The Place That Didn't Exist

by Mark Watson

  Although he hadn’t known the piece of music, Tim felt as if he could still hear it in his head, and when he dispelled it, it was replaced by the tapping of Adam’s fingers on the keyboard as – a couple of rooms down – he maintained his night watch over the story. When Tim shut his eyes, the image of Raf’s face swam powerfully into view once more. He screwed his eyes tighter and put his hands over his face, until all the pictures were replaced by a fuzz like television interference, the white noise that had been crackling since time began.

  11: THE GAME

  He had fallen asleep with some idea that the mere act of progressing from one day to another would release him from his problems, but it only took a look at his phone to destroy that notion. A text from Christian informed him that they would be meeting at noon, to go back to the golf club, ‘as originally scheduled’.

  Tim’s stomach was tightly knotted, and he felt a grogginess that recalled the hangover on the morning they had all found out: one of the last feelings he had registered when he was still ignorant of the tragedy. He sank onto the toilet and tried to order his thoughts. ‘As originally scheduled.’ The attempted nonchalance of the text was at best rather disingenuous, he thought, and at worst almost psychopathically indifferent: it was hardly part of the ‘schedule’ that a camera had toppled and come within inches of smashing someone’s skull, was it?

  Or, he reflected grimly as he adjusted the shower to Normal setting, perhaps it had been on someone’s itinerary. In any case, this was not a place he wanted to be any more. Foggy as his memory of the early-hours conversation with Adam was, he remembered with clarity the warning that it might be best to leave. It would not represent any sort of a climbdown, Tim told himself. There’d been a suspicious death, possibly a murder; yesterday, another near-fatality. There was every indication, despite Christian’s text, that the ad would not get finished any time soon. And even if it did, Tim’s role amounted to little more than changing a word here and there. There had never really been any point in his being here, you could argue; the role of ‘creative’ might just about mean something in an office, but here it was just a word, like everything was. He called Vortex in London and was put through to Stan.

  ‘How’s it going, mate? I would have been in touch sooner, but Louise, seriously. The woman is the bane of my life. Can you honestly tell me – right, you’re a man of the world. What would you consider a “reasonable time” for someone to get up and feed a baby when they’ve been out all night at a—’

  ‘Look, Stan,’ said Tim. ‘Sorry to interrupt. I need to get home. I don’t think I should stay here any more.’

  He tried to describe what had happened at the golf club. It was not easy to recount the events into the void of the phone line: there weren’t even any encouraging hums or clicks of the tongue, since Stan had developed the skill of maintaining complete silence during a call, as a technique to extract concessions from whoever he was negotiating with. Even the pay-off – the brush with death – sounded oddly undramatic as Tim brought it to a close.

  ‘I mean, seriously,’ he said, in an attempt at a suitably grave epilogue, ‘I could have been killed there and then.’

  ‘That’s terrible, mate,’ said Stan, but it was not enough; it was the same sort of ‘terrible’ as Mum’s book-club gossipers would apply to Raf’s death, hinting at satisfaction, even excitement, that something so dramatic could happen so close at hand, yet harmlessly to oneself.

  ‘So I need to get out,’ Tim pressed. ‘I was wondering if Vortex could sort a flight out. Change my ticket.’

  ‘But you don’t think someone is trying to get you?’

  ‘No,’ Tim conceded, ‘not exactly, but . . .’

  As soon as this backtrack was made, Tim felt as if he had weakened his position; as if it would now be too difficult to explain why his situation felt as wretched as it did.

  ‘But I really do think I should get out of here,’ he tried again.

  ‘I think . . .’ said Stan, his voice displaying not so much reluctance as a certain calm that was at odds with the reality confronting Tim. ‘I think you’d need to talk to WorldWise, mate. I mean, they’re the ones who booked the tickets. They’re probably your best bet.’

  This would all be perfectly sensible from Stan’s point of view, because he wasn’t here; all he knew of WorldWise was the sheen of their website, the stack of emails they’d sent finalizing the deal. Besides, Stan had his own problems, as did everyone; nobody could care about everything. Nobody had to care about anybody else’s life, technically. That was why Tim had liked the idea of the WorldWise account in the first place. The idea was that it was an easy way of caring, or at least simulating care with a donation. It had all sounded so good, even a few days ago.

