Creatures of the Pool Read online

  Chapter Seventeen

  SOME HELP

  I ought to phone the police as soon as the door shuts behind me—if the mobile in my sodden pocket has survived the downpour, surely I can—but I’m desperate for a drink and a shower. I gulp handfuls of water from the tap between peeling off my clothes in the bathroom, and then I climb into the bath. The shower aggravates my confusion; the onslaught of water does, and the idea that I’m using it to wash away water. As I perform the slow ritual dance that it entails, a sentence I leafed past in Whittington-Egan drifts back to me. It was in one of his rants about uncommon sex, a subject that appeared to fascinate as much as it disgusted him. He spends an entire chapter in deploring gay men or at best pitying them for their failure to conform, but I wish I hadn’t been so quick to pass over the next chapter, where I read “As late as the nineteenth century, the detestable vice known as ‘frogging’ was rife in the cellars of Whitechapel.” He meant the street in Liverpool, and perhaps that was all he could bring himself to write about the practice. The Internet may be less reticent about the meaning of the term.

  As I reach for a towel I’m troubled by the reflection in the steamy mirror. I wipe away the condensation in time to see a trickle of moisture run down my face. I could almost think my bruised forehead is exuding the fluid—and then I realise what’s troubling me. Was my mother too worried about my father to notice the injury? I mustn’t blame her, and I should be doing more on their behalf. I towel myself fiercely and grab the mobile from the floor outside the bathroom and redial the police.

  An operator takes the occurrence number in exchange for a generous helping of silence. I’m about to ask whether anyone’s there when a familiar but hardly friendly voice demands “Yes?”

  “Is that Constable Wrigley?” Since this earns no answer, I offer “Constable Maddock?”

  “Something like that.” As I wonder if I’ve demoted them he says “What’s it about this time?”

  “The same as last.” In case he thinks I mean Whitechapel I add “My father.”

  “We said we’d let one of you know.”

  “Is that what you’ve been saying to my mother?”

  “Yes, her.”

  “That’s not the way I heard it.” When this falls short of provoking a response I say “She thinks you don’t think he’s worth looking for.”

  “What else does she reckon she knows?”

  “That you’re treating him as some kind of suspect, which is ridiculous.”

  “Why’d we give up looking if we think he’s one of those?”

  I ought to have wondered about that. Is my mother more confused than I realised? Rather than admit the possibility to the policeman I say “I thought that’s why you think he was in Norris Green.”

  “So why do you reckon he was?”

  “I can’t see any reason to assume he was at all. We don’t know where his bicycle was stolen from, do we?”

  “If it was pinched why didn’t he report it? He’d got his mobile on him.”

  “Maybe it doesn’t work where he is.” I’m even less happy to have to suggest “Unless he was attacked and they took the phone too.”

  I remember the shrill clink that put a stop to his last call. Was he hit with the brick? I imagine my father lying somewhere, surely no worse than unconscious. Could the assault have damaged his brain? Perhaps he’s wandering the city, having forgotten where he lives and I do, if he hasn’t taken refuge somewhere. Perhaps he doesn’t know who he is. These feel like dreams I’m trying not to have in case they come true, visions that hardly seem to belong to me, but of course the idea itself is no more than a dream. In an attempt to bring myself back to reality I ask “Where is the bicycle, by the way?”

  “We’re keeping it for evidence.”

  “Fingerprints, you mean?”

  “Something like that.”

  I assume he’s saying that detection has become more sophisticated. “Have you followed up the messages you came to hear?”

  “Thought you were at home,” he says so triumphantly that I feel observed and uncomfortable with my nakedness. “Trying to keep out of the wet, are you?”

  This is followed by a rush of static I could mistake for a wave on a shore. Is he on a mobile somewhere in the open? “The messages,” I prompt.

  “Still looking.”

  Since he conveys no enthusiasm I’m provoked to say “How hard?”

  “How hard are you after?”

  “As hard as we ought to expect.”

  “You’ll be seeing us when we’ve got something to give you.”

