The Sand Men

by Christopher Fowler

‘Is that was this is about?’ He came over to take her shoulders, but she shrugged him away. ‘I swore to you, didn’t I? I swore it would never, ever happen again.’

  The circumstances of his infidelity still nagged at her. She had discovered the affair in the most mundane manner. She’d needed to replace a brake light and had been looking for the number of their local garage on Roy’s phone when she’d found some undeleted messages. ‘Would you have told me if I hadn’t found out?’ she asked.

  ‘You know how difficult things had been between us, what I was going through.’

  ‘You weren’t the only one suffering, Roy. I supported us while you were out of work. I had to deal with the day-today practicalities of getting by while you were sitting around at home, talking to her online.’

  ‘I told you, I knew it was wrong. I was about to end it.’

  ‘That’s what all men say when they get found out.’

  ‘Listen, you have to work with me here. There’s a lot at stake, for all of us. Can’t you just be like the others for a while?’

  Lea felt chastened. She knew the transfer had been hard on Roy, and the last thing she wanted to do was upset him. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said softly. ‘I didn’t think I was causing a problem. I’ve never been around people like this. It rankles me, the whole good life thing. I’m not used to it yet.’

  ‘You were the one who thought that the school here would be better for Cara.’

  ‘Yes, because you know how easily influenced she is. And we couldn’t always be around her to supervise.’

  Roy would not be mollified. ‘You could have, but you decided to work. Don’t kid yourself, Lea. You wrote because you didn’t want to be called a housewife. You were never very good at it.’

  Lea was stunned into silence. She hadn’t wanted to be lumped in with the immaculate beige women of Chiswick, their valeted 4X4s and unnaturally clean houses, their endless chatter about holidays and gardeners over salads in Twickenham and Richmond. She’d planned to create some distance from them and some respect for herself, but then Roy had lost his job and Cara had got into difficulties at school.

  She thought she might read for a while, but Roy snapped out the lights moments after pulling back the sheets. Now she lay awake, listening to the darkened villa, trying to temper her anger, concentrating on the week ahead.

  Roy had always acted hurt whenever she worked late. He considered himself a modern urban male, but his confidence had been damaged by losing his job and watching her become the breadwinner.

  She could see the trap that lay before her; to get back the things she wanted most, she would have to become someone she hated.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Lifestyle

  LEA KNOCKED ON Cara’s bedroom door and waited for an answer. They had lately come to an arrangement; she would not barge in unannounced, and in exchange Cara would turn up for meals on time.

  ‘Hang on a minute.’ She waited while Cara came to the door, opening it a crack. The blinds in her room were drawn shut. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I’m going into the Old Town this afternoon. Want to come?’

  She smoothed down uncombed hair. ‘It’s Sunday.’

  ‘Yeah, which means that everything’s open. We could get you a haircut. Come with me, I could use the company. I’m going to try and find some freelance work.’

  ‘How are you going to do that?’

  ‘I’ve got a couple of leads. Something called Gulf Coast magazine. Milo put me onto them. And Dream World is putting together a quarterly magazine about the resort.’

  ‘I’m supposed to go over to Norah’s this afternoon. We’re building a website.’

  ‘What time?’

  ‘Four.’

  ‘No good, I won’t be back by then. I have to update my CV and sort out examples of work before I go.’

  Cara looked sceptical. ‘You really going to find a job?’

  ‘Don’t make it sound like I’m going to track down the Ark of the Covenant. I can freelance from here. You can help set me up with an office in the spare room. I can’t seem to get my contacts onto my phone.’

  ‘I saw you had some synchronisation issues.’

  ‘When? Have you been in my stuff?’

  ‘I’m just trying to get everything to work together. I’ll set up your office.’

  ‘Okay. Just do me a favour and don’t make a big deal about it with your father.’

  ‘You’re going to tell him you’re looking for work, aren’t you?’

  ‘There’s no point in us talking about something that hasn’t happened yet. I don’t want another argument.’

