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

7 Spice of life

The Chuang-tzu, chuan seven, says: ‘The mind of the perfect man is like a mirror. It does not move with things, nor does it anticipate them. It responds to things but does not retain them.’

The same feeling of detachment can be found in another ancient text. The Yi-ch’uan Chi-jang Chi, chuan fourteen. Here you read the words of Shao Yung. He said this:

The name of the Master of Happiness is not known.

For thirty years he has lived on the banks of the Lo River.

His feelings are those of the wind and the moon;

His spirit is on the river and the lake.

To him there is no distinction

Between low position and high rank,

Between poverty and riches.

He does not move with things nor anticipate them.

He has no restraints and no taboos.

He is poor, but has no sorrow.

He drinks but is never drunk.

He gathers the springtime of the world into his mind.

Blade of Grass, slowly-slowly you are becoming wise. But remember this. The strength of the mind is the strength of its detachment.

From ‘Some Gleanings of Oriental Wisdom’

by C F Wong, part 131.

His journal tucked safely in the briefcase he clutched to his chest, C F Wong trotted briskly along the cracked and crowded pavements, his head held high.

A visit to Delhi is a very good reminder that one has a nose, he mused. Too often in visiting a city, the other senses prevail. One is visually entranced by the skylines of Singapore and Hong Kong; one’s ears are assaulted by the cacophony of construction in Shanghai and Kuala Lumpur; but here in old Delhi, you can conduct yourself by your nose alone. The tingling torrent of petrol fumes and dust tells you where the roads are, while the paved areas are marked by coriander, incense, spices, sugar, smoke, urine, new sweat, old sweat, plus some curious odour of burnt material which appeared peculiar to the oldest parts of the original part of India’s capital, although he had yet to identify what it was. Wong took a deep breath through his wide, flat nostrils to try out this theory, and immediately regretted it. The smells were so strong they hurt.

They jogged around a blind corner at speed and the geomancer was forcefully reminded of his other senses as he hit the side of some grey-brown monster-an elephant? No, a bullock. It turned baggy and infinitely sad eyes at him. He was repelled by the strangely inorganic way its rough, leathery skin hung like an ill-fitting cape off its angular bones. Aiyeeeah. Wong edged carefully through the small space between the fly-covered beast and a dusty, coughing bus that was dangerously nudging its way through a lane solid with human and animal flesh.

For the tenth time, Wong scanned the bewildering scene ahead of them and wondered if they had lost their guide. The boy slid through tiny, fast-closing gaps in the crowd so often that few observers would have thought he had any connection with the old Chinese gentleman and the young Caucasian woman following.

‘Jeez. Does he have to go so fast?’ cursed Joyce, who had trouble keeping up as she wanted to take photographs of what she called ‘characters’-old people with lived-in faces. ‘Has he like, totally forgotten we’re supposed to be following him?’ Her testy comments belied the fact that she was thoroughly enjoying her first visit to India. The feng shui master’s assistant found it totally seductive, with the sights and colours and smells and tastes combining to suck her almost into a state of trance.

They had arrived late the previous night, so she had only really taken her first good look at India in the morning light. The desolate tranquility of Rose House, the old colonial mansion in Uttar Pradesh where they were staying, had been wonderfully calming. The pleasant dry heat, too, was quite unlike the uncomfortable humidity of Singapore. She had rinsed out a thin cotton top and hung it on the balcony to dry before going down to breakfast. An hour later, after a wonderful breakfast of mangoes, pale-yoked eggs and homemade yogurt, the garment had been dry enough to wear.

Then they had gone into town. The old city of Delhi was equally mesmerising but in a different way. It was happy pandemonium. There was something hypnotic about being in this huge, hyperactive mob, surrounded by swirls of multicoloured silk, she decided. It wasn’t just the women who caught her eye. Many of the men appeared curiously fashionable, with their retro 1970s-style haircuts, Burt Reynolds’ moustaches and flared trousers. But were they truly wearing retro fashions? Or had the man in the old Delhi street simply not changed styles for thirty years?

‘I see him! Follow,’ said Wong, and thrust himself through a tiny opening between two motor-scooters, one of which was carrying a family of four, and the other a family of five, plus a monkey.

Joyce took one more photograph, this time of a bald spice-seller who looked at least 150 years old, and dived after her employer.

Five breathless minutes later, the pair were relieved to reach the commercial building which had been described to them in the briefing notes faxed to the office by Laurence Leong of East Trade Industries. The Associated Food and Beverages Delhi Manufactory Old Building was a crumbly, grey block on a busy corner. On first glance it appeared to be leaning to the left, but the careful observer soon realised this impression was the result of curious architectural design, featuring stepped overhangs. Joyce knew this would mean a heavy over-supply of something. She watched as Wong looked up to locate the harsh glare of the sun behind cumulus clouds. ‘Southwest influences. Maternal female ch’i,’ he said. ‘Difficult, difficult.’

