The Sand Men

by Christopher Fowler

  ‘Have you spoken to him at all this afternoon?’

  ‘Not since this morning. He has not called in. Do you want me to pass on a message?’

  ‘No, it’s okay.’ She rang off and called the nursery, but the line was busy. Had Cara and her friends forgotten that they’d offered their services and dashed over there, running late? She found it hard to imagine Cara rushing anywhere.

  There was still no response from Roy. Outside, a Mercedes passed her front door slowly, and she ran to look. The driver leaned over in his seat to check out the house. His face was in shadow, indistinct and unfamiliar. Before she could find her glasses, he had driven off.

  Evil was unfolding in the silvered dusk. The phantoms were flesh and blood after all. They had moved from a world of sand and silence to one of steel and silicon. The days of enforced lethargy were crawling to a close, to be replaced by a virulent, relentless malevolence.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  The Disappeared

  AS IF DARING herself to doubt its existence, she checked again on the Dream World plans that Roy kept in their shared desk. Long before the resort had been started, the map showed the old sites to be cleared. At their centre was a faint octagonal dotted line. The vault had always been there, once filled with elders deciding what was best for their people. She imagined the cabal becoming corrupted over time, old men taking children from the caravan trains that passed through the area. Terrible things, obscene things happening in the cool stone shadows.

  There was nothing she could do about it. What could anyone do? Milo, Rachel, Ben and all the others had failed to expose the truth.

  It seemed pointless staying inside the dead-aired house waiting for something to happen. Picking up her phone, Lea stared at the list of speed-dial names, all polite acquaintances with impassive faces, no real friends anymore.

  Then she remembered that Andre Pignot was once an archaeologist.

  ‘Lea, it is nice to hear from you. How are things?’ Pignot’s tortuous French accent was suddenly familiar and reassuring.

  ‘Andre, do you know anything about the site DWG chose for the resort?’

  His reply was guarded. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘There was a building belonging to a tribe called the Ka’al, an ancient monument. They never dug it out. They never destroyed it.’

  ‘Lea, now might not be the best time.’

  She caught herself, wondering how much was safe to say. ‘I thought you might know something more, that’s all.’

  His reply was measured and unemotional. ‘No, but then I’m not very up on things over there. I could call a couple of people for you.’

  She heard another voice in the background, asking a question. ‘Is there someone there?’

  ‘I’m with Nathifa and Sergei from Dream World magazine. Let me ask them—’

  Fresh doubt assailed her. ‘I picked a bad time. I’m sorry to have bothered you.’ She rang off before he could protest.

  She paced the floor, then looked out into the darkened street. It was better to see someone not directly connected with Dream World, a neighbour, one of the wives. Betty’s lights were all off except the one in her kitchen. Lea decided that she was probably still at the mall. She went outside and walked over to Colette Larvin’s house.

  ‘I was just about to come and see you,’ said Colette, opening the door and stepping onto the lawn in front of the house before Lea could say anything. Her neighbour’s distracted gaze flicked beyond Lea’s shoulder to the roadway, as if she was expecting someone to drive up at any moment.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Lea asked.

  ‘Have you seen Norah?’

  ‘No, and I can’t get hold of Cara. Her phone is dead. Not just turned off or out of range, I know how that sounds.’

  ‘Norah was supposed to be back over two hours ago. You don’t suppose something has happened, do you?’

  ‘Have you tried any of their friends?’

  Colette hugged her arms. ‘I called Dean, but there was no answer. And there’s a Swedish boy he hangs out with, Roslund. Same thing.’

  ‘Rashad says they were due to help out with some of the party preparations, but I can’t find anyone. I should go over there but I might miss them.’

  Colette managed to look cold in the evening heat. ‘I don’t know what to do. Sometimes I ask myself if I even know who Norah is. I only have the faintest idea of what drives her. Wherever we go, whatever we do, the one thing that never changes is her alien nature. I thought she’d help me with Ben but now she’s even further away. It’s almost as if she expected it to happen.’