  ‘The thing is,’ Tim tried to explain, ‘I’m not sure WorldWise are going to be much use with this. They’re not in the best shape. I mean, the guy who originally arranged my flights is dead, to put things in context.’

  ‘I can call them for you,’ said Stan. ‘Put in a word.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ said Tim, ‘I’m sure I . . . I’m sure it will be fine.’

  ‘Look, I’ll put you on to someone in HR,’ said Stan, and before Tim could object he was listening to the hold-message that had been concocted in front of his own eyes, in the Shoreditch office. The words ‘Vortex: a place where normal laws do not apply’ were intoned, in a sort of mock-Hollywood twang, over some ironically resurgent Eighties pop song. Even the normal laws of hold music do not apply here, the sequence implied, in that oh-so-clever way Tim feared was typical of everything the agency did. He put the phone down.

  I need to go home, Tim heard himself think on a loop, as the WorldWise vehicle took them back to the golf club. They pulled into the car park with its over-tended lines of vegetation. Bradley was poring over his notebook, as always, like a spy charged with memorizing state secrets. The Fixer conversed with the driver in Arabic; the driver was gesturing, with chagrin, at the lack of spaces.

  ‘It’s a lot fuller than yesterday,’ Tim murmured.

  ‘Naturally,’ said Ruth.

  ‘Because of the . . . because of what happened? Is it press?’

  ‘No – they’re here because it’s Friday.’

  As he and the Fixer began to unload the camera-bags from the boot, Miles mimed drinking with a certain wistfulness.

  ‘How do they get home, if they’re getting hammered?’

  The Fixer raised his eyebrows amusedly. ‘The wealthy ones have someone to drive them. The other ones just drive drunk.’

  The cars they passed gave the impression of having been bought because they were expensive, like Christian Roper’s shirts, or Raf’s shades, and as usual Tim felt the inner double take provoked by the thought of his colleague. Was any new evidence being dissected online? Did the internet commentators have opinions, already, about the incident here yesterday? Tim wanted to know, almost as much as he wanted not to.

  The bar was host to far more activity than yesterday. As Miles and his crew began setting up a place for Jason to conduct his online interviews, the throb of noise was already building. Elaine bustled in like an angry insect, talking to Jo, who tried to place a hand on the agent’s arm but was rebuffed. Tim found himself being forced to listen to a group of British and Australian men in their forties, who had marked out their camp with bottles of champagne arranged like traffic bollards across a table. The group was alternating between work talk and remarks aimed at a polite, embarrassed waiter.

  ‘Shut up, Keith.’

  ‘I’m on the money. We’ll ask this guy. My man! Sheikh Mo books a separate plane seat for his falcon – that’s true, isn’t it?’

  ‘Won’t be able to afford a plane seat for himself if this continues.’

  ‘Storm in a tea-cup, mate.’

  ‘It’s a big tea-cup. Buyers are dropping out like fucking rats off a, off a . . .’

  ‘Not here. Not Dubai.’

  ‘Everywhere. It’s just hit over there first. It’
s the whole world, mate.’

  ‘Dubai’s not in the world. My man! I’m right, aren’t I? About the falcon? What’s your name?’

  The waiter responded neither with the slightly haunted look Tim had sometimes seen in Dubai’s service industry, nor with the glazed servility that was more common, but – and Tim only saw it for a flash – with a kind of double-face, suggesting someone simultaneously cowed by, and dependent on, the people he spent all his time with. Tim adopted a studiedly pleasant tone as he set himself to the task of trying to book plane tickets.

  ‘Is there internet anywhere here?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Are you a member of the club?’

  With a gumption Tim would probably not find in more comfortable circumstances, he tried his luck.

  ‘No, but is there anywhere I could get on a computer – just quickly – without being a member?’

