Flash Flood (9 page)

Now that he had a plan he felt better. But it gave him more problems to solve. How should he get there? He didn’t know London that well. What if Charing Cross was underwater?

No point in thinking like that. If he found that it was flooded, he’d work out something else to do. The most important thing was to try to get there.

A map. He needed a map. He had no money to buy one so he would have to borrow one again. He went back to the car, but it seemed to be empty of anything useful. Then he peered in through the taxi’s open door, the swan watching his every move with black, alien eyes.

He couldn’t see a map. Maybe taxi drivers didn’t need them because they knew the streets off by heart. He reached in to open the glove compartment, but his hand paused. It felt like stealing.

It’s not stealing
, he told himself.
It’s survival. I’m only looking for a map, not money or valuables
or anything. And the taxi has been abandoned.

There was no map in there anyway. He would have to try the van.

As he walked round the front of the taxi, smashed brake and indicator lights crunched under his feet, making a wet mosaic of red and orange plastic.

Ben was keeping an eye on the swan, which was still glaring at him. He moved slowly and spoke to it soothingly. ‘I only want to look for a map. I’m not going to hurt you.’ He turned away to open the van door.

A honking sound behind him made him whirl round again. The swan was on its feet, half hopping, half charging towards him. Its wings were spread and its head was hooked backwards, like a cobra about to strike.

Ben had heard of swans attacking people but he’d never quite believed it. And until now he’d never realized how big they were and how fierce they looked.

The wings beat ferociously, making a noise like wind snatching at a heavy sail. Another fact he’d heard about swans popped into Ben’s head.
Apparently a swan could break your leg with a blow of its wings. Rubbish, he’d thought. But he changed his mind when he heard the sound of those powerful wings.

The swan’s neck uncoiled and its orange beak thrust forward like a dart. Ben backed away, fast.

The bird hopped awkwardly towards him and he retreated further, ready to run. But after another thrust with its beak the swan settled down on the ground again.

Ben stood, frozen. Was it safe to move again?

Then he saw blood trickling into the oily puddle and remembered the swan’s awkward hopping gait. It was injured. That must be why it had attacked.

He continued to back away, his hands low in a gesture of apology. ‘I’m sorry.’

There was another abandoned car on the other side of the road, its front crumpled into a lamppost. As Ben made his way across, a Canada goose came waddling towards him. He stopped, watching it carefully, alert to the slightest sign of aggression in the way it carried its slender black neck. But he soon
realized that it wasn’t interested in him. It began to root through the contents of an upturned bin.

Ben peered into the car and spotted what he wanted lying on the passenger seat: a battered
A–Z
of London. He opened the door and picked it up. ‘Sorry,’ he said to the departed owner, and closed the door again. In the last five minutes he’d been saying that word constantly.

Right, where was he? There was a sign on the building on the corner: Eaton Square. Ben opened the
A–Z
, but the rain was soaking through the pages. He closed it again, opened the car door and got in. It was such a relief to be out of the rain.

He found Eaton Square in the index. It was near Victoria Station and Buckingham Palace. Most importantly he wasn’t too far from Charing Cross – probably a twenty-minute walk. Provided he didn’t run into any more injured animals.

He looked out at the dismal sky. Having a roof over his head was such a relief. Above him, the rain drummed down relentlessly. He wondered for a moment whether to stay where he was; at least it would be dry. But the rain might continue for hours
and if Bel was already at Charing Cross, she would be waiting. Worrying.

He got out, and shuddered as the rain trickled down his neck again. He muttered a warning to Bel under his breath as he started off:
You’d better be at Charing Cross when I get there
.

After a few minutes he came to a telephone box. Relief flooded through him, along with an overwhelming sense of homesickness. He didn’t have to be alone: he could phone his dad.

He pushed the door open gratefully, then looked at the phone for a moment, wondering what to do. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d used a call box as he usually had his mobile. This one took coins – which was no good – but it also had a number you could call to reverse the charges. Just what he needed. He picked up the receiver.

Nothing. It was dead.

Of course it was. Why had he thought it wouldn’t be?

He jiggled the cradle up and down a few times, hoping the phone would come to life.

Ben started when a car horn suddenly blared out in
the empty streets. He looked around. Where had it come from? There were people out there – but where?

He couldn’t see anything, but the rain was blurring the windows of the phone booth: it was like trying to see out of a shower cubicle. He put his head out but the street was empty.

Another sound made him look again. It was the roar of a car engine. Ben jumped out of the phone booth, waving madly. Headlights came speeding towards him. He waved again – perhaps he could get a lift. Just to be with other people would be good.

But the car swished past, sending up a wake of spray like a boat. Ben stared after it as it raced towards a junction, where dark traffic lights stood watching mutely. Its brake lights come on momentarily, then it wheeled round the corner and disappeared.

Ben felt disbelief, then crushing disappointment. Surely the driver must have seen him. If it had been him or his dad and they’d seen someone alone in a situation like this, they wouldn’t have just left them.

But this was the big city. He remembered that girl
he’d helped with her luggage at Waterloo. Vicky James; he’d even remembered her name. Everyone else, though, had blanked her. In London, if you didn’t know anyone, you were on your own.

But he wasn’t totally alone.

As he made his way to the junction, he caught a glimpse of movement at an upper-storey window. Someone was watching him.

‘Hello?’ he called, and waved.

The movement stopped. The figure had moved away from the window, not wanting to be seen.

