The Exception (19 page)

They can hear the lift stop at their landing. The door opens and Bjarne steps out. He is the Centre’s freelance IT adviser and technician and has come to move the connections serving Camilla’s desk.

Anne-Lise’s voice is strident. ‘We must do everything we can to find out who’s writing these emails.’

They nod, but nobody looks in her direction.

There they stand. Everyone agrees, naturally. But what can they do?

Nothing that they haven’t done already.

When Bjarne has been told where the desk is meant to go, he wanders off to the small storeroom where the office server is kept, as well as leads and other pieces of equipment he’ll need. Paul is the only one sitting down. He asks Camilla if she would prefer to go home and try to recover from the shock. ‘Thanks, Paul. But no, I won’t. There’s nobody at home. I’d rather stay here with all of you.’

‘Camilla, why don’t you sit in a meeting room if you want some quiet?’ Iben suggests.

‘What I’d really like to do is lie down. Just for a bit, on the couch in the library.’

Malene squeezes her arm. ‘You do what feels right for you. I’ll deal with any phone calls today.’

‘You’re all so sweet and kind to me.’ Camilla looks around from one colleague to another. Her expression is still distressed, but in a more familiar way. ‘I wasn’t very pleasant to you when you were sent these emails.’

Malene comforts her. ‘But Camilla, things are different now. Our mails arrived at the same time. Now it’s clear to all of us that it’s not just a one-off. That makes the whole thing more serious. For us too.’

Malene glances at Anne-Lise. She doesn’t look that frightened. Why not? Now it seems that all the Centre’s staff are under threat, so shouldn’t her body language be more tense?

Camilla worries. ‘But I should’ve—’

Malene interrupts her. ‘Camilla, you mustn’t blame yourself. All you have to do now is decide whether you’d rather stay here and let me take the phone calls, or if you’d prefer to rest on the couch. Or whatever else you want to do.’

Camilla thanks her but then starts crying again. Paul gets up and says that he must notify the police.

Malene and Iben escort Camilla to the couch, with Anne-Lise trailing behind them. Once they are in the library aisles, Anne-Lise seems to feel that Camilla has entered her area of responsibility and comes closer.

‘Shall I take it from here? There’s a blanket somewhere and some water, and if there is anything else, I’m sure …’

Malene intends to reply, but Iben speaks first: ‘Camilla, what do you think? Is there anything you’d like?’

But all Camilla wants to do is rest quietly, so Malene and Iben leave her alone.

Bjarne is back in the Winter Garden now, on his knees behind the set of pigeonholes, which he has pushed away from the wall. To check the new connections for Camilla’s desk, he wants it
moved out of the way. Malene and Iben decide they can do it. To protect the floor they jam wads of junk mail under its legs and together push the desk to its new position, Malene shoving the desk to avoid taking any of the weight directly on her hands. Then they move a couple of small shelves, the monitor, the plants and Camilla’s other bits and pieces, trying to arrange everything as nicely as possible. Anne-Lise comes in to join them, leaving the door between the Winter Garden and the library open for the first time.

The three of them dawdle restlessly for a while. Iben and Anne-Lise push two large shelving units sideways to give Camilla more light and air round her new workplace. Bjarne curses when he discovers that the networking cables have been laid in a strange way, which means that a new set must be joined up to the server.

All this should satisfy Anne-Lise. They are working together ‘as a team’, and Iben chats to her. Malene ought to join in, but can find nothing to say.

When Anne-Lise returns to her desk, the door is still left open. Everyone will be able to hear what everyone else is saying from now on. At least, Anne-Lise can pick up what the rest of them are talking about. Anne-Lise herself never says anything, of course.

It’s almost lunch time. Iben and Malene still haven’t done any proper work. Iben nods to tell Malene they should talk. They meet in the copier room.

Iben stands very close to Malene and speaks in a whisper: ‘I have the impression that Camilla is scared of a man, someone she knows.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s probably nothing … I know we shouldn’t speculate about every little thing, but didn’t it strike you how strongly she reacted to this? Two large shots of whisky at nine o’clock in the morning? Then resting on the couch or sleeping or whatever, because she won’t go home and won’t go back to work either?’

