"The Feng Shui Detective" - читать интересную книгу автора (Vittachi Nury)

8 The taxi driver

The great sage Lu Hsueh-an lived on the Plain of Jars one thousand years ago. A man came to him. ‘Sage. I need your help. I have so many burdens. My house has started to lean over. I think it will fall down.’

Lu said: ‘Can be fixed.’

The man said: ‘I have another problem. My chief he does not like me. He wants to get rid of me. What can I do?’

Lu said: ‘Can be fixed with the same action.’

The man said: ‘I have yet one more problem. My wife looks at my neighbour. I think she likes him. I don’t want her to leave me.’

Lu said: ‘Also can be fixed with the same action.’

The man said: ‘What is the action?’

Lu said: ‘Spend three days in contemplation in a temple on top of a mountain.’

The man did this.

After, the man returned.

Lu said: ‘Your problems are fixed. I knocked your house down. I told your chief you are leaving. I moved your wife next door.’

The man said: ‘This is not what I asked for.’

Lu said: ‘How do you feel?’

The man said: ‘Free of my burdens.’

Then the man became very happy. He thanked the sage and lived happily after that.

Blade of Grass, do not listen to what people say. Listen to what they mean.

This is a truth that all of nature knows.

Only humans do not know. A hungry puppy knows he needs food. But a hungry child thinks he needs toys.

The poet T’ang Yu said: ‘Tears can be lies. The rain cannot.’

From ‘Some Gleanings of Oriental Wisdom’

by C F Wong, part 145.

Winnie Lim’s heavily mascara-ed eyes blinked fully open. She clamped her perfectly manicured hand over the mouthpiece of the telephone. ‘C F,’ she whispered. ‘For you. Madam Fu.’

C F Wong’s hand, which had been reaching for the phone, snapped sharply backwards on hearing the name of the caller. ‘Say I am not here,’ he said.

‘He is not here,’ said Winnie.

There was an asphyxiating silence in the office and a tinny version of Madam Fu’s screechy voice could be heard erupting from the office administrator’s phone.

‘Okay, I tell him,’ the young woman said.

Wong nervously picked at his lower lip. Winnie turned again to him. ‘I tell her you are not here. She say she wan’ to speak to you anyway.’

‘Okay, okay.’ The geomancer nodded and Winnie pressed a button which transferred the call 128 centimetres from her phone to his. He raised himself to his full 1.65 metres, and smoothed down his jacket.

‘Hello, Madam Fu. Very nice to call me.’

‘Wong? My cousin comes on Thursdays for tea. Every Thursday. That’s why you must do it now.’

‘Yes, Madam Fu.’

‘Immediately, if possible.’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘This afternoon or at the very latest tomorrow morning.’

‘Yes, Madam Fu. What you want me to do this afternoon or tomorrow?’

‘No, tomorrow morning. You have to have finished by the end of tomorrow morning. Sometimes she comes just after lunch. Better for you to come now. For safety-lah.’

The geomancer decided to try a different tack. ‘You have some bad luck recently, is it? Or new extension in your house? Something you want me to look at?’

‘No, Wong, I want you to tell me whether I should take it away or have it thrown away or just leave it to rot. My cousin is very sensitive to these things.’

‘But what? What is it?’

‘The thing. I keep telling you. The thing in my garden.’

‘In your garden. What sort of thing?’

‘ Alamok! That’s what you have to tell me. I can’t do your job for you, Mr Wong.’

Winnie Lim, who was listening on the other phone, put her hand over her mouthpiece and said to Wong: ‘ Aiyeeaa. Give up. Sudah-lah.’

The geomancer realised the futility of continuing and ended the conversation with an obedient promise to drop everything and head to Fu Town Villa straight away. He put the phone down and then crashed into his seat with the grace of a warehouse being demolished.

His assistant, Joyce McQuinnie, lowered her book and looked over at him. She hadn’t failed to notice his deep disinclination for the assignment. ‘Why don’t you just tell her to get stuffed?’

‘Who?’

‘Madam Thing.’

‘Madam Fu.’

‘Yes.’

‘No, tell Madam Fu to get who?’

‘Get stuffed. It’s not a name. S. T. U. F. F. E. D. As in, have her internal organs removed by a taxidermist.’

‘She does not believe in Western medicine. Only Chinese medicine.’

‘Never mind.’

Once more, Wong felt that he was having a conversation with an unhinged person. Did everyone feel constantly surrounded by madness or was it just him? He decided to change the subject. ‘The book. Good or not?’

