SNEAK PREVIEW - THE BELGRADE SCHOOL SHOOTINGS

 

To give readers an exclusive sneak preview of Neil Randall's latest novel The Belgrade School Shootings, Alien Buddha Press have made the opening chapters available on their blog. 

    Here's the opening scene, to whet your appetite:

ON THE THIRD of May 2024, my former partner Issak Lazarevic, an award-winning novelist and lecturer, shot dead ten of his students. Why, no one who knew him on a personal or professional level had any idea whatsoever. Issak was a popular and well-respected figure in Serbian society. His short- and long-form fictional works were considered the finest in the country’s contemporary literary cannon. His students absolutely idolised him – there was a four-year waiting list for his creative writing programme. Colleagues who spoke to Issak earlier that morning detected nothing out of the ordinary, in either his general demeanour or outward behaviour. In the staff room, not half an hour before he opened fire on a group of defenceless teenagers, he acted perfectly normally – or as normally as anyone so intense and preoccupied with his own thoughts typically acted. He exchanged good morning greetings with everyone he encountered, and even went so far as to confirm his attendance at a colleague’s retirement party. ‘Of course I’ll be there,’ he told Ivana Lubic, one of the secretaries. ‘Radovan is a fine man. I’ve always had the greatest respect for him. I’ll be sure to pop out at lunchtime and grab him a bottle of something special. Forty years in the profession is a huge achievement’.

     Hardly the words or sentiments of somebody carrying CZ-75 Shadow 2 and Ruger .22 LR variant pistols in his briefcase.

      In CCTV footage that would feature on news bulletins not just in Serbia but all across the world, Issak can clearly be seen walking across the faculty car park, with the same briefcase in his hand. If you didn’t know him personally, or weren’t aware of his literary pedigree, he would’ve appeared completely unassuming – medium height, middle-aged, unremarkably dressed (the same corduroy blazer, striped button-down shirt, and slacks combination he’d been wearing to lectures for years) – a face worthy of any crowd. In the immediate aftermath of the shootings, I remember replaying that footage time and again on my laptop, what were the last moments of the old Issak Lazarevic – a man I once genuinely loved with all my heart – before he became someone and -thing I would never have recognised: a maniac and monster rolled into one.

      And it’s curious how we can piece together a person’s movements like this – from the security camera images to the eyewitness accounts, to the moment armed police burst into the classroom and found him sat at his desk calmly reading from a well-thumbed copy of The Professional Mourner, what many consider his masterpiece, while surrounded by ten fresh corpses. But we can never tell what’s going on in their heads, or why they acted in the way they did, what motivated them to do something so despicable and so out of character.

       As for the actual murders, the crime scene specialists were able to ascertain a concrete and chilling chain of events. From the entry point of each bullet, the blood spatter, to the way the young bodies had crumpled to the classroom floor and the desks and chairs been upturned, it was evident that Issak had opened fire on the children without much, if any warning. This was corroborated to a certain extent by the lecturers and students in adjoining classrooms, as they heard no raised voices or anything out of the ordinary before the first shot rang out. Each student had been targeted twice, with the first bullet either killing them outright or incapacitating them. The second bullet, a headshot, was uncanny in its accuracy: direct through the middle of the forehead. When questioned following the attack, one of the ballistics experts made the following comments: ‘It was the kind of thing you’d see an experienced hunter do after they’d clipped their prey. What you’d probably call a “humane gesture”, putting the beast out of its misery as quickly and expediently as possible. That, or a mafiosi-style contract killing’.

      And it’s here that the case presented its first serious anomaly – of what would be many in the coming weeks, months, and beyond.

      Only a skilled, experienced marksman could’ve discharged shots of that accuracy in what was an incredibly short space of time. By all reckoning, barely a minute passed between the first reported gunshot and the last. But to the best of anybody’s knowledge – certainly mine, or any of Issak’s close friends, fellow writers, or colleagues at the institute – he’d never fired a gun before in his life. 

To read on, click on this link.