The Place That Didn't Exist

by Mark Watson

  Perhaps it was this, or perhaps his medium level of intoxication, which made Tim put himself forward when somebody suggested a final nightcap before bed. The sun’s eventual retreat had left a sky divided once more into blue and maroon, like the layers of a pudding, before this was pulled away to reveal a broad splash of stars over the sea. Everyone but Jason and his agent was still there; filming was not due to begin until lunchtime the next day, because of the golf club’s opening hours.

  ‘We can’t go to my chalet,’ said Bradley, vehemently enough that he had to explain: ‘It’s, it’s kind of a mess in there right now.’

  ‘Does Ashraf not clean yours?’ asked Tim, surprised. ‘He’s cleaned mine to within an inch of its life.’

  ‘All back to Tim’s, then!’ cried Raf, and Tim found himself agreeing, rising to what he perceived as some sort of challenge.

  For the first few minutes it was very odd to have them all there: the famous Christian Roper on his knees, methodically emptying the minibar; Ruth adjusting the air-con with a confidence Tim himself couldn’t boast; the Fixer deflecting enquiries about where he lived, what else he did with his time. But, after all, this was not really Tim’s chalet; it was nobody’s, and especially so given that Ashraf had restored it to the perfect neutrality it had worn before Tim came. His clothes were folded out of sight; his bathroom was showroom-spotless. As a green-shirted girl arrived with more booze, leaving a satisfaction questionnaire, Tim allowed perfect, giddy ease to wash over him.

  Music was on at a low level; people went out to the terrace and came back in. A double-bleep of his watch informed him that midnight had passed by the time Raf, beer in hand, proposed a game.

  ‘Got an idea. Remember what the man here – remember what he made us do? One fact about ourselves?’ He looked around the group. ‘All right, so leaving aside all the bullshit. How about we do one actual fact. One thing that’s actually interesting. A story. A secret.’

  Tim looked at Raf, thinking how drunk he sounded; the eye contact was fateful. Raf reached across and slapped him chummily. ‘Come on, mein host. Why don’t you start?’

  Once more, Tim’s brain told him that he was being put on trial, tested by the group’s alpha male; but with the insulation of booze and the rather dreamlike atmosphere, his brain added that he was equal to it, that he should say what the hell he liked.

  ‘OK. My brother – me and my brother Rod were best mates. We did everything together. Had all the same jokes. He got me into bars, took me to festivals. All that stuff. And then, last few years, we just drifted apart. He went into the City. Then abroad. And then lost touch with everyone. We don’t even know what he does now. Something with money. We hear from him maybe once a year. And I miss him.’

  Tim wasn’t sure he had expressed himself clearly, but the story seemed to be well received. Christian Roper, his shirt-sleeves rolled up as if he might start digging a well there and then, cleared his throat.

  ‘I’ll tell you my secret,’ said Christian. ‘I think it’s fucking disgusting I have what I have, and you all have what you do. Poverty – this whole thing – is not a hobby for me.’

  ‘That’s hardly a secret, dear,’ said Jo, stubbing out a cigarette in one of Tim’s mugs.

  ‘No,’ said Christian, ‘but still I don’t think people fully realize that—’

  ‘I’ll stop you there,’ Raf cut in, with a rudeness that surprised Tim, even given the producer’s recent history. ‘Do you not think that all this, this charity shit, in the end it’s a bottomless pit?’

  ‘What exactly do you mean?’ asked Christian. Tim, groping through his mind’s blur, tried to divine whether Christian seemed angry, but his sense of nuance had been depleted. He could only register the physical fact that Ruth had gone into the bedroom and was now lying on the bed, facing upwards, still seemingly awake.

  ‘I just, I don’t know,’ said Raf. ‘This thing about it all being our responsibility. I get what you’re doing. But I just think, the world is pretty screwed.’ He gestured at the coffee table as if it were a map of the doomed planet. ‘There’s . . . Africa. You’ve got the Middle East. There’s disease, kids dying everywhere.’ He had the drunken orator’s habit of stopping for unpredictable periods and then rebooting just as someone else was about to get in. ‘There’s been charity appeals forever. They keep doing it. But people keep . . . you know. My point is, I’m not sorry I live in a nice part of the world. I’m not going to apologize for that. Kids dying somewhere else. The world’s not fair, is my point. It never will be. Not our fault.’