Following a fleeting glimpse of their guide slipping past the uniformed security guards-who were holding hands, a sight Joyce had been told was common in India, but which continued to surprise her-they entered the building. Or rather they entered a time warp. She felt as if she was in the Edwardian era. The furniture was old, dark wood, with parts of it looking like genuine mahogany. The walls were panelled with some cheaper hardwood that someone apparently thought would match but didn’t. There was a dying plant on the receptionist’s desk and two old, black bakelite telephones, plus a small switchboard system of the sort favoured in early Clark Gable movies.

‘Cool,’ said Joyce.

‘Hot,’ said Wong, mopping his face with a handkerchief.

After a brief wait, the two of them were led up an old staircase to a rectangular conference room and introduced to many executives of the company, all of whom had identical moustaches and names featuring an extraordinary number of syllables, nearly all of which over-featured the letter ‘a’. There was a Mr Nadarajah and a Mr Vishwanathan and a Mr Kanagaratnum. The last of these added, in a strong north Indian accent: ‘But you may cull me Ravi.’ Joyce’s thanks were heart-felt.

There was much open staring at the young Caucasian woman, and one elderly bald man commented quietly to Wong: ‘She doesn’t look very Chinese.’

The geomancer turned his eyes to his assistant and nodded as if he was noticing this for the first time. He nodded. ‘Yes. She does not look very Chinese.’

After the exchange of pleasantries, the conversation quickly dried up. Wong was anxious to escape the small talk and get down to work. ‘Where are the rooms, Mr Ravi?’

‘Not Mr Ravi. Ravi is my farst name. I’ll just write your names in our visitors jarnal and then we’ll go. Come, come.’ As they walked, Ravi explained that he was the external relations manager for Associated Foods, and would be looking after them during their stay. He led them down a dark corridor to a door leading to another gloomy passage. A slow-moving, potbellied man with pockmarked cheeks, Ravi ’s calm, warm smile was welcome after the tumult of the streets. A turn to the left, another to the right, and the ascension of a small flight of steps led them to the room of the man who had died.

‘Here, this is the place,’ said the Indian executive, smoothing down his moustache with his finger and thumb as if he felt it were stuck on with insufficient glue. ‘Mr Sooti Sekhar’s old room.’

It was a large office, ill-organised and unappealing. Even without the use of his lo pan to take bearings, Wong could see many ways in which the room had not been properly formed. There was a desk sideways to the main door, leaving the occupant with his back to a second door. Light should have come from a series of tall sash windows on the far side, but bookcases and filing cabinets obscured them. Several jagged edges caused the ch’i energy to flip and swirl. The room reeked of musty paper, overlaying a damp, mildew-like smell. Ravi flipped a pair of switches, but only one of the two ceiling fans started to whirl.

Stepping into the middle of the room, Wong became aware that it was a distorted L-shape. ‘Ah. This room needs much work,’ he said. As did the rest of the building, he thought, wondering why he was not required to review the entire premises.

Ravi seemed to sense the question. ‘We are wanting you to do your thing here, because this wing is the international division, and most of the Far East deals are being done here. See those files over there?’ He pointed to a wall of filing cabinets and cupboards. ‘All the Far East deals are there, including, in that locked one on the right, the papers that bind us to your own East Trade Industries. Our Far East Division staff work in that room there, behind Sekhar’s desk. At the moment, there’s only one person there, a Malaysian woman, Ms Dev.’

He pointed to the main desk and the chairs around it.

‘We used to be big in niche Far East animal products, ivory, tiger medicines, things like that. Sekhar did all that for us. When we have clients from the Far East, they were always dealt with by Sekhar in here, around this table. After Sekhar died, some of them said that the feng shui was bad here. That’s why this room needs a touch of your magic, if you don’t mind me calling it that.’

‘I understand. You have no need of feng shui readings to be done in other parts of the building.’

‘Correct. They’re all Hindus on that side, except for some Muslims in one of the departments, who make their own arrangements, but you don’t have to worry about all that. You’ve just got to fix up this room and the one behind that door on that side, to keep our Far East clients happy, and of course our Singapore shareholders.’ He said this last line with a nod and a half-smile, to acknowledge the corporate bonds between Associated Foods and East Trade.

‘I thought you weren’t allowed to sell ivory and stuff?’ asked Joyce.

‘Yes, this sector is warsening warldwide. We are dropping the animal products entirely and going to relaunch this part of the operation as import-export of appliances. More politically correct.’

He pressed his moustache onto his upper lip again. ‘One more thing. The internal engineering team, who will reorganise the office and redecorate it after you have done your stuff, they are only available tomorrow and the day after. That means that you only have today to do your readings. I hope that will be enough time for you.’

‘It is not much time. But I think I can do it,’ said Wong.

