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

3 A kitchen god’s life

A little mystery always remains. Such is life. The ultimate can never be understood. But this should not frustrate you, Blade of Grass. Knowing that you cannot know is the First Principle.

In the year 950, the Ch’an Master Wen-yi was asked: ‘What is the First Principle?’

He replied: ‘If I were to tell you, it would be the Second Principle.’

The Record of the Transmission of Light, chuan five, tells the story of Hui-chung. He was a monk. He died in 775. One time, he agreed to take part in a debate. It was about Wu. This is translated as ‘nothingness’ or ‘inexpressibility’.

He sat in the chair but said nothing. The time for the debate began. Hui-chung said nothing.

The other monk said: ‘Please propose your argument so that I can argue.’

Hui-chung said: ‘I have proposed my argument.’

From ‘Some Gleanings of Oriental Wisdom’,

by C F Wong, part 90.

This, thought Joyce McQuinnie, is just too weird. C F Wong had just introduced her to an old Indian guy who appeared to be wearing two tiny wigs, one on each ear. Small but thick mats of white hair, they caught and widened her eyes, and it took a considerable effort to wrench her gaze from the man’s miniature ear-muffs to his heavy, hooded eyes as she shook his hand. No way could they be natural. He told her his name.

‘Uhh, hi.’

‘Hello. Extremely pleased to meet you I’m sure, Ms McQuinnie,’ he said.

‘Yeah, thanks, good to meet you, too, er…’ She had immediately forgotten his name.

‘Dilip Kenneth Sinha,’ he reminded her. ‘My friends call me Dilip, or D K, or ‘you silly old fool,’ more likely. The more honest of them, anyway.’ He flashed a row of long, horse-like teeth, gave a staccato laugh like a burst of gunfire and turned his palms outwards in an elaborate flourish. ‘Uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh-uh.’

‘Ha ha. Just call me Jo.’

He was rather over-dressed for the location, in an expensively tailored dark Nehru-collared suit. The rather featureless outfit on his tall, stooping, waist-less body made him look like an upholstered banana. His hair was white, contrasting sharply with his dark, almost aubergine, skin. His eyebrows looked like blow-dried caterpillars. He was extremely hirsute. She noticed that the peppery five o’clock shadow on his face went all the way up to the bags under his eyes. She decided that the wiglets on his ears might be real after all.

Dilip Sinha beamed at her and swayed slightly. He had a tendency to move his head up and down and diagonally like the spring-headed dolls you find on taxi dashboards, but his wrinkle-nested eyes were pleasantly grandfatherly, and he spoke with easy sincerity. ‘Delighted to have you join us tonight. Can’t remember when we last had a visitor to the mystics. Many, many moons, it must have been.’

‘Thanks for having me,’ she said, blushing at her phrase, which she suddenly thought better suited to a six year old leaving a birthday party.

‘I think our last visitor was six years ago, or was it seven? It was the year after Chandrika’s brother left. Now when would that have been?’ He started to ramble inconsequentially about dates and Joyce found his droney tone hard to listen to. His old-fashioned Edwardian English had a little Indian twang, and there was a clipped quality to some of the words that she was beginning to recognise as a distinctively Singaporean intonation.

She was grateful that the old man had proved so welcoming, as she felt totally adrift, for many reasons: the people, the time, the location, the planet. What was she doing here? She had a strange feeling that she was sticking her head out of a box. She felt oddly exposed. She felt alien. Her breathing was slow but her heart was beating fast. She felt tired, as if energy was pouring out of a hole in her abdomen. Concentrating was an effort.

Scheduled tonight was a special emergency meeting of the Investigative Advisory Committee of the Singapore Union of Industrial Mystics. The union had only a handful of active members, although Wong had told her that meetings had attracted as many as twenty-five in the past, and there were more than forty names in the books. Visitors were technically not allowed, but Wong had phoned a couple of other committee members in advance and received permission for Joyce to be there. ‘These are the real old masters of Eastern thought. They use different names for different things, but really, it is all the same under the skin. A rose by any other name is still smelling, right, understand or not?’

At first she had been reluctant to cancel the just-hangingout evening she had planned with her friends. She found Wong to be difficult company at the best of times, and was rather daunted by the idea of spending her evening in a meeting with three or four Wongs, some of whom may even be more weird and impenetrable than he. But her friends had been blown over by her account of her adventures in Malaysia -‘You saw like a real corpse?’- and she had decided that it was worth sacrificing a night out for an experience that may make a story to tell. ‘Yeah-yeah, I’ll come,’ she had said to Wong earlier that day. ‘It’s cool. You have to keep pushing the envelope, right?’

‘Right,’ Wong had replied in a neutral tone to disguise his bafflement.

Shortly before 8 p.m., the geomancer and his assistant had marched through some narrow streets in what seemed to be an older part of town, and had turned a corner to enter a large area of restaurants and open-air food stalls. It was so poorly lit that Joyce wondered how diners could see what they were eating. After walking a few yards, she realised that the restaurant through which they were walking was part of a series of street cafes, forming a lengthened, disjointed circle, with the jumbled seating for the public filling the centre of the ring.

