Chapter Fifty

The Ghost Town

 

 

FROM A DISTANCE, the grocery supermarket looked much as it had always been, but as they approached, Lea saw that it was abandoned. The yellow plastic fascia was split and caked with dust, but some of the outside fruit trays still contained the remains of dried-out pomegranates, prickly pears, figs and apples. The building had been compulsorily purchased by the government when they had planned to build a junction leading away from the East Highway, but with the scrapping of the extension it had been left derelict. A single streetlamp lent it a melancholy air of neglect.

‘Wait here,’ said Cara. ‘I’ll go and talk to them.’

Lea knew the others were waiting inside the deserted store, and wondered if they would receive her with hostility. Cara picked her way across a waste ground filled with detritus, an ocean of discarded blue plastic water bottles, rusty cables, washing machines, shelving units, coffee pots, broken crockery, baskets, glassware and old tyres.

She needed a cigarette. Pacing back and forth at the edge of the lot, she watched the distant roads for signs of the police. After fifteen minutes, Cara emerged and beckoned.

Lea entered the dusty supermarket, walking between shelves of sand-crusted cereal boxes, cloudy bottles of balsamic vinegar, packets of couscous and luxury shower gels with peeling price stickers. It was as if the owners had fled a regime change, fearing for their lives, leaving the store just as it always looked in opening hours.

There was no electricity. She walked slowly forward, trying to see into the shadows. Dean appeared before her, flanked by a sullen-faced blond boy she did not recognise. In their khaki camouflage jeans, beige string vests and dirty white T-shirts, they looked more like freedom fighters than English schoolchildren.

‘We couldn’t find Norah,’ said Dean.

‘What happened to her?’

‘I don’t know. We found her bag on the walkway near the beach house,’ said the sullen boy.

‘That’s Arendt,’ Cara said. ‘We have to move.’

‘How are we going to get around?’ asked Lea. ‘The highways will have checkpoints, and he’s blond. He’ll stick out like a sore thumb.’

‘We’re going to take the backroads, but we’ll need your help.’

‘I don’t see how I can do that. The police are looking for me too.’

‘We’ll feed them new information,’ said Arendt, crouching down to grab a handful of dirt. He sounded Danish. ‘We can tell them that your body has been spotted in the sea at the resort.’ He rubbed the earth in his hair, but it didn’t make much difference.

‘Do you think they’ll fall for it?’ Lea asked.

‘I don’t know,’ said Cara as the others gathered up their laptop cases and knapsacks. ‘It’ll buy some time.’

‘We have to hit the road,’ Dean said. ‘We’ve got to get out tonight.’

Cara led the way to a sleek black Mercedes that Lea recognised as Dean’s father’s car. ‘You managed to get away with driving this?

‘I look old enough,’ said Dean, getting behind the wheel. ‘We‘ll have to take the desert road to the Oman border and cross at a quiet outpost. Then head East to a port, the obvious choice would be Muscat.’

They loaded the Mercedes and headed out.

 

 

IT HAD NO name now, and few were left who remembered what it had once been called. The town had filled the valley of date palms at the foot of the great hill, its rock striations sweeping through the pale stone in amber arabesques.

The farmers below had made a good living there for centuries, but when the oil money arrived they had left their homes for bigger profits and grander residences with cool cement rooms. Dates still provided incomes, but the ancient mud villages where they were harvested had been outgrown. The residents had taken little more than they could carry in a single trip, piling furniture and possessions onto handcarts in the rush to abandon their past. Jeeps, trucks and horses had been loaded with crockery, televisions and clothes.

The empty red clay houses still stood, their intricately carved doors and window frames waiting to be stripped and converted into coffee tables by French antique dealers looking for the next ethnic trend. The streets twisted and doubled back on themselves, a maze that afforded protection against marauders, but they were also defeating Cara and the others.

The group walked along the line of palms through dry river beds, into the dusty, deserted alleys, following the wadis, the emerald pools that formed as rivers made their way from the mountains to the sea.

Lea stopped to catch her breath. Although they had plenty of water, their backpacks were heavy with laptops and bundles of technical equipment. They were passing an overgrown graveyard with odd headstones—two for a man, three for a woman. Lea watched as a family of lizards scuttled from a dried-out burial site. ‘They say you plant an extra one to make sure your wife does not come back,’ said Arendt with a laugh.

