The Exception (13 page)

‘It’s unbelievable. How long do you think she has hated us beneath all those smiles, always pretending everything’s fine?’

Camilla looks up at the others. ‘How did she keep it up? – lying to us every single day? I can’t imagine being that insincere, month in and month out.’

Suddenly Iben sounds more collected and serious. ‘But maybe that’s exactly what she didn’t do.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Maybe she couldn’t stand lying to us for ever. Maybe she has
been burning up inside and felt she had to find an outlet.’

The other two are silent.

‘An outlet, for instance by sending us emails?’ Iben suggests.

The others see her point at once.

‘If Anne-Lise sent the emails last night, she might have felt guilty today. To deal with that, one obvious strategy would be to prove to herself that we’re all nasty – worse than her. Which could explain why she lost control just now at lunch.’

Camilla adds a thought. ‘She didn’t seem the slightest bit nervous this morning when she heard about the emails for the first time.’

The idea makes sense to Malene too. ‘It’s obvious that she hates Iben and me the most. It would also explain why Paul hasn’t had one.’

Of course, it’s only hypothetical. Still, it doesn’t have to be Mirko Zigic or some other mass murderer who sent the emails.

Malene realises that she isn’t furious with Anne-Lise, although she ought to be. The others feel the same way – she can see it in their faces. More than anything, they are relieved. Iben doesn’t have to crash in Grith’s flat again tonight. Malene won’t find it as difficult to fall asleep as she did the night before. A confrontation with a trained killer – now that would be a life-or-death matter. But an office conflict – that can be sorted out.

The front door opens. The doorway frames a man with a muscular neck, wearing a safari jacket. The women freeze. But then they realise he’s not threatening them.

Malene smiles. ‘Hello! How did you get past the police downstairs?’

‘Police? What police?’

‘Didn’t two guards stop you in the downstairs lobby?’

‘No one stopped me. I came here because your website shows that you’ve got Ben Kiernan’s book about Cambodia,
The Pol Pot Regime
. I’d like to borrow it, if possible. And I’d be grateful if you could recommend more reading about the Cambodian genocide.’

They look at each other.

He explains: ‘I need it for senior-year teaching.’

Another moment of silence.

‘So, if you have any introductory teaching material I’d like to have a look at that as well.’

The Centre’s users mustn’t be worried by internal problems. Malene walks towards the visitor.

‘Please come in. Let’s see what we can find. We have a great deal on your subject. You know about the book by Marcher and Frederiksen, don’t you?’

‘Yes. Do you have it?’

‘Of course. And we have quite a few files of unpublished teaching material. I’ve read it all and it’s very good. Let’s go to the library and have a look around.’

Malene is ready to lead the way.

Iben gets up. ‘I think I’d better go downstairs and find out what’s happened.’

The teacher is curious and well read. Malene speaks about Cambodia, trying to sound relaxed. She tells him about the lectures that DCGI staff offer free of charge. She could come to his school.

While they talk, her mind strays. She tries to understand Anne-Lise, but can’t recall ever having been hard on her. On the contrary, she has always been friendly and professional. Surely? They have always told Anne-Lise when they are taking a break, even though she can be such a wet blanket. Everyone has tried to be pleasant to her, but, after all, other people should have a good time too. And there’s work to be done.

She goes on to speak about a recent DCGI seminar on Cambodia with Chandra Lor as the lead speaker. Lor, a genocide survivor, was the first head of the Tuol Sleng genocide museum in Phnom Penh. His story is miraculous. In the 1970s, government troops and guerrilla forces killed almost 3.3 million of the country’s 7.1 million population. The Pol Pot regime exterminated practically everybody who either had a family relationship with
the previous government or, simply, an education. Chandra Lor was the son of a deposed senator and a university student. The video of the seminar shows Lor speaking about his daily fight to escape death. The teacher could show it to his pupils.

Malene hears Iben return, and excuses herself for a moment.

Iben confirms that there are no policemen at the door. She intends to call the number the two officers gave them and ask what’s going on.