Joyce was struck by the sights and smells. It was dark. It was warm. There was something almost frighteningly surreal about the surroundings. In the shadows, fat hawkers appeared and disappeared in the steam from their cooking carts, like djinns conjured up from lamps. Their faces, lit from beneath by their cooking fires, seemed barely half-human. Every few seconds, there would be a sudden woosh and an explosion of conjurer’s smoke as a catty of wet bok choi slid into a super-heated giant wok, before being energetically slapped around with extra-long chopsticks. The sounds of the food market seemed indecently loud in the blackness, which made the night seem further advanced than it was. Against the background roar of several hundred diners talking in that half-shouted style common to Chinese restaurants, there were the cries of the independent vendors with their portable stove-carts, the sizzle of the ‘show’ dishes, the clinks of a thousand bottles and dishes, and the honks of the traffic backed-up on the adjoining high street.

She was half-conscious that it was the sort of lively nighttime, fire-lit gathering that was somehow primal: people must have gathered at dusk like this to share cooked meats over bonfires ever since man evolved. She sensed the appeal of allowing herself to be sucked into the scene, but she felt too unsettled and unconnected to submit to it. She couldn’t relax. She felt her world was one of brightly lit, surgically clean McDonald’s restaurants. This dark, noisy doppelganger was all just a bit too far beyond the boundaries, she mused.

The feng shui master slid his thin form gracefully through the tables, evidently knowing where he was going, although in his companion’s eyes, the restaurants all blurred into one pandemonious dining hall. She followed more tentatively, squinting at her feet to make sure she did not tread on ill-placed bags, children or small dogs.

Suddenly, she felt hungry. Wafts of pungent smoke were drifting from the cooking areas, carrying tempting smells of singed meats. Chilli in the air mingled with the odours of cumin and coriander, the comforting fragrance of boiled rice and the tang of fresh coconut. There was sweet mango, sour shrimp paste, something that smelled like burnt sugar and a hundred other smells she couldn’t identify.

But now where was Wong? He had been right in front of her a minute ago…

There. The geomancer had abruptly stopped and clasped hands with an Indian man of about sixty who had been sitting at a stained, circular table surrounded by small stools. Wong and Sinha had greeted each other with an odd combination of stiff formality and easy warmth. Clasping four hands together, they had looked into each other’s eyes and nodded their heads, their eyes still locked. Then they had swapped verbal greetings while maintaining the tight grip on each other’s fingers.

‘Been too long, Wong. Must meet more often, stop waiting for the mystics.’

‘True. We should make more effort. Let us not end this evening without choosing another date.’

‘Madam Xu’s already here. She has gone to talk to her friend first. Some old customers of hers here, she says. Come, sit. And the young lady.’

Wong had then introduced his assistant to the old Indian, Sinha, an astrologer, and the three of them took their seats. A thin young man had immediately appeared through the haze from the stoves with three plastic tumblers full of lukewarm Chinese tea.

Feeling a little more secure now that they had settled at a table, Joyce sipped the tepid liquid and cast her eyes around at the scene. It always surprised her to see so many young children and even babies out and about at night. You would never see under-fives running around at night in England, she mused. It was milk at seven and bed at half-past, no arguments. Yet in Singapore, children simply seemed to adopt their parents’ schedule, staying up until eleven or midnight, and if they got tired, they just put their heads on the tables and slept where they were.

As she scanned the crowd, she noticed an elegant, chop-stick-thin middle-aged woman approaching their table. On her bony shoulders hung a black cheong-saam with red piping. ‘Madam Xu!’ Sinha leapt to his feet and held the fortune teller’s hands to guide her to her seat. Before sitting, she bowed and smiled at Wong, who rose and bowed his own greeting.

‘And is this the child?’ Madam Xu asked, smiling at Joyce. ‘Hello, xiao pangyou. How old are you?’

‘Seventeen,’ said Joyce, although she had not started a conversation by volunteering such information since she had been a child.

‘And do you want to be a mystic or fortune teller or something similar when you grow up?’

‘Erm. I don’t know. Maybe. I’m just like, studying with Mr Wong at the moment. To write something for my project. It’s very kind of you to let me join the meeting. I hope I won’t be in the way.’ Joyce was shocked to hear herself accepting the role of a polite, model child-something she had never been.

‘I’m sure there will be no problem. Mr Wong explained on the phone that you understood the form of these meetings, that no information derived here ever goes outside. Superintendent Tan is right behind me, and he will speak of things that are official secrets.’

Joyce nodded. ‘Yes, C F told me already. It’s all hush-hush top secret, I know.’

Suddenly a rather delicate male hand appeared on Madam Xu’s shoulder, and a thirty-ish Chinese face loomed over her head. ‘Hello guys and dolls. Sorry I’m late. Quite unforgivable, I know. Helluva cheeky, since I called the meeting. Shall I sit here, is it?’

