Part 26 (1/2)

Come on, you can tell me. I love you for it.

His expression is growing colder. And do you believe that I exchanged the pills as well?

She is taken aback. No. Of course not.

He sees through her. She hadnt foreseen this. The last thing she wants is to sour the air between them.

Only youve said so often that you truly hate them. And of course Id understand if you had done it.

But ?

The muscles around his mouth and eyes have tensed up. Its such a small change, but Anne-Lise cannot bear seeing it.

He puts his hands on her shoulders and speaks slowly. Anne-Lise, I did not do those things. Neither one nor the other.

No, I see. I believe you. Its just you know how you can be.

What if there is some truth in the idea about dissociated ident.i.ties? Anne-Lise and Henrik are brus.h.i.+ng their teeth together.

I agree that it looks as if it was an inside job. Its unbelievable, but who else could have done it? Everyone knows Malenes bag. No one could have thought it was my bag or that it was my tablets they were swapping.

Theres Camilla. Shes the only one who could have sent the e-mails and exchanged Malenes tablets.

But that doesnt fit at all. I didnt think she was like that. Anne-Lise drops the toothpaste tube. A line of white paste ends up on the tiled floor. She picks up the tube. But, it could be why she stayed at home for so long after receiving an e-mail herself. Everything had become too much for her. The story about her ex-partner could just be a cover-up. Oh, I dont know. It still doesnt make any sense. She just isnt like that!

Did Iben say anything about how you find out if someone has a split personality?

Well, sort of. Camilla could be hiding a bitter hatred toward Iben and Malene. That I would find easy to believe. They dont behave well toward her, but you dont notice it so much compared to the way they treat me. There would be times in her life that she cant or wont remember. But then, thats true of most people.

The top of the toothpaste tube wont screw back on properly. Anne-Lise stops trying and puts it down.

Dissociated personality is a very serious mental illness, and Iben says that the patient has usually had a terrible childhood, with abuse, physical or s.e.xual. Thats something they seem to have in common.

Okay. What was Camillas childhood like?

Anne-Lise takes her time before replying. I cant remember if she ever said anything about it. Shes not like Iben or Malene they wont stop telling us about that kind of thing.

I thought she talked a lot during your lunch breaks.

Oh, she does. She speaks about her choir and how much she enjoys singing. And going to Norway and Sweden on family camping trips. And how much they save at the Metro Hypermarket When Anne-Lise thinks about it, there hasnt been one single instance of Camilla saying anything more revealing about her past. Not a word about where or how she grew up. I have simply no idea.

Four women having lunch together every day and you dont know anything about her childhood? What next? Theres something very odd about that!

He cackles away at his silly joke, but Anne-Lise cant be bothered with it.

I cant recall Malene or Iben ever saying anything about having the kind of childhood that would cause them serious mental problems now. But judging by the way theyve been behaving, they must have had a terrible time. Anne-Lise sits down next to Henrik on the edge of the tub. But then, probably no worse than most people.

When they are finished in the bathroom, Henrik wanders off to his study to enter a few notes on his personal organizer. Anne-Lise looks out the bedroom window. Apart from a few trees close to the street lamps, the garden is almost invisible in the darkness.

When they are in bed together Henrik continues to speculate: If the others have got it into their heads that youre the one who sent the e-mails and interfered with the medicine, then its only a matter of time before they make Paul and the board believe it too. You dont have much time to find proof that Malene mixed up the tablets by mistake. Or that Camilla did it on purpose. If you dont, youll be out on your ear.

Anne-Lise knows Henrik is right.

Some nights, in the dark quiet of the bedroom, Henriks familiar smell wafts across from his side of the bed. Anne-Lise remembers it from way back, when she was at college and they lived together in her small student room. It isnt a strong scent, but it makes her feel comfortable and safe.

Henrik is thinking aloud. Now, her husband is in the plumbing business, isnt he? Maybe I should ask him to fix something for us and make him talk while hes working?

Henrik! Thats out of the question.

