The Feng Shui Detective Goes South (22 page)

Dr Leibler gulped, despite himself. ‘I can hear it,’ he whispered. ‘It is like a patient. Like I said.’

Wong walked slowly around the chair, pointing his
lo pan
at it.

‘What is that?’ asked the American dentist. ‘Can it detect the ghost?’

‘No. Only a compass. I want to see if the ghost affects the direction of compass. No effect, I think.’

After circling the chair, Wong lowered the compass and stood straight, staring at the chair, and twirling the long hairs on his chin.

‘I want to try something,’ the geomancer said. ‘How do I make the chair go down?’

Dr Leibler pointed to a control panel jutting out to the right of the chair. ‘There. Press that top one.’

The feng shui master leaned over and pressed the button that tilted the chair back, and then pulled the lever next to it. With a noisy hiss, the chair dropped almost forty centimetres. It was a modern chair, which tilted back a full ninety-five degrees, leaving the patient’s head slightly lower than their feet.

Dr Leibler stepped over, and locked the chair into its new position and the two of them stood and waited. A minute of silence passed.

‘Come, let’s all go,’ said Dr Liew, who was watching from the doorway. ‘This is making me feel helluva uncomfortable.’

‘No,’ said Wong. ‘You can go. I want to see something. I want to see the sound is coming from where.’

There it was again. The sound of an unhappy patient, giving a low, moaning croak. This time it wasn’t from the chair, which had been dropped to its lowest point, but from the air in the middle of the room, above it. ‘Interesting. I move the chair. But has no effect. Sound stays there, in the air. Ghost patient has ghost chair. Or ghost can fly.’

Dr Leibler, with a sharp intake of breath, spun on his heel and marched briskly to the door. ‘Weird,’ he said. ‘Seriously weird.’

Wong followed more slowly, and strolled into the waiting room, where he picked up his bag. He pulled out a small vase in the shape of an altar and a bag of candles.

‘These will look after me. You can go,’ the feng shui master said. ‘You give me a key to lock up. I will stay.’

Thursday:
Ghosts can’t
get any deader

Thursday dawned cool and damp. CF Wong woke early, his thoughts distracted and confused after his encounter with whatever-it-was in the dental surgery the previous afternoon— an exchange that had lasted for more than an hour. He had gone home with a headache and slept badly. He was not surprised to find himself suddenly wide awake in the dark.

Noticing through his curtain-less windows that the dawn had yet to even think about breaking, he decided that he would go to work immediately to take advantage of the coolness of the morning. He left his tiny apartment in Chinatown’s Pagoda Street at 5.44 a.m. and was at the door of his office ten minutes later.

He entered the dark suite of rooms and was pleased to find the temperature pleasant for the first time in forty-eight hours. The last vestiges of a pre-dawn breeze were gently blowing through the space in the window where the air conditioner used to be. The night was almost silent. The murmur of traffic, which formed a constant white noise background during the day, had disappeared. In its place was a very low, undulating hum from the distant main thoroughfare, interrupted only by the occasional rattle of an early morning delivery van carrying newspapers or
char siu bau.

Wong sat down in his chair and pulled out his journal. He would be able to do several hours’ work before it became insufferably hot and he would have to retreat to Ah-Ooi’s Noodles, perhaps even producing several new gleanings for his chapter on the ingenious problem-solving methods of the great sages. He set to work.

The Emperor of Qi was a man named Jin Gong. One
day he found that his stable hand had accidentally
caused the death of his favourite horse.

‘My favourite horse is dead? The stable hand
responsible shall also be put to death,’ the ruler said.

‘Kill him immediately.’

But a wise sage named Yan Zi interrupted.

‘O mighty Emperor,’ said Yan Zi. ‘You are right in all
that you do. But you have said in the past that a man must
die knowing exactly what crime he has committed.’

The Emperor agreed.

A court was assembled. The stable hand was placed
in the dock.

Yan Zi read out the charges. ‘You will be marked
in history for doing three bad things,’ he said to the
stable hand.

‘Three bad things?’ asked the emperor.

‘Three bad things?’ said the stable hand.

Yan Zi related the three sins to the man in the
dock. ‘One: You killed the Emperor’s favourite horse.
Two: You caused the Emperor to kill a human being in
return for the death of an animal. Three: You spoiled
the reputation of the Emperor, who had previously been
known as a wise and kind ruler. For these reasons, you
must die,’ said Yan Zi.

‘No,’ said the Emperor. ‘I forgive him.’

In a dispute, Blade of Grass, let time intervene.
Only when anger has dissipated will there be room for
wisdom to enter.

From ‘Some Gleanings of Oriental Wisdom’
by CF Wong
,
part 347

He smiled, proud of his use of the words ‘intervene’ and ‘dissipated’. He flicked through his dictionary, looking for more long terms to use. Could he get ‘bene–ficiary’ in there?