The executive left the room with a polite farewell nod, and Wong and McQuinnie spent some time talking to the one remaining staff member of the Far East Division, who was spending the day packing files into boxes, in advance of the redecoration. The woman, Mardiyah Dev, had been with the company ten years, and was happy to tell them the full story.

Sooti Sekhar’s history was that of many young executives. He had joined the company some twelve years ago as an enthusiastic thirty-year-old fellow of a university near Mumbai, and risen relatively quickly up the ladder to be assistant director of sales of animal products by the time he was thirty-six. Two years later, he had settled, quite happily, in a job which required little effort from him, as executive director of sales of animal products. This was a bit of a sinecure, since he simply had to analyse sales trends for his sector, with those under him doing the active sales work.

‘Although some people were surprised that he was happy to be deskbound, the timing seemed to be right. He was then thirty-eight, he had got married to someone his parents had chosen for him, they had had a couple of sons, and he no longer wanted to travel half the year,’ said Ms Dev, a rather solid woman in her thirties. ‘For a few years, he had lived a simple life. He worked nine to five, he spent his Sundays with his family, he occasionally went out for a drink with friends. There was less and less work to do. But then the division was reorganised, he was moved to that dark room, and he became more and more quiet.’

Her brow wrinkled as unpleasant memories came to the fore. ‘About a year ago, he still said good morning, but it was more of a groan than a greeting. There was just two of us left by then.’

‘Poor you. Must’ve been a major downer. Did you like, ask him what was wrong?’ asked Joyce. Wong was glad his assistant was with him. His questions always sounded harshly interrogatory compared to hers, which came across as sympathetic concern.

‘Oh yes, we were good friends,’ the woman replied. ‘He insisted that nothing was wrong. His wife and children were happy and healthy. He had no debts, as far as I knew.’

Wong looked around the old-fashioned room. It was not a happy room, but neither were the negative forces in it great enough to kill its occupant. Its wooden furniture and hand-built cupboards were actually rather more attractive and durable than the modular furniture of modern cities, although this particular office probably underwent less wear and tear than the somewhat ragged reception downstairs. ‘Business was good?’ he asked.

‘Not particularly,’ said Ms Dev. ‘Animal products is not a good line to be in these days, and there was shrinkage. But it was gradual. Nothing dramatic.’

The Malaysian woman said ‘nothing’ as ‘nut-thing’, having picked up an Indian lilt in her many years here, he noted. ‘And then…?’

‘Well…’ She tilted her head diagonally to one side, another habit clearly picked up from Indian colleagues. ‘And then suddenly he was dead. At the age of forty-two. We couldn’t believe it. It was amazing. I mean, he had the usual executive stress problems-stomach ulcers and so on-but he was unusually fit. He had a line of trophies for sports things he had won. It was in that glass case over there. He was long-jump champion at his university or something. It was almost as if his energy was running out, as if he was a battery, and one day it was all gone. And then bang. Heart attack.’

‘At his desk?’ asked Wong.

‘At his desk.’

‘There was an autopsy?’

‘Sekhar’s brother-in-law is a doctor and dealt with the body. He said it was natural causes. There did not seem to be any controversy about it. He had no enemies, no one to, you know, poison him or anything.’

‘Jeez. Poor fella. Was he like okay to work with?’ asked Joyce.

‘Yes, he was a very nice man. He was moody, and a bit dispiriting, and his health went downhill-he had a bit of flatulence towards the end, but I don’t think that would have killed him,’ Ms Dev said with an embarrassed smile.

The story of Sooti Sekhar’s unexplained death at an early age intrigued the feng shui master. He knew that in such cases, there are often financial problems which do not appear until after the death. He attempted to mentally will Joyce to continue her sympathetic inquiries, and was surprised to find her doing just that.

‘Like, how were his wife and children? They must have been like, utterly devastated and stuff.’

‘They were okay,’ said Mardiyah Dev. ‘I mean, they were upset, of course, but I think they were all right in the financial sense. Sekhar had some savings, he had paid off their mortgage on their big house, and I think he was insured. You can ask his wife. She works part-time in despatch at Deshpande’s.’

‘Deshpande’s?’

‘It’s a handbag factory. Just about eight minutes down that way. Near the old market. You can take a taxi.’

Wong smiled. ‘Thank you for your help.’

The rooms required a great deal of work. The geomancer and his assistant spent the whole of that afternoon poring over floor plans, drawing charts, making measurements, and watching how the light moved in the rooms, as the sun was reflected in from the frosted windows of an old red stone office block opposite. Almost every item in the room was in the wrong place, and the mis-positioning of doors caused enormous trouble, with a too-fast flow of piercing northeast energy right across Sekhar’s old desk. No wonder he had been unhappy.

The main room was not quite a rectangle, having been designed with an extension to the southwest. This direction is associated with prosperity, but only if the proportions are correct, Wong explained to his assistant. In this case, the extension was too large in relation to the main room and would threaten the inhabitants with a desire to be over-active. Mr Sekhar had fought this by going to the opposite extreme and slowing down, which often happens, he said. The result would have been too great a flow of unresolved ch’i energy, leading to ill health.

