Christian Jungersen - The Exception

But would an experienced mass murderer take the trouble to travel to Denmark? Of course he might. The air fare wouldn’t be much for a professional soldier. And wouldn’t an experienced soldier position himself right there, on the other side of the door to the yard? He’d have a direct escape route into the street, making it easier to cover his tracks. Maybe he intended to make her dash downstairs and open that door.

She listens. Not a sound.

Then a click as the stairwell light switches itself off. All too quickly as usual. It’s very dark now. But her eyes don’t have time to grow used to the darkness. Above her on the stairs someone switches the light on again.

She waits for a second, badly wanting to believe that she is safe — that no one is in her flat; and that whoever is on the top landing isn’t coming after her.

The sound of heavy male boots on the stairs. Before she has even turned the lock the footsteps have reached the next landing. No time to think. If someone is waiting for her outside, she’ll have to take him by surprise.

Above her the man has passed two more landings. A deep breath. Iben yanks the door open and, in the same movement, starts sprinting across the pavement.

She scrambles over bicycles and dustbins, and over the fence into the neighbouring yard. One more yard to go before she finds an unlocked gate. She runs out into a street that is not her own.

After about a hundred metres she stops to look behind her. There are people, but none of them seems to be in pursuit. Here she will be harder to spot.

Whom has she written about recently?

Barzan Azis, a small dentist with a large moustache, who lives in a penthouse flat and has a history of personally having taken the lives of at least 120 Kurds and many Iraqi journalists and intellectuals. Aziz strangled his victims with a steel wire, except in some cases, when he hammered nails into their skulls.

Romulus Tokay, an ex-member of the Romanian secret police, was put in an orphanage at the age of eighteen months. He escaped after killing one of his teachers and is currently employed in Colombia, where his usual practice has been to hang people upside-down in trees and light fires under their heads.

And what about George Bokan? He was raised in the United States and played football in college, but went back to Serbia in the early 1990s to help fight the war. Bokan trained snipers, one hundred men at a time, in the skill of killing innocent civilians from vantage points in the hills around Sarajevo.

There are so many more. Iben has summarised the witness statements and other evidence of the activities of mass murderers such as Najo Silvano, Bertem Ygar, William Hamye and others, who between them have killed hundreds of thousands of their fellow men. It is all on the website, as are her condemnations of a whole array of military units, regimes and power-mad dictators.

Have they been hunched over their PCs in Serbia, the Philippines, Iraq, Turkey — wherever — studying her accounts of their crimes?

She looks around in all directions as she walks towards Nørrebro Street. The autumn air is cutting through her thin blouse and the sweat is beginning to dry on her skin, adding to the chill. She overtakes a pale girl with a ring through her nose, military boots and pink highlights.

Iben dials 112 — emergency services — on her mobile and tries to explain quickly to the woman at the other end what has happened.

‘Hold on, please. You say that someone sent you an email and now you’ve run out into the street?’

‘Yes … no. Not exactly. It was a death threat. The sender is probably a war criminal. Maybe from Iraq!’

The woman’s voice is dry, tight: ‘This is an emergency number. It is reserved for serious calls. I have to ask you to get off the line. Tomorrow you can phone your local police station — if you still feel this matter is important, that is.’

Iben tries to explain that it’s her job to write about international war criminals and that the threat is not just a practical joke played by an ex-lover, or whatever the woman is imagining. But she is not persuaded and replies abruptly: ‘You’re blocking an important emergency line. That’s an offence and you may be fined. I can see your number in front of me. If you don’t end this call, we’ll have to fine you.’

Iben is about to reply when the woman hangs up.

Is she right? Iben asks herself. Is this an attack of hysteria? It would be good to think so. Then she could simply turn round and walk back home.

She’s walking quickly now, keeping an eye out for suspicious-looking men. The trouble is that they are everywhere. Small gangs of swarthy men are driving up and down Nørrebro Street in souped-up cars and hanging out in the many Middle Eastern take-aways. Men in black leather jackets walk towards her, follow behind her.

Who knows how a war criminal reacts when he first reads the description of himself on a website? Is it a blow to his sense of honour? Might not his claim for asylum in some European country or his pending court case be affected? Some of these men would slit her throat as easily as they’d swat a fly. She has seen photos of massacred people and listened to survivors speaking at conferences. These men do not murder because they hate: even being vaguely irritated is enough.

But why should a killer take the trouble to go after her? Iben is so insignificant. Or is she? Her articles and abstracts describe events involving many hundreds of thousands of men, all experienced killers and mentally unstable. If just one of them is ‘irritated’ enough, her fate is probably sealed.

There are no police patrol cars around and by the time she’s reached Nørrebro Circus she decides to phone the emergency number once more. She’ll try to explain things better this time and insist on talking to somebody who’s prepared to listen.

At that moment her mobile rings. It’s Malene. ‘Iben! I’ve tried to phone you at home. Where are you?’

‘At Nørrebro Circus. Without a coat. I’m freezing.’ Iben begins to describe what has happened, but doesn’t get far before Malene interrupts her.

‘I’ve had a threatening email too! It says I’m evil and must die. I only just opened it!’

Iben can’t help shouting. ‘You mustn’t stay in your flat!’

Malene sounds confused. ‘I can’t stay here? I don’t know … I didn’t take it that seriously. Should I have?’

Iben hesitates. It’s a comfort that someone else has been threatened too. Everyone in the Centre might have received one of these emails and perhaps dozens of people in similar organisations abroad.

‘Malene, I was so sure there was someone in my flat. It could’ve been … I mean, if there was nobody in your place … Anyway, they could just be trying to scare us. If they really wanted to kill somebody, it’d be silly to send an email first.’

‘That’s what I thought.’

Iben is perfectly aware of what her friend Grith, a trained psychologist, would say about her reaction: it is a response conditioned by her experiences in Kenya, one of exaggerated watchfulness — ‘hyper-alertness’ — which is the lasting effect of previous exposure to danger.

A thought suddenly strikes Malene: ‘Iben. Do you think your reaction is because of Nairobi and all that?’

‘I suppose …’

‘Listen, find a taxi and come on over. I’ll wait for you in the street and pay for the cab.’

‘But if these people break into your flat, they’ll find both of us.’

‘Iben, I don’t think so. Look, it won’t happen.’

Iben doesn’t answer, so Malene hesitates. ‘OK. What do you suggest then?’

‘What about meeting in a café?’

‘But we’ll have to go back to our own places afterwards.’