The Sand Men

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘Anyone got a brew?’ Norah asked. Someone popped the lid of a cooler and threw them one apiece.

  ‘We’re not allowed beer on the beach,’ said Lauren, a blandly pretty American blonde with a heart-shaped face and lip implants. Cara had seen her before, seated behind her parents in their silver Mercedes, queuing to get into the estate. ‘Dean keeps a second icebox buried in the sand.’

  Dean caught the name-check and leaned forward, hand raised to Cara in greeting. He wore his curly brown hair in a ponytail knotted with coloured bands and beads. His wide smile invited complicity and revealed perfect bleached teeth.

  ‘But the cops could be a pain if they wanted to, couldn’t they?’ Cara asked.

  ‘They’re not serious,’ said Norah, ‘they just come around so that we’ll tell our parents we’ve seen them.’

  ‘Do you ever go into the desert?’

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Lauren. ‘My brother takes us, but he won’t roll his jeep or anything cool like that. He’s such a fun-suck. He sticks to the main highways. If you go off-road you have to let your tyres half-down to get traction in the sand, and he says it damages them if you do it too often.’

  ‘He doesn’t come to the beach?’ asked Cara.

  ‘No,’ said Norah. ‘Her bro hangs around the mall cruising for underage poo-say. They should get him chipped.’

  ‘We got plenty of other stuff to do,’ said Dean. ‘There’s a ski-slope at the Mall. The cinemas show English language movies but we don’t get the really gross horror movies. The censorship is fucked up. I’ve got some sites you can stream from. You’re London, right? We haven’t been back for two years. What’s it like now?’

  ‘Same as ever,’ said Cara, ‘cold and wet. There’s some good bands though.’

  ‘Bring some music down next time,’ said Norah. ‘If we like it, it goes on the playlist.’

  ‘Do you ever go out to the resort?’ asked Cara.

  ‘Dream World? No, the security guy there watches for us. There have been some really fucking weird accidents. One guy got a scaffolding pole through the top of his skull. Another one got killed when a stack of pallets slid over on him. The heat loosened the metal ties.’

  ‘Tell him about the ice-man,’ said Lauren.

  Dean drew them in with his smile. ‘Okay, there’s this beach out at the end of the resort where they’re building this exclusive restaurant? You can only reach it across the sand, but it gets too hot to walk on, so they installed pipes under the ground to cool it down. They didn’t want people to complain about burning their feet, so they filled the pipes with some kind of coolant like liquid nitrogen. There was a leak, so they sent one of the Indian workers down to fix it and he had to lay on the ground to uncover it, but it turned out his buddies hadn’t shut the pressure off properly. The pipe exploded and froze him to death on the sand, right in the middle of the day. His lungs turned to ice. When they came to take his body away, it was still frozen solid. Amazing, huh?’

  ‘What happened?’ asked Cara.

  ‘What do you mean what happened? They shipped the corpse back to India and charged his wife for the freight.’ Dean checked his watch, some kind of neon Japanese model. ‘I have to go home soon. Let’s swim.’

  The group waded out into the warm water together. Cara wasn’t used to swimming with boys, and felt self-conscious about her body. Most of them took athletic practice and worked out. Nobody seemed to be paying any attention, though, and after a while she grew more comfortable. She was a strong swimmer, and led the way into deeper, cooler water. Speedboats droned past, and a red acrobatic plane was performing stunt-rolls, corkscrewing down through the bare blue sky, a lone participant in a dogfight.

  Looking down between her feet she could see all the way to the bottom, where small black fish darted over the rippled sand.

  ‘Sometimes they swim over you,’ said Dean, floating alongside her. He tipped his head back and allowed his body to rise, the water gently lapping his broad chest. ‘I like it out here. You don’t have to think about anything, just hang in space, like you’re floating in the clouds. Sometimes the mist blurs the horizon line and you can’t tell which way up you are, if you’re in the sky or the sea. You might be looking down at the earth from the distant future. Like you’re in another life.’

