Flash Flood (4 page)

The Met. Office man made an exasperated noise. ‘Can’t we get a crane to raise the barrier? It’s high tide in less than an hour.’

‘There isn’t a crane that can lift it.’

‘There must be. There are marinas up the Thames with boat yards. They have cranes for lifting boats into dry docks.’

‘A normal pleasure boat weighs a couple of tonnes. The Thames Barrier gates weigh three thousand seven hundred tonnes each. That’s the weight of more than twenty double-decker buses. They’re so heavy they had to be built in situ.’

The liaison officer tutted again. ‘In that case, I’m calling the Department of the Environment to tell them we’ve got an emergency – a Code Red situation.’ He rang off.

‘That’s what we told you fifteen minutes ago,’ said the controller as he put down the phone.

Ben got off the Tube train at Waterloo. Behind him a plump girl in trainers and short, spiky dark hair was struggling to get her case off. It didn’t look heavy but one of its wheels had got stuck in the grooves of the carriage floor, and she was trying to balance a large shoulder bag on the other arm, which slipped every time she tried to move the case. People were pushing past her and glaring at her, as if she was obstructing them on purpose.

‘
Mind the doors
,’ called the tannoy. ‘
This train is ready to depart.
’

The girl gave her case a harder yank, and staggered
as the weight of her other bag nearly overbalanced her. The doors started to close, then encountered the obstacle and rolled back open again.

The tannoy came back to life again. ‘
Would you please remove any obstruction from the doors. This train is ready to leave
.’

Ben went back, took hold of the handle of the big case and gave it a hefty tug. It came free and the train doors slid shut.

‘Thanks,’ said the girl.

‘Pleasure,’ said Ben. ‘Do you need a hand up the stairs with it?’

The girl looked grateful. ‘Oh, would you? That’s very kind. I’ve had the journey from hell this morning.’ Her Welsh accent was strong.

‘So have I.’ Ben grinned. As he carried the case up the stairs, he noticed the label attached to the handle:
VICKY JAMES, 14 WEST STREET, LLANDUDNO
. Another newcomer to the city.

They emerged in a big concourse. Corridors led off to other platforms, and at the far end were two long flights of escalators.

‘Thanks, I can take it now,’ said Vicky James. She
stopped, got a piece of paper out of her pocket and looked up at the exit signs, puzzled. ‘I don’t suppose you know which exit I take for St Thomas’s Hospital?’

Ben shook his head. ‘Afraid not. I’m new here too.’

Vicky took the handle of her suitcase. ‘Not to worry – I’ll find a policeman or something. Thanks again for your help.’ She strode off purposefully, her case leaving dirty tracks on the wet floor.

Ben went in a different direction. As he came up the escalator, the station seemed to get wetter and wetter. People coming down were pushing hoods off their heads, shaking out umbrellas, shrugging their shoulders to get the sticky wet clothes off their skin, grateful for the warmth of the Tube station. There was a strong smell of wet coats.

Bel had phoned him just as he’d arrived at Euston. Now, instead of meeting her in Leicester Square, he was to go to the South Bank to meet her friend Cally, who worked for the oil company ArBonCo researching clean fuels. Then, at half past three, he was to make his way to meet Bel at a place they’d met at before – the Costa Coffee in Charing Cross Station. That didn’t leave much time with her. He
was booked on the 19.40 train back from Euston.

He was annoyed. He’d come all this way and now he had to make small talk with Cally for an hour and a half in the offices of a multinational oil company. That was typical of Bel – Ben could hear his father saying it now; all she ever thought about was her career. According to his dad, she cared more about endangered ecosystems than about her own flesh and blood. Right now, Ben was thinking that he might as well have stayed at home.

At the top of the escalator, the floor was swimming in dirty water. Ben skim-read the signs and saw that ArBonCo had its own exit. Outside, the rain was coming down like a curtain of water, hissing as it hit the road and the pavement. A woman hurried past him into the station, shoulders hunched with misery, her eyes panda-like with running mascara. Ben put his collar up, hoped the ArBonCo entrance wasn’t far and ran outside. He spotted the glass revolving doors immediately and sprinted for them.

Inside, the doors sealed out the road noise like an airlock. A set of pale leather sofas was arranged around a Perspex display case containing models of
oil rigs and drilling platforms. The foyer was a haven of white marble but, in the wet, it was like an ice rink. A number of yellow signs were arranged around the foyer, warning that the floor was slippery. The rain was creeping in under the doors, and the muddy footprints from people’s shoes spoiled the impression of tidy corporate grandeur.

A curly-haired woman was waiting for him. Cally. She got up and embraced him warmly. ‘Ben, lovely to see you. You’ve grown.’

Ben winced whenever adults said that to him. ‘Hi, Cally.’

‘Here, get that wet coat off. I’ll sign you in and let’s get something from the canteen. Are you hungry?’

They bought sandwiches from the canteen in the basement and then took the lift up to the top floor. The doors opened onto an enormous room. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out at the top of a big Ferris wheel, 135 metres high: the London Eye.

‘This is the viewing gallery,’ said Cally proudly. ‘It used to be open to the public until it became a security risk. So it’s quite a privilege to come up here now. Not many people get to see this.’

Ben could think of more interesting attractions to visit on a day out in London – the London Eye itself, for instance – but he was too polite to say so. And he’d been on the London Eye the last time he was in London with Bel, so he’d actually seen the view before. ‘Very nice,’ he said.

While they ate their sandwiches Cally asked him questions about how he was doing at school. He noticed she didn’t ask about his father. That didn’t surprise him. Bel’s friends and his dad’s friends were poles apart. After ten minutes Cally looked at her watch. ‘I’m afraid I’ve got to go to a meeting. I’m really sorry – I told your mum I’d try to get out of it, but I really do have to be there. If you need me I’ll be in the conference room. It’s next to the canteen.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ said Ben.

