The Sand Men

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘When I was much younger and more idealistic I was a state attorney, but then our department got caught up in a scandal,’ she explained. ‘You see these things happening, but it doesn’t mean you can do anything about them. It’s like you.’

  ‘What do you mean, like me?’

  ‘Oh, come on Lea, you’re not fooling me. You don’t want to write about how housewives pass the time while their men are at work, you want to get your hands dirty. You’re doing it without even realising. Don’t tell me you haven’t wondered why nobody’s been caught for driving over poor Milo?’

  ‘I assume the investigation is still ongoing.’

  ‘Do you think they even bothered looking for the car that hit him?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t they?’

  ‘Because if they did, they’d get reporters following up the incident. Have you seen anything in the news about your bomb or the sabotaged sewage pipe?’

  ‘No.’ Rachel was right. There had been nothing in the papers at all.

  ‘Of course not. Once the press senses blood they start hanging around and going through your trash until they find something, and right now that’s the one thing Dream World can’t afford to have. Their safety record is in the toilet, their labourers have a collective bug up their ass and their budgets are being stretched to snapping point. If this place underperforms, imagine what it will do to Sino-Arabic relations.’ Rachel raised her glass.

  ‘You always seem to see the bigger picture. How come—’

  ‘—I didn’t continue my career?’ Rachel passed over one of the cocktails. ‘Because I’m the grandmother. I was broke, honey. I got myself in debt. So that was the deal. Colette invited me here to look after the kids. Abbi’s easy. She’s the girliest little girl you could ever meet. Norah’s difficult. I don’t think she agrees with anything I stand for, but then I felt exactly the same when I was her age.’ She took a long drag at her Virginia Slim and jetted smoke over the kitchen table. ‘I should have been born a boy,’ she decided. ‘I’d have got a better deal.’

  ‘You don’t really think that?’

  ‘Hey, my son has been a great source of comfort to me. I couldn’t have gotten work here anyway. It’s a young town. Besides, I’d never be accepted as a Mowatina, a local. I don’t believe that Allah’s going to bail me out every time I screw up. It was Milo who fed my cynicism, of course. He had this wild theory about the older gods, a religion that’s even more ancient, one born in the rocks and underground rivers. You have to appease the land or lose everything, and everyone who comes here has to do it or fail. He gave me a book on the subject—if I can find it under all my shit I’ll lend it to you.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Lea, ‘I like history books.’

  ‘No no, not history.’ Rachel wagged a finger at her. ‘A living, practical mythology. He became an Olympic-sized bore about it when he was drunk.’ She squinted out at the light. ‘I think the sun accentuates the weirdness in all of us.’

  LEA MADE ONE more stop at the end of the afternoon, to Betty Graham’s villa. She rang the doorbell and stepped back into the silvery late heat, listening to two voices having an argument. Eventually Betty opened the door.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she began, ‘I’m having one of my weekly fights with Dean. It’s best to leave him be when he’s like this. Can I come over to you for a moment?’

  Before Lea could reply, Betty stepped outside and closed the door. ‘He’s slamming around in there, and when he gets like that there’s nothing I can say or do. He’s impossible. His grades are slipping. He won’t do his homework. He’s cut school twice this month to go to the mall. His father was able to control him, I just don’t have the same talent. Do you have trouble with Cara? No, of course you don’t, her father is there for her.’

  They sat in Lea’s walled garden as the sun faded below the hedges surrounding the swimming pool. A smell of grass cuttings hung in the air. ‘Dean’s a good boy at heart,’ said Betty, sinking back in her chair. ‘I really don’t know what to do. He’s his father’s son. They were inseparable. I thought being here would be good for him, but now I’m not so sure. There’s so much temptation.’

  ‘There is?’ Lea must have sounded unduly surprised, because Betty gave her a strange look. ‘The girls,’ she explained. ‘They stir the boys up, and they know exactly what they’re doing. They mature at an earlier age, you see.’

  ‘Which girls?’

