The Feng Shui Detective Goes South (20 page)

On the fourth floor of a nondescript building in Telok Ayer Street, the office door once again crashed open. The crack in the frosted glass lengthened further.

A lithe young Chinese woman with streaked hair entered the room. ‘Is Ms Joyce here?’

‘Aiyeeaah! Too many people today.’ Winnie Lim, who had restarted her interrupted phone conversation, peered at the entrant with distaste. ‘Joyce go out.’

‘Where is she?’

‘Out.’

‘Did she say where she was going?’

‘Don’t know. Not listening. Too busy.’

‘When will she be back?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘Will she come back today?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘Has she got a mobile phone?’

‘Yes.’

‘What’s the number? No, don’t tell me: you don’t know. Look, I really need to find her, talk to her about something really important. Is there any way you can help me? It’s urgent.’

Winnie Lim thought for a moment. A very short moment. ‘Don’t know,’ she said lazily through half-closed teeth. ‘Come back later maybe. Or tomorrow maybe.’

The young visitor looked around the room. Her eyes stopped on Joyce’s desk. It was very obviously the desk of a teenage female, with a portable minidisk player in the centre of the desk, and a single pink designer sports-shoe visible under the seat.

‘My name’s Maddy Tsai,’ she said. ‘I’m a friend of Joyce’s. I’ve met Mr Wong, too. Can I wait here for her?’

Winnie opened her mouth languidly, as if she was going to say, ‘Don’t know,’ again, but closed it without saying anything. She shrugged her shoulders and went back to her phone conversation.

Maddy sat in Joyce’s seat. It creaked and threatened to tip to one side. She looked around the office. It was shabby and dirty, and the air was hot and still. There appeared to be no air conditioner. But at least it was the room of a friend—something she desperately needed just now.

She looked at the CDs on the desk. Modern Western pop singers, pretty boys, some with little beards on their chins. They all had baggy clothes. They looked defiant. They looked as if they ruled the world. That’s how it should be. Young people do rule the world. Old people are dying people.
It will be our world
soon—if we live to inherit it.
The thought caused a feeling of white pain to sweep through her brain. How could she possibly be about to die? Her life had hardly begun.

Her reverie was interrupted by a crash as the door swung open again.

‘NOW WHO?’ shouted Winnie, her face showing astonishment at yet another interruption.

‘Oh no,’ gasped Maddy.

A tall, broad-shouldered, dark-skinned man with a goatee beard entered the room, a smile on his face. ‘So how? Why are you here, my dear? Visit a friend-lah?’

‘You followed me.’ She spoke angrily.

‘Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe I was passing only and saw you come into this building, is it?’

‘You followed me. Can’t you just leave me be for a while?’

‘
Takboleh-lah.
Cannot-lah. I’m so much concerned about you, man. I’ve eaten more salt than you. This is good Malay saying. Have news for you. Come, come.’

Amran Ismail moved menacingly into the centre of the room.

Maddy glanced quickly around the room. Ismail was in front of the main door, but there was another door on the other side of the office. Did it lead anywhere?

Winnie Lim, apparently guessing what was going through her mind, shook her head. It led only to an internal room, a meditation room Wong used for afternoon naps.

‘Stay away from me.’ Maddy Tsai sprang to her feet.

‘I’m your only chance-lah,’ said Amran Ismail. ‘Your only hope. Why you like to run from me? You need me. Without me you got nothing. You are dead. Really dead. I got some news. I found a place we can go. A place you can be safe. Listen to me, can or not-lah?’

They manoeuvred around each other.

Suddenly, Ismail sprang forward, reaching for the young woman with his long arms. She ducked out of his grip and tried to scuttle under his left arm towards the door.

But he fell sideways and reached out, grabbing her ankle with his hand.

‘Got you,’ he said, pulling her back.

‘Let me go,’ she shouted, trying to wriggle out of his grip.

‘Don’t like that,’ he said, holding her tightly by the arms. ‘Now calm down.’

They struggled for some time. He looked strong, but she was wiry and agile, and hard to keep captive.

‘Get away from me,’ she shouted, wrenching one arm free.

‘Come,’ he replied, grabbing her wrist with his free hand.

Suddenly, both of them froze in their tracks as an enormous bellow filled the room.

‘STOP THIS NOISE!’ screamed Winnie Lim, standing up. ‘I AM TRYING TO GOSSIP ON PHONE. GET OUT, GET OUT, GET OUT OF MY OFFICE.’

The struggling couple were so astonished by the extraordinary volume and intensity of emotion that came out of the body of the tiny receptionist-like creature that they froze.

‘GET OUT NOW,’ Winnie shrieked, pointing to the doorway. She stamped her size 3 feet.

Ismail momentarily loosened his grip.

Maddy wriggled free and ran out of the front door.

The
bomoh
chased after her.

Winnie was silent for a few seconds. Never could she remember a day when there had been such drama in her office. And from two complete strangers. How exhausting. She picked up the telephone and dialled a number to continue the conversation that had been so rudely interrupted for the second time. She said to her friend: ‘I think I need new job.’

