The Sand Men

by Christopher Fowler

  She rubbed at her temples, trying to forestall a headache. ‘The warnings came long ago, Mr Hardy, and they started on the inside, right in the heart of Dream World, but everyone ignored them. When people find out that you did nothing to stop it, guess who’ll get the blame?’

  ‘That sounds like a threat.’ He opened his mobile and made a call, speaking in Afrikaans. She stood waiting for him to finish, chilled in the warm night air. ‘My men are going to be on duty all night anyway, so I’ve instructed them to look out for your kids. I need you to go inside your house and stay there until your husband and daughter arrive, ya? Go and write something, assuming your laptop is repaired, do something that will calm you down.’

  ‘How did you know about my laptop? I didn’t tell you.’

  ‘You women have no secrets from us. I don’t want you wandering around the neighbourhood, do you understand? From midnight nothing bigger than a mosquito is going to get through our security. Everything must be kept orderly, and you can help by not frightening the hell out of people.’

  ‘Are you with them,’ she asked, ‘or with us?’

  ‘It depends on who you call them? Liberals—you all make the same mistake.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You come to a strange land and think you’re surrounded by devils. You never identify the real enemy. It’s you people.’ He jabbed angrily at her chest. ‘It’s always you.’

  Waving her away from the vehicle, he jumped back in and roared off, accelerating with a squeal of tyres as he barked commands into his phone.

  Chapter Forty-One

  The Abduction

  BEN LARVIN HAD been moved to the rehabilitation clinic, but was still in a hospital bed. The ends of his lower limbs were now capped in what appeared to be perforated blue shower caps. He still had the nub of a saline drip protruding from his plastered left wrist. The nurse warned her that the patient was still undergoing the after-effects of pain relief and might not respond to her, but Ben raised his hand in a weak greeting as Lea entered the room.

  She seated herself beside him. She hardly knew where to start. ‘Ben, I know what you’ve been going through. I don’t mean since the accident—before that.’

  He turned his head slowly and studied her.

  ‘When you first found out about the Ka’al.’

  No response.

  ‘After they made you a director, you realised what was happening. That’s why you sent pretty little Abbi away. You feared they might take her.’

  ‘Abbi is safe.’ His voice was slurred and low, like a recording that had been slowed down.

  ‘Yes, she’s safe. I know the truth now. How did you find out?’

  He licked his lips. Lea poured some water into a plastic jug and put the straw in his mouth.

  ‘Sewage outlet,’ he said finally. ‘Went there after Roy and Harji, to look at damage. Found shorts.’

  ‘Whose shorts?’

  ‘Tom Chalmer’s daughter. Was wearing them when she went missing.’

  The air-conditioned room felt colder still. ‘Did you tell anyone?’

  ‘No. But I listened.’ He tried to raise his head but fell back against the pillows. ‘So tired.’

  ‘Ben, why didn’t they just deport Mandhatri Sahonta when he made a fuss about losing his daughter? Why did they stage the accident?’

  ‘Avoid investigation.’

  Of course, she thought. Once they’d found out how easy it was to get rid of anyone who pointed the finger of blame, they used the same method again and again.

  ‘Ben, is there anyone I can talk to, anyone who knows?’

  His eyes had closed. Moments later he was asleep.

  ‘Ben? Who else knows the truth? Who can I trust?’

  He spoke without opening his eyes. ‘Betty Graham.’

  ‘Betty Graham?’

  ‘She was there.’

  He started to snore.

  HER NEIGHBOUR WAS coming out of the corner shop in the compound and actually started when she spotted Lea. For once, Betty Graham had removed her apron. She was struggling to carry a large carton filled with jars. Knowing Betty, it didn’t seem likely that she would still be upset.

  ‘Let me give you a hand with that,’ said Lea, taking one end of the carton and looking inside it. ‘What are these for?’

  ‘Oh, Mrs Garfield has enlisted me in jam-making,’ she explained. ‘She’s got us all under the cosh. A real martinet.’

  They reached Betty’s front door and carried the box to the chaotic kitchen. ‘I’m glad I saw you,’ said Lea. ‘There’s something I wanted to ask you about.’

  A look of discomfort immediately came into Betty’s eyes. ‘I don’t suppose I’ll be able to answer, I never know what’s going on.’

