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

6 Ghost in the machine

The sages of ancient days tell this story. There was a poor Taoist priest. He walked on the paths between the mountains. He lived on air and on river water and on what he was given.

One day he came to the village pear-seller. The village pear-seller had more than one hundred pears in his barrow.

‘Give me one please,’ said the priest.

‘No. You must pay like other people,’ said the pear-seller. ‘Go away.’

But the priest did not leave.

The man became angry. The people standing near said: ‘Give him a small one. Or a bad one. Then he will go.’

The pear-seller said: ‘No.’

Now a crowd had gathered.

The chief of the village came. He paid for a pear. He gave it to the poor priest. The priest said thank you. He said: ‘People like me give up everything. We give up life, family, money, homes, possessions. We cannot understand the minds of those who give up nothing.’

The people asked the priest: ‘Yes, you give up much. But what do you get?’

The priest said: ‘Many things. For example, I have many beautiful pear trees, each with hundreds of delicious pears.’

The people asked: ‘Where are they?’

The priest said: ‘In here.’ He pointed to the pear in his hand. Then he ate the pear. He took out the pips. He buried them in the ground. He asked for some water. He sprinkled the water on the ground. A stick came out of the ground. Then it became a tree. Then leaves came on the branches. Then pears came out of the branches.

‘Take. Eat,’ said the priest. The people took and ate the pears. The priest said goodbye and left the village.

The tree faded. It disappeared. The pear-seller looked back at his barrow. But all his pears had gone.

So, Blade of Grass, remember that he who is wealthy in riches is often poor in spirit. He who is poor in wealth is often rich in spirit.

From ‘Some Gleanings of Oriental Wisdom’

by C F Wong, part 116.

‘Ah, my prayers have been answered: a meeting of the mystics on a Friday night. We haven’t had a Friday-night meeting for a very, very long time.’ Madam Xu Chung Li radiated glee at her companions before taking a small towel out of her handbag and wiping the table, employing particular vigour on the areas directly in front of her and the other female present. These efforts had no visible effect on the table surface, but her observers assumed the gesture was symbolic.

‘Why d’you like meeting on Fridays?’ asked Joyce.

‘Well, dear, Friday is a very special night at the Sambar,’ the old fortune teller whispered confidentially, pursing her crimson lips to create a network of lines pointing the way into her mouth. ‘It’s the night old Uberoi makes string hoppers. Only place in Singapore where you can get them, to my knowledge.’

‘Oh.’ The young woman decided against asking what a string hopper was, not wanting to appear a tourist.

It was a comparatively cool evening at the open-fronted restaurant where they sat on Serangoon Road, after a day of wind and rain. A week of heavy, humid, oppressive weather had turned the population into slugs, and the sudden cloudburst of the mid-morning had brought welcome relief. It had rained intermittently all day, but had conveniently stopped at 6.30 p.m., allowing a northeast zephyr to blow the open-air seats and tables at the restaurant dry just in time for the 8 p.m. meeting of the Investigative Advisory Committee of the Singapore Union of Industrial Mystics.

Joyce had arrived early to make the most of her first visit to Singapore ’s Little India. She had stopped at the Temple of 1000 Lights, and then spent a happy hour perusing the shops on Serangoon Road. She bought some Punjabi clothes, a movie poster showing overweight actors from Madras, some Tamil music tapes and a whole bag full of Indian brass jewellery. Her shopping bags had soon become heavy, and she was glad when the time came to slide them under the table at the Sambar Coffee House.

She watched Madam Xu expend a great deal of energy rubbing at a dark circle on the table, and wondered whether she should tell her that it was a knot in the wood, not removable by anything less than a power saw.

The elderly fortune teller eventually gave up by herself. She foraged further in her handbag-a large, burgundy leather sack with gold clasps-and pulled out another towel, a small, flowered flannel, scented with patchouli. She delicately touched her forehead and upper lip with it. The evening was becoming balmy, and warm air was flowing out of the kitchen door, which was propped open. The smell of fried cumin pervaded the street.

Someone flicked a switch and a fan started to whirl lazily on the ceiling above them, sending down fluttering waves of tepid air. Joyce felt as if someone was gently stroking the top of her head.

