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

4 The lion’s share

In the fourth century BC, there was a man named Chuang Tzu. He went to sleep. He had a dream. And in his dream he was a butterfly. He could fly. He fluttered over the bushes and the grass and the flowers. He was part of the wind. The wind was part of him. He forgot that he had ever been a man. He thought only of his life as a butterfly.

Then he woke up. He found he was a man. ‘I am a man and I was only a butterfly in my dream,’ he said. But a voice inside him said no. You are a butterfly. You are dreaming that you are a man.

The following night the man Chuang Tzu went to bed. He felt himself returning to life as the butterfly Chuang Tzu. But was he beginning to dream? Or was he beginning to wake up?

And so it is with you, Blade of Grass. You think you are tangible. That which is intangible is a small part of your life. But from time to time you realise the truth. You are intangible. That which is tangible is only a small part of your life.

From ‘Some Gleanings of Oriental Wisdom’

by C F Wong, part 110.

Winnie Lim held up the phone. ‘For you,’ she said to C F Wong. She blew on her nails, evidently worried that the action of picking up the handset may have disturbed the perfect surface of the two-tone emulsion on them.

Joyce McQuinnie laughed. ‘Don’t sound so surprised. He’s allowed to get a call himself in his own office once in a while.’

The geomancer took a few seconds to extricate himself from his thoughts, then lowered his pen, blew at the ink in his journal to dry it, and snapped the book shut. He exhaled slowly, as if he were expelling a long ghost from deep within his scrawny trunk. Then he reached for the handset.

‘Wai? Hello?’

‘Good morning, C F. So it is apparent that you have a secretary now. That’s a new departure, is it not? How can you afford it? They cost more than 3000 dollars these days, correct?’ said Dilip Sinha.

‘That is Winnie Lim. She has been working here many years.’

‘Oh, Ms Lim is still there, is she? I didn’t realise. How is it that you usually answer your own calls, then?’

‘She has many calls. More than me. She has many friends. Likes to talk-talk all day all night. My assistant the same. So her phone always engaged. When it is engaged the phone it transfers to me. So I am answering the calls usually.’

‘So in fact you are wrong to say that Winnie Lim is your secretary,’ said the astrologer. ‘The truth is that you are her secretary.’

Wong thought for a moment. ‘Yes. Maybe so. I take many messages for her.’

Sinha sighed. ‘I really, really must give you a few lessons in basic man-management skills one of these days. But let us turn our thoughts to brighter things. Like work. Like high-paying work, no less. My dear C F, how would you like an unusual and well-remunerated assignment? You’ve done gardens, parks and golf greens, haven’t you?’

‘Have.’

‘Well, here’s something you haven’t done before, I’ll bet: a jungle.’

Wong was slightly taken aback.

‘Hmm? Sifu? Did you hear that? You still there?’

‘Yes, yes, I hear you. A jungle, you say.’

‘Yes, you’ve never done a jungle before, have you, C F?’

‘You are right, but a jungle is a wild place, not a place for people. I do yang feng shui, which is only for places where people live.’

He noticed Joyce looking over, happy to eavesdrop on what might turn out to be an enjoyable jaunt. She gave him the benefit of her thoughts in a stage whisper. ‘A jungle? Go for it.’ She showed him her thumbs.

In his ear, he heard Sinha’s strange, staccato laugh.

‘Uh-uh-uh-uh-uh. Wait till you hear the details. This will be fun, I think. It is a sort of park-I think they call it a theme park, you know, what they used to call a safari park a few years ago. It’s partly natural rainforest, partly man-made. Imported some lions at great expense. It’s quite new. It’s been going for about three months in Sarawak, near where my aunt lives. Someone told her about it and she called me. However, what it definitely needs, in my opinion, is a bit of help from you.’

‘Business is bad?’

‘Business has stopped. A lion ate the owners.’

‘Ah. I understand. This is not a good thing.’

‘It is, as you say, not a good thing. Especially for the owners. Will you do it?’

‘I don’t know whether I can…’

‘You can,’ said Joyce. ‘I’ll come with you,’ she added, as if such an offer were a plus-factor.

‘Let me think about it,’ said Wong.

‘Let me put it this way,’ said the old astrologer. ‘It’s a rush job, so it’s all expenses plus your usual overseas rate plus fifty per cent.’

Two days later, after an exchange of faxes providing a basic contract and a deposit paid by bank transfer, Wong, Mc Quinnie and Sinha found themselves in a hired Proton Saga heading towards Tambi’s Trek, a tourist attraction set up on the outskirts of Miri. This ‘oil town’ was the staging post on the way to the more remote parts of East Malaysia, the astrologer explained. If you wanted to go to the interior, you took a boat up the Baram River. If you wanted to go to Lawas or Limbas, you would need good weather, a friendly pilot and a Twin Otter.

Joyce had initially been excited by the fact that the hired car had a high-quality built-in audio system, but her companions’ horrified complaints about her choice of music left her in self-imposed exile on the back seat with her portable player.

‘Then of course there is the ultimate adventure entertainment-a trip into Mulu,’ Sinha said. ‘But only for the Indiana Joneses among us. Uh-uh-uh-uh.’

‘What’s so great about Mulu? Any good CD shops there? The ones I’ve been to in Singapore suck.’

‘Suck what?’ asked Sinha.

‘Don’t ask,’ said Wong.

‘There are, I think I can rightly say, no CD shops whatsoever in Mulu.’

Joyce was speechless.

Ignoring her horrified eyes, Sinha continued: ‘Mulu is the location of a famous cave. It is difficult to get to. You need a long journey by river boat, and then by narrow longboat when the river becomes too small. Or you can fly, but only if the bats are not leaving the cave. The bats have right of way, you see.’

‘Oh. What’s so great about a cave?’