The police took over the investigation at the photographic studio and Wong left an over-excited Mrs Mirpuri and her yawning, bleary-eyed daughter with a police inspector. Danita, excited at seeing Joyce, initially wanted to tell the whole story to her—but the police told the kidnap victim that she should give a statement to them first. The two friends eventually parted after Joyce agreed to phone Danita later that day for a
major
goss session.

Mrs Mirpuri, after giving her daughter a quick hug, was instantly on her mobile phone summoning the television networks, radio stations and newspapers to relate the story of how she had single-handedly rescued her daughter from an evil kidnapper. ‘Bring cameras,’ she said to everyone including the radio newsroom editor. ‘Bring cameras.’

In a taxi on their way back across town, Joyce, who was also in a state of hyper-excitement, was struggling with questions. ‘There’s lots of things I don’t understand, CF. How did Danita manage to get that letter delivered to our place?’

Wong nodded. ‘Is a mystery, truly. But I tell you what I think. She is kidnap on Sunday night, stuck in darkroom. She feel around, find photo paper, find old typewriter which is now junk—now everybody use electric typewriter or computer. She write help message to me. Try to describe where she is. She type in dark, so her writing is all wrong, look like code. Some keys missing on edge of typewriter. Then she put letter in envelope. She write address on envelope with her hand, so is correct, even though she write in dark. Then she put envelope on floor of black-out revolving door. When fat man comes in and out, maybe to deliver food, drink, letter is moved, swept out into office area directly next to darkroom. She hope he himself finds it on floor next day or something, posts it.’

‘And he did?’

‘I don’t know what happen really. But maybe he find letter on the floor and post it. Or maybe he has staff or assistant or family member who work with him. They think it is business letter. She wrote “urgent” on it. Maybe even the kidnap man post it himself. He think other staff member drop it.’

Joyce grinned. ‘Totally amazing. Her gamble worked. Someone picked up the letter and posted it—to us. She must have written it on Sunday. It got posted some time Monday morning, I guess, which is why we got it yesterday.’

‘Correct.’

The young woman shook her head. ‘Poor thing. Fancy being stuck in the dark for hours and hours. Must have been awful. No wonder her eyes are squinty. Poor Dani.’

‘Too bad,’ said Wong, agreeing. ‘Too, too bad.’

The feng shui master saw a good opportunity for him to have a break from his irritating helper. He dropped her at Telok Ayer Street so that she could write a hefty invoice to Mrs Mirpuri and then deliver it by hand. He also asked her to contact Calida Tsai-Leibler, to make discreet enquiries about Madeleine Tsai and what she saw as her imaginary murderous fiancé. He retained the taxi to take him to his appointment with Dr Liew Yok Tse, for which he was already late.

‘Off again? No peace for the wicked,’ said Joyce, waving goodbye from the pavement.

‘No piece of what?’ asked Wong. But the taxi whisked him away before she could answer.

He found the dental surgery in a nondescript tower on Orchard Road without much difficulty and spent some time talking to each of the people who worked there. Superintendent Tan had gone. The ghost had not appeared all day, so staff were starting to lose the tension that had gripped them. But without exception, they remained generally morose and uncomfortable-looking. Clearly, the events of recent days had put a strain on all of them.

Both of the actual surgeries were almost fully booked with patients for the afternoon, so Wong had to wait and snatch opportunities to talk with individuals when they were free, and carry on with his floor plan analysis when they were busy.

Dr Gibson Leibler was noticeably more polite than he had been on Saturday, but still maintained a certain aloofness.

Dr Liew Yok Tse was friendlier. He was a tall, but rather underweight man with heavy bags under a pair of frog-like, hooded eyes. He appeared harassed and looked as if he carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. Forty-two years old, the son of an import–export man and a retired schoolmistress, he looked considerably older. He had one sister, two years his senior, who worked as a doctor. The family had originally lived in Johor Baru, but had moved to Singapore when Liew was a child. He was married to a legal secretary called Catherine Liu. They had no children.

The dentist told Wong that he had worked for a group practice for the first ten years of his career, before setting up his own firm four years ago in Chinatown. Then he had met Gibson Leibler through a professional connection a year ago and they had settled on a plan to run a joint operation in a more upmarket location.

The two dentists presently shared Dr Liew’s dental technician Cheung Lai Kuen, although an advertisement had been placed for a second full-time technician. In the meantime, the role of technician for Dr Leibler was sometimes informally filled by Amanda Luk, twenty-six, who was really the receptionist—although she preferred to call herself ‘front office manager’. She had had just enough training to be able to carry off the job of dental technician, although she seemed to dislike the task, preferring to man the desk.

She was a rather buxom Eurasian woman with hair dyed the colour of copper wire. She had moved to Singapore from Hong Kong eleven years ago, after her father, an investment banker named Michael Luk, had become nervous about the city-state’s prospects after the 1997 handover. Luk told Wong that she had gone to a good school in Hong Kong—St Paul’s Co-Educational—and then finished her education in Singapore. She worked briefly in the hotel business as an assistant to a public relations officer, before hearing about an opportunity to help set up a new office for Dr Liew and Dr Liebler. She was attractive and dressed rather too well for her role, Wong thought, looking at the woman’s elegant black dress. But then, that was a characteristic of Singapore’s female workers generally.