The Place That Didn't Exist

by Mark Watson

  Even now, with his eyes doing their best in the dark, Tim could only make out the contours of Bradley’s bare head, the hint of his shoulder. ‘But,’ Tim objected, ‘I mean, OK, yes, we probably come across quite badly to some people here. But not so badly that you’d – that anyone would sneak into Raf’s chalet, specifically his chalet, and kill him. It’s insane.’

  ‘You know what I read someplace?’ Bradley said. ‘People kill for reasons that even they, themselves, aren’t aware of.’

  Tim reached up to remove his glasses and took a moment to realize he wasn’t wearing them. ‘It’s . . . surely it’s much more likely that he just overdosed on something. It sounds like he had form with that sort of thing. It’s pretty easy to misjudge it, if you’re pissed. I mean, he misjudged quite a lot of things.’

  ‘He sure did,’ said Bradley, and gave a short, mirthless laugh. ‘Well, I know I didn’t kill him.’

  ‘I know I didn’t, either,’ Tim said, worrying immediately that he had said this too hastily. But after all, it was true. Who was left, then? Ruth and Miles, who’d slept in Tim’s room – though Miles hadn’t been there in the morning. Christian and Jo, who had both gone home. The Fixer; perhaps Streng and his agent, although they were staying in another part of the Village. No matter how much you ran through it in your head, it felt ridiculous – like being at one of the murder-mystery parties his parents occasionally hosted in Devon. ‘Who had motive?’ he could hear his father asking the retired estate agents around the table, as tiramisu was served. ‘Who had opportunity?’ It was impossible to think of colleagues in this way, to apply it to a real situation. The only thing that made sense – or at least, that his brain felt up to – was to accept for the moment that there were things he could not know, could not understand.

  There were a long, silent few minutes. Tim heard the hourly double-bleep from his watch. Very gently, Bradley’s arm came across to rest on his chest.

  Tim opened his eyes. There was no sound, no other movement; Tim couldn’t even tell if he was asleep. He lay where he was and listened to Bradley’s even breathing.

  After a few more minutes he thought he heard a voice raised in another room, and a hasty shushing from someone else. He felt a yearning to be in his own bed at home, instead of this enforced physical contact with a man he barely knew, in a room too dark to see, in a millionaire’s mansion – a millionaire whose wife he had kissed – twenty-four hours after someone had died in the night. Only this time yesterday, the unfamiliarity of everything had seemed so attractive.

  He was almost certain now that Bradley was asleep, and he thought back over their conversation. It was true, he realized, that he knew virtually nothing about Dubai as anything more than a collection of well-presented ideas and images. He’d flown into the city like someone arriving at a theme park. It was easy not to ask questions about Dubai: that was part of its appeal. Now, however, certain questions could not be avoided.

  8: THE WORLD

  They had been allocated new rooms in another block of the Village, twelve floors up in a whitewashed building called Maritime Tower, which surrounded a swimming pool shaped like a four-leafed clover. From the window of Room 732 – well, really a whole glass wall, making him feel he could plunge straight down into the water – Tim could see a few couples idling on deckchairs, summoning green-shirts with a half-wave of the arm.

  The day of inactivity before filming restarted would, even this time last week, have been a tempting prospect; now the empty hours took on a vaguely threatening shape in Tim’s mind. He had no mental map of the city yet, and it did not seem a place that could be conquered with a sheer spirit of adventure, even if Tim had been that sort of visitor.

  ‘How can I help you today, sir?’ asked someone with SOPHIE on her badge, behind the Centrepiece desk.

  ‘Is there . . . do you have any recommendations for things to do near here?’

  ‘Sir, we can order you a car straight away.’

  ‘But if I wanted to, to just stroll somewhere . . .’

  Sophie’s eyebrows suggested an artfully withheld scepticism. ‘There is Zabeel Park.’

  ‘And how do I walk there?’

  ‘We can order you a car, sir.’

  ‘Do you like shopping, sir?’ The man at the terminal next to Sophie’s had entered the conversation.

  ‘Shopping?’