Joyce was reading a volume of ancient Chinese myths and legends that he had proudly recommended to her. She threw it down. ‘Well… to be honest, some of these are okay. But some are naff city.’

‘Hmm?’

She put her feet on the desk. ‘I mean, the girls always change into foxes or ghosts or something. That’s weird enough. But in this one, the guy changes into a chrysanthemum. I mean, puh-lease. A chrysanthemum? Who writes this stuff?’

‘P’u Sung Ling wrote it.’

‘He needs like a good script editor if he ever wants to break into movies.’

‘I think he does not. He is dead already.’

‘Yeah, well, not surprising.’

The geomancer was packing his bag. ‘I am going to see Madam Fu. Do you come?’ he asked, silently praying for an answer in the negative.

‘Sure,’ said Joyce. ‘A chance to see the loony upper crustaceans of Singapore society? I wouldn’t miss it for all the tea in Winnie Lim.’

The office administrator, hearing her name, momentarily lowered her eighteenth cup of gok-fa tea and glanced over at the speaker, but received no further information.

Suburban Singapore on a cloudy weekday in summer is a pleasant place. The traffic was snarled up in the centre of town, leaving the roads away from the business district clear, fast-moving and welcoming. The sky was an impossible shade of deep blue, made more rather than less beautiful by the white mountains of cirro-cumulus clouds standing over the horizon.

This was the sort of trip when Wong sometimes wished he had his own car. He watched rather enviously as free spirits in open-topped sports cars raced past, their hair whipping in the wind. But with tax on private cars in the city-state more than doubling their prices, it was out of the question for a small-businessman like himself.

On the other hand, if he were ever to save enough money for one, it would be through customers like Madam Fu. She was wealthy, required his services regularly, and paid in cash-usually more than he asked for. Putting up with a little madness was a small price to pay.

And, as for now, Singapore taxis were comparatively cheap and trustworthy-the one he was in at the moment was a Mercedes-Benz, a type of car associated with the highest grade of cadre in his hometown of Guangzhou. It took them less than fifteen comfortable minutes to travel from Telok Ayer Street in town to the open, residential roads of Katong.

‘Probably be an easy job. She sounds like a mad old bat,’ said Joyce.

‘Rubbish,’ said Wong.

‘She’s not mad?’

‘No, rubbish. The problem, I think is rubbish. In her garden.’

Madam Fu’s house was in a high-class low-rise housing estate just off Meyer Road, better known as Condo Valley, but her back yard faced a quiet country road, often used for mildly nefarious purposes such as lovers’ meetings or for the disposal of trash, which would simply be thrown over her wall. To be even-handed, observers would have to say it was partly her own fault, since her garden was so poorly tended and overgrown that any passer-by would assume that it was common land. But as soon as one person dumped an old fridge on the spot, every passer-by would seemingly pay the garden a similar compliment. In a week, a single item could grow to an entire town-sized rubbish dump. Sometimes the initial discarded piece of household waste was placed by Madam Fu herself. She never blamed anyone for the resultant mountain of trash, appearing to believe that unwanted items of furniture multiplied by high-speed asexual conjugation.

Wong guiltily felt that this sort of assignment was not really the work of a feng shui reader. The woman was eccentric, or even mentally disturbed, and he thought she needed to be looked after the traditional Chinese way-hidden away by her children where she could do no harm.

But his visits, every few months, had become a regular part of her tranquillity, and had also become an appreciated part of his income, so why complain? Both sides got something out of it. Besides, there was a degree of psychology in every geomancy case. The energy flows inside a house, however perfectly arranged, will not produce a happy household if the dwellers in the building are in a state of disturbance.

They swung through the wealthy Joo Chiat neighbourhood, the favoured dwelling place of the old Eurasian and Straits Chinese communities. The houses here fascinated the geomancer. He particularly liked Mountbatten Road, with its grand bungalows in large grounds, some in the classical colonial style and others in bizarre modern designs.

Then the taxi arrived at a small, leafy, carefully isolated estate of detached houses. The taxi stopped at the main gate, the security guard looked at the occupants and quickly waved them through.

This is one purpose for which his Western assistant really proved useful, Wong mused. A wizened old Chinese gentleman with small wrinkled eyes and a down-turned mouth looked suspicious, and would do so even if he were in a Santa Claus suit. Yet there is something frightening about white females that terrifies Asian bureaucrats, whether they be doorkeepers or heads of state. He wasn’t sure what it was. Perhaps it was the fact that they are so different from Asian females, definitely a separate and unrelated species. Western women were difficult, they were imposing, they were illogical, they lost their tempers so quickly and they screeched so readily. All these factors meant that one rather grumpy look from Joyce and the barriers were quickly raised, while Wong alone would have had to endure half a dozen questions and the production of some identification.

