The Feng Shui Detective Goes South (7 page)

‘Of course, I’ll be more than glad to review the case myself. I’m sure there will be occasions in the future when you can render me the same service—we all get stuck, sometimes. Would you like me to meet her, or examine her records? Is it your sister?’

‘Thank you. You are very kind. You are a gentleman like people said. I am very, very thankful for you giving positive answer in this matter. But is not my sister. Client only. One more thing I mus’ tell you. On this matter, I wan’ cast-iron promise of confidentiality.’

‘Of course. All my cases, naturally, are confidential.’

‘No. Need specific promise for this case only. Here got—’ He opened a briefcase and took out a plastic bag. There was something wet inside.

Sinha was surprised to see that it was a dead chicken.

‘We use these things a lot,’ said Ismail. ‘Is the way of the school of
bomohs
I belong. Sorry about this. I know is a bit messy, but . . .’

He took the chicken out, and Sinha was distressed to see blood dripping from its neck on to his rattan placemats.

‘
Sei-lah!
Sorry,’ Ismail repeated. ‘Twitching a bit but is dead, more or less. I kill it on the doorstep just before I came in. Blood must be fresh, you see, when you make serious vows.’

Sinha watched his Malaysian visitor close his eyes and start to enter a trancelike state to prepare the chicken for the ritual, and was surprised to discover that the man was silently weeping.

Two hours later, a gently reverberating doorbell rang in a flat in a well-maintained block in Chinatown’s Sago Street.

The door was opened by a Chinese woman wearing so much jewellery that it sounded as if someone was wheeling a rack of bangles across the floor of a department store. ‘Come in, come in,’ she said. ‘You must be Mr Ismail.’

‘Yes. And you are Madame Xu,’ the visitor replied. ‘Very nice to meet you. I am Amran Ismail, your servant.’

Madame Xu’s broad smile disappeared instantly as she noticed that her visitor was carrying a plastic bag in which something was twitching violently.

‘What’s that?’ she asked. ‘Your lunch?’

He glanced down at the bag in his hand as if noticing it for the first time. ‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘Later,
inshallah.
A chicken. I get through a big number of chickens.’

‘Reminds me of Hong Kong,’ she said with distaste. ‘Dreadful place. Everyone comes out of the markets with their shopping bags twitching. Everything is sold alive in Hong Kong. Why don’t you give your bag to the maid—she’ll keep it in the kitchen for you—and then come and sit down and have a nice cup of tea. Darjeeling?’

‘Yes, yes, very kind,’ said Mr Ismail. ‘But first, I wan’ use your toilet. Already today I drink one gallon of tea over.’

He returned to the main room of the apartment a few minutes later to find Madame Xu in a room designed in what a visitor would likely consider surprisingly austere for an owner who was so obviously enamoured of fussy accessories. The floor was dark brown parquet, unsoftened by either carpet or rug, and the furniture consisted of a black leather sofa and an altar table and cabinet in old-fashioned Chinese rosewood design, with inlaid fittings in a matt-gray metal. There was no television, but a set of shelves in matching rosewood contained several dozen tiny photographs in non-matching frames.

They swapped small talk for five minutes, before Ismail gave her an introduction to his background as a
bomoh.
Then, after another round of tea, he grandly announced that it was time to explain his mission. He became increasingly serious as he told Madame Xu that he needed her advice urgently on the case of a young woman whose fortune appeared to be very negative, and needed an urgent remedy.

‘All details one hundred per cent confidential must keep,’ he said.

‘Why naturally,’ replied Madame Xu. ‘Since you haven’t told me anything about the client or the case, I can hardly broadcast it to the world.’

‘No, but I will reveal shocking details to you now. Top
top
secret, understand or not?’

‘Yes, yes, yes,’ replied the fortune-teller impatiently.

‘In my school of
bomohs
, need spilling of blood to make vow. For this reason I bring chicken only. First, I go into kitchen and get it.’

‘No need, no need,’ said Madame Xu. ‘I’ll get the girl to bring it.’ She reached for a bell from a side table and rang it energetically. Then she shouted in an extraordinarily loud voice for a woman so petite: ‘Concepcion! Bring the visitor’s chicken.’

‘Yes, Ma’am,’ came a shrieked reply.

Ismail waited tensely, uncomfortable without his chicken.

Suddenly fidgety, it was clear that he was unwilling to say what he had to say without it. Vows had to be taken with full formalities.

They chatted further on topics of general interest, and then the visitor took pains to again impress on Madame Xu the seriousness of keeping details of the case he was about to reveal to her completely to herself. While speaking, he kept turning around and craning his neck to see if his fowl was being brought to him.

‘Why not I just go and get it?’

‘It’s coming now,’ said his host. ‘Concepcion?
Where are
you?
’ she screamed.

Two minutes later, a sullen pudding of a domestic helper plodded down the corridor, clutching a large platter containing the bird—roasted, drenched in soy sauce, sprinkled with garlic slices, and surrounded by pandan leaves. ‘Is ready, Ma’am,’ she murmured.

‘Oh,’ said Amran Ismail. ‘You cook it?’

