The Exception (61 page)

It’s only thirty metres from the bus stop to the entrance of Malene’s building. The man in the denim outfit is posted outside to keep guard.

Iben has her keys ready, but the man in the pilot’s jacket wants to show off to his boss. He has already slipped the lock and opened the door to Malene’s flat by the time Iben and Zigic reach the landing.

What if Malene is in there? Perhaps she didn’t want to let Iben in earlier. Iben would like to call out a warning to give Malene a chance to run down the back stairs, but there’s no way. Besides, if she’s at home, they will kill Iben at once and spare Malene.

Iben holds her breath, waiting for Malene’s voice. What if she shouts out, ‘Iben! You can’t just let yourself in! You should’ve handed the keys back ages ago!’ Zigic would demand to see their IDs and the next moment he’d get rid of Iben. He wouldn’t use a gun, that’s for sure. Something quiet: a plastic fork, a piece of string, his bare hands.

Pilot Jacket goes in first. Zigic gives Iben a push and follows.

The men don’t inspect the flat with their pistols drawn, the
way they always do in American films. Instead they wander from room to room, completely at ease but examining everything thoroughly, while keeping an expert eye out for a possible attack. Their movements are silent, but coordinated, and within a minute or two, their inspection is complete. They have checked all cupboards, corners and recesses, switched on the necessary lights and drawn the curtains. It’s as if they had practised house searches from early childhood, Iben thinks, and now they do them as easily as telling the time or tying their shoelaces.

Luckily the flat is empty, but Malene might just have popped down to the kiosk or the corner shop. Perhaps she’ll show up in a few minutes?

Malene’s bulletin board hangs on the wall in the hallway. Iben walks on the other side of Zigic and talks to him so he’ll look away from it towards her. Four photos of Iben used to be pinned on the board, but when she discreetly glances over Zigic’s shoulder, the pictures of her aren’t there any more. Instead there are photos of Malene with Rasmus, which she had originally removed when Rasmus left her.

In the sitting room Zigic turns to her. ‘First, prove to me that you have the disk. Then we’ll talk about what you want.’

‘What makes you think it’s here? I’m not that stupid. I’ve kept copies elsewhere. I need to have the money first and deliver it. And then you get your disk.’

‘I understand that. How much do you want?’

‘I’ve been told to say one million euros.’

‘That’s not a problem.’

Iben would dearly like to say, ‘Good, let’s go get the cash now.’ Better not.

Zigic is smiling in a way that, in another man, might be charming, almost fresh.

‘Come on now, Malene! Show me. I know you have it here.’

‘That’s not true.’

‘Of course you have a copy on this computer.’

Iben doesn’t answer. She tries to look confident.

Zigic is starting to lose patience. ‘Please turn on your computer.’

The ‘let’s do a deal’ game is over. But then, the whole suggestion of a deal was never realistic – anyone who has seen the file must die, and she knows it.

The computer boots up. Pilot Jacket tells Iben to type in the password.

Iben knows that Malene’s password used to be ‘lofa’, for ‘lots of future ahead’, but she might have changed it.

Neither of the men says anything. She has to try something.

She keys in the letters. This has to work. She only has one chance.

Windows opens. Iben suppresses a sigh of relief. Pilot Jacket shoves her out of the way, clicks on Find and enters ‘Zigic’.

While they’re waiting for the computer, Zigic steers Iben over to the sofa and puts his hand on her shoulder.

‘Why don’t you sit down? Stay here on the sofa. Read a magazine or something. Meanwhile, we’ll have a look around the flat.’

For some reason, something collapses inside her. She can’t hold back her tears any longer and starts to cry without making a sound.

He stands there. What does he want? He said something about reading a magazine. There is a small pile of
Eurowoman
on the coffee table. She picks up a copy and opens it up, holding it in front of her face. Finally he moves away.

He’s over by Malene’s bookshelf now. She hears him take out a few books, leaf through them and toss them to the floor. Iben peers at him from behind the magazine. He raises his arm and his command is like a blow: ‘Read!’

Iben turns her eyes to the pages in front of her, but the text is blurring. Is there some truth in what he has told her? Why else would he risk coming to Denmark?