An Indonesian domestic helper opened the door of the whitewashed townhouse and led them to ma’am, who was standing in the back garden. ‘Ah! Come, come,’ Madam Fu said, beckoning them to follow her. ‘This, I am sure, is bad luck for me, and I want to know what you think.’

Wong trod with care through the untended long grass. He had stubbed his toe painfully on a previous trawl through her garden and was taking no chances this time. They came to a halt at the back of the garden, just by the rear fence. Madam Fu pointed down in the long grass.

‘There. What do you think?’

At her feet was a body. It was dead. It was wrapped in a raincoat with a dark stain on it. The flies buzzing on it suggested it had been there for at least half a day in the hot sun. It was a man with black hair. The eyes were open and unseeing.

Joyce screamed and put her fist to her mouth.

Wong breathed deeply. ‘Aiyeeaa! I think you are right, Madam Fu. This is big bad luck. Needs to be dealt with pretty sharpish and no misprint at all.’

‘I knew it,’ she said proudly. She turned to the maid. ‘Didn’t I say this was bad luck?’

Wong decided he would have to ask her the obvious question. ‘Terok-lah. Er. Can I ask… er? Did you do this?’

‘Certainly not. I don’t kill people in my own garden,’ she said, as if she regularly committed indiscriminate slaughter at other locations.

The geomancer immediately summoned the police, who took over the investigation. After all, Wong said to himself, this was probably a gangland murder of some sort. Besides, he had an important job to do, reorganising Madam Fu’s fortune. The correct icons at the back door, facing the spot where the body was found, an eight-sided ba gua mirror on the wall above her french windows-it was not a difficult task to deflect the evil. He mused that people don’t realise that a single bad incident, even one as great as the placing of a murdered body on one’s premises, is less trouble to counter than a long-term flow of negative forces, such as the placement of a home in the direct line of a burial site.

The homicide investigator, a detective by the name of Gilbert Kwa, found Madam Fu difficult to deal with. She was illogical, confused and constantly contradicted herself. Wong found himself increasingly called upon to interpret what she said.

Kwa quickly started using Wong as a go-between to speak for, or get information out of, Madam Fu-a role to which the geomancer did not object, since his usual curiosity in such cases was piqued.

Later that day, the officer asked Wong to visit the police station. He asked him about the history of objects being dumped in the old woman’s garden. Wong explained that it appeared to be a symptom of the geography of the area. ‘It looks like a rubbish dump. So people put rubbish there.’

‘A body is not rubbish.’

‘True. Confucius said how to treat a dead body was a conundrum. You treat it like a dead thing. People say you have no heart. You treat it like he-she still a live person. People say you have no brain. Cannot win. Confucius in the Li Chi-’

‘We discuss Confucius another day, okay?’

‘Okay. Are you soon fingering a suspect?’

‘This is Singapore. We do not do such things.’

‘No. This is colloquial English phrase. Means finding the miscreant.’

‘Oh. I see. Well, already we got him,’ said Kwa.

‘Wah. So soon? Very good.’

The officer explained the full story. The dead man was Carlton Semek, an Indonesian businessman who had moved to Singapore four years ago. His business partners had put him in the taxi on the corner of Tanglin Road after a meeting the night before his body was found.

His colleagues, a Singaporean named Emma Esther Sin and an American named Jeffrey Alabama Coles, said he was fine at the time they last saw him, except for having had a few drinks-not a huge amount, but perhaps three glasses of wine, which was enough to make him slightly tipsy. They put him into a taxi and waved goodbye. Both of them recalled that the taxi driver was an Indian-looking gentleman of indeterminate age. ‘He had black hair and a moustache,’ Emma Sin had said.

‘That narrowed it down to a shortlist of tens of thousands,’ Kwa said.

Fortunately, another part of the police team had been watching traffic and other security videos in the area, and came out with a number of vehicles which were in Katong and the Meyer Road area at the right time-including three taxis.

The drivers had been traced, and one appeared to fit the bill. Ms Sin and Mr Coles separately picked out the same photograph. The suspect’s log book showed a pick-up at the corner of Tanglin Road and Orchard Road at almost exactly the time when the murdered man’s colleagues said they put him into a taxi. The taxi driver was questioned by one of Mr Kwa’s colleagues and quickly confessed to dumping the body of the businessman over the wall of Mrs Fu’s house.

