Nury Vittachi: The Feng Shui Detective

‘Yeah, that’s right. Ow! Sorry. Just got a huge splinter. Look, move it to the right a bit. Yeah. Okay.’

With remarkable agility she dropped through the small hole on to the table-which promptly collapsed, sending her crashing to the floor.

‘Shoot,’ she said. ‘Right on my bottom. Oww. Jeez.’

‘Hurt or not?’

She winced, rubbed her lower back and rose slowly. ‘No no, I’m fine, only my pride et cetera.’

Wong’s eyes darted nervously to the small window. It would be disastrous if any of the brothers thought he had deliberately smuggled this young woman into the premises. Her femaleness would taint the atmosphere. They may all have to flee. Worse still, she was in his bedroom and night had fallen. He would be assumed to have improper motives. If this got out, he may not receive his annual bonus from East Trade. Thankfully the curtain was drawn, and the night seemed to be as quiet as before.

Then there was sharp knock on the door. He took in his breath sharply.

‘Ye-es?’ Wong asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

‘Are you all right?’ It was the gruff voice of Brother Wasuran. ‘I heard a noise. Did you fall?’

Wong gestured frantically at Joyce to hide under the bed. But she leapt onto the chair. The geomancer’s eyes popped. What was she doing? Was she going to climb back up? Then he realised that she was carefully sliding the plank back into place. This achieved, she hopped off the chair, placed it to one side, and rolled under the bed.

‘Fine, fine. Everything okay. Only table broken. No problem please.’

‘Oh, let me fix. I am coming in, please.’

The door had no lock, so Wong had no choice. Checking that his assistant was not visible, he opened the door and Brother Wasuran pushed his way in.

‘Oh, the table has broken, very sorry,’ the monk grated.

‘No, I am sorry,’ said Wong. ‘My arms are heavy. Maybe I am pressing on it too hard.’

Brother Wasuran looked with puzzlement at the geomancer’s skeletal limbs. ‘No matter. I’ll bring you a new one. Very sorry. Very bad.’

Wong held his breath until the fat man had left the room. A full five minutes passed before the monk returned with a new table. During this time, Joyce slid her head out to get some air, disappearing again when Brother Wasuran was heard waddling down the wooden aisles of the sleeping block. Then the monk stayed and chatted for another three or four minutes before bidding goodnight. When the door was shut, Wong enjoyed half a minute’s perfect peace, and then heard Joyce extricating herself from her hiding place.

‘Phew. Dusty under there. I was worried I was gonna sneeze. That would have dropped you in it. Teenage bimbo under bed. In a monkey-house too. What a laff!’

‘Not funny,’ said Wong in a stern whisper. ‘Please to keep voice quiet. Why you here? You should go. Should not be here. No women allowed. Is a rule.’

‘Hey, cool it, boss man. You should be thanking me. I just solved the mystery. Don’t you wanna know how I got here?’

There was only one chair, so Joyce steered her boss into it and stood next to him, pointing out her discoveries on his map.

‘Look. See this part here? I spent hours looking for an opening in the wall. It’s plaster at the front, but just fencing on this side and at the back. I prodded every plank, every fence post, all the brick bits, and there wasn’t any section that like, opened up. But then I noticed that some of the bricks were sort of depressed into the wall, round the back, do you know what I mean? Just enough room for someone’s toes. So I tried climbing up. There were more little holes in the bricks above-designed just right for someone climbing up.’

‘This is dangerous. Anyone see you?’

‘Naah, I was really careful. Bin was look-out. He turned out to be a real okay kid. Anyway, this was at the back, where there isn’t much traffic. It was getting dark. So I nipped up. About 10 feet up, the brick wall becomes a wooden fence. I just pressed the fence and it swung open. It was a secret opening. Totally cool. And I’d found it by myself just like that.’

‘Please to keep your voice quiet.’

‘Yeah, yeah, I’ll be quiet, sorry. Anyway, listen. This is interesting. The fence bit opens up on top of the inner building here in the courtyard. What is this, some sort of garage?’

Wong looked at the shaded area on the map. ‘That is eastern altar. Smaller gold Buddha in there.’

‘Yeah, right. Anyway, I stayed quietly on the roof for a while. The building doesn’t connect with any other building, so I didn’t know what to do. It was kind of fun being on the inside of the temple without anyone knowing, so I just stayed where I was, lay down on my tummy and watched you all. Some of the younger ones are real hunks. I don’t suppose you can introduce me to the tall one…? No, okay, okay. I watched you going into your room. It was really funny.’

‘You could get us into big trouble. You should not do this.’

‘Oh, stop being so cross. This is a big discovery, I’m telling you. You see, I realised how people broke in and out and smuggled things. Several of the branches from the big tree come across to the roof of the place where I was. When it got a bit darker I climbed into the tree-now that was tricky. It’s probably been like, donkey’s years since I climbed a tree. Anyway, I shuffled along the branch-what are you looking so shocked about?’

‘This is not just a tree. This is the bo tree, grown from the bo tree where the Buddha got, er, got, er.’

‘Enlightenment.’

‘Yes, got enlightenment. You should not climb on it.’

‘Whatever. My skills as Catwoman are not being appreciated here. Just listen, can’t you? I didn’t hurt the tree. I’m a nature lover. I weigh 54 kilos. Anyway, the branches led to the roof section of this bit. The roof here is sloped, but you can get into a sort of atticky section and then slide along. Since I saw you were in the first room, it wasn’t difficult to crawl through the roof space and find you. The last bit of the journey was pretty scary-real Indiana Jones stuff-since most of it was in like, semi-darkness. But then, all the way along, I had this feeling that it was well-organised. You know, someone had taken this route many times, so I knew that there would always be a way forwards and I wouldn’t get stuck. I was just worried that someone from one of the other rooms would hear me. Also I lost my earring somewhere. My Buddha hologram thing. Cost ten pounds. I hope I can find it in the morning.’

‘I heard you. I thought you were a rat.’

‘Yeucch. There are rats here?’

‘Yes, the buildings have many rats. Brother Wasuran told me.’

‘Jeez, I’m glad I didn’t know that when I was up there.’

Silence fell. It wasn’t difficult to detect a scampering noise, as what sounded like a whole family of rats stampeded through the roof space above their heads in the direction of the room next to them.

‘Better you go now.’

‘Aren’t you going to thank me for making a great discovery, solving this mystery for you?’

‘Thank you. We will tell Master Tran in the morning. Now you go.’

Another rat passed over their heads.

The young woman shivered. ‘Eeee. I’m not going back up there if it’s full of rats. Besides, it’s seriously dark now. All the lights are off and stuff. I’m staying.’

‘But where you sleep?’

‘I’m an innocent young maiden. I need my beauty sleep. I’m going to sleep in that bed. I think the question is, where are you going to sleep?’

The night was passed in a state of great discomfort. At first, Wong was too furious to sleep. After a couple of hours, he became drowsy and tossed and turned on a blanket on the floor. He was reminded of his teenage years, sleeping on the floorboards of his uncle’s spice shop in Guangzhou. As the night wore on, his hips became increasingly sore and bruised. Joyce, relatively comfortable on top of his bed, had had several beers with Bin, and snored happily. The rats spent the night thundering from one end of the block to the other, apparently having an organised race meet. Wong eventually fell into a troubled sleep, full of strange images from his life.