‘Ng, chat, saam, yee, lok, sei, baat. ’ C F Wong mumbled to himself as he sat on the edge of the table, filling in numbers on a chart he had brought with him. ‘Yat gau-gau gau.’

Madam Xu tutted unhappily. ‘You have a lot of work? Can’t even take a break on a Friday night, C F, when string hoppers are on the menu?’

‘Yes, Xu-tai, have much work today.’ The old man’s hand seemed to vibrate as he drew tiny Chinese characters over a floor plan.

The fortune teller turned back to the geomancer’s young assistant. ‘While we’re waiting for the Super, shall I just read your palm, my dear?’

‘Er. Yeah. Whatever. I, like-’ said Joyce, nervously dropping her hands into her lap. Then she looked into the distance and broke into an involuntary smile. ‘There’s not enough time. Look, he’s here.’

Superintendent Tan approached in his usual languid manner, with a sloping gait and his hands buried in his pockets, as if he alone were the counterbalance to the famed uprightness and stiffness of other aspects of the city-state’s of ficialdom. He stood at the corner of the table. ‘Hello, old friends, very nice it is to see you. Thank you very much for coming, Madam Xu, C F, and, er, Miss Mak-er…’

‘Jo,’ she reminded him.

‘Jo, right. We met last time.’

‘Our pleasure to come,’ said Madam Xu. ‘Especially on a Friday night.’

Wong lowered his pen and gathered up his papers, his long fingernails scratch-scratch-scratching at the table like a cat sharpening its claws.

‘But where is D K?’ asked the young Singaporean police officer. ‘Not here yet? He’s coming late, is it?’

‘Not coming tonight. Sends his apology,’ the geomancer put in. ‘Has been tied up.’

‘Sit, sit,’ said Madam Xu.

‘No, first, I have something to ask you, you see. Officially, according to the rules, there are no visitors allowed to these meetings, right? But C F, you brought your assistant with you last time and this. I want to ask tonight if I can bring someone too. Can or not? You don’t mind, is it?’

‘Well, it depends,’ said Madam Xu, automatically checking how her cheong-saam (black velvet, flecked with purple, blue and pink) sat, at the thought of a guest approaching. Her clothing, of course, was immaculate. ‘If it is someone as charming as Ms Jo, I can see no objection.’

‘It is a bank manager. Well, private banker, really, I should say. He is involved with the case you will help with tonight, you see.’

‘A bank robbery?’ asked Wong.

‘No, it is a case of… actually, I am not sure what it is a case of. The bankers are calling it mass hysteria. I think you have not had a case of mass hysteria before, is it? I can bring him now, okay or not?’

‘A private banking gentleman? I think you may,’ said Madam Xu, and Wong nodded his assent.

Tan turned and gestured at a man in his early thirties, who stood awkwardly watching them from a distance. Tall and pale-skinned with sandy hair, he approached briskly, coming to a sudden halt behind the police officer.

‘I will do the introductions. This is Joseph Sturmer of United World Banking Corporation. Madam Xu, Ms Joyce, Mr C F Wong. Right, now sit, please.’

The lanky banker, looking out of place in his dark suit and conservative tie, perched unhappily on a chair with his hands on his lap and looked dolefully around. He was as freckled as a child. Joyce looked at him carefully. Nice floppiness to the hair, okay roman nose, but unpleasantly thin lips and no chin at all. Anyway too old, she decided.

Madam Xu explained that she had already discussed the evening’s menu with old Uberoi, so the men may as well just get on with their story. ‘We can eat and listen at the same time.’

‘We shall get on with it then,’ said Tan. ‘This is a story of a bank robbery, as you said. Or perhaps not. What would you say, Mr Sturmer?’

‘Well, it’s a mystery, isn’t it? That’s why we’re here, right? The guys in the bink can’t work it out, inniwhy.’

Joyce noticed the broad accent. ‘Hi. I’m Jo. You from Down Under?’

‘Austrylian? Me? No, mite. From New Zeyland.’

Uberoi’s wife, a huge woman named Nina Chug (Uberoi himself was supermodel-thin) arrived with drinks: salt lassi for Madam Xu, Wong and Tan, and sweet for the two mat sellah. All Westerners, it is assumed, prefer sweet.