It sounded like a straightforward case. ‘Man gets in taxi alive,’ said Wong. ‘Man leaves taxi dead. Taxi driver killed him, right? Finish already.’

‘Ye-es,’ said the detective, and Wong heard the discomfort in his voice. ‘But not finished. It’s the details I need to wrap up. Contents of the man’s bag are gone. Money, yes, but also other stuff, scientific stuff he had on him. What did Motani-that’s the driver-do with that? How come got no murder weapon? We turned Motani’s flat upside down. Found nothing. Still long way to go before I close the book.’

‘Why so hurry?’

‘I like to get these things sorted out while a case is hot.’ He suddenly let his tense shoulders fall to a more comfortable position. ‘Also I’m supposed to be going on a golfing holiday, to Genting Highlands, at the weekend. Need to wrap up fast.’ He smiled.

‘Understand.’

‘My colleague Superintendent Tan tells me I should let you speak to the man. I’m inclined to do that. What do you think, Sifu?’

Wong knew this was as near as Gilbert Kwa would get to a direct plea for help, so he agreed to have an interview with the driver, a 27-year-old man named Nanda Motani, who had been working in the taxi business for a year.

‘I didn’t do it, I tell you I didn’t do it,’ said Motani with a pathetic note of pleading in his cracked and hoarse voice, even before Wong had sat down.

The feng shui man carefully changed the angle of his seat before lowering himself slowly into it. ‘Mr Motani, I do not say that you did anything. My name is C F Wong. I am consultant. I want to know the real truth. Please to tell me exactly what happened. Start from when you saw Mr Semek. Finish when you left him. Go slowly-lah.’

‘I didn’t kill him,’ said the driver. ‘He was dead already when I looked back.’

‘Please to tell me the full story,’ Wong said, trying to be reassuring but firm.

The man scratched his hairy cheeks, sighed, and then began. ‘So many times I have said this already. I turned into Orchard Road about 10.30, maybe a bit earlier, maybe a bit later. I saw these three on the street corner. They had come out of a bar. I could tell. The man in the middle was leaning against the woman, who was laughing loudly. The other man, the tall foreigner, was holding on to the man in the centre. I think they had all been drinking. They waved to me and I stopped. Technically it is not allowed to stop there. That I know. And if you want to arrest me and charge me for that, I will plead guilty. I will plead guilty a hundred times for that, just do not charge me with this… with this thing I did not do.’

‘Please continue. You stopped the car. And then…?’

‘I stopped the car. The tall foreigner put the bags in and helped his friend in-the drunker one, while the woman was outside. Then he told me the address.’

‘Who told you the address?’

‘The tall one, the American one. “Katong, East Coast Road, near the Red House,” he said.’

‘Red House? Ah, you mean the old Katong bread shop?’

‘Yes, you know, the bakery. The drunk one was slumped a bit and the American reached into the car and sort of like patted him. “Bye, old buddy.” Something like that, he said. I did a U-turn into someone’s driveway-and if you want to arrest me and punish me for that, you can, please-and then I went down Orchard Road -’

‘East.’

‘Yes, east, you know, then down Stamford Road, Raffles Avenue, across the bridge. Then I took a wrong turn somewhere. I don’t know that side so well. I stopped, asked another driver which way. He told me, and I got to the Katong very fast, just only a few minutes later.’

‘Passenger say anything or not?’

‘No, he was too drunk. He repeated the address. I think I asked him something, made conversation, you know, I’m a very friendly guy, nice guy, I say something about Katong being a nice place to live, but he didn’t answer.’

‘He say anything?’

‘He sang a bit.’

‘What did he sing?’

‘I don’t know music, I have no time for music. I only know Tamil movie songs. He sang one of those old Western pop songs, you know, something about America or something, I don’t know.’

‘And then what happened?’

‘Nothing. Nothing at all. I just drove him, in the dark, to East Coast Road. I turn left into the road and I heard a noise behind. I looked in the mirror, couldn’t see him. I stopped, and saw that he had folded up, fallen over, partly into the foot well, partly on the seat. I drove on.’

‘Why you drive on? Did he not look sick?’

‘I tell you, Mr Policeman…’

‘I am not a policeman.’

‘I tell you, kind sir, when you are a taxi driver and you work the late shift, you many, many times take home people who fall asleep or who get drunk and unconscious. This is not unusual. You just take them home and when you get to their address you wake them up. This happens many times, ask any Singapore taxi driver.’

‘Okay. Then you came to his address?’