The question was perfunctory, since it was the only seat remaining. Superintendent Tan greeted Sinha and Wong and blinked quizzically at McQuinnie. A stocky, Malay-Chinese man with a pear-shaped head, he eased himself down into the chair and his eyebrows rose at the young woman opposite. Not just his clothes, but his entire body seemed to have the rumpled air of the overworked civil servant.

‘Please, Superintendent, I must introduce my assistant to you,’ said Wong. ‘I spoke to the others to tell them she is coming. I could not get through to you. You are so busy. She is Joyce McQuinnie. She is helping me this summer. I hope you do not mind she is joining us. She is the daughter of a friend of one of my bosses, so I cannot say no.’

‘Gee, thanks,’ said Joyce, glaring at Wong.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ said the Superintendent, arranging a large pile of papers on the table. ‘Bit young, isn’t she, Wong? I mean, for all this stuff? You know what we sometimes get into. Murders and rapes and things.’

‘I’m not young,’ said Joyce. ‘I know a lot of stuff. You’d be surprised. And I’ve helped Mr Wong on cases already. Murders and things, whatever,’ she added, as if she were discussing the irritation quotient of mosquitoes.

The ever-smiling Madam Xu leaned forwards and beamed at the police detective. ‘She is very mature. I can feel it. You need not worry, Superintendent. Almost as knowledgeable as some of my girls.’

‘I hope not,’ said Tan. ‘Anyway, if you are all comfortable with her here, it’s okay with me too. Good to see you all. You are looking well Madam Xu, and you, Wong. And how’s my old friend Dilip?’

‘I am extremely well and in fine fettle, Superintendent,’ said the elderly Indian. ‘For my happiness to be complete, only your presence was needed. And now you are here.’ He bowed his head gallantly.

‘Very nice speaking as usual,’ said the police officer. ‘Well, first, let me apologise for keeping you waiting. Helluva bad show. But this is worth waiting for. The case which I shall place before you is an interesting one in my humble opinion. Let me just wet my whistle and I will give you all the juiciest details. Under the usual condition of strict secrecy of course,’ he added with a special look at the youngest member of the party.

The waiter, familiar with the Superintendent’s needs, was already approaching with a pot of Iron Buddha. Wong had a detailed conversation in one of the Chinese dialects with another waiter, to order the food.

The group then waited in a not uncomfortable silence for the Superintendent’s tea to be poured. He took a slow sip, lowered the tumbler, and cleared his throat.

‘He’s quite a good storyteller,’ put in Madam Xu in a stage whisper to Joyce. ‘I think he should be in the theatre.’

‘I want you to picture, if you will, a large restaurant in a hotel,’ Tan said. ‘It’s just after three o’clock in the afternoon, and the last luncher has just dabbed his lips with his starched linen napkin and signed his bill. “Thank you, sir,” says the waitress as the man leaves. The restaurant is now empty, except for this last waitress, whose name is Chen Soo. All the other waiting staff have fled for their mid-afternoon break. Most of the kitchen staff have also left, but she hears at least one person still bustling inside, probably the head chef, who is usually last to leave. She also sees a young assistant chef slipping through the swing doors into the kitchen, so it seems that business in there is not quite finished. You follow so far, is it?’

Joyce found it hard to visualise anything, let alone a spotless hotel restaurant, while sitting in this distracting environment. Trying to cut out the sizzling explosions of wet vegetables hitting woks, she forced herself to focus on Tan’s lips and listen to his slightly sing-songy voice. He had smooth, babyish cheeks, and a slight fuzz on his upper lip. She guessed that he did not need to shave every day and would have a completely hairless chest. He spoke quickly, but giving due weight to each word. She decided that Madam Xu was right: he had a good sense of the dramatic.

‘You with me?’ continued Tan. ‘Now this Miss Chen Soo-birthday 10, 10, 1978, birth place Singapore -clears up the last items on the last diner’s table.’

All three members of the mystics carefully scribbled down this detail, like students receiving exam tips.

‘But the lull in the proceedings was not expected to last long. At one of the hotel’s other restaurants, the afternoon tea service had just started, and the food and beverage manager had asked her to help out there. But for this particular room, things would be quiet until about four, when preparations would start for a private cocktail party, which would last from 5 p.m. to about seven, after which the tables would be re-set for the seafood buffet in the evening. In other words, a typical afternoon in the café of a modern, five-star hotel, you see?

‘A few minutes later, Chen Soo wheels the used dishes into the trolley parking area just on the other side of the kitchen swing doors. By this time, there is only one person left in the kitchen: the head chef, Peter Leuttenberg, who she sees getting something from the freezer. She returns outside. She puts a fresh table cloth on the table. It takes her only a few seconds, maybe a minute. She hears a voice. “Afternoon, sweetie.” It is the sous chef, a rather dishy European man by the name of Pascal von Berger, who is in the habit of greeting all the young women, despite not being able to remember their names.’

‘Where is he from, chief? A Swiss, I suppose,’ Sinha asked.