  ‘This is rather serious, so I was hoping you’d be able to confirm something… you see, I talked to Ben at the hospital.’

  ‘Oh God.’ She turned away, busying herself with unpacking the empty jam-jars.

  ‘Remember when I Skyped you in the night? I asked about Tom Chalmers’ daughter and you changed the subject. Ben tells me you were there. When it happened.’

  For a moment Lea thought she wasn’t going to answer. Clink went the jam-jars on top of each other. Betty raised her head and looked out of the window. ‘It was cloudy and close,’ she said. ‘Not a good day for the beach. We were down by the lake, where it was cooler. I can’t remember why I’d agreed to take Joia down there. Funny, you’d think it would be the part I’d remember most clearly. We sat on the grass and she read for a while, but she was smart and I think she’d grown too old for the book—it was The Wizard Of Oz.’ There was an odd distance in her voice. ‘It got even muggier and she grew bored, so I said we should go to the pool. She had her swimsuit with her, and went off to the changing rooms. I was putting away our things when I looked up and saw two men in those grey hooded sweaters, and I thought they must be workers. It was so hot, only the workers wear clothes like that. While I was watching, they changed direction and headed toward the changing rooms, and something made me get to my feet and go after them.

  ‘When I reached the cubicles the men had gone, and so had Joia. Her T-shirt and swimsuit were still on the bench, which meant she was just wearing her red shorts. She was at the age when she was becoming self-conscious of her body, so I knew she’d not let anyone see her half-dressed. Mrs Chalmers—well, I think she blamed me even though she knew it wasn’t my fault. She didn’t speak to any of us much after that.’

  ‘And the police did nothing.’

  Betty came back a little. ‘Oh, they looked. They said they looked. They made enquiries and two workers were deported. It all happened so fast.’

  ‘What did you do with Joia’s book?’ Lea asked.

  ‘Mrs Chalmers didn’t want it back so I gave it to Rachel. She said it was proof.’

  ‘What do you mean, proof?’

  ‘Joia had taken it with her to the changing room. Some of the pages were torn, as if they’d tried to pull it away from her. Rachel said there would be fingerprints.’

  ‘But you didn’t hand it in to the authorities?’

  ‘No,’ she said in a small voice. ‘I was frightened.’

  ‘Did you tell Rachel what you saw that day?’

  ‘I did, but I shouldn’t have done.’

  ‘Why not?’

  Betty looked forlorn. ‘Because they’ll come for me one day, just as they did for the others.’

  ‘Who is going to come for you?’

  Her neighbour’s cheeks were wet. She wiped them with the back of her hand. ‘The men who were always here,’ she said. ‘The Sand Men.’

  ‘But a modern company like DWG.’ The idea defied rationality. ‘How is such a thing possible?’

  ‘Modern?’ Betty spoke as if dealing with a particularly stupid child. ‘Men don’t change. They’ll live with any cruelty and still believe in their innocence, if it gives them power.’

  Chapter Forty-Two

  The End Of The Dream
/>   THE DRIVE TO the beach house was hell. It seemed as if the whole of the city had been tipped out onto the roads. Lea had trouble parking near the low breezeblock villa, which was more accessible via the coastal dunes than from the road. To reach the entrance, she passed through a thicket of parasitic thorn-bushes and clumps of maroon and yellow desert hyacinths.

  She knocked on the front door but there was no answer. A dim light pulsed inside, but the place looked empty. Stepping back, she studied the house. The sea air had cracked and warped the window surrounds, and one side panel had clearly proven impossible to shut. After thumping it with the heel of her hand a few times, she managed to slide it high enough to climb inside.

  Several cheap plastic chairs had been set around the edges of the single large room. Electrical cables trailed across the sandy floorboards. The place reminded her of Cara’s bedroom. Jumbo Coke cups, pizza boxes and empty junk-food delivery cartons overflowed a wastepaper basket. She was like her father; they both had the ability to lock into screens and lose all sense of time.