The silence which followed was broken by Tan. ‘Ah. How shall we start? Someone has robbed the bank in a funny way.’

‘We think, maybe,’ added Sturmer, unhappily.

The geomancer said: ‘Why not Mr Sturmer just tells us?’

‘Yeh, okae,’ said the New Zealander. ‘All this is totally confidintial, right? Not to go further than these four…’ He noticed that the restaurant only had three walls. ‘It’s confidintial, inniwhy. I’m the diputy exicutive minager of the private binking division of United World Bink. Now I received a call from a customer this morning clyming that a deposit had not been processed. We often get this type of complynt. Nine times out of tin, it’s some sort of perfectly normal da-lie.’

‘Da-lie?’ asked Wong.

‘Delay,’ said Joyce. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll translate. My sister went out with a Kiwi once.’

Sturmer continued, a little warily: ‘I gaive the usual excuse: “I’m sorry Mr Somchai,” I say. “It takes up to seven working dies to clear a cheque, depending on which bink the money is drawn from, and up to twenty-eight days in the case of a foreign currency cheque.” It does, you see. But this customer, Mr Somchai, is not satisfied. “This was cash,” he says. “I put cash in. It should have been cleared immediately. You don’t have to clear cash, it’s just cash.” He had a good pint there. Now this calls for a different line. “Probably jist some miscalculation somewheres,” I tell him. “I’m sure it’s not a problim. I think if you just wite for your bink statement, you’ll find that it’s all there,” I say. You see, sometimes customers, they put money in, and a cheque arrives for a similar amount the same die, so that the customer thinks that his bink account total has not gone up, when really everything is fine. Or perhaps his wife withdraws an amount which she forgits to tell him about. Hippens all the time. I tell Mr Somchai that I could send him an interim stitemint, for which we could whyve the processing charge.’

Joyce noticed that C F Wong was watching and listening with intense concentration, struggling to understand the man’s accent. For some reason, the bank manager focused on Joyce, and related the story entirely to her. She was first nonplussed, and then pleased, and made sympathetic nodding movements as he spoke. She wondered if the others would be annoyed, since she was the only non-mystic among them.

‘Inniwhy, the guy turns mean. “Mr Sturmer,” he says. “I am not a fool. I have no wife. I know exictly what goes in and what comes out of my account. I bilince my chequebook every time I use it. What I know is that I deposited five thousand Sing dollars in my current account two dies ago and it is not there now.”’

Sturmer, now getting into his story, became more relaxed, and looked briefly at Wong and Madam Xu before returning his gaze to Joyce. He started using his hands for emphasis. ‘So I do the stroke-stroke thing and tell him that I know he is good with figures and I tell him I will personally look into the matter right awhy. Where did he deposit it? Head office? Fourth machine on the right? Right. Thank you for calling. I tell him I will call back within two business hours, which is standard procedure for private binking clients. Okay so far?’

He paused and Joyce and Madam Xu nodded. Wong continued to stare.

‘Right. Now at this stige, I am still largely disregarding the problim. Ninety-nine per cent of cases like this, it is the customer having mis-counted something. You would be amized the number of billionaires who just can’t count from one to tin or do simple arithmetic. But then my colleague, Sarah Remangan, who sits one desk away from me, she looks over. “I’ve had the same call from one of my accounts,” she says. “Put her money in last Tuesday. Got a receipt and everything. But she swears the money isn’t there now and never got there. Even ordered a stitement which bicks her up, so she says.”’

The banker paused as a waiter gently elbowed him to one side and placed plates in front of each of them. A platter containing five masala dosas followed almost immediately.

‘Go on,’ said Madam Xu, starting to distribute the potato curry pancakes, serving the banker first. ‘That is when you realised something was wrong.’

‘No, not really, not then,’ said Sturmer. ‘You see, the whole system is computerised. It can’t be wrong. It’s always that people spend too much and don’t know where the money’s gone at the end of the day. Human naeture. Then Sarah’s phone rings agin, and it was inother of her clients, with the sime problim. I could tell, just by listening to her half of the conversaition. It was probably then that I was getting a little worried. Three similar complyints, one after another. Something might just possibly be wrong.’

‘A bug in the computer?’ asked Joyce.