  He saw the waiter make a brief calculation, his brown eyes narrowing; the gambit had been successful. ‘If you go to Business Facility, sir. Past Relaxation Room and Legends’ Enclosure and then on the left you will see it. You can use the password “GregNorman”, sir, all one word.’

  ‘Greg Norman, like the golfer?’

  ‘No, sir: he spells it with two words.’

  Tim tried to convey his gratitude, but the man was already halfway to helping someone else; he had moved away as if this tiny, irrelevant moment of collusion were a pivotal moment in a spy thriller. But then, Tim reminded himself, he didn’t know what it might cost someone who worked here to flout the rules, even marginally. He thought of Ashraf – whom, it was almost certain, he would never meet again – and hurried into the corridor.

  The walls were hung with photos of golfers. One huge, autographed black-and-white shot showed six men wildly celebrating some unknown victory. He went, as he was instructed, beyond the Relaxation Room and past the empty ‘Legends’ Enclosure’, which seemed to be a premium version of the main lounge, with an elaborately stocked bar and an assembly of leather armchairs awaiting the presence of whatever legendary figures might appear.

  But after this he did not, as the waiter had promised, ‘see it on the left’. The corridor did snake around to the left, taking him back towards the main entrance and car park, but then – as if this had been a decoy – it curved back right, leading into the depths of the building. Tim retreated, looking more carefully this time for store cupboards like the one yesterday, which might yield a strange hidden room. He walked back as far as the Relaxation Room and tried another branch of the corridor, around another corner.

  This is completely out of character, he thought irritably even as he continued to do it: throwing himself at one route and another, not making proper mental notes. It was the opposite of how he’d always approached things, since the days of school orienteering. He had a memory of being in a wood, during a weekend’s training with older kids who took orienteering too seriously; trying to hold back a nosebleed as cold air numbed his face and the muddy ground sucked at his shoes. He’d forced himself to eliminate all the paths already taken, as they’d been trained to do, till only one was left. This hard-won triumph had remained in his brain as a sort of general exemplum. If you went, mentally, from one step to another, the world would make sense.

  But this corridor did not even seem to lead back the same way it had first brought him. He had the same feeling he’d experienced in the mall, that he was playing some sort of computer game in which he caused the environment to change by walking around it. Of course, this was nonsense; Tim was annoyed at himself even for thinking it. Come on, he urged himself, as the air-con breathed its way into his consciousness. You could find your way round this place in your sleep. There have just been a lot of unfamiliar places, over here, in quick succession. And a lot of information that doesn’t stack up, a lot of words that don’t quite mean what they say.

  He was back at the Relaxation Room, only a little way from the lounge where everyone else was; he could hear the chatter again, the expats’ laughter; and now here it was, a white door clearly marked: Business Facility. It was just to the left, exactly where the man had said it would be. Tim was convinced it had not been there a moment ago. He would have sworn it.

  The computers were of the blocky, nineties kind, and they sat on chunky, shiny oak cabinets: the whole room might not have been used since it was built. Still, when Tim brushed the mouse, the PC sprang into life as if it had only been waiting for him all this time. The password took him onto the net; he found a site with flight offers. For five hundred pounds he could fly back to Heathrow in the early hours of tomorrow morning. Five hundred pounds was a lot, but he’d get it back from Vortex. Tim felt his confidence rise a little. It didn’t even matter if it pissed Vortex off. Being a good employee, winning Stan’s approval, did not seem the important considerations that they once had.

  I’ll book it right now, he told himself, and navigated a series of pages, assuring the interface that he only needed a one-way ticket, that he would not need to book a hotel or hire a car once in London, that he would rather not receive information from the airline, the travel site, or any of their specially selected partners. He inputted his debit card details and waited for the moment of confirmation, the moment that would draw a line under everything: I am leaving tomorrow. I am out of here.

  Instead of this, an exclamation mark and accompanying message informed Tim that his card had been declined. He was asked to check the details he’d entered. He typed them again, more slowly to eliminate any chance of error. Tim knew he was a long way from reaching his overdraft, there was plenty in the account – in fact the bank often got in touch imploring him to borrow more money, or take extra cards. He clicked to send through this latest version of the card details; again, the webpage was unmoved, and went so far as to warn him that a third unsuccessful attempt would lead to his being blocked from the site for an hour.

