The Feng Shui Detective Goes South (19 page)

‘No. What do you think of my hair I am asking,’ she snapped in a low alto.

‘Ah, very nice, Mrs Mirpuri,’ said Wong. ‘Very . . . black.’

‘Thank you,’ said Mrs Mirpuri. ‘Now what were you saying about Danita? Have you found her? Is she with that awful policeman?’

‘I don’t know,’ the geomancer replied. ‘But I think she is
really
kidnap. Not run away.’

Mrs Mirpuri looked momentarily discomfited by this news.

But the expression on her face was more one of irritation than distress. ‘Really kidnapped? You think so?’

‘Yes. Not run away.’

The woman looked into the middle distance. She appeared to be attempting to come to terms with this idea. She turned to Wong. ‘I don’t know which is worse. To run away with unsuitable boy. Or to be really kidnapped. Both are equal bad news, no?’

Joyce was annoyed. ‘Of course it’s worse to be kidnapped. I mean, they may hurt her or something.’

‘Who is this person?’ Mrs Mirpuri asked Wong.

‘My assistant. Ms McQuinnie.’

‘It’s different in our culture,’ the Indian woman explained to the teenager. ‘In your tradition you girls just go with anyone you like and then switch every day. In our tradition we have this thing called marriage. We take relationships seriously.

Much better.’

‘We have marriage too,’ snapped Joyce. ‘We invented marriage.’

‘No, you did not,’ snarled Mrs Mirpuri. ‘That’s ridiculous.

We invented marriage.’

‘Rubbish,’ said Joyce.

‘You invented divorce,’ Mrs Mirpuri barked at Joyce.

The feng shui master held up his hands. ‘Please. Must hurry.’

‘Mr Wong, tell your assistant that we invented marriage.

Westerners hardly ever do it even now. Look at Madonna.’

‘She’s married,’ said Joyce.

‘Of course she isn’t—’ ‘Truly, I don’t know about any Donna,’ said Wong. ‘I do research first. Provide written answer at later date, is it okay?’

He started marching at a brisk pace along the road, pulling the older woman by the arm. ‘We go to find your daughter. On the way, please to tell me about policeman boyfriend and other boyfriends.’

‘Okay,’ said Mrs Mirpuri. But I warn you, Mr Wong. It’s a rather bizarre story, truth be told.’

Mrs Mirpuri repeated much of the story that Joyce had told Wong, about a wayward daughter who had been playing different boyfriends off against each other—and then, as the anger and passion and jealousy had mounted, had suddenly disappeared.

‘We told her to choose one. We thought we liked the crazy rich one better, but then heard that the police officer had reasonable prospects. The stockbroker was useless—he was unemployed, and a bit of a conman, as all stockbrokers are. Anyway, I had this note on Monday morning from the kidnapper, and then a call yesterday morning. He said he had Danita and wanted money so they could run away and get married. He sounded crazy. I asked to speak to her, but he said that was not possible. I began to think that maybe this wasn’t some silly lovers’ thing, but something serious. So I phoned you.’

‘But you didn’t want us to come yesterday. Why is it?’

‘Yes. There were a couple of reasons for that. First, I thought I would leave it one more day, just to see if it all resolved itself. You never know with Danita. She’s a silly girl. Second, I had a lot of things planned yesterday. I was scheduled to help my sister choose a trousseau for her daughter. This is a big event in Indian society. I couldn’t just cancel that.’

‘And this morning? Why did you go and get your hair cut?’ asked Wong.

‘I was thinking, if this is a real kidnap, then I shall surely end up on television and in the
Straits Times.
And Mr Wong, I know this is not important for a man like you, but it is vital for a woman—your assistant might understand, although it is probably not the same for Westerners—but it is particularly true of a woman of a certain age, such as me—that she looks her best. I have not had my hair done for several weeks—’ ‘Was it the policeman’s voice on the phone? Or the rich kid?

Or the stockbroker?’

Mrs Mirpuri’s brows knitted. ‘Not exactly. It was a distorted voice. It sounded like a robot. He was speaking through some machine to change the tone of it. But I am assuming it was the policeman. He was always into drama, so he would have been the one to set up something like this.’

