The Feng Shui Detective Goes South (35 page)

‘Aiyeeaah—too expensive. No.’ He flung her arm down in disgust. ‘Maybe better you fall off.’

Glad to be out of his grip, she shuffled closer to where Ismail and Madeleine were perched.

Alarmed, Wong lunged forwards and grabbed her arm again.

‘CF?’

‘Yes?’

‘I really, really want to stay out here and wait for Maddy to come in. Please?’

Wong was exasperated. ‘She will not come in. Already I tried.’

‘Well,
I
wanna try.’

‘Waste of—’ He was interrupted by Madeleine’s voice. ‘Joyce? You’re not with Jackie, are you?’

‘Of course I’m not.’

‘Did you find that girl you were looking for?’

‘Dani? Yeah. We rescued her. It was in the
Straits Times
on Thursday. They didn’t print my name. Her mum took all the credit, but—’

Now it was Amran Ismail’s turn to lose his temper.

‘You girls stop talking now,’ he shrieked. ‘Talk, talk, talk only. This is not the right time. Please go away you people. We don’t want you here. GO NOW.’ The last words were bellowed in apoplectic fury, his eyes bulging at Joyce.

The young woman folded her arms. ‘Whatever. I’ll stop talking,’ she said quietly. ‘But I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to wait for my friend. If she stays, I stay.’

Madeleine looked over to Joyce—and flashed a smile. She mouthed two words at her:
Thank you.

CF Wong didn’t know what to do next. So he waited.

The four of them sat on the roof of the Opera House, an odd quartet with nothing to say to each other.

Just hanging on took considerable effort. The wind buffeted them in short, unpredictable bursts with the force of flying fists. The gusts carried odd bursts of sound with them—people talking at ground level, the sound of police cars, the chug of passing boats, the yells of children and barking of dogs.

‘Aiyeeaah.’ The feng shui master made the mistake of looking down at the ground, a dizzying distance below. He was tingling from head to toe. His limbs appeared to have turned to stone yet at the same time his muscles were tensed, ready to spring to safety. There was a whiteness creeping through his mind as he looked down. His thoughts moved in slow motion. He was breathing in short, shallow gasps like a dog.

But as the minutes passed, he realised that the fear that was gripping him was gradually being shot through with strands of a completely different feeling—something akin to triumph. As he scanned his immediate environment, he slowly shook his head with amazement: he was astonished at what he had achieved in the pursuit of doing a favour for Old Man Tsai. Not only had he approached the monster broken rice bowls building but he had clambered on top of it. What more graphic example could be imagined of a feng shui master conquering his most nightmarish fears?

He wished Dilip Sinha and Madame Xu and Superintendent Gilbert Tan could see him now. He thought for a moment of asking someone to take a photograph of him—he still had the disposable camera in his pocket. But one hand tightly gripped a ridge on the roof and the other was holding Joyce’s forearm. He daren’t let go of either.

The geomancer carefully turned his head to sneak a sidelong glance at his intern, who was staring at the boats in the harbour. He was equally stunned by her behavior. He had tried hard to persuade Madeleine Tsai to come in off the roof and had been abruptly rebuffed. Yet Joyce, acting against his express orders, had stupidly climbed out on the roof to try the same thing—and appeared to be making headway. At least the Chinese girl had listened to her and responded in a trusting way.

Joyce McQuinnie was still a totally unknown quantity, he decided. How could this
mat salleh
child who couldn’t even speak intelligibly, manage to connect with this Cantonese young woman, when he, who was a member of the same sub-group of the same race, had so miserably failed to do so? It was remarkable. He shook his head. Truly strange things exist between heaven and earth.

The uncomfortable notion floated into his mind that Joyce could have been
meant
by the gods to be his assistant. Together they might just be able to achieve things that he could not do by himself. It was not impossible that her very differentness could even be a direct advantage to his operations. To distract himself from this horrific thought, he quickly cast his eyes over the broad horizon that stretched terrifyingly before him.

This morning, he had been unable to locate the mountains that usually cluster around a prosperous city. These were important—centuries before Western scientists had started to think about dinosaurs, the philosophers of China had dug up their swirling bones and had named them mountain dragons. But now, from this high vantage point, he could at last see Sydney’s missing dragons. There was a huge rolling ridge of mountains in the distance, slightly shrouded in mist.

He saw how the urban settlements had spread in the shadow of the distantly undulating landscape. Closer at hand, it was clear that the city’s immediate
ch
’
i
came from waterways.
The
Water Dragon Classic
, written by Chiang Ping-chieh in the Ming Dynasty, identified the ways the water dragon carries
ch
’
i
through natural conduits. Wong noticed the series of bays cutting steeply into the Sydney waterfront, two of which surrounded the spot where he sat.

He was confused by the defensiveness that Brett Kilington had shown for the broken rice bowls building, an obviously ugly monstrosity. But it was possible that the Opera House in context, at the heart of the sprawling city, might have a charm that he could not see. Gingerly looking downwards, he saw streams of visitors approaching the building on foot and in tour buses. Dozens of people were taking photographs. Some had spotted them sitting on the roof and were taking pictures of them.

Could he arrange to get one to send to Old Man Tsai? Probably not. How to contact the people down there? Not possible.

Brett had a point. The building appeared to be greatly admired, beloved even. Perhaps something had evaporated the bad
ch
’
i
its evil form produced? Perhaps Wong had failed to understand something.

The thought further humbled the feng shui master. Here he was, fifty-six years old; yet what a lot he had still to learn.

