She is in time to see the taxi on the far side of the Ministry compound. Despite Malene’s flailing arms and shouting, the cab drives off.
Zigic is closing in on her. It is the worst conceivable place for running. The cobbled quayside is deserted. Tall, dark warehouses on one side; on the other, the black, freezing water of the canal. Where can she hide? There is nothing. She runs on.
Zigic is fast. Iben turns to shoot at him, but after a short burst the magazine is already empty. It is much smaller than a real machine gun. She throws it into the snow and runs.
Only one brightly lit object stands out against the dark — a large, white shape: a houseboat. It is moving away from the quay. The mooring ropes have been pulled in and its decks seem completely abandoned. It is about to sail away, to leave them, but it is slow. They can still leap on board.
Iben overtakes Malene, whose arthritic feet must be hurting her badly. A few seconds more and then Zigic will be almost on top of them and everything will be over for them both.
Iben reaches the dock and leaps. She lands on the deck. Now, rescue Malene. There’s only one short moment to spare. She turns to reach out for her friend.
Iben has a vision of a scene set in Gunnar’s flat. Malene and Gunnar are together, damp with sweat, in his bed.
Does she hesitate for just a moment too long before reaching out? She doesn’t know. How long before she acts? Two seconds, or three? She doesn’t know. Perhaps she doesn’t hesitate at all.
And now the distance is too great. Malene can’t jump.
She screams.
Iben stands under the bright spotlight on the small area of the deck. In front of her, a white steel wall with one door set in it. She pulls at the handle. It’s locked.
What? Fucking what? The houseboat is only three metres from the quay, moving so slowly it’s practically standing still.
She runs the few steps to the other side. The deck is barred there and she can get no further. She runs back. Barred again. She hammers on the door.
This boat will not mean freedom and survival. It is a floating cage. She climbs up a ladder welded to the white wall. She hangs onto the boat’s flank, illuminated, like a black dot on a huge sheet of paper. She is just a few metres from Zigic’s gun.
She keeps climbing while she looks over her shoulder. She watches. Zigic stops a few metres behind Malene. He raises his gun and aims. Iben moves on up, but it takes time to climb so many small rungs.
He is so close she can see his finger bending to press the trigger.
He has her now.
Iben, Malene, Anne-Lise, Camilla
52
Iben shows up in good time. Today looks like one of the first proper days of spring. The brilliant sunlight brings out every crack in the pavement where she stands. Weeds will soon push up through the gaps.
Malene’s parents are the only other people who are present. Like Iben, they wait in silence, staring down the long one-way street. Cars should be coming into sight soon.
Over the last five days Malene’s mother has phoned Iben almost every evening. Malene’s parents arrived in Copenhagen yesterday and Iben went to meet them.
Not one day will pass when Malene’s parents won’t wonder why it was their daughter and not Iben. Even now they must lie awake at night, thinking that it should have been Iben.
As for herself, Iben watches Animal Planet and eats bowls of ice cream with marshmallows night after night. She thinks about what Malene did. In bed she twists and turns and thinks about what she herself did.
A green car shows up at the bottom of the street. Malene’s father and mother wave. When the car draws near them Iben recognises Malene’s aunt and her three children, whom she has met on her visits to Kolding with Malene.
Another thing that Iben has been pondering: Should she go into therapy again? But then, how will it help now?
More cars pull up. She must not be so nervous. Zigic can no longer come anywhere near her.
A whole fleet of police cars responded instantly to the shootings. Zigic was easy to arrest, hemmed in by the icy water and holding an empty gun. The disk Zigic had removed presented a much harder case. Detectives searched Zigic, his car, the wastepaper baskets and corridors of the Ministry, the rubbish bins in the yard and every other possible spot. Police divers combed the bottom of the canal several times. The disk was never found, but the man in the denim suit survived Iben’s gunshot and told the Serb police where to find Zigic’s computer. The data it held was sufficient to round up almost the entire organisation.
Malene’s aunt hugs her parents and, after a few quiet words, moves on to Iben.
‘Iben, this must be hard for you.’
‘Yes. It is.’
‘And you have much to be grateful for.’
‘Believe me, I know.’
The uncle talks to her too, as do other members of Malene’s family. Iben looks down at her feet. Do they see anything in her face? What are they thinking?
Frederik gets out of a taxi and catches sight of her. He walks quickly towards her, stumbles on the kerb, and saves himself by taking a couple of running steps.
Everyone has come: Malene’s friends as well as colleagues, Rasmus’s family, and of course Camilla, Anne-Lise, Paul and members of the DCGI board.
A transport van pulls up to lower two women in wheelchairs. Iben has never seen them before. Presumably they knew Malene from the Association for Young Arthritic People.
At last she spots Gunnar climbing out of another taxi. She observes his black suit, which looks new and expensive. His eyes are bloodshot and so swollen that his whole face looks different. She has been visiting him at the hospital over the last few days. Iben walks inside the chapel with Gunnar. She knows the music and hymns that Malene’s mother has chosen. All of them echo inside her head.
‘What happened on the quayside was an exception and I’m perfectly aware of it. In principle, it shouldn’t have happened. Her every instinct would have urged her to save her own life. So, what she did was — exceptional. Incomprehensible. Against nature.’
It is the day after the funeral and Iben is seated in the DC GI Small Meeting Room. There is only one other person in the room: Dorte Jorgensen, the plump woman detective, who spoke to Iben after Rasmus’s fall.
Dorte frowns and closes the door firmly. Iben is being interrogated. She doesn’t intend to cave in to the tension that the detective is trying to create, but continues her line of thought.
‘It was nothing short of miraculous. The way human beings behave is subject to natural laws. Then, suddenly, from one moment to the next, an exception occurs. That I am alive is precisely because of such an exception, as extraordinary as an apple rising from the ground to attach itself to a branch on an apple-tree. Or a malignant tumour regressing and disappearing without trace. Or blood dripping from a statue of Christ.’
‘Interesting. Now, do you have any explanation for how the hard disk from Rasmus’s computer could’ve disappeared?’
‘I guess Zigic must have thrown it away somewhere in or around the Ministry.’
‘You see, it contains data about his organisation. We have searched everywhere. And I mean everywhere. Even the bottom of the canal. We’ve drawn a blank every time.’
‘Well, I really can’t…’ Dorte is getting on Iben’s nerves.
‘That hard disk contained not only data on Zigic. It also held the name of your email sender, who is based here in Denmark. It’s not too hard to see what I’m thinking, is it?’
‘I’m afraid it is. I don’t understand.’
‘I should have thought it was pretty obvious. The man you killed in the car could’ve had the disk in one of his pockets. And you could have taken it before you ran. In all that excitement, nobody searched you.’