The Exception
‘It’s a murder mystery full of mental and physical cruelty … It reminded me of the novels of Patricia Highsmith, and even more of Lionel Shriver’s We Need to Talk About Kevin, which asked the same question – how innate is evil? … A horribly vivid and fiendishly clever novel’
Independent
‘From the quiet, understated early chapters the story develops into a tense struggle for survival … it is a powerful yet disquieting study of the psychology of evil, and a tense thriller’
Sunday Telegraph
‘The Exception is an interesting novel with quite unexpected pace and a great deal to tell us about the psychological games we play with other people and with ourselves’
Times Literary Supplement
‘Plenty of books promise to change readers’ lives. Few succeed. Christian Jungersen’s The Exception is truly an exception. Read it and you will never look at your work colleagues in quite the same way again’
Economist
‘The Exception has been a bestseller across Europe, and it’s easy to see why. The plot deals with complex ideas in a way that is brilliantly accessible. It deserves far more interest from British readers and reviewers than this branch of the genre currently receives. The book should establish its author as one of the rising stars of European crime writing’
Shotsmag
‘A literary page-turner that has already been met with much praise’
The Book Pl@ce
‘Wise and disturbing, Jungersen’s grippingly intimate dissection of betrayal, paranoia and human atrocity heralds him as a brave and gifted observer of the psyche – and a masterful storyteller. But beware: after reading The Exception, you may never look at your colleagues in quite the same way again’
Liz Jensen
‘The Exception is a rare book in the Danish literary landscape. Honest social interest, scary in a thrillingly realistic way and quite frankly clever … A very convincing novel. Quite a few highly educated women will no doubt feel exposed when reading the book – myself included. Christian Jungersen is a man who knows the female psyche. Phew – you’re left shaking’
Christa Leve Poulsen, Børsen
‘Christian Jungersen lands in the middle of a hot current debate on the psychology of evil with his thrilling novel of four “humanistic” women bullying each other. With his devilishly clever storytelling technique, Jungersen lets us feel sympathy for one and then the other of these complex women’
John Chr. Jørgensen, Ekstra Bladet
‘Excellent … A fantastic mix of thriller and a sophisticated and complicated plot on top of a bone-dry, pertinent, realistic description of life in Denmark … Written with impressive certainty. Normally you can sometimes lose interest in a novel halfway through when they are longer than 500 pages. Here is “the Exception” to prove the rule’
Michael Eigtved, BT
‘Christian Jungersen describes evil and its conditions brilliantly in his novel, which must be seen as the biggest read of the year … How unfortunate though, that you cannot read it again for the first time!’
Anne Sophia Hermansen, Fyens Stiftstidende
‘A heavyweight in every way … Keeps the reader captured from start to finish. Opposite Peter Høeg’s Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow and Leif Davidsen’s The Serbian Dane, Jungersen’s characters are real people of flesh and blood and not just fictional characters. With a few but precise details, Christian Jungersen brings out his characters as living and breathing persons … One of the greatest and most thrilling reads of the season. If I were a film producer, I would snap up the rights NOW!’
Jesper Uhrup Jensen, Euroman
Christian Jungersen’s first novel, Krat (The Thicket), won the Danish Best First Novel of the Year Award. The Exception, his second novel, won the Danish Golden Laurels prize, and has been a huge bestseller across Europe. He lives in Dublin.
the exception
Christian Jungersen
Translated from the Danish
by Anna Paterson
A WEIDENFELD & NICOLSON EBOOK
First published in Great Britain in 2006 by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. This ebook first published in 2010 by Orion Books.
Copyright © Christian Jungersen 2004
English translation copyright © Anna Paterson 2006
First published, in different form, under the title Undtagelsen by Gyldendal, Copenhagen 2004 Published by arrangement with Leonhardt & Høier Literary Agency, Copenhagen.
The right of Christian Jungersen to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the copyright, designs and patents act 1988.
The right of Anna Paterson to be identified as the translator of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the copyright, designs and patents act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978 0 2978 5709 9
This ebook produced by Jouve, France
Orion Books
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper St Martin’s Lane
London WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
www.orionbooks.co.uk
Contents
Cover
Title
Copyright
Praise
Iben
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Malene
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Anne-Lise
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Malene
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Iben
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Anne-Lise
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Iben
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Malene
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Camilla
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Iben
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Iben Malene Anne-Lise Camilla
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Iben
1
‘Don’t they ever think about anything except killing each other?’ Roberto asks. Normally he would never say something so harsh.