  On the central trestle table lay an assortment of laptops, one of which was set to the website’s homepage. The soft light emanated from the brightly coloured Bubble Life logo which revolved, burst and reformed. The room was free of paperwork—Cara assembled all her information online—but signs of the kids were everywhere. Norah’s favourite baseball shirt hung on the back of a chair. Dean’s sneakers were under a desk. An expensive cardigan, some drying swimwear, a skateboard, some rollerblades. It looked as if the group had left in a rush. Cara’s wristwatch, given to her by her father, lay on the counter. There were other signs of youth; small change, a candy-coloured wrist bracelet, a plastic hair-slide, still-damp swimming trunks, flip-flops. It was as if someone had set off a fire alarm and the building had been evacuated.

  She looked under the table and found an iPhone. Cara’s name was inscribed on the back. She never went anywhere without it. Pieces of the broken screen were scattered across the floorboards. Everyone knew that the kids hung out together at the beach house. They would never have left so suddenly under their own volition. Apart from anything else, they didn’t possess the organisational skills.

  A threadbare rug lay near the far wall, its corner rucked.

  It has a cellar, Roy had said, you can put your equipment down there.

  Hardly any buildings in Dubai had cellars. The city was built on solid rock, but the beach house stood on sand and soil. Kicking back the rug she found a single wooden flap fitted with a recessed brass ring. Underneath was a flight of sandy plank steps.

  The room was not much bigger than a telephone booth. On one side a grey metal door had a thin strip of light showing beneath it. There was neither lock nor handle, so she shoved. It grated against the floor, but moved easily.

  Inside was a room half the size of the one above. On a trestle table, four monitors glowed. The laptops connected to them all showed the same thing. The crimson and blue Bubble Life logo grew and burst, to repeatedly reveal:

  6-6-6 THE DREAM IS OVER 9-9-9

  Cara was seated with a laptop on her knees and another on the desk, writing code. A joint burned in an ashtray. Behind her, tacked to the wall, was a poster of Ed Snowdon. She was wearing headphones. Lea placed a hand on her shoulder, making her jump.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Cara asked, yanking off the cans and turning to face her. ‘You’re supposed to be at home.’

  She had pushed back her sunbleached hair, and looked older. Behind her the screens pulsed into fresh life. A computer-generated image showed the silver towers of the resort crumbling and collapsing into the sea. Across the destruction ran article headlines in red ribbons of lettering.

  LUXURY SLUMS: MULTINATIONAL CAPITALIST VENTURES LIKE DREAM WORLD WILL BE USED BY 0.0001% OF THE WORLD’S POPULATION.

  SLAVE LABOUR: DREAM WORLD STEALTH-HIRES BELOW MINIMUM WAGE, ABUSING THE POOR TO AMUSE THE RICH.

  RESOURCE PLUNDERERS: EACH DAY DREAM WORLD DRAINS MORE RESOURCES THAN AN ENTIRE AFRICAN NATION USES IN A YEAR.

  FUTURE NIGHTMARE: 23 NEW DREAM WORLD RESORTS AND APARTMENT COMPLEXES ARE SCHEDULED TO OPEN IN AFRICA, THE MIDDLE EAST, RUSSIA AND AMERICA IN THE NEXT DECADE.

  ‘This is what you’ve been doing,’ said Lea, staring at the screens, ‘playing at being a revolutionary.’

  ‘Not playing. Doing something.’ Cara eyed Lea warily as she approached.

  ‘Did you send warnings about the bombs?’

  ‘We tried to but we’re not sure they went through.’

  ‘How did you get the call sign?’

  Cara closed her eyes in sufferance. ‘From Dad, obviously.’

  ‘I should have realised.’ Cara shrugged, more intent on the screen than listening to her. ‘Look at me, Cara, why would you do this?’

  She tore herself away from the scrolling sentences. ‘To open people’s eyes. You always go on about wanting to do something but you don’t. You never do. You couldn’t even get your so-called writing career started, you just wring your hands and complain like all the other wives.’

  ‘Where are your friends? How many are involved?’

  Cara evaded the question and looked back at the screen. ‘We’re not children. We can look after ourselves.’

  ‘You’re not even sixteen, Cara.’

  ‘I will be next week.’

  Lea’s mind raced back over the events of the last few months. ‘You couldn’t have made the pipe bombs. The first one was found before we arrived.’

