CHAPTER 1: KING’S CROSS, MAY 2016..................
BAXTER FFILTHE WOKE LIBERATA THAT afternoon, tickling her spine as he lovingly carried her off the shelf, where she had been lying snug between a thick, beefy, leather-clad gentleman full of Haitian voodoo incantations on one side and on the other – an elderly esoteric codex of amulets and talismans.
If you’ve ever watched one of those American reality TV programmes about hoarding, where unfortunate mentally ill people with a bizarre tendency to keep everything they buy till their houses look like scrapping yards crossed with hamster burrows, then you have some idea what Liberata’s home looked like. Labyrinthine shelves upon shelves full of books; books that mysteriously shift position overnight; shelves that seem to grow bigger or smal