  Christian Roper spread his hands and said: ‘Well, we must agree to differ.’

  A few seconds elapsed before Miles began to tell a story about sitting on a snail and claiming that his younger sister had done it, so successfully that she herself still believed it was the truth over thirty years later. Everyone laughed; the awkwardness engendered by the previous conversation was soon gone. At least, as far as Tim could make out, it was; but he could feel reality pixelating, objects swimming into shapes pleasantly removed from their normal precision.

  Later – when it was important – Tim struggled to remember in what order people had left. Bradley was first to go, he was almost sure, and the Fixer absented himself without ceremony or comment shortly afterwards. Then Christian, Jo and Raf left in a three, going out onto the terrace and never reappearing. Tim felt more distanced than ever from the moments of intimacy with Jo, but this manifested itself less as a thought than as an acidic twist of the stomach, and he forced his mind to alight somewhere else.

  A strange sort of emptiness had descended. The rugs bore the imprints of recent human engagement, the air still hissed with past conversation. But two people remained. Miles had fashioned a bed out of two giant burgundy cushions and was lying in the middle of the lounge, face down and fully dressed, already snoring like a giant in a fairytale. Meanwhile, Ruth was still in Tim’s bedroom. He rose from the couch to speak to her, and a warning shot from brain to guts made him sink back down.

  ‘I’m going to go to sleep right here,’ she said, ‘unless you make me move.’

  ‘No, I’ll be fine on the couch.’

  ‘You can come in. I mean, this bed’s big enough for—’

  ‘Honestly.’

  He wasn’t sure whether he was snubbing her, and it bothered him that he was too drunk to judge. But after everything that had happened with Jo, it felt advisable not to take any chances. In any case, Ruth was almost asleep, and soon Tim would be too.

  He stood and took one more look at the scene: this new friend of his passing out on the bed, another crash-landed on the floor; the mess of bottles and drafted-in ashtrays. There was the dense mucky smell in the air of a just-finished party, an aroma that in only a few hours would provoke nauseous regret. There was no way of getting around that, Tim knew. It was half past two here, half eleven at home. He texted Pete. It’s mental here! The phone wrote ‘metal’ instead of ‘mental’; he sent this message by accident and was forced to issue another text as a correction. He stripped to his underwear and folded his clothes in a pile by the couch, which instantly proved as comfortable as the bed itself.

  Sleep was reaching out for him, but when it came, it was of a brittle kind. Several times he found himself padding about in a hazy place he was used to, neither asleep nor really engaged with wakefulness. Once he tiptoed into the bathroom, flicked the wrong switch and accidentally filled the bedroom with light. Ruth stirred and muttered; Tim apologized. When he came out of the bathroom, she was awake, and he perched on the edge of the mattress. The bedside clock said 04:15: he’d barely been asleep two hours.

  ‘You, erm, get around a lot in the night, huh?’ said Ruth.

  They spoke for a few more minutes, Ruth with the covers pulled up over her shoulders. She invited him into the bed again, once more with an air of pragmatism – ‘it makes sense’ – but did not seem offended when he went back to the couch and curled up, as he always had in strange places, with his hands over his
closed eyes.

  The muezzin was calling outside and light was streaming in. Tim’s bowels were nastily full and his head was aching with what felt like a sort of contempt for him. He checked the time; it was just after nine, though it felt as if he hadn’t been asleep more than a few minutes. He hauled himself up from the sofa and registered two things: the door was open a little way, and Miles was no longer on the floor. Other than these details, everything was as it had been; Ruth was exactly where he’d left her, head buried in the pillows. All the same, something was wrong, but again it was impossible to say, with hindsight, whether he knew this as he gathered up his jeans – a mixed shower of pennies and dirhams clattering out of the pockets – and stepped out in search of fresh air.