‘No way. You see, bink computers are set up so that they can only do one of two things: They either get it right, or they freeze. There’s no in-between. They cannot do their sums wrong. If they are working, then they are working right. All binking computer systems are based on this principle, as far as I know. Inniwhy, I called several people. I phoned my supervisor, of course, who told me to give all detiles urgently to the bink technology departmint and security departmint. This was about ten o’clock this morning.’

He ran his hands backwards through his hair. ‘Over the nixt, well, couple of hours I giss, there were several similar complyints from customers. A high-level security team was empowered to invistiguyte. By lunch time they gaive their initial findings. All checks of the bink computer showed no problim at all. No hint of a malfunction.’

The banker paused, his mystification showing in his face. ‘It was bizarre. It was like a mass hallucination. According to all our records, none of these cash deposits was ever put into the bink, and all the computers were behaving perfectly, according to all diagnostic checks. It was a complete mystery.’

‘Could it have been a mass hallucination, like you say?’ asked Madam Xu. ‘Perhaps… deliberate?’

‘That’s the answer the bink would like,’ said Sturmer, turning to her. ‘But between you and me, no. None of these people know each other. And there’s too many of thim to be in on a scam togither. Some are really old customers, been binking there for years. One of the people complaining is the niece of one of the directors.’

He paused again, as Mrs Chug arrived with plates of idli and uttapum. Madam Xu reminded her about the hoppers.

‘Don’t you have like, security cameras and things?’ asked Joyce.

‘We do. That was the nixt stige of the investiguytion. We worked out that all customers who lost money put it, in cash, into automitic teller machines in the head office’s 24-hour binking hall. There are security kimras in the doorwhy there, which tyke photos every five seconds.’

‘Cameras,’ translated Joyce.

The banker continued: ‘The videotypes confirmed that the customers who complained had entered the hall and used the machines, just like they said.’

‘Tell us about the room, please,’ said Wong.

‘Well, it’s a big room, squarish, on the north side of the building. The investiguytive team checked the bink machines themselves. There are three on each side of the hall, built into the walls on the east and west side, and another six stand-alone machines at the back of the hall, with two more or less opposite the front door and two on each side. All the machines were working perfectly. They were genuine machines, connected properly to the bink by their normal kybles. Nothing appeared to have been timpered with. The security videos showed UWBC technicians entering the premises several times during that two-week period. Four kyses involved adjustments of the wall-mounted machines. Two involved teams delivering and installing stand-alone machines, and one involved a team removing a malfunctioning stand-alone machine. Then there were visits twice a day by cleaning staff. Everything seemed striteforward.’

Mrs Chug arrived with a large plate of aloo gobi, which Madam Xu took from her hands and started dispensing to each of the diners, the banker first, then the other men, then Joyce.

‘That’s it, really,’ said Sturmer, his brow furrowed like a cassava field. ‘That’s all we know. People put the money in, or they imagined they did, and the stuff just vinished. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of Sing dollars, perhaps a million or more. We just don’t know. We don’t know when the complaints will stop coming.’

‘Did you count the machines?’ asked Joyce. ‘Sorry was that a silly question?’

‘All the machines were real and all ours. And nothing wrong with any of them.’

‘Now you stop talking and eat,’ said Madam Xu to Sturmer. She had apparently decided that she would mother the unhappy banker. ‘The time now is for eating and for thinking. Here.’ She picked up a plate of pakora and thrust it towards him.

‘Thenks, but I don’t really feel like…’

‘Eat. Will revitalise the brain and help you to solve the problem. Must eat.’

He helped himself to a tiny sample and the other diners were also suddenly active, serving each other and themselves.

Joyce felt sorry for the New Zealander, who had the deflated look of someone who has thrown away a winning lottery ticket.

‘Have some of this,’ she said, spooning a generous portion of lime pickle onto his plate. ‘This’ll give you a buzz. Must have been a horrible shock.’

‘Yes. Especially since the gineral manager has put me in charge of sorting the problim out. The awful thing is that we have no idea how big the problim is. We are worried that many people will not know they are victims until their bink stitemint arrives at the end of the month.’

‘Clues,’ said Madam Xu. ‘You must have some clues, Superintendent Tan?’

