The Exception Page 33

  Today, smiling broadly and with the folder stuck under his arm, Ole moves towards Paul and Gunnar as they come out of the library.

  ‘Hello, Gunnar. Good to know that we’ve got something here you can use for Development.’

  Gunnar, who is a head taller than both the other men, looks radiant. The board membership is recognition he should have had long ago.

  ‘Hi, Ole. Of course there’s plenty here. But today I’m just looking the place over. Learning a bit more before accepting the offer.’ He turns to Paul and smiles. ‘I’m pretty likely to say yes, you know!’

  Ole seems to be at a loss, so Gunnar continues: ‘Sorry, the offer to join your board … to replace Frederik Thorsteinsson.’

  Finally Ole speaks. ‘I see. Well, that’s good news.’ He leaves it at that.

  There is a short pause in the conversation, and suddenly everyone who knows Ole realises that he had no idea about Paul’s offer to Gunnar. Ole doesn’t confront Paul, allowing him to retain some dignity. Instead he says that he must hurry off.

  Maybe Gunnar guesses the truth as well. The joy is wiped from his face, but Paul keeps his cool. ‘That was good. Now you’ve had a chance to say hello to our chairman as well. This office is always busy – lots of unpredictable traffic.’ He leads the way back to his office. ‘But you will find that out soon enough, once you’ve got to know us all.’

  The men leave. Silence falls in the Winter Garden. Anne-Lise desperately wants to phone Henrik but the open door makes it impossible. Sometimes she wishes she could simply close the damned thing again, so that she could be herself for a few moments. No doubt they’d all complain if she did.

  She can’t concentrate on the Afghanistan reports. Instead she opens newly arrived boxes from the International Criminal Tribunal at The Hague and starts sorting the documents. She listens to the talk outside.

  Iben is speaking: ‘Gunnar won’t have anything to do with the DCGI now. He won’t want to be mixed up in Paul’s games.’

  Malene doesn’t seem to agree. ‘I think he’ll say yes to the board membership.’ After a brief pause, she adds an explanation: ‘I mean, they must be discussing it right now.’

  ‘He won’t do it!’

  For once – maybe for the first time – Anne-Lise hears Iben becoming overwrought. She is becoming more and more shrill. Her voice has risen to a near-scream.

  ‘You can’t think that about him!’

  Malene sounds different, controlled and rather patronising. ‘Iben, I don’t know how long he’s been waiting for a chance like this. You know he needs to get back in the running.’

  ‘But not at the expense of someone else, and in such an underhand way. He’s not like that!’

  ‘You have to take into account that Gunnar has lived in Africa, where corruption is the order of the day.’

  ‘So what? I’ve lived in Africa too.’

  At this point they fall silent. This is their first open disagreement. It seems to have materialised out of nowhere. Maybe an outsider wouldn’t see how furious they are with each other, but for Anne-Lise their fight is a revelation. She’s gratified to see them finally direct their meanness at each other.

  Somewhere in passing Malene manages to stick in a reference to her illness. Iben does not respond.

  A little later, Malene’s enquiry is almost gentle. ‘You know so much about him? Must be magic. I mean, you only spoke to him once, right? At Sophie’s?’

  Iben has regained control and now sounds self-assured. ‘We did have a very good talk that evening. Absolutely. Like Rasmus says, some of the best conversations are with people you meet only once.’

  Malene deflates a little. ‘I see. Now you have to drag Rasmus into this.’

  ‘Why, shouldn’t I?’

  After a few more minutes of this Iben decamps to the kitchen to cool down.

  Anne-Lise stacks magazines on a shelf. She has a view of the Winter Garden from where she is standing.

  Iben is back at her desk when at last the door to Paul’s office opens. Gunnar steps out, and he isn’t smiling. He walks quickly towards the front door and, as he opens it, turns round to face them all and politely says, ‘Goodbye.’

  Had it not been for Anne-Lise’s feeling of exhaustion, his angry frown would have made her utterly delighted.

  33

  Soon after the front door slams behind Gunnar, Paul comes out of his office.

  Iben asks him at once: ‘How did it go?’

