The Exception (27 page)

Anne-Lise has read all the other emails, so they leave them untouched.

Then they both drink some more whisky before going back to Anne-Lise’s desk. They keep the lights off, this time, ambling about in the dark, happy that the Centre is theirs for the time being.

Iben misjudges the layout of the rooms only once. She walks straight into the door between the Winter Garden and the library, forgetting that Malene has closed it. She falls and knocks a few magazine folders off a shelf, but doesn’t hurt herself. She gets up quickly. Some magazines have landed on the floor, but putting the light on seems too much hassle, so she picks up the ones nearby and puts them back any old how. Time enough to sort them out tomorrow.

Malene is back in the library. Iben hears her rummaging over by the readers’ desks. There is a huge crash.

Malene doesn’t laugh out loud, but her voice shakes a little. ‘Oops!’

Iben gets the drift at once. Malene has knocked over one of the very tall stacks of books that Anne-Lise has put on the floor while she sorts them.

Iben goes in to check the damage.

‘Look, it doesn’t matter. It kind of fell over, all by itself.’ Malene seems unfazed.

Iben gives another stack a brisk tap. ‘You mean, like this? Oh, look! It fell over too.’

Malene gives a third stack a push. ‘It’s like the domino effect!’

Iben is on her way through the Winter Garden to put the bottle of whisky back in Paul’s cupboard when she hears the whining of the lift. The sound lasts only a moment then stops. Someone gets out on their floor.

Iben rushes quietly back to the library. She tells Malene in a loud whisper: ‘Zigic! It’s Zigic!’

She walks towards Malene’s voice whispering in the dark.

‘No. No …’

She reaches out and touches Malene’s blouse.

‘No, it can’t be.’

They stand side by side, holding hands, their backs against the shelving on the far side of the open door to the Winter Garden.

Someone is fiddling with the locks on the front door.

Malene’s voice is low. ‘Are all the lights off?’

‘Not in the server room. Where Rasmus is.’

‘I wonder can he hear …?’

There are many hiding places in the maze of shelving at the back of the library, but Iben lacks the courage to go there. Once more, she has a fleeting impression of the Centre’s network of passages transforming into the torpedoed submarine as it sinks inexorably into the deep ocean trenches with their intolerable pressure.

The main door opens. The lights are switched on. How can they tell if it’s Zigic just by listening?

There are two people outside the door. One walks in shoes with hard soles towards Paul’s office; the other walks more quietly. The quiet one stops at Malene’s desk and rustles through her papers, looking for something.

Iben stands absolutely still, her heart hammering in her chest. The man in the Winter Garden is only a few metres away. She feels the sweat soaking through her top; a drop runs down her leg until it’s stopped by the tape that holds the knife in place.

A woman speaks: ‘You must’ve had something in mind when you drove her to Århus.’

It’s Helen’s voice, Paul’s wife. Iben relaxes.

Helen is a secondary-school teacher. Despite her faded looks, her features and her shock of blonde curls still hint at how very good-looking she once was. Her manner has changed as well and with time she’s become rather odd. She always excuses herself from Centre get-togethers, such as the Christmas lunch, and always at the last minute.

Paul’s voice comes from his office. ‘Just shut up! Stop harping on about it!’

Helen is shouting now. ‘It’s your fault! You make me like this, the way you keep avoiding my questions. It reminds me.’

‘What utter crap!’

Iben has never heard Paul speak this way – despairing, superior and angry, like someone telling a disabled child off for pestering them.

Helen’s voice is still very loud. Maybe they’ve been out and she has drunk too much. ‘But it’s true! You always avoid things – that’s what you do.’

‘That’s rubbish! I’m telling you the truth. End of story.’ Paul is closer now, somewhere in the Winter Garden. He must have picked up some papers he needs for tomorrow, since he’s due to be away from the Centre all day.

He speaks again, sounding resigned more than anything else: ‘If I really thought Malene was so gorgeous, I’d have lunch with these people once in a while, wouldn’t I?’ A bunch of papers lands on a desk top. ‘Which is what I ought to do. I’m their boss. But I can’t face having to listen to all their chit-chat. I don’t think of Malene in that way, believe me.’

Helen doesn’t say anything, but seems to be rolling about in one of the office chairs.

Silence.