  Roy was on site, supervising the relaying of the first of the damaged marble walkways, so Lea headed to the Old Town alone. The area around the creek came as a complete contrast to the high-rise modernity of the coastal hotels. Here, she saw just how separated the imported Europeans were from the Arab world. The older men still wore black dishdashas and white kiffiyeh scarves, and the women had robe-like dresses that covered the whole body. In clothing store windows, the word ‘modest’ appeared as a desirable description, yet discordant bolts of fabric clashed against each other in retina-searing limes and golds. Lea noticed that many of the young Muslimahs were now dressed in western jeans and shirts.

  Arranged around the mouth of the creek was a terrace of dilapidated two-storey buildings, flat-roofed and covered in plastic signs and satellite dishes. Lethal-looking necklaces of electrical wiring festooned the peeling facades of shops selling fruit and vegetables from plastic baskets.

  She parked, checked her notebook and found the office. The rickety, dark staircase to the first floor office did not look promising.

  Andre Pignot was an elegant fifty year-old French-Algerian, a former archaeologist who had been editing Gulf Coast magazine for over twenty years, although how he managed to do it in such a cramped, hot room was a mystery. He seemed surprised by Lea’s arrival, even though she had called ahead, and jumped up to shake her hand.

  ‘I’m afraid we’re rather old-fashioned,’ he warned, moving a stack of papers so that she could sit down. ‘We’ve been here a long time because we keep our advertisers happy. We run news items that supplement an aspirational lifestyle.’

  The lifestyle was hardly visible from Pignot’s headquarters. Around the walls were pinned yellowing Gulf Coast covers featuring speedboats, crystal-set dining tables, elaborate watches and women in furs. Below in the street, Lea could see a man selling mobile phone covers from plastic buckets.

  ‘I can work to a brief,’ Lea said, handing over a folder containing her resume and some articles she had written for Eva. She sipped sweet mint tea and waited for Pignot to read, but he slipped the articles back into their folder, having barely skimmed them.

  ‘I’m afraid that’s all a bit progressive for us,’ he said apologetically. ‘We’re looking for upbeat features about hotels, car rallies, summer fashions, that sort of thing. Our readers are mostly holidaymakers. We don’t cover crime, politics, social issues. It’s all rather bland, but who wants to be troubled with the world’s problems on vacation?’

  ‘I could write you some pieces on a trial basis,’ she persisted. ‘You’d only need to buy them if you liked them.’

  ‘I suppose that might work.’ Pignot did not sound too convinced.

  Lea decided to reduce his pain. ‘Well, you have my number,’ she said, rising. ‘I’m sure you’re a busy man.’

  ‘No,’ he said, tapping the edges of his desk in mild bemusement, ‘not really.’

  Her second appointment took her to a white building that occupied the whole of one side of Creek Square. It took her a while to find the office because the company signage was in Arabic.

  A Muscovite, Maxim Karpova, headed Dream World magazine, the first issue of which was already printed even though the resort had yet to open. In the icy reception area, blow-ups of the front cover featured an attractively modest girl in a black, gold-trimmed abaya standing beside a computer generated ho
rizon pool, flanked by gaudy baroque armchairs. Clearly, Gulf Coast magazine’s days were numbered, because here was the future; a Western ideal that had dispensed with vanity advertising in order to sell a single cohesive fantasy.

  Lea rubbed at her suntanned face. No matter how much moisturizer she used, she couldn’t prevent its tightness, and the air-conditioning gave her the sensation of always being about to catch a cold. Waiting to be seen by the assistant editor, she realised how far she had drifted from her student days, when she had only written for the liberal press. Her youthful idealism now felt like naivety.

  She was seen by a young Arabic woman called Nathifa who regarded her coolly through tinted oval glasses before offering carefully measured responses to her questions. Nathifa was confident, almost arrogant, knowing that soon she would be fielding requests from the world’s press eager to discover more about the resort’s roster of celebrity visitors.

  ‘It is in our interests to employ staff with connections with the resort,’ said Nathifa, in a clipped manner that suggested she had attended business studies at an English university. ‘I would be keen to know how you feel about the aspirational core values espoused by the DWG brand.’

  ‘Are you asking me if I would be uncritical?’ Lea asked.

  ‘The resort will set a new world standard for the luxurious bespoke lifestyle,’ Nathifa told her without a hint of irony. ‘We are unlikely to commission anything’— she searched for an appropriate word—‘abrasive.’