  Cara watched as his tanned form floated slowly past her. He was so close that she could smell the coconut oil on his sun-warmed skin. The lotion sheened his body in a golden carapace. Droplets shone on his chest like diamonds. He drifted and shone like some polished component of a luxury yacht, then sank beneath the surface of the glassine ocean, still gleaming, swimming slowly around her, encircling her. She could tell he was smiling, even underwater. He watched her for a long moment, then turned with a flick of his leg, sinking deeper, a lapidary merman returning home.

  Back on the shore, behind the open space of the beach, two policemen sat silent and motionless in their blue and white jeep watching the teenagers, the setting sun reflected in their mirror shades.

  Chapter Nine

  The Underpass

  THE LAST OF the boxes had arrived from Chiswick and their contents had been set around the house, but most of the pieces looked out of place, as if an effort had been made to reassemble their home from a poorly remembered dream.

  Disappointed, Lea drove back from Spinneys supermarket with several days’ supply of groceries. There could be no distractions next week; she was determined to find freelance work. She had bought a sombre high-necked suit in grey silk, and two light jackets that covered her skin. The outfits felt cooler than her London summer clothes. Catching sight of herself in the car mirror, with her dark hair tied back and large sunglasses, it seemed that she offered up the perfect image of Arabic modesty.

  It was, unsurprisingly, another beautiful day.

  The road to the compound curved from Highway A6 in an architectural arabesque, passing between several dusty single-storey buildings, the remains of an old village that had been cleared for the route. The last few stores were still open for business—stacks of beach chairs and blue plastic laundry baskets framed their doorways—but no customers could reach them through the tangle of on-ramps and roadworks.

  Clearly, some locals were missing out on the property bonanza. Lea was so busy studying the shabby row of stores that she missed her turn-off. Suddenly nothing looked familiar. The Renault’s sat-nav sounded confused, telling her to turn left where there was no left turn, so she looked out for signs.

  ‘Turn around at the first available opportunity,’ said the sat-nav. She could see the compound wavering in the distance, a low mushroom-coloured wall studded with date palms, but could not find a way to get to it.

  The traffic faded away, funnelling from the sculpted steel towers of the financial district toward the coastal districts. Taking the first slip road that presented itself she watched as the manicured verges broke up, to be replaced by rubble-strewn sandlots and stony ground littered with abandoned appliances.

  At first she thought she had reached the city dump, but ahead was another compound. This one had no security walls or statuesque palms. The eight rows of utilitarian blocks were arranged like army barracks. Most were fitted with narrow, rudimentary windows. A pair of sentry boxes guarded the only way in, and she was forced to brake.

  One of the uniformed guards came out to her car. ‘You are in an unauthorized area,’ he said, peering in to see if she was travelling with anyone.

  Lowering her window was like opening an oven door, and she did so reluctantly. ‘I took the wrong exit from the highway,’ she explained. ‘What is this place?’

  He ignored her question. ‘Where are you trying to get to, Ma’am?’

  ‘The Dream Ranches Estate. I could see it from the road, I just couldn’t—’

  ‘You need to turn around here, go back and take the third road on the right.’

  ‘Turn around at the first available opportunity,’ said the sat-nav, as if in corroboration.

  ‘Tha
nk you, but what—’

  The guard had already turned smartly on his polished heel and was heading back for the white wooden box.

  Lea did as she was instructed. When she glanced in her rear view mirror, she saw the sentries in their shadowed huts, as immobile as nutcracker soldiers, boles of beige dust blustering around them.

  As she followed the road beside the barracks she realised how close they were to her compound, and was surprised that she hadn’t noticed them before. But through the acacia bushes at the end of her street she realised she could now glimpse them, even if she could only see the tips of the roofs.

  On an impulse, she drove past her front door in the direction of the perimeter wall. The houses soon petered out. The central reservation’s sprinklers were spread further apart and the grass withered to scrub. The estate housed over a thousand residences, but most were gathered around the golf club at its centre.

