The Feng Shui Detective Goes South (36 page)

Ismail’s eyes darted from side to side. He tightened his grip on Madeleine. Tremors ran through the roof.

Wong struggled to maintain his grip on the shuddering surface beneath him. ‘Earthquake?’ he said to Joyce.

‘This is it,’ said the
bomoh.
‘The end is here.’

There was an ear-splitting roar as a helicopter appeared over a ridge on the curved landscape of white ridges that surrounded them.

‘It must be the police,’ Joyce shouted into Wong’s ear. ‘Brett must have phoned them.’ She looked suddenly distraught. ‘Oh no,’ she said, her chin beginning to quiver. ‘Officer Gallaher.’

Ismail froze. Madeleine Tsai pulled away from him and grabbed Joyce McQuinnie’s outstretched hand. The three of them raced off the roof at high speed, scuttling crab-like across flatter areas and scrambling down a set of ridges used by the Opera House’s window cleaners. The
bomoh
stayed where he was. He appeared traumatised, unable to keep up with events. ‘Come back,’ he yelled. ‘Must come back. Few minutes left
only.
’

Minutes later, Wong, McQuinnie and Tsai were racing down the steps and then down the promenade, heading desperately for the street where Kilington had parked his car. Joyce was running the fastest, her terror of the police officer lending speed to her blurred feet. The deafening, fluttering roar of the helicopter appeared to be following them. Instead of disappearing into the distance as they raced away, it got steadily louder.

‘No good,’ Wong shouted. ‘Following us. Helicopter will get in front of us. Cannot escape.’

Within minutes, all three had stopped running as the aircraft passed over their heads and then spun round, lowering itself gently between them and the only way out of the Bennelong Point extension.

As the helicopter gently touched the ground, a sob broke from Joyce’s throat. ‘I can’t—I can’t—I don’t want to be arrested again. By that man. He said he’d lock me up.’

‘It’s okay, Joyce. I’ll talk to them,’ Madeleine shouted. ‘They’ll help us. I’m sure they will. They’re okay with me.’ She lowered her head and stepped with difficulty towards the cabin of the shuddering craft, leaning forwards into the gale-force air that still blasted them.

As she reached the helicopter door, it swung open.

Smiling, Jackie Sum reached out and cut off her scream with a gloved hand before tugging her into the craft and ordering his pilot to lift off again.

The feng shui master moved forwards to help her, but he was too late.

The triad leader, a broad smile below his thick sunglasses, shouted a single word down to Wong through the open door: ‘Thanks.’

Madeleine screamed again as the door was slammed shut.

Joyce McQuinnie watched transfixed as the triads’ helicopter lifted itself gracefully into the air. Wong stood baffled under it, buffeted by waves of air.

Within seconds, a group of four on-site security guards and two police officers arrived at the spot. The young woman instinctively recoiled from them, but soon realised they were interested only in the escaping aircraft. To them, she was only one of several dozen open-mouthed passers-by watching the scene.

The helicopter, angled slightly nose-down, turned in the air and then started moving towards the building.

Joyce’s heart was in her mouth. She turned to the feng shui master. ‘What are they going to do to her? Are they going to . . . ?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Is there anything we can—?’

‘I think no. Can call police. But police already know.’

The helicopter skimmed the top of the Opera House before moving over the water to the north-east of the structure. A tiny figure standing on the roof of the building watched it sail past.

Joyce sniffed, overcome by disappointment and helplessness.

‘We tried, didn’t we, CF? We really tried.’

The geomancer put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Yes.

We tried.’

As they watched, they noticed the helicopter rocking slightly. It veered to the right and then pulled sharply to the left.

Brett, his puffed out pecs hoisted proudly in front of him like a shield, trotted up to where the two of them stood. Now that nothing obviously illegal was going on, he was happy to rejoin them. ‘Amazing. Like something out of a bloody movie. Looks like your friend is putting up a bit of a fight,’ he said, pointing high in the sky. ‘See how the whirlybird is rocking?’

The fluttering aircraft jerked suddenly to one side and then righted itself. As they continued to watch, they saw the door of the helicopter swing open. Then a body fell out.

‘Bloody bastards!’ said Brett, shocked. ‘The buggers have thrown her out. Geez, what a way to go.’ Joyce put her fist to her mouth.

The body seemed to fall forever. All three of them held their breath.

Then it hit the waters of the harbour with a splash they could see but not hear.