Malene goes back to the teacher. They start chatting about Western European communism. In the 1950s, Pol Pot and some of the top men in his government were students in Paris and their views were strongly influenced by the French Communist Party. Should the French communists accept a share of the guilt for the Cambodian tragedy? She pulls out a book of photographs from the Tuol Sleng Museum collection. The building was once a notorious prison. The photos show the primitive instruments of torture and the prison cells. Many of the cells were windowless and so small that the prisoners could neither lie down nor stand.

Iben interrupts them, apologising to the teacher. ‘I’ve spoken to the woman who’s in charge of the investigation and her attitude is totally different. She said that “the evidence pointing to Zigic is absurdly vague and, as it is, the police have spent far too much time over two emails”. She is in charge of the case now, but she won’t allocate any more time to it.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Well, of course I tried to argue that our safety should be paramount and because of our work we’re a special case, but I got nowhere. She wouldn’t even listen.’

Maybe Iben wasn’t all that persuasive. How can you convince someone that you are in mortal danger, if you actually feel enormously relieved because you’re pretty certain that a timid librarian sent the emails?

The idea that the emails might be harmless is not disputed by the phone calls they receive from helpful colleagues abroad
during the afternoon. The war criminals they suggest only add to their already unmanageably long list.

After the tense, anxious morning, not even a call from Lotta in Sweden about Zigic seems important. There are rumours that Zigic has gone underground somewhere inside the Scandinavian Customs Union, possibly in Sweden.

If Anne-Lise sent the emails she obviously must be emotionally disturbed, perhaps even borderline psychotic. If so, she has so far been able to hide her state of mind from her colleagues.

That is why Iben thought Malene should come along with her to see her friend Grith, the clinical psychologist. Malene is mildly sceptical, but she has only met Grith a few times and hasn’t a clue what insight she might provide. Besides, Malene does agree that it’s sensible to get a professional evaluation of Anne-Lise’s behaviour.

Grith is a tall, thin woman with large, slightly droopy breasts. She has the kind of body that’s supposed to drive men wild. Watching her, Malene thinks that Grith’s erotic pull is surely limited to when she sits down or stands still. When her long limbs are moving she looks like an awkward fourteen-year-old. The suspicion that she is likely to fall over any minute makes Malene, for one, feel rather nervous.

Grith practises her clinical skills at the Copenhagen National Hospital. They sit on the large, square cushions of Grith’s grey sofa.

‘The first thing to do is to make the client’s experience your starting point. The idea is always to support whatever the client believes. It is his or her reality, after all, regardless of how the rest of the world sees it. Clients often feel insecure, so we don’t move on until we’ve understood how they perceive what has happened.’

She leans forward from her seat on the sofa. It strikes Malene that there’s something unfeminine about her, despite her large, dark eyes.

Grith turns to Malene. ‘Anyway, why don’t you tell me about your problem?’

‘I don’t have one! We’re here because one of our colleagues has a problem.’

‘OK. How do you see
her
problem?’

‘But, look, even before we sat down we told you …’

Malene stops and starts again, trying to echo the slightly learned tone that Grith and Iben seem to adopt when they’re together.

‘Anne-Lise gives me the impression of being terribly angry. She might have sent us threatening emails.’

Malene pauses to pick a piece of dried mango from a bowl of Tropical Mix. ‘Iben, you’ve got to help me with this.’

‘Grith, I told you.’

‘Sure, but I need to get a sense of the situation. Try to describe why this woman is feeling so angry.’

Malene won’t say anything. Instead she catches Grith’s eye and then Iben’s.

It doesn’t take long before Iben speaks up. ‘Anne-Lise believes that being colleagues means being friends. And because we don’t treat her as a close friend, she has jumped to the conclusion that we are all bad people and that we’re bullying her.’

‘You’re giving me the view from the outside. Can’t you—?’

Iben won’t let Grith interrupt her and runs on: ‘Being viewed in this way is incredibly unpleasant for all of us. Her hostility is palpable … even if she never sent the emails.’

‘Iben, let’s stay with her perception of being shut out from a community. Now that’s a very unpleasant feeling too.’

‘We can’t think how to make her understand that we’re just following the ordinary rules of the workplace, and that no one is persecuting her or anything.’

‘Iben, remember that feeling excluded is awful. Being cast as the outsider would make anyone angry.’

