Forthcoming Atrocities

2. The Value of Books

Part One – of Plagues and Famine

I nodded to Martínez as I walked through The Ritz foyer. I'd already stuffed most of my newspapers into a bin in the restaurant rest room. The book was in an inside jacket pocket. Martínez and the young policeman I'd remonstrated with earlier were heading back into the restaurant.

I wasn't staying at The Ritz, but a less celebrated hotel in the sprawl of London's Soho. It was just for a few nights but speeches only paid so much and the following day's book signing was coming out of my publisher's hard-to-prise-open expenses budget.

I elected to walk to my hotel, hoping to clear my head of the phone images of Charlie Fox's blood-spattered body lying in these same streets. The book she'd left for me felt like a shared guilty secret. An almost tangible wash of mystery emanated from it and flooded my curiosity.

I was the first customer into the small Chinese restaurant in the Soho backstreets, where I'd promised myself a portion of their crab in black bean sauce as an evening treat. Settled by the arrival of my bottled beer, I put the last vestiges of my Sunday papers on to the table and reached for the book.

How was it I hadn't connected the name 'Charlie Fox' with Carla Raposo? Probably because I was distracted at being recognised by a fan, and surprised to discover that an attractive 20-something woman seemed eager to spend time with me. More obviously; because you don't expect a one hundred and fifty years dead literary legend to appear at your table in The Ritz.

I flicked to the first chapter and was puzzled to find it written in Spanish. The title and introductory pages were in English. I cursed. My frustration seized instead on the illustration that sat above the chapter heading. It was a rough rectangle made up of different sized dots, a kind of modernist black and white Pointillism that coalesced into an image.

It was the head of a Seventeenth Century plague doctor in one of those long beaked masks that they filled with sweet-smelling flowers and herbs. The macabre visage was given extra context by the stubby church tower and crosses of graves and tombs, rendered in fainter dots behind the main image. It led me to guess the translation of the chapter heading: 'of Sickness...'

The author, Carla Raposo (or presumably Charlie Fox using an infamous pseudonym) had splashed out on a quality illustrator. I flicked through numerous pages of Spanish text to see what illustrated the next chapter. I was greeted by a chapter in German. The same size and style of illustration; this time of a cattle skull in the foreground and a desiccated landscape of withered crops and tortured trees. The chapter heading translated as: 'of Famine...'

Skipping through the German, I arrived at the third chapter, 'of Migration...' written in English. An anguished mask of a small African boy's face emerged from the pattern of dots, a pitiful bag of belongings disappearing over his shoulder. The little fellow looked as if he just staggered out of the previous chapter, leaving the parched land for a broken promise of something better.

The door to the restaurant chirped, opening at the push of a couple who were dressed for theatreland. The waiter scurried forward from some recess beyond the bar to welcome them. I closed the book and slipped it under the papers. Neither man or woman glanced in my direction and I felt a little foolish, but then my crab arrived and my hands were busy with implements and stickiness. There would be no more reading here.

Part Two – Author bio

In my hotel room, I switched on my laptop, intending to run through my presentation – a ritual, despite having delivered the talk five times in six weeks. Presentations evolve subtly between the pulse of the slides.