  ‘Colette, the book Rachel said she’d borrowed from me, I told you I never lent it to her. There’s more to it than that.’

  Colette regarded her with puzzlement. ‘What do you mean?’

  She held up her hands, pleading to be heard. ‘Rachel discovered something at the resort. There was a site that she and Milo knew about. She wanted me to understand—’

  ‘Lea, you don’t fully make sense at the best of times,’ Colette warned. ‘We need to find the children. Where are they? The last time they all went off together it was because of the Iftar. I don’t want them to get into more trouble.’

  ‘Maybe they went to the mall,’ she said lamely, changing her mind about taking Colette into her confidence.

  ‘I guess so. Some of the stores have only just restocked after Ramadan, and you know how obsessed the girls get. They lose track of the time. Maybe there’s a connection issue with the phones. The servers are probably overloaded, all those folks arriving from around the world.’ Colette was already stepping back into the house, vanishing into the shadows as she convinced herself. ‘That’s probably it. I guess I’ll have to wait for her here.’

  She gently closed the door, sealing herself away. Lea was about to ring the bell again when she heard the sound of a car pulling up. Betty was negotiating the kerb in her Audi. Lea ran over.

  ‘Where’s Dean?’ she asked as Betty climbed out of the car. ‘Have you seen him?’

  Betty’s eyes widened with fright when she saw the look on Lea’s face. ‘Why, do you know where he is? We were supposed to meet at the marina and he never showed up.’

  ‘I can’t find Cara, and Colette hasn’t seen Norah,’ said Lea levelly. ‘I haven’t been able to raise any of their friends either.’

  ‘Then where are they?’ Betty looked as if she was about to cry.

  ‘We’ve been closing our eyes to it all,’ she said aloud, not meaning to, ‘right from the start.’

  Betty glared at her. ‘You know something, Lea? Everything was fine until you came here. There were never any problems. We all just got on with our lives. Then as soon as you arrived there was trouble.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘It all seemed to start around the time you arrived here.’

  ‘All what seemed to start?’

  ‘Everything—Milo got hit by a car, didn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, but there had been bombs before we got here, and Tom had already died,’ said Lea. ‘You can’t seriously think that we’re to blame—’

  ‘That girl of yours, setting up her computer club and getting everyone to hang out with her, digging up heaven knows what. If kids access illegal sites they can be arrested, do you realise that?’

  ‘Betty, they’re good kids, they wouldn’t—’

  ‘Everyone was happily minding their own business, and then all the trouble started, and there you were, going around poking your nose into everyone’s affairs, never mind our feelings, always siding with the shiftless workmen. If you want to know why there’s trouble try asking the migrants, not the decent families living here.’

  ‘You’re being unreasonable.’

  Betty took a timid step forward, as if trying to check on a dormant firework. ‘Am I? When did Milo get hit by a car? Just after you arrived. He was always mouthing off about the management to anyone who’d listen, and suddenly you were all ears. He found someone
who would take him seriously. I saw him at the party, drunk, and you hanging onto every word, buying it all. If you were so important in London, why didn’t you stay there?’

  Lea decided there was no point in trying to reason with her. ‘I’m sorry, Betty,’ she said, ‘I must find my child.’

  As she walked away, Betty continued to shout after her. ‘It was all right until you came here!’

  That’s how the Ka’al resurfaced and survived for so many centuries, she thought. The blame is always shifted. Nobody sees what the Sand Men do outside the closed circle. Oh, people suspect but they ignore what should be more obvious than anything else. Conspiracies are like oysters; it takes some grit at the centre for everything else to form around them.

  Her hands were shaking as she opened her phone’s address book. A rare wind was rising, mustering in the trees, lifting sand into the street. Marking down the house numbers, Lea walked to the next road to call on other families.

  She halted before the house of a couple she remembered from the golf club and rang the doorbell. Silence. Stepping onto the tightly clipped grass, she peered in through their darkened lounge window. A boxer dog slammed itself against the glass, spittle flying. It bounced about barking as she backed away.