The police officer, greedily heaping his plate into a Himalayan range, carefully lowered his spoon and lifted his briefcase onto his lap. ‘Maybe. There were lots of interesting little points on the initial witness statements we gathered this afternoon. I’ve got them here. They will be too long for you all to read, but I did note down the major discrepancies. Here.’

He pulled out a yellow sheet of police jotting paper covered with his spidery handwriting, and started trying to decipher it. ‘Aaaah, two customers said they came in on Monday afternoon, when in fact the security cameras show they came in at other times, one on Monday before lunch and the other on Tuesday afternoon. Both are old people aged fifty-over, so this might just be absentmindedness, you know how oldsters are? No offence to you, Madam Xu and Mr Wong, I hope, is it?’

He looked at his notes again. ‘Ah, most, in fact, nearly all the victims said they had used one of the stand-alone machines on the right-hand side. Two thought they used a machine on the left, and three could not remember clearly which machine they had used. Several had said they used “the deposit machine”, although there is no such thing, since all the machines, except the balance reader, offer withdrawal and deposit service.’

Tan squinted down at his notes and then held them at an angle to try and read something he had written sideways. ‘Let me see. Ahhh, yes. One guy claimed to have withdrawn a lot of money, changed his mind, and then queued up to deposit most of it back. He is sure he put it back, but only the withdrawal appears on his bank statement, not the deposit. He couldn’t remember which machine or machines he used, but says he usually uses one of the wall machines.’

‘You have not given enough information about the hall,’ said Wong, through a mouthful of masala dosa.

‘I knew you would want that, C F. Here. I brought a floor plan for you. You love floor plans, correct? The 24-hour banking hall is slightly narrower at the back than the front. The doors are at the east of the building, but they open facing south, being double doors on a small extension. Two complainers we took to the banking hall this afternoon pointed to this machine here as the one which took their money.’

‘The one to the east,’ said Wong.

‘Correct, C F.’

Sturmer sighed at the food on his plate, apparently too crestfallen to have any appetite at all. He looked around at the mystics, all of whom seemed fully occupied with what was on their plates. ‘Well. That’s it, really. Can innyone help? Otherwise I’ll bugger off. I’ve got no time to stop and eat, really. Like I sigh, I’m in charge of sorting this mess out.’

‘Obviously, someone pushed in a fake machine,’ said Madam Xu. ‘I guess they donned overalls with the United World Bank logo on the side and pushed their own machine into the corner. You must check those workers in your video tapes pushing machines in and out. If you like, I’ll have a look at the videos and see if I can identify the bad guys by paranormal means.’

The banker frowned: ‘We did think of that-I mean, that there was a fake machine-and our guys have been sent to track down all the technical staff working for the past two weeks. It’ll take a while. One possible mistyke we made is that the two security kimras don’t cover the whole room. We focused on the front doors, rather than the beck of the room.’

Joyce asked: ‘Why did you not have cameras on the people using the machines?’

‘We do, in a sinse. Each machine photographs each person who uses it from close range. Don’t ever pick your nose while getting money out of a cash machine, Miss. Not that I’m suggesting you would do such a thing. Naturally, there are several thousands of shots of people to look at over a period of a week. We’ve got people going through these, but no one has noticed innything stringe yet.’

They were all starting to be infected by the banker’s misery, and for a minute there was silence-if such a term can be used for any meeting in a restaurant on Serangoon Road on a busy Friday night. The banker said: ‘Like you, we wondered if someone put in a fake machine. But it would be difficult to install and incridibly audaicious.’

The old woman nodded. ‘I agree. It would be risky. The chance of the villains losing their takings and their expensive machinery would be very high.’

The Superintendent speared a pakora and concurred. ‘And surely it would be complicated and expensive to make a big machine like that just for what may be a small bit of money? I mean, I don’t know about you, but I never put money into those machines. I just take it out, right or not?’

‘Quite,’ nodded Madam Xu. ‘I have never put money into a bank machine in my life. I have only withdrawn it, and only when my little Amy is there to remind me about the secret number and to tell me what buttons to press.’

The police officer leaned back in his chair. He grimaced and sucked his teeth noisily before speaking. ‘Could it be that someone-perhaps a rival bank-got hold of a real ATM and re-programmed it in some way, before installing it at United World Bank? You’d need a top-level expert in computers and banking and what-not. There must be a limited number of such fellows.’

