The Sand Men (17 page)

‘I didn’t hear about this,’ Lea said, surprised.

‘Well, there’s nothing much to say. The police looked, but decided she’d run away. I ask you, a girl of that age! Of course, I know things like that happen all the time in London, but here—well, it’s usually so
safe
.’

Lea knew Mrs Busabi was right. She had seen BBC news items about two missing children just this week.

‘Tom never accepted that she’d run away. The police found a single shoe at the resort, but Tom and his wife couldn’t decide whether it belonged to their daughter. Then he had that ridiculous accident. I mean, what did he think he was doing outside after dark trying to cut out plant roots? We got together a petition.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘There had been reports of someone hanging around the houses. It didn’t seem right to have the migrant workers living so close to the compound.’

‘You think they might have had something to do with Tom’s death?’

‘I suppose we thought that at the very least they might have seen something. We tried to get the underpass sealed off, but the construction people won’t block it up until the resort is finished, because they’ll lose their slip road. It’s a short cut to the far side of the Persiana, you see. They can make their round-trips more easily. But what’s the point of having guards and ID cards and security checks if these people can come and go as they please?’

‘Are you sure they’re the only people who hang around the compound?’

Mrs Busabi grew defensive. ‘Didn’t you tell the police you saw them planting a
bomb
?’

‘No, I said I saw two people by the bin, that’s all. It was dark.’

‘But they
were
foreigners.’

‘I only saw them for a second. I can’t be a hundred per cent sure.’

Mrs Busabi’s sensitivity made her uncomfortable. How did she know what Lea had told the police? ‘I think I have all the answers I need for the moment,’ she said diplomatically, rising to leave. ‘By the way, the Larvins said you have some wonderful recipes. You must let me have them some time.’

‘I’ll put some in your postbox,’ said Mrs Busabi, happy to be back on solid ground. ‘Perhaps you’d like to come to our cooking circle one afternoon. We’re icing party sponges at the moment.’

‘Yes, I’d like that,’ Lea lied, standing. ‘It was so kind of you to spare me some time.’

Afterwards she was ashamed of her cowardly retreat. Perhaps it was better to let the Mrs Busabis of the world enjoy the comfortable lives they had created.

H
ER OTHER SOCIAL
call of the afternoon was to the Larvins. Only Rachel was home. She was wearing an orange tie-dyed sarong and looked more hippyish than ever. ‘Hey, I was beginning to think you weren’t talking to me,’ she said, throwing open the door. ‘I keep sneaking out back for a cigarette and never manage to catch you. I feel like a spy trying to find my contact. Come in. Don’t worry—I’m not going to force any sugar on you.’

‘Thanks,’ said Lea, genuinely grateful. ‘Mrs Busabi just made me eat some of her “famous seed cake”.’

Rachel laughed. ‘Did you ever eat anything that tasted more like chewing a sandbag? I’m making my famous vodka stingers and you’re having one. What’s up?’

‘Oh, I’m starting to think this is a stupid idea.’

‘Let me be the judge of that. According to Colette, criticism is my greatest skill. She’s pissed at me again because I had an argument with Norah. That girl can do no wrong in her eyes. So, shoot.’

‘It’s just that, well, I’m not getting anywhere with the journalism, so I thought I could make notes for a more serious piece. Or several pieces. Maybe I could turn them into a book.’

‘The psychopathology of the resort widow,’ said Rachel, ‘it should be a best seller. But not at Dream Ranches, home of the unexamined life. You should get enough material here to last you a lifetime.’

‘It’s weird. You say that, but outwardly there’s really not much to complain about. Everyone seems pretty happy. I feel like I’m the interloper.’

‘That depends.’ Rachel shot her a knowing look. ‘I always think you see what you’re searching for. You could paint an attractive portrait of the middle classes in retreat, or lift up a paving slab and study the dark things crawling around underneath.’

‘Are there a lot of worms?’

‘Are you kidding? Where do you want me to start? Look, this is a formerly Islamic city built on Muhammad’s land. The
muezzin
call is heard five times a day drawing believers to prayer, but you have to listen pretty goddamn hard to hear it out here.’

‘I’ve noticed you can only hear the mosque speakers when the wind is right,’ Lea said.

‘Most people just have it on their phones,’ said Rachel. ‘It’s not about being mindful of Western sensibilities. They chose to build the resort out here because it keeps the infidels away from the mosques, not the other way around.’

‘Come on, Rachel, this place is being sold on its cosmopolitanism.’

‘And you buy that? I’m going to smoke in the house, don’t faint. I expect you to join me.’ Rachel lit up a Virginia Slim and offered the packet. ‘Don’t worry, I keep air freshener in my room. I’ll douse the place and then open all the windows before the kids get back.’ She sprayed smoke in the air. ‘God, that feels good. Listen, there’s not a faith in the world that doesn’t operate on a double standard. If you believe in something, you have to find a way around the parts that make your life hard. Did you know all UAE nationals are entitled to a number of residence visas? They use them to hire imported servants, gardeners and drivers. But they often have permits left over, so they sell the remainder to brokers, because they can’t be seen to be selling their own permits. And who do the middlemen sell them to? Take a guess.’

‘I don’t know, but I have a feeling I’m not going to like this.’

‘They sell them to single young women who want to come and find full-time employment in the city. There are something like a quarter of a million imported hookers living along this coast in the summer months.’

‘Come on, Rachel, where are you getting this from?’

‘Dear old Milo knew all about it, because a friend of his had to process the permits. And right now is the busiest time.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s July. We’re hitting the upper forties. Haven’t you noticed how empty the cafés have gotten? That’s because if you’re a wealthy businessman, you send your wife and family away to escape the heat.’

‘Where do they go?’

‘To the Riviera, the Amalfi coast, the Greek islands, America. As soon as the coast is clear the men go absolutely apeshit. Middle-aged guys turn into hormonal teenagers. They head for the bars on the King’s Highway on the other side of the airport, and hire Nepalese and Chinese whores by the dozen. There are certain hotels that arrange orgies, or they’ll deliver women to your room.’

‘I’m not sure this is the kind of thing I’m intending to write about,’ said Lea uncertainly.

‘Think of it as background material.’ She slammed the fridge door and sluiced fresh vodka over ice. ‘You need white crème de menthe for this. I’d be making them at 10:00am if I didn’t watch myself.’

‘Don’t the police do anything about it?’

‘No, because they all get a cut. Theoretically paid sex is illegal, but the cops only clamp down when somebody goes too far. Once in a while a bar or a hotel will overstep the mark. There was a famous whorehouse at the edge of the desert that got shut down because it offered a shopping list of services: oral, anal, threesomes and so on in different rooms. The cops made a big show of closing it, but they let the owners off with a warning.’

‘What happened to the girls who worked there?’

‘I guess they moved somewhere else. Isn’t that what usually happens?’

‘You’re talking about human trafficking.’

‘Oh, don’t look so shocked. Where do you think your fancy London hotels get their staff from? But you’re lucky in England. Your corruption scandals are kind of pathetic. A member of Parliament charges the building of a duck-house to his expenses? Hell, Toronto had a crack-smoking mayor. Isn’t it funny how the most God-fearing people always have the most corrupt government officials?’

Lea could see the embers of old fires burning in Rachel. ‘What did you do back in Ohio?’ she asked.

‘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.’

L
EA 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.