The meanest Flood

fire but it must’ve been parked somewhere else.
    They were in a passing place on high ground with no obvious landmarks. A twisting B-road with chalky fields and a ditch to either side, a couple of crows, a high tree and a biting wind that sent the rain into a forty-five-degree angle.
    Omed had climbed into the trucker’s cab and was now jumping back down again. ‘I have our money,’ he said, a wide smile on his face. ‘Which we paid him.’ The Bolivian man took back the money he had paid the trucker.
    Sam wondered about the ethics of taking the money. He turned himself inside out anguishing about it for a long, long second or two. But he was obviously in a minority so he went with the vote and pocketed the grand. ‘Things I do for democracy,’ he said under his breath.
    They dithered and parleyed for a few minutes and finally decided to go back the way they had come, a downhill route. They were a colourful procession for a tiny rural road in Yorkshire, turbans and woven bags, small mirrors sewn into the cloth of the children’s dresses, quilted and felted jackets and smiles of relief that their journey was over. Sam taught the children single English words as they followed the road. ‘Hedge,’ he said, pointing. ‘Tarmac, rain, hills.’ He said, ‘When you’re rich and famous, don’t forget who taught you the language.’ After a couple of miles they came to a crossroads. To the right was a sign to Market Weighton and York and to the left: a sign to Howden and Goole. ‘Where you all heading?’ Sam asked.
    ‘We have an uncle in Doncaster,’ Omed said. ‘Manchester,’ the Bolivian father said and repeated it, enunciating all three syllables, ‘Manchester.’
    ‘You’ve got a long walk,’ Sam told them.
    ‘No, we’re going to Manchester.’
    They took the left fork and Sam stood and watched them trooping off down the lane. The Bolivian kids waved until they disappeared around a bend. Sam turned and looked down on the Vale of York. The rain stopped falling and he could see the Minster in the distance. Between it and him the rivers had swollen and swept away their banks so the landscape was pitted with fields of glistening water, like tiny mirrors planted on the land.
    Angeles would be waiting for him, there in York. The killer as well. There was more violence and bloodshed in store. That was something you could always count on. But Angeles was something else. With her in his world Sam thought he could manage the violence and bloodshed. He didn’t know how he’d managed to land her, even less how he’d managed to hang on to her for so long. He couldn’t begin to think of a world without her.
    As he stepped out and down the steep hill towards Market Weighton a village bobby came by on a bicycle. ‘Morning.’
    ‘Morning,’ Sam said. And he smiled to himself as he thought what would happen when the cop caught up with the group of asylum-seekers.
     

36
     
    The house was old but in good condition. The gables were freshly pointed and the lacquered tiles on the roof glistened in the sunshine. Marie had missed it on the first pass and drove to within a mile of Selby before turning around and finding it behind its hedge of conifers.
    The building had no name but a small plaque on the wall declared it to be the abode of J. C. Nott. Marie lifted the heavy brass knocker and let it fall on to the oak door. The place sounded hollow and evoked images from countless horror films. There would be nothing within apart from the odd cobweb and a door creaking in the draught from a broken window. There would be the barely audible creepy music to the beat of a pounding heart and the presence of something with enough attitude to make your hair stand on end.
    Marie shook the thought out of her head, smoothed down her hair and listened to the distant footfalls in the house, smiling briefly at her own conjectures as the sounds inside the building drew closer.
    He was young and down at heel, like a raggle-taggle gypsy or a moth-eaten angel. A slight man with tortoiseshell spectacles and spectacular hair-loss. It was as if an imaginary line had been drawn across his head from ear to ear and all hair-growth forward of that line had been banned while behind the line it was a free-for-all. Surprisingly, this didn’t make him unattractive. It added humour to his countenance but once you were over that, which in Marie’s case was soon, you had to come to terms with fine features, piercing blue eyes and a masculine