The Feng Shui Detective

by Nury Vittachi

  ‘Obviously, someone pushed in a fake machine,’ said Madam Xu. ‘I guess they donned overalls with the United World Bank logo on the side and pushed their own machine into the corner. You must check those workers in your video tapes pushing machines in and out. If you like, I’ll have a look at the videos and see if I can identify the bad guys by paranormal means.’

  The banker frowned: ‘We did think of that-I mean, that there was a fake machine-and our guys have been sent to track down all the technical staff working for the past two weeks. It’ll take a while. One possible mistyke we made is that the two security kimras don’t cover the whole room. We focused on the front doors, rather than the beck of the room.’

  Joyce asked: ‘Why did you not have cameras on the people using the machines?’

  ‘We do, in a sinse. Each machine photographs each person who uses it from close range. Don’t ever pick your nose while getting money out of a cash machine, Miss. Not that I’m suggesting you would do such a thing. Naturally, there are several thousands of shots of people to look at over a period of a week. We’ve got people going through these, but no one has noticed innything stringe yet.’

  They were all starting to be infected by the banker’s misery, and for a minute there was silence-if such a term can be used for any meeting in a restaurant on Serangoon Road on a busy Friday night. The banker said: ‘Like you, we wondered if someone put in a fake machine. But it would be difficult to install and incridibly audaicious.’

  The old woman nodded. ‘I agree. It would be risky. The chance of the villains losing their takings and their expensive machinery would be very high.’

  The Superintendent speared a pakora and concurred. ‘And surely it would be complicated and expensive to make a big machine like that just for what may be a small bit of money? I mean, I don’t know about you, but I never put money into those machines. I just take it out, right or not?’

  ‘Quite,’ nodded Madam Xu. ‘I have never put money into a bank machine in my life. I have only withdrawn it, and only when my little Amy is there to remind me about the secret number and to tell me what buttons to press.’

  The police officer leaned back in his chair. He grimaced and sucked his teeth noisily before speaking. ‘Could it be that someone-perhaps a rival bank-got hold of a real ATM and re-programmed it in some way, before installing it at United World Bank? You’d need a top-level expert in computers and banking and what-not. There must be a limited number of such fellows.’

  ‘Must be,’ agreed Madam Xu. ‘Must be some hi-tech crime people.’

  ‘Rubbish.’

  They all looked around. The scornful comment had come from Joyce McQuinnie.

  ‘You wouldn’t need an expert at all,’ she said. ‘Any jerk with a bit of programming knowledge could do it. I could do it and I only got a B minus minus in computer studies.’

  ‘Continue, please,’ said Tan.

  ‘Like, you wouldn’t need any fancy equipment. Just a fastish PC,’ the young woman said. ‘Let’s see, I reckon my brother’s 166 megaherz PC clone would do the trick. You would just program the thing to give you a basic flat desktop display with some instructions that told you to like, slip money into a slot and write down what you were depositing, and you would need a built-in printer. So like when you press “enter”, the printer would simply like churn out a deposit slip-thing with the information you’ve just input. Out it would come. A piece of cake.’

  ‘A piece of cake would come out?’ asked Wong.

  ‘No, not a piece of cake. A piece of paper.’

  ‘Then why you say cake?’

  ‘It’s just, well, it’s just what you say. I meant paper,’ Joyce snapped.

  ‘What about the other details?’ asked Madam Xu. ‘You see, deposit slips also have the time and date of transaction and so on.’

  ‘The date and time would be added automatically. Lots of computers do that anyway, on things you print out. Easy.’

  The banker nodded. ‘The kid’s right, you know. If it was just a screen which asked you how much you were depositing, instid of a full ATM service, it could be replicated quite easily on a basic PC. A teenager could do it.’

  ‘Well thank you, Joyce,’ said the Superintendent. ‘That’s very helpful. Wish I understood this stuff. I’ve got a nephew who’s good at computers. Seems to be young people who can do it, only. Anyway, so fixing a computer to print out a receipt is not too difficult. So what now?’

