The Sand Men (36 page)

‘I went inside. There’s a stairway leading to an apartment.’

‘It’s an air vent, Mrs Brook.’ He turned away from her. Solar lights sent a cold wash over the pathways between the hotels. The rest of the site was in darkness.

Lea looked around. ‘There’s nobody left here now, but that’s Hardy’s jeep over there so he must be around somewhere. Wait.’

Rashad seemed to make up his mind and walked swiftly back to the truck.

‘What’s that around your neck, Rashad?’ She caught up with him and flicked open his collar, exposing a silver chain hung with a small pendant of Ganesh. Rashad said nothing, but stared back at her.

‘Where did you get it?’ she asked. ‘It belongs to somebody I know.’

‘Have you been to the creek market, Mrs Brook? There are millions of these things.’

‘Not like that one. I should know, Rachel’s father made it for her. He was a silversmith.’ Before he could react she reached forward and flipped the heavy pendant. ‘His initials are on the back.’

‘Okay, let me tell you what happened,’ said Rashad, suddenly uncomfortable. ‘Someone left it in my locker. When people go home at short notice they leave stuff behind. The men often leave items they’ve found.’

‘When was this?’

‘Two days ago.’ He unclipped the chain and handed it back. ‘Take it, please, I didn’t want it in the first place.’

Rashad didn’t seem like the kind of man who would lie, but if someone had placed the chain in his locker it meant they were deliberately stirring up trouble. Worse than that, they could be trying to implicate him in Rachel’s death.

There was an odd look on his face now, something between guilt and a loss of nerve. ‘I wish you hadn’t done this,’ he said quietly.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Okay, look. Here’s what we’re going to do. I want you to sit inside the vehicle for a few minutes and wait for me. It’s going to be safer this way.’

‘Safer? I don’t understand. Safer than what?’

‘Please. You must not argue.’ He stood close to her and held up a hand. ‘I’ll only be a few minutes, I promise.’

Lea watched as Rashad padded off across the car park and slipped into the ground floor of the Persiana, leaving her alone. She looked across at the building. Everything was still and dead. While she waited, she tried to recall the exact order of events that had brought her here. She looked for anything that might prove she was wrong.

She wished she had a cigarette. She glanced back across the car park and saw the glass doors to the Persiana atrium slowly swinging open.

Rashad was walking purposefully toward her with Leo Hardy.

Hardy’s face was impassive. The South African moved forward, grabbing her forearm and hauling her out of the vehicle. ‘I need you to come with me now, Mrs Brook,’ he told her.

‘Keep your hands off me,’ Lea warned. ‘Rashad, why did you bring him here?’ Rashad looked away from her, embarrassed.

Hardy seized her wrist and began to gently pull. ‘Let me get you to—’

‘Leo, leave her alone,’ said Rashad.

‘The more people who find out, the greater the risk,’ said Hardy with a shrug of his wide shoulders, but he finally released her arm.

Rashad led Lea to one side. ‘We’ve had intelligence that there’s going to be some kind of attack on the resort,’ he confided. ‘They used a recognised call sign that’s only known to the directors.’

‘It’s not a real threat,’ she said. ‘They deliberately gave the call sign to the children.’
You can say anything,
she thought,
it won’t make any difference.

‘Hey, we’ve got to go,’ called Hardy.

‘There’s nothing you can do right now, Mrs Brook. You’ll be better off at home,’ said Rashad.

‘The power’s been cut, remember?’ she told him, stalling. ‘It’s not safe for me there.’

‘Then maybe you should stay in one of the hotels on the promenade until tomorrow morning. You can easily walk there from here.’

‘Rashad, come on, man,’ called Hardy again.

‘Where are you going?’ she asked.

‘To deal with the problem. I’ll catch up with you later. Don’t worry.’ He gave an apologetic shrug and ran to the truck.

The car park was overlooked by closed circuit cameras. They couldn’t do anything underneath the lights. They were just following orders.

