Christian Jungersen - The Exception

During this last sentence his tone became a little livelier. When Iben listened for the last time, she thought it sounded as if he was faintly amused.

‘Did you notice there’s a poetry reading by Inger Christensen this Thursday? She’ll read some of her early work. Would you like to go? Anyway, you know my number.’

Iben can’t call Gunnar now. She comforts herself by switching off the machine so that new messages won’t record over his voice.

It is barely a week after the funeral when Iben and Malene set out for IKEA to look for a new dining table. Even though it’s a weekday and they have left DCGI early, the huge furniture halls are crowded with happy-looking young couples, talking loudly about their future. Many of the women are pregnant and just as many of the men are carrying babies in carriers fastened around their bellies.

Malene doesn’t cry, but she is very tense. She selects one of the cheapest tables. It will be some time before she can afford good furniture again. The trouble is that she doesn’t really feel like living with any of the cheap IKEA tables. Iben feels Malene probably doesn’t want any of the more expensive tables either.

She pats a small birch-wood table for 789 kroner. ‘Once the flaps are up it’ll look a little like your old one.’

Malene isn’t paying attention.

Iben can’t help thinking: What will this table look like when it falls from the fourth floor? Will the corner crack, or the legs come off? Will the top split?

The model rooms along the back wall are not only furnished but also warmly, invitingly lit and carefully decorated with posters in striking colours. There are books on the shelves and plastic models of food ready to be eaten. But the cosy Swedish style extends only about three metres up. Overhead is a span of concrete beams some fifteen metres long. Iben looks up at the colossal air-conditioning units suspended by thin cables from the industrial ceiling. She wonders how much one of these units might weigh. If one of them fell, would it crush a person underneath? — bend him double?

While Iben thinks, she holds on to another flimsy-looking table in white Formica and steel tubing.

It occurs to her to think: If someone were after us, we’d be easy targets now, walking close together, our attention on things like table tops, designs, heights and widths.

Malene’s voice breaks into her thoughts: ‘You know, regardless of whether Anne-Lise poured the oil on the floor or not, he would still be alive if it wasn’t for her.’

Iben knows what’s coming next. It’s not the first time she’s heard it.

‘He’d never have wanted to move in the first place, if I hadn’t felt so worn out all the time. You know, by Anne-Lise’s … Rasmus always wanted a low-maintenance woman with no problems. I knew that perfectly well. But instead I … it was me who ruined our life together. But it was Anne-Lise’s fault. I was always finished after another eight-hour day with her. And I had to explain to Rasmus. I had to. Didn’t I?’

Iben has heard all this before and has stopped listening.

‘But if Anne-Lise hadn’t started her warfare … it makes me so angry. It’s weird. You’ve never experienced anger like this, Iben; you don’t know what it’s like. And there’s nothing I can do. Nothing at all.’

When Malene returned to the office for the first time after Rasmus’s death, Anne-Lise expressed her sympathy. She seemed so convincing, when she opened her eyes wide and said, ‘How dreadful it must be for you. It’s the worst thing that could happen. The thing we all fear the most.’

Paul had told Malene to take as much time off as she needed, but every day off was another day for Anne-Lise to dig her claws into the Centre’s users. And if the merger happens, Anne-Lise’s close association with them — and therefore with the board — will matter when the time comes to decide who should be fired.

The work on the Turkey issue carries on, although Iben and Anne-Lise’s collaboration is of course under strain. Still, Iben has to admit that Anne-Lise isn’t completely useless when it comes to newspaper research. She seems to know not to interfere with Iben’s writing and editing. Also it’s surprisingly helpful when she uses her librarian’s skill to check data and chase articles and author names in the databases of foreign libraries. During the last couple of weeks Iben has come to realise that it was rash of her to jump to the conclusion that it was Anne-Lise who murdered Rasmus. So much might have happened on the staircase that day.

Malene and Iben give up on finding the right dining table. In the IKEA restaurant they buy the traditional Swedish dish of meatballs in cream sauce, with cranberry jam on the side. They buy themselves glasses of wine as well. While Iben eats, Malene again expands on what a wonderful man Rasmus was and how miserably wrong her own behaviour was. She doesn’t touch her food.

‘It’s like holding a blowtorch in your hand and not knowing what to direct it at. You have no idea of what it’s like to be this furious.’

She fiddles with the food on her plate, pushing sauce and potatoes and cranberries from side to side with small, picky movements. ‘I tell you one thing. Now Anne-Lise will soon learn what it’s like when I can’t stand someone!’

Iben doesn’t reply.

Iben knew the garden would be large, but not this large.

It is three o’clock in the morning. She is walking in the tall, wet grass in the winter moonlight. The trees, bushes and hedges do not look black, but somehow it is difficult to distinguish the many shades of green and brown that are visible during the day. The only colour she can see clearly is a bush with bright red branches.

The tall, old-fashioned villa at the far end of the garden is also red.

She doesn’t feel the cold when she slowly makes her way to stand under one of the old fruit trees. She wears her thickest jacket with the hood up. Above her she can see bare branches and, here and there, an apple silhouetted against the dark sky.

The red villa is dark too. No one is up at this time of night along this suburban road. And no one is likely to be awake enough to cycle, as Iben has just done, all the way from Nørrebro to Vaserne, north of Holte.

If a light goes on anywhere in the house, Iben can get away long before they come outside to investigate who is roaming around in their garden. But why should anyone discover her?

She moves closer to the house, walks around it and peers through the dark windows of the ground floor, trying to make out what is in the rooms. As always, the knife is strapped to her shin, even though she fears Anne-Lise least of all.

Iben should cycle back home after peeking through all the windows on the ground floor. The whole excursion seems a complete waste of time. She can’t think what she hoped to find.

A week has passed since she realised that her suspicions that Anne-Lise murdered Rasmus were stress-related. It’s different for Malene. She won’t be able to move on until she has a clear picture of what happened. She needs to know more about Anne-Lise. Iben came here tonight more for Malene’s sake than for her own.

If only she could find something tonight that would help Malene. Then maybe Malene could finally put it behind her how Iben owes her for getting the job at the Centre.

She looks up at the first floor again. Dark, no signs of life.

She places the ladder she found in the garage near a first-floor window and climbs up. The rooms must be unusually high-ceilinged, because the climb is more than seven metres.

If she and Malene could be back on equal footing, like the old days, then it would be all right for Iben to phone Gunnar.

The window next to the ladder isn’t closed properly, just secured with a hook. It’s somebody’s study. She sees a computer and a shelf full of magazine boxes and folders.