Nury Vittachi - The Feng Shui Detective

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He paused, dramatically. ‘… dead!’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘I did.’

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

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

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