She recognises the front door to Malene’s stairs. She must ask her forgiveness. Forgiveness would be such a relief. Or maybe it wouldn’t?
Malene doesn’t reply to the entry phone, so Iben uses her key to get in and goes upstairs to knock on Malene’s door.
Nobody answers. She could let herself in, but she doesn’t. She knocks again.
On her way downstairs she can’t see the large stained-glass patterns, because it’s too dark outside. A pane of clear glass has been fitted in Rasmus’s window.
She must pull herself together. Think of nothing but her article.
The Psychology of Evil XXII
Here, the previous articles in Genocide News are followed up …
The social psychologist Albert Bandura recruited a group of students to help him with ‘an experimental study of learning’ … We are rats, all of us.
Regardless of what has been written in the magazine previously. We’re simply
Regardless of what has been written in the magazine previously we may
Regardless, it must be admitted that I’m sick now. So dreadfully sick I cannot think any more.
Iben, concentrate!
The Psychology of Evil XXII
Here, the previous articles …
The many lies presented in our magazine are … The truth is … We are also in each other’s heads. Murder each other, when no one is looking. The self-righteous theories previously described in Genocide News are …
Iben cannot walk now. She sits down on a litter bin at a bus stop. She’ll have to throw up again soon. It’s all these people that do it — their smells: fried food, piss, chlorine; decay. She’s disappearing. It’s so hard to stay in control. Only work to hold onto, and logical thought.
The Psychology of Evil XXII
Here, the previous articles in Genocide News will carry on, sickly as ever, and … unable to think any more. The reason is that we’re all rats and ready to bite each other’s heads off.
I will stay sitting here despite the human rats that smell … on top of a litter bin at a bus stop … and on behalf of the Danish Centre for Genocide Information … evil under my nails, making them smell badly, and inside … the early wrinkles in my face. In my cells, in my DNA. In me.
I give up.
Two people in love are waiting for the bus. They don’t look my way. They wear the same kind of long coat in a colour like butterscotch and aren’t interested in the slightest in a confused woman sitting on a litter bin.
Now a teenage girl comes along to wait. She has painted names of bands and singers all over her rucksack, just as I did in my teens. She is about the same age as a lot of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge soldiery. I know what she could do to that couple.
What about the lovers? They look so innocent. ‘Waiting for the bus’, that’s all.
But close-up you see the fat is oozing out of their pores — long, whitish-yellow worms. Those two, their bad smell won’t go away, even though they probably wash every day. It should not have been like this. Never.
I shouldn’t have fallen ill again. I should’ve been with Gunnar, in his kitchen, pottering about with the bread and little dishes for a delicious Sunday lunch. He would come and stand close behind me and hold me tight while he kisses my neck. And his two daughters, who are mine too, would be running about, in and out of the kitchen.
I know this scene so well. That’s how it should have been. And we would have been so happy. We wouldn’t have killed anyone then, not he nor I. Neither of us would have suffered from paranoia or been sick in the head.
Now I know it will never happen. I’ve become too weird for him. It shouldn’t — should not— have been like this.
A tall man with long, blond hair is approaching me. He speaks to me. Does he say that he wants to drop something into the bin? I get up, but he keeps saying things.
I have to speak to him. ‘Are you trying to use the litter bin? Is that it, the bin? I’ve moved off it now.’ Then it dawns on me that the man is speaking English, with a drawling accent. What’s that he’s saying?
‘Now tell me. What’s your plan?’
I don’t understand what he wants, but decide I’d better change to English too and repeat the bit about the litter bin.
He looks annoyed. ‘What’s wrong with you, Malene? I don’t care about that bin. What’s your plan?’
‘What? My name isn’t Malene.’
I look properly at him. He could have been an ageing rock star, once cool, but now on his way out. His skin is in poor shape and he has gone flabby, like men do when they’re past their prime. I want him to go away and leave me in peace.
‘My name isn’t Malene.’
He stares straight into my eyes.
‘I know who you are, Malene. I’ve waited for you when you come out of the Centre. And when you leave your house.’
I shake my head. ‘You’ve got it all wrong, I’m not …’
It is only then that Iben realises who the man is.
49
Like when you’re off, flying across the handlebars on your bike. Then, in the fraction of a second before you crash to the ground, all your muscles go tense and your mind suddenly focuses one hundred per cent.
How can she escape? She glances about her. Some five metres away from Iben and Mirko Zigic, a strong-looking man stands with his hands in the pockets of his pilot’s jacket. When his eyes catch Iben’s and he realises she has seen him, the corners of his mouth twitch slightly — something that is not quite a smile.
And opposite him, fifteen metres or so away, another man is standing. He too observes her. His hair is cut very short and there’s something very Eastern European about his matching jeans and denim.
Now she looks at Zigic again, sensing the weight of her knife against her leg. Her heart is pounding. Could she win a fight against him? Of course she couldn’t. Are these men armed with weapons other than knives? Of course they are.
Zigic interrogates her. ‘Who do you work for?’
‘The Danish Centre for Genocide Information.’
‘I know that. Who else?’
‘No one.’ She has no idea what he is after and how she should respond. Should she pretend to be confident? Friendly? Pathetic?
Zigic is already irritated. ‘You will tell me! Who are they? And what do they want? Or else, no deal.’
‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. I work for DCGI and nobody else.’
He stares as if wanting to see straight through her. Her words only seem to make everything worse. ‘What? Malene, do you want me to believe you sent that email all on your own?’
‘I haven’t sent any email.’
Iben cannot understand why she didn’t instantly recognise Mirko Zigic. He looks exactly like the man in the old family photos unearthed by Interpol. Through a mutual friend, Iben had got hold of the photos from an information officer in DCGI’s British counterpart. The pictures were accompanied by a video and documents about his parents and younger siblings. His family had also made statements, swearing that Mirko couldn’t have been the executioner and torturer of the Serbian camps. He was kindness itself, they insisted. They must have got him mixed up with someone else. It was impossible that he could have built up his own section in the Serb mafia.