The Feng Shui Detective's Casebook (26 page)

The worst moment was when a group of children started singing in the room below them. She recognised the song as something she had sung herself, in junior school. What was it called?
Morning Has Broken.

After the two of them spent an hour working in 208A, a bell rang and the sound of steps in the corridor became thunderous and continuous. It was lunch break. Young people started hooting and jeering and laughing and shrieking. She heard a girl’s voice cackle. She heard strident male voices shouting.

Hormones raging, Joyce felt herself simultaneously repulsed by and drawn to the playground beneath them. She eventually decided to slip out of the classroom and wander around the school.

She trotted down the stairs, took a deep breath, and stepped into the throng. She felt as if she stuck out a mile, but nobody noticed her. Again she found herself casting her eyes around to see if the right sort of guys were looking at her. She found no likely candidates. All way too young.
Babies.
She decided that there must be a separate area for older students to take their break. After all, in theory, there must be some students who were the same age as she was, or even older. In Singapore, schools often had young people aged nineteen or twenty, who still wore school uniform.

A little more aimless wandering led her to another playground adjacent to the sports field. There she found several groups of older teenagers, some of whom looked to be her age. Off to one side was a low building with plate-glass windows, through which she could see lanky youths lying around, some doing bits of homework, others reading pop magazines. She strolled over and pushed the door open.

No one looked up as she entered. She suddenly felt desperately alone—the scene powerfully reminded her of her own school days. Her father’s constant travelling meant that she had always seemed to be the new girl, the one who didn’t belong to any of the cliques, the person wandering around with no one to talk to.

Finding herself embarrassingly tearful, she marched quickly to the edge of the upper playground, where she could stay sheltered by a wall and observe the teenagers move from cluster to cluster.

A few metres away, she noticed one shadow-eyed, dark-haired girl of about fifteen leaning against a wall by herself. She was holding a book and pretending to read, but her eyes were looking into the middle distance over the top of the book at nothing in particular. Joyce immediately recognised a younger version of herself. She wondered whether to go over and talk to her, but what would she say?
Don
’
t worry, it
’
s all
right to be a total loser when you
’
re that age. Some of us are just
bad at making friends. I was just like that and look at me now.
I gotta office and a desk and stuff and I actually get paid . . .

There was an explosion of laughter from a group on her left near a water fountain. She turned and spotted a familiar face. Eric Chan was leaning against a wire fence, entertaining a mixed group of friends with some stories. She waited till he finished talking.

‘Yo, Eric?’ she called out, a little too quietly. She repeated it more loudly. ‘Eric?’

He looked over and smiled. The young man made brief excuses to the people to whom he was talking, and languidly strolled over to where she stood. ‘Hi,
feng shui
master—or is it mistress? How’s old Waldo’s flat?’

‘Fine,’ she said. She felt absurdly grateful to him for being there. And she was also thankful that he had given her information she had used to impress the head teacher—but of course she couldn’t say that. ‘We’re doing room 208A too, now. That’s serious business. Criminal charges and all that. Maybe attempted murder.’

‘Yeah,’ Eric said, taking a piece of chewing gum out of his mouth. ‘Everyone in the playground’s gossiping about what happened. But they managed to keep it out of the papers. Old Waldo sent a letter home to the parents saying that a “small localised incident of violence by a student against a teacher had occurred” or something like that.’ He mocked the head teacher by speaking in an absurdly deep voice, over-enunciating all the consonants.

‘Neat. You’re good at taking off Mr—Old Waldo.’

‘Waldo was
really
pompous at assembly: “The matter is in police hands and it will do no good to the school community for anyone to gossip about it or inform the media.”’

‘How is she?’

‘No one’s seen her for days. She’s been charged by the police.’

‘No. I meant the teacher. I heard she’s been paralysed.’

‘Yeah. It’s pretty serious. Probably will never walk again, they say.’

‘What actually happened?’

‘You really wanna know?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Hang on a minute. I’ll get an actual witness for you.’