It’s Malene’s fault if I die now, Iben thinks. It’s Malene who’s been in touch with Zigic, not Camilla. And, despite what the
others think, I’m not the one who’s been paranoid. In fact, I’m the only one who has faced up to reality.

There’s something else: this means that it wasn’t me sending those emails after all. I did remember writing them, at least I thought I did because it all seemed so real, so vivid and convincing, but that was just a fantasy. Now it’s all gone. But then was it Malene who sent them? Ever since I came back from Kenya she’s been full of resentment towards me. Why shouldn’t it have been her?

Zigic has finished going through the contents of the shelf. He found a box of home-made CDs, which he puts down next to Pilot Jacket. If Iben heard correctly, Zigic calls Pilot Jacket ‘Nenad’. She has the impression that Nenad is uneasy, presumably because he cannot find the file.

Zigic disappears into the bedroom and starts rummaging. She’s alone with Nenad, whose back is turned. Why aren’t they taking any precautions to stop her from trying to escape? They haven’t even searched her; they don’t know that she has a knife hidden away. Maybe they don’t give a damn because they are convinced of their own power?

Her common sense is fading. She desperately wants to believe that her executioners are going to let her live – that, after all, a deal will really be possible. But if her work at the DCGI has taught her anything, it is that genocide perpetrators always give their victims a glimmer of hope that they’ll survive if they cooperate and don’t provoke anger. This illusion allows the perpetrators to peacefully take the victims’ weapons and slowly oppress them until they are incapable of resistance. In the end their execution is as easy and inevitable as swatting a fly.

Iben urges herself to accept the truth of her situation. There is no hope. After all, the inmates in the Warsaw ghetto and the Sobibor camp revolted only when they faced up to the fact they had nothing to lose.

Nenad still sits facing in the other direction.

She gets up, slowly and soundlessly. Then she takes a step past the coffee table.

Nenad’s voice is loud. ‘No!’

Zigic suddenly appears at the door. Iben practically falls down onto the sofa and quickly raises the magazine to her face. Blindly, she waits for what will happen next, but when she peeps out from behind the pages, Zigic has returned to the bedroom. She stares at an article about handbags. How did they know? Did Nenad see her image reflected in something shiny on Malene’s desk? Was Zigic merely passing by?

A reel is playing in her head showing the landscape of Bosnia, the camps and buildings, the corpses excavated from mass graves – piles of corpses with cracked skulls and cut-off fingers; close-ups of the better-preserved bodies; the black marks of the ties that held straining torture victims to their chairs.

She has spent two years trying to understand men like the ones now in Malene’s flat. Is the smell of evil around them different from the smell of ordinary people? All she can get a whiff of is a mixture of aftershave and deodorant – expensive aftershave and deodorant. Zigic has enough money.

Zigic returns to the sitting room and walks around testing Malene’s chairs, lifting them and shaking them. He slams several of the chairs against the floor, selects one, places it in the middle of the floor and then turns to Iben. ‘Do you have any string?’

‘There might be some in the fourth drawer down next to the kitchen sink.’ Iben has no intention of telling him that there’s some in Malene’s desk.

When he goes to fetch it, she’ll be alone with Nenad for a few seconds, her last chance before they tie her down and start torturing her. She has to run for the front door. Losing them in the hallway and the stairwell is going to be nearly impossible, but she forces herself to remember Warsaw. And Sobibor.

Her whole body tenses. She hides her face behind the magazine. They mustn’t notice. Now she leans forward. Her heels against the floor.

Only Zigic does not go to the kitchen. Nenad goes instead. ‘I’ll fix some coffee as well.’

Zigic and Iben listen to Nenad opening and closing drawers in the kitchen.

‘There’s nothing here!’

Zigic suddenly remembers seeing a ball of string. He shuffles through the desk contents scattered on the floor and finds it under the radiator. He walks to the chair and turns to Iben.

‘Malene, come over here. We’ve got to leave you alone for a moment. We won’t be long. But I’m afraid I will have to tie you to a chair.’

It doesn’t matter whether he’s lying or not, and he knows it. What can she do except hope that her common sense, all her instincts, are mistaken?