Malene hadn’t thought of this, but Iben has a point.

Iben has more to say. ‘When Camilla phoned Finn I overheard her say “I knew he’d be back.”’

‘Anything else?’

‘Nothing. Just that.’

‘What does it mean?’

‘No idea. I tried to ask her, but she avoided the question.’

The light in the copier room is bleak. Malene backs away a little.

‘Couldn’t she explain at all? It couldn’t be about a friend coming to visit or something like that?’

‘No. I have no idea what she was going on about but it wasn’t like that. I could have misheard, of course.’

‘Well, yes. I mean, Camilla is so sensible. She wouldn’t drag us into something dangerous. Did you ask her again?’

‘I did, but indirectly. She could be frightened of someone she knows, and that’s why she’s taking the emails even more seriously than we did.’

Malene leans on the copier. ‘I’ll ask her too.’

Iben’s voice is still very quiet. ‘Do that. But somehow I don’t think it will get you anywhere.’

Malene takes the phone calls that afternoon, as agreed. When Finn rings to ask how Camilla is doing, Malene goes to the library to find out and wakes her up. Camilla follows Malene back to the Winter Garden, but stops in the doorway.

‘Oh, look! Is that how it’s going to be from now on?’

Malene glances at Iben before replying. ‘Yes, well, no; it’s up to you to decide. We just moved your desk because Bjarne wanted it closer to the new connections. So that he could check if it all worked.’

Iben chimes in. ‘It’s just temporary, Camilla. We’ll help you if you want to move the desk somewhere else.’

Camilla sits at Malene’s place to take Finn’s call, since her phone is not connected. When the call has ended, she comes over to consider the new position of her desk.

‘I suppose it’s all right like that.’

Malene has been searching the shelves for a particular copy of
La Lettre de la Fédération Internationale des Ligues des Droits de l’Homme
. She smiles.

‘We think so too.’

Iben looks up from her screen, concerned. ‘Try it out for a couple of days. You need to get used to the new set-up before you make up your mind.’

‘The network connection at my old place is gone, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. Anyway, Bjarne said there was something wrong with it. He’s in the server room now.’

Anne-Lise comes in through the open door and Camilla stares at her a fraction longer than normal, as if she might not be fully awake yet.

Bjarne eats lunch with them and today Paul joins them as well. All six have a discussion about the extent to which continued economic growth in the West is an essential condition for African development. And, conversely, the way certain economic mechanisms lead to conflicts of interest between the industrialised states and the Third World.

After lunch they settle down to work, but are very aware of the open library door. Iben speaks up, distinctly and quite loudly. ‘How’s it going in there?’

Anne-Lise’s desk is placed so that she cannot see into the Winter Garden. So her reply comes from just behind the door frame. ‘I’m fine.’

Iben and Camilla converse politely as if they were strangers attending a reception. Malene tries to think up ideas for a lecture she has agreed to write for Paul. She stares silently at her screen. If this is what it’s going to be like from now on, she thinks, I’ll have to leave.

She wonders what Iben makes of their new circumstances. There have been times when Iben seems to have found Anne-Lise worthwhile. Could it be that this new, formal tone between her and Malene suits Iben better?

The minute twitching of muscles in Iben’s cheeks is enough to drive more drops of sweat from her scalp. She can feel them running down her skin under the white T-shirt she has draped over the top of her head and the back of her neck as protection from the sun. Sweat trickles down behind her large sunglasses, along her nose and the rest of her face, sliding over the thick layer of sun lotion that covers her skin. However hard she squints her eyes she cannot escape the colour, the red glare of the sun as the light pierces her dark glasses and her eyelids.

Their truck stands on the dirt track snaking between the mud huts of the slum. They are almost surrounded by a crowd that is growing all the time. People seem frightened and excited, but no one dares to approach closer than fifteen metres or so, for fear of the armed men who are guarding the four hostages. There is shouting and talking from the back of the crowd. When Iben opens her eyes wide again, she sees an ocean of heads, a rippling surface formed by the women’s colourful headdresses and the men’s shorn black curls.