  ‘Your earlier point still hasn’t been answered,’ said the fortune teller. ‘Was it worth it? Do people put money into these things? Mr Sturmer. You must know the answer.’

  ‘That’s a good pint, ma’am,’ the banker said. ‘You’re right. Most people use automatic cash machines to take money out of binks. It’s only a comparatively small percentage which uses them to put money in. In our hall, on single-transaction visits, it’s something like sixty-eight per cent withdrawals, eleven per cent deposits and the remaining twenty-one per cent transfers, account balances or other services.’

  Wong leaned forwards. ‘This is not a problem, really.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Tan.

  ‘You want to attract money to a new venture. Not difficult. New machine was placed in the east. The room is not too crowded with machines. There are many areas where it could have been placed. More people would go past it if it was close to the front of the hall. But it was placed in the east. The reasoning is obvious.’

  He stopped, and there was silence. Madam Xu stared at him, a spoon halfway to her mouth.

  ‘Not to me,’ said the Superintendent.

  ‘The trigram of the east is symbolised by the flowering of plants. By the green of fresh grass. By the dawn. This is the location of the forces of birth and growth. Perfect for a new business venture. Whoever placed the new machine there knew about the flow of energy. Or maybe just good luck.’

  Madam Xu was unsatisfied. ‘So the east of the room is better for feng shui factors, but that does not answer the question. Why did people put money into it?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Wong. ‘But maybe the people who did it put a sign on it.’

  ‘A sign?’

  ‘A sign saying something like “High-speed deposits here”. So they get all deposits. You remember customers said they put money in deposit machine?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ said Joyce, suddenly excited. ‘You put a sign on the machine saying “All Deposits Here for Instant Service” or something. Then everyone carrying dosh to put in the bank would deposit it in that one. Or most people, anyway.’

  The Superintendent was intrigued. ‘Possible, quite possible. So the customers pull cash out of the other machines, but only pump cash into the villains’ one. Can or not, Mr Sturmer?’

  ‘Could work. I giss that would be one why of maximising your collecting of deposits.’

  Tan picked a piece of cardamom out of a crevice between his teeth. ‘Now we are thinking. Let us take this further. They have dressed them-selfs up as bank technical people and wheeled in this fake machine, battery-powered, which takes deposits only. Has a big sign on top: deposit machine. How do they empty it? Do you leave all your ill-gotten gains in the machine on the premises day after day, knowing that you would eventually be found out? Helluva risky, no?’

  ‘Not need to,’ said Wong. ‘You have a cow. You milk it every day, yes or no? One of the villains-maybe it is a different one every day-he-she comes like normal customer. He uses deposit machine. But he takes all money out.’

  Madam Xu objected. ‘But you just said that the machine would not give out money, only take money in.’

  Wong looked at Joyce, who had suddenly taken on the role of technology expert.

  ‘Er, yeah. It would be easy to fix that,’ she said. ‘Quite easy. Whoever programmed the computer would know the commands which would like, open a little door and send the money out. You just have a hot key.’

  Another moment of silence.

  ‘Explain, please,’ said the geomancer.

&
nbsp; ‘A hot key is just this key which you press and it toggles from one thing to another thing,’ the young woman explained. ‘So you press the hot key and it changes from the basic program, which is a thing for you to write down what money you are putting in, to a screen which you can use to like, get all the money collected.’

  Superintendent Tan spoke with his mouth full. ‘But how would you stop other people from pressing this hot key?’

  ‘Password.’

  Wong, who had jotted down the words ‘toggle’ and ‘hot key’ for further study, said: ‘Yes, this would seem very normal. Man or woman walks up to a bank money machine. Presses buttons. Types in a password. Takes money out. This is very normal. No one would think anything strange.’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said the banker, who had absently started to eat and had a spoonful of brinjal hovering in front of him. ‘Still, I don’t see how they could have done all this without the bink staff noticing. I mean, this hypothitical machine was right on the bink premises. We have a security guard there the whole time.’