‘OK. I’ll come and collect you in an hour.’ She called the lift, stepped in with a wave and was gone. Now Ben was on his own.

Ben put his headphones in and switched on his personal radio/MP3 player. Looking around as he listened to the Kaiser Chiefs, he spotted a bronze plaque on a stand next to the window. He wandered
over to look at it. Engraved on the plaque was a drawing of the skyline, with a key explaining the names of the various buildings that lined the river downstream from the ArBonCo Centre. Ben could make out the dome of St Paul’s, dwarfed by the lipstick-shaped tower of the Gherkin building. He walked along the gallery to the end of the room. Another bronze plaque showed the map of the view from there: the Post Office Tower up to the north; the river curving away, under Westminster Bridge and Lambeth Bridge; the Houses of Parliament – that was presumably where Bel was at the moment. Probably haranguing another politician about global warming.

The back of the building looked all the way across the roofs to Sydenham Hill and the Crystal Palace television transmitter, its red light just a faint smudge against the heavy grey sky.

Bel must be delighted about the weather today: it was a big I-told-you-so for the politicians who denied that the climate was changing. As he looked down at the riverbanks, he could see how high the Thames was – well over the normal high-tide mark, as far as he could see.

Ben had done a full circuit and was back at the London Eye. Had it moved? Yes: the people in the red cagoules were now at one o’clock instead of twelve. The wheel went slowly, like the hour hand on a clock. Ben had spent the whole day so far watching time drag by. First on a train going nowhere, now killing time at the top of this building.

The Kaiser Chiefs track finished. Ben leaned on the guard rail and decided to see what the London radio stations were like. Usually he listened to his native Key 103 Radio in Manchester, but down here he could try Capital FM. He skipped through the stations, looking for the frequency, and got a short blast of the news on Radio Four. The announcer’s voice made him think of home. His dad usually had it on while he was tinkering in his workshop. He listened for a moment:

‘
Motoring organizations have issued a weather warning to drivers, warning them not to set out unless their journey is absolutely necessary. Several towns in the South West, including Boscastle which was devastated by flooding a few years ago, are on flood alert
.’

Ben found Capital. He found a chirpy female
presenter, but the message was the same. ‘
Don’t travel by car unless it’s absolutely necessary. The M25 is gridlocked after flooding at Wisley. This is Meena Chohan in the Flying Eye, with all the latest traffic news as it happens.
’

He tuned through the stations until he found one playing an Usher track. He looked out of the window to see how many more millimetres the London Eye had moved.

Suddenly something caught his attention down below.

The river.

One moment it was lapping at the walls of the Embankment. The next, it was rising, as though the water was swelling, like a bath filling too fast.

And it didn’t stop.

It swallowed the walls of the Embankment on the north side and spilled over the banks on the south …

Down on the street below, the pavements, dark grey with rain, seemed to dissolve as the water surged over them.

People who were out walking, heads down under hats and umbrellas, looked at the water swirling at their feet and started to run. They ran up the steps of the London Aquarium.

The water followed them. It flowed over the half-wall by the National Theatre and swirled around the deserted café, clattering the chairs together. It lapped at the theatre entrance, then swirled down the passageways between the buildings and out over the roads.

In moments it had covered the square of green grass in front of the entrance to the ArBonCo Centre. It crept over the road, choking an excavator so that it stalled with its arm poised in the air like a yellow claw. It gushed down the steps of the ArBonCo Centre and filled the sunken stepped area in front of the glass doors like a swimming pool.

On Ben’s headphones the music continued. The radio station seemed unaware of the catastrophe. He took the phones out of his ears.

The noise from outside was deafening. There was a loud roar like an earthquake as the water slammed into the sides of buildings. Very faintly Ben could hear other noises too; the faintest of sounds that he thought might be screams.

Looking across the river, he saw that, over on the north bank, the road was invisible. The river was twice as wide as it had been, bordered now by the rows of buildings opposite. And still the water continued to rise.

Ben saw a set of binoculars on a stand next to the window. He grabbed them and put them to his eyes.

What he saw made him go cold all over.

A tourist stall by the London Eye buckled as he watched, its canvas roof collapsing. Policemen’s helmets, Union Jack bowler hats, brightly coloured T-shirts and a host of souvenirs spread out in the water and were swept upriver in the strong current. Burger wrappers and cardboard coffee cups were flushed out of bins and set off in clusters.

More, larger debris followed: the wooden chairs that had been standing outside the theatre; books and trestle tables from a stall under Waterloo Bridge; placards from the National Film Theatre shop and menu boards from the restaurants.

A distinctive shape skimmed through the water. Ben tried to focus the binoculars on it, unable to believe his eyes. A long pale grey outline; a triangular fin like a sail. He saw an eye. And then the words:
SEE THE TIGER SHARK AT THE LONDON AQUARIUM
. Yes, he was indeed looking at a shark, but it was a cardboard cut-out.

He focused on the far side of the river again. What had happened to the vehicles that had been travelling along the Embankment? It was lunch time, and quite a few people had been hurrying along the pavement
under their inadequate umbrellas. A frisson of horror went up his spine. He realized he could no longer see the front doors of the buildings opposite. He couldn’t see the cars and lorries because the water had completely engulfed them. That must mean the water was at least two metres deep on the Embankment. Probably three metres, because it was nearly up to the first-floor windows of the white building opposite.

Then Ben noticed the top of a double-decker bus sailing sideways past the white building. Only the red rectangle of its roof was visible; the rest was submerged.

Ben was amazed by the speed at which the flood waters had surged up. In only a matter of seconds, it seemed, they had risen up over the Embankment walls and totally covered the road above.