There was an attack earlier in the day, when the people almost reached the driver’s cabin before two of them were shot and the crowd withdrew again. By now the bodies must have been carried away along the open sewers that also serve as paths between the myriad huts. Above the noise of radio stations broadcasting in Arabic and Swahili, Iben can hear crying and shouting from somewhere in there.

Since the shooting, some of the Nubian men have formed a line to stop the teeming mass of people from drifting closer. These men are as coordinated as militiamen in civvies. They all wear similar clothes, trousers and garish shirts, possibly
European leftovers from the 1970s. They stand as if nailed to the spot, but they are alert. One of them carries a heavy machine gun of the same type as the hostage-takers; the rest are armed only with clubs and long, sharp pangas. They wait.

The boy stands right in front of Iben, clutching his machine gun and intoning long prayers and quotes from the Bible while he scans the sea of people. The crowd is growing larger all the time and more heavily armed. Like the other hostage-takers, the boy belongs to the Luo tribe. Iben observes him as he slowly goes to pieces.

It’s impossible to predict what he will do. Iben shifts her thigh a little along the sheet of metal, part of the car’s framework that serves as their seat. It is burning hot and she pulls her leg back again.

On the horizon, beyond the tin roofs of the shacks, the skyscrapers in the centre of Nairobi rise against the backdrop of pale-blue sky. If one of the Nubians surrounding the car has called the police, they should have been here already. The police force is notorious for being corrupt and violent, but what other hope is there?

The line of men in front of the car moves forward a few steps. There are two men with machine guns now, and both are pointed at the driver’s cab. In a while, they’ll probably have ten.

One of the two Luos in the driver’s cabin cries out in fear. The boy shifts to stand right in front of Iben. His mouth is twisting as he takes aim with his gun.

The crowd in front of the truck moves a little closer, then backs away. The front line of Nubians has gone through this pattern of advance and retreat before. Cathy, who works with Iben, shakes her head every time. Now she whispers, ‘What does it mean? Why are they doing that?’

No one answers, because there seems to be no point to the movement. Maybe the crowd is reacting to something going on inside the cab.

The two Nubians who were shot did not have an easy death.
In films, killings happen quickly, almost cleanly. This was different. The two men in their dated nylon shirts had lain on the baked, cracked mud in front of the truck, thrashing about in spasms, piss stains spreading on their trousers.

Cathy is fidgeting. She seems to want more sunscreen for her sandalled feet, but doesn’t dare ask permission to look for the tube in her rucksack. Next to her, Roberto must fear that the kidnappers will kill the leader first. Slightly built and with the kind of Italianate looks that can seem a touch effeminate, he doesn’t look like any kind of leader.

The other Luo on the tailgate catches Iben’s eye. He has lost a couple of teeth, is taller than the others, and smells more strongly of the slum.

She looks down at once, but not quickly enough.

‘You. Yes, you!’

He puts his panga under her chin. It is so wide that she can see its far edge as the sharp blade touches her throat. This is the moment when I should think of my loved ones back home, a voice inside her says. No one comes to mind.

She tries, pushes herself. Everyone I love, everyone who loves me.

Still nobody. Only the thought that I’ve wasted my life, I’m going to die and no man will weep for the love and the loss of me. I have no children and no father. My mother will weep, and so will the two women who are my best friends. But that’s not enough, not nearly enough.

You deserve to die, murmurs the voice inside her head. You’ve had twenty-eight years and you’ve done nothing with them.

Then the voice scolds her. You always think too much, always about yourself, always self-critical. Now you must act.

The tall Luo interrupts her thoughts. ‘You get out of the truck. Get the driver out. Then you take the wheel.’

Iben looks up at him. She does her best to make her every movement calm and controlled. ‘Get the driver out? Why?’

The tall Luo’s black face is contorted and inscrutable, like a
corpse preserved in a bog. ‘You open the door. You carry the driver out. Then you go sit at the wheel.’

‘How … why carry him?’

‘He is dead.’

Iben senses that the man holding the panga at her throat feels something after all, behind his tense, closed features. It’s the broken rhythm of his breathing that gives him away, and the slight quivering of the blade against her skin.