Nury Vittachi - The Feng Shui Detective

‘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?’