  ‘Oh, not so good. Such fucking bad luck that Ole turned up just then.’ Paul looks irritated. ‘Well, anyway, let’s see how it pans out. Christ, all we’re trying to do is save this Centre. That’s all.’

  He backs into his office and is about to close the door behind him. ‘I need to phone Ole.’

  They all exchange looks. So apparently Paul isn’t feeling bad about anything nor worried about how Ole will react. What does that mean in terms of the Centre’s future?

  Anne-Lise looks around the Winter Garden, taking in every familiar and tedious detail: the decorous orderliness of the Post-it notes on Camilla’s desk, the little plastic troll perched on Malene’s desk, the broken spring on Iben’s lamp.

  In a few months everything might be different.

  Ole can’t have answered his phone, because Paul joins them again a minute later. He is holding a croissant, presumably left over from Gunnar’s visit, and settles in the spare chair next to Malene’s desk.

  ‘Well, anyway, the show must go on. Listen to this. Yesterday I had lunch with a friend of mine. He is friendly with someone on the Conservative Party’s foreign-policy working committee. That’s how I know that in two months’ time everyone who’s anyone in Brussels will be debating the EU’s relationship with Turkey, especially in the light of Turkey’s repudiation of the Armenian genocide.’

  Does Paul intend to make them work as if nothing has happened?

  Anne-Lise looks around. Aren’t the others finding Paul’s manner hard to take as well? She sees that everyone is pretending that it’s all quite normal.

  ‘It follows that the Armenians will be on the parliamentary agenda of the Danish Parliament. Both our own media and the EU’s will be falling over each other to run the story. That is why we must be the source for all the most vital and up-to-date information on the subject. In print and on the Internet. In English as well as Danish.’

  He turns to Iben. ‘This should be our top priority. Drop Chechnya for now. An issue packed with information on Turkey should be ready to go to the printers in a month’s time. We must present the best data, the best background briefings and interviews – in Europe!’ When Paul is fired up about something, his enthusiasm is impressive.

  ‘Our website must offer the best set of links. When you get to work, keep thinking: What’s hidden in this region that no one else has thought of? Think history! We need to be ten times smarter than the press.’

  He relaxes for a moment. ‘Over to you, Anne-Lise. Any books we should know about in order to write this up? Any magazines that have already featured the subject?’

  This is new. Not Paul, nor any of the others, has ever turned to her in this way, she thinks. This is it. I’ve waited a whole year and now it’s happened. At last they’re letting me in.

  She starts to speak. ‘There’s definitely …’

  Then she dries up.

  ‘I’m sure …’ She can’t think of anything else to say.

  The others glance knowingly at each other. It’s totally infuriating. But it’s her own fault. She is the one who isn’t behaving professionally.

  Paul turns to Iben. ‘Iben, do you have any ideas?’

  Of course she has. Iben smiles. There is no hint in her manner that only fifteen minutes ago Ole proved Paul to be deceitful.

  ‘If we approach the foreign freelance journalists, the guys on the spot, we’ll get information well beyond our usual range. And there is no problem about compiling an overview of the responses from each of the larger EU states to genocides in Turkey and
elsewhere.’

  Anne-Lise doesn’t take in the rest of what she says, because she is preoccupied by the image of Iben running into the library, holding an empty bottle of rum and hiding it in the cupboard. It is beyond Anne-Lise’s understanding how this cool-headed, persuasive academic is the same manipulative, childish person.

  Iben is reaching the end of her suggestions: ‘ …would give our clients a better chance of informing themselves not only about the subject itself, but also about the basis for joint European decision making.’

  Paul swallows the last of his croissant as he listens to Iben. ‘Great! Well done, Iben! Anne-Lise, we need you to be in on this too.’

  Somewhere inside Anne-Lise a fuse has blown. The fantasy of Iben feeling the war criminal’s knife against her throat in the harsh light of the stairway plays over and over. It is only through a haze that Anne-Lise sees Paul wiping crumbs off his mouth. His lips keep moving, talking to her.

  ‘It’s important that you don’t just trace lots of articles and review papers, but that you also work with Iben to select the most useful ones. You two will have to work as a team. What do you think?’