‘Correct. That’s when I tried to wake him. Anything I said, it didn’t work. I reached over and shook him. It didn’t wake him. He felt funny, loose. Then I got out of the car and went to the back to take him out of the car, leave him on his doorstep. I’ve done that before. But that’s when I saw the stain on the coat. I thought he had been sick. But it was black.’

‘It was blood?’

‘Yes, I guess it was blood, but it looked black in the dark night. There was not much light there. When I realised he was sick or dead, well, I nearly screamed. I didn’t know what to do. I just wanted to get him out of the car, but what could I do? It felt like there were a hundred windows all round, all looking at me. I couldn’t take the body out, in front of the windows. I thought about calling the police, but no one had had anything to do with this man except me. I thought the police might think I was… I was the killer. Which I wasn’t. I wasn’t, I wasn’t, I wasn’t. I tell you he was dead when I looked back.’

‘Then you did what?’

‘I closed his door, got back into my seat, and drove as fast as I could.’

‘Where to?’

‘Don’t know. Just drove. Eventually, I found myself out in Meyer Road area, you know? I went down a dark lane near there, around the corner, and threw the body over a little wall. Also his bags. Briefcase and heavy bag.’

‘Did you open?’

‘No. Didn’t touch. Only touched outside of bags, to carry them.’

‘And after?’

‘Then I took the car back home, cleaned, cleaned, cleaned it all night. I cleaned it and then repeated cleaning it and then did it again. I finished cleaning it at 6 a.m. in the morning and then went to sleep, slept for only a couple of hours. I was too scared to go back to work, so just sat at home, staring at the wall. I did that, for, I don’t know how many hours. I did that until the police knocked at my door. They brought me here. I have been here ever since. That’s all I know. Please believe me. Please, I ask you, beg you.’

‘I believe you,’ Wong found himself saying. ‘But must ask some questions. Car windows open or not?’

‘No, the windows were shut. I have air-conditioning. Don’t want to waste. Keep the cold in, you know?’

‘You hear Mr Semek open window? Hear any sound like him opening window or door or anything?’

‘I think no. I wish I could say something different because it would indicate that someone came in and killed him, which is what I believe happened. But I am a good Hindu man, Mr Policeman, and I do not tell lies, so I say I did not hear anyone opening any windows or doors, because that is the truth. Please, please, I hope you-’

‘Okay, finish-lah,’ said Wong.

The geomancer sat in the police canteen with a cup of green tea, studying copies of the paperwork of the case. Joyce arrived, carrying his books of astrological charts. He told her the details of the case, to see whether she would ask the right questions. ‘Weird,’ she said. ‘Who killed the guy if the driver didn’t? what happened on the journey that we don’t know about? The key is: what effect did the guy’s death have, right? Any inheritance or anything?’

Wong nodded. Correct question. It was one he had asked Kwa earlier that day. Semek had an ex-wife in Indonesia, and some children at college somewhere who would inherit his money-but no relatives in Singapore or Malaysia. The inheritance was not large, and as far as the police knew, there was no life insurance. As for business deals, Semek, Sin and Coles had just signed a development deal for a technical product. Something to do with ore analysis for use in mining in Kelimantan. Semek was a scientist, on the technical side of the deal, with Coles and Sin handling the business side, respectively being specialists in financing and marketing functions. The partners, who were badly shaken by the murder, had agreed to freeze the deal until after the funeral, when everyone involved would meet again and restructure it.

‘Like, anything interesting on the body of the dead guy?’

‘What is interesting is what was not on the body. He was carrying two bags when he got into taxi. One small briefcase. But also one big bag. Doctor-type bag. This contained rock samples, machine bits, foreign currency.’

‘And that’s gone?’

‘Not gone. The bag was still there. With the other one. Both in Madam Fu’s garden. But big bag was full of bricks. Like from building site.’

‘Ah, the switcheroo.’

‘Switch…?’

‘It’s kind of a law in American movies. Old ones. You had to have a switcheroo. One bag with valuable stuff and another bag which looks the same, only has junk in it. The bag gets switched. They still have it sometimes. Dumb and Dumber.’

‘Yes. American movies dumber and dumber.’

‘So who took it? The driver, right?’

‘Maybe. Or if he stopped somewhere… Maybe there is something he is not telling us.’

‘What about the other bag?’

‘Full of usual businessman stuff, you know. Here’s the list.’

Joyce examined the sheet. Semek’s briefcase contained a huge number of pieces of paper, mostly technical documents to do with soil and rock analysis, the remnants of a doughnut in a paper bag, a Michael Crichton novel, a copy of Penthouse and a bag of peanuts from a SilkAir flight.