‘Er, hang on a moment.’ The Superintendent flicked through the papers in front of him. ‘That’s right, he’s from Lausanne, birth date 7, 4, 1964.’

‘It figures. All Swiss, these hotel people.’

‘Ms Chen looks up and greets him as he passes through the swing doors into the kitchen. A few seconds later, she hears a cry, a shout. The word sounds like “Murder”. But it couldn’t be, she thinks. Why shout such a word? Perhaps the men are playing games? She knows that several of the cooks are lively young men-they are playing pranks from time to time. She stands there, not knowing what to do, when Pascal races out of the kitchen. “Miss, miss,” he is calling. “Help, call an ambulance. Peter is ill. Quickly.”’

Superintendent Tan leaned forward, knowing that he had now fully caught the attention of his listeners. He speeded up his speech. ‘Chen Soo heads for the captain’s desk at the front of the restaurant. She presses the code to summon hotel security on a red alert. She asks Pascal what is wrong with the executive chef. He says: “Peter is on the floor. I think he is dead.” She calls an ambulance. And then the two of them go into the kitchen. Chen notices that von Berger is pale and shivering, in shock. He says to her: “Maybe you do not want to see. It is bad. He is hurt. There is much blood.” But Chen follows him. There, close to the main ovens, the executive chef, a Californian, lies dead on the floor. His hair is wet and matted. There is a spreading pool of blood under him, from a wound apparently on his skull. His head is battered, all out of shape. He seems to be…’

He paused, dramatically. ‘… dead!’

The detective leaned back in his chair and looked at the faces of his four listeners. ‘Murdered.’

He picked at his right index finger nail for a moment before continuing. ‘Now von Berger says he was still breathing slightly when he found him. The chef had lifted his hand to make some sort of gesture, and he had tried to speak. He said something about a waiter. But unlike in the movies, he named no names.’

He paused again as the first dishes of food arrived. Joyce looked suspiciously at the chipped bowls, one of which contained a green vegetable and the other something in a lurid orange-brown sauce. She wondered if there would be anything she could eat.

The officer appreciatively breathed in a lung-full of steam from the plate of garlicky choi sum and oyster sauce. He helped himself to a large portion as he spoke: ‘Hotel security arrives within minutes. Two officers. One is an old Nepalese man named Shiva and one a Malay called Sik. Shiva checks the body. He reckons the chef is dead. Sik stands guard at the door of the kitchen. Medics arrive a few minutes later and confirm the man’s soul has made its final journey.’

‘Hold on, hold on, my good man.’ This is Dilip Sinha, who was dishing a generous portion of an unidentifiable substance onto Joyce McQuinnie’s plate, ignoring her protests. ‘The door of the kitchen, you say? Surely a big main kitchen in a hotel would have several doors?’

‘Quite right,’ the Superintendent replied. ‘But this wasn’t the main kitchen. The hotel is a big one, and had three kitchens, one large and two small. This was a smallish subsidiary kitchen, known as Kitchen Three, which dealt mostly with just two outlets, and also supplied canapés and what-not for cocktail parties in the function rooms on that side of the hotel. This kitchen had only three doors. A main door into the café, a staff entry door and a fire escape.’

‘May we ask which hotel? Would it be the Continental Park Pacific?’

‘It would. I see you saw this morning’s Straits Times story about this particular incident.’

‘I did.’

Madam Xu made a clucking noise with her tongue. ‘This is clearly going to be a difficult case, Superintendent. These modern hotels are such big, sprawling complexes. I presume the staff door leads into a network of rooms and corridors, to which literally dozens of staff would have access.’

‘Not dozens, Madam Xu. Hundreds. Five-hundred-over, I think.’

The Superintendent heaped chilli prawns onto his plate. ‘Someone had smashed open the head of the executive chef and then fled through one of the doors, we first thought. But this case is simpler and at the same time more complicated than it seems. You see, Shiva went to open the staff door and found he couldn’t get through. Chen, the waitress, explained that there was some building work going on in the staff quarters. The construction people had temporarily closed off that passage. A sign had gone up in the staff room explaining that the staff access to Kitchen Three would be blocked for a few days, and staff would have to arrive and leave by the main door, through the coffee shop.’

Sinha raised one long, bony index finger to make a point. ‘But wouldn’t that be very disruptive to the restaurant, to have staff tramping in and out all the time?’

‘Not necessarily. Staff arrived in the kitchen well before lunch time, to prepare the food. The customers rarely arrived before noon and ninety per cent of them go by 2.30 p.m. The kitchen staff would clear up and leave for their fifteen-minute breaks, which were staggered between three and four o’clock.’

‘What about the fire escape?’ This was Madam Xu.

‘Yes, the fire escape. This would be the perfect exit for a murderer on the run. It goes straight from the kitchen to a corridor on a lower floor which leads right out to the back gardens. A murderer using that route could have made a speedy exit, and gone from the kitchen to the back garden in less than a minute. Except for one thing. He or she didn’t.’

Joyce asked: ‘Was that locked as well?’

