Nury Vittachi - The Feng Shui Detective

‘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 & 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 & 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.’