The Sand Men

by Christopher Fowler

  Harji sniffed the air and recoiled. ‘It’s shit and oil.’ He unclipped his black nylon backpack and removed a clear plastic tube, lowering it into the water to take a sample. As he did so, a bulbous grey squid broke the surface and tenderly wrapped a tentacle around his gloved wrist. Harij leapt back with a yell as the squid released him, returning to the water, too weak to maintain a grip.

  ‘It’s okay, Harji, it’s dying. Like everything else is going to be around here unless we cut those valves off.’ He pulled something else from the filthy water, a torn red cotton pair of shorts. ‘It doesn’t help if this kind of stuff gets sucked into the inlet pipes. What will it be like when the hotels are full?’

  He turned the tender around and headed back to the jetty. ‘I’m betting the raised water pressure has cracked one of the sewage outfall pipes. It’ll soon start discharging raw effluent onto the nearest beach. Good job the hotel’s not open yet. Can you imagine this happening with two thousand occupied bathrooms? That’s an awful lot of shit.’

  ‘It’s nothing to what we’re going to get from Davenport if we don’t contain this,’ Harji warned.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Roy, ‘I’ll deal with it.’

  Harji was pitifully grateful. ‘I’m glad you’re here. I wouldn’t have known what to do. I keep hearing good things about you. They say you’re already on track for promotion.’

  ‘Well, it hasn’t been officially announced yet,’ said Roy. ‘I can’t even discuss it with my wife. It will probably mean me staying on, and I don’t think she’s going to be too pleased.’

  They headed back to the treatment plant, shut down the system and closed the staff bathrooms, then set about tracing the fracture.

  CARA EMERGED FROM the Abercrombie & Fitch changing room and gave a twirl. ‘What do you think?’ she asked. She was wearing a tiny red skirt and top that exposed her flat brown stomach. She was flirting with Dean, but he couldn’t tell how seriously.

  ‘You look great,’ he said.

  ‘My mother would have a shit-fit if she saw me like this.’ She darted back into the cubicle and put her jeans back on. While she waited for her purchases to be wrapped, she took his arm and led him to the men’s section. ‘You need to get some new clothes. Something less boring.’

  Dean’s arms were thick from his morning workouts at the school gym, and her hand rested on his bicep appreciatively. ‘I need swimming trunks,’ he told her.

  ‘How about these?’ She held a pair of bright green shorts over him, her forefingers and thumbs pressing lightly against his hips. It was as if she had passed an electrical charge through her fingertips.

  ‘Okay, fine.’

  ‘That’s it? You’re just going to buy the first pair you see?’

  ‘They don’t let you try on swimwear. I could get some new baggies.’

  ‘No, no, no. How about these?’ She pressed another pair over his groin, smoothing her hands towards his hips, enjoying his discomfort.

  The counter clerk was carefully watching them on her monitor. Cara knew she could face jail for a display of public intimacy. She brushed back her newly blonde hair and moved away to the racks, pulling out T-shirts and pairs of shorts.

  ‘What, you’re choosing my clothes for me now?’ Dean asked.

  ‘I’m good at picking out the right stuff, that’s all. It doesn’t mean we’re like, going out or anything.’

  When she was with Norah and Dean she felt as if she could change the world. Dean looked at her stupidly. ‘So we’re not—I mean, we wouldn’t—’

  ‘What? Oh, I went out with lots of boys in London,’ Cara said airily. ‘Who wants to be tied down? Where’s the fun in that? You should see my folks, totally fucked up.’ She knew she made him uncomfortable, and she knew he hadn’t had a girlfriend. She used her innocent smile on him like a knife.

  ‘Maybe I’m not looking for a girlfriend,’ he countered, setting aside the shorts.

  ‘Of course, that’s why you spend all your time with the boys. What do you get up to with them?’ Her smile held mischief. ‘Don’t you let girls join your group? I bet you all talk about us.’

  ‘No, we talk about all sorts of things. Politics, technology, the law.’