  ‘Yes, sir, are you interested in Dubai’s wealth of shopping options?’

  His voice had the swish of someone eager to demonstrate mastery of a language. In Tim’s peripheral vision, the promotional video played on forever: the golfer swung at a ball, the visitors marvelled at the ice models.

  ‘Well, I—’

  ‘You might be interested to visit the Mall of the Emirates. Very good designers and brands, good prices. Beautiful food court and ski slope.’

  None of this appealed greatly to Tim, but staying here – among the oblivious holidaymakers, the never-disrupted rituals of leisure – was no more attractive. The floors of restaurants and saunas creaked above his head. At least, he thought, the mall would mean getting out.

  ‘That sounds good,’ he said.

  The taxi driver was listening to a recording of an imam leading prayers, drumming his fingers appreciatively on the steering wheel. The Mall of the Emirates came into view, the ski slope tacked recklessly onto its side. Then it seemed to disappear again as the driver, his hand forced by a network of overpasses, swung them into a lane they weren’t supposed to be in, and almost into the path of a Lamborghini. The other motorist blasted the horn and Tim started.

  ‘First time in Dubai, sir?’

  ‘It is, yes.’

  ‘How are you liking it?’

  ‘It’s, er . . .’

  ‘Very clean, sir, no?’

  ‘Very clean,’ Tim agreed.

  ‘You throw even a small piece of litter out of the window, sir – a thousand-dirham fine. First time at Mall of the Emirates?’

  ‘Yes.’ The wail of prayer continued in the background; the air-con was almost icy. ‘Is it . . . is it a good mall?’

  ‘Very excellent mall. You like Paul Smith?’

  ‘Paul . . .?’

  ‘Paul Smith is in the mall, and Gucci also, sir. And Prada for your wife. It is – as you say in London – superb-duperb.’

  Tim suppressed a grin. ‘Have you been to London?’

  ‘No, sir, but many English people come here. English people love to shop. Are you from London?’

  ‘Originally from Devon.’

  ‘Sorry, sir?’

  ‘Yes,’ Tim conceded, ‘London.’ He tried to think of something else to say. The approach to the drop-off point, outside the mall, took them down a spiral ramp, which the driver tackled like a funfair ride. ‘So do you go shopping here?’

  ‘Me?’ The taxi driver flashed a white smile; Tim was reminded of the Fixer and of the recurring feeling that everyone here was in on a joke he didn’t get. ‘No. I drive the car.’

  ‘But I mean, when you’re not driving.’

  ‘I am always driving the car, sir.’

  A sign at the main entrance splashed red Xs across male and female forms. Please dress modestly and appropriately. Under a high, domed ceiling, lifts conveyed dark-clad women and sun-reddened tourists frictionlessly between floors, like nerves around a body. He looked in vain for a map. Everyone else seemed already to know where they were going: they moved as if following a plan.

  There were no obvious store guides, and the whole mall was bigger than he’d first thought: what seemed like the central atrium gave way to a grander, roomier one, which in turn was the prelude to one bigger still. He followed signs to the ski slope, passing under a two-storey-high banner which trumpeted INTERNATIONAL BRANDS.

  GIVENCHY

  CALVIN KLEIN

  DKNY

  SELFRIDGES

  NIKE

  GUCCI

  VICTORIA’S SECRET

  CHANEL

  LACOSTE

  CLINIQUE
>
  DIOR

  HUGO BOSS

  On and on went the list, running to forty or so names. There was nothing to explain whether these brands were already available here, or had outlets opening soon; the names were simply there, as if expressing some self-evident truth. English people love to shop, he thought. It was true; it must be. Dubai had not put up these palaces of commerce and leisure to amuse itself: they were there because foreigners – including the English – wanted them. The ski scope principally existed not because Emirati wanted to ski in the desert, but because Westerners wanted to go to a place so decadent that it was possible to ski in the desert.

  All the same, there were some Emiratis here. At the entrance to the slope, a lady’s eyes watched through the slit in her niqab as a worker in a polar-bear costume capered for the amusement of two kids. Two other women stood nearby, their forms obscured by the hijab; each held a bejewelled handbag. Nearby, a Filipino girl stood guard over a thicket of designer-label shopping bags. At a signal from the women, the maid picked up the bags and hung them on her arms, and began to usher the protesting boys away.

