The Feng Shui Detective Goes South by Nury Vittachi

It is so short. And it just stops.’
    Amran Ismail nodded. His eyes were wet and it looked as if he did not trust himself to speak.
    ‘I don’t really like doing readings from prints,’ she continued. ‘I would much rather meet Clara in the flesh.’
    ‘Maybe also can. Later.’ He spoke in a whisper.
    ‘Hmmf.’ The fortune-teller switched spectacles and then held the print very close to her face. ‘Well, you know as well as I do, Mr Ismail, palm readers almost never give a precise date of death by looking at the lines on a hand. It simply isn’t done. It cannot be done. For technical and scientific reasons. And you probably also know that the lines on the hands change as people get older.
    Especially since this handprint is one of a child of nineteen.’
    ‘Yah. And?’
    ‘Nevertheless . . . there is definitely trouble here. I see what you mean. Goodness me.’ She stared at the print in front of her with astonishment. ‘This is really amazing. I can see why you are worried. All three of the major lines are remarkably short.
    They all fade into little wispy endings long before they should.
    This is quite amazing.’
    The bomoh nodded slowly.
    ‘She has no rascettes,’ the fortune-teller continued.
    ‘I don’t know this word. We do different type of palm reading in Sabah.’
    ‘Naturally you would. But mine is the classical system which has been used for centuries. The rest of you are entitled to your own systems, even if they are wrong. Now rascettes—you better write this down—is the technical term for the rings at the point where the wrist joins the hand. On the inner wrist. Each of these is supposed to indicate thirty years of life. Your client has virtually no rascettes. I have never seen anyone without rascettes before.’
    She lowered the piece of paper. ‘I’ll take the case. It will take me several hours to do the job properly. And I really would like to meet the young lady in question. It is a very serious and disturbing case and I would like to help if I can. This will need a lot of expertise to resolve in a happy way. I can’t guarantee that it is even possible.’
    Amran Ismail nodded again.
    Madame Xu looked at his pained expression. ‘I am a good judge of people, Mr Ismail. And I know that most of what you have told me is true.’
    He moved awkwardly, clearly uncomfortable under her gaze. ‘You mean what?’
    ‘Most of what you have said is true. But you have left out one fact. One very important fact.’
    He said nothing.
    She continued: ‘You desperately want to save this girl’s life because she is one of the teenagers in your children’s home, and has become your most interesting client. But there’s another reason.’
    Amran Ismail stared at her but said nothing.
    ‘You are in love with her,’ Madame Xu said.
    The bomoh sniffed. His face crumpled up and his chin fell to his chest. His goatee trembled. He burst into tears.
    ‘Yes,’ he said, in a tiny voice, ‘Yes, I am-lah.’
    The loud and tremulous wail that burst from the huge man’s throat shocked the parrot into silence and distracted Concepcion from her task of cleaning her beloved new microwave oven.

    The geomancer blinked at the doorway, which was lit in such a way that it was simultaneously painfully bright and far too dark to see anything. Clearly a miracle of modern engineering. Then he looked again at the small piece of paper in his hand. ‘Dan T’s Inferno,’ it said. ‘Mohamed Sultan Road.’ He glared again at the neon sign over the doorway. There were flames around a mish-mash of letters in an indecipherable font, but he could vaguely make out a ‘D’ and a ‘T’. This had to be it. But where was Joyce McQuinnie? He scanned the scene but could not see her anywhere. But then he was a long way away.
    CF Wong was peering suspiciously at the nightclub from a safe distance on the other side of the road. The place was not just unwelcoming, but positively frightening. Not only did the harsh glare of the