Фредрик Бакман - Anxious People

Then he called the owners of the apartment at the top of the building, the one on the same floor as the apartment where the hostage drama was going on. The owners of that one turned out to be a young couple in their early twenties, they were in the middle of splitting up and had both moved out. “So the apartment’s empty?” Jim asked, relieved. It was, but in two separate conversations Jim still had to listen as two twentysomethings took it for granted that Jim would want to know why they had split up. It turned out that one of them couldn’t live with the fact that the other one had such ugly shoes, and the other was turned off by the fact that the first dribbled when he brushed his teeth, and that both of them would rather have a partner who wasn’t quite so short. One said that the relationship was doomed because the other liked coriander, so Jim said: “And you don’t?” only to receive the reply: “I do, but not as much as her!” The other one said they’d started to hate each other after an argument that, as far as Jim could understand, started when they were unable to find a juicer in a color that reflected them both as individuals but also as a couple. That was when they realized that they couldn’t live together another minute longer, and now they hated each other. It struck Jim that today’s youngsters had far too much choice, that was the whole problem—if all those modern dating apps had existed when Jim’s wife first met him, she would never have ended up becoming his wife. If you’re constantly presented with alternatives, you can never make up your mind, Jim thought. How could anyone live with the stress of knowing that while their partner was in the bathroom, they could be swiping right or left and finding their soul mate? A whole generation would end up getting urinary tract infections because they had to keep waiting to pee until the charge on their partner’s phone ran out. But obviously Jim said none of this, merely asked one last time: “So the apartment’s empty?”

They each confirmed that it was. All that was left in there was a juicer in the wrong color. The apartment was going to be put up for sale in the new year, with an estate agency whose name one of them couldn’t remember, only that it was “really corny, kind of dad-joke corny!” The other one confirmed this: “Whoever named that estate agency has a worse sense of humor than hairdressers! Did you know there’s one here called ‘The Upper Cut’? I mean, like, what?”

Jim hung up then. He thought it was a shame that they’d split up, those two, because they deserved each other.

He went over to Jack and tried to tell him about it, but Jack just said: “Not now, Dad! Did you get hold of the neighbors?”

Jim nodded.

“Is anyone home?” Jack asked.

Jim shook his head. “I just wanted to say that…,” he began, but Jack shook his head and resumed his conversation with his boss.

“Not now, Dad!”

So Jim didn’t say anything more.

What then? Well, then everything slid out of control, little by little. The whole hostage drama took several hours, but the negotiator got caught up in traffic and ended up stuck behind the worst multi-vehicle pileup of the year on the motorway (“Bound to be Stockholmers who set out without proper studded tires,” Jim declared confidently), so he never arrived. Jim and Jack were left to deal with the situation themselves, which wasn’t without its complications seeing as it took them a long time before they even managed to establish contact with the bank robber (culminating in Jack getting a large bump on his head, which itself is quite a long story). But eventually they managed to get a phone inside the apartment (which is an even longer story), and once the bank robber had released all the hostages and the negotiator made a call to that phone, that was when the pistol shot was heard from inside the apartment.

Several hours later Jack and Jim were still sitting in the police station, interviewing all the witnesses. That didn’t help at all, of course, because at least one of them wasn’t telling the truth.

22

The truth is that the bank robber went to ridiculous lengths not to point the pistol at anyone inside the apartment, to avoid frightening anyone. But the first person the bank robber accidentally happened to aim the pistol at was a woman called Zara. She’s somewhere in her fifties, and beautifully dressed in that way that people who have become financially independent on the back of other people’s financial dependency often are.

The funny thing is that when the bank robber rushed in, stumbled, and ended up waving the pistol in such a way that Zara found herself staring straight down the barrel of the gun, she didn’t even look scared. Another woman in the apartment, on the other hand, let out a shriek of panic: “Oh, dear Lord, we’re being robbed!” Which seemed a little odd, because the bank robber had absolutely no intention that this bit should be a robbery. Obviously no one likes being treated in a prejudiced way, and the fact that you just happen to be holding a pistol doesn’t automatically make you a robber, and even if you are, you can still be a bank robber without necessarily wanting to rob individuals. So when another woman cried, “Get your money out, Roger!” to her husband, the bank robber couldn’t help feeling rather insulted. Not unreasonably, really. Then a middle-aged man in a checkered shirt who was standing by the window—Roger, evidently—muttered sullenly: “We haven’t got any cash!”

The bank robber was about to protest, but caught sight of the reflection captured in the balcony window. A figure with a masked face armed with a pistol, and the other people in the room. One of them was a very old woman. Another was pregnant. A third looked like she was about to burst into tears. They were all staring at the pistol, eyes wild with fear, no one’s wilder than the eyes staring out through the holes in the ski mask in the reflection. Then the bank robber reached a crushing realization: They’re not the captives here. I am .

The only person who didn’t look remotely scared was Zara. That’s when they heard the sound of the first police sirens from down in the street.

23

Witness Interview

Date: December 30

Name of witness: Zara

JIM:Hello! My name’s Jim!

ZARA:Yes, yes, fine. Get on with it.

JIM:So, I’m here to record your version of what happened. Tell me about it in your own words.

ZARA:Who else’s words would I use?

JIM:Well, yes, quite. Just a figure of speech, I suppose. But first I’d like to make you aware that everything you say here is being recorded. And you can have a lawyer present if you’d like one.

ZARA:Why would I want one?

JIM:I just wanted you to be aware of that. My bosses say that their bosses say it’s important that everything’s done properly. We’re going to be getting a team of special investigators from Stockholm who are going to take over this investigation. My son’s very angry about that, he’s also a police officer, you see. So I just wanted to let you know that bit about having a lawyer present.

ZARA:Listen, I’ll pay for a lawyer if I ever threaten anyone with a pistol. Not when I’m the one being threatened.

JIM:I understand. I certainly didn’t mean to be impertinent, certainly not. I realize you’ve had a difficult day, obviously I realize that. You just need to answer all my questions as honestly as you can. Would you like coffee?

ZARA:Is that what you call it? I saw what came out of that machine out there, and I wouldn’t drink that if you and I were the last people on the planet and you promised me it was poison.