  ‘But think about it,’ Madam Xu cut in. ‘All he saw was normal bank procedures: customers using machines, and occasionally teams of bank technicians, or people who looked like bank technicians, installing or removing machines. Nothing unusual, is it?’

  The banker mused. ‘Well mai-be. But I still reckon avoiding discovery would have been tricky. You see, the bink’s own staff visit the machines every day to reload them.’

  ‘I ask a question,’ said Wong. ‘Does the bank staff come at same time every day?’

  ‘Er, yes, I think they come every night, twice on Friday nights, Monday mornings and at weekends.’

  ‘There is an answer, then. At night, one of the villains comes in. He wears bank worker clothes. He covers their machine with “out of order” sign. Any bank staff member who sees it will think technical department’s job to fix.’

  Sturmer asked: ‘But when the technical people arrive to fix it…?’

  ‘No,’ said Wong. ‘No one calls technical people. Guard won’t call. Not his job. Also, everyone will assume that technical people will be notified already. Whoever put the out-of order sign there would have done it. So people think.’

  The banker was silent, carefully digesting this suggestion. ‘Could work,’ he said at last. He spoke slowly. ‘Just maibe. The front office, which reloads the machine at night, would assume that an out-of-order machine would be the responsibility of the beck office. The beck office, seeing a deposits-only machine, would assume that this was some new procedure being tried out by the front office. Neither side would need to. discuss it with the other.’

  Suddenly he leaned back and laughed. ‘Quite funny, really. Could happen. You couldn’t do something like that in a bink with real people, but a large, busy, 24-hour automatic binking hall is different. Behaviour is governed by procedure. You set up a scam which slots neatly enough into the system but does not affect the official procedure, and no one notices. Damn sharp.’

  Tan smiled. ‘Interesting. Thanks, mystics. You’ve done your job. You’ve given us some fresh ideas. Now comes the tough part, which is my job: tracking down the villains. The machine with all their fingerprints on it, presumably, will be miles away by now.’

  ‘Our only chance is the video tapes. There must be photos of the guys,’ said the New Zealander.

  Tan shook his head. ‘Trouble is, the perps will be expecting us to study the pics and will be heavily disguised,’ said the police officer. ‘I wouldn’t put much hope in that. Maybe very tough to find them.’

  Madam Xu said: ‘Well, as you say, that’s your job. Tracking down criminals. Much too dangerous for elderly people like ourselves, Ms McQuinnie excepted, of course.’

  Sturmer wiped his mouth with his napkin and spoke to Tan. ‘I want to get back to the bink. See if these ideas can help the investiguytive team.’

  Wong looked up. ‘Just wait a minute, please. Can I talk to you a bit about the feng shui contract for United World Banking Corporation?’

  ‘Can we do it another time?’ asked Sturmer, getting to his feet. ‘I’m griteful for your help, but I’m kinda busy now, as you kyn imagine. Let me pay for this meal.’

  ‘Just for a minute please,’ said the geomancer, and something in his voice made Sturmer sit down again. ‘Need to tell you something. C F Wong & Associates had the contract for feng shui readings at all branches of your bank. Until two years ago. The contract was not renewed.’

  ‘I was in the Sydney office then. Only been here for twelve months. Don’t know innything about it.’

  ‘I will explain. Your bank gave the contract to another feng shui reader. He is cheaper. But maybe does not stick to the high standards of C F Wong & Associates.’

  Tan interrupted. ‘I’m sure Mr Sturmer can arrange for you to have another interview with the decision-maker on such matters, C F, see if you can get the contract back, okay or not?’

  Sturmer nodded, and rose to his feet again.

  ‘Oh no,’ said the geomancer. ‘I am not saying this because I want the contract back. I am saying this to give you more information.’

  ‘I’m listening,’ said the banker.

  The geomancer flicked open the map book on the table. ‘I keep a little eye on your banks. I knew them so well from the time I was feng shui reader there. I need to see whether feng shui done correctly or not. Feng shui is business like any other. We need to keep an eye on rivals. This is extra true for cheaper ones. Most of the branches are okay. One or two not so good. The Somerset Road branch all wrong. Has some errors that can be fixed. I can do that for you some time. He put goldfish on the west side. Very crazy thing to do. But never mind.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Sturmer.