She reached into her handbag. ‘I’ve been very efficient. I knew you would ask me about her boyfriends, so I have brought photographs of them all.’

‘Let me see,’ said Joyce.

‘This is Ram Chulini, the rich kid. See that funny look in his eyes? A bit odd. And this is Mak Kin-Lei. Everybody calls him Kinny. He’s the police officer. And this one, Winterbottom, is the stockbroker. He’s tall, quite good-looking.’

‘I bet I can sort this out,’ said Joyce. ‘The first one’s a dog. Forget him. I’ve met him. I went to a party with Danita and him ages ago. Maybe two weeks. Didn’t rate him. This guy, Kinny, is all right. I’d give him a seven. I think I’ve seen him down at Dan T’s. I’m not sure. But this guy Charles—he’s got weird eyes. And no chin. Only a five, or maybe less. I’d go for Kinny Mak. He’d make a good son-in-law.’

‘You think so?’ Mrs Mirpuri looked at Joyce, evidently trying to decide whether her opinion was worth anything.

‘Sure. Not that I’m an expert on guys. But my sister is. If she were here, she could just look at those pictures and instantly tell you all about these guys, what their strange habits are, what’s good or bad about them, all that kind of thing. She’s really amazing.’

Suddenly, the feng shui master came to a halt at a junction. ‘Your daughter is close here, I think. On this road. Joyce, I want you to go to that shop, pretend to buy something, have a look round. See if you can see one of the boyfriend. Mrs Mirpuri please wait. She will come back here after one-two minutes. Or maybe not.’

Joyce refused to move. ‘How do you know we’re in the right place? Did you break the code? What did the message say?’

‘No time for that now.’

‘I’m not moving until you tell me.’

Employer and employee stared at each other.

‘Okay, okay, I show you,’ said the feng shui master, backing down. ‘But I think you should hurry.’

He carefully got out the note, which was folded in his pocket—and also the envelope in which it came, which he had found under Winnie’s desk.

‘Here is message.’

Joyce stared hard at it, giving it one more chance to give up its secret.

Mrs Mirpuri reached into her bag and got out her reading glasses.

Jr;[@@@@ O

Br nrrm lofms[[rf/ O

, om s fstl tpp, om s nio;fomh eoy j
{ptyihirdr=dyu;e

g;ppts yjtrr pt gpit ,omiyrd gtp, Jplorn Dytrry/
Gomf ,r/ Ithrmy@@@ Fsmo/

‘Is not an alphabet code,’ said Wong. ‘Is not a code at all.’

‘What is it, then?’ asked Joyce.

The feng shui man smiled. ‘Is bad typing.’

‘What?’ This was Joyce. ‘What do you mean bad typing? It must be really bad typing—I mean, if you can’t even read a single word of it.’

Wong pointed to the first word. ‘If you type a letter but your fingers are on wrong buttons—one button too far right—then this is what happen. You want to press ‘h’ but you get the next letter, is ‘j’. You want to press ‘e’, but you get next letter, which is ‘r’. You want to press ‘1’, but you get next letter, which is ‘dot-and-comma.’ And so forth and so fifth.’

Joyce nodded slowly. ‘I get it. Someone typed it with their fingers in the wrong place on the keyboard.’

‘Correct,’ said Wong.

‘But how did she end up with her fingers in the wrong place?’

‘Is old typewriter. She is typing in the dark. Maybe some keys on edge are missing.’

‘I don’t follow any of this,’ said Mrs Mirpuri.

‘Like we care,’ said Joyce under her breath. To Wong, she added: ‘We need a typewriter keyboard to work out what it means.’

‘Already done,’ said the feng shui master. On the lower part of the sheet, he had scrawled out in scratchy handwriting the letters adjacent to the letters printed. He showed the translation to Joyce.

Help!!!! I’ve been kidnapped. I’m in a dark room in a
building with Portuguese-style tile floors three or four
minutes from Hokkien Street. Find me. Urgent!!! Dani.

‘The instructions are a bit vague,’ said Joyce. ‘How do we know we are in the right place? “Dark room in a building with Portuguese-style tile floors”. Could be anywhere.’