‘This is not just a cave. This is more like an underground world. The largest room in the cave is the Sarawak Chamber. It is very, very large. You can fit forty jumbo jets within it. The longest passage, Clearwater Cave, is 36 miles long. For the sake of comparison, the whole of Orchard Road is a mere 1.5 miles long, although this may come as a surprise to those who walk the length of it, as I regularly do, knowing the importance of-’

‘Forty jumbo jets?’ The young woman was astonished. ‘Have they tried it?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose so,’ said the astrologer.

‘Cool. Are we going there?’

‘No. Tambi’s Trek is a little diversion arranged for travellers on the way to these natural wonders, or those with young children who perhaps don’t wish to go all the way into the virgin jungle. It is also perfect for lazy travellers, who want to say that they have been to a real jungle and seen real jungle animals, but want to be back the same night for a hamburger and a glass of Coca-Cola at their hotel. You know the sort. As such, I think it is an excellent idea and will be a great financial success. As long as they can stop the lions eating the staff.’

This time, Wong did all the driving. His seemingly erratic driving style, learned as a teenage truck driver in Guangdong, was frightening in Singapore, but seemed to fit well with the noticeably more chaotic roads of East Malaysia. He drove largely in the middle of the road, sometimes overtaking on one side, and sometimes the other. The deep potholes which caused all of them to occasionally bounce off their seats did not seem to bother him at all. He nosed through herds of sheep without fear of injury to vehicle or livestock. He read the map stretched out on the steering wheel as he drove, preferring to navigate himself than risk being led astray by miscommunication.

The sun glared in at the windows, as did staring locals and heavy-eyed bullocks. The car’s air-conditioner, cranked up to full blast, fought a losing battle to keep the interior comfortable.

After half an hour’s driving without incident, his passengers started to relax. Not being a conversationalist, Wong liked having a definite task to occupy himself with, and refused all offers of relief at the wheel.

Sinha was quite the opposite. His tall frame draped languidly back over the front passenger seat (which seemed to wilt under his weight), he talked endlessly about people he had met, and seemed to be able to continue indefinitely with minimal reaction from his listeners.

He told his half-listening audience several stories, starting with one about the time he went in search of a levitator who was rumoured to live in the hill country near Simla in northern India. He said he had made copious inquiries before setting out, to make sure the man was a genuine defyer of gravity, and not one of those yogic flyers who bounce cross-legged on mattresses, while disciples take carefully timed photographs.

‘I was repeatedly assured that he was the real thing, a genuine floating man, so eventually I set out, and took a sixteen-hour bus ride to the foothills of the mountain where he lived. From there, it was a case of questioning the locals until I found someone who knew the man I wanted. But he refused to guide me up the mountain until I gave him a large sum of money. This I did. I would have given him money afterwards anyway, because I believe in the distributing of my largesse to the poor back in the country of my forebears. What a strange word that is, forebears. Does it have anything to do with bears? I suppose not. Anyway, the man wanted it up-front, so I gave it to him. He scurried away to put it in the bank, which means, I suspect, he dropped it in a hole in the earth under his bed-the poor are very predictable, I’m sorry to say, and predictability is one of the great shortcomings of the human race. In fact, I would go so far as to say that one of the reasons the poor are poor and remain poor is because they behave entirely predictably. It is only the man who breaks free of the rut who has a chance of improving his circumstances. Otherwise one is like a bullock, pulling a plough along the same furrow, year in, year out. Indeed, you would think that the poor in northern India would realise this, because they have an example of bullocks trapped in identical ruts right in front of their very eyes, all year-’

‘The levitating man?’ This was Joyce. ‘Can you go back to him, please?’

‘Oh yes, sorry, I was digressing. I’ll get back to the point. You’ll have to forgive me, but I have always tended to wander off on a tangent. Not that I’m the worst digressor I know. I had an uncle, a politician in Uttar Pradesh, who was once asked to give a ten-minute vote of thanks before a meal. What with his digressions, his speech lasted almost an hour and the meal was ruined. The first bits cooked had gone cold and congealed, and the bits still on the heat had burned. Yes, yes, the levitator.’

Sinha rearranged his long legs and draped one arm behind his chair. ‘I went into the deep, dark candle-lit cave where the man was supposed to live-my guide refused to come with me-apparently you were not supposed to approach the levitator unless you were an acolyte who had done years of training with him. I found a perfectly normal man sitting at a table. It was a high, Western-style table and he sat there as if he was about to eat a Sunday roast beef lunch. Which of course he wasn’t, because you don’t eat roast beef in India. Not unless you want to get into big trouble. Which I did once, and there’s a tale worth telling. It was when I was about twenty, and had just left college. But I’ll tell you that one afterwards, shall I? The levitator. He was sitting at a table, as I say, upon which there were candles and a shrine with several gods in it. Saying his prayers, no doubt. We had to try several dialects before we found one we both shared, and soon we were chatting like we had been friends since the egg. I stood there, bowing respectfully, and he sat there with his hands together. We talked about all sorts of things, about mysticism, about religious leaders we both respected, about our favourite foods.

‘Eventually, I had had enough of polite chit-chat and asked him directly about the levitation, and he said, yes, he could do it. But when I asked him to demonstrate, he just changed the subject. I brought the subject back again. He changed it again. I could not persuade him to agree to lift himself even an inch off the ground for my benefit. He just sat there smiling at me. When I asked again, rather more forcefully, he gave an interesting reply, which I will always remember. He said: “Such skills are not given to us for demonstrations, but for high purposes.” So I replied, “Showing a traveller your skill so that he can spread the word to thousands outside is a high purpose, is it not?” And he said, “Your idea of a high purpose in not my idea of a high purpose. A high purpose can be to rise in the air to glorify the gods, even if there is no one watching except the gods themselves. Indeed, that is the highest purpose, because the glory is for the gods alone.”’