In his pockets the police had found a Finnish mobile phone, a local laundry ticket stamped with the word PAID, a bank ATM stub from a machine in Orchard Road, a dictaphone and a spare tape.

‘Did they play the tape?’

‘Yes,’ Wong told her. ‘Were two tapes. One had business letters on it. The other one had him singing.’

‘Singing?’

‘He liked singing. One tape starts with part of a business letter, Kwa says. Changes to him singing ‘ New York, New York ’. He was karaoke singer, understand or not?’

‘Yeuucchh. Yeah, I know karaoke. Where people murder songs in public.’

‘Don’t like? Dead man liked karaoke. Ms Sin said he often went to karaoke clubs.’

‘Any messages on the phone?’

‘None.’

The young woman picked up the list of personal possessions and suddenly whistled. Wong looked over. Had she spotted something important?

‘Wow. What happens to all his junk?’ she asked. ‘Do the police ditch it? I quite fancy the Dunhill lighter. Not that I smoke. And I could do with a new Walkman, and his tape machine is hot. Extra bass, built-in speaker, auto-reverse. I mean, if they were going to throw the stuff away.’

‘No. They give to family members.’

‘Oh yeah. I suppose that’s only fair. So what now? Pack the old bed pan and go feng shui the taxi?’

‘Not bed pan. Lo pan. What is bed pan? Anyway, compass no good in a car. Car always changes, south, west, north, east. Car has no direction itself.’

‘Mine does. Daddy bought me a 1989 mini to learn in a couple of months ago and I lost the keys and it was like, stuck on the side of the road for weeks. You know what a station wagon is? We used to call my car the stationary wagon. That’s a joke.’

‘With this case we need no lo pan. Only lo shu charts, pillars of destiny. First, Mr Semek.’

He opened his dusty volumes with enormous satisfaction and started reading through pages of Chinese characters. Mr Semek’s day pillar was fire and he was born in late spring, at a season of wood, the geomancer explained. He would get strength from fire and wood. Just like in a real fire, if you add more wood and more flames, the fire gets bigger. But if you add water on it, the fire will go out. If you put metal objects or earth on it, it will be difficult for the fire to burn.

The night he died was a day of metal, Wong said. Each element is associated with a part of the body. Mr Semek was shot in the chest. Metal is associated with the respiratory system. In this case, the astrological indications came true in the most literal way. A metal bullet went into his respiratory system.

Motani is also a fire person. However, there was only one wood element in his four pillars, but three metal elements. So he was not a strong fire person…

Gilbert Kwa strode over to the table. ‘Got anything?’

‘Yeah. It’s obvious, isn’t it, chief?’ said Joyce with smile.

‘It is?’ The police officer sat down opposite her.

‘Driver’s innocent. Someone shot the guy through the window of the cab. Long-range gun. Sniper style. With a silencer. Like in that movie The Jackal, you know? Remake of The Day of the Jackal. Good film.’

‘But the driver says the window was shut.’

‘Naah,’ said Joyce. ‘The driver said he stopped to ask directions. How do taxi drivers do that? Well, they wind down the window and shout, right? That’s when someone shoots the guy. The bullet whistles past the driver and kills the guy without the driver even noticing. Waddaya think?’

‘I think you watch too many movies,’ said Kwa, with a smile. ‘For a start, he wasn’t shot. He was stabbed. We saw the hole and the blood and no knife, and we first assumed a gun… but the doctor says he was definitely stabbed-by something like a kitchen knife or fruit-paring knife, short but sharp. We are searching Motani’s house again. Trouble is, could have thrown the thing out of the car window anywhere along the route.’

‘Oh. Does that change your theory?’ Joyce asked Wong.

‘No. Metal in respiratory system. Bullet, knife, the same.’

The young woman sat back and bit her index finger nail. ‘You know, I’ve got another idea. How about this? There was someone hiding in the trunk. He stabs the guy right through the back seat, yanks the knife out, then when the car stops, he jumps out and runs away. The car doors are never opened. Waddaya think?’

Kwa smiled. ‘Still you watch too many movies,’ he said. ‘Nice idea, but the victim was stabbed in the front. Right through the heart. Not the back.’

‘Well, at least I’ve got some interesting theories, which is more than you guys have,’ she said.

‘The answer is not in your movie ideas. Is somewhere on this desk,’ said Wong. He picked up the paperwork, opened his book of charts, and slotted the sheets in. ‘I go to my office. Sit quietly. Draw four pillars of fortune for each person. Must do the investigation properly.’ He stood up.

Joyce remained seated. ‘This is the first time I’ve been in a Singapore police station. Can you give me a tour, chief?’

