The Sand Men (12 page)

‘That’s not what I’ve been hearing.’ Roy helped himself to salad. ‘He’s been badmouthing the directors. They’re going to take him out of the compound as soon as his contract expires.’

‘Can they do that?’

‘Sure. They own his house.’

‘That’s a shame. He’s a nice old stick.’

‘He’s a disruptive influence.’ Roy shook his head. ‘It’s probably better if you stayed away from him. You don’t want to be tainted by association.’

Lea could hardly believe her ears. She chewed slowly, thinking it over, then turned to her daughter. ‘Cara, do you think Milo’s crazy?’

‘All old people are crazy,’ said Cara unhelpfully.

‘What will he do?’

‘Go home, I guess. Hey Cara, I was thinking. With me working such long hours, maybe you’d like to come over some evenings and visit the site. There’s an empty beach house just past the East tower, at the end of the beach promenade. It belongs to the resort but they haven’t worked out what to do with it yet. It’s got power and it has a cellar, so you can put your equipment down there. It’d be perfect for your computer club.’

‘I don’t know,’ said Cara, ‘How fast is the broadband?’

‘It’s the same as the resort, really fast.’

‘We have Wi-Fi here, Cara,’ said Lea. ‘You know that.’

‘But she’d have room for her friends,’ said Roy. ‘They’re working on a website.’

‘You didn’t tell me that.’

‘Yes, I did,’ said Cara petulantly. ‘You just didn’t listen.’

‘Well, go on.’ She held out her hand. ‘Expound.’

‘You wouldn’t be interested.’

‘Don’t be silly, of course I would.’

‘It’s kind of about this place. It’s going to be called
Bubble Life
. You know, like the boy in the bubble? It was this old movie about a kid who couldn’t go outside without catching germs.’

‘Is that how you see Dream Ranches?’ She caught herself. ‘I still have trouble calling it that. It sounds like an American TV show.’

‘Of course that’s how I see it. We’re cut off from the real world. The internet is censored, for Christ’s sake.’

‘You can use Facebook and Twitter. If stuff is being censored, it’s because you shouldn’t be looking at it,’ said Roy.

‘Great new world order, Dad, I hope you’re really proud to be a part of it.’

‘So what’s it going to feature, this site?’ asked Lea hastily.

‘All kinds of online community stuff you can add to and comment on. But for people of my age.’

‘Don’t worry, I won’t embarrass you by leaving comments,’ said Lea. She thought about her conversation with Milo. ‘I don’t know about spending evenings out at the resort. How would you get about?’

‘She’ll be nearby, and I can give her a lift back when I’m ready to leave,’ said Roy.

‘A beach house.’ Cara glazed a little, clearly enticed by the idea.

‘There you are,’ said Lea with a sigh, ‘If it doesn’t offend your delicate sensibilities to be in such a horribly commercial place, I guess you can go with your father.’

That settled the matter. The rest of the meal passed in the smallest of talk and the most awkward of silences.At ten, Lea went into the garden to smoke, and saw Rachel through the branches of hedge that separated them from the Larvins’ house. ‘I’m sorry,’ she called, ‘is my smoke going over there?’

‘Hey, I came out for a cigarette too,’ said Rachel. ‘Besides, you’re in the great outdoors. People make such a fuss these days. I can’t breathe in there. My daughter-in-law keeps the windows shut and the air-con permanently set at eighteen degrees. She’s in one of her rearranging moods tonight. She gets very tense some days and there’s no talking to her.’

‘I’m starting to write again,’ Lea said, keen to tell someone.

‘Really? Good for you. What are you writing about?’

‘I’m not really sure yet.’

‘I took a pottery course last year.’

‘How did that go?’

‘My first pot looked like a camel took a shit. My problem is I don’t take direction well. I do my yoga most mornings, and I’m learning how to make sushi. I got caught using salmon I’d dropped on the floor. You should come with me. We could get thrown out together.’

Lea laughed. ‘I’m not sure I’m cut out for group activities.’

‘I know what you mean. But we can’t hang out with the captains of industry. We’re not allowed in
that
club. Besides, the private conversations of company men would totally horrify you. So we get stuck with the ladies who lunch. Mrs Busabi tried to enrol us all in belly-dancing classes. I warned her it was a little late in the day to start shaking my junk in public, but I went a couple of times just to gross out my grandchildren.’