  ‘Yeah, all talk, no action.’ Their sparring always involved a certain amount of spite. ‘Maybe you should put aside your boy-toys for a while.’

  Before he could think of an answer Cara had collected her bags and headed out into the mall’s main walkway, dancing ahead.

  LEA STOOD ON the patio listening to Maria Callas and sneaking a guilty cigarette. She noted the sepia corner of the lawn where one of the sprinklers had stopped working. Finally she covered her shoulders with a jacket and stepped outside, hoping that a walk would calm her down. Nobody walked in Dream Ranches.

  The early evening light was tinted misty blue, the street as silent and severe as a gallery painting. As she passed Milo’s darkened house, she carefully avoided walking over the spot that had been scrubbed clean. It had dried now, and looked no different from the rest of the kerbstones. The useless CCTV cameras stared back at her mockingly.

  Every evening, a soporific air settled across the estate. The houses camouflaged themselves in stonewash colours, a featureless terrain that smothered dissent, passion or any violent emotion. Its occupants remained hidden in shadowed silences, watching satellite TV or lounging beside pools in drugged entropy.

  She passed a house with its porch lights on—the timer must have been set slightly ahead of the rest—and was struck by the property’s resemblance to Magritte’s painting The Empire Of Light. When she reached the end of the road, she took a left turn and found herself in the compound’s most expensive section.

  Few lights showed from the road. She could smell barbecue coal, lighter fluid. The high-walled villas had central courtyards. There were no cars on the street; every Mercedes, Lexus and Audi had been tucked away in its garage, to gleam in the dark like jewels in a safe. She finished another cigarette and took pleasure in grinding it out on the pavement, a small unsightly blemish, like a fleck on a photograph. Then she went home to start the dinner.

  At 9:00pm, Roy called home and told Lea not to wait up for him.

  She sat at the table with lamb couscous laid out for three, and ate alone. Cara had belatedly texted her to say that she would be out with Dean until ten, an hour later than she was allowed. Bored, Lea flicked through the TV channels, the spectacularly bad soap operas filled with kohl-eyed women shouting at their husbands and sisters in orange and purple lounges, the simpering girls falling into lovers’ arms against badly digitized sunsets. Two TV presenters were discussing the ‘Modestkini’ swimsuit, a head-to-toe outfit made of acid-lime rubber, this year’s hot colour. The BBC World Service channel showed police disappearing into a tent on sodden, muted moorland as a crimson caption ran past: ‘Yorkshire police find body of Shannon, aged six.’

  She checked her watch; 11:25pm. It was still warm. Suddenly she missed London, the dripping plane trees and cool fecund parks where plants grew unstoppably, not because they had automatic watering systems. She missed the messy streets, chance meetings, rowdy laughter. The mob rule of the city had been replaced with moderated behaviour and calculated glances. If there was any lunatic impulse here it had been carefully hidden away, along with every other sign of life.

  Feeling rebellious, she let herself out of the house and started to walk with new ferocity.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Fracture

  THE STREETS WERE bathed in melancholy aqua light from the overhead lamps, the colour of loneliness. They drained the warmth from the red roofs and green verges so that the world appeared to be under shallow water. No breath of air stirred the branches of the eucalyptus trees.

  Lea checked her watch. Just after midnight. She was about to head back when she heard a sound in one of the front gardens, a plastic scrape like a dustbin flap being dropped back in place. She slowed and looked over. As she passed through the blackness between the kerb la
mps she could vaguely discern a pair of slender figures in whispered argument. They stopped and loped off, doubled low. Curious, she walked nearer.

  She was still trying to decipher what she had seen when the package in the bin exploded. The detonation was muffled by plastic bags, but caught her by surprise. Its vibration set off an alarm inside a garage, and moments later several confused residents emerged on the street to look at the smoking, melted mess of garbage in the driveway.

  She found herself sitting on the kerb, unable to recall how she had got there. It felt as if the air had fractured. One of the householders came over and put his arm around her, and her surprise at this intimate gesture was mitigated when she realised she was bleeding. She was taken to a peach-coloured bathroom in the villa, and saw there was a small cut on her forehead caused by a tiny shard of glass, but it had bled enough to make her appearance disturbing.

