The Picture

When Greed Turns Deadly

by Roger Bray.

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A warehouse in Japan used as an emergency shelter in the aftermath of the 2011 Tsunami. A distraught, young Japanese woman in dishevelled clothes sits on a box, holding her infant daughter. Ben, a US rescue volunteer, kneels in front of her offering comfort. They hug, the baby between them. The moment turns into an hour as the woman sobs into his shoulder; mourning the loss of her husband, her home, the life she knew. A picture is taken, capturing the moment. It becomes a symbol; of help freely given and of the hope of the survivors. The faces in the picture cannot be recognised, and that is how Ben likes it. No celebrity, thanks not required.

But others believe that being identified as the person in the picture is their path to fame and fortune. Ben stands, unknowingly, in their way, but nothing a contract killing cannot fix.

A Word from the Author

The basic idea for The Picture came to me one day when I was standing outside on a grey overcast day. I wasn’t thinking of anything in particular when the clouds parted and a beam of sunlight lit up a few square yards of my courtyard. I began to consider how an event like that could be used to frame a moment for a photograph, then about why would a photograph taken in those circumstances be important. I came up with the basic premise of the eponymous picture within a few days. The tsunami in Japan was still fairly recent and seemed an obvious candidate for the setting.

It was a long way from there to come up with a plot in which The Picture could be used for good and bad. It was yet another story about a certain vacuous, Armenian descended family which gave me the idea of celebrity without merit and some people’s need for fame at any cost without having any talent or discernable positive attributes which gave me the model for the adversary, Vince.

Looking back it all made perfect sense but I cannot say the plot grew easily it was more about building it around the initial Picture as I wrote.

(Roger Bray, April 2018)