She watched Rashad drive out of the parking lot, then set off in the direction of the main road.

Chapter Forty-Five

The Hunt

A
S
L
EA HEADED
toward the taxi rank, she decided not to go to a hotel. She had no spare clothes, nothing but the money in her purse, and there didn’t seem to be any stores open. Rashad had warned her about the difficulty of getting cabs tonight, but an empty cab sporting a local company logo was parked at the kerb beside a takeout shop. Its driver was leaning on the bonnet eating pungent
gulab jamun
from a plastic cup. She tapped his arm and climbed inside.

As the hotels and cafés ran out, the concrete parquet of the road pixelated into loose uneven rectangles. The taxi drove on until the promenade became desolate and half-buried. She paid off the cab and ran with her sandals in her hand, over the still-warm dunes.

Once she reached the sidewalk she looked back, but could no longer see the shoreline. Over at Dream World, police vans and security vehicles were crowded near the guard’s post. All of them had their lights off. There was no sound, and she could see no personnel moving about.
Nothing to see here
, the silent lights said,
just men going about their business.

At this end of the promenade the only cabs to be found were illegal. Climbing into the nearest one, its dashboard festooned with gold garlands, she sat back and listened to the driver’s English news channel. Most of the items were about the feasts and parties that were being planned across the capital to celebrate the opening.

‘Sharon Stone is there,’ said the young Indian driver. ‘She is old woman. Why no sexy Bollywood girls? Where you wan’ go?’

She left the taxi near the road that ran parallel to the compound’s outer perimeter, paid the driver and ran across to the cleared access tunnel.

Once she reached the interior, she saw that most of the street lamps were still off. It took her another twenty minutes to walk home. She was glad she had worn trainers. As she crossed the deserted, darkened pavements she tried to formulate a plan. She wouldn’t be able to do anything if she was arrested.

The safest thing would be to drive out the same way in the Renault and try to book two flights online as soon as she could get a signal. She didn’t know how she would ever track Cara down in time, but she had to try.

She ran up the drive, dug out her keys and let herself into the house. The alarm system was down. The rooms smelled of disinfectant and polish, nothing human, as if it was being returned to a pristine state by Lastri, ready for the next occupants.

Poking around in the dark proved challenging, but she finally found a decent torch under the sink. She decided now to take only the bare minimum. She would buy everything she needed at the other end.

She had wanted to shake Cara and shout,
How could you have been so stupid, couldn’t you see what would happen?
But how could she have, when she had been just as blind? The important thing now was to find her and make it out alive. Survival was the key.

She was zipping up her flight bag when something caught her eye at the window.

A police car was creeping forward silently from the next street, its roof-light sliding crimson panes across the lawns. Grabbing the keys to the Renault, she headed downstairs. She ran to the car via the kitchen door and threw her bag onto the passenger seat just as the police car turned into the street.

The car’s interior was filled with red light. She prayed that the patrol driver hadn’t seen her, but a moment later the whoop of a siren cut through the night air. She put her foot down, swinging the Renault hard into the next street. It was best to head away from the compound’s main entrance. They would be waiting for her there. Rashad had shown her another way out. Nobody would know it was open.

She pulled the Renault up onto a front lawn, tearing over the grass, stopping under the low boughs of an acacia tree. Turning off the engine, she kept her head down until the police car had passed the turnoff. Across the gardens, she saw the glow of another red light. They would have her license plate; they would not expect her to continue on foot.

Grabbing her bag she slid from the car, running down the side of the nearest darkened house. The gardens backed onto the meandering path that led around the lake. The fountains were turned off and silent.

She realised she did not know the way to the embankment tunnel from here. She and Rashad had found it from the main road. It had to be at a point where lights shone from the other side of the highway, but if she ran in the wrong direction she might never locate it.

Two torches switched back and forth between the houses. Vaulting the low steel fence and falling to the ground, she lay in the soft dry earth, partially hidden by the low leaves of the bushes. One of the torches came closer, wavered in the overhead branches.