‘Microwaves,’ said Madame Xu. ‘We bought one a month ago. Six hundred and fifty watts. Now Concepcion can do a small chicken in eleven minutes. Twenty-nine if you press “Dual cook”.’

‘Er, thank you.’ The
bomoh
took the dish from the servant’s hands.

He rather awkwardly performed his ritual with the dish of roasted chicken, sprinkling pungent warm gravy rather than blood on his hands and the hands of his hostess. ‘What to do,’ he mumbled, his thick brows knotted.

Madame Xu politely accepted the gravy splashes on her hands but quickly wiped them away with paper tissues. Her real handkerchief, which was made of perfumed silk, she retained purely for the purposes of patting her face from time to time.

‘Would you like Concepcion to carve it for you?’

‘Er, no. Later I eat.’

‘Okay, dear boy. Tell me about your client with the big problem.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s time.’

For the second time that day, Ismail related the story of how he had grown up in a poor kampong in the jungles of East Malaysia, and, after a terrible accident from which he recovered with the help of a traditional witchdoctor, had decided to become a
bomoh
himself.

‘Aren’t
bomohs
rather, er, primitive?’ Madame Xu ventured.

Ismail looked affronted.

‘I know computer. I know Internet. I mix old and new. I use only old spells that work. I know that some things the
bomohs
do is for show. Bones and everything. For children. I skip these things. Just show-off stuff.’

‘But you like the chicken stuff?’

‘Chicken stuff is valid and important and scientific,’ he said, with the impatient tone of someone being forced to state the obvious.

‘I see.’

‘I am running a orphanage just outside Kuala Lumpur, praise be to Allah for allowing me grace to do this. Mostly I help runaway kids—teenage boys. Girls also I help. Send to cousin-sister’s house. She is a religious. Boys I hang out on streets very late to find. One night, there was big fight in a bar in KL. Two men fighting over one woman, lost, no money, no family, no friends, no contacts, just
pokai.
I pick up both men, skinny
koochi
rats both, throw them out.
Kacang putih–lah.
Can do with my eyes close.’

He smiled at the memory. ‘I did not take the girl to my cousin-sister’s house. The men—bloody
lembus—
maybe they find her there. So I hide her. Something tells me Allah has sent me to help her. She was Chinese. Her features were small. Not so beautiful maybe. A little bit only. Skinny,
papan.
But she had a big spirit. Very not shy, you know? Had big fire.’

‘That is what they used to say about me,’ Madame Xu said dreamily. ‘“A certain fire about her.” A few years ago. Now tell me, who was she? How did she come to be lost in Kuala Lumpur? Was she a girl from the countryside?’

‘This also I thought. But not so. I realise she is not local.

Her skin was whitish yellow and her languages were English and Cantonese. Also I can speak. She is from Hong Kong.

What for she is in Malaysia? She says she is on holiday. She says she is tourist. But she was not so good at telling lies. What tourist girl end up
pokai
in bar in KL? No. I tell her, what you think, I am bloody fool? I can guess. She was someone guilty of great crime in Hong Kong. She was hiding in Malaysia. She was . . .
on the run
.’ He weighted his words with melodrama enough for a Hindi movie.

‘What was her name?’ the fortune-teller asked suddenly.

‘Clara.’

She made a note in a diary. ‘A lovely name. Very literary.’

‘She stay in my boys’ home outside K L for eight days over.’

‘Boys’ home?’

‘Sure. Hiding. Who will look for girl in religious boys’ home? I put her in
baju kurung.
Big
kudung
over her head. People think she is staff, cook. Only then I had idea of looking at her birth charts. You see, first she was one of my rescued orphan, not one of my client.’

He suddenly stooped to the ground and pulled a messy pile of papers from his ragged bag.

‘But then I decide to do the cards anyway. One afternoon I read her fortune with the cards, with the bones, with the symbols, with the fire method, with the birds, with every method. I look at the lines on her hands. I look at her face. I look at the lines on the soles of her feet. I look at the colour in her eyes. I look at the stripes on her fingernails.’

He held up a piece of A4 paper that turned out to be a photocopied image of a small hand.

‘Results so shocking. First test say she will disappear. Death coming quick-quick. Second the same. Third saw bad, bad luck coming very soon also. You know how messages come by in this business, Madame Xu? Little hints, small-small hunches. This point a little this way, that point a little that way, you interpret this, you interpret that, stick it together, eventually you decide-lah? But this one is totally gone case.’

‘I’ve had cases like that,’ boasted Madame Xu, who hated to be bested by anyone. ‘People facing imminent death. Loads and loads of them. Half my clients.’

He ignored her interjection. ‘Six days ago, I take her to old man who lives in small-small hilltop village south of Melaka: a very, very great man, with very, very great power. He is called Datuk Adzil Abu Hitam Noor. But the
bomohs
call him only the Great Bomoh. “Usually people ask me to tell their fortunes,” the old man said. “This woman no fortune. She will die on first moon, which will be in ten days. At tenth hour of the day.”’

Madame Xu stirred uncomfortably. ‘This all happened recently?’ she asked.

Ismail nodded. ‘Six days ago I took her to the Great Bomoh.