Sinha bit at his thumbnail and shifted slightly in his seat, causing it to creak alarmingly. After a brief pause, he continued. ‘I took this as a cop-out, although I did not say this to him, of course. It seemed to me that he was saying that he would only levitate when no one could see him do so, which meant that there would never be any proof. Anyway, there was still something tangibly holy about the man, so I remained polite to him, and thanked him. “My visit is over,” I said, then I bowed and took my leave. I was just walking away, when I thought of something. He said a high purpose can be to glorify the gods. He was glorifying the gods even then, worshipping the shrine on his table. I suddenly thought… I was about 20 or 30 yards away. I spun around and then stooped slightly, to look under the table. There was no stool. There was no chair. The man was sitting on nothing, his crossed-legs and bottom floating about 2 feet off the ground. He had been levitating all along! I started to walk forwards again, but he spoke again. “Your visit is over,” he said. Then he blew out the candles, and the cave was plunged into darkness. I could not see 1 inch in front of my face. So I stopped and called out for him to light a flame. But there was silence. I walked back out towards the light. I never saw the man again.’

For a moment Sinha paused, his eyes fixed on a place far distant. ‘Getting back from there was another adventure. I imagined, that I, too, could levitate. So I decided to try it, while I was on the holy mountain, close to the influences of the levitator. Mountains, for some reason, always seem holy. Even in the Christian Bible, you will note how Moses and Jesus went up mountains to see their god. It is something to do with the idea of vastness and stillness, of course, something that can best be appreciated by a visit to the Himalayas, which I first visited as a boy of nine…’

After half an hour, Joyce, who was still sitting in the back, retreated into music. Whenever Sinha turned around to emphasise a point, she would just nod sagely. He never seemed to notice the little earphone wires which ran from her ears to her bag.

There was an exhausting sameness about the villages through which they travelled, and all three were visibly glad when they reached the gate of the park and were met by a small, fuzzy-faced, pop-eyed man by the name of Icksan Dubeya.

‘Go up to the house first,’ he said. ‘There you meet the owner, Sulim Abeya Tambi. He will explain to you what he wants.’

‘What was the position of the two people who died, please?’ Wong asked.

‘They were on the jungle trek. You’ll see later.’

‘No, I think he means like, the position in the company,’ said Joyce. ‘You just said go and see the owner. But our contact in Malaysia, he said the owners were eaten.’

‘Yes, they were co-owners with Mr Tambi. The people who were eaten. Mr and Mrs Legge. They were all partners. But now they are dead. Eaten by lions. Not a nice way to go.’ The man smiled, showing a mouthful of dirty teeth.

‘So Mr Tambi has become owner of the whole operation?’ Joyce asked, doing her Girl Detective bit. ‘Like, is it better for him that way? With the others out of the way?’

‘You may think so.’

She found Dubeya’s tone hard to interpret. Did he mean it was better, or that we might think it better but would be wrong? His expression was made even harder to fathom by the fact that his eyes appeared to be looking in different directions. He gruffly pointed to a fork in the road ahead of them, and told them to head to the left and follow the No Entry signs.

Wong lifted his clutch foot and the car jerked back to life.

They slowly travelled up a long, curving drive. To the left, they saw a tall fence enclosing a thick forest-doubtless the outer edge of the animal sanctuary. They passed several small buildings of a practical nature-garages, storerooms, something that looked like a stable-before the road turned again, and the Proton scrunched onto the gravel of a large, low house. It was built in yellow stone, in the old colonial style, but had a certain boxiness about it that gave away its more recent origins.

The geomancer ran his eyes over the outside of the building carefully. It was modelled on the plantation villas of early Singapore. The house was raised on piles, Malay style, but had European deep verandahs. Decorated eaves and suspended lattice-work in Kallang fashion suggested a Chinese architect, but one with eclectic tastes: the windows had Portuguese shutters.

The lower verandahs were hung with mosquito nets in a rather lurid shade of pink, presently common in that part of Malaysia. Sinha laughed: ‘No doubt some scientist worked out the colour the creatures would like least, ignoring the fact that human beings would find it equally repugnant.’

Standing in the porch was their host. Sulim Abeya Tambi was an obese, sweaty man with curls of jet hair plastered onto a mottled dark brown face. He wore white robes in light cotton, which were too thin to be flattering, and his belly bounced in lazy synchronisation with his waddling gait. He was tall, more than 2 metres in height, and had hands like spades.

‘Come in, come in, how nice of you to come, do come and make yourselves comfortable,’ he sang effusively, in a high and wispy voice, but with an unexpectedly educated English accent. He led the visitors into an old-fashioned hall, featuring dark stained wood and a mess of garments and boots on a low table.

They followed him through to a large, open sitting room, and were urged to sit on some rather uncomfortable rattan furniture. Tambi then disappeared to find a servant boy to bring them some fresh king coconut.

‘Ouch. I hate these seats,’ said Joyce, squirming on a low armchair. ‘They’ve got like, little sharp bits which go right through your Levi’s.’

After the bustle and activity of their arrival, silence returned to the room. And then, the quiet sounds of the jungle started to drift in over the verandah: buzzing, fizzing noises, plus a sort of low hiss. Occasionally there were bird calls which sounded almost human. Joyce had turned off her personal stereo out of politeness, but there was still a song playing in her mind. She consciously stopped it running through her head, and then rose to go and stand on the verandah. She stared at the sea of green before her. Something made a caw caw sound far in the distance. There was something hypnotic about the scene.

Three minutes later, their rotund host reappeared and seated himself grandly on a wicker chair which had a pair of fold-out planks on which he rested his ankles. ‘So glad to have you here. It’s been an absolutely horrible summer, and we desperately need to start afresh-which is where your advice is needed,’ he said.

Little vertical lines appeared above his eyebrows as he assumed an expression of deeply felt pain. ‘Three weeks ago we were on the brink of the realisation of a dream. We had twenty-five full-time staff. We had a host of animals, including five lions. All the advertising was lined up in magazines throughout the country and the region even. Journalists were waiting to come and see what we had in store. Travel agents were taking bookings for tours which would include a visit to Tambi’s Trek, which would fast become the most essential part of any visit to Malaysia.’

He took a swig of coconut through a straw that seemed ridiculously thin to feed such a huge frame.