Wong leaned out of the tall sash window and gave a yelp of triumph. ‘Waah!’

‘What is it?’ Joyce looked over from the table where she was looking at two charts Wong had produced-a lo shu chart based on Sooti Sekhar’s date of birth and another for the construction date of the building.

‘Water pipes. Some big water pipes from the building. They pass just outside here. On the southwest. One of the worst places to have water. Water is good. But in the southwest lives the soil ch’i energy. Destroys the water benefits. Very bad design.’

Wong looked back over his shoulder and grinned, unable to hide his delight at having found a major hidden fault so quickly. The geomancer returned to the table and busied himself with his diagrams again.

The bored young woman picked up a yellowing copy of The Hindustan Times and spent some time reading the matrimonial advertisements. After a few minutes, her mouth dropped open. ‘Just look at these. “Wanted, beautiful fair-skinned bride. Under twenty-five.” “Wanted, Sikh engineer or doctor boy under thirty.” These have got to be illegal. They just have to be.’

She flipped through the classifieds. They fascinated her, and she sat down, studying them for the next ten minutes. ‘This has got to be the most sexist, ageist, racist place in the world. All the marriage ads say the girl must be fair-skinned and beautiful, and all the job ads say applicants must be under thirty or under thirty-five. It’s amazing. You have to be young and light-skinned to get anywhere in India. I could probably earn more than you can here.’

Two hours later, they broke for lunch with Ravi Kanagaratnum and with Sooti Sekhar’s replacement, a Sikh named Jagdish who had learned Putonghua after four years in the company’s Beijing office. Wong said he wanted to visit Deshpande’s and have a brief talk with Sekhar’s widow.

‘Oh, you don’t need to do that,’ said Ravi. ‘We just want you to get the room straight so Jagdish can deal with the Chinese clients there. Look ahead, look forwards, there is no need to be looking backwards.’

‘It is difficult to fix the problem if I do not know the full problem,’ said Wong. ‘Must be serious problem. This man dies at age only forty-two.’

‘I am just thinking there will not be enough time. The engineering department will arrive at nine o’clock tomorrow morning to do those two rooms, and all the plans will have to be ready by then,’ said Ravi.

Jagdish cut in. ‘Why so little time? Why not postpone internal engineering for a few days so that these people can do a good job? I don’t want to die at the age of forty-two. That’s only four years away. I have yet to father a son. I better get cracking. Are you free, Ms McQuinnie?’ he asked, with a cheeky laugh.

‘Ha. If you help me buy a sari, I will refuse you nothing,’ she replied. Then she blushed, wondering if what she had said was too flirtatious. She looked down and studied her hands.

‘Engineering is only free for two days and then they have some big assignments,’ Ravi said to his colleague. ‘Besides, I want to get this business over with and move on. Far East business is terrible. We need to give it a buck up.’

The Sikh appeared unconvinced. ‘He died very young. I think if Mr Wong thinks that seeing Sooti’s wife would help tie up the loose ends, we should get him to see her.’

The external relations manager slowly unwrapped a sweetmeat from its leaf wrapping and popped it into his mouth before replying: ‘Very well. I’m not stubborn. I could arrange to have her brought to my office and you could come and ask her questions. I wouldn’t mind asking her a few question myself.’

‘I want to be on her alone,’ said Wong.

Ravi ’s eyebrows rose.

Joyce quickly interpreted: ‘He means he wants like a one-on-one interview with her.’

‘I’m afraid that really is impossible,’ said Ravi. ‘This is India. A man cannot see a young widow alone. It is not seemly. No, it would have to be in my office.’

‘No problem,’ said Joyce. ‘I’ll go and see her by myself. Two women talking is okay, isn’t it? Ms Dev said it was near the old market. I wanna go down there anyway, do some shopping.’

Ravi smiled. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘It’s not very far. You can take a company taxi or you can even wark.’

Joyce nodded her head diagonally. ‘I’ll wark, I mean walk, thank you.’

After lunch, Joyce took a long, lazy meander through the marketplace to the offices of Deshpande Handbag Manufactory Company, stopping regularly to take photographs. The midday heat made her dizzy and she stopped to buy a fresh king coconut from a street vendor. It was like drinking liquid energy. She found Delhi, like Hong Kong and Singapore, was a buzzy place, full of people hurrying and scurrying on their missions. Yet there was also something spiritual about it. People often had their hands together as if praying, and there were gods and shrines and holy pictures everywhere, sometimes interspersed with pictures of the Spice Girls and Elvis.

The young woman initially had some difficulty entering the garment firm’s offices, but a phone call to Ravi helped sort out the problem-the Associated Foods executive had a cousin on the board of Deshpande’s. Access was quickly arranged.