  With this he’s gone, apparently washed away by static. I hurry to the bathroom for my towelling robe, and then I head for my workroom. I’ve already checked that there are no messages on the answering machine, but I’ve yet to look on the computer. All the new emails are impersonal, and can’t distract me from remembering the names I sent Waterworth. Perhaps he’ll think they’re simply British.

  The Frugoget search engine reveals that frogging can refer to ornamental lace or the corruption of a text, neither of which helps. My gaze wanders to the window, outside which the night has overtaken the dark of the storm. Raindrops are still trickling down the glass and the windows opposite, so that I can’t tell whether anything is moving in the dimness of the office. When I strain my eyes I seem to glimpse at least one large figure writhing deep in the gloom, as if performing a sluggish dance that appears to involve changes of shape. As I grip the sides of the desk and lean forward, eyes stinging, my mobile strikes up its band.

  I straighten up, and the dancing shapes sink into the darkness and vanish. I interrupt the ringtone before it can go on too much about love. “Where are you?” I want to know.

  “Just outside,” Lucinda says.

  “Then come up. We need to talk.”

  “Let’s, but you come down. I know where’s best.” Through a rush of static, unless it’s a wind along the street, she says “We’ll go to our place by the river.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  AT THE MOUTH

  Slamming the door of Lucinda’s car dislodges rain from the roof, so that half a dozen ropes of water wriggle down the windscreen. Beyond them, at the end of the street, a dim blurred figure appears to swell up before vanishing towards the river. Lucinda gives me a tentative smile and reaches out a hand but, observing my mood, doesn’t quite touch me. Instead she drives along the street and turns downhill.

  This takes us past the oldest theatres, all of them unnamed—one in Cockpit Yard, another along the Old Ropery, a third in Drury Lane, where a popular eighteenth-century play would end with “a procession of a human sacrifice after the manner of the ancients.” Theatre audiences, especially sailors, were so liable to grow violent that an armed soldier would be stationed at either end of the stage to keep order. During a riot at the Drury Lane theatre an actor costumed as an aquatic creature was shot, though one report insists he was a member of the audience and the cause of the disorder. Some of these streets no longer exist, and a fountain constructed of dozens of pivoting buckets stands where a theatre once stood. The buckets are dormant though dripping with rain, and somebody homeless or drunk is squatting under them. I lose sight of the bulky glistening shape before the car swings onto the Strand opposite the Liver Building, where the metal birds perched on the pair of clock towers are rigged like masts. Histories of Liverpool suggest that Coleridge had the ancient Liver Bird in mind when he conceived the albatross. He certainly visited Liverpool, and we may imagine him deep in a reverie on the Birmingham coach—the “lousy Liverpool,” as it was known, on which he did indeed catch lice. One biography suggests that he imagined more of the Ancient Mariner in Liverpool—the slimy creatures from the sea, the nameless dweller in the ocean with power over all the creatures of the water—but why am I swamped by these thoughts? They must be conjured up by Lucinda’s silence and mine, but they feel as if I’m not thinking so much as being employed to think.

  Since Victorian times there has been a w
alk upriver from the Pier Head, but building work has cut off the route. Lucinda drives along the dock road, which used to be divided by an overhead railway that was torn down more than fifty years ago. Several boys ride their rearing two-wheeled steeds along the central reservation, pedalling towards Aigburth. Another demolition has exposed the location of the first dock, where an animal is prowling amid the debris. Most likely it’s a dog, however it defeated the high fence. Perhaps it swam along the river; the whitish form, which elongates as it leaps several feet, looks wet, and there’s no water in the dock. I lose sight of it as Lucinda steers the car off the main road, towards the warehouses surrounding the Albert Dock.

  They’ve been converted into apartments above shops and restaurants. One block houses the Tate Gallery, where a Dada exhibition is outraging sensibilities with the long-banned Three Persons of God, a trio of urinals. Lucinda drives around the warehouses and parks at the edge of the promenade, beside a ship’s mast rigged to the pavement. As I climb out I hear a soft but enormous lapping beyond the sea wall. Did I once imagine that the waves in the river were calling to those in the dock? I must have been young or asleep. Apart from the ripples there’s silence except for a radio presenter’s voice beyond an apartment balcony until Lucinda says “Are you going to tell me what’s wrong?”

