The House Next Door Trilogy (Books 1-3)

by Jule Owen

  As he turns a corner to the north-facing side of the building, the London Eye looms, the lower half submerged, many of the pods with broken glass, a couple missing entirely. Through the portal he scrubs for himself, he sees Somerset House, the Savoy, the Shell Mex building, Charing Cross Station, all part-submerged. Hungerford Bridge has a big gap in it; bits of rail track hang into thin air like exposed bone.

  He turns to Parliament and Big Ben. The clock is gone. Sheets of material blanket the gaps, flapping in the wind. Surrounding the whole of the Palace of Westminster are huge black and red metal walls that extend three-quarters the height of the side of the building. Scaffolding straightjackets these walls. The roof of the House of Lords has been removed and there is a vast canopy across the top.

  On the riverside, there is a wooden pier with fifty or more boats moored against it, of all sizes and types: barges and yachts, little boats, dinghies, larger ships too, one with a large crane on its deck, and beside it, a battleship. People, tiny from his perspective, rush off the scaffolding, en masse, and head for the boats.

  Outside black clouds churn, there is a rumble of thunder; the sky curdles yellow, and a fork of lightning strikes a pylon on one of the Golden Jubilee Bridges. It blasts blinding white light into the room. He steps back from the window, startled. Torrents of rain lash against the window, washing rivulets into the dirt and grime down the glass. Recovering himself, he steps back to the window and watches the people on the scaffolding as they hurry to escape the rain, bowing and sheltering their heads.

  It occurs to him he has to move. Sooner or later one of Lestrange’s colleagues, someone like Borodin the Cat, will be after him, trying to take him back through the door. But how to leave the building? He glances at the lifejacket.

  When he walked across the office he’d noticed a stairwell with its door hanging on its hinges. He retraces his steps now and squeezes past the door. Water pours from above. The roof has a gaping hole - half of the ceiling is collapsed on the stairs. He makes his precarious way through the debris and gets to the top of the stairs, onto the roof of the building. At first, he tries to shelter under the lintel. After a few minutes, he abandons his attempt to keep dry and walks into the rain.

  Thunder booms again, a colossal, terrifying sound that shakes the building. He steadies himself against the wall. Almost immediately lightning strikes. This time it hits the top of one of the buildings across the river. He watches as tiles and woodwork fall away and tumble to the ground. The exposed joists catch fire, despite the sheets of water that come down from the sky. He has only been outside a few moments, but he is already drenched to the skin.

  Across the river, the scaffolding around Parliament is abandoned. Boats shelter people. The unluckier workers on the edge of the flotilla are huddled under makeshift tarpaulins. He sees them clearly and assumes they see him. Waving at them with both arms, he yells at the top of his voice, but no one notices him and the pandemonium of the storm obliterates his voice, as gusts of wind blow sheets of rain across the water.

  He stumbles back inside and clambers back down the stairs, slipping and sliding on the soaked, rotten wooden boards and broken plasterboard. He keeps going down, floor upon floor. He counts 24 sets of stairs before they disappear under black water and he can go no further.

  He retraces his path to the last floor level not drowned and enters. This office floor is much like the one he explored upstairs; abandoned, debris-littered, damp-smelling. He heads towards the windows and through the murky glass. The river laps at the side of the building ten feet below. On the north side, at this level, he sees more clearly across the river to the boats moored-up against the makeshift pier of the Palace of Westminster. People on the boats are crouched under whatever shelter they can find, shrinking from the storm.

  He bangs on the window and tries to get their attention, but he knows as he does so that they can’t hear him. There’s no way to open the window. He can’t swim across the churning, fast-running river. He needs to get someone to help him. If he had matches and the whole building and everything in it wasn’t so damp, he’d start a fire on the roof.

  Then a solution occurs to him.

  He runs back up the stairs. His heart beats through his chest, his legs burn. All the while, he is thinking of the time ticking away for his mother, pushing down hard at the rising panic.

  The rain still lashes. It batters the windows of the stairwell tower and blows wet waves though the broken glass panels, spraying him. With a final push across the collapsed ceiling at the top of the stairwell, he stumbles again into the full force of the storm.

  On the roof he grabs whatever he lays his hands on. The first thing he finds is an old ceramic pot with a small dead tree inside it. He rolls it on its rim to the low wall at the edge of the roof. Struggling to lift it, he manages to get it over the lip of the wall and let it go. He watches it hit the water. It makes a good-sized splash.

  He gazes hopefully across at the people on the Westminster boats, but no one has seen or heard it.

  On a paved area, near a broken skylight, there’s an old cast iron table, part of the remnants of a long neglected roof garden. He fetches it and throws that too. It bounces off the wall before it drops to the river and hits something submerged. It makes a satisfying loud metallic clang before it is sucked beneath the brown churning river.

  He waits.

  There is no reaction from anyone on the boats.

  In frustration, he slings each and every thing he can find off the roof of the building. Old garden furniture and tools, pots, bits of rubbish, a flagstone, a broken beam from the roof. He pulls the fractured sheets of plasterboard from the stairwell. It all goes over the edge.

  And still no one notices.