The handbag factory was noisy, dark and chaotic. Joyce McQuinnie soon found herself in a small room, loaned by a junior manager, talking to Mrs Kumari Sekhar, an attractive 29-year-old woman who looked too young to have children of eleven and twelve. The young Westerner was fascinated by the Indian woman’s large, dark-rimmed eyes and wondered whether it would be unprofessional to ask what sort of eyeliner she used.

Better stick to business. Feeling very adult, she explained to the young mother that she was working for her late husband’s company’s Far Eastern shareholders, and just wanted to see if there was anything she wanted to talk about, anything to clear up.

‘You mean like returning of office properties?’ the woman asked in a strong Delhi accent. ‘He never took anything home, only paper clips, occasionally he would be having a pen with the company name, only like that. You can come and see in my home. There’s nut-thing.’

‘No, no, I am not like being the big nasty corporate big brother or anything, no way. We’re just like, really sorry he died and stuff. I just wanted to know if anything was wrong, whether he had any like, problems or anything?’

‘Oh, I see,’ said the widow. She thought for a while, and then leaned forwards, not conspiratorially, but as an apparent gesture of trust. ‘Nut-thing. He had a bad cold one time last year, couldn’t shake it, and sometimes a bad stomach, but basically he was so healthy. Used to boast that he never went to a doctor. Never took a pill. No, he was healthy in body. When he started to go downhill, my brother-he’s a doctor-checked him out and just told Sooti to take more exercise, go to his bar a bit less. You know he liked to go out with his friends before coming home.’

Joyce unwisely took a generous sip of the tumbler-full of unidentifiable yellow-pink liquid which had been placed in front of her. She grimaced and nearly spat it out when she found it was lukewarm milky tea containing at least three spoonfuls of sugar. She tried to turn her scowl into a smile.

‘He went out boozing and stuff lots?’

‘Oh no, I am not meaning he was a drunkard or anything like that. His father was a Muslim. Sooti used to be a teetotaller too. Then, maybe a year ago, he started to have one glass of wine or a Kingfisher with his meal. Maybe he would have two Kingfishers, or maybe three if it was a long evening. But still moderate. He was never drunk. Never in his life was he drunk.’

‘Did he stay out late very often?’

‘Never. Usually came home about 8.30 or nine, not late.’

‘Did he gamble?’

‘Never.’

‘Borrow money?’

‘No.’

‘He sounds a cool dude.’

‘Kul-doot?’

‘I mean, like a good husband.’

‘He was. Very very good man.’

‘It must have been awful for you. Him being so young. How are you like, you know, getting on?’

‘Oh, it was a shock all right, but I am over it now. Nearly four months ago he died. We did the mourning properly.’

‘What about, er, money and stuff? You have two kids, right?’

‘Yes, certainly, the loss of income was a worry at first. But we saved a lot of money and Sooti had two life insurance policies. We do not need to worry. We have a house. My parents are still alive and live nearby.’

‘That’s really neat. The insurance companies have already paid up?’

‘One has paid, the other has agreed to shortly. Because he was so young…’ She paused, apparently rather uncomfortable about something.

Joyce gave her a look which she hoped was a mixture of friendliness and concern.

The widow continued: ‘I do not like to tell everyone this, but you are from his boss, who already knows this. Because Sooti was quite young, only forty-two, the pay-outs are actually quite large. We are very fortunate that he took such policies out. I do not really have to continue working. In fact I have handed in my resignation and am leaving at the end of the month.’

‘That was lucky,’ said Joyce.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The gods have been very kind.’

‘Yeah, cool. Like, er, did you take out this insurance a long time ago?’

‘Quite a long time. A year, maybe two years ago. Not me. I don’t know much about all that. Sooti handled it all, but left the policies in my father’s strongbox for me to get if anything happened to him.’

‘Great,’ said Joyce. ‘I’m really glad to hear that you and the kids will be okay. Do you mind if I just ask you a question about your eyeliner?’

Late that afternoon, Ravi, who was clearly taking his role as genial host seriously, asked the visitors if they wanted to eat out or be entertained in some way. ‘Or would you like to go home? I understand you are staying at Mrs Daswani’s place in UP. I can arrange a car to take you back there. Any jet lag to sleep off?’

Wong said: ‘We like to have dinner at a club. The club where Mr Sekhar used to go to after work.’

Joyce added: ‘Yeah, you see we’re having some trouble visualising what went wrong in that room.’

‘Fine,’ said Ravi, waving to a small man with a large head. ‘Peon!’

A noisy taxi ride in a tiny, cramped old car, grossly mis-named an Ambassador (anything less ambassadorial would be hard to imagine) took them first to Janpath, a main road in the centre of New Delhi. From there, they turned eastwards onto a road crowded with cars and bicycles, and drove over an old bridge into a more suburban area. ‘They really do use their horns instead of their brakes,’ commented Joyce, watching in horror as their vehicle simply pushed carts, bicycles and pedestrians out of the way.

