The Sand Men (41 page)
‘I don’t care about your plans. I just want to keep you safe.’
‘You never worried before.’
She grabbed at Cara’s face and pulled it around to hers. ‘Of course I worried! I always cared. We caught a kind of blindness, you and I. The one thing I can’t do is lose you now. There’s nothing else, don’t you see? If we throw this away, there’s nothing else left for us.’ They cautiously emerged into sunlight, keeping to the shadowed edges of the buildings. ‘At the moment it’s only worth thinking about the things we can control. We need to stay out of sight. We have to get a ride to Muscat. I have our passports and some money, we could get a passage to Karachi, head into India, make our way home from there.’
‘What home are you talking about?’ said Cara. ‘What’s home anyway? Dad’s not coming back. If what you say is true, he left us a long time ago. The time for families is over. This is all the home we need now.’ She led the way, checking the road ahead, and for once it was her mother who followed without question.
Ahead, a colourful boy scout parade was spread across the road out of Nizwa. Carmine banners had been hung across the sidewalks, offering some shade from the punishing sunlight. As the King of Sweden’s motor cavalcade passed, they turned to watch. Marching in front was a local band, an odd mix of trumpets and
ouds
playing the
maqamat
that gave songs their distinctive Arabic temperament. The procession of vehicles was followed by a small squad of soldiers and military officers, with a mix of security guards and regular police bringing up the rear. All of the men had ceremonial rifles strapped across their backs.
Cara and Lea stood beneath the oleander bushes on the far side of the road, separated from their destination.
‘We’ll have to wait here until they’ve passed,’ said Lea. ‘There are plenty of trucks going to Muscat. We should be able to get a lift in one of them.’
Cara turned to her and smiled. She looked happy again. ‘You understand, don’t you? That if everything you’ve told me is true, it all has to go?’
‘I don’t know how.’
Cara swung down her rucksack and opened it, showing Lea. Inside was a gun. ‘Leo Hardy gave it to Norah’s dad. He found at in the workers’ barracks,’ she explained. ‘It works okay. The scouts will be going to Dream World.’ Still smiling, she took a step forward into the street.
‘Come back,’ Lea warned, ‘don’t draw attention to yourself.’
‘It’s okay, Mum.’ Cara raised a placating hand. ‘I have to go.’
Lea’s stomach tipped. ‘We’re going together, we agreed—’
‘No,
you
agreed. As usual, you decided what you wanted to hear. We can’t, we’re western females among all these men, they’ll stop us sooner or later.’ She took another step into the road. ‘Do this one thing, okay? Don’t follow me. I’ll find a way back and I’ll stay in touch somehow.’
‘You can’t do it alone,’ Lea implored.
‘I won’t be alone. There’s one phrase I learned in Arabic.أناالصالحين
.
It means
I am righteous
. There are plenty of people who’ll help me.’
Her smile was filled with the light of the day.
Cara touched her face and held the sight of her, then walked away, into the glare of the sun, through the thicket of beige uniforms.
Lea’s instinct was to run after her, but for the first time she held herself in check.
The tribal elder was still leaning on his cane, watching with a half-smile on his lined face. He had been joined by several other men of his age. The gathering of the Ka’al had occurred as if by some form of spontaneous magic. The Sand Men watched and smiled and waited, and did nothing.
Lighting the last of her cigarettes, Lea remained beneath the bushes, pushing back into the dusty hot leaves, hardly bearing to watch. Cara carried on walking. She did not look back. Soon she had passed through the crowd and was lost in among the buildings.
My daughter,
she thought,
my own daughter.
The scout troops were being followed by a great mass of mothers and children. In her
burkha
, Lea look no different to any other Omani woman. She allowed herself to be absorbed by the crowd.
She looked back one more time to see if she could find Cara, but the girl was lost in the dust of the people following the parade.
The sun shone and the band played on, and the procession of scouts followed the gleaming black cars along the road with small children running behind them, all filled with an absurd, irrational hope for the future.
About The Author
B
ORN IN
L
ONDON,
Christopher Fowler has written for film, television, radio, graphic novels, and for newpapers including
The Times
, for more than thirty years. He is a regular columnist for
The Independent on Sunday
. Fowler is the multi-award-winning author of more than thirty novels, including the lauded
Bryant & May
mystery novels. He is the winner of the 2015 CWA Dagger In The Library award.
For more information visit
www.christopherfowler.co.uk
With a Foreword by Joanne Harris
June Cryer is a shopaholic suburban housewife trapped in a lousy marriage. After discovering her husband’s infidelity with the flight attendant next door, she loses her home, her husband and her credit rating. But there’s a solution: a friend needs a caretaker for a spectacular London high-rise apartment. It’s just for the weekend, and there’ll be money to spend in a city with every temptation on offer.
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‘Christopher Fowler is a truly original writer. I’ve loved everything of his I’ve ever read, and with
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Peter James
‘The dark reverse of a personal growth novel, a hoot of a crime thriller.’
The Independent
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Imagine there was a supernatural chiller that Hammer Films never made. A grand epic produced at the studio’s peak, which played like a cross between the Dracula and Frankenstein films and Dr Terror’s House Of Horrors...
Four passengers meet on a train journey through Eastern Europe during the First World War, and face a mystery that must be solved if they are to survive. As the ‘Arkangel’ races through the war-torn countryside, they must find out:
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Bizarre creatures, satanic rites, terrified passengers and the romance of travelling by train, all in a classically styled horror novel.