‘No. The fire escape wasn’t locked. But it was wired to an alarm, as are all the fire exits in that hotel. You cannot go in or out of a fire exit without tripping the alarm. The security desk confirmed that the door had not been tampered with, nor had the alarm gone off. Therefore, the murderer did not use that exit, you see.’

Joyce spoke indistinctly with her mouth full of surprisingly delicious onion cake. ‘So he killed the guy and then went out through the coffee shop. Sorry, Mr Sinha. I didn’t mean to spray you.’

Madam Xu lowered her tumbler to the table with a dramatic thud, slopping brown bo lei onto the table cloth. ‘Unless,’ she said, dramatically, ‘he had not left.’

The police officer smiled. ‘Yes. A definite and frightening possibility, which did occur to the officers, as they stood in the kitchen. After all, the body was freshly murdered. But remember the security guards. Sik had been guarding the door throughout that first hour, and Shiva and the first of my men who arrived checked the kitchen carefully. There are not that many places to hide in a small kitchen like that, and all of them were checked carefully. There was no one there.’

‘Air-conditioner vent?’ asked Sinha.

‘Checked,’ said the Superintendent. ‘It was too greasy to climb out of. Even if you had done it, you would have left lots of evidence.’

‘So the murderer must have left through the café door,’ said Joyce. ‘Must have been a waiter. He said it was a waiter.’

Madam Xu said: ‘What exactly were the dead man’s last words? And you said he made a gesture. What was his gesture?’

‘He said, “It was that stupid waiter,” and tried to wave his hand towards the washing area-but by that time, there was no one standing on that side of the kitchen. And there are no doors or windows in that part.’

‘So you questioned the waiters?’ said Madam Xu.

The Superintendent finished chewing a mouthful of orange vegetable before replying. ‘Of course. We interviewed all the waiters. But remember, several people saw him alive after all the waiters had gone. The last people to see him alive were a waitress, a junior cook and the sous chef. None of these can technically be described as a “waiter”. On the other hand, if you are dying, you may be a bit muddle-headed and may be not too accurate about your words, agree or not? Maybe he meant the waitress or some other staff member.’

‘Birth date? Of the dead man?’ This was Wong.

‘Ahhhh…’ Tan leafed through his papers. ‘Twentieth of September, 1957. Born in… ah, Sacramento.’ He used his chopsticks to fill his mouth with rice and spoke out of the side of his teeth. ‘Anyway, you know what police procedure is. We were pretty thorough. All the lunch-time staff were interviewed, and they all said Peter Leuttenberg was alive and well when they last saw him. Naturally, suspicion fell most heavily on the last person to leave the kitchen. It was a young man named Wu Kang, who was a junior assistant chef, birth date 4, 9, 1976, Singapore. Ms Chen-the witness I mentioned right at the beginning of my story-she remembers seeing one young kitchen assistant re-entering the kitchen while she was clearing the last table, you remember I said before? That was Wu. He says he was only there for a few seconds. His story seems to stand up-and to help us time the event.

‘You will also remember that Chen says she popped into the kitchen for a moment a few minutes after seeing Wu enter, and she saw Leuttenberg alive and Wu gone. Wu’s story was the same as that of the other staff. He said he left the kitchen, popped back in a few minutes later to pick up his hat, and left almost immediately. He said he had said goodbye to Leuttenberg, who was preparing a tiramisu for himself. He said he recalls seeing Ms Chen tidying table forty-three as he left. It all tallies, time-wise.’

Sinha asked: ‘Tiramisu? At three in the afternoon?’

‘Mr Leuttenberg was in the habit of eating tiramisu every afternoon at about this time. No one begrudges the senior chef his little quirks. And there’s something else that was strange.’

‘Yes,’ said Wong. ‘The murder weapon.’

‘How did you know?’

‘You have not mentioned it yet, so I knew.’

‘Well, you are right, Wong, the murder weapon is a factor here.’

‘What was it?’ asked Joyce. ‘A saucepan, I suppose? Or a leg of lamb, like in the story?’

‘No, Miss,’ said the Superintendent, with a laugh. ‘I have read Roald Dahl too. There was no leg of lamb to be used as a murder weapon and then consumed by the investigating officers. They do not eat on duty. Nor drink. This is a rule. This is Singapore. We do things properly here. The murder weapon was a problem. We weren’t able to find it. It was something big and heavy, like a saucepan-the dent in Leuttenberg’s head was evidence of that. But where was it? We examined everything in that kitchen. We looked at every moveable object, trying to find hairs or tissue or fresh blood that matched Leuttenberg’s. It was difficult, because kitchen utensils are always covered with fingerprints and almost always have microscopic bits of blood on them. Anyway, it was a tough job that took several of our best people many, many hours. We found nothing. Not a sausage.’

‘You were looking for a sausage?’ asked Wong. ‘You think it was a sausage?’

‘Not a sausage,’ said Joyce. ‘It’s just an expression. It means, well, like if you have some place that is completely bare, and there is absolutely like, nothing at all there, you go: Not a sausage.’

‘Why?’