In another house Ben could see a shadowy figure behind a large frosted window. Someone was hurrying up a flight of stairs, a box in his arms.

‘Hello?!’ he shouted.

The shadow quickened its pace up the stairs and vanished, as if it was afraid of him.

At the junction Ben picked a turning and found himself in a road with a few shops – a newsagent and a delicatessen.

The delicatessen was dark, but in the window, arranged on a marble slab, there were loaves of bread and delicious-looking savoury pastries. Ben’s stomach rumbled at the sight of them. He must have used up a lot of calories keeping warm in the water. He tried the door but it was locked.

Reluctantly he tore himself away and trudged on, turning off into another street. The first buildings he came to were hotels. Their names were picked out in neon letters over the doors, but the signs were dark.

A big four-by-four in a parking bay started to shriek, its indicators flashing. The noise continued for about thirty seconds and then stopped. Ben couldn’t see what could have set it off and no one came to investigate. Other alarms and sirens sounded in the distance, as if in answer. Thirty seconds later the alarm came on again. How long would it carry on like that? Until its battery was dead?

Was there another sound too, mingling with the far-off sounds of alarms and sirens. Human cries?

Or was that his imagination?

Down a side street Ben caught sight of a figure trudging slowly along, head bent against the rain. The man was walking away from him, but Ben’s heart leaped at the thought of company. Should he run to join him? This trek was so lonely. He had never had to fend for himself and make all these decisions before. He yearned to have someone to talk to, the reassurance of another human being. Someone to stop him imagining he heard screams in the wail of a car alarm.

No
, Ben told himself.
I know where I’m going. Keep to the plan
.

As he walked on, he caught sight of himself in the window of a bookshop. He looked bedraggled, as if he’d been sleeping rough. The expensive Burberry mac on top of his sodden jeans was obviously stolen. No wonder no one wanted to stop for him; he looked a real vagabond.

He glanced down a flooded street and saw a red dinghy with an outboard motor chugging slowly
along between the buildings, at first-floor level. One of the boat’s three occupants was standing up, looking in through the windows. They were dressed for the weather in heavy-duty rubberized yellow sailing coats.

They must be looking for people in trouble, thought Ben. At least some people were helping each other. It restored his faith in human nature.

In a richly furnished house down one of the flooded streets, a middle-aged couple were carrying boxes up the stairs.

‘There’s a boat out there,’ said the woman, spotting the small dinghy chugging along outside the window. She came into the living room and put the box down on a black bin liner on the pale carpet. It contained their passports, building society books and share certificates from the safe downstairs. Another box was filled with the jewellery she had inherited from her grandmother – a diamond necklace and a string of pearls. They lay in satin-lined leather boxes on top of some other essentials – some bottles of water, a few croissants and the keys to the BMW in the garage – although the car was probably ruined: the garage was
in the basement and the whole ground floor was underwater.

Those boxes were all the couple had been able to salvage from the ground floor when the flood started.

‘Did you hear me?’ said the woman. ‘I said there’s a boat out there. People are getting out of London … Do you think we ought to?’

Her husband was easing his wellington boots off, careful to keep them on a black bin liner so that he didn’t mark the carpet. ‘No, we should be all right here.’

The woman noticed that one of the men outside was standing up in the boat. She waved at him and he waved back. The boat stopped beside the window to the stairwell, so she put down her box, crossed to the window and opened it to talk to them.

Two of the men climbed in without waiting to be invited, muddy water dripping off their boots.

The owners were a bit surprised, but then it all turned very strange indeed. For, shockingly, unbelievably, rather than helping them, one of the men pointed a stubby handgun at them.

The woman felt the blood drain from her face.

‘Stay quiet and no one will get hurt,’ said the gunman. Rain dripped off his yellow coat onto the pale carpet.

The other burglar pushed past them and went over to pick up the box on the sofa.

‘Hand over your valuables and no one gets hurt,’ said the gunman. He nudged the woman with the stubby end of the weapon and she whimpered.

Reluctantly her husband stood back, letting them take the box. The burglar turned it upside down. The slim black jewellery boxes fell out on top of the passports and certificates. He picked up the jewellery and stashed it in his jacket pockets. He left the rest, and gestured to his partner.

‘That’s it. All done here.’

‘See?’ said the gunman. ‘Painless if you let us get on with it.’

And the intruders climbed back out of the window and joined their partner in the boat.

As they started up the engine, they could hear the woman sobbing.

‘Better get away from here,’ said the gunman. ‘She’s screaming the place down and the neighbours might hear.’

The other man took the jewel cases out of his pockets and put them in a rucksack on the floor of the boat.

The burglars had been at a boat show in Earl’s Court when the flood struck. As well as the small motorboat they’d got the yellow coats, some binoculars – and the flare pistol, which was proving extremely useful. Since then, they had visited so many people that afternoon, all of them rescuing their valuables from their safes; all of them sitting ducks for burglars.

The gunman was now focusing the binoculars down the street. ‘I think our next stop should be that big house at the end of the road,’ he said. ‘I can see a lady waiting for us with a leather briefcase …’

Bel was not at Charing Cross, waiting for Ben.

She wanted to be, but she was still stuck in Westminster – though at the present moment she wasn’t quite sure
where
in Westminster.

The room was small – about five metres square. It contained a desk, a telephone and several chairs. It reminded Bel of a dentist’s waiting room, except she had never been in a waiting room that had blank concrete walls and no windows. The only thing to look at was the two sets of doors.