Фредрик Бакман - Anxious People

“Has she passed away?”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

He nodded gratefully. It’s so odd, he thought, that still, after all this time, it feels so incomprehensible that she isn’t here. That his heart hasn’t gotten used to the fact that no giggling idiot is going to stick her finger in his mouth when he yawns, or pour flour in his pillowcase just as he’s about to go to bed. No one to argue with him. Love him. There’s no getting used to the grammar of it all. He smiled sadly and said: “Now your turn.”

“At what?” the bank robber said.

“Telling your story. About how you ended up here.”

“How long a story do you want?”

“As long as you like. One bit at a time.”

Which was a nice thing to say. So the bank robber told him.

“My husband left me. Well, he kicked me out, actually. He’d been having an affair with my boss. They fell in love. They moved in together, in our apartment, because it was only in his name. Everything happened so quickly, and I didn’t want to make a fuss or cause… chaos. For the children’s sake.”

Jim nodded slowly. He looked at her ring and toyed with his own. There’s nothing harder to remove.

“Girls or boys?”

“Girls.”

“I’ve got one of each.”

“I… someone needs to… I don’t want them to…”

“Where are they now?”

“With their dad. I was supposed to pick them up tonight. We were going to celebrate New Year together. But now… I…”

She trailed off. Jim nodded thoughtfully.

“What did you need the money from the bank robbery for?”

The desperation on her face revealed the chaos in her heart as she said: “To pay the rent. I needed six thousand five hundred. My husband’s lawyer was threatening to take the girls away from me if I didn’t have anywhere to live.”

Jim held on to the handrail to stop himself collapsing as his heart broke. Empathy is like vertigo. Six thousand five hundred, because she thought she’d lose her children otherwise. Her children .

“There are rules, legislation, no one can just take your children away from you simply because…,” he began, then thought better of it and said: “But now they can… now you’ve held up a bank and…” His voice almost gave out as he whispered: “You poor child, what have you got yourself mixed up in?”

The woman had to force her tongue to move, her lips to open, as her smallest muscles seemed to have almost given up.

“I… I’m an idiot. I know, I know, I know. I didn’t want to cause any trouble with my husband, I didn’t want to expose the girls to that, I thought I might be able to sort it all out for myself. But all I’ve done is create chaos. It’s my fault, it’s all my fault. I’m ready to give up now, I’ll let all the hostages go, I promise, the pistol’s still in there, it isn’t even real…”

Jim couldn’t help thinking that was one hell of a reason to rob a bank: because you’re scared of conflict. He tried to see her as a criminal, tried to look at her without seeing his daughter, and failed at both.

“Even if you release the hostages and give up, you’ll still end up in prison. Even if the pistol isn’t real,” he said mournfully, and of course he’d been a police officer long enough to have seen that it was. He knew she wouldn’t stand a chance, no matter how sympathetic any decent person might feel about her situation. You’re not allowed to rob banks, you’re not allowed to run around with firearms, and we can’t let criminals like that go unpunished if we catch them. So Jim concluded there and then that the only way she wouldn’t get punished was not to do that. Not to catch her.

He looked around in the stairwell. On the door of the apartment behind the bank robber was a real estate agent’s sign bearing the text: For sale! HOUSE TRICKS Real Estate Agency! HOW’S TRICKS? Jim stared at it for a while, ransacking his memory.

“That’s odd,” he finally said.

“What is?” the bank robber wondered.

“House Tricks Real Estate Agency. That’s a fairly… silly name.”

“Maybe,” the bank robber nodded, not having given it much thought before then.

Jim rubbed his nose.

“It might just be a coincidence, but I spoke to the couple who own the neighboring apartment on the phone a little while ago. They’re splitting up. Because one of them likes coriander, and the other also likes coriander, but not quite as much, but apparently that’s enough of a reason if you’re young and are on the Internet.”

The corners of the bank robber’s mouth tried to form a smile.

“No one wants to be bored anymore.”

She was thinking that the worst thing of all, the most impossible thing to reconcile herself to emotionally, was the fact that she still loved her husband. Every blood vessel felt like it was exploding every time that realization struck her. That she couldn’t stop loving him, not even after everything he’d done, not even then could she stop herself wondering if it had all been her fault. Maybe she wasn’t enough fun—maybe it’s unreasonable to expect someone to stay with you if you’re not fun.

“No, that’s just it! Everything has to be like the first flush of infatuation for youngsters, nothing can be mundane, they’ve got the attention span of a kitten with a glittery rubber ball,” Jim agreed, suddenly excited, and went on: “So they’re separating and selling the apartment. One of them couldn’t remember what the real estate agent’s name was, just that it was a silly name. And you know what? House Tricks Real Estate Agency—that’s a really silly name!”

He pointed at the sign on the door of the apartment where the real estate agent was. Then at the door opposite. It was too small a town to have many estate agencies with silly names. It wasn’t even big enough to have more than one hairdressing salon called The Upper Cut.

“Sorry, I don’t understand the significance,” the bank robber said.

Jim scratched his stubble.

“I was just thinking… is the real estate agent in there with you?”

The bank robber nodded.

“Yes, she’s driving everyone mad. When I went in with the pizzas just now she was making Roger stand near the balcony, then she went and stood at the other end of the apartment, then she threw her keys to him so he could see how far you could throw something because it’s all open plan.”

“How did that go?”

“Roger ducked. The window very nearly broke,” the bank robber smiled. It was a friendly smile, Jim thought. Not the sort that wants to hurt anyone. He looked at the sign again.

“I don’t know… this might be… but if it is the same real estate agent who’s going to sell the neighboring apartment, then maybe she’s got the keys to that one with her, and then…”

He couldn’t quite bring himself to say it.

“What do you mean?” the bank robber said.

Jim pulled himself together, stood up, and cleared his throat.

“What I mean is that if the real estate agent is also selling the next apartment, and if she’s got the keys with her, then perhaps you could hide in there. When the other police officers come up here, they won’t break open all the doors to the other apartments to look for you, not right away, at least.”

“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.”