There was silence. Joyce usually felt compelled to be the chief apologist of the English language, but this one foxed her.

The Superintendent, too, was stumped. He absently stirred the food on his plate with his chopsticks. ‘Never really thought about it. Helluva strange. It’s just what you say.’ He looked vaguely annoyed, then continued: ‘Anyway, the murder weapon must have been removed from the kitchen, or it had been scrubbed clean and returned to its normal place.’

‘You searched the hotel?’ asked Wong.

‘We did all the things we could think of. Wu, the young assistant, had been seen by several witnesses walking towards the main kitchen. He was carrying nothing, although he could theoretically have had some small item hidden within his clothing. But nothing big enough to have done the damage that was done to Leuttenberg’s head, you see? Chen was in the coffee shop throughout lunch, right up to the time when we interviewed her. There was no murder weapon visible in the café. Pascal von Berger, the sous chef who found the body, arrived in the café carrying nothing, and had nothing in his hands until the time we interviewed him.’

Joyce put her elbows on the table. ‘Perhaps it could have been something small but heavy like a lead pipe, which he could have hidden in his clothes? You know, like “Colonel Mustard in the study with a lead pipe.” You know the game?’

‘I do,’ said the Superintendent. ‘But I have never enjoyed it. My father was a colonel. I have always been uncomfortable with the idea that anyone with the title Colonel could be a murderer.’

Joyce was excited. ‘I know, Wu or von Berger could have hidden the lead pipe in their chef’s hats!’

‘A cute idea, Miss, if we can label any possible technique by a killer as cute. But I repeat. No, it couldn’t have been a small lead pipe. Leuttenberg was hit with an object so heavy that it crushed part of his skull, and then his head hit the floor with such a crash, such an impact, that his skull was crushed on the other side as well. It was almost as if a large microwave oven had been dropped on his head from a height. You see, is it?’

‘Right. Well, that must have been what it was,’ said the young woman.

‘No. We checked all the microwaves and things like that in that kitchen. You would be able to tell if one had been dropped on someone’s head all right. There were two portable ovens, and they were not broken or anything. They had not been moved recently.’

Madam Xu, who was shuffling some fortune-telling cards, asked: ‘Did you believe young Mr Wu? He says he left the chief cook alive?’

‘I think I do. I can find no motive for him to murder his boss-especially since he was the last person to see him in that kitchen before the body was found. It would have been pretty stupid, not that that has stopped other murderers from committing other such crimes.’

Madam Xu looked into her cup. ‘My calculations and my cards and my tea leaves and my brain tell me the same thing: Mr Pascal. If you believe Mr Wu is telling the truth, it seems to me that the case would look quite bad for Mr Pascal.’

‘Pascal von Berger, the sous chef. Yes. The man who found the dead body. The flirtatious one. “Afternoon sweetie.” Exactly what it seemed to us when we discussed the case in the station. Von Berger must have gone in, bashed the man, and then run out, pretending that he had found him dead.’

‘Surely you have a precise time of death?’ asked Sinha. ‘Does your forensic pathologist not give you some aid on this count?’

The Superintendent grimaced to find his tea had gone cold, and waved at the waiter to bring a fresh pot. ‘She did, she did. It is an impressive science, but it cannot tell the time of death to the minute. There are so many complicating factors, such as the condition of the man and the warmth of the room. A kitchen, you know, is very hot. Kitchens are traditionally not air-conditioned. She reckons he had died maybe twenty minutes or half an hour before she saw him, you see.’

‘Which means?’

‘Our pathologist saw him about thirteen minutes after the first call to police. That ties up with the other evidence, because it means he died sometime between when the other kitchen staff left the kitchen and when the waitress Chen Soo saw him dead. This we knew. So the pathologist did not add too much to our basic store of knowledge there.’

Wong was looking at the floor plans. ‘Excuse me, Superintendent Tan, I find the design of the kitchen very relevant to this case.’

‘Well, you would, wouldn’t you?’ said Tan. ‘Being a feng shui man.’

The geomancer pointed to a plan of the kitchen. ‘This is interesting. The kitchen is east of the centre of the building. This is where it should be. It is extremely well-designed in feng shui terms. It is perfect, even. Kitchens are rather troublesome from a feng shui point of view. They are full of significant elements: water taps, water pipes, windows, metal objects, knives. And of course, the stove fire. All important things. East is best, in my opinion, because it supports water. Now the door of the kitchen is here. In the south part of the room. The fridges and freezers are far away. In the northwest of the room, over here. The ovens are on the opposite side, the northeast part. The man was found here. Near the fridges.’

‘You have got your thing upside down. North goes on top,’ said Joyce.

‘No! South goes on top,’ snapped Wong. ‘Always. They teach you nothing in school these days. Nothing.’

Tan said: ‘Yes, the corpse was there, on the floor. When von Berger first went in, he couldn’t see the body because it was on the floor, and all these things-these work tables and benches and what-nots-were in the way.’

Wong pencilled compass points-with south on top-onto the floor plan. ‘Water ch’i does not mix well with the ch’i of the northeast, which is the energy of the soil. It is a combination which creates instability. Thus it is not surprising that he died there.’

