“Yes. That’s what I’ve been trying to explain to you: we believe the perpetrator is still in the apartment.”

4

The truth is that when the bank robber gave up, all the hostages—the real estate agent and all the prospective buyers—were released at the same time. One police officer was standing guard in the stairwell outside the apartment when they emerged. They closed the door behind themselves, the latch clicked, and then they walked calmly down the stairs, out into the street, got into the waiting police cars, and were driven away. The policeman in the stairwell waited for his colleagues to come up the stairs. A negotiator phoned the bank robber. Shortly after that the police stormed the apartment, only to discover that it was empty. The door to the balcony was locked, all the windows were closed, and there were no other exits.

 

* * *

You didn’t have to be from Stockholm to realize pretty quickly that one of the hostages must have helped the bank robber to escape. Unless the bank robber hadn’t escaped at all.

5

Okay. A man was standing on a bridge. Think about that now.

He had written a note and mailed it, he had dropped his children off at school, he had climbed up onto the railing and was standing there looking down. Ten years later an unsuccessful bank robber took eight people hostage at a viewing of an apartment that was for sale. If you stand on that bridge, you can see all the way to the balcony of that apartment.

Obviously none of this has anything to do with you. Well, maybe just a little. Because presumably you’re a normal, decent person. What would you have done if you’d seen someone standing on the railing of that bridge? There are no right or wrong things to say at a time like that, are there? You would simply have done whatever it took to stop the man from jumping. You don’t even know him, but it’s an innate instinct, the idea that we can’t just let strangers kill themselves.

So you would have tried to talk to him, gain his trust, persuade him not to do it. Because you’ve probably been depressed yourself, you’ve had days when you’ve been in terrible pain in places that don’t show up in X-rays, when you can’t find the words to explain it even to the people who love you. Deep down, in memories that we might prefer to suppress even from ourselves, a lot of us know that the difference between us and that man on the bridge is smaller than we might wish. Most adults have had a number of really bad moments, and of course not even fairly happy people manage to be happy the whole darn time. So you would have tried to save him. Because it’s possible to end your life by mistake, but you have to choose to jump. You have to climb on top of somewhere high and take a step forward.

You’re a decent person. You wouldn’t have just watched.

6

The young policeman is feeling his forehead with his fingertips. He has a lump the size of a baby’s fist there.

“How did you get that?” the real estate agent asks, looking like she’d really prefer to ask How’s tricks? again.

“I got hit on the head,” the policeman grunts, then looks at his notes and says, “Did the perpetrator seem used to handling firearms?”

The real estate agent smiles in surprise.

“You mean… the pistol?”

“Yes. Did he seem nervous, or did it look like he’d handled a pistol plenty of times before?”

The policeman hopes his question will reveal whether or not the real estate agent thinks the bank robber might have a military background, for instance. But the real estate agent replies breezily: “Oh, no, I mean, the pistol wasn’t real!”

The policeman squints at her, evidently trying to figure out if she’s joking or just being naive.

“What makes you say that?”

“It was obviously a toy! I thought everyone had realized that.”

The policeman studies the real estate agent for a long time. She’s not joking. A hint of sympathy appears in his eyes.

“So you were never… frightened?”

The real estate agent shakes her head.

“No, no, no. I realized we were never in any real danger, you know. That bank robber could never have harmed anyone!”

The policeman looks at his notes. He realizes that she hasn’t understood.

“Would you like something to drink?” he asks kindly.

“No, thank you. You’ve already asked me that.”

 

* * *

The policeman decides to fetch her a glass of water anyway.

7

In truth, none of the people who were held hostage knows what happened in between the time they were released and the time the police stormed the apartment. The hostages had already gotten into the cars down in the street and were being driven to the police station as the officers gathered in the stairwell. Then the special negotiator (who had been dispatched from Stockholm by the boss’s boss, seeing as people in Stockholm seem to think they’re the only ones capable of talking on the phone) called the bank robber in the hope that a peaceful resolution could be reached. But the bank robber didn’t answer. Instead a single pistol shot rang out. By the time the police smashed in the door to the apartment it was already too late. When they reached the living room they found themselves trampling through blood.

8

In the staffroom of the police station the young policeman bumps into an older officer. The young man is fetching water, the older man is drinking coffee. Their relationship is complicated, as is often the case between police officers of different generations. At the end of your career you’re trying to find a point to it all, and at the start of it you’re looking for a purpose.

“Morning!” the older man exclaims.

“Hi,” the younger man says, slightly dismissively.

“I’d offer you some coffee, but I suppose you’re still not a coffee drinker?” the old officer says, as if it were some sort of disability.

“No,” the younger man replies, like someone turning down an offer of human flesh.

The older and younger men have little in common when it comes to food and drink, or anything else, for that matter, which is a cause of ongoing conflict whenever they’re stuck in the same police car at lunchtime. The older officer’s favorite food is a service station hot dog with instant mashed potatoes, and whenever the staff in the local restaurant try to take his plate away on buffet Fridays, he always snatches it back in horror and exclaims: “Finished? This is a buffet! You’ll know when I’m finished because I’ll be lying curled up under the table!” The younger man’s favorite food, if you were to ask the older officer, is “that made-up stuff, algae and seaweed and raw fish, he thinks he’s some sort of damn hermit crab.” One likes coffee, the other tea. One looks at his watch while they’re working to see if it will soon be lunchtime, the other looks at his watch during lunch to see if he can get back to work soon. The older man thinks the most important thing is for a police officer to do the right thing, the younger thinks it’s more important to do things correctly.

“Sure? You can have one of those Frappuccinos or whatever they’re called. I’ve even bought some of that soy milk, not that I want to know what the heck they milked to get hold of it!” the older man says, chuckling loudly, but glancing anxiously toward the younger man at the same time.