  Through the viewing window Tim watched as tourists swished down the ski slope. A group in red jackets was attempting to mount a fake mountain range with an Alpine hut at the top. A fibreglass snowman looked on with a crooked grin. Tim bought a coffee – proudly brewed in the Italian tradition, according to the napkin – and listened to ‘Santa Claus Is Coming to Town’ oozing from the speakers. He thought briefly of Christmas at home: the afternoon lull, Miss Marple quietly solving an upper-class murder. The next song was ‘Let It Snow’. Presumably the same CD played every day, including Christmas Day, regardless of the thirty-degree heat and the fact that Christmas was not part of the official calendar here. He finished the coffee and went on his way. ‘Sir, Gucci?’ someone asked; before he could process the question, a sample had been squirted onto his hand.

  A banner advertised the EMIRATES PROPERTY EXPO. Waiters were circulating with silver trays; there were cardboard cut-outs of Big Ben, a Sydney Opera House, a rainforest and a Japanese temple. A woman in a turquoise sarong informed Tim that this was an exhibition for The World, the new group of man-made islands each resembling a country; he had an exciting opportunity to be part of something iconic.

  ‘Are you interested in investing, sir?’

  Tim gave her what he hoped was an inclusively self-deprecating smile. ‘I rent my flat at the moment, so I’m not sure I can stretch to an island.’

  The woman beamed, her eyes blank. ‘So you are interested, sir?’

  He regretted the stab at humour. ‘I’m afraid not. Not for the moment.’

  ‘You can sign up with my colleague over there for a boat tour of the islands which will further your interest.’

  Tim wove his way through the waiters. He looked at the model Big Ben and thought about the model village jointly run by his father, which attracted a smattering of tourists. Toy trains puffed around it on tracks; there were shin-high grocers’ shops, a church, pubs with agonizingly hand-drawn signs the size of postage stamps. One morning a tiny wooden tennis player had been found keeled over on his hand-trimmed rectangle of grass; he was given a funeral by Mr Callaghan and his friends, in a ceremony which Tim and Rod were made to attend. ‘That was really stupid,’ said Rod, on the way home.

  He swivelled to look at Tim, and Tim – wanting nothing more than to impress his brother – agreed: ‘Yeah. The model village is stupid.’ Mr Callaghan smiled sadly into the rearview mirror, his long spine hunched over the steering wheel.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry you chaps feel that way,’ he said.

  This was an unwelcome memory. It stirred an impression, perhaps sharpened by his distance from home, that his parents had never been much rewarded for their patience and effort, for the hundreds of days spent ferrying their sons around, providing whatever was needed, loving the boys in their undramatic way. Tim had never been disruptive or difficult, but he had made no secret of his glee at escaping to the big city, and he was lax about staying in touch; Rod had taken these traits quite a lot further.

  The guilt that stole up on Tim was enough to make him think of buying his mother a present. It was awful, really, how little he had to do to thrill her, and yet how seldom he made the effort. He browsed windows until he saw a black lambswool coat on a mannequin. He remembered her owning something like this before. It was the sort of thing she would want to wear, but perhaps consider too fancy to buy herself, which was her attitude to most things; it looked just the right size, too. He went into the outlet with an encouraging sense that this trip to the mall was about to acquire a purpose, to yield a result. But when he asked about the jacket, the shop assistant – a bony and bright-eyed man – made an apologetic face.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, but this is the last one.’

  ‘Is that a problem?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I cannot sell you the jacket because then it will not be on display, and people will not know it is available.’

  ‘But it won’t be available,’ said Tim. ‘I will have bought it.’

  The thin man nodded as if they were on the same side of the argument. ‘Yes, sir. So we prefer to keep it on display.’

  Tim could feel the pulse in the side of his neck. ‘So, just to get this straight: you want to keep it here, so that people know it’s available to buy. But if someone does try to buy it, you won’t let them.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The man reached behind his counter for a flyer. ‘Are you interested in the Shopping Festival?’

