Creatures of the Pool by Ramsey Campbell Read Free Book Online

poke at the blue sky. They belong not to a church but to the massive grey Municipal Buildings, outside which stopped buses throb and chug.
    Wide steps lead to the pillared entrance. Beyond an enquiry desk, people are chattering in a selection of languages while they queue to pay bills in an expansive hall beneath lofty skylights. “Gavin Meadows for the Touristic Eventualities Coordinationist,” I tell the woman behind the desk.
    Her official expression doesn’t relent as she wields a phone. “I have Mr Meadows for you,” she says, and to me “If you could wait.”
    “I’ll give it time,” I say, which proves equally incapable of lending her a smile. Perhaps it was how my father used to say such things that made them work. I listen to the clamour of languages, and then I hear another one along a corridor. “I’ll get back to you,” an American is saying.
    I seem to recognise the voice, and I do once he unlocks the door to the corridor. The corner of his mouth lets the hint of a grin subside, and the features of his wide faceappear to clench even smaller. I’m able to believe he has been visiting some official until the receptionist indicates me with the phone. “Here’s your one o’clock, Mr Waterworth.”
    His preoccupied eyes barely take me in as he says “We’ll talk in my office, Gavin.”

Chapter Six
W ATERWORTH
    The green paint of the high arched corridor has never seemed so institutional. Once the glass door shuts off the global hubbub in the payment hall there’s silence except for the measured tread of my escort, which puts me in mind of a pulse in mud, and my own imitation. He pushes open a fire door and another, presumably expecting me to keep up, because he doesn’t hold them. Beyond the second one he marches into Rhoda’s office.
    She’s gone. So are the photographs of the river, ousted from their places on the walls by a map of Liverpool I hardly recognise and an artist’s impressions of the future of the city, full of shopping malls and more of the skyscrapers that have invaded the famous skyline, towering above the tethered birds. Outside the window behind Rhoda’s desk a bus trundles away from the stop, exposing a row of small discoloured shops and the lower end of Cheapside. “What happened to Rhoda?” I’m anxious to hear.
    “Close the door, Gavin,” Waterworth says, which I assume is a prelude to sharing a confidence until he adds “I can’t discuss council personnel. We’re here to explore what happened to you.”
    He sits in Rhoda’s chair and permits himself an almost invisible grimace at the unstable jiggle it has acquired from her rocking and swivelling in it during discussions. As he more or less upturns a hand to indicate that I should take the chair opposite I say “She was good at your job.”
    I feel as if he’s trying to write her out of her own history, erasing every trace of her that he can find. He treats me toa mute stare before saying “Did she observe any of your tours?”
    “She mustn’t have felt she needed to.” His muteness provokes me to ask “Shouldn’t you have told me what you were?”
    “What difference would it have made to the tour?”
    I’m tempted to point out that without him we might have taken refuge in a pub where I could have told Liverpool stories. Instead I say “Was there much on it you didn’t know? I’m betting yes.”
    “My antecedents are here.” Before I can take back any implication that he’s an ignorant foreigner he says “The core issue isn’t how much people knew.”
    When raising an eyebrow and then both doesn’t prompt him to continue, I have to ask “What, then?”
    “How reliable you are.”
    “I’ve had no complaints.”
    “You have now.”
    “From whom?” Having been subjected to his scrutiny again, I say “Sorry, you, yes? Fire away. I’m always trying to improve.”
    I haven’t finished speaking when I realise that he may have a complaint about the encounter with my father. It’s a