‘And then it all went wrong.’ He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, as if he was speaking to the ceiling. ‘The death of my dear, dear friends and partners meant the death of my dream. Who would come to an animal park where even the people who run it were not safe? Who would even come near such a place?’

He suddenly opened his eyes and stared at his visitors.

‘Would you? Would you? Would you, young lady?’

‘Well, um,’ said Joyce, who wondered whether she should point out that she had comenear such a place.

‘Exactly. You would not. All the tours were cancelled. All the advertising was withdrawn. All the staff-ungrateful wretches-fled except for my cousin Dubeya, whom you met. I prepared, as is my tradition, to go into a long period of mourning, and abandon the project. I was devastated, as I had known Gerry and Martha Legge for many years and considered them my best friends. But then, I thought, No. Let me try once more. In their memory. They loved animals, as I do. Let me do it, not for myself, but for them.’

He moved forwards, lowered his feet to the ground, and shifted to the edge of his seat. He looked directly into Wong’s eyes. The others watched uncomfortably as the chair tilted forwards under his weight.

‘And that is what you have to do for me. Make it safe. Not only make it safe, but give it the feeling of safety. Make everyone who steps into Tambi’s Trek feel this is the most secure place in the world. Make them feel they can leave their children and babies on the ground here and nothing will happen to them. Reorganise. Redesign. Check every inch of the house. Check every inch of the grounds. If it costs money, I don’t mind. What changes you want me to make, I will make. It may cost me millions, but closing it down and abandoning my ideas will also cost me millions.’

Tambi’s expression changed again, this time to one of a humble supplicant. ‘I am not asking much,’ he said. ‘Only a miracle. Can you do this?’

Wong looked down at the briefing papers in front of him for a moment. Then he looked Tambi in the eye. ‘Miracles we have fifteen per cent extra surcharge. Is it okay?’

Wong spent the next four hours sitting at a huge dining table-it seemed designed to seat about thirty people-with his book of charts, a map of the theme-park grounds, and a map of the district in front of him. He scribbled, he scrawled, he calculated, he drew charts on tracing paper, he overlaid sheets onto sheets, he looked at books full of trigrams, he mumbled to himself and he pulled at the hairs on his chin.

Joyce wandered around the house, and peered out of the windows at the jungle. There were weird-sounding birds calling and unseen creatures chattering and she thought she could hear a lion roar. It was all so deliciously exciting and exotic! It really was like being in a movie. She imagined herself a jungle dweller, greeting a nervous visitor-Brad Pitt, preferably-and impressing him with her ability to run a fabulous home in the depths of the rainforest. She paced the corridors, lost in a fantasy. Suddenly chancing upon the wild-eyed Dubeya emerging from what she had thought was an empty room, she suddenly felt frightened, and returned to sit by Wong in the dining room.

Sinha slept for a few hours in a guest room, and then woke up suddenly at tea time, coming downstairs with his white hair standing on end and a raging thirst for earl grey.

He arrived just in time to hear Wong’s initial exegesis of the site to his young assistant. ‘There are problems. I can see. We have too much water to the west. Right next to the mountains. This is known as “mountain star falling into water”. It is not a good sign. This needs to be fixed.’

‘Oh right, so we are going to move the lake and the mountain,’ said Joyce. ‘Fine. I’ll do that and you can get on with something else.’

‘It would be hard to move the lake and the mountain,’ Wong said. ‘We must compensate for it by other ways. But there are good signs on this big map too. Look further this way. You see this range of mountains. It forms almost an embracing road. A path of affection. Roads curving around things are good. See how this line embraces this part here? This means that Tambi’s Trek is in part of a dragon’s lair.’

He pulled the close-up map of the theme park closer to him, and then compared the two. ‘There seems to be an arm of this mountain range coming down here, which actually comes into the park. It forms a lifted-up flat bit here. What do you call it? A platter?’

‘A plateau.’

‘Yes. Now this good force will come down this way. But is being dispersed by the wind. We need a body of water to stop it dispersing. There is a body of water just here. It needs to be made a bit bigger until it comes nearer to the plateau. We will tell them to make it wider. If they can. Or set up a spring or waterfall. Or even a tap. At this point here.’

Tambi, who had been hovering in the doorway, entered the room and peered over the geomancer’s shoulder. ‘I am fascinated that you identified this part as the interesting part. Can you tell, from this map, what is under here? We once had some visitors who were in the mining business, and they said there could be ore under here. Possible?’

‘Yes, I think so,’ said the geomancer. ‘This shape of the mountains and the water is very common for metal underground. Look. The soil ch’i here leads to this flat part. Then there is the water here. This part is strong, thriving. But soil ch’i and water ch’i do not thrive together. Unless there is metal ch’i between them. Soil ch’i damages water ch’i. But soil-metal-water is what we call the support cycle of the Later Heaven. This is a good area. It may be because there is metal hidden here, under.’

‘Absolutely fascinating,’ said Tambi, wiping his sweaty hands on his white trousers. ‘I await your full report with interest.’

After a preliminary examination of the area on paper, Wong told the others he would spend the afternoon doing a feng shui reading of the house, and devote the following day to travelling around the park itself.

During a heavy dinner at the same long table that night, they heard the grim story of the Legges.

‘He was a wonderful man. He loved the lions. And they loved him,’ said Tambi.

‘They ate him,’ said Joyce.

‘Yes, but that was because of a misjudgement on his part. Lions, you see-and animals in general, I suppose-they behave instinctively. They do what they have been programmed to do, like computers. They have no choices.’

He paused and took a long drag from his cigar-a rather damp cheroot which he had had trouble lighting.

‘Lions, you may or may not know, do not eat three meals a day like we do. They gorge themselves on meat one day, and will happily go for the next three, four, five days with nothing at all to eat. They are quite docile, especially just after a meal. But you would not want to get out of the car next to them when they haven’t eaten for many days and are ready for their next meal.’