When Paul speaks again, he uses his more familiar, if slightly too controlled, office voice.

‘Hey, come and look at this.’

‘What?’

‘Come and see the library. Anne-Lise has started to clear the readers’ desks. It’s going to look really good.’

‘I’m not in the mood.’

‘Oh, come on. It’s right next door.’

Paul walks towards the library door. Now he is only a few metres away.

Iben jumps when Helen shouts angrily: ‘I don’t care about your fucking readers’ desks. Can’t you get that into your thick head!’

Nothing more can be heard for a moment, except the drumming of the rain. Then Paul sighs deeply. Something makes a slapping noise.

The front door opens, the light is turned off, the door slams shut.

They’re gone.

Iben’s heart is still pounding in her chest. She stays where she is, pressed against the shelf.

Besides, Paul and Helen may well come back. Malene takes Iben’s hand and places it over her heart. It beats wildly and she too has been sweating.

Despite the dark, Iben knows that they’re smiling tensely at each other. They listen as the lift descends and stops.

They can’t hear anybody walk across the downstairs hallway.

They can’t hear the street door open and close and a car start in the rain.

Even so, after several minutes, they have to assume that Paul will not come back.

They’re still standing in the same place. Iben feels strange – drunk and queasy. But she didn’t drink that much, so it must be the fear that’s making her feel sick.

A little later Rasmus comes in. ‘Holy shit!’ he whispers to them.

They laugh from sheer relief.

‘Look, girls, I wouldn’t mind going home now.’

‘We’re with you!’

‘I turned the light off and stayed under the server desk all the time they were here. Now I have to restore everything on the server to the way it was before.’

They stay close to him as they leave the library and use the bicycle lights until they get into the server room, where the light is on. It is good to be able to see properly.

Rasmus fixes the computer while Iben and Malene look on distractedly. At one point, the emails from Tatiana and Lotta to Anne-Lise pop up on the screen.

‘Why did you delete them?’

Malene shrugs.

Rasmus reads the emails. ‘Hmm …’

He keys in the right command. ‘You have to remove them from the system entirely then.’

He has deleted Anne-Lise’s unread mail. And no one says any more about it.

The telephone wakes Iben the next morning. It is Malene and she has been crying. It doesn’t take Iben long to figure out what’s wrong. She knows that Malene has been taking painkillers recently but still hasn’t been able to get much sleep.

‘Iben, I have to go to the clinic.’

Iben sits up and pushes a pillow behind her back. ‘Oh, Malene, you poor thing. But you seemed so well yesterday?’

‘I don’t know what’s happened either. It doesn’t usually hit me like this.’

‘Is it very bad?’

‘Bloody awful. It came on during the night. It doesn’t usually happen that quickly. I don’t know … oh God, I can’t trust anything any more. And it hurts so much, even though I’ve taken my pills. I can barely think. My knee is huge and the skin feels tight right up my thigh. I’ve never heard of it coming on so quickly.’

‘Shall I come over?’

‘Could you bear it?’

‘Of course.’

‘It’s just that Rasmus left for the airport not long ago. I’ve called Out Patients and they’ll try to fit me in soon after nine.’

‘I’ll be with you in half an hour.’

Iben has gone with Malene to the rheumatological clinic several times before, when her friend was too ill to walk down the stairs by herself. In the hospital Iben would always stay by her side, while Malene lay on the paper-covered couch in the doctor’s examination room. She would hold her friend’s hand, while the doctor inserted a wide-bore needle into Malene’s kneejoint, draining off one syringe of liquid after another.

The last time, they both believed that there would be no more visits for a while, but the doctor had been worried.

‘We shouldn’t do this too often, you know. Recurrence of inflammatory episodes can erode the joint surfaces. I’ll prescribe something that should help.’

Malene was put on methotrexate. It helped a great deal. Until today, that is.

‘I can’t walk … I can barely stand. All I can do is sit here.’

Faintly, Iben hears Malene cough or sob, or maybe both. She must have put her hand over the receiver.

Then Malene speaks in a voice that is no longer familiar. ‘I can’t do anything. Because it hurts so bad. I can’t do anything at all.’

‘Malene, don’t try. Just wait. I’ll be with you soon.’