  On the outskirts the lawns turned to empty lots. The sun shone dully, baking the dead earth into rock. A few wild dogs scratched at the dirt. The Renault coasted quietly along the back roads, mapping the topography of the compound. Drifts of wind-carved sand shimmered between a handful of maroon and yellow desert hyacinths. Most of the stems had been strangled by tough parasitic plants. Little else grew in the salt-heavy soil.

  The first three streets proved to be dead ends. The furthest point of the fourth dipped beneath a wide, noisy highway. It appeared to be an unmanned exit from the compound. The sat-nav failed to recognise it, and told her to continue straight on.

  She slowly drove toward the embankment, trying to see into the deep shadows of the underpass, but her eyes had trouble adjusting. Something had caught her attention, a faint wavering movement in the darkness.

  By the time she realised her mistake, it was too late.

  Braking sharply, she narrowly avoided a young man. Gathered in the gloom of the underpass were at least thirty people, who grew agitated as soon as they saw her car steadily approaching. She attempted to make a U-turn, but realised that the road was too narrow. If she left the tarmac, there was a danger that her tyres would slip in the loose sand.

  Suddenly the crowd surged forward. There was a dull thud behind her. Someone had thrown a chunk of sunbaked earth at the car. It bounced and broke on the trunk, to be followed by a second and a third, this last one skittering across the roof.

  Panicking, she ground the gears and frog-hopped the Renault, trying to reverse it. A hubbub of complaint rose around her. Forced onto the waste ground at the side of the road, she slammed the accelerator and fantailed gravel, pulling away as the crowd retreated back into the penumbral harbour of the tunnel.

  She found another exit and drove for a while, passing beneath a vast poster that read: Visit the largest shopping mall in the world. She was heading in the direction of the Dubai Mall.

  Later, standing in the icy blue light of the outsized aquarium, where sharks drifted behind magnifying crystal, shrinking observers to the size of children, she practiced breathing exercises and lowered her pulse. The mall’s bright anonymity removed any sense of time and place, calming her more effectively than any pharmaceutical prescription.

  She took tea beneath a dizzying man-made waterfall through which a dozen sculpted steel divers burst in inverse cruciform. Many of the stores she had left behind were replicated by the same English brands here. There was even a Patisserie Valerie. It was odd to think that a tiny cake shop that had first opened in a bohemian part of Soho could now be found in an Arabic country, its louche clientele replaced with severe Muslim wives.

  Outside, she smoked a cigarette and stared up at the dazzling gilded towers of the Burj Khalifa, a series of transcendent repetitions that formed a hallucinatory futuristic Babel. There was a soaring grandiloquence to those slender spires that mitigated suspicions of vulgarity and doubts about economic sense, as if it was man’s purpose to grasp at the heavens whatever the human cost. The crowds of shoppers seated at its base appeared to share a communality that was missing at Dream Ranches, or perhaps it was just the illusory effect of so many people gathered together in one place. No alcohol, no litter, no spontaneity; it was almost appealing, like being gently medicated.

  Every few minutes the crowds thickened, gathering to watch the dancing fountain show, a matrix of circuitry that switched thousands of water jets back and forth in a preprogramed display of technical wizardry, and always earned a burst of noisy appreciation. Its audience might have been applauding a television set, she thought, or a computer.

  It comforted her to stroll through the anonymous, orderly throng. She feared she might soon come to dread the thought of returning to the anarchy of London. London was like the underpass, unpredictable and threatening. Here life was as predictable as the robotic fountains. It could deliver the thing she most wanted right now, the return of her daughter and husband. She decided not to report what she had seen. Chaos was best left in the shadows.

  Chapter Ten

  The Welcoming Party

  LEA HAD BEEN expecting to see plastic chairs and a barbecue appear in the Larvins’ back garden around lunchtime, but at 8:00am a team of Indian workers began to erect a large red and white marquee, which they filled with bunting-trimmed trestle tables and a silver-painted bandstand.

  ‘Have you seen this?’ she called from the bedroom.