‘She say “dark room”. But I think she mean “darkroom”. You know, photo-developing darkroom. In
any
room, there is a bit of light, you can see what you are typing. Even at night, with moonlight, you can type in the dark. But if she is in photo-developing darkroom, there is no light. No light at all.’

‘I thought there was a red light.’

He rolled his eyes. ‘In movies, there is red light. But in real darkroom, most of the time is just black. If you remove optional red light bulb, then is black all the time.’

‘So you reckon she’s in a photo studio, in a darkroom?’

‘Most photo shop today have modern machine. No darkroom. Only old-style photo studio have old-style dark -room. I check in Yellow Pages. I know this area a bit. Only a few shop like that. And only two shops in tile-floor building, I think,’ said Wong. ‘This one and one on that street.’ He pointed to a junction half a kilometre up the road on the other side.

Joyce was suddenly excited. ‘Yay! Let me do this, chief,’ she said. ‘After all, it’s my case. Let me go first. I’ve met some of the guys. I’ll be able to spot the perp.’

‘Perp?’

‘Perpetrator. Don’t you watch crime shows?’

‘Maybe dangerous,’ Mrs Mirpuri said.

‘Yes.’ Wong thought about this. Was the potential danger a good reason for him to go first or for him to let her go first? She was surely stronger and faster than he was. But then she was a female and a minor. What if she got shot or wounded or something? Maybe Mr Pun would deduct something from his retainer. Not worth risking. ‘Maybe we go together,’ he said eventually.

‘I bet I’ll be able to recognise the guy,’ she said.

The feng shui master and his assistant marched together into the shop. As they approached the counter, they saw the counter-staffer—a stocky, heavily obese man. He saw them and froze, his mouth dropping open.

‘It’s you!’ said Joyce, dramatically.

‘
Alamak!
’ the man said and spun round to race through the door into the back room.

‘Go out, call police,
fai-dee
,’ said Wong.

Joyce started digging in her pockets for what remained of the office mobile phone.

Wong disappeared through the door after the fat man.

There was the sound of a brief struggle—and the geomancer came hurtling back through the door. He fell heavily against the counter. ‘Aiyeeaah!’ he said.

They could hear the sound of his assailant panting and pushing aside boxes as he scrambled to escape through the rooms behind the shop.

‘You all right?’ asked Joyce, jumping nimbly over the counter to her boss’s side.

‘All right,’ said Wong, rubbing his upper arm. ‘Let him go.

Police will catch. Not our job. We go find girl.’

They went through the door into a suite of offices, untidy stockrooms and tiny portrait studio rooms, and eventually found an exit door that was still swinging. The shopkeeper had raced into a back yard and had disappeared from sight. Wong told Joyce that it was no use giving further chase.

So they searched the premises. The young woman soon found a locked darkroom, entered through the office by way of a blacked-out revolving door. Although the key was in the padlock, Wong waited for Joyce to search the premises and find a torch before they entered.

Inside they found a rather attractive young woman fast asleep on a bed she had fashioned out of dozens of packets of photographic paper. She had removed her sari to use as a sheet. There were boxes of chemicals, piles of old photographs and various other items of junk—including a battered old typewriter—in the corners of the room.

Wong clasped his hands together and looked smug.

‘Mystery solved,’ said Joyce, speaking in a whisper so as not to wake Dani. ‘She must have typed out the note in pitch darkness.’ There was McDonald’s fast food debris and two empty bottles of Diamond Black on the floor.

‘Who was it? The man?’ the feng shui master asked. ‘Which boyfriend?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘But when we enter the shop, you look at him and you say: “It’s you.”’

‘Yeah.’

‘So you know who it is?’

Joyce frowned. ‘Not really. It’s just—well, in movies and stuff, when they finally find the mystery bad guy, they always say, “It’s you.” So I did.’

The geomancer was confused. ‘Is it one of the people you see in the photographs?’

‘No. It’s nobody we know. It’s a stranger. Probably some other boyfriend that she never got around to telling anyone about. Someone who turned nasty and decided to really kidnap her. I haven’t the foggiest. Life is not a neat little TV mini-series, you know, CF.’

‘Oh.’

But despite her dismissive tone, Joyce felt oddly unsatisfied.

Surely there should be some universal law requiring the perp to be someone the investigators knew?