  ‘The service.’ She dropped her voice, as if someone might overhear, but the only sound in the garden was the hiss of the watering system coming on. ‘I had to fire the maid just after Christmas because—well, you know. I caught them together. Fooling around.’

  ‘You mean, actually—?’

  ‘Well, no, but flirting certainly. Eye contact, brushing against each other.’

  Lea caught herself stifling a laugh. Was that all? Youthful high spirits? Here in a hot country where Dean was constantly surrounded by pretty girls at the beach, it was hardly surprising that he was showing an interest in sex. ‘It doesn’t sound like anything to worry about,’ she said.

  ‘But there’s an unwholesomeness here,’ Betty persisted. ‘Girls go missing.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  She looked shamefaced, as if the subject itself was taboo. ‘There have been—I don’t know, indecencies, things covered up. The girls get pregnant. Or they report trouble with men. Then suddenly they change their minds. They stop talking, they move away—and sometimes they disappear. Everyone has an opinion about them but nobody has the facts. They come here and simply disappear.’

  Lea returned home to start supper, failing to realise that she had taken hardly any notes.

  Later she lay on the garden sofa with a book about the Middle Eastern landscape and its customs.

  A unifying religion born in the rocks and underground rivers…

  In all of the latitudes at the middle of the world, people supposed that light and darkness were poles attracting powerful magic. The sultans had once believed that the shadows in their courtyards harboured deathlike wraiths that waited to claim their souls. And there were dark corners here.

  Something she could sense but not properly define was shifting within those slivers of blackness. It was chill and poisonous, and was rising out of the shadows toward the light.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The Boy

  THE SCORCHING SUMMER swamped their waking hours in a sunburst of dead white heat.

  Out in the sparkling sea, the squadron of red trucks appeared as a shimmering mirage, driving endlessly across the surface of the water. They were dumping rocks, building the marina causeways that extended on either side of Dream World like stone arms ready to embrace the world. The low drone of their engines could be heard behind Cara’s radio, a ceaseless soundtrack of activity.

  With the arrival of the resort and its surrounding beach hotels, a linear city was rising along the coastline. Here, the usual human hierarchies would be absent, replaced by a single community of sun-worshippers unmoored from time and responsibility, a pagan zone that existed beyond political or religious concerns, the new evangelists.

  The sons and daughters of the compound had spread themselves on towels across the only cool patch of beach they could find, beneath some wild acacia bushes at the edge of a hotel backlot.

  ‘We’re heading over to the Mall of the Emirates later,’ said Lauren. Her coral lip implants looked larger than ever. An iridescent orange wrap floated over her yellow bikini, so that she looked like an extension of the sun. ‘Are you coming with us?’

  ‘Yeah, I guess so.’ Cara and the others were lying in the shade of an acacia bush drinking beer from cola cans. A sulky-looking Indian-American girl called Madhuri had joined them.

  Madhuri had arrived with a legendary reputation; back at her old school in Orange County she had talked her way out of an arrest after her brother had planted marijuana on her for stealing his favourite T-shirt. She still wore the Patriots top as a badge of honour. Her latest id
ea was to persuade some of the kids to ‘liberate’ Percodan, Adderall, Valium, Dexedrine, Ritalin and other prescription drugs from their parents. She then searched the internet and matched up the ingredients with various uppers and downers, crushed the right combination of pills with a mortar and pestle and fed them back to her friends.

  Cara breathed deep. The air was golden. Even swimming in the sea wasn’t enough to cool anyone down, not when you had to walk back over burning sand and could feel the afternoon sun stinging your back. There was hardly anyone else at the beach now.

  ‘How long do you think you could stay out in this heat without dying?’ asked Norah.

  ‘It would depend on whether you had fresh water,’ said Dean.

  ‘Well, how long without water?’

  ‘In a temperature of about 43°, two days tops,’ said Lauren.

  ‘Maybe, but you can lose like, ten per cent of your body weight through dehydration and suffer no long-term effects,’ said Cara.

  ‘I think cover would be the big problem. You’d get burned first. You’re supposed to cover up, because your clothing stops your sweat from evaporating.’ Norah sounded as if she was recalling a science project.