  As he followed signs to the taxi rank, Tim felt as if the whole trip had happened to him, rather than being something he’d initiated. He passed a fish tank which had taken over a wall in a rash of blue: striped clownfish skittered in and out of each other’s paths. Perhaps, he thought, the fish believed that they were in charge of the place, and the humans were there as ornamentation. A small boy came and banged on the glass, jabbering in Russian; he laughed as the fish turned tail. Outside, the heat clobbered Tim as he made his way to a taxi.

  ‘Where your bags, sir?’

  ‘I didn’t buy anything.’

  ‘You don’t buy anything?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  The driver swung them up the spiral ramp. Tim closed his eyes as they joined a line of traffic and came to rest there in a way that felt indefinite, like a stone dropped into a pond.

  He found the panel to turn off the air-con and slid back the blinds. Outside, the weather had taken an inhospitable turn: the early-evening sky had curdled to a British grey. TV would dispel the gloom, Tim thought; it was for moments like this that you had a TV. Its opening offer was Beyoncé shaking her midriff into a grovelling bank of cameramen. A channel-change, and a scene appeared which initially struck him as some kind of visual joke. It was the Village. An American reporter was talking into a microphone, her eyes alight with the newshawk’s relish for the regrettable.

  ‘. . . said, in a statement, that the incident should remind Dubai visitors of the dangers of excessive consumption. This is Jacqui Nelson in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.’

  Before Tim had adjusted to its being there, the picture of the Village was gone, supplanted by another story: a zigzagging stocks-and-shares graphic, the caption MARKET FEARS GROW. He took off his glasses and started up his computer. His inbox was the usual crowd of bogus money-making schemes and needlessly protracted email exchanges from the office, but in the middle of it – sent only two hours ago – was a message which made him catch his breath.

  Bro,

  Heard about this murder on the net. Your name came up.

  You all right? I’m in Cuba. Give me a bell.

  Rod

  There was a phone number, including so many digits that Tim was unsure where international and local codes began and ended. None of it mattered for now. What mattered was that this was as much as he’d heard from his brother in more than a year. He read the minimal message three times, as if by doing so he could somehow tease more out of it. H
e tried, out of some vague and superfluous sense of pride, to deny to himself that he was thrilled, and that the thrill was likely to disperse as soon as he tried to call the number and it failed to connect; or he left a message which was never returned; or he fell prey to any of the other ways in which his brother routinely disappointed him and all the other Callaghans. For now, Tim wouldn’t try the number. He would simply enjoy the glow of this moment.

  When he dragged himself away from re-reading the message, Facebook was the obvious next destination; if someone as remote as his brother could have heard about Raf’s death, it must already be a major talking point online. Tim remembered that he and Raf had become ‘friends’ when the project began. This enabled him to go onto Raf’s personal page, which was topped by a picture taken only hours before his death: an image of the producer in his Aviators, accompanied by the caption ‘on set in Dubai – good times!’

  Vacated by Raf himself, the page had become a shrine of remembrance. There was a stream of shocked comments, photos, testimonies. Raf was a beloved brother and son. He had paid for two strangers to get into Alton Towers when their credit card failed. He’d been a huge source of support to his brother-in-law, who was in a wheelchair. His stunned parents recalled a ‘beautiful blond boy whom everyone loved’, and who became a ‘brilliant young man who made people laugh’. Raf Kavanagh’s online identity was so comprehensive that it was hard to believe he no longer existed in physical form. This version of him was as real as the unpleasant man Tim had known. The more he read, in fact, the more he doubted that unpleasantness, even reproached himself for remembering things the way he did.

  A link from Raf’s page led to a newly established Facebook group: ‘RIP Raphael Kavanagh’. It had 900 members already, and people had been posting as recently as ten minutes before.

  This whole thing stinks 2 hell. I know it’s not the time 2 talk about this. But truth will come out when there’s an autopsy. Raf did not die because of some ‘mistake’. Some1 knows something. WorldWise need 2 answer some questions.