‘Of course,’ said Kwa.

‘And can you show me where you lock people up and cane them and stuff?’

‘Also can-lah. Come.’

Early that evening, Joyce sat in a Starbucks on Orchard Road with a Coca-Cola and a blueberry muffin. She faced the road and looked at the shops on the other side of the street. Traffic flowed quickly, although there were periodic obstructions. Once, a taxi stopped suddenly to pick up a fare, and a van behind it skidded to a halt. A few curses were exchanged, and then both vehicles moved on. Somewhere in the distance, there was what sounded like a church bell ringing; an unexpected and very European sound, she thought to herself.

There was a Toys ‘R’ Us nearby. And around the corner was a large bookshop. In the boutiques on either side of the road, she saw the same designer clothes she had seen in South Molton Street. A young couple strolled past and sat at the table next to her; they were both wearing Levi’s 501s: she recognised the tags.

Without consciously thinking it, her mind was pondering over the fact that the scene looked like Tottenham Court Road, or perhaps a main road in the Kensington area. Yet it could never be mistaken for such a spot. What made the difference?

The trees, she decided. Very oriental. English trees looked different from Singaporean trees. And the people of course. They were shorter. English people were tall, angular. And there weren’t so many of them. Ten people on a London high street at once, and the pavements looked crowded. Here, there were always seventy people on the pavements, night and day.

And the air, of course. Although it was a cloudy, breezy day, and the sun had disappeared, the air remained hot, humid, unmoving. If this sort of weather hit London, it would be described as a heat wave. There would be topless sunbathing in Hyde Park, and reporters would be trying to fry eggs on the pavement. Here, people had put on their sweaters.

What other differences were there? She became suddenly aware that she was focusing on this mundane comparison because her mind didn’t want to acknowledge what was really going on in her head. She was trying to block out something which had shaken her. She wasn’t sure what it was.

But as she absently chewed on the muffin, she felt herself relaxing, and she gradually started turning over recent events in her mind. She had spent a rather fruitless afternoon talking to members of Motani’s family. His mother spoke little English, but was clearly devastated by the arrest of her oldest son. Then there were the four brothers and two sisters who still lived at home in the small apartment in a characterless housing estate called-called what? Already she had forgotten. The girls had been uncommunicative, and she had spent most of the time talking to two of the taxi driver’s younger brothers. One was seriously good-looking, but was sullen, and spoke in monosyllables.

The other had a huge nose and wispy facial hair, but was animated and helpful.

She felt a fraud. She was trained in neither police work nor feng shui. What was she there for? What could she do? All Wong’s instructions had been were to talk to the family and find out if there was anything they could tell her that would be helpful in resolving the case. She had no idea what to ask, or what information to record. Should she have taken notes? Should she have recorded the interview? At least that would have given her some air of professionalism. But then, they may have thought she was a reporter, after a scoop.

Was anything said that would be useful to relate to Wong? There had only been one topic of conversation during the time she had been in the house. And that consisted of repeated declarations that Motani was entirely innocent and how could the gods have got him into the situation?

When Joyce had explained that she wasn’t a police officer, but was someone who wanted to help, they assumed she was a type of social worker, and asked a slew of questions about what welfare help they could get if Motani, the main breadwinner of the family, was locked up for years-not that he had committed any crime, of course.

She had surprised herself with her ability to answer some of their questions, and deflect the ones that baffled her. ‘Where did I learn to bullshit so well?’ she asked herself. Maybe it came naturally. Her dad was an expert, after all. Anyway, she had not brought any shame onto C F Wong amp; Associates, which was the main thing. She reckoned she had acted professionally enough-except, perhaps, for her impulsive request to borrow a bootleg CD of a Pearl Jam concert she saw on the desk that Motani’s youngest brother was doing his homework on.

So why did she feel so shaken? She decided that it might be because she had soaked up a lot of the misery of the mother, who had drifted in and out of the room in tears throughout the afternoon. Or perhaps it was more than that; perhaps she had taken on some sort of moral responsibility for getting Motani free? Maybe that was why she felt like she was carrying a huge burden.

Or perhaps it was just all the events of the past few days that had left her in shock. Finding a corpse in the garden. That was the second corpse of the summer. So far. Not a lot of seventeen-year olds spend their gap year finding corpses. Perhaps I’m just like, growing up, she said to herself.

She had stopped for a drink to put off the main job of the afternoon, which was to report back to Wong what she had discovered. But she had discovered nothing. How could she communicate this to him? She called him on her mobile phone.

‘CF? It’s me. Jo.’

‘You find flat okay?’

