People don’t do that sort of thing here.’
‘So it doesn’t mean he doesn’t love me?’
Sinha turned to her. ‘My dear little girl. In India, if he doesn’t kiss you, it means he
does
love you.’
Joyce sniffed and felt a heaviness and a lightness in her soul at the same time. She had the impression that something powerful and wiry, like one of the creeper’s on Mag-Auntie’s house, was growing deep inside her. She turned to wave at Subhash one last time, and then turned away.
In ancient times, a thoughtful nun was sad about the transience
of all life. She said to her teacher: ‘All things decay. Today dawned beautifully, but tonight it will die. Life
is only a breath. Man is born to die. What value has
existence?’
The teacher said to the nun: ‘Go ask the butterfly. Go
ask a candle. Go ask a drop of water.’
The nun went to a sacred barna tree, a tree with white
flowers which attracted white butterflies. She watched and
saw how the butterflies lived only one day each.
The nun went to the temple. She looked at candles
burning in front of the Buddha. She saw how the candles
went out after only one hour each.
The nun went to a river. She saw how the river was
made of a million drops of water. She saw how they passed
her town in less than the time it took to sip a cup of tea and
never come back.
The nun went back to her school. She said: ‘Life is transient
like a butterfly visiting a sacred barna tree.’
But the gardener was present. He said: ‘No. Butterflies
make plants live. Already the barna tree is older than you
are. It has been growing for a hundred years.’
She said: ‘Life is transient like a candle in a temple.’
But the priest was there. He said: ‘No. The fire in the
temple has been burning for many centuries. It is one
thousand years old.’
She said: ‘Life is transient like a drop of water passing
a town in a river.’
But the old boatman was there. He said: ‘No. The river
has been there for ten thousand years. It will be there for ten
thousand more.’
And so it is with us, Blade of Grass. Some of us see the
butterfly, the candle and the drop of water. Some of us see
the tree, the fire and the river.
From ‘Some Gleanings of Oriental Wisdom’
by CF Wong, part 23.
Joyce McQuinnie felt an uncomfortable sourness in her stomach as she stepped through the school gates and walked towards the main entrance. She felt sick. As she walked past the staff car park, she tried to breathe slowly and calm herself. She realised that she was intensely aware of her heart beating: every individual thump seemed to shake her ribcage. Why did schools make her feel so uncomfortable?
She tried to focus on one of the few attractions this assignment held: she was being allowed to do it partly on her own. Since the problem with the fish man’s apartment—a problem, which she repeatedly reminded him, was not
in any
way
her fault—CF Wong had dropped the idea of letting her handle clients entirely by herself.
In this case, he had made a compromise decision. The head teacher of the international school was a minor non-executive director of Mr Pun’s board and was thus entitled to have his premises examined. She was to go for the initial reading, draw floor maps and prepare the basic documents. He would come down a couple of hours later, check all this, make any needed changes, present the findings to the client, and see if he could bully him into pre-booking some follow-up visits, to be paid for separately.
But a
school—
did she really have to spend her day in a place she associated so strongly with misery? She found herself searching for reasons to justify her acceptance of the assignment. It was good to get out of the office, since her attempts to engage the geomancer and Winnie Lim in conversation were always difficult and deflating. And she was always desperately seeking opportunities to prove herself an asset to the company. A job like this, which gave her a degree of personal responsibility, was useful in that regard.
But as she arrived at the scene, her spirits fell again. What a shame that the assignment was in a secondary school so reminiscent of the ones in which she had spent her early teenage years. The unimaginative blocks with their cookie-cutter classrooms, corridors, staircases and playgrounds had only negative associations for her.
As she approached the main entrance, Joyce felt reluctant to join the scrum of children thronging through the doors, so she loitered near the car park. She folded her arms and surveyed the scene. Every school was different, yet somehow they were all the same: The same smell, the same rectangular low-rise blocks, the same tinted concrete yards, the same patchy green and grey playing field.
It was 9:06 am and school had officially started for the day, although there were still straggling knots of children in the corners of the car park, gossiping or waiting for late friends or siblings.
After three or four more minutes, Joyce decided she could delay no longer. Head down, she marched past the row of cheap cars owned by teachers and tried again to force herself to look on the positive side. It was possible that she might meet some interesting people on this assignment. A hunky male gym teacher or two to add to her inadequate, stop-start social life would not go down too badly.
