Free Creatures of the Pool by Ramsey Campbell Page B

fumbles at the keys recall the police. “Just put me through,” I snap at the operator, because the pulse in my skull won’t let me describe the situation twice. Either she’s spurred by my urgency or she wants the police to deal with me, because with almost no delay a man says “What’s the problem, please?”
    I should have rung 999. Surely this is still an emergency, and more to the point, I’m sure I recognise the voice. It’s the policeman to whom I spoke at such length about my father. What would my father do in the circumstances? The pounding of my head drives me to adopt the thickest Scouse accent I can summon up. “Mergencee,” I declare. “Youse need—”
    “Who is this?”
    “Youse don’t need me name. Dere’s no time, like. Dere’s been—”
    “Is this Mr Meadows?”
    My skull seems to grow enormous, or the pain does. He must have recognised my number. “Mr—” I blurt, but that won’t work. “It is, yes.”
    As if to compensate for my abandoning my Liverpool sound, his Lancashire accent becomes more pronounced, emphasising the distance between us. “What’s this about, Mr Meadows?”
    The best I can produce between jabs of pain is “I was trying not to confuse you.”
    “How were you going to do that?”
    “I thought you might think I was calling about my father. Is there any news of him?”
    “You just said you weren’t calling about him.” The policeman lets my head pound several times before he says “We told you we’d inform you if there was.”
    “Has anybody been to see my mother?”
    “I couldn’t tell you without checking. Is that why you rang?”
    “No, it’s because somebody, I think somebody’s been murdered.”
    “That’s why you put on a silly voice.”
    “No.” I grope through the pain for an explanation. “I was confused,” I try saying. “I was attacked. Knocked out. Knocked down.”
    “How long ago was this?”
    You could use the pain in my head for a metronome, and it barely lets me read the time on my mobile. “Maybe quarter of an hour,” I say. “There was a body but it’s gone.”
    “Where are you calling from?”
    “Frog Lane.” My headache has befuddled me, or the atrocious memory has. “It isn’t called that now,” I say. “I run historical tours, that’s why. It’s Whitechapel.”
    “Which town?”
    As long as he recognised me, how can’t he know? “I haven’t gone anywhere. Liverpool.”
    “Please stay where you are and don’t touch anything.”
    He has nothing more to say to me. Presumably he’s busy sending a car. I pocket the mobile and hold on to the barrier around the roadworks. I should like to close my eyes in the hope that it might ease my headache, but it would make me feel open to attack. The city murmurs all around me like a subterranean flood. I can’t hear any vehicle, even one without the siren it surely ought to be sounding. I’m sure rain is imminent, unless the climate has grown so wet that there’s always water in the air. The police need to examine the scene before the next downpour washes away any evidence. Just because I mustn’t touch anything, that doesn’t mean I can’t look.
    I stumble forward to squint at the pavement where the body was. The flagstones are cracked and tilted by years of parked cars and vans and trucks. They’re moist with rain and stained with oil, but I’m able to distinguish faint tracks. A trail that I’m sure was left by the dragging of a body is flanked by prints that must have lost shape in the rain. They lead towards the tunnel at the Old Haymarket, but once they’ve crossed a deserted taxi rank beyond the last shopsthey veer away from Whitechapel, along the approach to an entrance that lets shoppers drive under the theatre square to collect goods from beneath the stores on Church Street. Has the corpse been abandoned in the underground area? I can’t see any tracks to suggest whoever moved it has emerged. If they do before the police arrive, shouldn’t I