  “I’m not the only one who hasn’t been talking.”

  “I didn’t want an argument while I was driving, Gavin.”

  “So you knew there was going to be one.”

  She locks the car and gazes wistfully at me across the wet roof. “Let’s walk,” she says and then frowns. “What have you done to your head?”

  “Nothing.” I don’t want to be reminded of Whitechapel just now, let alone to talk about the incident. “It’s fine,” I tell her, though the question has quickened the ache in my forehead.

  The promenade extends behind the warehouses. Beyond railings festooned with occasional lifebelts, a second fence composed of chains strung between cones is silhouetted against the restless water. Lucinda steps through a gap and sets off between the fences, towards skyscrapers multiplying around the Pier Head. She likes to walk close to the water, but there isn’t room for two abreast, and so I pace her on the landward side of the fence. The slopping of dark water below the promenade seems to pace her too. When she looks away from the advancing tide I say “Why didn’t you come out when I needed you?”

  “Aren’t I allowed to be busy sometimes? Maybe even too busy to come as soon as you call?”

  “Like expecting me to answer my mobile whatever I’m doing, you mean.” Before I’ve finished speaking I see how irrationally unfair this is, which only aggravates my anger. “I did a lot more than call,” I object. “You must have heard how important it was.”

  “As a matter of fact I didn’t. I was on my break.”

  “I’d have thought you’d have heard me wherever you were.”

  “That isn’t something to be proud of, Gavin.” She halts and turns to the river, so that she appears to be confiding in it. “We did hear some noise in the staffroom,” she murmurs. “We thought it was more demolition work.”

  When she doesn’t move I hurry to the next gap and tramp back to join her. She seems intent on the river, where innumerable ripples glint as if a vast underlying pallid mass is showing through the blackness. A buoy rocks in their midst, and alongside the opposite bank a ferry ploughs through the reflected lights of Seacombe towards the bay, but the view is largely of wakeful whispering blackness. I feel as if I’m distracting Lucinda from it by saying “I’ll bet your colleagues had fun telling you all about it when you got back to the counter.”

  “Why do you say that? It was no fun for anyone.”

  “Tell me what they said, then.”

  “No, I want you to say, Gavin. I want you to tell me what happened. What was it all about?”

  She still hasn’t looked away from the water. I know she finds it peaceful at night, but now the river feels oppressively lulling. I could almost fancy that her speech has borrowed a surreptitiously hypnotic rhythm from the waves. My lack of sleep must be to blame, because I feel as if the insistent ripples are drawing me down, robbing me of balance, until I retreat to the gap in the barrier. “Let’s sit down first,” I call.

  Metal benches are spaced along the promenade within the shadow of the wall in front of the apartments. I’m making for the nearest bench when I see another couple on the one next to the mast. Perhaps they didn’t want us to realise we were being overheard, since they’ve made so little noise. I move to a further bench and don’t speak until Lucinda is seated, an arm’s length from me but not touching. “Did they show you what I found?”

  “You still aren’t telling me. You’re asking.”

  “You should have listened to my father. There was an entry in your catalogue for the papers he wanted.”

  “Gavin,” Lucinda says so quietly that it’s almost swallowed by the repetitions of the waves. “There wasn’t, honestly.”

  “You looked, did you?”

  “Certainly I did, when he came in, and there was nothing at all.”

  “How about this time?”

  “Gavin,” she repeats, and the water seems to. “Why would I look again?”

  I’m distracted by the slopping of the river. I could imagine that the sound isn’t just beyond the promenade—that it’s to my left as well. At this distance I’m easily confused into fancying that the occupants of the other bench are making some of the noises. All I can distinguish is that they’re embracing with their faces pressed together, and I concentrate on saying “You could see the print on the back of the other page, and there was a bit left of the one somebody wants us to think wasn’t there.”

  “Nobody else saw them, Gavin.”

