The Feng Shui Detective Goes South Read Online Free PDF Page B

was not even properly dressed! I knew you wanted to talk to me about something, but what it was, I couldn’t begin to guess. So I replied to your summons by phoning your number. I am relying on you to tell me.’
    ‘Ahh,’ said Sinha. ‘Now I understand. So neither of us know what I want to talk with you about. That does make this conversation rather difficult.’
    There was another silence on the phone, but it was not a particularly uncomfortable one—the two had been friends for long enough to be able to spend time thinking silently while aurally linked to each other.
    ‘I have an idea,’ said Madam Xu. ‘I’m expecting a visitor today, but I’ve got a gap in my timetable tomorrow morning. Why don’t I just pop into your flat for a cup of tea, say ten o’clock? By that time, you may have remembered what it was that you wanted to tell me.’
    ‘That sounds like a perfectly splendid idea. I’ll have the kettle on. Darjeeling?’
    ‘Of course. Afterwards, we could take the bus to Fort Canning, and have a walk, like we did last week.’

    Dilip Sinha smiled as he put the phone down. She probably just needed of a bit of company. At his age, he found the attention flattering—after all, he was 62 and she was just a spring chicken, somewhere in her mid-50s.
    He went to the kitchen to make some tea for himself and settle to work on a knotty problem that had arrived on his lap earlier that day.
    Sinha had nominally retired. But these days he found himself busier than ever. Now he was no longer a Singapore civil servant, his hobbies had grown into a full and active second career. His first book, published four years earlier, had given him some fame among Singapore’s large Indian community.
    Although he was ostensibly a specialist in Indian astrology, the book had been filled with tidbits on other philosophies, ranging from Ayurvedic medicines to the importance of using ghee instead of butter when cooking curries.
    His second book, published a year ago, had been ‘positioned’ by the publisher as A Guide to New Age Secrets From India , and had sold well to several of the communities in Singapore, being particularly popular among women from the United States.
    The initial excitement of that book launch culminated in Sinha’s finding himself profiled in The Straits Times and being invited to give a talk at a rotary club.
    He then found himself besieged by parents of Indian origin wanting advice on getting their children married off to the ‘right sort of people’, a topic touched upon briefly in the last chapter of the book. This tiresome business came to a spectacular end when his own daughter jilted the pitifully dull Punjabi import–export man her parents had chosen for her, and married an up-and-coming Chinese veejay. Sinha had initially been angry, but was delighted by the subsequent event—his reputation as a marriage expert collapsed. He found himself happy enough to pay for the rebel daughter’s wedding to her spiky-haired beau.
    Things had quietened down. But he still found himself consulted at regular intervals by people wanting insight into their destinies.
    Yet the most curious request he had had for months had arrived that morning. A man named Amran Ismail had called him at eight that morning, and requested an urgent meeting. The man spoke politely with a curious accent—a mixture of east and west Malaysian English, sprinkled with Malay and Chinese slang. But he sounded intelligent and sincere. As Sinha moved the conversation around to detailing his consultancy fees, the man had explained that he, too, was a mystic, and wanted a no-fees exchange on professional grounds. Sinha had agreed to this.

    Amran Ismail had turned up on the doorstep less than an hour later, and he and his host had sat down to a breakfast of freshly baked bread, home-made fig jam and fruit, liberally washed down with blackish oolong.
    The visitor was a tall, broad-shouldered man in his mid-30s from East Malaysia. He had