* * *

Because it wasn’t Lennart who opened the door when Jim showed up with the pizzas. It was the bank robber, the real bank robber. Both Roger and Lennart had insisted on being allowed to wear the ski mask, but after a long pause she had said no. She had looked at them, her voice gentle with appreciation, then given them a determined nod.

“Obviously I can’t set a good example to my daughters and teach them not to do idiotic things now. But I might at least be able to show them how you take responsibility for your actions.”

So when Jim knocked on the door again, she opened it. Without the mask. Her hair was draped over her shoulders, the same color as Jim’s daughter’s hair. Sometimes two strangers only need one thing in common to find each other sympathetic. She saw the wedding ring on his finger, old and dented, tarnished silver. He saw hers, thin and discreet, gold, no gemstones. Neither of them had taken them off yet.

“Are you a police officer?” she asked so quickly that Jim lost his train of thought.

“How did you…?”

“I don’t think the police would send a real pizza delivery guy if you thought I was armed and dangerous,” she smiled, more like her face actually cracking than cracking into a smile.

“No, no… well, yes… and yes, I am a police officer,” Jim nodded, holding the pizzas out.

“Thanks,” she said, taking them with one hand as the pistol dangled in the other. Jim couldn’t take his eyes off it.

“How are you doing?” he asked, which he may not have done if she’d been wearing a mask.

“I’m not having the best day,” she confessed.

“Is anyone in there hurt?”

She shook her head in horror.

“I’d never…”

Jim looked at her, noting her trembling fingers and the bite marks on her lower lip. He couldn’t hear anyone crying inside the apartment, there was no one shouting, no one who sounded afraid at all.

“I need you to put the pistol down for a little while,” he said.

The bank robber nodded apologetically. “Can I give them the pizzas first? They’re hungry. It’s been a long day for them… I…”

Jim nodded. She turned around and disappeared for a while, then came back without the boxes and without the pistol. From behind her, someone exclaimed, “That isn’t a Hawaiian!” and someone else laughed: “You don’t know a damn thing about Hawaiians!” Laughed. Then came the sound of idle chatter between strangers who were no longer quite that. It’s probably hard to say precisely what would be normal in a hostage drama, but this certainly wasn’t it. Jim looked intently at the bank robber.

“Can I ask, how did you get caught up in all this?”

The bank robber, now unarmed, took such a deep breath that she doubled in size, then she became smaller than ever.

“I don’t know where to start.”

Then Jim did something deeply unprofessional. He reached out his hand and wiped a tear from the bank robber’s cheek.

“My wife had a joke she used to like. How do you eat an elephant?”

“I don’t know.”

“A bit at a time.”

She smiled.

“My kids would have liked that. They have a terrible sense of humor.”

Jim put his hands in his pockets and sat down heavily on the landing next to the door. The bank robber hesitated for a moment, then sat down with her legs crossed. Jim smiled.

“My wife had a terrible sense of humor as well. She liked laughing and causing trouble. The older she got, the more trouble she was. She always told me I was too nice. That’s a terrible thing to be told by a priest, isn’t it?”

The bank robber laughed quietly. Then nodded.

“Who did she used to cause trouble with?”

“Everyone. The church, the parish, politicians, people who believed in God, people who didn’t believe in God… she made it her job to defend the weakest: the homeless, migrants, even criminals. Because somewhere in the Bible Jesus says something like: ‘I was hungry and you gave me food, I was homeless and you looked after me, I was sick and you cared for me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ And then He says something like, what we do for the weakest among us, we also do for Him. And she took everything so damn literally, my wife. That’s why she kept causing trouble.”

“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…”