The Feng Shui Detective's Casebook (2 page)

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 going 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.’

The tiger stood up and gave a short, sharp roar. The sound was lower and louder and more terrifying than Wong could ever have imagined.

Their hearts stopped.

The creature opened its mouth, revealing thirty off-white teeth, several of which were pitted and scratched. Most were canines and incisors. As its lips retracted, molars were revealed behind the carnassial complex in the upper jaw. The relatively short jaw, lined with thick, powerful muscles, was clearly designed to strip bones clean.

The tiger straightened itself, stretching its spine.

It shook its head once, and then took two steps directly towards the mother, its eyes still on the baby in her arms. As the tiger moved, its shoulder blades swung backwards and forwards in wide curves, enabling the beast to take huge strides. It trod elegantly, like a dancer: only the five soft pads of its toes touched the ground, with the rest of the foot raised slightly. Its claws were retracted, but their needle-sharp tips were visible protruding through the white fur.

It took another step.

Wong reached one hand out to his left. His fingers snaked around the side of a cabinet, looking for the wall. Stretching further, his fingertips touched cold, sticky, dirty, unwashed tiles. He moved his hand along the surface. He bent slightly and found what he was looking for: a power socket. A three-pin plug—furry and damp with a coating of oily dust—connected one or other of the freezer cabinets to the wall at this point.

The
feng shui
master strained his fingers and pulled at the plug. It obviously had not been extracted for a long time, and was stiff. Manipulating it from side to side, he eventually managed to work it loose. As he did so, he saw a yogurt and cheese cabinet behind them start to flicker. There was a crackling, fizzing sound from the wall socket. The cabinet flashed again.

The tiger stared at the fridge. Discomfort registered in its eyes. Some deep instinct in its brain apparently associated bright, irregular light with fire.

Wong continued to manipulate the plug, and the neon tubes in the cabinet continued to flicker and buzz. Now there was a slight smell of burning. The tiger took four steps backwards, away from the three humans, its haunches moving into the Staff Only doorway that Tang had said was their only escape route.

‘Now,’ whispered the
feng shui
master. ‘Walk to
back.
Walk, don’t run.’

The trio moved smartly to the shelf of canned meats at the back of the store.

Watched carefully by the unnerved beast, Wong put his fingers around the corner of the tinned meats shelving unit and pulled with all his might. It didn’t budge. He tugged at it again. It shook slightly, but did not move forwards. The geomancer started to sweat. ‘Stuck,’ he groaned.
‘Aiyeeah.’

The mother put the baby down at her feet. ‘Let me trylah,’ she said. ‘Mothers carry 20-kilo babies around all day only.’

She pulled at one side of the shelving unit with two hands, while he yanked at the other.

She screwed her face up, let loose a long string of Chinese curse words and heaved with all her strength. It started to tip forward in slow motion. Cans of Libby’s Corned Beef slid along the top shelf and tumbled into the air, followed by a shower of cans of Hormel Spam Lite from the shelf below.

They clattered and bounced and the air was filled with the angry sound of crashing tins bouncing and ricocheting off the tiled floor.

Behind them, they saw the white tiger raise its dark eyebrows, alarm in its blue eyes at the unexpected racket. It retreated further into the staff area.

The falling shelf wedged itself at an angle in the aisle, revealing an ancient, filthy door in the wall. Wong pushed at it and it opened—but only about 30 centimetres. There was something behind it, preventing it from opening further.