Anxious People(89)
“Why not?”
Jim shrugged. “Because we’re not that good. Everyone will be concentrating on getting the hostages out first, and if you tell them to close the door behind them, then everyone will assume that the bank robber… you… are still in the apartment. This apartment. Then, once we’ve smashed the door in and discovered you’re not there, we can’t just smash the other doors in willy-nilly, that would cause a huge stink. Bureaucracy, you know. We’ll have to take the hostages to the station first and get witness statements from them and, I don’t know… you might be able to come up with a way of getting out. And you know what? If anyone were to find you in the other apartment, you can always pretend you live there! We’ve been assuming that the bank robber is a man right from the start.”
The bank robber was still wide-eyed and uncomprehending.
“Why?” she asked again.
“Because women don’t normally do… this sort of thing,” Jim said, as diplomatically as he could.
She shook her head.
“No, I mean, why? Why are you doing this for me? You’re a police officer! I mean, you’re not supposed to do this sort of thing for me!”
Jim nodded feebly. He rubbed his hands on his pants, then his wrists across his brow.
“My wife used to quote some guy who said… what was it? He said that even if he knew that the world was going to hell tomorrow, he’d plant an apple tree today.”
“That’s lovely,” the bank robber whispered.
Jim nodded. He wiped the back of his hand over his eyes.
“I don’t want to… catch you. I know you’ve made a big mistake here, but… that sort of thing happens.”
“Thank you.”
“You need to go in and ask the real estate agent if she’s got the keys to the other apartment. Because it won’t be long before my son loses patience and comes storming in here, and then…”
The bank robber blinked several times.
“Sorry? Your son?”
“He’s a police officer, too. He’ll be the first one through the door.”
The bank robber felt her throat tighten and her voice faltered.
“He sounds brave.”
“He had a brave mom. She would have robbed banks for his sake, if she’d had to. I didn’t even believe in God when we met. She was beautiful, I wasn’t. She could dance, I could barely stay on my feet. Back when we first met, the way we thought about our work was probably all we had in common. The fact that we save those we can.”
“I don’t know if I deserve to be saved,” the bank robber whispered.
Jim just nodded, looked her in the eye, an honest, decent man about to do something that went against the principles of a profession he’s belonged to all his adult life.
“Come and find me in ten years’ time and tell me if I was wrong.”
He turned to go. She hesitated, swallowed hard, then called: “Wait!”
“Yes?”
“Can I… Is it too late to make a demand in exchange for releasing the hostages?”
“What the hell…?”
He raised his eyebrows, then frowned, at first taken aback, then almost annoyed. The bank robber was trying to make her mind up.
“Fireworks,” she eventually said. “There’s an old lady in here who always used to watch the fireworks with her husband. He’s dead now. I’ve been holding her hostage all day. I’d like to give her some fireworks.”
* * *
Jim grinned. Nodded.
* * *
Then he went downstairs and lied to his son.
66
The bank robber went back inside the apartment. There was blood on the floor, but the fire was crackling in the hearth. Ro was sitting on the sofa eating pizza and making Julia laugh. Roger and the real estate agent were arguing about the measurements on the plan, not because Roger was thinking about buying the apartment anymore, but because “it’s pretty damn important that you’re given the correct information.” Zara and Lennart were standing by the window. Zara was eating a slice of pizza, and Lennart was having fun watching the expression of disgust on her face. It didn’t look as if she liked him, it really didn’t, but she didn’t seem to hate him, either. He in turn seemed to think she was wonderful.
* * *
Anna-Lena was standing on her own, holding a plate in one hand, but the pizza on it was untouched and going cold. Naturally it was Julia who spotted her and got up from the sofa. She went over and asked: “Are you okay, Anna-Lena?”
Anna-Lena looked over at Roger. They still hadn’t talked since the rabbit emerged from the bathroom.
“Yes,” she lied.
Julia took hold of her arm, encouragingly rather than to comfort her.
“I don’t exactly know what you think you’ve done wrong, but the fact that you hired Lennart all those times so that Roger would feel like a winner is one of the daftest, weirdest, most romantic things I’ve ever heard!”
Anna-Lena prodded the pizza on her plate tentatively.
“Roger should have had a chance at being promoted. I always thought, next year it’ll be his turn. But time goes faster than you think, all those years all at once. Sometimes I think that when you live together for a very long time, and have children together, life is a bit like climbing trees. Up and down, up and down, you try to cope with everything, be good, you climb and climb and climb, and you hardly ever see each other along the way. You don’t notice that when you’re young, but everything changes when you have children, and sometimes it feels like you hardly ever see the person you married anymore. You’re parents and teammates, first and foremost, and being married slips down the list of priorities. But you… well, you keep climbing trees, and see each other along the way. I always thought that was just the way it is, life, the way it has to be. We just had to get through everything, I thought. And I kept telling myself that the important thing was that we kept climbing the same tree. Because then I thought that sooner or later… and this sounds so pretentious… but I thought that sooner or later we’d end up on the same branch. And then we could sit there holding hands and looking at the view. That’s what I thought we’d be doing when we got old. But time goes quicker than you think. And it never did get to be Roger’s turn.”