She pushed open the Plexiglas doors. An involuntary shiver ran down her spine as she stepped into the dark belly of the monster.
It was pleasing to discover that the foyer was found a cool and quiet space, lined with displays of children’s artwork. A notice board stood on one side, covered with pieces of A4 paper, gently flapping in the breeze. A sculpture of Beethoven made out of recycled materials took pride of place on a small pedestal, next to a bronze bust of some unidentifiable local dignitary. There were no hunky gym teachers to be seen. Looking to her right, she found a window at a counter with a secretary on the phone. She waited politely for the woman to finish her conversation.
‘Yes?’ the receptionist eventually asked.
‘Hello! I’m from CF Wong & Associates, the
feng shui
people? I’ve come to do some work in, er . . .’ She quickly pulled the letter out of her bag. ‘Mr LA Waldo’s quarters?’
The receptionist blinked. ‘You’re the
feng shui
master?’ She didn’t hide the incredulity in her voice.
‘Yes,’ said Joyce, wounded and proud at the same time. She straightened her spine and tried to look haughty. ‘I
am.
I am going to do the initial readings, and then my colleague, a senior
feng shui
master, will come along a little later to confirm my findings.’
The receptionist spoke to a spiky-haired boy of about seventeen typing at a computer behind her. ‘Eric, go and show this young lady to the head’s apartment. You can finish that later.’
The boy slouched out of the office through a side door, perfunctorily introduced himself as Eric Chan, and set off down a corridor at a brisk pace, with Joyce scampering along behind. Her bag, which contained a
lo pan
and a large number of
feng shui
reference books (she wanted to get everything right and didn’t trust her memory), was heavy, but he didn’t offer to carry it. Don’t they teach them politeness any more? Then it occurred to her that the young man probably thought she was a student like he was, not realising that she was a proper working woman from The Real World, with a real desk and a real office in town.
She suddenly felt it was very important to let him know this. ‘You go to this school then?’ she asked, trotting to catch up.
‘Yeah. We take turns helping in the office. I’m doing nine to ten today. Bit of a pain really.’
‘Why?’
‘I’d rather be in the lab. Doing computer games. Anything rather than be a slave to Ms Koslowski.’
‘Is that the receptionist?’
‘Yeah.’
He lapsed into silence without asking her anything about herself. She soldiered on: ‘I used to go to a school like this. When I was young. Well, a bit like this. When I was a student, ages and
ages
ago. But not these days. These days, I’m a
feng
shui
expert. I’ve come to do the reading on your head teacher’s room. Does he have bad fortune or anything? If so, it’s my job to fix it.’
He half-turned his head to look at her.
‘You’re a
feng shui
expert?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Oh.’
Joyce took this as an insult. ‘What do you mean, “Oh”?’
‘Nothin’.’
‘I’m probably the youngest
feng shui
expert in town. And our consultancy gets the most exciting cases, too. That’s because we specialise in crime scenes. We’ve done murders,’ she said, deliberately using the word without dramatic emphasis, as if it was a term she had to use constantly.
Murders,
ho hum.
This time he stopped walking, freezing so abruptly that she bumped into him.
‘Murders? Well, if you’re an expert in scenes of crime, you shouldn’t be doing the headmaster’s quarters. You should be doing room 208A.’
He looked hard at her. She assumed he was sizing her up, trying to decide whether she was telling the truth. Then his head tilted to one side, as if he was thinking about something. He snorted but said nothing.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘Nothing.’
He started walking again, turning suddenly to sprint up a staircase.
Joyce followed with difficulty, her bag getting heavier by the minute. Why did schools always have so many staircases and so few elevators?
When she reached the top, she saw that Eric Chan had slowed down, and was again throwing curious glances her way. ‘So does this
feng shui
stuff really work?’
‘Course it does. Otherwise the police wouldn’t use it, would they?’
‘Police use it?’
‘Yeah. I know loads of officers. I work with them. I know their first names, like. Some of them. Inspector Gilbert Tan for example, who I know as Gilbert, and, oh, loads of others . . .’
‘Oh.’
‘So what happened in room 208A?’
‘Nothin’.’
‘
Don
’
t
tell me then. I don’t care. Schools are such boring places. Nothing interesting ever happens in school. I am
sooo
glad I’m out there in the real world with a real job. Real life is way more interesting. This is like living in a bubble. I pity people like you, stuck here . . .’