  ‘I appreciate that. It would help me to understand whether the magazine is simply to be a quarterly advertorial for the resort’s featured attractions or whether it aims at something more.’

  ‘Mrs Brook, we think our magazine can provide the highest level of quality without making people uncomfortable.’

  ‘Then you don’t need a writer,’ Lea replied, ‘you need a publicist.’ Rising, she politely thanked Nathifa and left.

  On the way home she passed the laughing girl on the Dubai Pearl poster, promising the bespoke lifestyle. I can’t be you, she thought, because you don’t exist.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Locks

  LEA BOUGHT AN ice cream bar and sat on the beach wall unwrapping it, feeling the cold radiating against her hands. It made her think of the worker who froze to death on the beach.

  She called Andre Pignot at Gulf Coast magazine. ‘You said you have to keep your local advertisers happy,’ she reminded him. ‘Suppose you put some fresh pieces into your online version? I know it’s little more than a holding page right now but we could make it into something more. Nothing too thought-provoking, just something with a little more meat than the latest restaurant opening. Something that would get readers talking. You could keep the hotel edition unchanged.’

  ‘I suppose we couldn’t do any worse than we’re doing right now,’ said Pignot finally. ‘Dream World magazine is going to destroy our market.’

  ‘I’ll write the sample lead for free. Let me try that, at least.’

  ‘All right. But I’ve no money to pay my freelancers this month.’

  ‘That’s fine. If I increase your readership, you can pay me.’

  ‘Then we have a deal,’ said Pignot.

  ‘Oh, there was something else. My husband told me about a worker who suffered a freak accident on the beach.’

  ‘The one who froze?’

  ‘That’s him. Do you happen to know his name?’

  ‘Well, it’s not a secret,’ said Pignot, as if attempting to convince himself. ‘Mandhatri Sahonta. I heard he was a good company man.’

  When she got home, she typed his details into her computer’s main search engine. Another name turned up in an archived press article. Sakari. Sahonta’s daughter had vanished four months before his death. He’d waited for her in the workers’ dormitory one Friday evening and she had never turned up. She had called earlier to say she was stopping by the mall on the way home—then nothing. The Dream World Group would have been holding her passport, so they knew she hadn’t left the country. There was no more information to be found, which was hardly surprising given that Sahonta would not have been allowed to break confidence online. But presumably it meant that he had died without ever discovering what had happened to her.

  The next day, Lea got organised. She bought a flatpack desk at the Mirdif Mall and converted her spare room into an office. In the evening she visited Harji Busabi, telling him that she was writing an article on the way in which Dream World’s eco-friendly technology would set a standard of excellence for other resorts. Harji was happy to talk to her.

  Although she was not English by birth, Mrs Busabi had managed to recreate the clutter of a Cotswolds cottage in her villa, fitting a fireplace and hideous ornamental coal scuttles into her lounge. She had swathed the wide windows in heavy Laura Ashley curtains as if determined to keep the sunlight at bay. The room was like the stage-set of a forgotten provincial play, incongruous against the bleached-out view to the street.

  Harji was helpful but dull, anxious to provide her with the exact data concerning cubic capacities and kilos of force per square metre. He handed her brochures about swimming pools and shower units while Mrs Busabi poured weak tea and periodically interjected with things her husband had forgotten. Lea slipped home in time to cook Roy’s supper.

  The next evening she went to the Larvins and asked Ben about the Dream World staff. She preferred their house; Rachel’s untidy touch was everywhere, from the crocheted pot holders filled with sickly cactus offshoots that hung in the kitchen to the stacks of newspapers overflowing from the patio furniture. As if to fight her mother-in-law’s unruly influence, Colette always dressed as if she was expecting guests. Today she was wearing a blue silk Roberto Cavalli kaftan, and remained in the background through Lea’s visit, combing Abbi’s hair and finding things to tidy away.

  Ben tried to be helpful, but clearly knew very little about how the other staff members felt. ‘We don’t discuss our feelings around the office,’ he explained. ‘You get a bunch of guys in the room together, they’re going to talk about weight differentials on load-bearing ceilings, not their feelings.’

