The Sand Men (22 page)

‘Where there any footprints near the car?’

‘No, the wind wiped away any tracks.’

‘What did the police say? Have they had a chance to examine the vehicle yet?’

‘They pulled it apart yesterday and said there was nothing mechanically wrong. They found some grit between the door and the floor, and think it could have got into the lock and temporarily jammed it. They’ve already said that the coroner will return a verdict of accidental death. Rachel was in a swimsuit, she’d even left her sandals inside. She knew how sensitive her skin was. She usually took a strong sunblock with her, but there was nothing in her bag.’

‘She had to have left the car for some reason.’

‘The way I see it is she got out, shut the door, it jammed and so she walked around to the other side and threw rocks at the glass. The trapped grit loosened and the door lock popped back open, but by that time she was either too confused or too panicked to notice, and collapsed from heat-stroke.’

Lea shifted uncomfortably as she remembered the rocks that had been thrown at her by the workers in the underpass. ‘You’re right, maybe the air-con stopped working for a few minutes and the heat made her light-headed,’ she suggested. ‘I was coming home with the shopping the other day and honestly thought I was going to pass out.’

‘Not the air-con.’ Colette was resolute. ‘It never went wrong.’

‘Maybe something else happened, did you consider that? Maybe she saw something that encouraged her to leave the vehicle. You don’t think she was meeting someone, do you? Could someone else have been there?’

‘No, of course not. The police don’t think so, either. There were no tyre-marks, but the wind clears everything. Entire dunes have a habit of shifting and disappearing out there. Sometimes whole sections of that route simply vanish. Hardly anyone uses it, precisely for that reason.’

Things get covered up
, thought Lea.
It’s as if the desert is intent on sealing away the truth.

‘She was a ridiculous, impossible woman,’ said Colette vehemently. ‘She never wanted me to marry her precious son. I wasn’t ‘creative’ enough for him. If she’d just stayed in town where I could have kept an eye on her—’

‘I don’t think it’s good for you to keep thinking about what might have happened,’ said Lea. ‘Perhaps it would be better to concentrate on the practicalities for now.’

Colette worried at her knuckle, her head turned aside. ‘You didn’t know her like I did. This was just so damned typical of her.’

‘What’s going to happen about the funeral?’

‘We have to organise it as soon as the coroner has delivered his decision. That will probably be later today. They do things quickly here. We’ll cremate because it’ll be too expensive to ship the remains to the US.’

‘If there’s anything I can do to help, will you let me know?’ Lea asked. ‘I’m sure Ben has enough to worry about right now.’

‘Thanks,’ said Colette. ‘Ever since he got his promotion I hardly ever see him.’

‘Oh, I didn’t know he got promoted.’

‘Didn’t Roy tell you? I’m sorry, I’m just not dealing with this at all well. I’m glad you became friends with Rachel. Tom Chalmers was a sweet old stick, but she didn’t have much to say to him.’

‘They never found out what happened to his daughter?’

‘I don’t think so. Why?’

This was her moment to say that she thought there was a connection, but seeing the pain in Colette’s face she could not bring herself to make the claim. What would be the point of furthering her grief?

‘Oh, before I forget.’ Colette removed a hardback from her pocket and slid it across the counter. ‘Here’s your book back.’

Lea looked at the green and cream cover, which featured a lion wearing spectacles. A very old edition of
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
by Frank L Baum, with illustrations by WW Denslow, 1900. Surely not a first edition? She carefully opened the flyleaf and checked the receipt inside:
Kinokuniya bookstore—Dubai Mall
. She had been to the store but would never have been able to afford anything like this. The date on the receipt indicated that it had been purchased three months earlier.

‘I don’t think this is mine,’ Lea said warily.

‘Rachel asked me to return it to you,’ said Colette. ‘She was anxious that you should have it back.’

‘Are you sure she wasn’t just confused?’

‘She didn’t seem to be. I don’t know why she didn’t bring it over herself.’

Because she was going to the desert first thing
, thought Lea, but said nothing. She placed the book among the cookery volumes on her counter shelf. ‘If you want me to look after Abbi and Norah while you make Rachel’s arrangements it’s no problem.’

