Flash Flood (5 page)

And then he began to see the people – helpless shapes borne along by the tide, arms waving as they tried to attract attention, to get help, to grab onto things. Others were holding onto trees, clinging on like monkeys, trying to climb out of the water. The trees looked fragile and spindly, like clumps of coral.
Ben realized their trunks were submerged: only their tops stood clear of the water.

One woman was trying to hold onto a coral-tree, but the branches wouldn’t take her weight. Ben watched, appalled, as the branches snapped and she was pulled off into the current. Then he swung the binoculars away. He didn’t want to see any more.

He focused on the river to the east of the ArBonCo Centre. There were more small helpless objects being swirled along. He told himself these shapes were debris, furniture, chairs from cafés; anything but people.

For miles downstream towards the obelisk of the Canary Wharf Tower, the river was lapping at windows. The roads had vanished. Ben could see cars, but they were being borne along in the water like boats, only visible as metal roofs, rocking in the current. And it was the same in the other direction.

In the windows of the buildings opposite he could see movement: rows of faces gathering to look out at the changed world. Their expressions all said the same thing:

We’re trapped.

That was when it dawned on Ben that he was trapped too.

Trapped – like hundreds of thousands of Londoners, now struggling to come to terms with what had happened to them.

Struggling to survive …

The traffic lights had been red for ages. Charleen, in her Bentley Flying Spur, sighed and put her handbrake on.

It sounded a bit odd outside. Watery.

She looked out at the traffic to either side of her. And noticed the water.

Even as she watched, the surface of the road disappeared completely. The pavements went next, engulfed by mud-coloured water. And then her whole car just seemed to die. The light behind the LCD control panel went dark, the air conditioning fell silent and the almost inaudible throb of the engine, silent as a heartbeat, was still.

£115, 000-worth of Bentley never stalled. It was simply impossible. Charleen cursed and turned the key, waiting for the familiar muted roar under the bonnet which always set butterflies dancing in her stomach.

The engine turned over once and died. She turned the key back sharply and then pulled it out. Something was very wrong. The water must be so deep it had been sucked into the engine. And now she could hear a ghostly, ominous noise …

The roar suddenly grew louder. A muddy avalanche of water and rubbish was rumbling towards her down the road. In seconds, it was up to the doors. All around her, the cars were reduced to windowed pods poking out above the dirty swirling water.

Forget the car, she decided, panicking. She had to get out. She released the locks and pressed down the door handle.

The door wouldn’t open.

She tried again, pushing her shoulder hard against it.

Nothing. The weight of the water outside was holding the door shut. The water was still rising, lapping at the windows like dirty grey lips.

A black car was coming towards her now, rocking on the water. Inside she could see the driver hammering at the windows, trying to get out. Under the water the car smashed into her bonnet with a dull crunch. Then her front wheels reared up off the ground, as if a giant hand was lifting the car.

The heavy Bentley slid along the road sideways, into a mini-van, crumpling it around a lamppost like a tin can. Two pale arms flailed against the bonnet, then slid beneath the surface of the water.

Charleen’s stomach turned over. That had been the driver. She thanked heavens the Bentley was so solid. At least when it eventually stopped she’d be all right.

Then she saw the window coming up: a glossy expanse of plate glass, the lighted interior showing the foyer of a big office building. She ducked.

The plate-glass window shattered as two and a half tonnes of car hit it. The noise was amazing, high and tinkling in the watery air. Shards of glass rained down on the roof.

The arch at the top of the window smashed into the side of the car, rolling it over. Charleen found herself
squashed against the ceiling, her head muzzy with the impact. The car was upside down.

And it was still moving. Outside, a confusion of shapes hurtled towards her in the murky water: a desk, chairs, printers, paper, the black eye of a computer screen. All mixed up together, as if caught in a hurricane.

Charleen started to scream …

Jackie got off the Northern Line at Elephant and Castle Underground Station, and made her way towards the Bakerloo Line. It was an old, dirty station and she always tried to tune out her surroundings when she used it. All she was thinking about was getting down to the Bakerloo Line so that she could continue reading the next bit of her magazine.

She walked past the heavy blast doors in the corridor, looking at her feet as she went along, careful not to step on the curved steel tracks near the doors as her stiletto heels would probably slip on them.

Why did those tracks always look so bright and shiny, as though the doors were constantly swinging to and fro over them? If you looked at the blast doors,
they were thick with dust and grease. They looked like they had never moved in years – as firmly stuck in position as the riveted sections of the tunnel above.

Jackie reached the steps to the Bakerloo Line and turned to go down. She unfolded her magazine, finding her place. Nearly at the platform now.

A noise behind her made her look round. The other people in the tunnel turned back too.

The giant riveted blast doors were starting to move. For a moment Jackie thought she was hallucinating; she stopped and stared. As she watched, the door swung smoothly away from the wall to close off the passageway.

It was like someone had started a race. One moment the corridor looked quite empty: only a few people were walking to and from the platforms. The next minute they were all running towards the doors and suddenly the corridor seemed very crowded. A big guy pulled Jackie aside and pushed his way in front of her. An elderly man and his granddaughter were crushed against the wall, but no one noticed.

Everyone had just one goal: to reach those doors before they closed.

Jackie didn’t see how many people got through. She was short, even in her high heels. The taller, stronger ones reached the doors before her and by the time the weight of the crowd had carried her there, the doorway was sealed shut.

