The Feng Shui Detective Goes South Read Online Free PDF

woman taking a deep breath and raising herself up to her full height, which he knew to be in the region of 1.5 metres. Madame Xu Chong Li apparently saw his assertion as a deliberate challenge to her own reputation as a person of peerless paranormal powers. She replied, with an icy edge to her voice: ‘I myself knew that I was going to speak to you on the telephone this morning several hours before I actually did.’
    ‘But that’s because you decided to phone me,’ Dilip said.
    She was unmoved by this argument. ‘And,’ she continued, her voice becoming increasingly severe, ‘out of all the four million people in this city, I knew that it would be you who would pick up the phone.’
    ‘Madame Xu: The other three million, nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand inhabitants of this blessed conurbation do not share my telephone—although sometimes I feel like they do,’ he said, thinking back to the days before his younger daughter’s wedding four months earlier.
    ‘Are you making light of my well-documented paranormal abilities, Mr Sinha?’
    ‘Certainly not, Madam Xu. I am second to none in the fervency of my admiration for your celebrated powers, which I believe can only be accurately described by the use of words such as “legendary”.’
    ‘Mmm,’ she said, somewhat mollified.
    ‘I was once told by my father that I picked up a ringing telephone at the age of 15 months and said “Hello Mama” even though there was no way of knowing who was calling. There were no little screens or caller-ID services in those days. I was very proud of this story and repeated it to many people over the years as proof of the early manifestation of my psychic powers. However, I stopped using this anecdote after I had my own first child. That was when I realised that “Hello Mama” is what all 15-month-old children say. It is more or less the sum total of their vocabulary. These days I am only impressed if a baby points to a ringing telephone and says something like, “A man named Terence L Gunasekera is calling in an attempt to sell you shares in a vacuum cleaner company.”’
    ‘Very amusing, DK.’
    Pleasantries over, there was a brief silence as Dilip Sinha waited for her to continue.
    She said nothing.
    ‘Always good to hear from you,’ he proceeded. ‘Even on a delightfully sunny Monday such as this, you add a special touch of brightness to the day.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Nice to have a chat.’
    ‘Yes.’
    Another silence.
    Since she seemed to be waiting for him to continue, he asked: ‘Now what exactly did you wish to speak to me about, Madame Xu?’
    ‘You’ve got this all wrong. I think it must be your age.
    I think you must be getting a bit Celine or something.’
    ‘Celine?’
    ‘You know. Celine. When your mind goes.’
    ‘Clearly a fashionable new phrase which I have not yet encountered, or which has passed me by entirely. Anyway, proceed. What have I done to deserve the accusation that I have become, as you so interestingly put it, Celine?’
    ‘Well, you know. You are asking me what I have to speak to you about. In fact, you have something to talk to me about.’
    ‘I do? And what might that be?’
    ‘Well, I don’t know. How would I know that? I am not a mind reader, Dilip Sinha. Well, or at least I haven’t been for five years, except when any of my ex-husbands come round.’
    As a practitioner of many Ayurvedic sciences and various types of Indian astrology, Dilip Sinha was used to dealing with irrational and even deeply disturbed people. But for some reason, he was finding it particularly difficult to follow Madame Xu’s train of thought today.
    ‘Let’s start at the beginning,’ he said with the voice of a patient schoolteacher. ‘You phoned me. That is where this discussion started, it is not?’ Surely she could not disagree with that?
    ‘I disagree. It all started when an image of you intruded itself into my mind much earlier this morning, while I was preparing myself for the day. I