‘How are they doing?’

‘They were so cute when they were small, but now Abbi’s turning into her mother and Norah has become some kind of alien creature. Nothing she says or does makes any sense to me whatsoever.’

‘That used to worry me about Cara.’

A coil of smoke drifted around the branches. ‘God, no, that’s how it’s supposed to be. I was beginning to worry that they’d never do anything to upset me. I was in my thirties when punk broke out, and I was so shocked—but you know, nothing has really surprised me since? I feel sorry for kids. How can they rebel if they only know conformity? Colette thinks it’s a good thing, of course. She loves it here.’ Rachel’s cigarette flared orange in the hazy evening air. ‘She couldn’t even bear Morocco, everybody carrying mattresses and window-frames around on bicycles, all baksheesh and hashish, chaos and dirt.’ Another cloud of blue smoke wafted through the leaves. ‘You know the funny thing? There’s a lot to like about the Arabic culture. The propriety, the formality, the sense of grace. Dream World isn’t Arabic, of course—it’s not anything.’

‘Rachel, do you think Milo is crazy?’

‘No, of course not, why?’

‘He has locks on the insides of his doors. And he thinks—’ She waved the thought aside. ‘No, skip it.’
Saying it aloud might really make him sound crazy
, she thought.

‘Listen, I’d better get back inside before my daughter-in-law decides to start cleaning out the refrigerator again. She has these fits where she throws away everything that’s a minute past its sell-by date.’ Rachel blasted a final jet of smoke into the hedge. ‘Has Mrs Busabi warned you about the need to refrigerate your perishables?’

‘Yes, I had that lecture.’

‘Hey, we should meet out here regularly. We can be the Anglo-American alliance, and bitch about everyone behind their backs.’

‘It’s a deal,’ Lea agreed. ‘Same place tomorrow night.’

‘I’ll be here. Keep the flame.’

Lea tried to fan away the last of her smoke but it hung in the still air like a guilty secret. She slipped back inside, wondering why she felt the need for an ally.

Chapter Fourteen

The Car

C
ARA MOVED HER
laptop to the beach house and began travelling home with Roy, so that Lea found there were times when she saw no-one except Rachel through the hedge.

Turning out her bedroom light, she lay thinking about the strange division that had appeared in the family. Cara had never sided with her father before. They were all retreating into their own lives. It wasn’t what she had hoped for at all.

She must have dozed, because the next time she looked at the alarm clock the glowing green letters read 12:47am, and blue lights were sliding across the ceiling. Roy was asleep, so she tiptoed to the window and looked out.

A police car and an ambulance had stopped in the middle of the empty road. Two young Indian medics were carrying a stretcher covered in a yellow blanket. The absence of sound was odd. In London, such an event would have been accompanied by sirens and the crackle of two-way radios. Presently, the police car silently followed the ambulance and the street was still once more. Frowning, Lea went back to bed.

Mrs Busabi rang the doorbell just as Roy was leaving for work. Bizarrely, she was covered in flour again. ‘I remembered that I promised to bring you some cupcakes,’ she said, but Lea could remember no such promise.

‘Thank you, that’s kind,’ she said, accepting a box of lurid, deformed sponges. ‘Would you like to come in?’

‘I won’t stop, if you don’t mind.’ She hovered on the doorstep, bursting with contained information. ‘I suppose you heard about last night.’

‘No,’ Lea admitted. ‘But I saw an ambulance.’

‘Poor Milo,’ said Mrs Busabi, tutting. ‘We’ve never had something like this happen before.’

‘What do you mean? What happened?’

‘Why, he was knocked down by a car! They think he was putting out his garbage and walked into the road. You know they turn the streetlights off at night as part of the ecological thing? Well, it was after twelve, I know that.’

Lea had seen the overhead lamps switch to low intensity solar-powered kerb lights at midnight. ‘Yes,’ she said impatiently, ‘I didn’t see a car outside.’

‘That’s just it, they didn’t stop.’

‘You mean it was a hit and run?’

‘Can you imagine? Knocking over an old man and just driving off like that? However did they get into the compound?’

‘How do you know it wasn’t someone who was already inside?’ asked Lea.