After twenty minutes driving, they entered an area of high-class suburbs. The roads were still wide, but the press of population was much less. With its grand avenues and tree-lined streets, the young woman decided New Delhi was interestingly different from the old city, at the same time more stately but less charming.

Then the roads suddenly became narrow and the houses less prepossessing. The small car took them to the Go Go Club, in a dingy, ramshackle street on the northern outskirts of New Delhi.

Despite its name, the Go Go Club was a rather Spartan basement canteen. The inmates, clusters of middle-aged men energetically shovelling rice into their mouths, seemed content enough, judging by the loud and animated conversations in which they were engaged. They stopped talking for a minute to examine the foreign visitors, but the noise quickly returned to its former level.

The magnolia paint on the walls was peeling slightly, but the orange-hued light fixtures gave the restaurant a warm appearance, and the smell of hot, spicy food was undeniably enticing, particularly for Wong, who had a taste for any food which bit back.

Ravi ordered, and the two visitors were quickly presented with a huge selection of dishes. There was no meat, because Ravi was a vegetarian, and the potato curry was a more fluo-rescent yellow than anything Joyce had eaten before. But the food was delicious. Joyce took tiny bites, and drank six glasses of water. While eating, they chatted with club manager Anish Butt about Mr Sekhar’s visits.

Butt, a scrawny man of about seventy with a neck wrinkled like a turkey’s, champed his nearly toothless gums and spoke at length about The Deceased, whom he had known, he said, for at least twenty years.

‘Oh yes, indeed, The Deceased’s father used to come in here and Sooti came as a boy. Then he got the job with Associated and he came on his own steam. Three, four times a week, and then the last year he used to come almost every day, on his way back from work.’

‘Was there any change?’ asked Wong. ‘Did he drink more?’

‘When he was younger, he never drank. He was a Muslim, but not religious. Then he started drinking a little bit, but not a problem. Couple of Kingfishers, that’s all.’

Joyce asked: ‘Did he come with the same people all the time?’

‘Mostly alone. Sometimes with Mr Kanagaratnum,’ he said, pointing at Ravi. ‘You become good friends, no?’

‘To some extent,’ said Ravi. ‘He was a difficult man to get to know. Not much of a talker. Once a week or so I would join him here. He never spoke of any health problems. I’m still stunned that he is dead.’

The club manager went to tend to other customers, and the three diners spent the rest of the meal talking about the relationship between the Indian firm and the Far East ones, the standard corporate chit-chat of business travellers. Joyce gave Ravi a piece of paper on which was written the name of a cosmetics company. ‘Do you know where I could get stuff from this company? They make like, totally fab eyeliner.’

Ravi was a great eater. He consumed everything that was left on the trays when Wong and McQuinnie were finished, polished off a fifth beer, patted his rice-belly and then took the young woman on a tour of the club’s facilities, which included a library and a gymnasium that was so under-used that several of the machines had never been plugged in.

Wong told them that he would wait for them in the canteen.

While he was putting on his suit-coat, he chatted briefly with the club’s oldest waiter, who had a walrus moustache that would have better suited a British major-general.

‘Please, what do you remember about Mr Sekhar’s visits?’

‘His favourite for years used to be aloo makhani and chicken korma,’ said the old man, his voice slightly muffled by the weight of hair on his upper lip and lack of teeth. ‘Lately he got this taste for vindaloos, double vindaloos and palis even. He quickly became hot-stuff king, and used to challenge the chef to make something too hot for him to eat.’

‘Did he eat alone? Or with friends?’

‘Sometimes alone, sometimes with friends. Sometimes Mr Kanagaratnum, Mr Jagdish, Mr Govind, or someone else from the company. No one could eat the killer chilli like Mr Sekhar, though. Our food is quite hot.’

‘Is,’ Wong said. He had lost all sensation in his tongue, although he considered himself an experienced eater of spicy food. ‘He drink much beer?’

‘No. Always two Kingfishers, three on special occasions.’

‘Did he ever talk to you about any problem?’

‘Business was not so good. He used to sometimes come alone and bring business papers, all numbers, and he would do sums while he ate. Once I saw him by himself and he seemed to be crying into his bhaji. He never talked to me about his problems, though.’

‘Thank you,’ said Wong as his companions returned.

That night, Wong worked in his room at Rose House until midnight. He then slept until about five o’clock when he had to rise and go to the toilet rather urgently. He stayed in the bathroom for a long while. Fortunately, he did not feel particularly ill. He suspected that the food he had eaten had not been bad, but was eliciting complaints from his stomach because of its unfamiliarity.

Dawn came slowly. Over an uneaten breakfast, Joyce was unusually silent, and was later induced to admit that she had had similar problems with her digestion.