  The wound was already scabbing over as a woman fussed around her with a hot flannel. Everyone seemed overly excited. Her ears were singing. The couple who lived in the house introduced themselves as Bill and Nancy Cooper from Seattle.

  ‘Is there someone we should call?’ said Nancy, peering anxiously into her face.

  ‘Did you see them?’ asked her husband, storming back and forth.

  ‘No—yes—not really,’ said Lea. ‘Just their backs. It was dark.’

  ‘What were they like?’

  ‘There were two of them, short, dressed in jeans and grey jackets I think.’

  ‘What my husband means is, were they—you know—’

  ‘Black,’ completed Bill. ‘Were they from the workers’ barracks?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she said, resenting the question. ‘It was hard to see.’

  In the disordered minutes that followed, Roy somehow appeared, accompanied by James Davenport. ‘Lea, would you mind giving a statement to the police?’ he asked.

  She nodded numbly. ‘Can I do it here?’

  ‘I’m afraid we have to go down to the station,’ said Davenport. ‘I’ll drive you. You’ll be home in an hour.’

  ‘No, really, Roy can drive me, or I can drive myself.’

  ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea, Lea. You could be in shock,’ said Davenport.

  ‘Please, everyone’s overreacting, it’s just a scratch. It took me by surprise, that’s all.’ I lived through the London 7/7 bombings, she wanted to say, stop treating me like a child. But she let herself be led to Davenport’s Audi, climbing into the back of the car with Roy.

  She could tell Davenport was anxious to question her himself, but Roy deflected his enquiries. ‘Perhaps we should wait until she sees a police officer,’ he said. ‘It’s better to keep her answers fresh.’

  Good move, she thought, I don’t trust you, James. You’re the one who accidentally sent Milo the email. They talked about her as if she wasn’t there, as nurses did beside hospital patients.

  The state institutions all shared the same architectural ethic. School, government building, hospital, police headquarters, all were low white rectangles with airy, empty spaces, built with an odd disdain for human scale. There was something about them that encouraged calm and a sense of respect. Very few members of staff were on duty, but Davenport found someone from the national security office. A tall, goateed man in a crisp white thobe introduced himself as Mr Qasim, the Deputy Commissioner, and led her to an interview room.

  ‘Can’t my husband be with me?’ she asked, looking back over her shoulder at Roy.

  ‘It is better if we take notes from you without intervention from anyone else,’ said Mr Qasim. ‘People want to be helpful, but sometimes they make our job more difficult without meaning to.’ He held open the door to a bright featureless office and seated himself opposite her.

  ‘Please do not feel uncomfortable concerning the question of racial identity,’ he instructed, opening a folder and unsheathing a silver fountain pen. ‘It is simply a matter of accurately recording what you saw.’ There was a computer on the table, but he ignored it.

  She did her best to describe the pair, apologising for her disappointing powers of observation. Mr Qasim sat patiently, allowing her to gather her thoughts. His soft, insistent tone teased out details from Lea’s memory. He seemed like a good man. Finally, after listening to her account and confirming her contact details, he sat back and regarded her coolly for a moment.

  ‘What do you think actually happened?’ he asked, placing his slender hands flat on the table.

  ‘What do I really think? That it was probably a prank.’

  ‘A prank.’ He turned the word over, slightly puzzled.

  ‘Maybe a couple of the workers got drunk and came into the compound looking to play a joke.’

  ‘These are sensitive times, Mrs Brook. It is not the kind of joke people find funny.’

  ‘Mr Qasim, if this had happened in London, we would probably have dismissed it as high spirits.’

  ‘But we are not in London. This is the Middle East. There are a great many political and religious sensitivities to take into account.’

  ‘I appreciate that, but whatever it was they detonated barely had the strength to blow a plastic bin apart. I hear much louder fireworks at the beach every weekend.’

  ‘You know there were bombs found at the Dream World resort? Did your husband tell you that somebody smashed a sewer pipe today, causing poisonous effluent to leak into the sea?’

