Anxious People(81)
“What makes you think I’m a police officer?” Jim asked innocently.
“Because pizza delivery guys don’t give pizzas away for free.”
Jim couldn’t really see much point in trying to deny it, so he said: “You’re right, I’m a cop. But I’m on my own, and I’m unarmed. Is anyone in there hurt?”
“No. At least no more than they were when they arrived,” the bank robber said.
Jim nodded amiably.
“My colleagues out in the street are starting to get nervous, you see, because you haven’t made any demands.”
Taken aback, the man in the ski mask blinked.
“I asked for pizza.”
“I mean… demands in order to release the hostages. We just don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
The man in the ski mask took the pizza boxes, held up a finger, and said: “Give me a moment!”
He closed the door and disappeared into the apartment. One minute passed, then another, and just when Jim was thinking about knocking on the door again, it opened a couple of inches. The man looked out and said: “Fireworks.”
“I don’t follow,” Jim said.
“I want fireworks, the sort I can see from the balcony. Then I’ll let the hostages go.”
“Seriously?”
“And no cheap rubbish, either, don’t try to trick me! Proper fireworks! All different colors, the sort that look like rain, the whole lot.”
“And then you’ll release the hostages?”
“Then I’ll release the hostages.”
“That’s your only demand?”
“Yep.”
* * *
So Jim went back down the stairs, out to Jack in the street, and told him all this.
* * *
But it’s worth pointing out again that Jim really isn’t good at telling stories. He’s completely hopeless, in fact. So he may not have remembered everything entirely accurately.
61
Roger was right that time when he looked at the plans and said that the top floor of the building had probably once been one single, large apartment. Then, when the elevator was installed, the apartment was split in two and sold as two separate apartments, which led to a number of creative solutions, among them the double wall in the living room and the abandoned ventilation duct above the closet. That was left intact, ignored for years, until, like people you think have become superfluous with age, it suddenly made itself known again. Because in winter cold air would blow in from the attic of the old building: the insulation up there is poor and the air finds its way down in the form of a draft in the closet. You have to sit right at the back, on a chest full of wine, to notice it. Not a bad place to smoke, of course, if you’re that way inclined, but apart from that the vent hasn’t served any purpose at all for many years. Not until a real estate agent realized that the space was just large enough for a fairly small real estate agent to climb up and hide so she didn’t get shot by an armed bank robber.
The opening in the ceiling was so tight that she had only just managed to squeeze through, which of course meant it was far too tight for Lennart not to get stuck, so much so that when he tried to pull himself free, the rabbit’s head finally came loose. He fell backward from the hatch, off the stepladder, and landed heavily on the floor. Horrified, the real estate agent leaned past the rabbit’s head and out of the hatch to see if he’d killed himself, whereupon she, too, promptly lost her balance and tumbled through the hole, landing on top of him. Anna-Lena’s foot was trapped beneath them and she fell over, too. The stepladder wobbled and in turn fell over, hitting the hatch on the way and swinging it shut with a bang. The rabbit’s head remained up there.
* * *
Roger, Ro, and the bank robber heard the commotion from out in the apartment and came rushing over to see what was going on. Everyone inside the closet tried to crawl out, and everyone outside tried to figure out which limbs to pull on, not altogether unlike trying to untangle the wiring of the Christmas lights the Christmas after the Christmas when you had a row with your wife about brothels and ended up stuffing the whole lot into the box, thinking: “I’ll sort the whole darn mess out next Christmas!”
When they were all finally back on their feet, they stared in unison at Lennart’s underpants, because it had become difficult not to, even if Lennart himself had no idea what was going on until Anna-Lena howled: “You’re bleeding!”
Lennart, now free of the rabbit’s head, leaned over quite a way to see past his stomach, and, sure enough, blood was dripping from his underpants.
“Oh no,” he groaned, then stuck his hand inside his underwear and pulled out a small, leaking bag that looked like the sort of thing you hope your child won’t notice when you pass it on the motorway. He ran toward the bathroom, but tripped over the edge of the carpet in the living room and fell headfirst, and the bag of blood flew out of his hands and the contents exploded across the floor.
“What the…?” Roger exclaimed.
Lennart gasped breathlessly: “Don’t worry! It’s stage blood! I had a bag of it in my underpants, because sometimes you need that little bit extra in the whole ‘rabbit on the toilet’ routine to really frighten people away.”