Their host, Mrs Daswani, laughed. ‘I’m sorry, but our bacteria here in India are quite unique. It always takes visitors a few days to get used to it. Some tourists swear by a slug of whisky every night. Kills all known germs. You’ll be fine in a few hours.’

Both the visitors slumped silently in the car as they were driven to the centre of town. They were back at the Associated Food and Beverages Delhi Manufactory Old Building at 9.30 a.m., and Ravi led them to the Far East department, which they knew they would never have re-found without him. The internal engineering department’s team was standing at attention, waiting for the plans. The two visitors spent the next hour giving detailed instructions to the foreman and his staff.

Wong and McQuinnie then moved to a spare office, near Kanagaratnum’s. The young woman grabbed a phone and started dialling. ‘My uncle’s a journalist,’ she said. ‘I worked in his office for a summer job last year. I’m going to do a bit of what he calls “working the phones”.’

She spent the next half-hour on the phone, being transferred from person to person, until she found what she was looking for: an expert in pathology and poisons at a medical school attached to the university. She had a theory she wanted to check out.

Not for the first time, Wong marvelled at the ability of a Western female to command Asian males to do her bidding. Without any indication of her authority other than her bossy phone manner, Joyce soon had the man obediently answering a lengthy list of questions, which she shouted down the phone, since the line was poor.

‘Dr Prasad, are there poisons which are like, really really slow-working and which would like, not be detected in an autopsy?’

Wong picked up the extension handset to listen to the man’s answer. ‘That is a very hard question, since it all depends on your understanding of what a poison is,’ said the voice on a crackly line. ‘The word usually conjures up images of strychnine, or arsenic, or some forms of mercury perhaps. These quickly and obviously do great damage. But consider alcohol. This is also a lethal poison, but taken in small quantities over a long time, it is not lethal, and some doctors-I am not among them-say it may even do some good. If you drank a bottle of detergent, it would make you very sick. Yet every night, we all consume tiny amounts of detergent left as residue on the cups and plates we use. You see, Ms McQuinnine, almost anything can be a poison if you take an inappropriate quantity of it over an inappropriate period, you see what I am saying?’

‘Yeah. I see. It’s McQuinnie, not McQuinnine. But is there any… I mean, like, is there a poison that you could use, and doctors doing an autopsy would just be like, “Oh, it’s natural causes or a heart attack”?’

‘There are many substances which can be introduced at low levels and could eventually lead to death. Most, I am glad to say, are detectable, particularly if the autopsy is done promptly, not more than a couple of days after death.’

‘Okay, thanks Dr Presshard.’

‘Prasad. It’s Prasad.’

During the lunch break, Wong and McQuinnie ate with Mardiyah Dev (at least, Ms Dev ate, while the two visitors pushed food around their plates and took tiny sips of bottled water). The Malaysian woman added little that she had not already told them the previous day. She said she believed Sooti Sekhar’s autopsy had been performed promptly, the morning following his death late one afternoon. ‘There were no suspicious circumstances,’ she said.

The assignment seemed to be over, the geomancer thought. The rooms had been done, and Sooti Sekhar had been confirmed by all routes of inquiry as a victim of death by natural causes. But Joyce’s doggedness had inspired him. Perhaps it would be worth making one final call. They should speak to the man who did the autopsy, he decided.

That afternoon, Wong phoned Dr Ran, brother-in-law of the dead man. The geomancer also had to shout into the phone. ‘Hello? Is it Dr Ran? What? Yes? I am Mr Wong from East Trade Industries. I am working today at Associated Food and Beverages. No, no, I am not selling anything. I am a feng shui master. I want to ask you about Mr Sekhar. What? No, I do not want to come to your surgery. Sick? I am not sick. What? You ask what? Who is sicker? No, not sicker. I am not saying sicker. I am saying Sekhar. Your brother-in-law is sicker. I mean Sekhar. Yes, yes, I know he is dead.’

Joyce gently picked up the extension. She waved to him to signify that she would do the talking.

‘Hi, Dr Ran, this is Jo McQuinnie, I’m like Mr Wong’s assistant. We are doing like a report at Associated on the death of your brother-in-law, and just, er, want to double-check a few things, if you’ve got a couple of minutes.’

‘Very well.’ The voice was low and measured.

‘Like, er, okay, so what happened?’

‘Well, Miss er…’

‘McQuinnie.’

‘Ms McQuinnie. I think you will find that I have supplied my findings to the company already.’

‘Would you mind just repeating them? Think of us as, like, fact-checkers.’

‘Very well. My brother-in-law had a ventrical infarction, a cardiac arrest. He had become overweight. He was swallowing a lot of digestion tablets in those last months. Fundamentally, I think, it was stress, physical and mental. Simple as that. Now I am really rather busy, so if you would excuse me, I am in the middle of an examination.’