‘Must be,’ agreed Madam Xu. ‘Must be some hi-tech crime people.’

‘Rubbish.’

They all looked around. The scornful comment had come from Joyce McQuinnie.

‘You wouldn’t need an expert at all,’ she said. ‘Any jerk with a bit of programming knowledge could do it. I could do it and I only got a B minus minus in computer studies.’

‘Continue, please,’ said Tan.

‘Like, you wouldn’t need any fancy equipment. Just a fastish PC,’ the young woman said. ‘Let’s see, I reckon my brother’s 166 megaherz PC clone would do the trick. You would just program the thing to give you a basic flat desktop display with some instructions that told you to like, slip money into a slot and write down what you were depositing, and you would need a built-in printer. So like when you press “enter”, the printer would simply like churn out a deposit slip-thing with the information you’ve just input. Out it would come. A piece of cake.’

‘A piece of cake would come out?’ asked Wong.

‘No, not a piece of cake. A piece of paper.’

‘Then why you say cake?’

‘It’s just, well, it’s just what you say. I meant paper,’ Joyce snapped.

‘What about the other details?’ asked Madam Xu. ‘You see, deposit slips also have the time and date of transaction and so on.’

‘The date and time would be added automatically. Lots of computers do that anyway, on things you print out. Easy.’

The banker nodded. ‘The kid’s right, you know. If it was just a screen which asked you how much you were depositing, instid of a full ATM service, it could be replicated quite easily on a basic PC. A teenager could do it.’

‘Well thank you, Joyce,’ said the Superintendent. ‘That’s very helpful. Wish I understood this stuff. I’ve got a nephew who’s good at computers. Seems to be young people who can do it, only. Anyway, so fixing a computer to print out a receipt is not too difficult. So what now?’

‘Your earlier point still hasn’t been answered,’ said the fortune teller. ‘Was it worth it? Do people put money into these things? Mr Sturmer. You must know the answer.’

‘That’s a good pint, ma’am,’ the banker said. ‘You’re right. Most people use automatic cash machines to take money out of binks. It’s only a comparatively small percentage which uses them to put money in. In our hall, on single-transaction visits, it’s something like sixty-eight per cent withdrawals, eleven per cent deposits and the remaining twenty-one per cent transfers, account balances or other services.’

Wong leaned forwards. ‘This is not a problem, really.’

‘Go on,’ said Tan.

‘You want to attract money to a new venture. Not difficult. New machine was placed in the east. The room is not too crowded with machines. There are many areas where it could have been placed. More people would go past it if it was close to the front of the hall. But it was placed in the east. The reasoning is obvious.’

He stopped, and there was silence. Madam Xu stared at him, a spoon halfway to her mouth.

‘Not to me,’ said the Superintendent.

‘The trigram of the east is symbolised by the flowering of plants. By the green of fresh grass. By the dawn. This is the location of the forces of birth and growth. Perfect for a new business venture. Whoever placed the new machine there knew about the flow of energy. Or maybe just good luck.’

Madam Xu was unsatisfied. ‘So the east of the room is better for feng shui factors, but that does not answer the question. Why did people put money into it?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Wong. ‘But maybe the people who did it put a sign on it.’

‘A sign?’

‘A sign saying something like “High-speed deposits here”. So they get all deposits. You remember customers said they put money in deposit machine?’

‘Yes, of course,’ said Joyce, suddenly excited. ‘You put a sign on the machine saying “All Deposits Here for Instant Service” or something. Then everyone carrying dosh to put in the bank would deposit it in that one. Or most people, anyway.’

The Superintendent was intrigued. ‘Possible, quite possible. So the customers pull cash out of the other machines, but only pump cash into the villains’ one. Can or not, Mr Sturmer?’

‘Could work. I giss that would be one why of maximising your collecting of deposits.’

Tan picked a piece of cardamom out of a crevice between his teeth. ‘Now we are thinking. Let us take this further. They have dressed them-selfs up as bank technical people and wheeled in this fake machine, battery-powered, which takes deposits only. Has a big sign on top: deposit machine. How do they empty it? Do you leave all your ill-gotten gains in the machine on the premises day after day, knowing that you would eventually be found out? Helluva risky, no?’