Madeleine Tsai turned to Ismail. ‘I want to go with her.’

‘No,’ said the
bomoh.
‘You ruin everything. Must stay out here. Until it happens.’

‘Come on,’ said Joyce, suddenly excited. ‘I know this market in Sydney where you can get really cool stuff. And it’s cheap.

Better than Clarke Quay. Come on. I know Sydney really well.

I’ll take you to the Paddo Village Bazaar. It’s on tomorrow.’

‘I’m going with her,’ said Madeleine, shaking her shoulders out of Ismail’s grip.

‘No,’ he shouted.

‘Get your hands off me. I’m going with my friend.’

Twisting downwards and yanking herself out of his grip, she quickly scuttled out of his reach and started to carefully track on her hands and feet over to where Joyce sat.

‘NO!’ shouted Ismail. He leapt to the side and grabbed her, his arms wrapping themselves around her upper body. She lost her balance.

Wong and Joyce both reached forwards at the same time—but neither of them could reach her.

Maddy screamed as Ismail held her tightly and pulled her away from them. The two of them started to slide slowly down the roof.

‘Let her go,’ Wong shouted. ‘You’re falling.’

Ismail placed his feet apart and managed to arrest their descent. He roughly shuffled away from them, keeping the young woman in his arms, his forearm around her throat. ‘Get away. Get away from us!’

The geomancer started to move towards them, moving sideways like a crab.

‘Get away,’ said Ismail again.

Wong continued to approach.

‘Stop,’ said the
bomoh.
‘Stop or I
throw
her down. I’ll do it.’

‘Amran,’ gasped Maddy, breathing with difficulty. ‘Let me go.’

‘I throw her down,’ he repeated in a furious growl. ‘I will. I drop her. Take one more step closer to me only and she goes down. She dies.’

The geomancer stopped moving.

‘Amran!’ Maddy screamed.

Wong crept forwards again.

‘Stop. I drop her,’ Ismail said. ‘You move one more time, she dead already.’

‘Amran!’ the young woman shrieked. She stopped kicking. She turned her face to his. ‘I thought you loved me?’ She spoke in a dreamy voice, suddenly a child. ‘They’re telling the truth, aren’t they? You are the danger.’

‘Shut up.’

Ismail continued to gradually move away from Wong and McQuinnie, dragging his victim with him. ‘I’ve won. I’m sorry, but I have. She’s going to die and then all finish.’

‘We’ll tell on you. We’ll tell the police,’ shouted Joyce, the schoolyard phrases sounding odd as soon as they had left her mouth.

‘Police don’t like you. Think you are
chi-seen
,’ said Ismail.

‘They like me better. I think they believe me, not you. I tell them all your fault. I tell them I try to save her. Officer Gallaher—he is my friend.’

‘Let her go, you beast,’ said Joyce.

Ismail turned his forearm and looked at his watch. ‘Almost time,’ he said. ‘Almost time to say goodbye.’

‘I thought you loved me,’ repeated Maddy in a thin, high voice. ‘I thought you were going to save me, not kill me.’

‘I do,’ said Ismail. He looked down at her face and the granite hardness in his eyes disappeared. ‘I do love you. But no one can change fortune. No one can. The only thing is make the best of it. Everything I do is for you.’

‘You lied to me.’

‘I am like a doctor who not tells patient that she is dying. I bluff you because I want you to be happy.’

‘I saw the papers. I saw them on your desk.’

‘Papers?’

‘The insurance. You took out all that insurance. You will make money if I die. You love money, not me.’

‘No!’ Ismail was suddenly furious. ‘No. Don’t love money instead of you.’

‘I saw the insurance papers.’

‘You are going to die. No one can change your fortune. No one. Not me, not Joyce’s friend, no one. Very sorry. Insurance

I got so something good comes out of your death only. Is for memorial to you, understand or not? When I got the money I will use it to start a foundation-lah. To help young people.’

‘Zahra? And the kids in your home?’

‘Yes. Zahra will be first. She must got surgery. Very expensive. My
pak-mak
no money. I need money to send her to Singapore, get good hospital. The other children too. All need money. They will pray for your spirit.’

‘You want money more than me.’

‘No choices are left. You must die. Is it better you die only? Or better you die and Zahra lives? Other children also?’

‘Amran. I don’t want to die.’

‘You must. No choice only. Not just me saying that. Joyce’s friend say the same thing.’

Ismail suddenly looked over at the feng shui master and his assistant, clutching the roof four metres away.

‘Tell her,’ the
bomoh
shouted. ‘Tell her she must die today. You say you know her fortune. I went to see a feng shui man in Singapore myself: Eric Kan. He told me that she is a wood person. At five o’clock today, metal and fire and water converge on her sign. Very bad. Here and now. True or not? Come on, true or not?’

The feng shui master looked at them, but said nothing.

‘True or not?’ Ismail repeated as a shriek.

‘Is true,’ said the geomancer. ‘But feng shui does not predict time of death. Only bad factors and bad times. You can do things, you can fight bad fortune.’

‘See?’ the Malaysian crowed to Madeleine. ‘Metal and fire and water. Death. He knows the truth. All finish now. Go quietly. I make sure they will remember you. The Maddy Tsai Foundation I call it.’

The latter words in Ismail’s speech were difficult to hear. Suddenly the wind had risen to a deafening volume. The roof started to shake. There was a rumbling sound. There were shouts from below. A ship’s foghorn sounded. The roar of air traffic seemed to be all around them. Vibrations made it difficult for them to continue holding on to the ridges.