  ‘Nobody was ever meant to live in this place,’ said Lauren, stretching lazily.

  Cara looked over at them, from Lauren to Dean’s tanned body, his thick thighs, his shiny red trunks. His skin seemed to glow with light and energy. In London, the girls in her class prided themselves on looking pale and tough. They wore leggings, shirts, boys’ coats, clumpy boots. It was an effort to imagine them undressed. Lauren was wearing immense glittery sunglasses, and always looked like a teenager’s idea of a celebrity.

  ‘Can I help you, Cara?’ asked Dean.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re staring at me.’ He set down his beer and studied her. ‘I want to go to this heavy metal bar in London that’s full of rock chicks. It’s famous. Do you know it?’

  ‘There are loads of bars. Whereabouts?’

  He thought for a moment. ‘Camden Town, I think.’

  ‘You mean the place Amy Winehouse used to go. Yeah, I know that.’

  ‘She was a total skank who deserved to die,’ said Lauren, shaking her bottle and finding it empty. ‘It’s getting too hot. Let’s go to the mall.’

  ‘Why don’t we go to the other one past the gold market?’ said Norah. ‘There’s a place that sells crazy old bootleg DVDs.’

  ‘I’ve got to get my mom’s car back before she gets home,’ Lauren replied. ‘We have to go now.’

  ‘I think I might stay here for a while,’ said Dean, glancing at Cara.

  ‘Whatever. You’ll have to get the bus.’

  ‘That’s OK. Cara can stay with me. Drop off the car and we’ll join you at the mall later.’

  ‘Fine by me.’ Cara nodded, feeling the others staring at her.

  They watched in silence as Lauren, Norah and the others packed up and left, flip-flopping across the burning sand to the parking lot.

  ‘Why didn’t you want to go with them?’ Cara asked as Dean pulled himself up into the deeper shade of the bushes.

  ‘They’ll spend like an hour in A&F,’ he replied.

  ‘Did you go out with Norah?’

  ‘You’re joking, right? You need to be careful around her. She and Madhuri are fucking crazy. One day they’ll make a mistake and take us all down with them. Besides, she doesn’t like guys.’

  ‘You mean—’

  ‘She’s not like, gay or anything. She just—doesn’t see us, like we’re beneath her.’

  ‘Is that why you don’t come to the mall?’

  ‘Why would I want to spend my afternoon watching you going into shoe stores?’

  ‘I don’t complain about you guys high-fiving each other over your Gran Turismo scores.’

  ‘I don’t play games,’ said Dean.

  ‘Well, that’s good. Neither do I.’ She rose and stepped back between the polished green leaves of the acacia bushes, keeping her eyes on his.

  ‘Well, what do you want to do?’ asked Dean, mesmerised.

  ‘Come over here and I’ll show you.’

  Cara dropped her sunglasses onto the sand. She slipped the end of her wrap around his neck and pulled him into the bushes toward her. The shadows of the leaves hid her eyes as she retreated, until he could only see her glistening pink mouth. The heat of their bodies was fiercer than the sun.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The Need

  RAMADAN HAD BEGUN, and many of the local shops were now shuttered. Bars and cafés kept shorter hours, and were only frequented by tourists. The British Foreign Office had issued warning guidelines about morally correct behaviour.

  The trucks crawled through the tarmac delta that led to the resort like dying beasts. It was too hot to pass between buildings into valleys of molten glass, too hot to breathe without scalding the throat and nostrils. At the shoreline, the dump-trucks emptied boulders into the sea until the land rose above the water-level. Every week the shore grew a little, human ingenuity providing what nature could not. The city slowed to an imperceptible crawl, its population becoming invisible, but in the icy offices of the business district, worlds turned.

  Lea put a teabag into her ginger cat mug and stared at her notes. The air-conditioning unit was not yet set as high as it could go, an indicator that there was even worse heat to come. The words on her screen seemed indecipherable this afternoon, and reworking them brought no improvement.

  Finally, she rose and went to the window.