She was thrown against it by the weight of the people behind her. They screamed and started to claw at the doors with their fingers, as though they could pull them open again. But they were solid steel and blast proof. Immoveable.

All over the Tube system, giant doors were closing. The network was sealing itself up.

For a moment Jackie began to wonder if she was having a peculiar dream. In a moment she would wake, either at home in bed or sitting safely on a train, her dream inspired by the sight of those heavy-duty doors and the bright steel runners in the floor. Surely she couldn’t really be here, wedged against the steel doors, the ridges pushing into her ribs, forcing the air out of her lungs so that she could hardly breathe …

*   *   *

Sanjay was on a crowded Tube train, lost in the world of his iPod. The train shuddered to a halt. Even then he didn’t take too much notice. It happened all the time. The train would start again soon.

The faces around him looked irritated. The people who were standing up recovered their balance, adjusted their grip on whatever rail or strap they were holding onto, and resumed what they were doing to pass the time. Some were reading novels, some newspapers; some were counting the stops on the tube map above the head of the person opposite. It was just a normal day travelling on the Tube.

Then the lights went down. That was really annoying. Sanjay took one headphone out in case there was an announcement from the driver. All he heard was people around him complaining.

‘More power cuts.’

‘Because of that bloody rain.’

‘The other day those people were stuck in a train for two hours.’

‘Two hours?!’

There was no announcement. Sanjay put the headphone back in his ear. Lemon Jelly carried on playing
their cheerful electronic burbles. And on. And on.

If they
were
here for two hours, Sanjay had more than enough chillout music to stay the course.

He sat back, so relaxed he felt he could almost go to sleep. Actually it was rather pleasant being in total darkness. Because he couldn’t see the faces around him, he could be anywhere.

Another track finished and Sanjay was aware of a faint squawking outside the world of his headphones. Maybe the driver was making an announcement. He took one headphone out again.

It wasn’t the driver on the tannoy.

It was the sound of people screaming.

Then Sanjay realized that his legs were wet …

Francisco Gomez had been lying back on his concrete bunk. The mattress in the police cell was thin and provided hardly any padding. He was looking at the pattern made by the painted bricks on the opposite wall. He had been looking at it for so long that he had lost track of time.

He was thinking that he would have to get used to amusing himself like this. He doubted whether there would be any more inspiring ways of passing the time once he got to prison.

It probably wouldn’t be a prison here in England. He’d been hiding out in London with his partner, but
they’d almost certainly ship them back home. They were wanted in Spain for planting a car bomb in Madrid in 2001 that injured 65 people. He and his partner José Xavier had been caught in Chelsea this morning; he’d been thrown into this cell while José had been taken to another police station – he didn’t know where. He wondered if José would manage to escape and reach their rendezvous.

The water came slowly. It seeped in under the door while he was staring at the wall. He only noticed it when he heard a commotion outside.

Suddenly he was aware of footsteps clattering on the bare floors. People were shouting, their words echoing as if in a subway. But that wasn’t unusual in police stations. They were hardly peaceful places.

He ignored it all until he heard a sound that really surprised him. Splashing. That’s when he sat up.

The floor of his cell was under half a metre of water and it was rising. The police station was flooding.

He got up off his bunk and paddled across to the steel door. He looked through the tiny hole and saw that the water was higher outside – halfway up the green-painted line that ran at waist height down
the corridor. His cell was at the end – had they forgotten he was here?

He shouted out, but several black-uniformed figures were already running down the corridor towards him. They tried to open the cell door next to his, but seemed to be having problems getting in. Finally there was a rush as the water spilled gratefully in.

Francisco shouted out again. ‘Hey! I thought you were looking forward to sending me home.’

Two policemen appeared at his door. ‘Get back, Gomez.’

Francisco waded backwards, unsteady on his feet. ‘Hurry up,’ he said.

The door was unlocked. The policemen tried to pull it open, but once again the weight of water on the outside held it shut.

‘Gomez, you’ll have to push.’ Their voices sounded worried, urgent, as if this was a matter of life and death.

He put all his weight against the door. On the other side the two officers pulled.

Something was very wrong, thought Francisco.

The door opened a crack and that was enough: the water began to pour in. With the pressure equalized the door moved open more easily.

Something else registered in Francisco’s brain. Only two officers had come to get him. Normally he never had fewer than four guards.

‘I thought you’d forgotten me,’ said Francisco.

‘We wouldn’t forget you, Gomez.’

He saw they had cuffs, and felt a tiny prick of disappointment. He’d hoped they’d forgotten. One of the officers grabbed his wrists and snapped the cuffs on.

Curiously that made Francisco feel better. Usually they asked very politely if they could put handcuffs on him. Moreover, they hadn’t made him turn round to cuff him behind his back. They were not bothering to do everything strictly by the book. The emergency had taken them by surprise and they had no time for their usual precautions.

How many more important details were they going to miss?

One officer linked his arm through Francisco’s pinioned one. ‘Get a move on, Gomez.’

The water was up to their knees now and still rising. They started to run. Their shouts echoed noisily off the brick walls, as if they were in a public swimming pool. Other officers were already on the stairs, hurrying more prisoners to the upper levels.

By the time Francisco and his escort reached the stairs, the water was up to their waists.