  She headed for Lauren’s house, walking as fast as she could, eventually running down the middle of the deserted roadway.

  Lauren’s mother answered the door on the second ring. She touched her lacquered copper hair and pulled at her low-cut blouse as if going on a date.

  She was as mystified as Lea. She had not been able to reach her daughter for several hours. Lauren had left school at the normal time and was supposed to be coming straight home, but still hadn’t arrived. None of her friends had turned up. ‘Didn’t they say they were going to the nursery? The number seems out of action, but then it often is,’ said her mother, puzzled but not unduly worried. ‘Lauren is kind of a wild card but she at least sends a text if she’s going to be held up. You have to trust your kids to show some common sense, don’t you?’

  ‘I think this is something more serious,’ Lea began, but just then a white Toyota Prius pulled up and Lauren climbed out, waving goodbye to a girlfriend.

  ‘Where have you been?’ asked her mother, eyeing her short pink skirt with alarm.

  Lauren shrugged, pouted, resented being questioned. ‘I had coffee with some friends down at Sheikh Zayed Road, so what?’

  ‘Didn’t you hear your phone?’

  Lauren dug it out and checked the screen. ‘Battery’s out. What’s up?’

  ‘Have you seen my daughter?’ asked Lea.

  Before Lauren could reply Lea’s mobile suddenly rang, making her start. ‘Roy, where are you?’

  ‘I’m still in town, waiting for final approval on the plans. There’s like, a dozen missed calls from you. What’s wrong?’

  ‘Have you heard from Cara?’

  ‘No, isn’t she with you?’

  ‘She didn’t come home. And some of the other kids are missing. Several of them have just disappeared.’

  ‘Did you try the beach house?’ The shack had no dedicated phone line. ‘They’re bound to be there. I can’t get away but I could send someone over in a little while.’

  ‘No, I can drive over there.’

  ‘Listen, things are really crazy here.’ Roy was having to shout above the sound of a drill. ‘It’s a really tough night for us. Everything has to be just right. I can’t stay on the phone, they’re holding everything up for me. I’ll be finished soon, I’ll come home, okay? I’m sure Cara’s just lost track of the time. The traffic looks real bad from my window. Why don’t you go home and wait for me? She might be back at the house by now, anyway.’

  No, she thought, she’s not, she’s gone, along with the others. They’ve been taken by the Ka’al and no-one will believe me, just as nobody ever believed Milo or Rachel. We could have done something about it but we didn’t, and now it’s too late.

  She looked across at the roofs of the compound houses and suddenly longed to see the land reclaim its natural geography. To watch the clocks speed up, the water pipes split, the pools drain, the grass desiccate. Cracks would appear in the walls, tiles loosen, paint peel, sand silt up against the dulled and splitting front doors until the pressure caved them in, drowning them in the sparkling silicate of the returning desert.

  The compound would join the other lost and ruined towns that dotted the landscape of the Middle East, abandoned by families made newly rich from oil. Instead of acacias there would be thorn bushes, instead of overbred pedigree dogs, gazelles. Instead of concrete and air-conditioning, nothing, nothing at all but yellow sand and blue sky.

  But the Ka’al would still resurface because it belonged to the oldest of old worlds. It was here first, along with the sand and the stars.

  She headed home to get the car.

  Chapter Forty

  The Enemy

  IT FELT AS if there had always been something going on behind her back, beyond the mirrors and glass, obscured by the sun, always just out of reach. As she walked, she tried to recall the exact order of events that had brought her to this point.

  It had started with Milo being hit by a car. Why had the police never managed to trace the vehicle? They would have contacted Leo Hardy, they would have made him check every truck and saloon in the workers’ compound. Why had they never found it? Because Hardy reported to the Ka’al.

  And Rachel’s lonely death in the scalding desert heat. What had happened in the hour of her death? How could she have accidentally locked herself outside, knowing that she was at risk in the heat?

