Anxious People(85)

63


Jack stomps out of the interview room, exhausted with anger. The real estate agent is still sitting in there, terrified, looking on as the younger of the two police officers starts to march up and down the corridor. Then she turns hopefully to the older officer, who is still seated in the room, looking sad. Jim doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands, or any other part of his body, for that matter, so he just passes the glass of water to her. It shakes, even though she’s holding it with all ten digits.

“You have to believe me, I swear I’m not the bank robber…,” she pleads.

Jim glances out at the corridor, where his son is walking around hitting the walls with his fists. Then Jim nods to the Realtor, hesitates, nods again, stops himself, then finally puts his hand very briefly on her shoulder and admits: “I know.”



* * *




She looks surprised. He looks ashamed.



* * *




When the old policeman—and he’s never felt older than he does right now—lifts his hand, he toys with his wedding ring. An old habit, but scant comfort. He’s always felt that the hardest thing about death is the grammar. Often he still says the wrong thing, and Jack hardly ever corrects him, sons probably don’t have the heart to do that. Jack mentions the ring once every six months or so, saying: “Dad, isn’t it time you took that off?” His dad nods, as if he’d just forgotten about it, tugs it a little as if it fits more tightly than it actually does, and mumbles: “I will, I will.” He never does.

The hardest thing about death is the grammar, the tense, the fact that she won’t be angry when she sees that he’s bought a new sofa without consulting her first. She won’t be anything. She isn’t on her way home. She was. And she really did get angry that time Jim bought a new sofa without consulting her first, goodness, how angry she was. She could travel halfway around the world to the worst chaos on the planet, but when she came home everything had to be exactly the way it always was or she got upset. Of course that was just one of her many strange little habits and quirks: she put onion flakes on breakfast cereal and poured béarnaise sauce on popcorn, and if you yawned when she was next to you, she would lean forward and stick a finger in your mouth, just to see if she could pull it out again before you closed your mouth. Sometimes she put cornflakes in Jim’s shoes, sometimes little bits of boiled egg and anchovies in Jack’s pockets, and the looks on their faces when they realized seemed to amuse her more and more each time she did it. That’s the kind of thing you miss. That she used to do this, that she used to do that. She was, she is. She was Jim’s wife. Jack’s mom is dead.

The grammar. That’s the worst thing of all, Jim thinks. So he really wants his son to be able to pull this off, solve the whole thing, save everyone. It just doesn’t seem to be working.



* * *




He goes out into the corridor. Looks at Jack. They’re alone out there, no one can overhear their conversation. The son turns around, despairing.

“It must be the real estate agent who did it, Dad, it must be…,” he manages to say, but the words get weaker and weaker the further into the sentence he gets.

Jim shakes his head, painfully slowly.

“No. It isn’t her. The bank robber wasn’t in the apartment when you stormed in, son, you’re right about that. But she didn’t leave with the hostages, either.”

Jack’s eyes dart wildly around the corridor. He clenches his fists, looking for something else to hit.

“How do you know that, Dad? How the hell do you know that?!” he yells, as if he were yelling at the sea.

Jim blinks as if he were trying to hold back the tide.

“Because I didn’t tell you the truth, son.”



* * *




And then he does.





64


All the witnesses from the hostage drama were released at the same time. In a way, this story stops as suddenly for them as it began. They gather their things and are shepherded gently out onto the little flight of steps at the back of the police station. When the door closes behind them they look at each other in surprise: the real estate agent, Zara, Lennart, Anna-Lena, Roger, Ro, Julia, and Estelle.

“What did the police say to you?” Roger immediately asks the others.

“They asked loads of questions, but Jules and I just played dumb!” Ro declared happily.

“How clever of you,” Zara says.

“So none of the police said anything particular to any of you at all when they let you go?” Roger demands to know.

They all shake their heads. The young police officer, Jack, had just gone from room to room, saying no more except that they were free to go, and that he was sorry it had taken such a long time. The only thing he was careful to say was that they wouldn’t be leaving via the front entrance of the police station, because there were reporters waiting out there.

So now the little group is gathered at the back of the station, glancing nervously at each other. In the end Anna-Lena asks the question they’re all thinking: “Is she… okay? When we left the apartment I saw a police officer standing in the stairwell, that older one, and I thought: How on earth is she going to get into the other apartment now?”