‘Not need to,’ said Wong. ‘You have a cow. You milk it every day, yes or no? One of the villains-maybe it is a different one every day-he-she comes like normal customer. He uses deposit machine. But he takes all money out.’

Madam Xu objected. ‘But you just said that the machine would not give out money, only take money in.’

Wong looked at Joyce, who had suddenly taken on the role of technology expert.

‘Er, yeah. It would be easy to fix that,’ she said. ‘Quite easy. Whoever programmed the computer would know the commands which would like, open a little door and send the money out. You just have a hot key.’

Another moment of silence.

‘Explain, please,’ said the geomancer.

‘A hot key is just this key which you press and it toggles from one thing to another thing,’ the young woman explained. ‘So you press the hot key and it changes from the basic program, which is a thing for you to write down what money you are putting in, to a screen which you can use to like, get all the money collected.’

Superintendent Tan spoke with his mouth full. ‘But how would you stop other people from pressing this hot key?’

‘Password.’

Wong, who had jotted down the words ‘toggle’ and ‘hot key’ for further study, said: ‘Yes, this would seem very normal. Man or woman walks up to a bank money machine. Presses buttons. Types in a password. Takes money out. This is very normal. No one would think anything strange.’

‘I suppose so,’ said the banker, who had absently started to eat and had a spoonful of brinjal hovering in front of him. ‘Still, I don’t see how they could have done all this without the bink staff noticing. I mean, this hypothitical machine was right on the bink premises. We have a security guard there the whole time.’

‘But think about it,’ Madam Xu cut in. ‘All he saw was normal bank procedures: customers using machines, and occasionally teams of bank technicians, or people who looked like bank technicians, installing or removing machines. Nothing unusual, is it?’

The banker mused. ‘Well mai-be. But I still reckon avoiding discovery would have been tricky. You see, the bink’s own staff visit the machines every day to reload them.’

‘I ask a question,’ said Wong. ‘Does the bank staff come at same time every day?’

‘Er, yes, I think they come every night, twice on Friday nights, Monday mornings and at weekends.’

‘There is an answer, then. At night, one of the villains comes in. He wears bank worker clothes. He covers their machine with “out of order” sign. Any bank staff member who sees it will think technical department’s job to fix.’

Sturmer asked: ‘But when the technical people arrive to fix it…?’

‘No,’ said Wong. ‘No one calls technical people. Guard won’t call. Not his job. Also, everyone will assume that technical people will be notified already. Whoever put the out-of order sign there would have done it. So people think.’

The banker was silent, carefully digesting this suggestion. ‘Could work,’ he said at last. He spoke slowly. ‘Just maibe. The front office, which reloads the machine at night, would assume that an out-of-order machine would be the responsibility of the beck office. The beck office, seeing a deposits-only machine, would assume that this was some new procedure being tried out by the front office. Neither side would need to. discuss it with the other.’

Suddenly he leaned back and laughed. ‘Quite funny, really. Could happen. You couldn’t do something like that in a bink with real people, but a large, busy, 24-hour automatic binking hall is different. Behaviour is governed by procedure. You set up a scam which slots neatly enough into the system but does not affect the official procedure, and no one notices. Damn sharp.’

Tan smiled. ‘Interesting. Thanks, mystics. You’ve done your job. You’ve given us some fresh ideas. Now comes the tough part, which is my job: tracking down the villains. The machine with all their fingerprints on it, presumably, will be miles away by now.’

‘Our only chance is the video tapes. There must be photos of the guys,’ said the New Zealander.

Tan shook his head. ‘Trouble is, the perps will be expecting us to study the pics and will be heavily disguised,’ said the police officer. ‘I wouldn’t put much hope in that. Maybe very tough to find them.’

Madam Xu said: ‘Well, as you say, that’s your job. Tracking down criminals. Much too dangerous for elderly people like ourselves, Ms McQuinnie excepted, of course.’

Sturmer wiped his mouth with his napkin and spoke to Tan. ‘I want to get back to the bink. See if these ideas can help the investiguytive team.’

Wong looked up. ‘Just wait a minute, please. Can I talk to you a bit about the feng shui contract for United World Banking Corporation?’