  ‘Your small electronic banking section on Mosque Street is very big problem. I think I can say it is urgent problem. You need to fix immediately. Feng shui is bad. But in an odd way. The room is strange shape. There is cutting ch’i points right at name-plate of the bank. Very bad. Very negative. The position of the machines is okay but the position of bank name, no. There is a ba gua mirror-you know, eight-side feng shui mirror with trigrams-but it is placed inside. Is facing the bank name. Makes it worse. Almost like geomancer has tried to make it bad as possible for the bank. Instead of good.’

  Tan was getting impatient. ‘C F, do we really have to go through all this now? Can’t you just write a report or…’

  Sturmer held up his hand to interrupt the police officer. ‘Jist a minute, Superintendent. We don’t have an electronic bank in Mosque Street. We don’t have any branches in Mosque Street.’

  ‘This is what I am telling you,’ said the geomancer. ‘Yet this bank has your name on it.’

  Sturmer abruptly sat down. ‘Do you think…? I mean, are you sure it is our bink?’

  ‘United World Banking Corporation, it says, in big letters, across the top. Also your logo.’

  ‘Could it be the same people…?’ asked the banker, turning to Tan.

  The Superintendent was speechless.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Wong. ‘But, if I can remember right-it is hard for oldster like me, who is more than fifty years old-there are two machines in this electronic bank. One has an out-of-order sign on it. The other one, I think, has a sign, says: “High-speed deposits”. I only notice this because feng shui of the room so bad. I was hoping no one thinks I am responsible for it. Singapore is a small town. Not difficult for me to keep eye on the few branches of your bank.’ The geomancer shook his head in dismay at the memory of the ill-designed room.

  ‘So that’s how you knew about the deposit-at-this-machine sign,’ said Madam Xu. ‘You let us all think it was an inspired guess. I think that’s cheating, Mr Wong.’

  Tan’s mouth dropped open. ‘If it’s got your bank’s name on it, but it’s not your bank, it’s got to be some sort of scam.’ He pulled out his pocket phone. ‘I hope to heaven it’s the same people, trying to do a similar trick in a different location. This may be an opportunity f
or us to do our part. Paydirt.’ He leapt to his feet.

  ‘What does paydirt mean?’ asked Wong.

  ‘I don’t know. Ask your assistant,’ said Tan, thumping the phone buttons.

  Joyce blinked. The space between her eyebrows turned into a little grid. ‘Don’t know. It’s just what people say when they find something they’ve been looking for, for a long time.’

  Old Uberoi appeared through the steam with two large dishes, one containing string hoppers, and one egg hoppers.

  ‘Oh, paydirt,’ said Madam Xu, clapping her hands.

  7 Spice of life

  The Chuang-tzu, chuan seven, says: ‘The mind of the perfect man is like a mirror. It does not move with things, nor does it anticipate them. It responds to things but does not retain them.’

  The same feeling of detachment can be found in another ancient text. The Yi-ch’uan Chi-jang Chi, chuan fourteen. Here you read the words of Shao Yung. He said this:

  The name of the Master of Happiness is not known.

  For thirty years he has lived on the banks of the Lo River.

  His feelings are those of the wind and the moon;

  His spirit is on the river and the lake.

  To him there is no distinction

  Between low position and high rank,

  Between poverty and riches.

  He does not move with things nor anticipate them.

  He has no restraints and no taboos.

  He is poor, but has no sorrow.

  He drinks but is never drunk.

  He gathers the springtime of the world into his mind.

  Blade of Grass, slowly-slowly you are becoming wise. But remember this. The strength of the mind is the strength of its detachment.

  From ‘Some Gleanings of Oriental Wisdom’

  by C F Wong, part 131.

  His journal tucked safely in the briefcase he clutched to his chest, C F Wong trotted briskly along the cracked and crowded pavements, his head held high.