‘Well, it couldn’t have been, could it? I mean, it stands to reason. It must have been someone from outside. Nobody here would leave a defenceless old man lying in the road.’

Maybe they were drunk
, she thought. ‘How is he? Where have they taken him?’

‘I think he went to one of the small private hospitals like the Jebel Ali. No, wait, it was the Omar. I heard he was unconscious.’

‘We should go and see him.’

Mrs Busabi shook her head violently. ‘Oh no, I wouldn’t want to interfere,’ she said, backing off the porch. She was happy to divulge information but felt contaminated by involvement. ‘I’m sure he’ll have family visiting.’

‘But that’s just it, he doesn’t have any family here,’ said Lea.

‘I only stopped by to give you those, I have to be going,’ said Mrs Busabi, seizing the opportunity to flee.

Lea dumped the cakes, grabbed her jacket and her car keys.

T
HE
O
MAR TURNED
out to be a low, almost invisible building of antiseptic-white concrete, set back from the glass cathedrals of the commerce district. Its elegant, spacious halls were designed to calm and reassure. Nursing was a profession frowned upon by hard-line Muslim families because it required long hours and overnight stays, which contradicted a woman’s devotion to home and husband. Lea found a large number of uniformed Indian women passing in distant corridors, and seemingly few patients. The majority of locals did not need to take jobs in the public sector. They remained only partially visible in public life, following a tradition that had marked them as patient, supine, prone to inanition. The Indian workforce was an expedience that posed little threat to them.

She searched for someone to help her. The wide arctic corridors were sparsely populated and disconcertingly silent except for the squeaking of rubber-soled shoes. It was the opposite of an NHS unit; there were no mismatched posters affixed to the walls with globs of Blu-Tack, just dual-language signs hanging discreetly from the ceilings. She felt as if she had wandered into an Edward Hopper painting.

The duty nurse sat motionless behind a long white reception counter, her hands folded together, almost as if she had been waiting for her. The sense of placidity was supernatural. Lea explained who she was looking for, and how Milo had come to be admitted.

The nurse checked her screen with deliberate, careful movements, then looked back up at Lea. ‘Are you a relative?’

‘No, a neighbour.’

‘I cannot give out any further information.’

‘I just need to know if he’s okay.’

The nurse discreetly tapped at her phone and spoke very softly into the receiver. She looked back up, her face unreadable. ‘Someone will be with you in a minute.’

Lea sat and waited. Five minutes later, an absurdly young Asian doctor made his way over and introduced himself.

‘I understand you’re a friend of Mr Melnik,’ he said.

‘That’s right. I’m his neighbour. How is he?’

‘You’re aware that he was hit by a car?’

‘I didn’t see what happened, but I saw the ambulance driving away last night.’

‘I’m afraid Mr Melnik suffered internal injuries and died this morning at’—he checked his mobile—‘7:09am. I’m sorry.’

‘He
died
?’

‘His injuries were severe. He underwent a series of cerebrovascular incidents and was not strong enough to take them. He could not be revived.’

‘Do you know if the police arrested the driver of the vehicle?’

‘I’m afraid I have no information on that. You would have to check with the police. They’ll inform the family directly when the need arises.’

‘He had no family living here. Surely you could you give me a contact number?’

‘Well, somebody will need to take care of the body.’ The doctor took a slip of paper from the counter and wrote on it. ‘If you can think of any relations who should be notified, they can discuss the matter with me. Insurance, and so forth.’

Lea stepped back into the heat of the hospital car park in a daze. She had spent no more than a few hours with the old man, but felt a connection with him that had been prematurely severed. His death made no sense to her. Why would he have chosen to put out his garbage after midnight? Why hadn’t the vehicle stopped? Where had it gone? These were questions that would not have concerned her in London, but here, where life unfolded at a calibrated pace, they took on greater significance.

Like Tom Chalmers
, she thought.

Milo had been afraid of something. He had fitted locks on the inside of his doors. He had kept an email intended for someone else and had asked her to be his spy. He had suspected something and had a big mouth, and that made him a risk. On the drive home she fought down the temptation to start looking for a conspiracy.

Back at the house, seated before her laptop, she tried to write but nothing materialised. Finally she called the number of the police officer the doctor had jotted down for her. After ten rings a voicemail message in Arabic cut in. She severed the call without leaving her name.