  Exhausted, he sinks down with his back against a brick wall. He is so frustrated his eyes smart and he digs his nails in his palms to push back the tears.

  Get up. Get up and do something.

  He slides back down the stairs, takes hold of the door, manages to rip it entirely off its hinges, and pulls it after him. He thinks, if he gets it into the Thames then maybe it will float and act as a raft.

  I will jump after it.

  It takes him five minutes to drag the door behind him onto the roof. He rests the top half on the wall, lifts it from the bottom and tips it up. He waits a moment. There’s a satisfying splash. It must have landed flat.

  There are yells from below - colourful swearing. He has never been so pleased to be verbally abused.

  “Hey! You up there! Are you a lunatic?”

  Mathew peers over the wall cautiously. There is a boat. It is fourteen-foot long, with a small fibreglass cabin, open at the back. Two people glare at him, sheltering their eyes from the driving rain - a blonde woman and a short bulky man.

  “You nearly brained us, you idiot!”

  “Sorry!” Mathew yells back. “I didn’t see you.”

  “It’s a good idea to look before you throw large heavy objects from the tops of tall buildings. What the hell are you playing at? You might have killed us.”

  “I was trying to get someone’s attention.”

  “You managed that alright.”

  “I’m stuck here.”

  “Yes you are. And if that’s the way you try and get help, you’re going to stay stuck there.”

  “Please!”

  The two on the boat confer for a minute. The short fat man shakes his head, raises his hands defensively. The woman makes appealing gestures.

  The short fat man says, “Come down, then.”

  “How? Where?”

  “How the hell do I know? How did you get up there?”

  “I… I don’t remember.”

  “Great, he’s crazy,” the man says to the blonde woman.

  The blonde woman ignores him. She shouts up to Mathew, “Come down to the water level. There’s bound to be a cracked pane of glass. Find one and kick a window open.”

  “Will you wait?”

  “Yes, of course we
’ll wait. But hurry, will you? It’s pissing rain and it’ll be dark soon.”

  Mathew runs down the stairs as fast as his legs will carry him, all the way down to the floor he’s just explored, the one just above water level. Outside the door, the stairwell wall is marked with the number twelve. He navigates the upturned desks and chairs and the collapsed roof tiles and heads to the windows on the north of the building, finding an area of glass he’d cleaned with his shirt and peering through. The boat belonging to his potential rescuers is below.

  From this closer distance, he realises the second person in the boat isn’t a man at all, but a woman with short hair, wearing bulky men’s clothes.

  Mathew bangs hard on the window to get their attention. They stare blankly across the river. The window is double-glazed and rock solid in its frame. He goes from window to window looking to find one cracked or broken pane. None of them are damaged. He searches around for an object to smash with, hefts an office chair to his shoulder and rams a window with the wheels, but they spin and bounce off. Frantically, he hunts for an object to break the glass, worried the women will leave, thinking he has disappeared.

  In the corner of the room, something catches his eye. It is a fire door. He weaves his way through the mess of the abandoned office. Across the door there is a rusted metal bar and a sign that reads, “Fire. Only open in case of emergency.” Supposing this counts as an emergency, he pushes on the bar. It is stiff but with some effort and rattling he manages to force it open.

  He stands on the roof of a wing of the building. The rescue boat floats off round to the east side. The women are hunting for him.

  “Hey!” he shouts.

  They turn the boat around and come back beneath him.

  “Hi,” he says.

  “Hello,” the short, dark-haired woman says.

  The other woman is tall and thin, her blonde hair tightly tied back. She raises a hand, “Hi there.”

  “How do I get down?”

  “Good question,” the blonde woman says. “You’ll have to jump.”

  “If he jumps from up there into the boat he’ll go through the bottom, or at the very least tip us up,” the short woman says to her companion. She squints up at Mathew, sheltering her eyes from the driving rain. “You’ll have to jump into the water.”

  “Jump? Into the Thames? In there?”

  “Yes, jump in there. Where did you think I meant? The bloody Mediterranean?”

  Mathew looks down, over the edge of the roof. It seems a long way down. The river is running fast. “I’m not sure I can.”

  “Then you’re staying and we’re going.”

  “There’s got to be another way.”

  “I tell you what, why don’t you spend the night here while you decide what to do and we’ll pick you up tomorrow morning?” She glances at the sky. It is dark from the storm but the sun is also dimming. “I am not travelling down the river after dark. You’ve got a bloody lifejacket on, for Pete’s sake.”

  “Okay. Okay. I’ll jump. Just give me a minute.” Mathew contemplates the brown water. It doesn’t look like water at all. It gives every impression of being solid. He teeters on the edge, but fear grips him and refuses to let his body move off the edge of the roof.

  “Are you going to jump or what?” the dark woman says.

  “Yes!” Mathew says. “I will.” He shuffles right to the edge, wobbles and almost loses his balance.

  “Watch out for floaters,” the short woman says.

  “What are floaters?”

  “Stuff floating in the river. Could be big dangerous stuff, like big bits of wood, things like doors crazy people throw from the tops of tall buildings. There’s also the nasty unhygienic little stuff that gives you e-coli or other horrible things. Whatever you do, don’t swallow any water.”

