“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.”
Julia was still holding her arm. Less in encouragement, more to comfort her.
“My mom always says I should never apologize for myself. Never say sorry for being good at something.”
Anna-Lena took a dubious bite of her pizza, then said with her mouth full: “Wise mom.”
* * *
They stood there in silence.
* * *
And then there was a loud bang.
* * *
Once. Twice. A few seconds later came the whistling and explosions, so many and so close together that you couldn’t count them. Lennart was standing closest to the window, so he was the one who exclaimed: “Look! Fireworks!”
Jim had sent a young officer from the station to buy them. He was setting them off from down by the bridge. Lennart, Zara, Julia, Ro, Anna-Lena, Roger, and the real estate agent went out onto the balcony. They stood there watching in amazement. They weren’t pathetic little bangers, either, they were the real thing, different colors, the sort that look like rain, the whole deal. Because, as luck would have it, Jim liked fireworks, too.
The bank robber and Estelle watched them from the kitchen window, arm in arm.
“Knut would have liked this,” Estelle nodded.
“I hope you like it, too,” the bank robber managed to say.
“Very much, you sweet child, very much indeed. Thank you!”
“I’m so sorry for everything I’ve done to you all,” the bank robber sniffed.
Estelle pouted her lips unhappily.
“Perhaps we could explain everything to the police? Tell them it was all a mistake?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Perhaps you could escape somehow? Hide somewhere?”
Estelle smelled of wine. Her pupils were ever so slightly unfocused. The bank robber was about to reply, then realized that the less Estelle knew, the better. Then the old woman wouldn’t have to lie for the bank robber’s sake when she was questioned by the police. So she said: “No, I don’t think that would work.”
Estelle held her hand. There wasn’t much else she could do. The fireworks were beautiful, Knut would have loved them.
* * *
When they were finished the bank robber went into the living room, and the others all came back in from the balcony. The bank robber tried to signal discreetly that she wanted to talk to the real estate agent, but sadly that was impossible given that the real estate agent was busy arguing with Roger about the price Julia and Ro ought to pay for the apartment if they bought it.
“Okay, then! Okay!” the real estate agent finally snapped. “I can go a bit lower, but only because I have to put the other apartment up for sale in two weeks’ time, and I don’t want that competing with this one!”
Roger, Julia, and Ro all tilted their heads in such a way that they bumped into one another.
“Which… other apartment?” Roger asked.
The real estate agent harrumphed, annoyed with herself for having let that slip out.
“The apartment opposite, on the other side of the elevator. I haven’t even put it up on my website yet, because if you sell two apartments at the same time, you get less for both, all good real estate agents know that. The other apartment looks just the same as this one, only with a slightly smaller closet, but for some reason it has excellent mobile reception and that seems to be ridiculously important for people these days. The couple who own it are splitting up, they had a terrible row in my office, they’ve removed all the furniture from the apartment, the only thing left in there is a juicer. And I can quite see why neither of them would want it, because it’s a truly terrible color…”