C's Crime

By Birte Leseberg

Birte Leseberg’s latest publication, C’s Crime, is a short novel for adults of all ages, set in the 1980s and whose message resonates no less today. 

C witnesses a shooting in a park, which sparks off the onset of her crisis. Conventional and routine-loving C, a lab assistant at a clinic, feels her seemingly safe world starting to crumble. A vibrant array of images and symbols, with a medley of sounds, smells and movements accompany the reader on C’s journey. What does the recurring vision of the super-enlarged human eye represent? Who is C? As elements of her shifting personality and perspective are portrayed, alongside her interaction with her inner and outside world, the reader experiences the development of C’s crisis and the part it plays in her crime. What is her crime? As she moves, and is transported, along a trajectory of dreams and flashbacks, and later to Paris in her mission to establish clarity, questions are raised. Anything seems possible and nothing is finite. But the journey ends ... with a revelation.

C’s Crime is a captivating and powerful read that will take you away from wherever you are ... Enjoy the journey.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Troubador Publishing Ltd
• Release date: May 14, 2021
• ISBN: 9781800469853

Book preview

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Copyright © 2021 Birte Leseberg

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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ISBN 9781800469853

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Contents

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

Part One

Two men, one shot, one victim, one witness. C had left the lab having completed the day’s routine tasks and had a sudden urge to stop off in the park nearby and observe the nature of winter. The ubiquitous gleaming and almost dazzling whiteness of the dense snow lent an air of serenity to the park. Sitting on an ornate, cast-iron bench, C watched the intricately patterned snowflakes dancing in front of her, and eyed others coming down to rest on her black, woollen winter coat. Darkness was not far off. Before long, the tall, green park lamps would light up. Then it would be time to leave. In one of the bends of the path ahead of her, C saw two warmly-clad figures walking slowly, side by side. One was wearing a fur hat and what looked like matching boots; the other was dressed in a longish, darkish single-breasted winter coat and was carrying something resembling a briefcase. The next minute C saw the man in the fur hat point something at the other man with the briefcase and she watched as the latter fell to the ground. She turned away, her head facing the park entrance and exit, thinking to herself that if she were to get up now she just might draw unwanted attention to herself. No, that would not have been her wish. But, on the other hand, if she continued to sit there, she might be suspected of having witnessed something terrible and have to bear the consequences. It seemed to C that the ‘criminal’ had disappeared from sight. C made a conscious decision to do the same.

C’s first stop was the cheese shop, which she had frequented twice a week for the past five years, always on Tuesdays and Fridays, unless something unexpected happened. She invariably bought 150 grams of Camembert and maybe one other type of cheese. C felt strangely relieved as she ambled up the narrow cobbled street; the familiar shop fronts provided her with a sort of comfort and she was thankful that she was now able to breathe with more ease. As she gently pushed open the dark green, glass-panelled shop door, the smell of the interior seemed somewhat alien to her. She was greeted by the shop assistant in her usual courteous but terse manner. C asked for 100 grams of Chèvre, which was promptly weighed and efficiently wrapped. The shop assistant asked her if there might be anything else she wanted. C shook her head politely and thanked the assistant. As C pulled back the door to leave, a feeling of giddiness overcame her. However, once she was out in the street she seemed to feel better. She would now return to her cheap but reasonably comfortable studio flat and spend a quiet evening in front of the television. C was feeling a little weary after her experience in the park.

At the front door, C was fumbling with her key in the brass lock. As she did so, she felt she was being watched. The greater her urge became to get inside her abode, the more difficult she found it to get the key to turn the lock. She told herself, in her rational way, to check that she had put the correct key in the lock. On discovering that she had in fact mistaken the flat door key for the front door key, C cursed herself for being so stupid.

It was a blessing for her to be back within her familiar four walls. As she unpacked her bag, a gnawing sensation occurred from within the confines of her stomach. C thought she must be hungry and stuffed a piece of bread into her mouth. She fetched the remainder of the bottle of red wine she had started the previous night in the company of Barbara - her colleague at the lab - and sat down at her small white kitchen table to eat. In front of her was a fresh, brown, wholemeal loaf on a wooden board and the 100 grams of crumbly Chèvre sitting in its loosened deli wrapping. C rose to get a cheese knife and proceeded to cut off a mouth-size wedge. But at that moment a feeling of nausea, previously unknown to her, arose within her. She stabbed the knife into the white chalky round, attributing the nausea sensation to sheer hunger.