  Iben’s clawed hand grips the war criminal’s leather jacket. She tugs violently at it. He doesn’t react at all. His movements are so assured, so experienced. The big man has done this many times before.

  Anne-Lise shakes herself. Is this what Yngve warned me against? she wonders. Am I burnt out? Is that why I can’t concentrate?

  She looks quickly around the circle of her colleagues. Paul has seen it. Now he has to admit that the others were right all along. I’m incompetent. I’ll be fired and they will have succeeded.

  Her head clears enough to tune back in as Paul is finishing his speech.

  ‘The themed issue of Genocide News will also serve to legitimise our existence in the eyes of the politicians. The thing is to be on the offensive. If we can produce the best printed and website info on this subject, it will be harder to close us down. So – Iben, Anne-Lise – next month you’re working for the Centre’s survival as well.’

  Anne-Lise’s head is spinning. Has he asked me to do something else? Yes, he must have. I’ve no idea what it is. Is it true that I’m impossible to work with? Yes, of course it’s true.

  After the meeting, Anne-Lise has a headache.

  She stops in the library doorway and puts on her winter coat and scarf. The painkillers seem to have had no effect. Her eyes narrow in the Winter Garden’s bright fluorescent light. Staring down at the floor, she speaks quietly. ‘I need to go home. I’m not feeling well. That’s why I couldn’t concentrate earlier on.’

  Paul is there too. Camilla smiles at Anne-Lise and makes sure that he sees it. She says in a loud voice that she had no idea that Anne-Lise wasn’t focused, she seemed as attentive as ever.

  Outside the December weather is cold and grey. Anne-Lise manages to drive along the motorway towards Holte without any problems, but after turning onto Vase Road she almost misses seeing a cyclist in the dim light. She slams on the brakes seconds before hitting his rear mudguard. Without looking round, she swerves the car until it comes to a halt perpendicular to the road. The car behind her does a grinding emergency stop. There’s a small shudder as it hits her own car.

  The driver leaps out. Together with the cyclist, they shout at her and bang their hands on her car. The driver says that his front bumper is dented and demands her telephone number and insurance details. Anne-Lise obliges.

  She manages to park off the road. She and the driver exchange phone numbers. He asks her if she’s in a bad way, implying that she’s either drunk or high. She tells him that she has a headache. Once he has gone, she sits for a while in her car with her head in her hands.

  Eventually she decides that driving is too risky. It is less than a kilometre to her house, so she can leave the car where it is and walk the rest of the way.

  Anne-Lise walks along a road lined with villas, close to a hedge whose long, bare branches form a prickly canopy over her head. The pain is so bad that she can’t bear looking up.

  A woman’s voice calls out. ‘Brigitte!’

  After hearing the name called a couple more times, Anne-Lise glances around. There’s only a woman she doesn’t recognise, so Anne-Lise starts to walk again; but the woman catches up with her.

  ‘I knew it was you! Camilla’s friend! So nice to see you! Do you live near here?’

  Anne-Lise cannot think what she is talking about. The woman notices her blank stare. ‘You don’t remember me, do you? The choir. The Copenhagen Postal Choir.’

  ‘Oh!’

  Anne-Lise feels dizzy. Her headache makes it hard to think. Even so, she knows that if this woman discovers that ‘Brigitte’ is in fact Anne-Lise, Camilla will find out. And then her colleagues will not hesitate to stick the label ‘mentally ill’ on Anne-Lise for good.

  The woman is dressed expensively in a blue, woollen coat that is almost full-length. The shade of her lipstick is far too bright for her age. Anne-Lise can’t help but feel that this woman seems confused and a little disturbed.

  ‘Brigitte, do you live round here too? We do need a choir here instead of in town.’

  Anne-Lise is only a hundred metres or so from her home. ‘I’m afraid I don’t. I’m just visiting … an old friend of mine.’

  ‘Not Camilla? Or has she moved out here?’ The woman obviously doesn’t remember how Anne-Lise’s evening at choir practice had ended up.