‘I can’t believe it,’ said Brett. ‘Pushing her out.’

‘No,’ said Joyce. ‘I don’t know. Maddy was on the swimming team at school. I think she jumped.’

Joyce’s inclination was to race towards the water to see if Maddy could be rescued but the others persuaded her that she had landed much too far away.

‘The police’ll get there long before we do,’ said Brett. ‘She’s landed near Circular Quay. I hope she doesn’t get run over by one of the ferries. That would hurt.’

The young Sydneysider told them that while they had been on the roof, he had sat down and read through some of Wong’s book about the Opera House. He was fascinated to report that the geomancer had been right—it clearly had been a place of great negative energy. The history of the Opera House was one of constant arguments. The original architect had stormed off the project and his replacements had found that no part of it could be brought into being on schedule and within budget. Even after it had been opened, the performance spaces within it had been a matter of dispute, with some rooms changing designation repeatedly. ‘You were bang on,’ Brett conceded.

Wong’s attention was still on the harbour, as he anxiously waited for Madeleine’s head to bob up out of the water. Without looking away from the scene, he accepted Brett’s compliments, and then graciously pointed out that the millions of visitors who had visited the Opera House over the years would have done a great deal to alleviate the building’s negative energy and leave it with a positive air.

The mutual back-patting session was interrupted by Joyce. ‘Excuse me, guys,’ she said with infinite sadness in her voice. ‘The police are coming this way. I think it’s our turn to be arrested again. Oh dear.’

The next series of interviews with the Sydney police took a little over five hours—from just after 5.27 p.m. that day until almost 10.30 p.m. They were described by officer Denton Gallaher as ‘debriefing’. Although neither Wong nor McQuinnie were familiar with the word, it was clear that they were no longer seen as sources of trouble. Instead, they were perceived to be key sources of information regarding a highly unusual disturbance at the Opera House.

Gallaher’s face was white and set. He was in a state of shock. He found it hard to accept that the group of inconsequential weirdos he had held in his office that afternoon had suddenly become an item on the television news.

His colleagues had contacted him with a string of bizarre revelations. The Malaysian man he had shared tea with earlier that day had refused to come down from the roof of the Opera House for several hours and appeared to be in a demented state. A group of visitors from Hong Kong had hired a helicopter and landed it at the approach to the building—and then had used it to abduct the young Chinese woman who was allegedly ‘destined by the stars’ to die on that day. She herself had then jumped or been thrown out of said helicopter from a great height into the water, and was missing, presumed dead. She had not emerged from the water, nor had her body been found.

The helicopter had eventually landed on a small airstrip north of the city and the individuals inside detained. None of them was being in the least bit helpful. A Cantonese-speaking police specialist in international triad activity had been summoned back from an organised crime conference in Melbourne to help question them.

Meanwhile, initial witness statements appeared to indicate that the people he, Gallaher, had identified as the real troublemakers—Wong, McQuinnie and Kilington—had not committed any specific crimes. Indeed, there was some evidence to suggest that their behavior had been exemplary. Witnesses said they had appeared to be attempting to talk the Malaysian man and his Chinese fiancée down from the Opera House roof, and Wong had later been seen by several officers trying to stop the helicopter abduction of the young woman.

Gallaher found the whole thing almost impossible to take in. Not a day goes by without police officers encountering lunatics making ridiculous allegations. Such claims
have
to be dismissed. Normal police business couldn’t proceed otherwise. But wacko predictions aren’t normally fulfilled almost immediately afterwards.

He decided he was ultimately livid with God/Destiny/Fate for having played such a vile trick on him. The fact that the accusations made by Wong and McQuinnie turned out to have been right was just one of those huge, horrible coincidences that showed that whoever ran the universe had a sense of irony the size of Uluru.

In the end, after hearing the entire bizarre tale a dozen times over, Gallaher came to his own conclusions. The weirdos from Singapore were convinced that Madeleine Tsai would die today.

By spreading this fear around, they somehow managed to bring it about. It was all explicable by normal, scientific means. It was a prediction that had fulfilled itself thanks to group hysteria.

But although the troublesome visitors had brought it all upon themselves, they had—unfortunately for him—not done so in a way that enabled him to charge them with specific offences, except very minor ones, such as trespass.

It was infuriating, but it looked as if he would have to let the crazy old Chinese guy and his mad young assistant go.