Wong had been working for almost half an hour when he started to feel oddly distracted. He had gradually started to feel, at first only in his subconscious, that he was not alone. Before the thought penetrated fully into his conscious mind, he continued to write for several minutes. Then something made him look up. Had there been a tiny movement in the room, some motion glimpsed from the periphery of his vision? Or had there been a sound, a noise so low that it was barely audible to a person concentrating on something else? He glanced around. The only light came from his desk lamp, so the rest of the room remained filled with deep shadows. He pricked up his ears. He identified no sound except the far-away whispers of vehicles speeding along Orchard Road. If there was no motion and no sound in the office, what had he detected? Was there some sort of presence in the room?

Chee-sin
, he scolded to himself. He had spent so many hours last night thinking about the ghost that he was now starting to think he could detect spirits all around him. Ridiculous! He turned his attention back to his writing.

Two thousand and five hundred years ago, a child was
born who was already old. His hair was white and his
brain was filled with wisdom. He was called Lao Tzu,
which means The Old Child.

The Old Child lived fifty-four years before
Confucius. He was a great sage. But he refused to write
down any of his thoughts. He believed that writing
words down killed them. Words should be used in the
way he used them, for thinking and speaking about
great ideas.

At the end of his life, when the Old Child had become
an old man, he rode on a water buffalo to retire in a
faraway kingdom.

But the lowly keeper of the gate refused to let him
in. ‘Write something for me and that will be the price
of your entrance,’ he said.

The Old Child sat at a table and wrote 5000
characters. The result was the Tao-Te-Ching, which is
one of the greatest classics of ancient wisdom.

Blade of Grass, every person thinks other people are
like themselves. Lao Tzu, the Old Child, was a great
sage. But he believed that every man could journey
through ideas as he did. But the poor gatekeeper knew
something that Lao Tzu did not. Most men cannot share
the journey of a great sage without a guidebook.

From ‘Some Gleanings of Oriental Wisdom’
by CF Wong
,
part 347

He froze. This time, he knew he had heard a sound. It was unmistakable. It was a tiny, low moan made by a human voice. It was similar to the sound in the dentists’ surgery, except it was made by a closed mouth. And it was right here in this room. An involuntary shiver ran down his spine. Had the thing in the dentists’ surgery left its haunt and decided to follow him around? Or had yesterday’s experience made him suddenly more attuned to the existence of supernatural spirits? Had a ghost been occupying his office for some time?

He couldn’t write one more word. He had to investigate. Lowering his pen, he grabbed a tiny ceremonial sword, faintly ashamed to be using such a device as a talisman to ward off evil spirits in which he didn’t really believe. He started to walk carefully around the room.

‘Unnh . . .’

The husky groan appeared to come from the meditation room. He approached it carefully and looked through the glass window. It appeared to be empty. He listened at the door. He heard a third gently voiced moan. It was in there.

The geomancer opened the door with infinite care and carefully moved his head inside.

Something white moved in the shadows, low on the floor. A ghastly pale face with angry red eyes materialised suddenly before him.

‘Aiyeeaah!’ he gasped, dropping his talisman.

A replica of an old-fashioned phone, inlaid with cloisonné and mother-of-pearl, trilled prettily three times. Bejewelled fingers picked up the handset.

‘Yes?’ chirruped Madame Xu.

‘Madame Xu?’

‘Yes?’

‘Good morning, Chong Li. I hope you slept well. It’s me.’

‘That’s right. I knew that it was you, Dilip Sinha. Even before I picked up the phone.’

‘I knew it was me, too. We seem to be in general agreement on that point. That’s a good start.’

‘I suppose it is.’

‘Now listen, my dear. I could hardly sleep at all last night. I don’t know why, but this week my spirit can’t seem to settle at all. I’m sleeping badly. So many worries. Last night, I kept thinking about that unfortunate young couple. The girl, only a mere slip of a thing at fifteen or nineteen or whatever she is, and her heartbroken boyfriend . . .’

‘Fiancé, actually.’

‘That’s right. Well, what struck me most painfully last night was the sheer impossibility of anyone doing anything about this except us. I mean, think about it. If young Ismail takes her to the police and tells them to lock her in their strongest cell for safety, they will think he is mad, and lock him up instead. If he goes to doctors, they will tell him that there is nothing wrong with her, and they will be correct. Medically speaking, there
is
nothing wrong with her. She’s young and fit.’

‘He could go to the government. There must be a department to deal with this sort of thing. Underage death.’

‘I don’t think so. If he goes to any sort of higher authority— government officials, or academics, or judges or what have you, they will merely think that this is a load of mystical tomfoolery. And perhaps some of it is—I mean, some of Ismail’s stuff, like the chicken blood and the soles of the feet stuff—it all seems frankly irrational. But our own readings, which we ourselves trust and know to be reliable, confirm so much of what he has said. So we have to take his fears seriously and act upon them. It is clear to me that we are the only people who are going to listen to this problem, and also the only people who are going to be able to do anything about it. We are running out of time.’