‘I think we’re covered,’ said Colette absently. ‘I can drop Abbi off at the daycare centre, and Norah—well, I don’t know where she is. On a study date, probably.’ She rose to leave. ‘You know, Rachel had a good life. I think Ben wants her funeral to be some kind of celebration, but none of her old friends will be here. Perhaps you’d come?’

‘Of course,’ said Lea. ‘I’m sorry I only knew her a short time. I think we would have become good friends.’

She watched as Colette headed back down the path once more, carefully avoiding the new-mown grass, as if she was afraid of leaving footprints that might mar the striped pattern.
That’s the word
, she thought, watching her neighbour leave,
afraid
.

She went to her computer and checked on the book.

Baum’s very first edition had been for friends. The main imprint ran to 10,000 copies. Prices for an original varied between $100,000 and less than $4,000, depending on quality. It turned out that the book largely owed its success to a musical version that opened two years after its publication. There were thirteen sequels. She flicked through the faded pages, and for the first time it crossed her mind that perhaps Rachel had been unbalanced after all. But then she remembered her very first sighting of the city’s towers, and the thought that they reminded her of the Emerald City of Oz. There were no bookmarks or letters slipped inside, so she placed the volume on top of all the others yet to be properly arranged.

Cara returned from school, passed through the kitchen without speaking and carried a stack of toast off to her computer. Occasionally a car crept along the street in near silence. The sky remained so uniformly blue and cloudless that the house appeared to be in some kind of film set representing limbo.

We are adrift and becalmed
, she thought,
floating far away from the everyday world, vanishing one by one. We have to leave here before it’s too late, or do something about it. Either way, it will be the end of everything.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

The Promotion

L
EA CALLED THE
Deputy Police Commissioner to see if there had been any progress on the search for Milo’s attackers.

Mr Qasim sounded harassed and in no mood to talk. ‘We found an old Toyota abandoned in the workers’ barracks,’ he explained briskly. ‘The owner said it was stolen from him. Unfortunately, he had lent the car to many of his fellow workers—they all paid a share to use it. Therefore we have no useful forensic information. Is there anything else I can help you with?’

‘I guess you know about Rachel Larvin. She’d been to the desert plenty of times before, but somehow she got locked out of her car died. What do the police think?’

Mr Qasim sounded surprised to hear that she had already been informed of the death. ‘I’m afraid I am not at liberty to give out that information,’ he said carefully. ‘How did you hear about this?’

‘I’m her next-door neighbour, Mr Qasim,’ she said. ‘We had started to become good friends.’

‘The police have no reason to presume that it was anything other than an unfortunate accident.’ Qasim was obviously anxious to halt any spread of disinformation. ‘Please,’ he said, ‘if any of your friends ask, tell them not to worry. The police will issue a statement soon.’

‘One other thing. What about the pipe bombs? Any further news on those?’

‘There is no danger. We believe them to be the work of a single angry individual, and will shortly be making an arrest.’

‘Single? I saw two people.’

He ignored the point. ‘You understand that we are anxious to resolve this matter as quickly and quietly as possible.‘

Lea had no more time to dwell on the subject. Roy had called to warn her that one of his supervisors, Alexei Petrovich, was coming to dinner, so she would be forced to marshal her meagre cooking skills and prepare something that would please him. She found a recipe of her mother’s, chicken with lemons, and reluctantly went to the mall.

C
ARA SAT ON
her favourite rock and looked out at the sea. Her conversion was now complete. Her skin had tanned a deep, rich caramel, her hair lightening and growing coarse. She looked more like a Californian wild-child than a Chiswick schoolgirl. She had abandoned her track suit top and black jeans, and now wore a faded blue Superdry tee, checked shorts and flip-flops. Her manner of speech was altering. Surrounded by the polyglot conversation of migrant children, she had shaved away the clip of her Britishness and had begun to soften and elongate her speech, so that she sounded American. She called Dean and waited for him to pick up.

‘Hey.’

‘Hey.’

‘I’m down at the beach. Wanna meet up tonight?’

‘I can’t. My father has grounded me until I finish all my fucking homework. Did you finish already?’

