Nury Vittachi - The Feng Shui Detective

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.’