  “No need to keep saying my name.” Instead of this I retort “Who are you going to believe, people who won’t admit what they’re seeing, or me and my father?”

  “My own eyes, Gavin. Please don’t go the same way as Deryck.”

  The couple on the other bench must be anticipating a downpour. As far as I can see they’re waterproofed from head to foot in shiny black material that even covers much of their heads, concealing their ears. Could it be some kind of fetish? This might help to explain the passion that thrusts their faces together so fiercely that they appear to have flattened, merging the heads into a single roundish mass. I attempt to ignore the illusion while I say “That’s exactly what I will be doing.”

  “Why would you want to do that?” She sounds worse than disappointed. “You’ve got your tours,” she says. “They’re you.”

  “I’ll have time for both. I’ll make time. If the police can’t do their job, it’s up to me.”

  “What are you saying they aren’t doing?”

  “Finding him. Seems as if too many people can’t be bothered looking at evidence.”

  I turn towards her, not least to lose sight of the couple on the bench. Of course I didn’t glimpse the substance of their heads clinging stubbornly together as the figures moved apart. It could only have been a lingering kiss, and the loud wet noise came from the river, not from their features stretching like rubber masks before the faces separated and sank back into place. “Shall I tell you what I think?” says Lucinda.

  “I hope you always do.”

  She gazes at me, but I’m wondering what she sees beyond me as she murmurs “How much sleep have you been losing?”

  “About as much as my mother, I’d imagine. No, probably not nearly as much.”

  “I’m off work tomorrow. You catch up on your sleep tonight and if there are any calls I’ll take them.”

  “You think I’m imagining things, is that it?”

  “I’m not blaming you, Gavin. Nobody should.”

  I’d be more provoked to argue if it weren’t for the Whitechapel incident—for the way the memory has begun at some indeterminate point to resemble a dream I can’t shake off. Surely I’m not imagining a copious splash in the river behind me,
even if Lucinda doesn’t look away from my face. “Shall we do that, then?” she says.

  “If you’re sure you don’t mind. I mean, thanks.”

  As I stand up I’m confronted by an empty promenade all the way to the bench by the mast and beyond it too. Unlike its neighbours, the bench looks wet. “Did you see them?” I blurt.

  “What, Gavin?”

  “You mean who,” I insist, pointing at the bench. “The couple who were there.”

  “I was looking at you. I didn’t see anyone else.”

  Rather than argue I trudge to the car. The radio beyond an open window is bringing “Criminal Record” by Rachel and the Rehabs to an end. I’m still behind the apartments and walking over the buried mouth of the Pool when I falter. “What’s that?”

  “What now, Gavin? I can’t see—”

  “Not see,” I protest. In a few seconds the radio presenter repeats the information. “That’s it,” I almost shout. “That’s what my father meant by stones.” The trouble is that I’ve been brought so nervously awake that sleep seems more remote than ever.

  Chapter Nineteen

  THE OLDEST STONES

  As we enter Calderstones Park two adolescent girls in anklelength white dresses greet us with a wreath each. My head prickles, less with the flowers one girl has placed there in imitation of her own adornment than from insomnia. She and her friend produce more wreaths from the cardboard boxes on either side of the avenue to await the next newcomers, and I notice that the boxes originally contained bottles of Frugorganic spring water. We’re advancing between trees decorated with drops of this morning’s rain when Lucinda blinks at my preoccupied frown, which feels weighted by the wreath. “I hoped you’d sleep,” she says.

  Eventually I did, which is why it’s now the afternoon. Once we left the bath that she insisted would help me relax I lay awake for hours, sleepless with attempting not to betray that I was and unable to yield up my vigilance to her. I couldn’t help trying to imagine how she would answer the police or my mother if they called, or suppose my father did at last? Suppose he distrusted her too much to speak? The idea felt dismayingly close to distrusting her myself, and all this felt like an uneasy dream I was having without benefit of sleep. At some point I lost consciousness, but this doesn’t seem to have done me any lasting good. “You did your best,” I tell Lucinda. “And you’re here. Maybe you’ll spot something I miss.”