Cara was used to having far more homework than she was given here, and got through it easily. ‘Yeah. I can help you if you like. My folks have got some Russian guy over for dinner. I don’t want to be there. We could meet up later.’

‘Not tonight.’

‘Why, what are you doing?’

‘Just stuff. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?’

‘Sure.’ She rang off, wondering if he was starting to lose interest in her. She should have kept more of a distance from him, showed less enthusiasm.

‘Hey, Cara.’ She turned to find Martin Tamworth heading her way, armed with his skateboard. Although he was older and almost absurdly muscular, Tamworth was in the year below the rest of them. He wasn’t too smart, and had been held back to retake his tests. The others avoided him because he had some kind of inner ear problem and shouted when he spoke.

‘Hey, you hear about Norah’s grandmother?’ he asked. ‘She fucking fried out in the desert.’

‘I heard,’ said Cara, still checking her phone. ‘She was my neighbour.’

‘She was like, a hundred years old or something, and got sunstroke. Right in the middle of the desert. Crazy old bitch.’

‘Hey, she was okay.’

‘I fried my pet rabbit back home, left it in the greenhouse during a heatwave. I wanted to cook it for dinner but my old man said that was gross.’

‘He was right, it is gross.’

Tamworth kicked the rock disconsolately. ‘I thought I’d see you guys at the mall last night but you didn’t show. You guys are never around anymore. You’re not avoiding me, are you?’ The amiable Californian worked in a GAP store in the evenings, and enjoyed it so much that everyone assumed he would probably end up working there full-time.

‘We’re not avoiding you, Martin, we just don’t want to spend our evenings hearing about what you saw in the changing rooms, okay?’

‘I get that. Listen, I got to get to the store or they’ll dock my pay. Later, babe.’

‘Later.’

Cara slid down from the rock, dusted her shorts and walked off across the empty road to the ice cream parlour, a glitzy art deco confection of rippled chrome and pastel neon. She could see Lauren, Norah and some of the others seated near the window. They locked fingers in greeting, and Cara slid into a red plastic bench-seat beside them.

‘We’re taking a break from schoolwork,’ said Norah, looking slyly at Lauren. ‘Wanna come with us?’

‘No, it’s okay,’ said Cara slowly. ‘I’ve got things to do tonight.’

‘Aw, come on, I already apologised, didn’t I?’ The pair had argued the day before.

‘Why, what are you going to do?’ asked Cara.

‘It’s gonna be fun.’

‘Tell me what first.’

‘Nah, anyway you’ll probably be seeing Dean anyway.’ Her voice was loaded with insinuation.

Cara bristled. ‘What do you mean?’

Norah exchanged a look with the others. ‘Come on, everyone knows you guys are doing it.’

‘Where did you hear that? Not from me.’

‘So it’s not true then?’

‘If you’ve been listening to Martin, you should know he talks shit.’

‘So you’re still a
virgin
.’

‘Fuck you, Norah.’

‘I’m just messin’ with you. We’re cool. Anyway, we need to be cool together, don’t we?’

‘Yeah, I guess we do,’ Cara said, and let the subject drop.

A
LEXEI
P
ETROVICH WAS
not a man given to spontaneity. He studied his companions, remained alert to his surroundings, listened patiently before offering a lugubrious non-committal reply and got slowly, inexorably drunk.

The evening was a disaster. Cara had gone missing, the chicken had dried out, Roy was late and Petrovich was early. The Dream World supervisor was in his late forties, grey-templed, grey-suited and handsome in an out-of-shape, exhausted way. He looked like the manager of a failing provincial football team, but his immobile eyes betrayed a cold alertness. It was the first time the dining room table had been formally laid out since the family moved in. Seated at its head, the Russian drank iced oak vodka at a measured, constant rate. Roy had reminded his wife to buy the brand he liked.

Petrovich was the most senior building supervisor at the resort, and had no conversation except work. Lea struggled to find something to talk about while she prepared the chicken, and found herself matching her guest’s drinking pace with glasses of white wine. She had not eaten lunch, and by the time Roy turned up, was on her way to being drunk.

Petrovich lacked social grace but he liked facts, and recited statistics about the resort whenever the conversation failed. Finally Roy walked through the door, and Lea virtually dropped at his feet in gratitude.