  Roy poked his head around the door, goateed in shaving cream. ‘They always put marquees up for parties,’ he explained. ‘It’s too hot otherwise.’

  ‘But it looks like they’re going to have live music and everything. I hope it’s not just for us.’

  ‘Why not? The company’s paying for it.’

  ‘It’s just so extravagant. I don’t like all this fuss.’

  ‘Enjoy it while you can, honey, we’re all only here for two years.’

  ‘Not according to Colette,’ said Lea, following him back to the bathroom. ‘Her husband is contracted indefinitely.’

  ‘Did I tell you I met Ben?’ Roy wiped foam from his chin. ‘I’ve never seen a more worried-looking man in my life. He has satchels under his eyes.’

  ‘That’s what Colette says. She thinks the project will overrun and they’ll have to stay on.’

  ‘That won’t happen. The board of directors has everything in hand.’

  ‘So why is Ben so stressed?’’

  ‘He’s a director now too, he has more responsibility. They’re—’

  ‘Darling, are you really going to wear those?’ Lea stifled a laugh. Roy had donned a pair of shorts with purple stripes that made his legs look like candles.

  ‘I picked these up at the mall on the way home last night. I thought they were kind of hip.’

  ‘Hang on.’ She went to Cara’s room and knocked. ‘Cara, would you come out here for a minute?’

  Cara emerged looking dishevelled and tired. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Your father needs to know what you think of his shorts.’

  Cara studied them for a moment. ‘Utterly gross.’

  ‘Thank you my sweet, you may return to cyberspace.’ Lea grinned back at Roy. ‘If you kept the receipt you could take them back.’

  ‘No, it’s small acts of defiance like this that keep me sane. What time are we going over?’

  ‘Colette said noon but I think that’s a little early.’

  ‘I guess we’ll hear when the other neighbours start to turn up. Then add twenty minutes before we leave. My old man gave me two pieces of life advice; he said Never arrive early for a party and Never turn right on a plane.’

  ‘It’s that where you get your ambition from? At least it means I still have time to write my speech.’

  ‘You’re not—’

  ‘No, honey, it was a joke. Remember those?’

  Roy was right. By 12:30pm the garden was crowded. ‘I can’t believe I’m actually nervous,’ Lea said, smoothing out her floral shirt in the mirror. She caught Roy looking at her. ‘What? It’s just that you work with all their husbands. I want to make a goo
d impression. Oh God, look at them, all so perfect. I’m the only one in jeans. Aren’t there any working women at the resort at all?’

  ‘Apart from Irina I haven’t seen any others.’

  ‘Who’s Irina?’

  ‘She handles the architects’ correspondence and appointments, but she’s based off-site. Apparently there are some women in accounts and on the PR side. Come on, I’ll introduce you to the guys I’ve met so far.’

  As they reached the front door of the Larvins’ house they spotted a banner across the garden entrance that read: Welcome Brook Family!

  ‘Oh my God. Do you think she gets these specially made every time someone moves into the neighbourhood?’ Lea asked from the side of her mouth.

  Roy leaned in. ‘Give ’em a smile, honey. And remember, you’re the prettiest woman here.’

  Moments later they were surrounded and everyone was talking at once. The Larvins’ home had the same layout as Lea’s, but their furniture was more extravagant. Norah targeted Cara and pulled her aside. Her sister Abbi was a doll-like eleven year-old, curled and painted in an uncomfortably adult style, dressed in bows and flounces as if she was auditioning for a children’s beauty pageant.

  Colette hauled Lea through the families to the marquee, piling on introductions. Roy had been stolen away by Ben, probably so that they could discuss drainage.

  A band consisting of four middle-aged European men in red-striped blazers and straw hats struck up, playing soft jazz. The quartet’s lead singer was the compound’s medic, Dr Vance, twinkly, avuncular, perfectly suited to the bandstand. From the corner of her eye, Lea saw James Davenport with a heavy red-haired woman, presumably his wife. Children scampered around the rear of the garden, chasing a young fox terrier. Maids served sickly purple punch from a silver tureen the size of a paddling pool.