‘Sure, but—’

‘What if we choose to believe her perception? Some part of
her story is probably true. When does she feel angry, do you think? Any particular time, or times?’

‘She might’ve been angry last night, when the emails were sent. But listen, no one is trying to exclude her.’

Grith’s voice, always calm, grows even slower and deeper. ‘Hold on, let’s stay with her for a while. Last night, you said. Did anything special take place in the office yesterday?’

‘We had quite a nice day together. Chatted a great deal. I remember talking about that journalist, the woman who wouldn’t stop asking me about how we were fed in Africa. Later in the afternoon we listened to
Chris and the Chocolate Factory.
’ She looks at Malene. ‘It was fun, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes, it was.’

Grith’s large eyes are fixed on Iben. ‘And as far as you know, no one in the office has been hard on this woman?’

‘People have been irritated with her, but that’s normal. We all have our ups and downs, but there’s nothing unusual about that, surely?’

‘Not at all. Quite normal.’

‘So, she might misinterpret mood swings that the rest of us think nothing of, if she’s another personality type. It’s the kind of thing I thought we might talk about.’

Grith leans back, stretching one arm out on the back of the sofa. Her flexibility makes her thin, elongated limb seem to flow along the cushion.

‘Iben, you’ve never seen anyone have a go at this woman?’

‘I can’t think of anything like that. We try to be helpful and kind. Don’t we, Malene?’

‘Yes, we do.’

Iben is quiet for a moment. ‘Still, it’s difficult to know what goes on inside her head because she withdraws into her shell such a lot. She can seem quite odd. That’s what we wanted to talk to you about …’

Grith uses both hands to lift the mug of tea to her lips, the way Malene sometimes needs to do. Not that Grith has arthritis,
of course. She listens and blows on her drink before interrupting Iben.

‘You said that the door to her workplace is always closed?’

‘Yes, Camilla likes the library door to be closed, to keep out draughts. It’s debatable …’

‘And we do debate it,’ Malene points out.

‘True. But Camilla has worked in that office longer than she has. And that door has always been shut. It’s a bit much.’

Grith asks more questions, especially about Camilla. Does she harass Anne-Lise when the others are out of earshot?

It’s still Iben who fields the questions. ‘She wouldn’t … Look, Camilla is OK, isn’t she?’

Iben’s question puts a stop to Malene’s discreet finger-exercise session. It’s the time in the evening when she usually massages her knuckles.

She nods. ‘Yes. Camilla is easy to work with.’

Grith pushes a fine strand of hair away from her cheek.

‘It could be just a little thing,’ she says. ‘You two might not notice. You’re committed to creating a good working atmosphere for the whole office and that’s great. You talk with this woman and invite her to join your group, even though you’re not that keen on her. What do other people do? Someone in your office is giving her a hard time. And if you don’t demonstratively take her side, she might well feel that you’re all bullies. That’s enough to make anyone unhappy and very angry …’

Iben tries to interrupt, but Grith continues. ‘It explains why she’s reserved and insecure in your company. It’s quite understandable.’

‘Grith, it’s not—’

‘Try to see things her way and the pieces fall into place. Don’t ignore her angle.’

Iben has been eager to talk for so long that she has to draw breath. She says quickly, ‘Grith, listen. Apart from the head of the Centre – and he’s almost always out – there are no other people. Just Camilla and us!’

‘Is that so?’

Malene leans forward to get a little closer to Iben. She looks at Grith.

‘Grith, only us. You see? No one is harassing her.’

By now Grith’s measured approach has become even more deliberate. ‘Is that so? I assumed there were more … that there was a large staff.’

‘There isn’t. We’re it.’

Silence. Grith’s eyes flit around the room, scanning the bookshelf, the bare walls, the small table with the telephone, the dining table made from heavy wooden beams.

Then she looks calmly at her visitors and smiles.

‘Aha …’

They talk about the possibility that Anne-Lise is envious of them, maybe because of their friendship, or because their jobs are more exciting, or their relationship with Paul is better than hers; any envy she feels that might remind her of other disturbing situations in her past, when she felt undervalued and excluded. Maybe she didn’t dare allow herself to show anger then.