While Zigic ties her arms behind her back, Nenad pops his head around the kitchen door. The scene doesn’t bother him at all – it must be routine. ‘Hey, where’s your coffee?’

Iben finds it hard to speak, her vocal cords seem coated with thick glue. ‘In the jar … by the window sill.’

Nenad seems to have another idea. He looks pleased with himself and cocks an eyebrow. ‘You have any cakes or biscuits?’

‘No.’

Zigic tightens the string. It cuts into her wrists and hurts badly – nothing compared to the pain to come. Soon he’ll discover her knife.

‘You know, there are some biscuits. Only three left. He’s probably eating them all right now.’

Zigic seems to find that funny. He yanks hard at the string to make sure she can’t move and wanders off to the kitchen.

Iben kicks her right leg up under the chair as far as it can go, reaches for the knife and grabs it. It’s something she has practised many times. She nicks herself as she jabs the tip of the knife under the string but suddenly her arms are free and she can stand up.

At lightning speed she slips soundlessly into the hallway.
She’s able to reach the door without being discovered.

Denim Suit, however, is guarding the door downstairs. The moment she turns the dead bolt to the flat they’ll hear it in the kitchen. A couple of deep breaths. Someone in the kitchen throws something; she hears them run.

She turns the lock and almost flies down Malene’s stairwell, her feet barely touching the steps. They’re only a few metres behind her. As she throws herself around a turn in the staircase, she hits the handrail and almost tumbles into an endless fall. She grabs the handrail with her bloodied hands to stop her body from crashing down the steps and the knife clatters to the ground. This near-fall speeds her descent, but she has to stoop to pick up her knife.

The men behind her call out in Serbian to their guard below.

He shouts back: ‘OK!’

She’s already on the first-floor landing when he comes into view, walking slowly up towards her. He’s a big man.

She remembers exactly what the yard looked like.

If, like Rasmus, you’re on your way down the stairs and shoot out through the window, your body will take off to the right and become skewered on the fence posts, but if you’re on your way up, the angle of the fall should be different. It should be possible to miss the wide steel railings and land on the tarmac, clear of the fence.

Iben takes a few more steps down. Denim Suit is getting closer. She turns around, facing up towards the landing. With her hands, she grasps the rails on both sides of the stairs and pushes off with her arms and legs for maximum speed. Her body flies upward and forward. Back on the landing she doesn’t turn the corner but puts one foot on the guardrail and throws herself at the old stained-glass panes. Protecting her face with her arms against the shards of many-coloured glass, she falls less awkwardly than she did that night in Anne-Lise’s garden. She is on her feet at once, unaware of how badly she is cut. She runs along the wall to the entrance leading to the communal bicycle storage in the
basement. She hears no steps. The far end leads to the street behind Malene’s house.

She keeps running. The air is much colder now. Normally, taking in lungfuls of icy air would hurt, but it doesn’t. She is becoming conscious of the pain in her hands and feet.

At last, she reaches Gunnar’s street.

She throws herself into his arms. Her nose is running and her wrist is bleeding, making large, dark stains on his shirt.

Gunnar carries her inside. ‘Iben, what on earth …?’

He dries her face gently with his shirt and asks where the blood is coming from. She is crying so much he cannot make sense of what she’s trying to say.

He examines her hands and starts picking fragments of glass from her blouse.

‘Iben, listen. You need to get out of your blouse and take a bath so we can see where your wounds are …’

‘I want to lie down.’

‘Of course. You will. But first we need to find out where you’re bleeding.’

‘
I want to lie down!
’

‘Yes, yes. Of course.’ He helps her to the sofa.

The light is too strong. She closes her eyes, but the brightness won’t go away. It seems to make dancing patterns against her lids. She asks for a cushion to cover her eyes. With her face partly hidden, she tries to pull herself together.

‘We have to get hold of Malene and warn her. It is very important.’

She tries to explain what happened, but hears how garbled she sounds.

‘Iben, let’s phone the police right now.’

Iben doesn’t reply.

‘Are you absolutely sure that no one saw you coming here?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Yes, we definitely have to phone the police.’

‘Wait. Just a little.’

‘But Iben, it’s essential …’