Eric called over to a small group of young people. ‘Bug. Bug.
Bug!
Come here. I want you to meet someone.’

A girl with acne on her large forehead and a shiny nose propping up large, round red-rimmed glasses joined them. She eyed Joyce suspiciously.

‘Edna was in the class,’ Eric explained. ‘She saw everything. This is . . . ?’

‘Joyce.’

‘Joyce is like investigating what happened. In Ms Ling’s room, you know?’

‘Police?’ Edna’s voice was low and suspicious.

‘Nah,’ said Joyce. ‘I’m a
feng shui
expert. We’re just checking out the bad vibes, make sure the classroom is okay for when you guys are allowed back into it. That’s all.’

‘Oh.’ Edna still looked uncomfortable.

Eric said: ‘Can you tell her what happened?’

‘What does she want to know?’

Edna directed all her comments at Eric. Joyce desperately wanted the girl to be on her side. ‘I heard the headmaster—Old Waldo’s version. It would be really neat to have your version.’

Edna looked down at her feet. ‘Okay. Well it was simple. We’re in room 208. At the back of the room is the art area. It’s another big space, and we open the sliding doors if we want to make the classroom bigger. But Ms Ling also uses it as a detention area. If anyone is behaving really badly, she makes them go and sit in the art space and shuts the sliding wall thing on them.’

‘Like a prison?’

‘Yeah, I suppose.’

‘So what happened on Monday?’

‘Ms Ling said that Sasha was being cheeky. Sasha was being a bit cheeky, but not that bad really. Anyway, Ms Ling is in a bad mood, all nervous and fidgety. Eventually she marches across the room, grabs Sasha by the shoulder and marches her into the art room.’

‘Putting her in detention?’

‘Don’t know really. Just taking her back there to give her a good talking to, I think.’

‘Did she shut the door?’

‘Yeah. She takes Sasha into the art space and pulls the sliding door shut. Only it doesn’t really shut. We’re all just sitting there, a bit quiet, you know stunned by what a bad temper Ms Ling was in.’ Edna paused.

‘And then . . . ?’ Joyce prompted.

‘And then Sasha really lost it. She grabbed Ms Ling and threw her out the window.’

‘The window of the art space?’

‘Yeah.’

‘How did you see this, if the sliding doors were shut?’

‘They weren’t really shut. Not fully. We could see them struggling. Ms Ling suddenly goes: “No, no, put me down!” The two of them fight and they end up near the window. Then she throws her out the window.’

‘You saw it?’

‘Not from where I was. But I heard it. I heard a scream and a thud.’

‘That was the sound of Ms Ling’s body hitting the playground?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Did anyone actually see it?’

Edna picked her nose thoughtfully. ‘Yeah. Simone Waldo. She was sitting right by the crack where the sliding wall was open. She saw everything.’

Joyce turned to Eric. ‘Is Simone Waldo —?’

‘Yeah. The head’s daughter.
Simone
,’ he bellowed.

A tall, thin girl with bleached-blond hair and a bad complexion turned to look at him from the other side of the playground. ‘What?’

He beckoned with a short, sharp movement of his head.

She slowly walked over to join them, looking curiously at Joyce.

‘She’s a kind of investigator,’ Eric explained. ‘Your dad booked her. She wants to know what you saw. In Ms Ling’s room, that day.’

Simone smiled and inflated her flat chest. Clearly she was enjoying her moment of fame. ‘Yeah, I saw everything. Absolutely everything. It was like
sooo
traumatic. I gotta go to a psychiatrist. The school’s paying. I might be traumatised for life, they say.’ She was thrilled at the prospect.

‘Tell me in your own words,’ said Joyce, recalling a phrase that she had heard television detectives use.

‘Well,’ said Simone. ‘Old Ling takes Sasha Briggs to the art space. They start fighting. Sasha goes crazy. She’s a bit mental. That’s what they say. She picks up the teacher and pushes her over to the window. Then she heaves her up to the windowsill. Old Ling screams. But Sasha refuses to let go. Sasha pushes her out of the window. She’s got this crazy look in her eyes. She’s actually mad. That’s what they say.’