Cycling over to Malene’s she thinks, as she did over and over again during the night, that they shouldn’t have deleted the email from Tatiana. Regardless of what Anne-Lise has done to us, she tells herself, we must make sure that we’re not equally at fault. We mustn’t be tempted to do things that are simply wrong, or else we’ll be stooping to her level. And then we can’t claim that we’re simply fighting for what’s best for the Centre. Iben pulls out her mobile phone and dials DCGI to say that she’ll be in late and that Malene is ill.

Anne-Lise answers; Camilla isn’t in yet.

Iben tells her about Malene’s attack of arthritis.

‘That’s awful. Is it bad?’ If you didn’t know her, you wouldn’t have a clue that she hated Malene.

Iben overtakes a bicycle pulling a trailer.

‘Anne-Lise, one more thing. When I saw her at Louisiana, Lea mentioned that Tatiana is about to start on a major paper. I thought you’d be the right person to suggest books from our library for her research.’

‘I could do that. What’s the subject?’

‘Don’t know. But, listen, why don’t you phone her and ask if you can help?’

Anne-Lise pauses briefly before answering. ‘That’s so nice of you. I’ll do that. Thank you for the advice.’

‘Don’t thank me. I’m just helping a colleague.’

‘No, Iben, it’s different. I can’t tell you how pleased I am.’

Anne-Lise sounds unusually happy. Iben loses her concentration a little as she looks over the tops of the parked cars to try to find a gap in the traffic and slip across Østerbro Street.

She unlocks the door to Malene’s flat with the spare key she keeps for times like this. Malene is lying on the sofa. Before he left, Rasmus helped her into a loose-fitting tracksuit, made her some breakfast and helped her to go to the toilet. Rasmus is on his way to Glasgow with a group of other salesmen.

Malene is pale, but even without her make-up she still looks lovely.

‘Malene, what lousy luck.’

‘Umm.’

‘What have you taken?’

‘Two ibuprofen at five this morning. And then two paracetamols and then two more ibuprofen. I’m not allowed any more.’

‘And it got this bad in just one night?’

‘Yes, it did.’

Iben packs an overnight bag. Then, while Malene is still lying down, Iben gently slides on her shoes, lacing them loosely but tying the knots firmly. Iben puts Malene’s arm round her own neck, careful not to jolt her friend’s hand, and then, as effectively as she can, she helps her to stand up. When they reach the hall, Iben eases Malene into her coat.

On the landing, Iben lets Malene lean against the banister while she quickly grabs her jacket and picks up both of their bags. Iben can see that Malene’s eyes are full of pain, but also of something else – something that surely no one else, except Rasmus, has seen.

Making their way down the stairs is the hardest part, but
together they have mastered it. Iben tells the waiting taxi-driver how to help Malene into the cab.

Once they’re through Door 42 of the hospital, manoeuvring is easier, because here the corridors are wide and the lifts roomy. The Out Patients at the rheumatological clinic has no proper waiting room, only a selection of chairs and magazines placed in a cul-de-sac in the corridor. Iben helps Malene out of her coat, finds her a chair and another one for her leg, and then goes off to register her arrival.

Now it will take at most an hour until a doctor comes along to drain the fluid out of the inflamed knee joint. If Malene had the energy, she might have felt some relief. As it is, all she can do is endure it.

Iben sits down next to her. ‘Is there anything I can do for you?’

Malene has put one of her hands lightly on her swollen knee. She stares straight ahead. ‘No, Iben, nothing more. Thank you so much.’

‘You know that all you have to do is say …’

‘It’s OK. You can go off to work now, if you like.’

‘No way. I’ll stay here with you. But I need to go downstairs and make some calls. They won’t take long. Is there anything you’d like me to get you from the kiosk?’

Malene doesn’t move. ‘No, thanks.’

Iben walks with long, swift steps, aware of the ease with which she can move. Dear God, thank you, she thinks, and then feels ashamed.

But she has nothing to be ashamed of. After all, she is doing everything she can to help Malene. She has no reason whatever to feel bad.

And, she thinks, she was also being helpful to Anne-Lise.

The air is chilly and still damp after the night’s rain. A handful of people are wandering around between the parked cars, smoking or talking into their mobile phones. Iben phones Nisa at the Danish Institute for International Studies to ask for current
statistics on the ongoing genocide of Amazonian Indians. Nisa asks her how things are going at DCGI.