‘Is that what the unfortunate couple did?’ Sinha asked. ‘Dear me. It doesn’t bear thinking about. I had a great uncle who was eaten by one of the last tigers in south China. It’s really quite a good story-’

Tambi interrupted: ‘It was most unpleasant. There was no one with them, of course, so we had to piece it together afterwards. What we think happened is that Martha and Gerald went in to the Trek in the middle of the morning, because they had heard that one of the wildebeest had been seen limping badly, and also because a rare bird had been reported in the sanctuary, some crested something-or-other. The lions were due to be fed later that day, so were hungry. Normally, there is no danger, even in going in when the lions have not been fed-as long as you do not get out of the car near one of the beasts. They know they cannot bite through metal. They perceive the cars as big, metal, inedible beasts. They will leave you alone if you stay in the car. Our lions are well-trained. When we are feeding them, we take the meat in, we throw it on the ground, then we press the car horn repeatedly. This sound they have learned is their summons to dinner. We stay in the car. Absolutely crucial.’

He shifted his weight in his chair, which creaked loudly, and took another drag from his cigar.

‘But they did not. They got out of the car. Heaven knows why. Gerald had a miraculous ability to be friendly with the lions-they would literally eat out of his hand. I have seen them take a piece of liver from his hand. But to get out of the car on feeding day before the lions have been fed is not wise.’

Tambi screwed up his face in an expression of agony. His voice cracked. ‘For some reason-I don’t know why-for some reason they thought they would risk it. My cousin Dubeya found the bodies. He had gone in to feed the lions about two hours after the Legges had been seen alive for the last time. He found their four-wheel-drive car on the edge of the road with the doors open on both sides.’

He reached forwards and stirred a large pot of glass vermicelli. A pungent aroma of chilli and lemongrass drifted over the table from a dish of unidentified meat.

‘The remains of Martha and Gerald were stretched over an area of many yards. It was not a pleasant sight. Lions, you see, do not go primarily for flesh. They go for entrails, first. If you ever see a big cat eating an animal, you will see it will go for the belly first, rip it open, and then pull out the internal organs, the colon, the stomach. Only later will it devour the muscles. The whole thing was a mess.’

He shivered. ‘The staff fled. Everyone went except my cousin. Picking up the pieces of the Legges must have been an unbelievably terrible job. Dubeya did it-after we had the police in, of course, to check the scene. The remains were sent for autopsy. Death by misadventure. They were tucked away in coffins by the time their relatives arrived to bury them.’

Yuk,’ said Joyce. ‘What a horrible story.’

Tambi nodded. ‘A horrible story. Now it is only me and Dubeya-two humans and five lions. More lions than humans in this place.’

The servant boy, who apparently did not count as a human, entered with more dishes.

Tambi turned to Joyce: ‘I hope you brought a camera, dear child. You’ll see lots of birds and some strange cow that you only get in this part of the world.’

‘Neat,’ the young woman replied, without enthusiasm.

‘We go into the park tomorrow,’ said Wong. ‘The lions, I hope they have been fed already.’

‘Actually, feeding time is tomorrow night. But don’t worry. You’ll be quite safe. Dubeya will go in with you. I may even come myself. We will be with you at all times. Your internal organs will be quite safe. Now, who would like some chicken liver?’

The next morning, Wong did not appear for breakfast. The servant boy told Tambi that the old Chinese man had risen very early, had a bite in the kitchen, and then had spent the morning walking around the outside of the house and drawing plans.

Tambi later found Wong working at a desk in his bedroom.

‘Good to see you are taking your mission so seriously. What have you discovered?’

The old geomancer pulled out a list he had made in tiny, finely drawn Chinese characters. ‘There are many small changes you need to make to this house. But not difficult or expensive. Problem really is that it is long, narrow. Runs south to north. This means imbalance of directional ch’i energy. Not enough from west and east. You can compensate for such problems. I will make list for you in English. No problem I think.’

‘And what about our troublesome little jungle?’

‘There is water problem and dispersal of ch’i problem. But these can be fixed too. This is not well-designed to be jungle park. I see there is a new fence which is not on the map. To the west. Just here.’ Wong stood up and pointed out of the window. ‘Behind the trees. That fence not on map. Also there is some equipment there.’

‘Oh, yes. Well, we started to make some changes soon after the Legges died. There is some, er, swampy ground there that needs draining, so we put draining equipment in. We took some advice from a local bomoh, and he said it was okay that we cut off a bit of the jungle and work on it a bit. There’s still plenty of room left for the lions.’

‘But cutting that area off is very bad. Bad for flow of energy. Bad for feng shui. And there should be no swamp problem there, I think. Maybe mistake.’

‘We’ll fix it. It’s only a temporary problem. Now come down and have a cup of tea. I understand that you had breakfast at 5.30. That’s two and a half hours ago. Definitely you must be thirsty or hungry again.’

As they walked down the wide steps, Wong pointed to the ground-floor corridor on the left. ‘That secret room also caused me a problem. Wasted one-two hours trying to work it out. Not on floor map of house. Very clever. Should have told me first. But then I guess you are paying for my service, hour by hour.’ Wong laughed.

Tambi looked uncomfortable. ‘What secret room?’

‘The one that is between your room there and the west room.’

‘Oh.’ The man was uncomfortable. ‘That’s a security device. Keep the money and stuff in there. The main safe, for the takings. When we get some takings, that is. After all, there will be thousands of strangers wandering around the park.’

‘I didn’t see a safe in there,’ said Wong. ‘Just papers and all that muddy equipment.’

‘You went in? But how…?’

‘The door was locked but I could open. Hope you don’t mind. You told me to do detailed feng shui reading. Whole house. Every inch.’

‘Yes, I did, of course. Obviously, I don’t mind. It concerns me a bit that the room with the safe can be broken into so easily, that’s all.’

‘I saw no safe.’

‘The safe hasn’t arrived yet,’ said Tambi. ‘Anyway, it’s time to get us all into the jungle. Why don’t you go and collect the others-I think they are still in the breakfast room-and I’ll meet you around the back of the house in twenty minutes.’