  The air, for a start, was not fresh. The new day had the kind of heat that the previous ones had only hinted at. There was an unpleasant frankness about the light. Outside this group of chalets, the perpetual good times of the Village would be starting up once more: the deckchairs set out in the same patterns, the shiny cocktail shakers perched on bars, the swimming pools shimmering and blue, as welcoming as newly made beds.

  Ashraf was the first person he saw: he was standing outside chalet number seven. Tim began a greeting, but it froze in his mouth. Ashraf was clutching the top of his head with both hands, as if about to wrench all the hair out in one grab. He was swaying like somebody with seasickness; he barely seemed to recognize Tim. The cleaning trolley was parked a little way away, forgotten about.

  ‘Ashraf, are you all right?’

  Wordlessly, the cleaner pointed at the open door of the chalet, and Tim felt his overfull insides churn with foreboding. Ashraf was taking huge, unsteady breaths; he did not seem able to speak. The idea of going any further gripped Tim with fear, but at the same time it seemed to become almost unavoidable.

  Tim walked slowly into an entrance identical to his own, with the lounge on one side, the main bedroom on the other. He went into the bedroom. Raf Kavanagh’s clothes were scattered by the side of the bed; his watch and phone had been placed neatly on one of the bedside tables. His radio-alarm clock showed a non-time, 8:88. Tim progressed to the en-suite bathroom, wiping his damp hands on his shirt. Out of habit he knocked on the door; there was no answer. Tim removed his glasses, replaced them, and pushed the door open.

  In the centre of the bathroom was a hot tub and there lay Raf Kavanagh, resting limply against the porcelain tiles around the rim. His eyes were dull and unmoving and his mouth half open. There was no doubt at all that he was dead. Tim began to say something, but he realized – with a feeling unlike any he’d had in his life so far – that there was nobody there to talk to.

  PART TWO

  7: CLOSE-UP

  They drove in the falling dark. Nobody spoke. The vehicle purred along the trunk of the Palm, encountering few other cars. It seemed as if the whole place was a track built for this one car to make this one trip. Tim thought he was probably feeling that way because he didn’t want the journey to end. It was comfortable in this vehicle. There were bottles of Welsh spring water poking out of grooves in the armrests; there was the in-car laptop in sleek silver. Nothing bad could happen while they were in here.

  The Ropers’ place was at the top of a marble-white block presided over by security floodlights, which burst on as soon as the group got out of the vehicle, as if to accuse them of something. The Fixer gave a signal to a dark-suited man inside who waved his hand over a panel to part the automatic doors. A brass plate above the desk welcomed them to NIRVANA APARTMENTS. The air-con exhaled. The concierge was almost asleep. The pinging sound made by the lift to announce their floor was the loudest thing anyone had heard for half an hour.

  They heard a chain being pulled across, a sequence of bolts and locks being manipulated, before the door opened. Jo Roper was wearing a man’s shirt, the sleeves rolled up; her hair was tied back, and there were pronounced circles around her eyes. Tim was ashamed to find himself reconnecting with something of what he had felt for her before.

  In the entrance hall, the artful illumination – angled uplighters, ceiling bulbs – only emphasized how white and washed out they all were. There was something about their collective exhaustion that made him feel welded to everyone there. They had all suffered a loss together: the loss not just of a person, but of the assurance that the world was in good order, that things could not suddenly turn to madness.

  From the second Tim saw Raf’s body, a train of events had sprung into being. As he watched hotel staff arrive and summon the police, as he stood numbly with the other crew members having the same minimal conversations over and over again, he had the persistent sense that none of it was anything more than a charade he was going along with. He was aware this was probably shock, and almost welcomed the instruction which came from police around an hour later: that they must all stay in their individual chalets until further notice. It was good to have orders, somehow. It made it feel as if someone understood what was going on.