  “You are making me feel so much better. How do I spot the floaters? It’s like soup.”

  “You can’t spot them.”

  “Great.”

  “Just jump, will you?”

  Mathew jumps. He plunges feet-first, mouth and eyes closed tight. Down he goes, into the murk. When he slows, the lifejacket tugs at his shoulders and he expects to bob to the surface. Instead it is like someone very strong has grabbed both his legs and is pulling at him and he swirls around and around like a shirt in a washing machine. He tries to swim, but he doesn’t know which way is up and which way is down. Opening his eyes, there’s nothing but fast churning coffee-coloured mire. Then something hard hits the side of his head, there is suddenly a constriction at his waist and he is being reeled in.

  Coughing, gasping, he is at the surface, breathing.

  “Give me your hand!” a woman’s voice is saying urgently. “Come on! Grab his jacket will you, Mike? I can’t hold this much longer.”

  He reaches blindly, desperately. He finds a hand and is hauled into the boat.

  10 Bob and Mike

  Mathew lies on the floor of the boat and stares at a pair of muddy boots, a large shrilk bottle of water, several boxes stacked one on top of the other, and a machine gun. He must have swallowed a pint of the Thames. The thought makes him retch. The boots step across him.

  “That nearly didn’t go well,” says a woman’s voice.

  Unsteadily, he pushes himself off the floor with his aching arms. Around his waist is a rope and a metal hoop.

  “Here,” the blonde woman says, and she loosens it and pulls it over his head. “Thank God we had this. Saved your life I think.” She helps Mathew to his feet. “Are you ok?”

  He nods, but he’s not really sure.

  “Sit there,” the short woman says. She points to a wooden bench. Up close, her face is distinctly feminine, but her hair is dark and cropped short and her clothes are bulky and man-like. She has a paunch. The blonde woman passes him a small, rough towel as he stands and steps unsteadily the few paces to the bench.

  “Thanks,” he says as he sits and takes the towel and dries his hair. It smells of fuel. His hands are shaking.

  “Cold?” the blonde woman asks, noticing his hands. He nods, but it’s not cold that’s making him shake. She looks at the towel and then pulls a face. “Sorry, it’s not much.”

  “There’s an old sweatshirt in the dry box,” the dark woman says.

  “Right.”

  The blonde woman disappears into the little cabin and reappears with a large, shapeless navy hoody. Mathew takes it gratefully, strips off his dirty, sodden t-shirt, and pulls the clean sweatshirt on over his head.

  The dark woman goes inside the cabin and starts the engine. It sputters into life and she steers the boat around to face the river.

  “It’s getting dark. The sooner we get back the better,” she says.

  They pass the London Eye and travel along what used to be the Riverside Walk. Down below, he supposes, is the old walkway of the South Bank, the place where millions of people used to enjoy the view of the Thames and the Embankment buildings.

  “Can you search for floaters at the front, Mike?”

  “On it,” the blonde woman says. She scrambles onto the fibreglass bow of the boat, and kneels and peers into the murky water, holding a long pole, with a metal noose at the end, the one used to fish Mathew from the water.

  “Right, we’re okay now. Into the swim.”

  Mike sits next to Mathew, who has found a seat on the bench, behind the little cabin.

  She is a woman in her mid-forties. Although her face is not painted and her eyes and mouth are lined, she is strikingly attractive. She has a perfect, straight nose, symmetrical features, greenish eyes.

  She extends a hand, “Hi, I’m Mike.”

  “I’m Mathew,” he says, taking her hand.

  “Yes, I know. You’re broadcasting,” Mike says. She points to the right of his head, where virtual letters hover about him in the air. “You may want to switch that off.”

  Before Mathew can ask what she means, she says, “That’s Bob,” nodding at their driver.

  Bob raises a hand to
say ‘hello’. “Where shall we drop you?” she asks.

  Mathew hesitates and then says, “I need to get to Silverwood.”

  Bob laughs. She has a loud, throaty, dirty laugh. Mathew finds himself staring at her with surprise and smiling. “Good luck with that,” she says.

  “Why?”

  “How were you planning to get there?”

  “Isn’t there a train?”

  Again the laugh. She clutches her heaving belly as if she’s pulled a muscle.

  “Are you shitting me? The boy’s a comedian, Mike.”

  “You’re joking, right?” Mike says.

  Mathew nods uncertainly.

  “See. He’s joking.”

  “It’s the only explanation.”

  “Whoa!” Mike says. She scrambles to the front of the boat once again. “Slow.” She grabs the metal pole and pushes a large box aside. “That was close. You’re okay now, Bob.” But she stays where she is, on watch.

  “So how were you planning to get to Silverwood?” Bob says.

  “I don’t know. How far is it?”

  “Now you’re scaring me.”

  Mike says, “Silverwood is a hundred and seventy miles away.”

  “A hundred and seventy miles!”

  “Where were you planning to stay tonight? Where is home?” Mike asks.

  “Blackheath.”

  “There’s a bit of luck. We’re heading to Greenwich. We can give you a lift to there at least, can’t we Bob?”