Free Mr Wong Goes West by Nury Vittachi Page A

master, the incident was proof that the gods were going out of their way to make things up to him, having been so mean over the past few months. A murder undeniably introduced a massive amount of negative energy into a space. It meant that his role was far more important than would otherwise have been the case. More importantly, it meant that he could jack up his fees. Best of all, the murderer had been caught, so he didn’t have to do the difficult part ofthe job, which was to work out who did it and gather proof for a legal case. That particular ball was firmly in the court of the law enforcement people. All he had to do was check out the space, alleviate the negative vibrations, and collect his fee. Life was sweet.
    Wong and Teo abandoned the buggy, went down an escalator, and then stepped outside into the bright sunshine, whereupon they boarded another small vehicle, which trundled them towards the hangar where the fabled visiting aircraft was housed. Minutes later, they stopped at a security gate and Teo had a long and earnest talk with security staff, producing a long series of papers to justify Wong’s presence on the site. Clearly, the murder had brought down the shutters heavily, and officers had become hostile to allowing anyone into the hangar who had not been born and raised there.
    After three sets of people had examined the papers, Teo and Wong were allowed through.
    ‘Hard to get in here,’ he commented.
    She agreed. ‘That was the problem. It wasn’t hard enough, before. We used to just have two staff at the barrier. I guess one was in the toilet, or fetching coffee or something, and the perpetrator got past the other one.’
    ‘He sneak past?’
    ‘No. He tricked her. That’s what I heard. He said he was a local environmentalist and he didn’t have a pass but he wanted to go in and take some pics, do an environmental assessment on the new plane. He was cute and charming, and she was a bit of a greenie, you know vegetarian and all that, so she let him slide through.’
    ‘I know this type of woman. Very troublesome. Too bad.’
    ‘It was a very naughty thing to do. You should never let anyone past security like that. But it was hard to blame her.She wasn’t a trained security guard or anything. More just a receptionist or PA.’
    ‘Very bad to let a bad guy in.’
    ‘True. But we felt kinda sorry for her. I mean, she was quite young, and it all seemed innocent enough.’
    ‘What happened to her?’
    ‘She was sacked on the spot, of course. I think she’ll be lucky if she’s not prosecuted.’
    ‘And this bad guy. He did what?’
    ‘You don’t know?’
    ‘Mr Manks told me a bit. But not too much. He shot somebody.’
    ‘Well, it was in the newspapers this morning, so I guess it isn’t a secret any more. He got into Skyparc and then shot a guy working there. Then he tried to escape but the techies saw it all through the windows, and tipped off the guards, who came running. They grabbed him before he was even out of the hangar.’
    They had reached a long corridor and she ushered Wong into a room on one side. In it, three men were waiting. One of them, a tall man with a walrus moustache, stepped forward to greet them.
    ‘Mr Wong. Good morning. My name’s Handey. Most people call me Sir Nicholas. I have the honour of being chairman of Skyparc Airside Enterprises. Now you understand that your role has become rather more important than we had expected, due to the highly regrettable incident yesterday morning. We hired you because we wanted to make sure everything was correct for the meeting; so we didn’t make the sort of protocol mistakes that we would have been unable to see without the help of a…er…specialist such as yourself. But since the incident of yesterday, things have become more serious. A death onthe plane is bad luck to the superstitious of any country, Mr Wong, Britain or China or anywhere else. We’re going to make damn sure we don’t have any British or Chinese bad