‘Can we do it another time?’ asked Sturmer, getting to his feet. ‘I’m griteful for your help, but I’m kinda busy now, as you kyn imagine. Let me pay for this meal.’

‘Just for a minute please,’ said the geomancer, and something in his voice made Sturmer sit down again. ‘Need to tell you something. C F Wong amp; Associates had the contract for feng shui readings at all branches of your bank. Until two years ago. The contract was not renewed.’

‘I was in the Sydney office then. Only been here for twelve months. Don’t know innything about it.’

‘I will explain. Your bank gave the contract to another feng shui reader. He is cheaper. But maybe does not stick to the high standards of C F Wong amp; Associates.’

Tan interrupted. ‘I’m sure Mr Sturmer can arrange for you to have another interview with the decision-maker on such matters, C F, see if you can get the contract back, okay or not?’

Sturmer nodded, and rose to his feet again.

‘Oh no,’ said the geomancer. ‘I am not saying this because I want the contract back. I am saying this to give you more information.’

‘I’m listening,’ said the banker.

The geomancer flicked open the map book on the table. ‘I keep a little eye on your banks. I knew them so well from the time I was feng shui reader there. I need to see whether feng shui done correctly or not. Feng shui is business like any other. We need to keep an eye on rivals. This is extra true for cheaper ones. Most of the branches are okay. One or two not so good. The Somerset Road branch all wrong. Has some errors that can be fixed. I can do that for you some time. He put goldfish on the west side. Very crazy thing to do. But never mind.’

‘Sure,’ said Sturmer.

‘Your small electronic banking section on Mosque Street is very big problem. I think I can say it is urgent problem. You need to fix immediately. Feng shui is bad. But in an odd way. The room is strange shape. There is cutting ch’i points right at name-plate of the bank. Very bad. Very negative. The position of the machines is okay but the position of bank name, no. There is a ba gua mirror-you know, eight-side feng shui mirror with trigrams-but it is placed inside. Is facing the bank name. Makes it worse. Almost like geomancer has tried to make it bad as possible for the bank. Instead of good.’

Tan was getting impatient. ‘C F, do we really have to go through all this now? Can’t you just write a report or…’

Sturmer held up his hand to interrupt the police officer. ‘Jist a minute, Superintendent. We don’t have an electronic bank in Mosque Street. We don’t have any branches in Mosque Street.’

‘This is what I am telling you,’ said the geomancer. ‘Yet this bank has your name on it.’

Sturmer abruptly sat down. ‘Do you think…? I mean, are you sure it is our bink?’

‘United World Banking Corporation, it says, in big letters, across the top. Also your logo.’

‘Could it be the same people…?’ asked the banker, turning to Tan.

The Superintendent was speechless.

‘I don’t know,’ said Wong. ‘But, if I can remember right-it is hard for oldster like me, who is more than fifty years old-there are two machines in this electronic bank. One has an out-of-order sign on it. The other one, I think, has a sign, says: “High-speed deposits”. I only notice this because feng shui of the room so bad. I was hoping no one thinks I am responsible for it. Singapore is a small town. Not difficult for me to keep eye on the few branches of your bank.’ The geomancer shook his head in dismay at the memory of the ill-designed room.

‘So that’s how you knew about the deposit-at-this-machine sign,’ said Madam Xu. ‘You let us all think it was an inspired guess. I think that’s cheating, Mr Wong.’

Tan’s mouth dropped open. ‘If it’s got your bank’s name on it, but it’s not your bank, it’s got to be some sort of scam.’ He pulled out his pocket phone. ‘I hope to heaven it’s the same people, trying to do a similar trick in a different location. This may be an opportunity for us to do our part. Paydirt.’ He leapt to his feet.

‘What does paydirt mean?’ asked Wong.

‘I don’t know. Ask your assistant,’ said Tan, thumping the phone buttons.

Joyce blinked. The space between her eyebrows turned into a little grid. ‘Don’t know. It’s just what people say when they find something they’ve been looking for, for a long time.’

Old Uberoi appeared through the steam with two large dishes, one containing string hoppers, and one egg hoppers.

‘Oh, paydirt,’ said Madam Xu, clapping her hands.