‘What about going into the desert?’ asked Cara. ‘The Bedouin have camps where we could stay until things calm down.’

‘Bedouin movement is regularly checked by the police,’ said Lea. ‘They’re not as cut off as you think. The old days when they used to keep three or four wives are over. One of them told me there was a time when you could have bought another wife with a good camel. Now you need a plasma TV, a bigger house and a pool to amuse her.’

Cara smiled. Lea looked at her daughter and could no longer recognise her as the Chiswick schoolgirl who spent every weekend in her room. The transformation was complete.

They halted at a further dead end, this one created by a dense thicket of date palms that had broken through the earthen road, nature reclaiming the town as its own.

‘It has to be right around here,’ said Dean. ‘The signal showed it at the far end of the gulley.’

They were looking for a new car that had been left for them by some sympathetic Omani teenagers. Dean’s phone signal had cut out before he had time to enlarge the map of the area.

The separation between the two countries was porous here, the region’s immense outcrops of rock forcing a staggered borderline around the landscape that sometimes disappeared altogether.

‘There,’ said Lea, ‘under the fig trees.’ She pointed ahead to a dust-greyed Subaru van listing to one side of the cambered red roadway. Dean had refused to allow her to lead the group, but she was determined to stay near Cara.

Inside the vehicle they found a box of provisions, a map and several cell phones. The Subaru had a full tank of gas. While Dean drove, Cara and Arendt studied the map.

‘It can’t be far from here,’ said Arendt. ‘We may even be over the border already. Some of these ghost towns lie right on the dividing line, and their streets are impassable.’

It was hard to imagine the shadowed, crumbling houses filled with families, the streets bustling with life. Tough, spiky date-shoots pierced through the clay roads, cracking and raising them like overbaked pie-crusts. Branches had forced their way through walls and ceilings. In several places dried-out timbers from the buildings had fallen across the street and had to be hauled out of the way.

The sun had risen an hour earlier and the abandoned houses were still bathed in apricot light. The climate was more temperate here, with muddy streams crossing the ruptured earth.

The group possessed the wired energy of youngsters who had spent the night awake. Dean and Arendt took turns driving. Lea could not be allowed to take the wheel in case someone saw them—no woman would drive males through small villages. Arendt lurched the Subaru out of the shattered ghost town and onto the blacktop that crossed the valley floor.

After seven kilometres they came within sight of a pair of grey boxes, positioned on either side of the road. Directly in front was a car park filled with traders’ vehicles.

‘Shit—border police patrol,’ said Dean. ‘Go around it.’

‘I can’t. We haven’t seen a turn-off for miles.’

‘It’s okay,’ said Cara, checking the contents of the box they had been left. She held up a handful of false ID cards. ‘Pull into the car park.’

‘How did your friends manage this?’ asked Lea, examining the cards in amazement. Cara ignored her.

Their vehicle was identical to dozens of others. Dotted between the cars were trucks and vans filled with produce. Cara opened the carton and produced two burkhas. Lea’s was too short. She checked her appearance in the wing mirror and noted that it hid her identity well enough.

‘If they ask anything, you’ll have to do the talking,’ Cara told Arendt, who was the only one who spoke any Arabic. ‘If they speak to you, show them your ID and get out of the car, but keep them away from the rest of us. They’re fat old guys, they won’t want to move around too much.’

‘That’s not going to be enough,’ said Lea. ‘They’re experienced. They’ll be less interested in ID cards than how you behave, whether you’re suspicious in any way. If they look in the back of the van they’ll see all the laptops.’

‘We can’t get rid of them,’ said Cara. ‘We need them on the other side. They’re our lifeline.’

The two middle-aged border policemen had machine guns strapped to the backs of their beige uniforms. They were moving from one vehicle to the next, checking the contents. The boys had donned ragged brown shirts, caps and jeans, and looked like local agricultural workers. Lea watched the traders, trying to think of a diversion.

‘I’ll be back in a minute,’ she told Cara. ‘I have an idea.’

‘You’re not going anywhere,’ Dean warned her. ‘Stay in the van.’

‘You have to trust me on this. I’m not going to try and turn you in. I came this far with you, didn’t I?’ She studied his eyes, but a man she barely knew stared back at her.

‘All right,’ he said finally. ‘Go.’