The truck with the four aid workers and two of the hostage-takers on the tailgate has been stopped for an hour or more. Burnt-out
cars block the road ahead, but it ought to be possible to reverse and outflank them by driving between the small, flimsy shacks on either side.
‘What are we waiting for? Why they don’t drive on through the crowd?’
Roberto’s English accent is usually perfect, but now, for the first time, you can hear that he is Italian. He is struggling for breath. Sweat pours down his cheeks and into the corners of his mouth.
The slum surrounds them. It smells and looks like a filthy cattle pen. The car stands on a mud surface, still ridged with tracks made after the last rains, now baked as hard as stoneware by the sun. The Nubians have constructed their greyish-brown huts from a framework of torn-off branches spread with cow dung. Dense clusters of huts are scattered all over the dusty plain.
Roberto, Iben’s immediate boss, looks at his fellow hostages. ‘Why can’t they at least pull over into the shade?’ He falls silent and lifts his hand very slowly towards the lower rim of his sunglasses.
One of the hostage-takers turns his head away from watching the locals to stare at Roberto and shakes his sharpened, half-metre-long panga. It is enough to make Roberto lower his arm with the same measured slowness.
Iben sighs. Drops of sweat have collected in her ears and everything sounds muffled, a bit like the whirring of a fan.
Rubbish, mostly rotting green items mixed with human excrement, has piled up against the wall of a nearby cow-dung hut. The sloping, metre-high mound gives off the unmistakable stench of slum living.
The youngest of their captors intones the Holy Name of Jesus.
‘Oh glorious Name of Jesus, gracious Name, Name of love and power! Through You, sins are forgiven, enemies are vanquished, the sick …’
Iben looks up at him. He is very different from the child soldiers she wrote about back home in Copenhagen. It’s easy to spot that he is new to all this and caving in under the pressure. Until now he’s been high on some junk, but he’s coming down and terror is tearing him apart. He stands there, his eyes fixed on the sea of people that surrounds the car just a short distance away; a crowd that is growing and becoming better armed with every passing minute.
Tears are running down the boy’s cheeks. He clutches his scratched, black machine gun with one hand while his other hand rubs the cross that hangs from a chain around his neck outside his red-and-blue ‘I Love Hong Kong’ T-shirt.
The boy must have been a member of an English-language church, because he has stopped using his native Dhuluo, and instead is babbling in English, prayers and long quotes from the Bible, in solemn tones, as if he were reading a Latin mass: ‘Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life. And I will dwell in the house of the Lord for the length of all my days …’
It’s autumn back home in Copenhagen, but apart from the season changing, everything has stayed the same. People’s homes look the way they always did. Iben’s friends wear their usual clothes and talk about the same things.
Iben has started work again. Three months have passed since she and the others were taken hostage and held prisoner in a small African hut somewhere near Nairobi. She remembers how important home had seemed to all of them. She remembers the diarrhoea, the armed guards, the heat and the fear that dominated their lives.
Now a voice inside her insists that it was not true, not real. Her experiences in Kenya resist being made part of her quiet, orderly life at home. She can’t be that woman lying on the mud floor with a machine-gun nozzle pressed to her temple. She remembers it in a haze, as if it were a scene in some distant experimental film.
This evening Iben has come to see her best friend, Malene. They are planning to go to a party later, given by an old friend from their university days.
Iben mixes them a large Mojito each. She waits for Malene to pick something to wear. Another track of the Afro-funk CD with Fela Kuti starts up. After one more swallow, she can see the bottom of her glass.
Malene emerges to look at herself in the mirror. ‘Why do I always seem to end up wearing something less exciting than all the outfits I’ve tried on at home?’
She scrutinises herself in a black, almost see-through dress, which would have been right for New Year’s Eve but is wrong for a Friday-night get-together hosted by a woman who lives in thick sweaters.
‘I guess we just go to boring parties.’
Malene is already on her way back to the bedroom to find something less flashy.
Iben calls out after her: ‘And you can bet tonight will be really quiet. At … Sophie’s!’ She pauses. Just long enough to suggest that saying ‘Sophie’ says it all.
In a loud, silly voice, Malene responds: ‘Oh yes … at Sophie’s.’
They both laugh.