  ‘Dean made the first one and smuggled it into the resort, but he got the timing wrong.’ Her face betrayed no emotion as she spoke. ‘Norah and I showed him how to do it properly. We’re not hurting anyone, we’re aiming at disruption. It’s better that you stay home until all this is over.’

  ‘All what?’ Lea took a step closer, watching the messages drift down the screens. ‘Tell me how this works.’

  ‘You wouldn’t understand.’

  ‘Try me.’

  Cara tapped the nearest monitor. ‘The site is a call to action. It looks normal when people first open it, but they get to the sub-site by following coded clues from other sites. And they only get those once we’ve checked out their personal details. We’ve created a private universe. We only talk to people we trust.’

  Behind her head, the largest screen showed a computer graphic of buildings being consumed by an electronic apocalypse. The firestorm threw fierce orange light across the room.

  ‘We’re showing others what’s going on here. How the workers are being treated, how they’re deported when they fail to reach targets. How the owners are importing rare hardwoods for hotel bedrooms to please the Chinese. Buying drugged-up dolphins from Japan to stock the aquariums. Taking bribes from contractors, stealing land, poisoning the sea. We’re waking people up. It’s a mechanism for protest. The next war will take place here, and you won’t even notice it. The stuff out there isn’t real. It’s a dream. You don’t see how far you’ve fallen. You’re terrified of just being a housewife but you have no dreams left.’

  Lea looked into her daughter’s eyes and saw naivety, innocence, hope—all the things that would be taken from her. ‘You really don’t see what you’ve done, do you,’ she said, watching the screens.

  Cara barely heard her. ‘We thought we could take the resort offline during the opening by hacking the digital management program. We removed the existing OS and transferred the symbolic role of the integer 999 to the digit sequence 9-9-9. The building’s secure but the network isn’t. Their IT team is rubbish. We had everything we needed to take it down. Then the security patrol turned up. Dean and Norah got away. I stayed down here. I have everything I need. I can get out after dark.’

  ‘Cara, listen to me. You’ve been set up. You’ve played right into their hands. They wanted you to do this.’

  For the first time, Cara looked unsure of herself. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘James Davenport said the system was failsafe. They made you think it could be ha
cked, and you fell for it.’ She leaned in and wiped the sweat from Cara’s forehead. ‘Oh baby, you weren’t to know. You did everything they expected of you. Right from the day your father told you about the beach house.’

  ‘I don’t understand what you’re saying.’

  She sat down in the chair next to Cara. ‘You’re the distraction, the release valve. Now if any questions are asked they can say it was you.’ She tried to explain about how the vault had always been there, an ancient spot where the Ka’al elders gathered, set deep in the rocks. How the company had built the complex around it, adding the private apartment, a meeting place for modern elders. She explained why it was on every single map going back through the centuries, and what they used it for now. She mopped at her forehead, feeling dizzy. ‘Do you have anything cold to drink?’

  Cara stayed silent, but reached under the table and pulled a plastic bottle of water from a mini-fridge, rolling it across the table-top to her. Lea drank a third and pressed the bottle to her forehead.

  ‘They didn’t want the whores from King’s Road, the ones everyone else used. What’s the point of having power if you still have to do that? They started taking girls. Afterwards they dumped them at sea but one washed up in the creek. It wasn’t enough to take the workers’ children, and they made a stupid mistake. Her name was Joia. Tom Chalmers’ daughter. She was thirteen. Tom suspected the truth. He told Milo they had taken her. Milo told Rachel and Rachel said something, so they followed her out into the desert and staged another accident. They took her pendant as proof. Rachel was found without her neck-chain.’

  ‘This is insane. You’re talking about—’

  ‘The rituals were secret and sacred,’ said Lea. ‘Now they’re just expedience. They provide... an outlet. This land has only just turned its back on the old ways.’ She wanted to reach over and touch her daughter, but Cara shifted away. ‘Your father and the others, they let you build the website and do all this. They encouraged you. You think they didn’t know about Dean right from the start? An angry kid with a backpack, planting home-made bombs on a high-security site? Now they can make you disappear. You and anyone else they want. Your father sold you to them, Cara. A new city built on ancient ground, that’s what they promised to deliver. They even brought back virgin sacrifice. The sins of men never change.’