Christian Jungersen - The Exception

Anne-Lise is feeling content. Her thoughts constantly return to how much better things are going to be once she has new colleagues.

They return to the sofa and pick up Iben’s statement. The most obvious thing about it is that she is well in the black, to the tune of 183,000 kroner. There was a credit of 120,000 three months ago. They guess it was compensation from the organisation she worked for in Kenya. The rest seems to be the result of saving steadily over several months.

Even though Henrik has already spent some time that afternoon skimming the statements, he is too much of a career banker not to become irritated once more at Iben’s financial adviser. ‘This is stupid! Someone should tell her to pay off her student loans. And if she doesn’t want to do that, she should invest her cash in Premium Bonds or a savings account.’

This evening, Anne-Lise is in a good enough mood to find her husband’s banking instincts funny. She doesn’t think Iben’s fiscal choices are that significant. ‘Won’t Iben be taxed on the Kenya compensation? Maybe she keeps the cash accessible because she doesn’t know how much she’ll have to pay.’

‘But the bank staff should have told her. It’s unacceptable. Her adviser is giving us all a bad name. What’s he doing? She clearly hasn’t had any advice whatsoever.’

Just like Camilla, Iben is paid less than Anne-Lise, but the difference is smaller. They are all paid according to public-service scales and, even though Iben and Malene earn good money in recognition of their educational qualifications, Anne-Lise is ahead owing to her seniority.

Iben is paying off her university loans in instalments. She buys her food mainly at the Nørrebro branch of upmarket Føtex and her books at Athenaeum, the university booksellers. She is a member of both Greenpeace and Amnesty International and subscribes to Information and The Week . Apart from these debits, she hardly ever spends any money. She has paid seven café bills at a place called the Metro Bar and once bought something unspecified from the kiosk on Roskilde Station. There is just one irregularity: a string of transfers to accounts in the USA, UK and Germany.

‘Can you work out who is receiving the money?’ Anne-Lise asks.

‘Not from the statement, but there are ways. Leave it with me.’

In the last three months alone she has made thirteen transfers to seven separate accounts.

‘She buys books about genocide and psychiatry on the Internet, but there is no obvious reason why she would use seven different booksellers. So what can it be?’

They’re both aware that foreign anonymiser sites charge their users. The person who sent the threatening emails would have had to pay fees. Henrik and Anne-Lise don’t need to remind each other of this. ‘If it’s not that, then what else could she have been buying on the Internet that often?’

A smile flits over Henrik’s face. ‘I get sent spam all the time trying to sell me pornography. Perhaps she goes in for that kind of thing?’

Anne-Lise giggles at the thought of earnest Iben surfing the net in search of erotic sites. It’s so out of character.

‘But it could be payments for access to things like chat rooms or dating sites.’

Anne-Lise associates looking for company on the Internet with loneliness. Anne-Lise only sees Iben with Malene, the two of them behaving like a couple of teenage girls. She has never thought of either of them as lonely. But what’s it like for Iben outside work? She doesn’t have a man. She rarely speaks of other female friends.

Henrik and Anne-Lise move on to Malene’s statement. She has overdraft protection, but exceeds the limit just about every other month. It goes without saying that she is a member of Amnesty International and Greenpeace, subscribes to Information and The Week , and is paying off her student loans. She draws heavily on her interest-free account at the very chic furniture store Illums and has made several payments for designer clothes, mostly bought in the small, fashionable shops clustered along the lanes off Strøget. Malene rarely uses supermarkets, presumably because she favours delis and ethnic greengrocers. She has paid restaurant bills a few times, and visited a nightclub once. That evening she withdrew cash four times.

Malene’s debits are understandable enough, but one of her sources of income is mysterious. Now and then, three to four thousand kroner are transferred into her account from an unspecified private source — just the back-up she needs to cover her spending. Anne-Lise takes note.

‘ Ha! ’

Henrik puts down his cordial. ‘What?’

‘Come on! Isn’t it obvious?’

Henrik hesitates. ‘Anne-Lise, I checked these transfers. They are made from an account in Kolding that belongs to a woman called Jytte Jensen.’

‘Oh. I see.’ Anne-Lise knows it’s unreasonable to feel disappointed.

‘Jytte Jensen is probably Malene’s mother. I must say, I had the impression that Malene’s mother was just a secretary who retired early and wasn’t well off. Malene says she grew up poor.’

‘So what was it you thought was so obvious just now?’

‘It’s … I don’t know.’ She’s reluctant to say it, but Henrik insists.

‘I thought Malene … was seeing someone. A rich man. And he paid her for it.’

Henrik dislikes Malene too, but thinks Anne-Lise has gone a bit overboard. He leans back on the sofa, irritated. ‘Anne-Lise, really … just because she dresses the way she does?’

Anne-Lise reaches out to him. ‘No, no. Of course not. And the money comes from her mother. So there.’ She strokes his upper arm. ‘That is, from her impoverished mother, who is always broke …’

A few days after the business with Malene’s medicine, a policeman phones the Centre to let them know that there has been a new development in the email case.

Camilla, who takes the call, switches it through to Paul at once and then tells the others. Iben and Malene get up from their desks and walk over to stand by Paul’s door. Anne-Lise joins them from the library and they wait anxiously.

When Paul finally emerges, he tells them that the CIA has been casting around Chicago’s large Serbian community and has arrested two former private soldiers who have a record of war crimes. Interrogated, one of the men admitted to having sent emails to DCGI.

Paul is deluged with questions.

‘Did he do it on his own?’

‘Are they keeping him in prison?’

‘Did he really want to kill us?’

‘Does he know Mirko Zigic?’

‘Why send the threats just to us? He didn’t write to other people, did he?’

Paul says that he doesn’t have any answers. He has told them everything he knows. There are powerful forces at work out there, chasing Mirko Zigic and his associates. The three brief emails to DCGI have somehow taken on international importance.

Malene phones the police herself, but gets no more information. Iben meanwhile makes a call to the US embassy, but they don’t have anything to add either. The women then ring various institutions in the USA and, finally, their contacts in other genocide centres worldwide. Despite their efforts, they get nowhere.

While the others get more and more worked up, Anne-Lise withdraws to the library and sits looking at the photo of Henrik and the children on her desk. The emails never caused her to feel afraid. But she simply doesn’t believe the alleged statement by that war criminal. Without a doubt, his ‘confession’ was the result of a fair amount of pressure. In her own mind, she’s certain that whoever wrote the emails had inside knowledge of the Centre and, as far as she’s concerned, nothing has changed.