  Outside, the brown patch where the sprinkler was failing had grown larger. The grass was returning to the natural colour of the land. Everything would die here if left unattended. Thoughts desiccated in the heartless heat.

  There was no point in waiting around for inspiration to strike. On the spur of the moment, she decided to drive out to the resort and see Roy. A little spontaneity might at least persuade him to take a beverage break.

  She arrived at the Dream World sentry gates and waited while the guards examined her photo-pass. As one of them went to phone ahead, she realised that the heightened security around the resort forestalled any notion of a surprise visit. CCTV cameras glared down at her.

  ‘There’s no answer,’ said the guard, checking his watch. ‘What time is your appointment?’

  ‘I don’t have an appointment,’ she explained. ‘I’m his wife. I was in the area and thought I’d look in to see him.’

  The guards seemed to think this odd and talked among themselves. One came forward. ‘I can get someone to take you as far as the Persiana,‘ he offered. ‘We think Mr Brook may be in the main hall.’

  Lea waited while the other guard called ahead. They made the process unnecessarily laborious, glad to have something break the monotony of their day. They were in their late teens, but both carried some kind of squat black weapon in their belts.

  A bright yellow electric buggy appeared, driven by James Davenport, who hopped out and shook her hand. He was wearing a blue woollen cardigan over his starched white shirt. The high temperatures had no effect on the energetic young Scotsman. ‘Lea, this is a surprise,’ he said. ‘You can leave your car here.’

  She switched the Renault for the electric buggy, and they headed off. Beyond the gates was a white concrete path flanked by vast plots of dead brown earth. ‘You should have called first. You might have had a wasted journey.’

  ‘I thought Roy was just working on the Persiana?’ she asked.

  ‘They’ve got him troubleshooting between there and the Atlantica,’ Davenport explained. ‘Let’s see if we can find him.’

  The grand portico of the Persiana appeared to be a cross between a church and a casino. In addition, the elaborately carved entrance of white marble was laid with red protective carpets, like the mosques that covered their floors for non-Muslims.

  The centrepiece of the atrium was an opalescent chandelier over ten metres high, constructed in the shape of an ornate red and gold tulip, through whi
ch the light of a thousand stained-glass windows refracted in chromatic refrain, like a place of worship for Las Vegas showgirls.

  ‘It’s extraordinary,’ said Lea, marvelling at the expense more than the design. ‘I feel tiny.’

  ‘The chandelier was made in Venice.’

  ‘Will anyone be able to come here and visit?’

  ‘The foyer, you mean? Yes, but it will cost them around eighty US dollars to do so. To keep out gawkers. Ah, there he is.’ He pointed to a distant figure working beside a dry octagonal fountain of aquamarine quartz panels.

  ‘Lea, what are you doing here?’ Roy looked up as she approached, but did not come over to greet her. He didn’t seem too pleased to see her at all.

  ‘I was nearby,’ she said lamely.

  ‘But there’s nothing near here.’

  She wasn’t about to argue. ‘Do you have time for a coffee?’

  She caught him glance at Davenport in apology. ‘Oh honey, if you’d phoned ahead I could have cleared a space. I’m just about to go into a meeting.’

  ‘No problem, it was just on the off-chance.’ She turned to Davenport. ‘I’m sorry to have wasted your time, James.’

  ‘Let me drive you back to your car,’ Davenport offered.

  She waved his offer aside. ‘Really, it’s no distance, and it’s shaded. I can walk. I’m learning to cope with the heat. I seem to drive everywhere these days, I could really use the exercise.’ She set off before Davenport could stop her. When she glanced back, she saw him calling someone on his mobile.

  As she studied the three great hotels in their unfinished states, the cables of marble-polishing equipment snaking out of windows and doorways like the controls of some long-dead automaton, it seemed that the resort had already been abandoned and that she was wandering a future disaster area, as ruined as the remains of Baghdad or Xanadu.

  She knew the resort layout by heart; Roy left maps lying all over the house, yet the sight of the buildings always caught her by surprise.