Free Mr Wong Goes West by Nury Vittachi

flight.’
    As she slowed the vehicle down, nearing their destination, she turned to look at him: ‘Do you have any questions you’d like to ask? I know everything there is to know about this place…well, nearly. I’ll be glad to answer any queries you have. Incidentally, in case I didn’t mention it earlier, we handle fifty-three flights an hour at peak time, which is equivalent to almost one per minute.’
    The feng shui master turned to her: ‘I have a question.’
    ‘Good.’ She was delighted. Most of her victims were so stunned by her torrential onslaught of facts that they were barely able to speak.
    ‘Where’s the front door?’
    ‘The front door?’
    ‘Yes. Where’s the front door? I want to know which way it faces.’
    For Wong, it was a natural question to ask: how could you understand the feng shui of a building without knowing where the front door was? The main door of the house had to be aligned with the most positive direction for the director of the group of people who used the building. For example, if the most senior man had a
kua
number of seven, a northeast facing door would make the house prosperous, while a southwest door would see the property expanding in size; other directions would be less positive.
    Nicola Teo was momentarily silenced. It appeared that no one had ever asked that question before. But the confusion in her face suggested that she was surprised to be unable to answer such a simple question. She pointed to his diagram.
    ‘Well, that’s easy. The front door is, well, at the front. And, well, I would say the front was this bit, where the airport express train arrives—at least, it is from the passengers’ point of view. The passengers on the trains, that is. But from the air passengers’ point of view…well, they arrive at gates mostly down that end, so they would probably see that end as the front. But then the car drivers…well there are five car parks—well, two main ones, you could say. And they come in sort of from one side or the other. So they would probably think the front doors were probably at this side, or that one. Did I tell you, we have a total of two thousand four hundred car parking bays? So let me think, where exactly is the front door?’
    Wong let her chew over the question and returned to his study of the plans. It became clear over the next few minutes that his question had more or less silenced the young woman, although she still spewed forth a fresh factoid at irregular intervals, like a short circuiting copy of a child’s talkingdictionary. ‘Did I tell you there were ninety-eight separate elevators in this building alone?’ she gushed. ‘Did I tell you we serve the passengers from two hundred and ten thousand, one hundred and twelve flights a year?’
    Wong smiled. The sun was starting to shine in his life again. Over the past day, the feng shui master had become increasingly enthusiastic about this assignment. Everything had gone well. The client had said he was happy to reimburse them for the business class tickets they had not purchased. The hotel was comfortable and had good Chinese food on its menu. Joyce had been banished from the task, so he could work efficiently and without interruption. The schedule was relaxed, with him doing the on-board conference area today, and then flying off to London for more work tomorrow.
    And then there had been the icing on the cake: the murder.
    Once Joyce had moved out of earshot at the hotel, Robbie Manks had filled Wong in on the details of the ‘incident’ that had so upset him. Apparently an environmental activist—a well-known extremist in greenie circles—had broken into the plane while it was parked at the airport yesterday morning. The man had shot and killed a petroleum executive and then tried to escape. But airport technicians had seen the whole thing through the aircraft windows and had alerted police, who pounced on the killer as he was trying to leave the hangar.
    For the feng shui