Wong blinked at him, a little nervous.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Tambi. ‘We’ll all go in together.’

Tambi led the party from Singapore around one side of the house where their hired car and a large multi-terrain vehicle were standing next to a tall wire fence with barbed wire on the top. ‘This entrance is only for staff. It will get us to the east side of the lake much faster than going the normal way. It will also take us right over the section where my unfortunate friends were killed. You said you wanted to see that, right, Mr Wong? Give you a feel for the gruesome events of three weeks ago. I think the blood has all been washed away by now, but for me, the stain will always be there. I can never forget it.’ He shook his head slowly.

Abruptly brightening, he gestured to the vehicle on the left. ‘You go in your car. Dubeya and me, we’ll go in this one.’

‘Why not we all go together in one car?’ said Wong. ‘It will be better if we are all together. You can answer my questions.’

‘Are you kidding?’ said Tambi. ‘I would never get my fat gut into that little car. I’ve had this vehicle specially adapted for me-you see the special double-sized seat? But don’t worry. We’ll drive in front, and we’ll go really slowly. There’s no chance of getting lost. No danger, that’s the Tambi’s Trek guarantee.’

‘This car, will it be okay in the mud?’ asked Wong.

‘It will be okay. It’s a bit muddy just here, but once we get past those trees we get onto a proper path. There’ll be no problem, I assure you.’ He picked up a dark camera bag. ‘I’ve brought my video camera. I’ll give you a souvenir tape of yourselves in the jungle. It’s a service we are planning to offer to our best customers.’ He climbed with some difficulty into the car with some help from his cousin.

Wong took the driver’s seat in the Proton, with Joyce next to him and Sinha in the back.

The young woman was complaining about the breakfast. ‘I rang Melissa. I’m like, “Hi, Melissa, guess what I’ve had for breakfast?” And she’s like, “Blueberry pop-tarts?” And I’m like, “Rice and chilli and salty fish.” And she’s like, “That is sooo weird.” I mean, I don’t mind a bit of spice now and then, but for breakfast? Who can eat that for breakfast? I asked the boy if he had any toast but he didn’t understand English.’

‘ Nasi lemak you had,’ said Wong. ‘Good Malay breakfast. Very delicious.’

Dubeya, having heaved his cousin into the back of the jeep, hopped down, and opened, one at a time, each of the two sets of double gates for the cars to drive into the park.

The four-wheel-drive car climbed smoothly over the rocks and headed at a sedate 15 kilometres an hour towards an opening in a line of trees.

The Proton at first jerked and swayed around on the uneven, rutted area of stones and mud close to the gate, but Wong steered the car into the ruts left by the larger vehicle, and the two cars were soon moving steadily forwards in tandem. The gates closed automatically behind them.

Swinging to the right beyond the trees, they found a narrow concrete road and soon picked up speed to a leisurely 20 kilometres an hour.

‘Funny how Tambi does not know names of animals,’ said the geomancer.

‘I noticed that too,’ the old astrologer said. ‘ “Some strange cow that you only get in this part of the world.” You’d think he’d know the name of it.’

‘Maybe the dead guys were the animal experts,’ said Joyce. ‘He’s just the money. They’ve written a fab guidebook.’ She was leafing through the Tambi’s Trek Spotter’s Guide, which the Legges had prepared before their deaths. ‘There are three, four, five things I wouldn’t mind seeing. There’s a kind of checklist thing here in this book.’

She flipped through the pages. ‘I wanna see the lions of course. Then there’s the binturong, which is also known as a bear-cat. Looks like a bear, but the size of a cat. Then we’ve got to see the colugo, which is a flying lemur, whatever that is. Looks like a cross between a squirrel and a bat. Then I wanna see a pangolin: “A scaly armour-plated mammal which rolls into a tight ball when threatened.” Oh yeah, and this must be the cow he mentioned, this thing called the banteng.’

Joyce scanned the trees around them for interesting animals, but it was the sounds that really marked off the area as jungle. The humming and buzzing became loud and seemed to form a dense aural wall around them. A distant bird gave a plaintive cry. ‘A-why? A-why? A-why?’ it seemed to be saying.

‘Peacock,’ Wong explained. ‘Mating call.’

There was a flash in front of them as a red bird swooped over the car and disappeared into a canopy of trees. There appeared to be a second bird, following about 60 centimetres behind it, but Joyce realised after a moment that the first bird had a cluster of feathers on the end of a long thin tail.

‘ Paradise bird,’ said Wong.

‘This is kinda cool,’ said Joyce. ‘Wish I had a proper camera with a zoom thing. I hope we get close up to the animals.’

She lapsed into silence as they entered the rainforest proper. On some parts of the road, the trees met overhead, and they found themselves in an arboreal tunnel, with flickering shadows running the length of the car. The woody canopy was heavily festooned with epiphytes, giving the impression of having been decorated. Giant mushrooms sprouted from trunks supported by immensely thick root buttresses. The air inside the car quickly turned humid, and there was a pungent, earthy smell.

After ten minutes, their eyes became accustomed to the shadows under the thick, leafy canopies, and they started to spot animals in the trees: Bulwer’s pheasants, Bornean gibbons, white-bellied woodpeckers and other curious climbing beasts that none of them could name. A huge variety of large, colourful butterflies and birds seemed to fill the gap between the bushes and the canopy.

‘Listen. What’s that? What’s that sound? Can you hear something?’ asked Sinha.

‘What? You mean lions or what? Where? I can’t see them,’ said Joyce, looking around.

‘No. Some noise in the car. Sssss, like air coming out of a balloon.’

‘I can’t hear anything.’

‘CF?’

‘Don’t hear.’

There was a sudden intake of breath from Sinha in the back seat. ‘Wong,’ he said, quietly. ‘Wong,’ he breathed again in a high-pitched whisper.

Wong was preoccupied with the road, leaning over his steering wheel as if he could see better that way. ‘Have a bad feeling,’ he said to himself. ‘Tambi driving too fast.’