Iben sips her drink while she looks over the bookshelves as she has done so many times before. When she arrives somewhere new she always likes to check out the books as soon as she can. At parties she discreetly scans the titles and authors’ names, filtering out the music and distant chatter.
She pulls out a heavy volume, a collection of anthropological articles. Clutching it in her arms, she sways in time to one of the slower tracks. Her drink is strong enough to create a blissfully ticklish sensation.
She holds her cold glass, presses it against her chest and gently waltzes with the book while she reads about the initiation ritual to adulthood for Xingu Indian girls. They are made to stay in windowless huts, sometimes for as long as three years, and emerge into the sunlight plump and pale, with volumes of long, brittle hair. Only then does the tribe accept them as true women.
Also on the bookshelf is the tape that Malene’s partner, Rasmus, recorded of the television programmes on which Iben appeared when she returned from Kenya. It sits there on the shelf in front of her.
Nibbling on a cracker, she puts the tape into the machine and presses Play without bothering to turn the music down. As the images emerge on the screen, she takes a seat.
Now and then she laughs as she observes the small puppet-Iben, sitting there in front of the cameras of TV2 News and TV Report, pretending to be so wise and serious – as she explains how the Danish Centre for Genocide Information, where she works as an information officer, lent her to an aid organisation based in Kenya. There is a short sequence filmed in a Nairobi slum before the camera records the arrival of the freed hostages at the American embassy for their first press conference. She studies these images. Every time she sees them, they seem just as fresh and unfamiliar.
Malene comes back, trailing a faint scent of perfume and wearing a flimsy, chocolate-coloured dress. Dresses suit her. It’s easy to understand what men see in her. With her thick chestnut hair and lightly tanned skin, she looks positively appetising, like a great smooth, glowing sweet.
Malene realises at once which tape Iben is watching and gives her friend a little hug before sitting down next to her on the sofa.
Iben turns down the music. Roberto, still in Nairobi, is addressing a journalist: ‘In captivity it was Iben who kept telling us that we must talk to each other about what was happening, repeating the words over and over until they were devoid of meaning, or as near as we possibly …’
He smiles, but looks worn. They were all examined by doctors and psychologists, but Roberto took longer than anyone else before he was ready to go home.
‘Iben explained that there were a lot of studies demonstrating how beneficial this could be in preventing post-traumatic stress …’
TV Report cuts to Iben speaking in a Copenhagen studio. ‘If you want to prevent post-traumatic stress disorder, it’s crucial to start debriefing as soon as possible. We had no idea how long we were going to be held. It could have been months, which was why it was a good idea to start trying to structure our responses to what we were experiencing during captivity …’
Safe in Malene’s flat, Iben groans and reaches for her drink. ‘I come across as … totally unbearable.’
‘You’re not the tiniest bit unbearable. The point is, you knew about this and most people don’t.’
Malene puts down her drink, smiles and touches Iben’s hand. ‘Couldn’t it be that they were simply fascinated by the way you managed to stay in control inside that little cow-dung hideout? You were heroic. No one knows what goes on inside the mind of a hero and you certainly weren’t used to being one.’
Iben can’t think of anything to say. They laugh.
Iben nods at Malene’s dress. ‘You know that you can’t turn up to Sophie’s in that?’
‘Of course I do.’
The next recordings are Iben’s appearances on Good Morning, Denmark and on Deadline. On screen she looks like somebody quite different from the old stay-at-home Iben. Normally her shoulder-length blonde hair is thick but without the sheen that the sun brings out in most blondes. The African light, however, has been strong enough to bleach her hair. Since then, she has had her hairdresser add highlights to maintain her sun-drenched appearance.
She had also wanted to hang on to her tan, which, in the interviews, was almost as good as Malene’s. And she felt that the usual rings under her eyes were too visible for someone not yet thirty, so she had followed Malene’s lead. She went off to a tanning salon, but it didn’t take her long to realise that frying inside a noisy machine was not for her. Now her skin is so pale and transparent that the half-moon shadows under each eye look violet.
At the time, her story suited the news media down to the ground. Whatever Iben said was edited until it fitted in with the narrative they were after: an idealistic young Danish woman, confronting the big, bad world outside and proving herself a heroine. She was the only one who had managed to escape from the hostage-takers. Afterwards she had left her safe hiding place to run back to the captives in an attempt to make the brutal policemen change sides in the middle of a brawl.