The meanest Flood

as she tried to bolster their courage. The braggadocio of the two Iraqis as they tried their best to sound as if they were on a seaside outing. The trickle of liquid as the Bolivian father pissed into a plastic bucket.
    This was a trip he could survive, Sam decided. He didn’t know about the others. He’d probably have to share his food and water, but that was OK. He’d ration it out, something every six hours, make it last the voyage. At the other end he reckoned he’d stand a better chance of avoiding the authorities than the rest of his fellow travellers.
    At least he hoped so.
     

31
     
    ‘That’s the great thing about detective work,’ Marie said. ‘There’s always something else. I mean it’s ninety per cent routine, can bore the pants off you. But at the point where you start writhing in apathy something’ll happen to make you sit up and take notice.’
    ‘Ah,’ JD said. ‘The town’s on the brink of imminent flooding. Thousands of people are in danger of losing their homes and you’ve found something that interests you.’
    ‘Don’t talk to me about flooding,’ she said. ‘I can only get to my house by boat. Yesterday I got in through the bedroom window and I still needed wellies.’
    ‘But you don’t find it exciting?’
    ‘Hell, no,’ Marie said. ‘It was exciting when it might happen, but once it’s happened it’s inconvenient. It’s tragic, maybe. You could call it a nuisance or a disaster. But it’s not exciting, it’s boring. Boring as hell. It means you can’t go home. You have to live with other people, and when the water’s gone back to normal you’ve got to clean out the mud and silt and you can’t move back in for six months or more, until the place has dried out.
    ‘What’s exciting about that? Or the fact that you can’t find anyone to insure you? Add to that that the thing you live in is no longer a des res, estate agents laugh when you walk through their door. The mortgage you’re paying is twice the value of the house.’ She handed him a look as hard as prison time. ‘No, I don’t find that exciting.’
    ‘I used the wrong word,’ JD said. ‘I’m sorry.’
    ‘You shouldn’t use wrong words. You’re supposed to be a writer.’
    ‘Yeah, I write books, but I’m not God. I make mistakes.’
    ‘You can say that again.’
    ‘I make mistakes.’
    They were on the steps of All Saints church in North Street watching soldiers placing another layer of sandbags on the flood defences. The river was roaring past within the limits that the army had allowed it, content for the moment to display its naked power. But it was like a mob, a fury that could turn at any moment, flip the sandbags aside and engulf the town.
    ‘What was your point?’ JD asked.
    ‘Sam asked me to research dolls and doll-makers.’
    ‘Sex dolls?’
    ‘Yes. It’s amazing. I knew there were these sad things, blow-up girls that guys take to bed with them...’
    ‘Some guys.’
    ‘Yeah, some guys. Don’t be predictable, JD, this isn’t about you.
    ‘I could never work out how they kept them clean,’ she said. ‘I knew there was a vagina, something like that down there, but I imagined the thing just filled up with jism.’ She laughed. ‘You know, as time went on, the girl got heavier and heavier and smellier and smellier.’
    ‘But it doesn’t? She doesn’t?’
    ‘Yeah, I think some of them do. The cheap ones. But you can get all kinds. There’s balloons at one end of the market and at the other end there’s dolls with a self-lubricating vibrating vagina and anus. You can get them with locks on so the guy you share your room with can’t get his end away while you’re out at work.’
    ‘Ah, nice touch,’ JD said. ‘Fidelity among dolls. What if I wanted a nurse?’
    ‘You can have anything you like: nurses, policewomen, French maids, an Asian princess, all the stereotypes.’
    ‘Black policewoman?’
    ‘I expect so. You can order anything you like. Mix and match. You want something fitted to size, no problem. Same with animals. You want a pig or a sheep, you can j buy them over the counter. How about a black ewe with a throbbing, erotically noduled mouth?’
    ‘There was a moment earlier when you were turning me on, now it’s going the other way.’
    ‘How about this then, big boy? I can get a six-foot-four guy doll with a moustache and chest hair and a penetrating rotating and vibrating tongue and a powered, veined dong all running off four AA