‘Joyce,’ said Sinha, louder and more urgently.

‘You okay?’ Joyce turned around. She noticed that his face was set, his eyes were wide open and he was barely moving his lips.

‘I think I’ve found out why Martha and Gerald Legge got out of the car in the jungle,’ he said, very quietly. ‘It wasn’t to pet the lions. It was because they were not alone in the car. Joyce, I don’t want you to move a muscle. Stay calm when I tell you this. There’s a large snake in the footwell just under your seat. It is coiled up. At the moment its head is facing to the back of the car and it is looking at me.’

The young woman gasped and covered her mouth with her hands.

‘Wong, did you hear what I said?’ asked the astrologer.

Wong gave a single nod. He had a deep-rooted fear of snakes, and appeared to have stopped breathing. ‘Will turn around. Drive back to the gate.’ The geomancer peered out of the window. The path was only as wide as a single vehicle, and he would have to drive onto rough ground to change the direction of the car.

‘No,’ spat Sinha. ‘Don’t bump it around. It may get annoyed. I think just try and drive as smoothly as you can.’

‘But I must go out of this jungle. Then we can leave the car. We cannot leave the car if we stay here,’ said the geomancer, driving slowly and craning his neck forwards to find a flat section of ground where he could turn the car around. ‘There are hungry lions.’

‘Oooooh,’ yelped Joyce. ‘What’s it doing now? Can’t we get it out of the car? Is it still under me? Eeeeeeee.’

‘Bump is here,’ warned Wong, as the car approached a small pothole in the road.

Joyce lifted her legs off the ground as the car jerked slightly and righted itself.

‘It didn’t like that,’ whispered Sinha. ‘It hit its head on the underside of the seat. It’s looking ahead at where your feet were, Joyce. I think you had better just stop the car, Wong, as carefully as you can.’

‘Ooooooh,’ Joyce squealed. ‘Can you get rid of it? Ask Tambi. He’ll know how to get rid of it.’

‘Unless he put it here,’ said Wong, bringing the car to a gradual halt. ‘Aiyeeeya.’

‘We really, really have to get out of the car. This is a highly dangerous snake. It’s a king cobra,’ said Sinha. ‘It looks highly irritable, too. I think it has dyspepsia.’

Dubeya had also stopped his car, ahead of them. He started pressing his horn in a repeating two-beat pattern.

‘Why is he doing that?’ asked Joyce, her legs still in the air. ‘It’s not feeding time… is it?’

‘He has not put any fresh meat out,’ said Wong, with a gulp. ‘I think… maybe we are the fresh meat.’

Three adult lions appeared in the bushes and started to move directly towards the Proton.

‘Oh, why are they coming over here?’ Joyce squealed.

Their muscles rippling under their lean skin, the big cats padded calmly towards the car. They were large and heavy-looking, the stockiest one about 2 metres long. His head seemed huge. One had its tongue, a pink, rough-surfaced thing as long as a child’s arm, lolling out of its mouth.

‘They are coming here. Don’t know why,’ said the geomancer, a tremble in his voice.

The lions stopped, 3 or 4 metres from the car, looking with curiosity at the vehicle’s inhabitants. A large male lion licked its lips, and flicked his head to one side.

‘Oh dear God,’ prayed Joyce.

‘They’ve probably sprinkled our car with some blood or something. Maybe stuck some raw meat in the tyre wells,’ whispered Sinha.

‘Ooooooh, someone do something. Can you get rid of the snake, please? Can you call Tambi?’

‘He’s busy,’ said Wong, squinting at the multi-terrain vehicle ahead. ‘He is making videotape of us.’

There was a slight scraping sound from under Joyce’s seat as the snake moved.

She gave off a thin, high-pitched squeal like a badly tuned television.

‘The snake is moving, looking for something,’ said Sinha. ‘I don’t think it has had its dinner. We really cannot stay in the car. We have to leave. We have to get out. It’s in a bad mood, I can tell. I know snakes.’

‘Maybe I can drive slow-slow and we get out of the jungle?’ suggested Wong.

But looking around, he realised that it might be impossible. Tambi’s large car was blocking the path in front of them. The ground was uneven on both sides of the road, and there was no way to spin the car around without throwing the snake from side to side.

‘Maybe I drive backwards, very carefully,’ said the geomancer.

‘No. Just stay as you are,’ said Sinha. ‘The snake may calm down. At the moment it is moving forwards, very slowly.’

There was silence in the car. One of the lions gave a small roar, more a throat-clearing really. The snake could be heard shuffling slightly.

The young woman, who was breathing in short, sharp bursts like a galloping dog, turned pleading eyes to Wong. She whispered: ‘I really, really don’t like snakes. Do something. Please!’

Wong leaned over to the passenger seat. ‘Joyce. Take your music-thing out of your music machine. Put it in the car player.’

‘What?’ She reached into her handbag and fumbled with the CD player, eventually extracting its contents. She then tried to stretch over with the disc in her hand, but she lost her grip and it tumbled down into the footwell. ‘Ooops.’

‘Careful! You just missed its head,’ snapped Sinha.

‘You have any other disc? Loud one? Bad noise? Screaming, that sort of thing?’ asked Wong.

‘Yeah. Here, take this.’ She pulled another CD out of her bag and snapped its case open.

The geomancer reached over to take the shiny disc. He said to Sinha: ‘This music it makes me uncomfortable. I think it will make the lions mm-shu-fook too. But the snake. What will happen?’

‘Don’t worry,’ said the astrologer. ‘Snakes don’t have ears, really. Not like ours. But they do feel rhythms. They rather like them, I think. You know, this gives me an idea. Put the music on, Wong, loud as you can. It might scare the lions, but it will probably have a different effect on the snake.’

Wong pushed the disc into the car audio unit and wound the windows of the car down a few inches.

Joyce leaned forwards. ‘Erm, track three. Press that button with the arrow on and then press number three. That’s a real screamer.’

‘Like this?’ said Wong.