  He found another site offering tickets on the same flight; put in the details again; the same thing happened. He brought his fist down heavily on the keyboard, twice, then immediately glanced behind him to see if anyone had witnessed it. You could probably get thrown out of the club for that, he thought – but actually, that would be OK. That would be fine. The computer emitted a low, mildly reproachful noise in response to his attack. Tim shut the computer window and left the room. He’d have to call the bank. Call the bank and then go back online for the plane tickets. Call, then get online, then get to the airport, then get away from this place.

  Ruth was pacing the corridor when he returned to the lounge, and for a second it occurred to Tim that his absence might have been noticed, even held things up; but no, her attention was on someone else. ‘You haven’t seen Christian?’

  ‘Christian? No.’

  ‘He’s literally vanished into the fucking air.’

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘They’re nearly ready to start with the to-camera bits. It’s just, Jason’s being funny about the script. Doesn’t want to start till his agent approves it. She’s bickering with Jo about whether we can go out on the course. It’s basically a—’

  ‘A shit sandwich?’

  She gave him a reluctant grin. ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Why do you think Jason is being weird about reading the script?’ Tim found himself asking, before he could stop. ‘About reading? I mean, he’s always doing this sort of thing.’

  Ruth’s eyes, a sort of sleepy green, fixed hard on Tim’s. With a fizz of excited fear he realized that his conjecture was right, that Jason couldn’t read; also, that Ruth already knew, and it was debatable whether he should have mentioned it.

  ‘Will you go and look in the bathroom for me?’

  ‘For Christian?’

  Ruth snorted. ‘Well, look for whatever you want in there, but yeah, I was thinking for Christian.’

  A man in uniform was standing in the gents’: as Tim approached, he pointed helpfully to the urinals, as if otherwise Tim might lose heart and leave again. Tim stood dutifully at the ur
inal. The cubicles were all unoccupied, and nobody else was here. On the side of the next urinal was a sticker: HOW ARE THESE FACILITIES? Where had he seen this message before? In Streng’s trailer, of course. Tim’s brain was connecting dots with other dots. He remembered the burn on his cheeks when Raf reprimanded him, in the most public way he could, for going into that trailer. In that instant, he’d wished any harm on Raf that there could be. Without even knowing it, he had wished it.

  There was the dream. Why was it so vivid, his memory of strangling Raf? Why did he dream of Raf saying that he ‘knew what was coming’? The chalet door had been open when Tim woke up; who opened it? Tim swung across planes of memory, back to the orienteering trip. He remembered coming home, sodden and exhausted, slumping down next to the fire in the grate, in the plodding comfort of the living room. Mr and Mrs Callaghan were watching some Sunday-night detective thing, one with hilariously ill-paired sleuths whose tetchy relationship is the very thing that leads them to a solution. And that had been the solution to the seemingly impossible puzzle: the culprit had been sleepwalking. ‘That couldn’t happen, could it, Henry?’ asked Mrs Callaghan, and Tim’s father, who had once worked in a pathologist’s office, remarked mildly that he did think he’d heard of a case like that. ‘In America, probably. Pretty much anything can happen in America.’

  Tim felt needles of nausea jostling inside him. He stepped away from the urinal as two of the drinkers from the bar entered, exchanging witticisms. ‘Something a little bit gay about this . . .’ one of them began. They made no impression on Tim; he didn’t even notice their faces.

  He tried to rearrange his expression as Jason Streng appeared, for once without his agent, just outside the doors of the main lounge. On the other side of the doors, the noise was steadily increasing. Tim rolled his eyes at Jason with attempted insouciance.

  ‘Any sign of progress?’

  ‘It’s not happening, mate.’ Jason shrugged with vague regret: everything about his body language, Tim thought, suggested that in less than a week he would be by a pool, somewhere very far from here. ‘The management won’t let me go back on set till they’ve done proper safety checks on the cameras. I can do the internet bits, but at this rate we’re going to end up bailing after that.’