‘Yeah, thanks. The cabbie took me right there.’

‘You find anything?’

‘Well… he’s got this huge family. His dad’s dead. He’s the main breadwinner. He has loads of brothers and sisters. They’re all really upset, of course. And…’

‘And?’

‘Well… that’s it, really. I mean, I didn’t find out anything to like, solve the mystery or anything. I didn’t really know what to ask. Or what to look for. I just sort of talked to them.’

‘Okay, no problem.’

‘But there is one thing, I guess…’

‘What thing?’

‘We have to get him off. I mean, he didn’t do it.’

‘Why you think that?’

‘No reason. I just do.’

‘Understand. Me too. You go home now. Walk-walk slowly.’

She smiled. Emma had explained the Chinese equivalent of ‘take care’. ‘Yeah. You walk-walk slowly too. G’night.’

Late the following morning, Wong found Gilbert Kwa in the corridor of the court house. The police officer was in a bad mood. ‘Why oh why can’t court cases be done on proper schedules, like dentists or doctors? Why do I have to spend hours hanging around like this?’

‘I have an important question for you,’ the geomancer said. ‘Then maybe we will have answer.’

‘Better be quick. We’re charging Motani this morning. We’re going to be called into court three any minute now. Or any hour now. Hard to tell.’

A clerk appeared at the door and read out a sheet of paper. ‘Case 12/768-F. Motani, N.’

‘I should have said any second now. Sorry, we’re on. Talk to you after.’

‘No. Wait, Mr Kwa. One question: was it raining Tuesday night? I slept early. I don’t know. But very important.’

‘No, if I remember, it rained in the afternoon, but was dry in the evening, okay? Sorry, Wong, I have to go in now.’ The officer started to move towards the door of court three.

‘Wait. I have something important.’

‘Got thirty seconds only, C F. Judge Simeon Malik is on today. He keeps everyone waiting but no one can keep him waiting.’

The geomancer took a deep breath and started his explanation. ‘The main thing is that Motani is a weak fire person who needs wood to give him strength. On the night of the killing, his pillars were bad. There was a clash between metal and wood. Also a clash between wood and earth. But the hour pillar of the death shows strong support of wood to Motani’s fire. If water was present-if it had rained at that time, then very bad for Motani. But no rain. Only wood. This means that what happened at that hour was not destruction of Motani’s life. Only part of the cycle. He will not be locked up. He will be released.’

‘Sudah-lah,’ said the officer. ‘Thank you and goodbye.’ He stepped towards the door of the court.

‘There is another thing. Semek was dead before he met Motani.’

‘What?’ Kwa stopped. ‘What do you mean? Proof, please.’

‘Semek was stabbed on the street. His friends carried body to taxi. He was not drunk. Dead. Big American put Semek into the car. Propped him up.’

‘But he-Semek spoke to the driver-told the driver the address even.’

‘American reached into the car. Switched on a tape recorder. In Semek’s pocket. Contained the sound of a voice saying Mr Semek’s address. Then a gap. Then later a voice humming song called New York.’

‘“ New York, New York ”.’

‘Yes.’

Kwa’s legal assistant approached. ‘Gilbert. We’ve been called. Come on.’

‘Wait,’ said the police officer.

Wong continued: ‘This is designed to make everyone think he dies later. On cab journey. Even the taxi driver thinks he dies later. Later police examine body. Then tape player has switched itself off. Auto rewind. You play tape. Hear a voice saying an address. You think is the start of dictating a letter. You think nothing strange. You listen to the tape more. You hear voice singing. Mr Semek is big karaoke fan. You think nothing strange.’

‘What about the bag? With samples and cash?’

‘Bag never had samples and cash. Always was full of bricks. To prop him up. Keep him straight in taxi.’

‘You think his partners killed him? But why? What would they have to gain from it? He was the only one with no money.’

‘They are venture capital people. He is ideas man. They don’t want his money. They got money. They want his idea. Maybe they don’t want to pay him.’

Kwa turned to his colleague: ‘Tell the prosecutor to approach the judge. Ask for an adjournment. We’re not ready.’

Joyce McQuinnie, who had been talking to Winnie Lim on the phone in another part of the court house, arrived in the corridor. ‘Hi. Winnie says you got a call this morning from Madam Fu again.’

‘More rubbish in garden?’

‘No. Her cousin came for morning coffee, stayed an hour. The old bat reckons her cousin left some bad vibrations there sort of thing. Wants you to come and do her house again.’

Wong nodded. ‘Better go. Just in case. We can take taxi again. Singapore taxis quite safe.’