The Feng Shui Detective's Casebook Read Online Free PDF

closed his eyes. A man could only pray.
    Joyce gathered together all the papers, squashed them into her bag, and set off for the block on Fort Canning Road. The door slammed shut, the shh-chka-shh-chka-shh-chka noise vanished into the distance, and silence fell like a curtain.
    Suddenly he was free of fishy Mr Tik, free of Joyce, and free of pressure. His secretary–administrator Winnie Lim had not turned up for work, so the stillness in the office was complete. It felt weird. It felt unfamiliar. It felt wonderful. He determined to attempt to arrange external assignments for Joyce on a daily basis, even if they were pro bono assignments.
    Once more Wong started thinking of ways to celebrate. Singing and dancing were definitely out, he decided, but the second-breakfast idea was a winner. He picked up the phone and ordered a special delivery of dim sum.

    Fu, the septuagenarian deliveryman, turned up twenty minutes later with three steaming bags. In traditional Shanghainese street-food style, the restaurant hadn’t bothered with polystyrene boxes. Staff had simply thrown the dim sum into translucent plastic bags and sprinkled them with soy sauce and chilli oil.
    While waiting, Wong had made a pot of green tea. The deliveryman let himself in and carelessly dropped the bags on the table. One tipped over. A yellow pork siu mai rolled across the table, leaving a trail of oil across the papers.
    ‘Aiyeeah!’ shouted the feng shui master. ‘You nearly spoil cheque!’ He grabbed an envelope containing payment from a customer, kissed the oil off it, and tucked it into his inside pocket.
    Excitedly, he opened one of the bags and the cloying aroma of sweet glutinous sauces filled his wide nostrils. ‘You have one,’ he said generously, holding the bag out to the old man.
    ‘Already got,’ Fu replied, pointing to his stuffed left cheek.
    Wong counted the dumplings in his bag and realised that the deliveryman had helped himself to a significant proportion of the meal as commission for bringing it. This was outrageous, but the geomancer couldn’t bring himself to be in a bad mood today. He wiped up the oily residue from his desk with some tissues from a toilet roll in his bottom drawer and picked up a toothpick with which to stab the dumplings.
    ‘Mmm, ho mei ,’ he mumbled to Fu’s retreating back as he placed a whole har gow between his yellowing teeth and an explosion of grease filled his mouth. Life was improving and could conceivably get better.
    Which was the moment Winnie Lim arrived.
    She pushed the door open with such force that it bounced off the wall.
    He was about to scold her for being late, but she was faster off the mark. ‘Mean one you. Why you not share? Also I want,’ she said, staring at his steaming collection of plastic bags.
    The secretary scraped her chair over to his desk and started transferring the dumplings to her mouth at a steady, machinelike pace. Wong lifted his own game to match. For several minutes, the only sounds in the office were sloppy, competitive chompings from Wong and Lim.
    Then the geomancer looked up at his secretary, putting on his sternest I-am-big-boss voice. ‘Joyce this morning go to do Mr Tik. If no problem, then we give her plenty more assignment.’ He spoke with his mouth full, oil dribbling down his chin. ‘After a while, I do no work. Just count money. Ha ha.’
    Winnie gave him a disapproving look and shook her head disdainfully.
    He noticed her reaction with irritation and stopped chewing. ‘So? What?’
    ‘No good,’ the secretary mumbled, also speaking with her mouth full. ‘Joyce cannot do-ah. Bad idea.’
    ‘Can.’
    ‘Cannot. She mess up-lah. Joyce is foreigner. Everything also she do wrong.’
    ‘Easy job I give her. Apartment of Mr Tik very easy.’
    Winnie added a third dumpling to the two already in her mouth and spoke indistinctly, spraying grey goo over the desk. ‘Not easy. She mess up. You see.’
    He was angry. ‘So many times already I do it,