  There was no one in the office in London; it was still too early. But Pete was often up before seven because of a habit of pre-work bike rides, which he undertook as a sort of voluntary penance for spending most nights in the pub. ‘What’s up, mate?’ he asked. ‘Grafting it out by the pool, you lucky bugger? Do you remember if I used up all the pasta sauce the other night? It’s just I could swear—’

  ‘Someone’s dead,’ said Tim.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The producer of the ad is dead.’ The line was remarkably clear, as if Pete were in the same room: it enhanced Tim’s sense that he couldn’t really be so far from home, and in this confounding situation. ‘Ashraf . . . the guy who makes up the rooms . . . he found him.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, mate. What happened?’

  ‘No one knows yet. Well, I don’t know.’

  ‘Christ,’ said Pete again, sounding alarmed and impressed. ‘Keep me updated.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Stay safe, Tim, will you?’

  A sentiment as raw as this had no normal place in his interactions with Pete, with any of his friends; Tim felt unnerved as the call ended. It hadn’t really struck him until now that he might be anything other than safe. He switched on the giant TV after some negotiation with the bedside panel and watched it play a promotional clip. A woman was shopping in a shiny mall; then returning to the Village, her haul of bags being conveyed to her room by a smiling porter. When Tim did find the BBC’s world news service, there was – of course – no mention of what he had seen. A news event had happened here, but the news itself didn’t know yet. The feeling of reversed authority was peculiar. He sat on the edge of the bed, staring dumbly at the cycling images of events elsewhere in the world, until two policemen knocked on the door.

  They wore olive shirts with a red trim, and dark green berets with the logo of a ship and a wreath of Arabic characters underneath. It was very strange to lead the two men into the space where all his guests had assembled last night and which was still shabby and sour-smelling despite Tim’s dazed attempts to clean up. One policeman perched on the sofa; the other, much taller and clearly the natural leader of the two, was glancing about the place. Tim wondered if he was drawing some sort of unfavourable conclusion from the fact that lots of alcohol had obviously been drunk here. It was stupid to worry, though: Dubai was awash with Westerners’ narcotics. He cleared his throat.

  ‘Would you like water, or . . .?’

  ‘No, no.’ The short officer seemed almost tickled by the clumsy attempt at etiquette. ‘We just wanted to ask you a few questions. You know, obviously, of the death of your friend.’

  It sounded even stranger like this than when Tim had said it himself. This was partly because ‘death’ continued to seem such a lurid idea, and partly because he and Raf had not been friends; yet now he did feel the beginnings of horror at the notion the man had died.

  ‘Can you describe how you became aware of what happened?’

  ‘I came out and Ashraf – the, er,
cleaner . . . anyway, he led me to Raf’s chalet.’

  ‘Where you found . . .?’

  ‘He was lying in his hot tub, dead.’

  ‘Was the door already open?’ asked the tall policeman.

  ‘Yes.’

  As he recounted these events, all true, Tim inevitably came to feel more and more as if he was covering something up.

  ‘Do they . . . do you think it was . . . that someone killed him?’ Tim found himself asking.

  In a cop drama, one of the police might have snapped back that they were the ones asking the questions. These policemen achieved the same result by ignoring him altogether. The shorter man, removing his beret, began to ask about the previous night. Who had been in Tim’s chalet? What was drunk, and were other drugs used? With whom did Raf leave, and at what time?

  Tim strained to answer these questions with as demonstrative an air of helpfulness as he could. The last one caused him difficulty, given his sketchy memories; he was forced to admit – gesturing at the minibar – that he had been drunk. There were no other drugs, he said emphatically, but again with a creeping and unpalatable sense that he really had no idea what had happened outside on the terrace.

  The lanky policeman’s mouth seemed to twist into a sceptical grin at the unhelpfulness of his responses, but they did not pursue any particular topic to the point of discomfort. They asked some general questions about the ad, Tim’s role, his career. He tackled these, feeling a slight slackening of pressure. The two investigators then made a brief search of the place, thanked Tim and told him he was free to go, although he should not leave the UAE for the next forty-eight hours.

  ‘Thank you very much,’ he said, as if they were plumbers who’d just carried out repairs.