Forthcoming Atrocities

4. The Galician Raposo

Part One – Translation

A new hotel bedroom – arrived at via a black cab, two tube trains and an Uber. I'd no idea if my amateur evasion techniques had thrown anyone off the scent.

I'd planned a couple of next steps in the Uber. Step one was to at least get the chapter heads translated. In my book on Raposo I'd included a guess at what areas she had covered in her books and I wanted to see if Charlie Fox's book had just ripped off my hypothesis.

I took some carefully edited phone pics of the chapter headings. Then I called Rio, one of my research students. I was only on a part-time contract at the university these days but I enjoyed teaching my modules; inter-disciplinary courses that combined literature and English history. Ryeo Jung-Hwa answered to 'Rio' and was a post graduate, studying the history of London through literary writing and historical texts. He was probably Samuel Pepys's biggest fan.

Like a lot of my students, he was also keen to polish his CV with some extra-curricular research. He'd helped me with my last book, but I chose him now because he was discrete and a more of a linguist than I'd ever be.

'Hi Roman, you have something on?'

'Well, it's only a mess of translation work,' then I played my ace card, 'possibly to do with Raposo.'

'And you knew I'd be cheap?'

'If it is related to Raposo, we're likely to find ourselves in the eye of a conspiracy shit storm,' I said.

'If it has an eye, it's a shit hurricane.'

'Pedant,' I said. 'I'm happy to keep you involved and credit you as ever if this develops, Rio, but it may come to nothing.'

'I'm in. You only use that bullshit line when you know I won't refuse. I think it's time we went back to Raposo; especially after the talk you gave this lunchtime.'

'You heard about that already?'

'YouTube pings me every time you do anything stupid. Don't worry though, there is genuinely zero danger of you going viral anytime soon.'

'Rio, this may be one of those doing something stupid occasions. If it is I'll swear you were never involved.'

'I said, I'm in. Where do I sign?'

'There's a thirty page non-disclosure agreement that I be bothered with, so for now just imagine lots of long onerous clauses and be discrete.'

'It's my watch word, Roman.'

'That's why you get all these great jobs. I'm texting you through pics of ten chapter titles in different languages, not all of which I recognise. I want the titles translated and maybe the first couple of sentences too.'

'OK, I'll get on it as soon as.'

Part Two – In Galicia

The second step was to study the graphical illustrations in the book more closely. I'd been prompted by something Klaus had said, 'Pictures-within-pictures.' It was a key element of my research into Raposo's books. When I decided the Raposo mystery would make a sexy subject for a low-rent literary history book, my problem was a lack of biographical material and, crucially, any historical information about their books' content. How could you judge a historical forecaster when you didn't know what their prognostications were and whether any could be argued to have panned out.

My idea, just as shamelessly mercenary as Klaus had suggested, was to investigate the cultural contemporaries of both Raposos. Fellow scholars, writers and artists whose company the pair might have sought out in their locality during the time of their writing – i.e. just before their deaths.