Okay, okay. Were brainstorming, arent we? What about finding out who their friends are and getting them to talk?

Neither Henrik nor Anne-Lise can figure out a way to do this. The only hope is that Anne-Lise can persuade Camilla to open up about herself during work.

Anne-Lise is doubtful. She doesnt speak openly with anyone, and tomorrow theyll be furious with me.

They will. But remember, theyll be frightened of you as well. If they really believe you have a split personality and that youre a psychotic basket case, theyll be at a loss about how to handle you. In situations like that, people cope by sticking to routine. Youll see. I suspect that a stranger entering the office tomorrow wouldnt notice a thing out of the ordinary.

I hope youre right.

But Anne-Lise still thinks that the so-called plan is absurd. Does Henrik truly believe that with such a terrible atmosphere at the DCIG, she can say, out of the blue, Listen, Camilla, weve never had a proper heart-to-heart, have we? Why not start today? Tell me a bit more about yourself.

chapter 28.

the following morning Malene phones the office to say that she is still ill and wont be coming in to work this is something Anne-Lise has not foreseen.

Paul is out of the office again as well. Hes at a conference in Odense and will be there all day. Anne-Lise is alone with Iben and Camilla, who behave exactly as Henrik predicted. They may well be on edge, but they arent letting it show. n.o.body can prove anything. Anne-Lise thinks that the Winter Garden is a little quieter than usual, but Malene is away, of course.

Like the other two, Anne-Lise throws herself into her work. Her next task is to extract the best database keywords for a collection of eyewitness accounts from the 1971 genocide in what was then East Pakistan. The killing started up suddenly and unexpectedly in the aftermath of Pakistans 1970 parliamentary election, which was won by the oppressed Bengali majority. The ruling minority, drawn from the Punjabi and Pathan tribes, rejected the election result and took over after a military coup. The Bengali population protested by staging a nonviolent general strike, but the army crushed it. Its orders were to kill, loot, and rape. Punjabis and Pashtuns traditionally believed Bengalis to be an inferior race.

The Pakistani soldiers drove about forty million of their countrymen into exile, flattened several provincial towns every day, raped some 250,000 women of all ages, and killed, in total, about three million people.

Anne-Lise has read piles of witness reports from those nine terrible months. At the moment she is reading about a twenty-five-year-old Bengali woman, married to an officer and the mother of three children. The soldiers took her husband away despite her pleas. She threw herself on the ground in front of their house, begging for his freedom. They brought him back to her later, disfigured by torture and close to death. Another group of soldiers broke into the family house the following morning and raped the woman in front of her husband and children. They tied the husband down and beat the children when they cried. In the afternoon, the soldiers took her to a cellar, where they locked her in and raped her night after night until she lost consciousness. Three months later she returned home. She was pregnant.

Bengali families often rejected s.e.xually abused women on their return because they regarded them as a dishonor to their relatives. This woman was fortunate; although her husband refused to take her back, her neighbors showed her some compa.s.sion. When they pressured the husband to accept her back as his wife, he hanged himself.

After reading this account, Anne-Lise goes through it again to find the best descriptive words for the library database, but she grinds to a halt after a few paragraphs. She tries to start from the beginning, but its no use. I need a break, she thinks after the fourth attempt.

As Anne-Lise steps into the brightly lit Winter Garden, Camilla is on the phone, saying that she must cancel her rehearsal session with the choir tonight because she has to attend a parent-teacher meeting at her daughters school. The fluorescent light above the shelf of Dutch publications is on the blink. Camilla puts the receiver down and now Anne-Lise can talk to both of them.

Im off to the kitchen to make myself a mug of tea. Does anybody else want one?

To her surprise Iben says that she wouldnt mind some tea, thank you. And her face seems more relaxed than usual; she even looks friendly. But then, Malene is away. Anne-Lise still has serious doubts about her desperate plan of getting to know Camilla better. Anne-Lises chances here would be so much easier if Iben has resolved that they should all get along, in spite of her accusations yesterday.

Anne-Lise pours water into the electric kettle and waits for it to boil.