Madam Xu clucked impatiently. ‘It is nice that the murderer chose the right part of the kitchen to do his murdering in, but does this tell us who the murderer is, C F?’

‘No. Not at all.’

Sinha laughed. ‘The implication is that the murderer was you, C F, because only you would know the precise spot to do the dastardly deed in. Ha!’

‘It was not me,’ said Wong. ‘I was in my office at that time.’

‘That’s what they all say,’ said Tan.

‘Let us find more profitable avenues of investigation,’ said Sinha. The Indian placed his fingertips together and balanced his chin on them. ‘Superintendent. When did all this happen, may I ask? The day before yesterday, was it?’

‘Correct.’

‘Two days ago. You have a narrow circle of suspects. Surely given enough interrogation-even using your gentle, law-abiding methods, which do not include hitting them with lathis, as would be done in India-one or other will soon break down and reveal all?’

The police officer looked disappointed. ‘That’s what we thought. We have talked to the last three people to see the victim and drawn blanks. We talked to Wu, we talked to von Berger, we talked to Chen, until we were blue in the face. They all stick rigidly to their stories and insist they are innocent. We haven’t been able to find enough of a hole to slide a cigarette paper in, even. The male waiters who left earlier also have cast-iron stories. We are stuck. I need you to move us forwards, can or not?’

This was a plea. It called for some serious mystical thinking. For two minutes, no one spoke. Madam Xu looked carefully at her cards and scribbled calculations, and Sinha flicked through an almanac of astrological charts for the year. Wong continued scratching out lo shu diagrams for the main players in the mystery.

Madam Xu broke the silence. ‘It is a tricky problem.’

‘Indeed it is,’ said Sinha. ‘You have a body in a kitchen, but no murder weapon, no murderer and no exit or hiding place. It doesn’t hang together very well at all.’

The Superintendent sighed. ‘It is a curious one. We thought that you guys, with your, ah, unusual methods of investigation, might be able to reveal facts that are not uncovered by normal police procedure.’

‘Well, now, I have a question for you,’ said the old Indian astrologer. ‘How did von Berger know it was a murder? He shouted out “murder”, but at that time, all he saw was a body. It could have been an accident. Leuttenberg may have just fallen over or something, for all he knew at that time.’

The Superintendent lifted his bowl of rice and vigorously shovelled rice into his mouth. ‘What do the rest of you think about that?’ he asked with his mouth full.

Madam Xu said: ‘That seems to be an interesting little unresolved oddity in this case. Tell us that bit again.’

‘Of course,’ said Tan. ‘Chen, the waitress, insists she heard von Berger-who else could it have been?-in the kitchen, shouting “murder”. But von Berger says he just gasped with horror but has no recollection of saying that word.’

Sinha said: ‘I have it. Perhaps it was Leuttenberg-perhaps it was the chef’s last word before von Berger threw the microwave or whatever at him and then picked it up and washed the blood and tissue fibres off it before running out to get Chen to call the security guards?’

‘Could have been,’ said the Superintendent. ‘But whoever said “murder”, does it matter? Does it take us any further? I think not.’

Silence returned.

Wong wrinkled his brow. ‘Which company was having a cocktail party that evening in that room?’

The question was unexpected. The Superintendent blinked. Then he looked through his notes. ‘Didn’t think to ask. Let me have a look. Er, it should be here somewhere, it must be here. I have the banqueting schedule. Hang on a minute. Here it is: Eagle Flight Life. It’s an insurance company, I think. What’s the relevance?’

‘So,’ said Wong. ‘The American’s spirit was taken away by an eagle. That seems fitting.’

‘What are you on about, Wong? You’re going all metaphysical on us, is it?’ The Superintendent sat up in his chair.

‘No, no,’ said the geomancer. ‘I only point out the symbolism. When did you last go to a corporate cocktail party in Singapore which did not have a centrepiece?’

Sinha was getting interested. ‘You mean, flowers or a logo of some sort? A statue?’

‘Or an ice sculpture.’

‘Of course.’

‘You always have an ice sculpture. Almost always,’ said the geomancer. ‘Large, heavy, hard. Perfect for a strong man to pick up, use to smash over the head of another man. When you have finished? You just stick it into the hot oven or sink. By the time someone has a look at it, it will be nothing but water.’

The Superintendent was scribbling notes. ‘I like your thinking, Wong. The ice sculpture.’

‘An ice sculpture would make sense,’ said Madam Xu. ‘You think von Berger did it, then? Hit him with an ice sculpture? Stuck it in the oven, and then cried murder?’

‘Ice sculptures are usually the job of younger assistants in the kitchen. I think if I was the Superintendent, I would ask the cooking staff about Mr Wu’s jobs. One of them may well have been to make ice sculptures. Or look after them in the kitchen freezers.’

‘But if Wu did it, he wouldn’t have had much time. Ms Chen saw Leuttenberg alive-and alone-in the kitchen, and von Berger arrived a few minutes later,’ said the Superintendent.