‘Then what?’

‘Then Sasha comes out, all distraught. Then she runs through the classroom and runs out, crying.’

‘Did she say anything?’

‘Sasha?’

‘Yes.’

Simone thought about this for a moment. ‘I don’t think so. I don’t remember.’

‘Did she say anything while they were fighting?’

‘Yeah, she was calling Ms Ling names, “You’re bloody crazy” and things like that.’

Edna agreed. ‘I heard that too.’

Joyce said: ‘Then what happened?’

Simone continued: ‘We were all shocked. Somebody went and called another teacher. We all had to wait there. And then the police arrived and interviewed us all individually. It was horrible. We thought Ms Ling was dead. She wasn’t moving. Just lying on the playground with her head at a funny angle.’

Joyce thanked Simone and Edna for their help. Time to sit down and make some notes.

She started to walk away and was pleased to see Eric accompanying her. Actually, he wasn’t that bad looking, if you didn’t look at the acne on his forehead. It would clear up one day . . .

‘Who’s that?’ she asked, pointing discreetly at the girl standing by the wall.

‘Who?’

‘That girl by herself.’

‘Oh, Becky. That’s Rebecca Smiley.’

‘Her name doesn’t suit her.’

‘Yeah.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Never has done. She’s always been a bit of a loner. She used to hang out with Sasha Briggs a bit. Now Sasha’s been expelled, she’s got no friends.’

They walked along in silence for a while. Joyce decided to keep Rebecca Smiley as the topic of conversation. It was a safe subject, and would show how compassionate she was. ‘I feel kinda sorry for her. I was really shy when I was at school.’

‘Yeah. I’m shy myself.’

‘Rubbish!’

‘No, really. I used to be, anyway. When I was like fifteen.’

‘That was only like a couple of years ago, probably, am I right?’

‘Two and a half,
please.
’

She laughed at his nitpicking, and then abruptly stopped laughing. Mustn’t be too friendly. This boy was maybe a year younger than she was.
A whole year.
He was a child. A boy. A baby. She was a working woman with an office—well, a desk, anyway.

‘What are you going to do now?’ Eric said.

‘Find a quiet spot and like write down what those girls said while it’s still fresh. And you?’

‘Thought I might get something from the canteen.’ He paused, apparently working up the courage to ask her something. ‘Have you . . . ? I mean, have you, like, had lunch or anything? Would you like to . . . ?’

She was impressed that a seventeen-year-old schoolboy would invite her—a real eighteen-year-old executive working woman with a real job—to lunch. ‘I might. Anything good at the canteen?’

‘No. It’s all crap.’

They both laughed again.

Oops, thought Wong. We did the wrong room. The principal’s home was straightforward and unremarkable in
feng shui
terms, but the man’s office was a whole different story. How on earth could he work in a room like this? This was the place that was really in need of urgent examination and adjustment.

The geomancer had gone to visit Lawrence Angwyn Waldo to give a preliminary report on their findings about room 208A. Joyce McQuinnie had disappeared without trace.

The head teacher’s office was filled with mementoes of visits to other countries. There were spears and shields from Irian Jaya, an antique musket of some sort, probably from the United States, and some sort of curious bamboo thing with ropes and a sharpened end. Wong couldn’t work out whether it was a musical instrument or a weapon. He decided, after staring at it for some minutes, that it might be a headhunter’s tool from northern Borneo. The entire room was full of spiked or pointed objects, most of which were associated with violence.

The room was terribly cluttered, suggesting that the user was not a clear thinker, and the piles of papers on the filing cabinet indicated that it was not a productive working environment. Some drastic changes were needed. If he were doing this room, first, he would . . .

His thoughts were interrupted as the door swung open and Lawrence Waldo stepped in. He swung nimbly into his large, leather chair. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting. Departmental staff meeting. Bane of my life. Never mind. Where’s the young lady?’