  The Busabis’ house, burned down because Harji smoked, but Mrs Busabi swore he had given up. Ben Larvin almost crushed to death beneath the concrete pipe, another absurd accident that should never have happened. There should have been enquires launched, questions answered. Instead there had been quiet confusion and silence. The Ka’al left no trace. They were the Sand Men; they scattered themselves to the winds, only to reappear when they were hungry once more.

  She recalled reading about the energy blackouts in America, how executives had turned off power to those in most desperate need. They had no shame, no conscience, no guilt, because this was how companies had always been run and would always survive.

  Milo hadn’t been the first tragedy. Tom had died and a worker had frozen to death on the beach. Everything was all right until you came here, Betty Graham had told her. But it couldn’t have been. It must have started earlier.

  As she was letting herself in she heard the sound of an approaching vehicle, and turned to find Leo Hardy’s green Land Rover in the street. He spotted her and pulled up before the house.

  ‘You always seem to be in my way, Mrs Brook,’ he said, taking an unnecessarily heroic leap out of the vehicle.

  ‘I was going to say the same thing, Mr Hardy.’

  ‘I’m checking the security arrangements,’ he warned. ‘You have to get back in the house and stay there until this thing has passed.’ He narrowed his eyes at the street. There was an absurd, outdated masculinity about him.

  ‘What thing?’

  ‘It’s a security alert. A big day tomorrow, ya?’

  ‘I need to find my daughter. Some of the children are missing.’

  ‘They haven’t been in touch?’

  ‘Their phones go to voicemail.’

  Hardy prowled around his car as if checking for enemies. ‘I just came from the North Side nursery. A few of the older kids are helping to paint the room for the parents’ celebration dinner. Who exactly is missing?’

  ‘My daughter, Norah, Dean, Roslund, some others, I can’t remember all their names. We haven’t seen or heard from any of them since before dark. They were supposed to be coming home but never got here.’

  He shrugged, barely listening. ‘They probably stayed late at school or went to the beach.’

  ‘I rang the school. Cara always turns her phone back on as she leaves.’

  ‘Okay, let me
make a call.’ He speed-dialled a number on his iPhone and cupped a hand over the microphone. ‘I’m checking with the nursery staff.’ Lea waited while he spoke, studying his pressed scoutmaster shorts and high beige socks.

  ‘You’re absolutely sure of that?’ Hardy put his hand over the phone. ‘They haven’t seen your daughter, but some of the others are there.’

  Her head throbbed with the effort of remaining calm. ‘That’s what I said, they’ve—’

  ‘Wait, let me finish.’ He listened—or pretended to listen—for a moment. ‘The supervising teacher only just came on duty. She thinks your daughter and her friends went to get burgers.’

  ‘Then why aren’t they answering their phones? The directors—’ She caught herself.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter—’

  He rang off. ‘You might as well tell me.’

  ‘My husband’s promotion—’

  ‘Roy’s a lucky man. The board trusts him with everything.’

  ‘I still can’t believe he rose so quickly.’

  ‘It was always on the cards, Mrs Brook. They like well-educated men.’

  ‘Was it on the cards even when he was back in London? Was he told he’d get a promotion then? Did you ever meet the board of directors?’

  ‘I deal with their people. We all deal with their people. Nobody has to meet them.’

  She studied his bare forearms and saw no evidence of burns. ‘Have you ever heard of the Sand Men—the Ka’al?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ Hardy shifted impatiently. ‘I have to go. I’m trying to get everyone back to the compound. I’ve already lost most of my best men this week. The new compound guards are a bunch of illiterate bastards who can’t fill in a simple form. I don’t know where everyone is.’

  ‘People think the workmen caused your security breach but they didn’t, did they?’

  ‘Maybe someone is planning to leave us with a grand gesture.’ Hardy stopped and looked at her in the ghostly blue light of the street lamps. ’There have been warning signs.’