By the end of that afternoon, the rooms were already becoming brighter and more appealing, although one side of the room, where the door was being moved, was a mess of bricks and mortar. Still, the operation was progressing at speed, and Wong thought the job would be complete with relatively few feng shui formalities (a sprinkling of sea salt for example) and a careful final inspection tomorrow.

By eight o’clock that evening, after the usual harrowing taxi ride through permanently honking traffic which seemed to continuously switch lanes for no reason and with no warning, the visitors got back gratefully to the coolness of Mrs Daswani’s home in Uttar Pradesh. They sat in wicker chairs on her verandah and sipped fresh mango lassi with a piece of lime floating on the top. The Indian suburban mansion seemed like paradise after a day in the heart of town.

‘You look relaxed, Mr Wong,’ said Mrs Daswani. ‘So have you fixed the rooms at Associated?’

He nodded. ‘I think so. It was a big job. So much out of place. But I think we have finished.’

‘It was a horrible pair of rooms,’ said Joyce. ‘Business-people often think big rooms are better, but they can be worse if they are badly laid out. This was dark and like, all out of shape.’

Mrs Daswani smiled. ‘But what I want to know is, did it really cause harm to the young man who died? Forgive me for being skeptical, but it still baffles me that inartistically planned furniture can kill a healthy young man.’

Joyce looked at Wong for an answer.

‘The feng shui in the room did not kill him. Not directly,’ the geomancer said. ‘It had an effect. It had a big effect. But it was not the number-one reason.’

‘So what did kill him?’

‘I can tell you. But in confidence only. You must not tell the company.’

‘Very well,’ said their hostess, sitting up, suddenly interested. ‘What was it?’

‘Suicide,’ said Wong.

‘It was?’ asked Joyce, surprised.

‘Do tell,’ said Mrs Daswani.

‘He had a problem. He was very good sales analyst.’

‘That’s a problem?’ asked the young woman.

‘Can be,’ said the geomancer. ‘It is like this. He was ambitious man. Star pupil. Keeps going up the ladder. Up and up and up. Boss loves him. Then he gets stuck as head of animal products sales. Can’t go up any more. Then, I think, he looks at two things. One is the business trend for his division. Far East business in ivory, tiger medicines, deer antlers, all that, is going down. He has chosen wrong specialisation. His department shrinking. He realises his work will one day disappear.’

Wong sipped his drink. ‘Number two. I think, maybe, he looks around at the other old men in his office and in his club. Sad, fat businessmen. Unemployed or underemployed. Both are bad. He did not want to be like them, but cannot not see any way to escape. Very hard to find a new job or change job after age forty in India. Almost impossible.’

‘That’s true if you believe the newspaper ads,’ said Joyce.

‘So he takes out life insurance policies. Big ones. So his wife and children get everything they need all their lives. Then he commits suicide.’

Joyce looked puzzled. ‘But how was it suicide? Everyone said it was natural causes. Some kinda poison, like I suggested?’

‘No. He committed suicide very slowly. He was an eater of kormas. Korma is number-one mild curry. He had ulcer in his stomach. But he made himself to eat vindaloos. He ate extra chilli. Then he had double vindaloos and palis. Hottest curries. He told the chef to make him spiciest food they could. Gave him great pain. Much bottom gas. When his stomach hurt, he ate many indigestion tablets.’

‘That killed him?’

‘I think so.’

Mrs Daswani was surprised. ‘But how do you know all this?’

‘I don’t know,’ said the geomancer. ‘I only guess. He liked mild curries. But he eats hot ones. He has stomach ulcer. But he eats chilli sauce. He is a teetotaller. But he makes himself drink beer every day. He loves sports. But he stops doing them. He hates pills. But starts swallowing indigestion tablets. So many changes in his life this year. So sudden. Add up. Must be deliberate.’

‘Gosh. He vindalooed himself to death,’ said Joyce. ‘Now that is truly weird.’

‘Do you think Dr Ran knew about this?’ Mrs Daswani asked.

‘Maybe,’ said the geomancer. ‘Or not. But Dr Ran is brother of Sekhar’s wife. He also wants family to be happy.’

There was no sound for a minute except the loud, cyclic chirp of cicadas from the garden.

‘What a way to go,’ said the young woman. ‘But it makes sense. No one noticed a thing. I mean, what could be strange about an old Indian guy sitting in a Delhi club eating a curry?’

Mrs Daswani raised her eyebrows. ‘So, C F. Are you going to report that it was suicide, and save the insurance company a fortune?’

‘Take money from children? After he went to such trouble? Certainly not,’ said Wong. ‘Death was natural causes. This is what the doctor says. I am not a doctor. Only feng shui man.’

His hostess laughed.

Wong added: ‘Besides, there are many people slowly murdering themselves with hot curry. I think even I am one.’

The servant boy appeared and struck a gong to signify that dinner was ready. ‘Just wait till you see what we have for you tonight,’ said Mrs Daswani. ‘This will kill you.’