She waited a few minutes to be sure it had passed by, then set off around the lake.

She had reached the far side when the glistening helicopter came over, its tail swinging round, its searchlight casting a perfect oval of light on the smooth glass of the water. Hardy must have arranged to have the search stepped up. She could feel the chunking vibration of the overhead blades in her bones. The top branches of the plants and bushes were fluttering like candle flames.

She would have to cross the lake’s bridge. The only other way was to go all the way around, and the path would take her along the exposed edge of the road. The chopper’s searchlight swept the undergrowth. She broke cover, leaving the circle of brush that surrounded the water, and ran for the bridge.

She had reached the mid-point when the searchlight caught her. Some kind of order was being barked from above but it was in Arabic, and she could barely hear above the throb of the chopper blades.

The police would be armed, and trained to kill.

Chapter Forty-Six

The Road

L
EA WAS ONLY
a few metres from the far side of the lake bridge. If she ran into the bushes the powerful searchlight would spot her through the cover. She would be seen as easily as if she was moving through open territory. But there was no way back.

At the edge of the lake was a covered walkway that offered daytime shelter from the sun. It had a curved steel roof, and allowed the maintenance staff to pass between buildings. She reached it knowing that even though the chopper could probably see her, its marksmen would not be able to shoot through the canopy.

She ran as hard as she could, covering the five hundred metre span to the park edge.

When she looked ahead, she swore. She had run the wrong way. Straight ahead lay the entrance to Dream Ranches. The two young guards had reappeared at their post. They seemed bemused by the helicopter. Craning up and shielding their eyes against the spotlight, they were trying to see what was happening. Lea realised that nobody had yet informed them of the search. It meant that she might be able to brazen it out and walk right through.

She tried to control her breathing and calm herself. She still had her ID card, but it would look odd being on foot. Nobody walked anywhere here.

The guards looked even more surprised to see her step from the undergrowth onto the road in front of them.

‘My car broke down,’ she called cheerfully, hefting her bag onto her shoulder. ‘I couldn’t find a torch, and can’t see to fix it—the power’s out.’ Getting no reaction, she pointed to the street lights. Still nothing. The guards looked at one another.

She pulled out her ID card and handed it to the one who had always seemed friendlier towards her. The chopper was banking and coming nearer. Lea waited while her card was slowly passed between them. The searchlight swung over the trees behind the guard booth.

‘Come on,’ she said under her breath. ‘Come on.’

‘Where are you going?’ asked the guard.

‘To the other side of the highway. To get a taxi.’ The searchlight was creeping nearer.

‘There are no taxis from there. You can’t get across the road.’ He was right. The city had not been built for pedestrians. There was no walkway.

‘I’m hot,’ she said. ‘Can I wait in your box? Do you have air-con?’ She darted inside just as the helicopter beam reached them.

‘You can’t go in there—security,’ said the other guard, but now the pair of them were arguing with each other and looking up into the chopper’s light, unable to hear what was being announced from above. The beam crossed back and forth, checking the entrance, and found nothing.

Seconds after it passed overhead, Lea stepped from the box and quickly walked away. The guards were still arguing. She had left her ID card behind, but figured she would no longer need it.

When she glanced back, she saw one of them opening his cell phone. They were going to run a check on her. She needed to get off the road.

It means he’s got a signal from another phone mast,
she realised. Lea checked her phone and watched as it picked up reception. She kept a taxi service on speed-dial, and tried it now.

The chopper was tilting back. She didn’t dare look up at it, but kept moving forward. Cars and trucks roared past her on the eight lane highway. There was no possibility of getting across it, or of flagging anyone down. The taxi service answered.

She remembered that there was an Arabic grocery store somewhere up ahead, a cracked red and green plastic fascia tacked on a breezeblock building, one of the old local shops that had been left behind in the gold rush. What the hell was it called? ‘Hi, I need to be collected from the Palm Supermart,’ she said.

‘I don’t know where that is, miss.’