  ‘Don’t you talk about the bombs or the accidents?’

  ‘Sure,’ said Ben, looking uncomfortable for the first time. ‘We wouldn’t be human if we didn’t. But we don’t get much intel.’

  ‘If you want the inside dope about how everyone really feels, you should talk to Milo,’ Rachel said to her on the way out. ‘He hired the Persiana’s original team and was there for all of the early meetings. He never approved of the new structure though, so don’t expect him to say anything complimentary.’

  ‘Don’t send Lea off to Milo,’ said Ben. ‘He’s kind of a loose cannon. He exaggerates everything, you know that.’

  ‘He gets a little carried away,’ Rachel agreed, ‘but I’m sure Lea can figure out when he’s telling the truth.’ She smiled secretively. Lea felt as if Rachel was pushing her toward something she had not yet discovered for herself.

  As Rachel saw her to the door, she placed a hand on her arm. ‘Is this really an article for Gulf Coast magazine?’ Her look was slightly incredulous.

  ‘Of course,’ said Lea. ‘What else would it be?’

  ‘I’M WARNING YOU now,’ said Milo, holding the door open for her. ‘I don’t do the whole tea-and-cake thing. I don’t have a maid. Don’t agree with ’em.’

  ‘I let mine stay for Roy’s sake,’ Lea admitted. ‘I’m a coward, I took the easy route. And I don’t miss the ironing. Your own coffee is fine with me.’

  ‘Then come in and be poisoned.’ He stepped back with a smile.

  Milo’s lounge reminded her of her grandfather’s house in Kent. There was a great dark dresser overstuffed with mismatched crockery in the kitchen, and cartons of junk lined the hall. Milo made mugs of pungent coffee, then led the way along the hall to a small lounge. The room was lined with framed certificates, and there were several photos of a small, severe woman in a deep green forest. ‘I
moved to a single-level property after my leg started seizing up,’ he explained, dropping into an armchair. ‘So you’re planning to write propaganda for the enemy. I’m not sure I’m the right person you should be talking to. I’m treated as a pariah by the management these days. The board has changed a hell of a lot since it was set up.’

  ‘How?’

  Milo shifted a stack of Financial Times back-issues and sat down. ‘We threw a lot of stuff out of the window. We’d planned for a zero-carbon footprint and the use of sustainable resources, but the other directors deemed it unfeasible, and nobody protested the altered plans. When you’re talking about a country that builds ski-runs in shopping malls, local manufacturing tariffs don’t really top the agenda.’

  ‘Is that why you left? You were disillusioned?’

  Milo released a death-rattle chuckle. ‘Hell no, I left because I was dog-tired. This is a young man’s game. There are all kinds of social issues.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Bedbugs. As one crew returns from the night shift they take the place of those rising for the day, which causes infestations of bedbugs unless their bedding is properly aired, and Rashad can’t get them to do it.’

  ‘Who’s Rashad?’

  ‘He’s their supervisor. There are all kinds of religious and ethnic divisions. Different nationals have different habits. The Somalis chew khat to keep themselves awake on late shifts, and the Indians are known to take a locally manufactured amphetamine when they’re driving trucks out to the site. The work is boring and repetitive, and in hot weather it’s easy to lose your concentration, so they lose a lot of trucks.’

  ‘Rachel says you have the inside dope on everyone,’ Lea prompted. ‘Does that include Tom Chalmers?’

  ‘He was more than just a neighbour, he was someone I trusted.’ He studied her face. ‘Well, I know you a little better now, so I suppose it can’t hurt. I was sitting here one night and heard this ridiculous noise outside, so I went to see what was wrong. I found him lying on the kerb and recognised the signs of severe electric shock, so I covered him with a blanket. I can’t imagine what he thought he was doing, taking an old-fashioned steel-bladed trimmer out there. He managed to blow half the street lights. The cables for the street are only just below the surface of the grass verges, because there’s bedrock underneath. One of them was sliced in half. I called Dr Vance, but he was too late. The next day I had an argument with Tahir Mansour—who was then his assistant—over what we would say about his death. Mansour wanted to call it a heart attack.’