That Wednesday night, C was unable to sleep - for the first time in years as it seemed to her - because the plaguing, menacing ‘cat-killers’ from her childhood would not leave her alone. She was eight years old at the time of the incident, living in a town house in a cul-de-sac in suburbia. She was walking slowly past the neatly-kept front gardens and the freshly-polished cars in their snowflake-tarmacked drives towards the end-house on her right. Sean and his three other companions were out in the garden in front of that particular house, whose worn orange walls had seen brighter days, as had the gutters in their precarious state of suspension and disrepair. Crouched on the crazy paving, the ferocious four had a distinct air of mischief and complicity about them. C thought that since they had seen her she might as well walk right up to them and investigate. The four hastily, and with great urgency, tried to conceal something they were encircling ... but it was too late. C had already caught sight of what was going on. Sean and his entourage were kneeling around a pink plastic baby bath. On the surface of the water C got a glimpse of the Persian cat from next door, lying there, motionless. At the same time, she felt all four pairs of eyes focused on her awaiting a reaction of some sort. C said nothing. They all whispered to her in unison, ‘Don’t tell!’ She felt an intense urge to escape from this scene of unexpected torture, and turned away to walk back in the direction of her own end-house at the beginning of the cul-de-sac.

At teatime that same day, C was not hungry although it was her favourite: baked beans and sausages. Her mother asked her if she was feeling a bit under the weather. C replied wearily that it was just a slight headache. Consequently, her mother packed her off to bed somewhat earlier than usual, but instead of getting some extra sleep, C was being kept awake, being tormented by the vision of the cat-killers and their threatening warning, ’Don’t tell!’ She had a desperate desire to obliterate the despicable scene, to annihilate the penetrating voices reverberating in her mind. Then she longed to tell someone what she had witnessed, but only a second later the same longing ceded to her wish to be alone with what she had seen.

The next morning, C had decided to tell her best friend Alison after all. C’s confidante listened intently and vowed not to tell anyone. Unfortunately for C - as she viewed it in retrospect - during the course of their school day, Alison had made up her mind to approach the cat-killers in person. Having got home from school, C was drinking her usual glass of Ribena and munching on a Bourbon biscuit when the doorbell rang. ‘It’s Alison for you, darling,’ called C’s mother.

On their way out to play C fetched her cherry red scooter, her pride and joy and a recent birthday present. She kept it safe and clean in the garage where, as she had worked out, it would come to no harm. Alison then suggested going to play with Sean, at which point C felt most uncomfortable and had to get reassurance from Alison that she wouldn’t tell anyone what C had told her in strictest confidence: ‘You won’t tell, Alison, will you? You did promise not to tell.’ ‘No, of course I won’t tell,’ replied Alison. The nearer they got to Sean’s end-house, the more nervous C became. Sean and his three conspirators were congregating in the front garden, in front of the dilapidated, five-foot-high, wooden gate to the back garden. ‘Hi C, hi Alison!’ they called out simultaneously. C managed to emit a nervous, ‘Hello,’ whereas Alison shouted at the top of her voice, ‘Hi you cat-killers!’ C started shaking and clung to her scooter for dear life. Seeing the boys’ horrified faces and fearing the worst, she attempted to make a quick escape on her scooter. At that precise moment, Sean gave C a violent push, stared at her with his mean blue eyes, his ruddy cheeks now burning with rage, grabbed the ‘traitor’s’ scooter and together with his accomplices, who had knowingly come to their chief’s aid, threw the shiny, cherry red scooter over the gate. C heard it land with a resounding crash on the paving slabs of the back garden. As she stood in the front garden sobbing about the damage which no doubt had been done to her prized possession, the boys all turned to face her. Standing in their neat row, they observed her menacingly, and with immense satisfaction in his voice, Sean confirmed resolutely, ‘We said, Don’t tell! and you went and told. And now you’ve paid for it.’

***

For the first time in her working life C had overslept. She had not heard the seven o’ clock alarm call. It was 7.45 when she awoke of her own accord furious that such a mishap could befall her. She had, throughout her time as a laboratory assistant at the clinic, never once been late for anything. What would her colleagues think, and her boss? They might think she had had an accident on her way to work. C decided to ring in and put their minds at ease.

Her colleagues thought she was rather on edge that morning, muttering such phrases as, ‘It’s really not like you to be in a bad mood. What’s up?’ Her friend, Barbara, asked her quite sympathetically why she was not being herself today. Had anybody upset her ... C shrugged it off, by saying that nobody had any reason to be concerned about her well-being, and whatever it was would soon pass. Barbara asked her if she wanted to go to the canteen with her for lunch that day - they did this every Thursday - but C declined politely with the excuse that she had a bit of a stomach upset.

C went to her usual café instead. She proceeded towards the familiar wooden table with its red and white checked table cloth, her table, picking up a communal copy of The Times on her way. Having sat down, she ordered a cup of coffee and a piece of red cherry cheesecake. She glanced at the headlines without actually reading them. She was finding it exceedingly difficult to concentrate today. The table she was sitting at normally made her feel comfortable and relaxed, but today she found it virtually impossible to find any comfort whatsoever in this establishment, for all its apparent tranquillity. She felt her face turning crimson like