‘But did the waitress see the chief chef in the kitchen?’ asked Wong, lifting his floor plan of the kitchen. ‘She said she saw him getting something out of the freezer. This is in the northeast. Back of the room. Far from the main door. Fridge doors always open on the left side, except for some funny ones in Japan. Hotel fridges are always big. If he was getting something from the fridge, the door would be open. She would not be able to see him from the main door, which is in the south of this room.’

‘Maybe, like, she could see his tall hat over the top of the fridge door,’ said Joyce.

‘Maybe she did see his hat. But who was wearing it? Maybe it was not the chief chef taking something out of the fridge. Maybe it was Wu Kang re-arranging the things in the freezer. So that people did not notice that the ice sculpture was missing.’

‘Could be. Maybe so.’ The Superintendent was sitting bolt upright now. ‘But how did he get out of the kitchen in the two minutes before von Berger arrived?’

Wong looked at his floor plan again. ‘I think maybe the dead man did not say anything about a stupid waiter. I think he said something about a dumb waiter. Now this is a technical term used in architecture. In kitchen architecture, especially so. It means food elevator.’

‘Food elevator.’ Madam Xu considered the unfamiliar phrase carefully.

‘There are no food elevators in this kitchen,’ said Tan.

‘No. Not now. But I think there used to be. Just here, behind the cabinets over the washing part. I think maybe they are still there. Not used. That is how he got out.’

‘How on earth could you possibly know that?’ asked Sinha.

Madam Xu was equally amazed. ‘If you can tell that with your feng shui powers, I will give up fortune-telling and start taking feng shui lessons from you.’

‘Well, it is not really a guess. I did the feng shui for this hotel when it was refurbished about five years ago myself. That is why the kitchen is arranged perfectly. Remember I was telling you?’ He folded his arms, proudly.

‘Ah, inside information,’ said the fortune teller.

‘Prior knowledge. This is not fair,’ said the astrologer. ‘It is not truly making use of the mystic arts.’

Wong looked put out. ‘The sage Hsun Tzu said: “We should think about Heaven but also not reject what man alone can do.”’

‘I still think it was von Berger,’ said Madam Xu. ‘Young Wu has no motive. But von Berger has many dealings with the chief chef, and also would be likely to get the man’s job after he died.’

This appeared to be a direct attack on the geomancer’s theory, and all eyes turned to him. ‘Always a little mystery remains,’ said Wong. ‘We help Mr Tan. We give him ideas. But we do not do his job.’

Madam Xu leaned forwards. ‘But Wong, why did von Berger shout “murder” before he knew it was a murder? There was no weapon around, so how did he know? I think this throws suspicion on him. He was trying to throw people off the scent.’

‘That I cannot say,’ said Wong.

Sinha said: ‘Could it have been the victim who shouted “murder”?’

‘No. I think not. Watch,’ said Wong. He suddenly stood up and picked up the soup tureen and swung it as if he were about to strike his assistant with it.

‘Hey!’ shrieked Joyce, lifting her arms to protect her head. ‘What are you doing?’

Wong halted abruptly and put the dish down. Then he sat down. Joyce sat with her arms still in front of her head, blinking at him from behind her wrists.

‘Sorry. Just a demonstration,’ said the geomancer. ‘You see? When you are being attacked, you shout “hey” or “no” or “help” or “don’t” or you just scream. A man being attacked does not shout “murder”. He is not murdered yet.’

Joyce lowered her arms. ‘Hey, you know, I think I can answer that one. My sister went out with a French guy once.’

‘Do enlighten us, Miss,’ said Sinha.

‘The guy, Pascal, is Swiss, right? People say Swiss and you think he speaks Swiss-German, right? But he was from Lausanne. That’s the west bit, the Frenchy bit of Switzerland.’

‘And…?’ said Madam Xu.

‘Pascal von Berger didn’t go: “Murder!” He sees the body and the blood and he’s like, “Merde”. It’s a bad word in French. French guys say it all the time, whenever they are angry or surprised or anything. It means “shit”, if you’ll pardon my French.’

‘Shit is also a French word?’ asked Wong.

‘No, shit is English. I just said “pardon my French” because, well, never mind. And “merde” is French for “murder”, I mean, for “shit”. To someone who doesn’t know any French, it maybe sounds like “Murder”. He goes in there and he goes, “Oh shit”, only, he says it in French: “Merde”.’

The Superintendent clapped. ‘Well done, Missy, very good.’

The police officer turned and looked at the others. ‘I knew I could count on you to push this little mystery along a bit. You have my head buzzing with ideas so well that I am not even going to wait for the Sichuan beef, but I am going to race back to the station. Oh, hang on.’

A sizzling dish of dark pieces of meat flecked with slivers of kumquat peel arrived and was placed in the centre of the table.

‘Perhaps I’ll just have a taste,’ said the Superintendent, his chopsticks already digging into the steaming platter.

Joyce, looking down, realised that she too had emptied her bowl and was ready for more.