  ‘No. Not Camilla.’ Anne-Lise moves out from under the hedge. She knows that she doesn’t have the stamina to continue the lies for much longer.

  The woman repeats herself. ‘I live nearby. And we do need a choir here.’

  Anne-Lise has no idea what she means. ‘Yes, we do.’

  ‘Perhaps you live in the Holte area?’

  ‘No. No, I don’t.’

  The woman wipes her mouth, as if something were stuck there. ‘I was Camilla’s friend once.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I was. I stopped seeing her when she started that relationship with him … you know, that ghastly man.’

  ‘Yes, I know. What was his name again?’

  ‘Dragan.’

  ‘That’s it. Dragan.’

  This woman won’t stop talking. ‘Odd name. But he was a refugee. From Serbia, wasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Serbia.’ Anne-Lise forces herself to look at the woman. ‘It was Dragan …? Dragan …?’

  ‘Dragan Jelisic, wasn’t it?’

  ‘That’s it. Yes, Dragan Jelisic. Yes, yes. I thought he was really hard to get on with.’

  Anne-Lise excuses herself abruptly and hurries home.

  The next best thing to being able to speak to Henrik would be to talk to no one for the rest of the day. She walks up the driveway, unlocks the door and goes to lie down on the black sofa, with little hope of the migraine going away soon.

  She thinks about Camilla and what it might mean that she once went out with a Serbian refugee and has kept it secret. But the pain in her head makes it impossible to think.

  Only the revenge fantasies about Malene and Iben are alive in her mind, as if the images lead a life of their own. A young man in a red tracksuit hauls Malene’s body into the undergrowth. The cracking sounds as branches break when her body is pushed down onto the woodland floor. Iben’s pale neck, the echoing acoustics of the stairway, the veins that become visible in her neck and under the thin skin beneath her eyes. And in the shadow of the trees, the terror in Malene’s eyes when she understands that she is being punished for having ruined another human being’s life.

  Anne-Lise is determined to think about something that makes her feel like a good person, one who is normal and healthy.

  The blood is flowing from Malene’s body and soaks into the ground.

  She can’t tell how much time has passed when she discovers that her head has cleared a little. She is still lying on the sofa, but now she feels able to phone Henrik to ask if he could pick up the children today.<
br />
  Without moving the rest of her body, Anne-Lise reaches out and takes the phone off the hook.

  She can hear voices. Has Henrik come home while she was resting? Since her car isn’t parked outside he wouldn’t know that she is home already.

  It is Henrik. At first she can’t grasp what he’s talking about. The other voice belongs to Nils, Henrik’s brother. She wants to say something, but has an awkward moment trying to turn the phone around.

  ‘… as if I haven’t told her that a hundred times already. To tell you the truth, it’s all been very tough going.’

  Nils sounds sympathetic. ‘Henrik, I believe you.’

  A pause, but Anne-Lise is so baffled that she can’t think of anything to say. What are they talking about?

  ‘But have you thought of speaking to her doctor?’ Nils adds.

  ‘We saw him together. And we agreed afterwards to do what he advised. It went well. But she’s refusing to see him again.’

  Nils sounds more serious than Anne-Lise had ever thought possible.

  ‘Henrik, you can always phone me. Remember that. And you can always drop by to talk to us, any time. Stay the night if you like.’

  Henrik’s voice is dull. ‘Well. Thanks. But there are the children.’

  Everything filters slowly through her headache.

  She screams.

  She runs.

  She cannot endure the sitting room now, but doesn’t know where she wants to be. She’s in the hall, but can’t stand it there either.

  Henrik’s footsteps are on the floor upstairs.

  Anne-Lise runs around as a rush of thoughts overwhelms her.

  Why should I have believed that they could bear to live with me? I’m bursting with evil thoughts. All the time! How I’ve kidded myself! They’ll have to move out. No, I’ll have to move. They can have the house. I’ll go away.

  Henrik catches up with her in the kitchen. She has collapsed. He shouts: ‘I didn’t say anything bad about you! I didn’t!’

  But now the rapist in the red tracksuit leaps out from between the tall rushes. He strikes me. He gets out his small black razor. He holds it against my neck and forces me into the bushes.