The Feng Shui Detective's Casebook by Nury Vittachi Read Free Book Online Page A

hours, she was feeling half-asphyxiated by the smell. She’d have to throw these clothes away.
    Joyce decided she might as well try to make contact with people outside.
    She went back out onto the balcony and called out to passers-by below.
    ‘Helloooooo,’ she yelled to people walking on the street below. ‘Heeeeeyyyy.’
    No one looked up. She was fifteen floors above them, and her voice was drowned out by traffic that roared from a major road some 75 metres to the southwest of the block.
    She wondered whether she should write a help message and send it down to ground level. But who would find a piece of paper on the ground and read it? It would probably be kicked into the gutter or get run over by a vehicle. It might not be read for hours, or days, if ever.
    No. She needed something more creative. Perhaps she could lower something distinctive that would make people look up? She thought for a moment about throwing rainbow fish down until someone looked up, but then remembered that Wong had said the fish were very valuable and expensive. He might take it out of her pay.
    Joyce went back into the apartment and walked around again, looking for something long and thin that would stretch fifteen storeys to reach the ground. What she needed was a really long rope or something that she could use to lower a message to ground level. In the movies people knotted sheets together, but there were no beds. What could she find to use as a rope?
    She opened a cabinet under the sink in the bathroom and found two old rolls of toilet tissue. ‘Got it,’ she exclaimed.
    She wrote a message on the first few sheets of paper: HELP , CALL FENG SHUI MASTER CF WONG TELL HIM TO COME TO THIS ADDRESS , URGENT , OR POLICE .
    Then she added the office phone number, attached a pen to the sheet to give it weight and gently lowered the long line of toilet tissue out of the window. Fortunately, it was a still afternoon and there was little breeze. Although it made her dizzy to hang over the balcony and watch the paper descending, she was pleased to see that a single roll of toilet paper took her message about two-thirds of the way down the building. She carefully knotted the last few sheets to the first sheets of a second roll and continued to lower the message.
    Two minutes later, the message touched the ground. It dangled near the front door of the building, swinging gently from side to side in the breeze.
    The first resident to pass, an elderly man, glanced at the vertical line of toilet tissue paper, but did not stop to examine it.
    ‘ Oi !’ Joyce screeched from fifteen storeys above him. ‘Idiot,’ she added, as he disappeared.
    After a few minutes, a middle-aged woman carrying bags of shopping appeared and strolled towards the front door. She noticed the swinging line of tissue and paused.
    Joyce watched excitedly as she shook her head disapprovingly. Then she looked up to see where it was coming from.
    ‘Heeey! Look up here,’ the young woman hollered. ‘I’m stuck.’
    The woman gave no signs of noticing her or hearing her cry. But to Joyce’s delight, she lowered her shopping bags and picked up the tissue, noticing the writing spread across several sheets. She started to read.

    The phone rang at Telok Ayer Street. Winnie had disappeared and Wong was alone in the office, carefully calculating just how much money he could make from monthly repeat visits to Mr Tik’s rainbow apartment.
    ‘Yes?’ said Wong, snatching up the handset.
    ‘Are you CF Wong?’ asked a young male voice.
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Are you a feng shui master?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Ha! I would have thought that toilet paper would be bad feng shui ,’ said the voice with a laugh.
    ‘What?’
    ‘Toilet paper. Do you know your name is on a long piece of toilet paper hanging out of building in Fort Canning?’
    Wong was speechless.
    ‘Are you still there, Mr Wong?’
    ‘You are who?’
    ‘I’m calling from the news desk of the Straits Times. We just got a call from a