‘Yes. And that’s the vol-let me do it.’ She reached over with some difficulty, since her legs were still in the air, and slid the volume slider to maximum.

Seconds later, the harsh, jangly crash of a power chord from a rock guitar shook the car. This was followed by an unearthly scream which went on for four seconds. There was a thunderous explosion of drums. Then the other musicians jumped into the fray, and the car throbbed and shook with the sound of pounding drums, shrieking voices and fuzzy, wailing guitars.

‘Good, good,’ shouted Wong, as he saw the surprised lions suddenly spring away, moving some 25 or 30 metres from the car. ‘They don’t like it either. Have good taste.’

‘Never mind about that. What’s the snake under my chair doing?’ yelled Joyce, curling her legs tightly to her.

‘I think it likes it. It’s interested,’ shouted Sinha over the sound of the music. ‘Unfortunately it is moving towards you. I think there must be a speaker near you.’

‘Waaaaaaa,’ wailed Joyce as she saw the snake’s head for the first time, appearing in her footwell and sliding upwards.

She had her legs in the air, angled to the centre of the car. The snake slowly rose to the other side, heading towards the thudding bass speaker in the door.

‘It feels the rhythm,’ said Sinha. He suddenly opened his door, stepped out, snapped the radio aerial off the rear car wing, and started waving it in a figure of eight, trying to catch the attention of the snake. ‘Wong, lower the window. And tell me if the lions come back,’ he shouted.

‘You’re all right,’ hollared Joyce. ‘They’re miles away.’

Wong lowered the window on the young woman’s side.

The dancing aerial eventually attracted the snake’s attention. Sinha gradually moved away from Joyce’s window, coaxing the snake to follow. Its head followed the movement of the aerial and then it started to move out of the car through the window. The young woman stopped breathing, frozen in a mixture of joy and terror as the snake’s long body wriggled past her.

Wong was gripped so tightly with horror that he could barely breathe. After a long and strained minute, the snake was partly out of the window. The music continued to shake the car.

‘Wong. Wait till I get its head higher, then shut the window,’ shouted Sinha. ‘It has been years since I even saw a snake charmer. I never imagined I would be doing it myself. Come on, baby. Come on, little serpent. That’s right. A bit more. A bit more. Keep on coming, that’s right. Ha!’

Joyce suddenly stiffened and pointed. The lions had started to move back towards the car.

‘Sinha. Lions are coming. You need to come in the car quickly please,’ said Wong.

‘I understand. Just a second or two more.’

He made pulling motions with the thin metal rod and several more centimetres of the snake flowed out of the window.

The lions were moving faster. Wong knew he couldn’t wait any longer. About half of the snake’s long body was out of the window. He pressed the ‘window up’ button. The glass started to slide upwards, its whirring sound masked by the harsh music. As it touched the snake’s body, the beast tried to withdraw at high speed back into the car.

Joyce screamed, seeing the cobra withdrawing sharply backwards, visualising it heading right into her lap. But the window continued rising, and caught the snake by a curve of its body behind its head. It struggled, but the glass kept rising, and it failed to get its head back through the gap. As its skull was crushed by the rising glass, its mid-section and tail suddenly started flailing backwards, slapping the young woman across her arms. Joyce shrieked again. Sinha jumped back into the car and slammed his door shut just as the lions reached the car in a few huge leaps.

Sinha grabbed Joyce under the arms. With one sharp tug, he pulled her backwards through the gap between the front seats, away from the wriggling snake until she was sprawling in the back of the car.

The lions peered into the car. At the front window, one of the lions started nosing at the head of the snake, from which dark liquid was dripping down the window.

‘Okay now, okay now,’ said Wong. ‘All safe.’

‘You’re all right now,’ said the old astrologer, squeezing Joyce’s shoulders.

‘Sorry,’ she whimpered. The snake’s body continued to writhe from the top of the window, and then gave a shudder and stopped.

‘There’s nothing to be sorry about,’ said Sinha. ‘You’ve been very brave. I think Wong is more petrified than you are.’

‘Jun hai,’ said the geomancer, breathing in short gasps as he turned the car around, nudging the lions out of the way as he had the sheep the previous day. The car lurched over the roadside ruts, and then righted itself, facing back to the entrance. ‘Now we go,’ he yelled. ‘I think we do not wait to collect our fee. I think we have to be satisfied with deposit only.’

‘I agree,’ said the Indian.

The Proton moved back towards the gate, with Tambi’s multi-terrain vehicle following at a distance.

‘A narrow escape,’ said Sinha, still holding the shaken young woman. ‘Now why would he want to do a thing like that? Not very thoughtful. No good for us or him. Surely three more deaths would be the worst possible publicity for his park?’

‘He is not interested in making money from animal park,’ said Wong, turning down the music. ‘He just pretends, I think, so he can take share in this project. He makes lions eat his partners. Solve two problems at once. Gets rid of them. Gives good excuse for not continuing with park. More deaths, even better. He wants to dig up land. Make a mine. Much metal under the ground.’

‘What a bastard.’

Joyce sniffed and started to breathe more steadily.

‘You wanted to see jungle animals closely,’ said Sinha.

‘Yes,’ gasped Joyce, wiping her eyes and trying to smile.

After bumping along in relative silence, the astrologer, who had loosened his fatherly grip on the young woman’s shoulders, looked back. ‘Tambi’s car has stopped. I wonder why?’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Wong. ‘Maybe because I took all the petrol out this morning.’

‘You did what?’

‘I use a bit of hose I found in the garage. Just suck it out.’

‘So you siphoned off his gas. I thought your breath smelt a bit alcoholic this morning. How very interesting. How will he and his cousin get out?’

‘Don’t know. They could walk. But maybe not a good idea. Lions not been fed yet.’

The geomancer slowed down the car as a pink butterfly flew in a drunken zig-zag across the road. Then he put his foot back on the accelerator. He turned to face his young assistant. ‘You know, Joyce? Maybe I start to like your music now.’

Wong turned up the volume and the sound of rock music shook the car as they headed for the gates.