The Feng Shui Detective Goes South Read Free

it would be too high to jump from.
    Madeline Tsai, the young lodger, wandered in a slightly dazed way into the room. Clearly she had been asleep, despite the fact that it was almost lunchtime.
    ‘House is on fire,’ Cady shrieked.
    Her cousin, who appeared to be in her late teens, seemed oddly unperturbed by the blaze around her. She calmly strolled towards the door, approaching within a metre of the flames, and picked up her shoulder bag.
    Drug taker, Wong decided. Her skin was dry and dehydrated like that of an ecstasy user.
    Then Dr Leibler noisily returned to the main room, his heavy form bumping against the side of the kitchen door. ‘There’s nothing to use to fight the fire with. We’ll all go out through the back door.’ He looked at his wife and child, both frozen with terror. He added, in a shout: ‘Do you hear me? NOW.’
    Cady Tsai-Leibler and C F Wong looked at each other. Neither wanted to deliver the bad news to the angry man in front of them. The Hong Kong woman spoke first: ‘This type of old flat doesn’t have back door. You didn’t notice?’
    Her husband reacted unexpectedly well. He spoke calmly: ‘Okay. Get your valuables together. We’ll go over the balcony when the fire service arrives.’
    She raced around the room, putting her mobile phone in a bag that she slipped over one shoulder and then started looking for her shoes.
    ‘My bag my bag my bag!’ shouted Melody, who had been ordered to stand on the balcony. The child was jumping up and down. She pointed to the corner of the room, where a pink backpack with a Winnie The Pooh motif stood against a wall.
    Her mother, braving the flames, picked it up and threw it onto the balcony. The child immediately unzipped the top and looked bereft. ‘My Miffy pencil case isn’t inside.’
    ‘Just GO!’ her father shouted.
    ‘I want my Miffy pencil caaaaaase,’ she squealed, suddenly bursting into tears. ‘I want it.’
    Her mother saw the missing item under a chair. ‘Here,’ she shouted, throwing it to her.
    The child squeezed it to her chest, and then started crying.
    ‘I wanna go home,’ she bawled.
    Madeleine Tsai stood watching the chaos from the balcony. ‘Aiyeeaah,’ she breathed. She appeared to be gradually waking up to what was going on.
    ‘Do something, Mr Wong!’ Mrs Tsai-Leibler screamed, as the heat became more intense.
    ‘I am, I am,’ said Wong. He was scrabbling through the mess on the table. ‘I try to find my papers.’
    ‘Forget papers. Gau meng! Save you. Save us .’
    She raced into the bedroom. Seconds later, she raced out again, her arms full of silks. She raced to a window and threw them over the balcony.
    ‘You see Hello Kitty clutch purse somewhere?’
    ‘Forget the child’s stupid things,’ her husband shouted.
    ‘Not Melody’s,’ said Mrs Tsai-Leibler. ‘It’s mine.’
    ‘ Geez ,’ the American said.
    ‘And my DKNY top. Can’t find it.’
    The flames advanced steadily across the living room.
    ‘Must jump out,’ she shrieked.
    ‘No,’ said Wong. ‘You hurt yourself. Stay.’
    ‘We’ll be fried if we stay,’ said her husband.
    Right on cue, there was a roar as the chair nearest the front door ignited, and flames started to lick at a small rug in the centre of the room.
    ‘Where’s my digital camera?’ Gibson Leibler thundered.
    ‘Where my earring box?’ his wife gushed.
    ‘My computer. We need to save the hard disk. And my laptop. Where’s my laptop?’
    ‘My Cartier panther brooch.’
    ‘Where the hell is my Palm Pilot?’
    The couple stared at each other.
    ‘Must find my papers,’ said Wong. He was sure he had put them on the dining table, but they had vanished.
    ‘Forget the papers,’ said Mrs Tsai-Leibler. ‘Get important stuff.’ Then a thought seemed to occur to her. She turned to Wong: ‘I moved them to that chair so I could put the teapot on the table.’
    ‘The man’s mad,’ said Dr Leibler, who had absently picked up a hammer to fight the fire with, before