  ‘No, he told me he had to work late, but didn’t explain why.’

  ‘Because of this we will undergo a heightening of status to the area’s security, an inconvenience to everyone. How we handle such situations is as crucial as anything we build. In Britain every move you make is filmed by closed circuit television cameras every minute of the day. We do not wish to take that path, because we must be able to trust our citizens. We cannot afford to start curtailing the freedom you enjoy here.’

  ‘But that’s nonsense—there are CCTV cameras all over the place.’

  ‘The compound cameras only record during the day. They don’t operate after midnight. The ecological lighting—’

  ‘It’s too low to see anything, I imagine.’

  ‘The presence of the cameras is intended to warn, not to control.’

  Lea wanted to argue that it was a waste of time having them if they couldn’t be properly used, but kept her counsel.

  Mr Qasim checked his notes. ‘Is there anything else you can remember about the men who planted the bomb?’

  She thought for a moment. Something drifted just beyond the edge of her consciousness. ‘Something.’ She said, trying to remember. ‘They both had hats of some kind. White, with no brims—’

  ‘A kufi.’

  ‘Maybe, I’m really not certain.’

  ‘Muslims.’

  ‘Surely Christians wear them too.’

  Mr Qasim closed his book, clearly disappointed. ‘Mrs Brook, I would like you to think carefully tomorrow about what you saw. It could be very important. You must call me if you think of anything else.’

  She emerged to find Roy and Davenport waiting for her. She began to wish she had lied to Mr Qasim, and remained silent on the drive home, unwilling to share her thoughts with Dream World’s PR chief.

  As soon as they were back in their own car, she could sense a bad atmosphere building between them. ‘I don’t know why you wouldn’t speak to James on the way back,’ said Roy, nettled. ‘He was good enough to wait for you.’

  ‘Anything I say to him will go straight back to his bosses, you know that,’ said Lea.

  ‘No, I don’t, Lea. He has a difficult job to do. He’s here to help you. Anyway, what the hell were you doing wandering about the neighbourhood at that time? I came home to find the place empty. Where did you think you were going?’

  ‘You hadn’t come home, Cara was still out with her friends and I needed to stretch my legs. We’re not in a police state. I’m still free to come and go, or perhaps you’d like to lock me away inside the house like Mr Mansour
does with his wife.’

  Roy gave a sigh of impatience. ‘Jesus, Lea, try to see it from my side just once. We had a terrorist act at the resort today. Somebody smashed a section of temporary pipe and tampered with the pressurisation software. The police are involved now.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Lea. ‘It’s been a bad day for me too. I know it’ll seem like a small thing to you, but I’m trying to find some work that actually pays instead of writing free content for a website nobody reads.’

  ‘You don’t have to look for work anymore,’ he said gently, touching her arm. ‘We’ve got good money coming in and we’re saving a ton each month. I’ve been meaning to tell you. I’m in line for a directorship.’

  ‘How is that possible? You’ve only been here a short time.’

  ‘Jeez, I thought you’d be pleased for me.’

  ‘I am but—’

  Roy shrugged. ‘A couple of group heads decided not to renew their contracts, so I got fast-tracked. I’m just waiting for the confirmation letter.’

  ‘I’m really happy for you, honestly.’

  ‘Well, you should be. There’s no going back now. I’m senior management material. Cool, huh?’

  ‘Of course—’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘I need to do something too. It’ll put me in a better mood and stop me from moping about the house while you’re out building an empire.’

  ‘You make it sound like such a bad thing. It’s giving us better lives, Lea.’ Roy’s anger would not allow him to stop. ‘So it’s a leisure complex—big crime. It creates employment and pours money back to places where the standard of living is lower, so that people can buy houses and start families. Think about that for a change.’

  She forced a smile. ‘I’m sorry. I know you think I’m being selfish. I hope the police don’t come down hard on your workers. There’s no proof that any harm was meant. I hated having words put in my mouth.’

  ‘Why? You were just telling them what you saw.’