Anxious People: A Novel

by Fredrik Backman

  Julia dragged the stepladder to the back of the closet, Estelle got off the chest, Anna-Lena helped the rabbit up. He pressed his hands against the ceiling until it gave way. There was a hatch, and above it a very cramped little space.

  * * *

  And there sat the real estate agent.

  59

  In the police station Jack has nearly lost his voice with rage by this point.

  “Tell the truth! Why did you ask for fireworks? Where’s the real real estate agent? Is there even a real real estate agent?”

  The real estate agent, whose jacket is still as crumpled as a bulldog’s nose after the hours she had spent in the cramped space above the closet, tries and tries to explain everything. But if there’s one thing modern life and the Internet have taught us, it’s that you should never expect to win a discussion simply because you’re right. The real estate agent can’t prove she isn’t the bank robber, because the only way she can do that is to say where the bank robber is right now, and the Realtor genuinely has no idea about that. Jack in turn refuses to believe that the real estate agent is a real estate agent, because if she was, that would mean he’s missed something very obvious, and that in turn would mean that he isn’t particularly smart after all, and he simply isn’t ready for that.

  * * *

  Jim, who has been sitting silently throughout most of the interview, if you can actually call it an interview when it’s really only consisted of Jack screaming nonstop, puts his hand on his son’s shoulder and says: “Shall we take a break, son?”

  Jack fixes his eyes on him: “You were fooled, Dad, don’t you get that? You went up with those pizzas and you let her fool you!”

  Hurt by this, Jim’s shoulders slump as he finds himself declared an idiot.

  “Can’t we just take a break? Just a short one? A cup of coffee… a glass of water…?”

  “Not until I’ve figured out what really happened!” Jack snarls.

  * * *

  He won’t succeed.

  60

  What actually happened was that when Jack ended the call with the negotiator and ran out of the building on the other side of the street, Jim was just emerging from the building where the hostage drama was taking place. Jack of course was furious that Jim had gone into the building despite being told to stay outside, but Jim did his best to calm him down.

  “Take it easy, now, son. Take it easy. That wasn’t a bomb in the stairwell, just a box of Christmas lights.”

  “I know! Why did you go into the building before I came back?”

  “Because I knew you’d never let me go if I waited that long. I’ve spoken to the bank robber.”

  “Of course I wouldn’t have… hang on, what?”

  “I said I’ve spoken to the bank robber.”

  * * *

  Then Jim told him exactly what had happened. Or rather, as exactly as he could. Because it has to be said that telling stories wasn’t one of Jim’s greatest talents in life. His wife always said he was the sort of person who tells a joke by starting with the punch line and then stopping, yelping, “No, hang on, something happened before that, darling, what was it that happened before the funny bit?” then trying to start from the beginning again, only to get it wrong again. He never remembers the end of films, so he can watch them any number of times and still be surprised when he finds out who the murderer is. He’s not much good at party games or television quiz shows, either: there’s one his son and wife both liked, with celebrities in trains who had to guess where they were going by solving various clues, and Jim’s wife used to mimic him as he sat there on the sofa frantically suggesting everything from Spanish capitals to African republics to tiny Norwegian fishing villages, all in the same round. “See! I was right!” he always declared at the end, and Jack always snapped: “You’re not right if you guess EVERYTHING!” And his wife? She just laughed. Jim missed that so much. With him or at him, he didn’t care, as long as she laughed.

  * * *

  So Jim took the opportunity to go into the building when Jack wasn’t looking, because Jim knew that’s what she would have done. He felt very, very foolish when he reached the landing with the box and realized that sometimes Christmas lights were just Christmas lights. But she would have laughed at that. So he kept going.

  There were two apartments on the top floor. The hostage drama was taking place in the one on the right, and the one on the left was owned by the young couple who couldn’t agree about coriander or juicers, and who Jim had had to phone not long before (and the details of whose separation he now knew more about than any normal person ought to know). Just to be on the safe side, he peered through the mailslot, but there were no lights on, and the mail on the mat suggested that no one had been there for a while. Only then did Jim ring the doorbell of the apartment containing the bank robber and hostages.

  There was no answer for a long time, even though he kept ringing the bell. Eventually he realized that the bell wasn’t working, and knocked instead. He had to do that several times as well, but eventually the door opened a crack and a man dressed in a suit and ski mask looked out. First at the pizzas, then at Jim.

  “I haven’t got any cash,” the man in the mask said.

  “Don’t worry,” Jim said, holding the pizzas out.

  The man in the mask squinted suspiciously.

  “Are you a cop?”

  “No.”

  “Yes you are.”

  Jim noted that the man’s accent changed several times, as if he couldn’t quite make his mind up. And it wasn’t possible to determine much about his appearance, not even if he was tall or short, because he never opened the door properly.

  “What makes you think I’m a police officer?” Jim asked innocently.

  “Because pizza delivery guys don’t give pizzas away for free.”

  Jim couldn’t really see much point in trying to deny it, so he said: “You’re right, I’m a cop. But I’m on my own, and I’m unarmed. Is anyone in there hurt?”

  “No. At least no more than they were when they arrived,” the bank robber said.

  Jim nodded amiably.

  “My colleagues out in the street are starting to get nervous, you see, because you haven’t made any demands.”

  Taken aback, the man in the ski mask blinked.

  “I asked for pizza.”

  “I mean… demands in order to release the hostages. We just don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

  The man in the ski mask took the pizza boxes, held up a finger, and said: “Give me a moment!”

  He closed the door and disappeared into the apartment. One minute passed, then another, and just when Jim was thinking about knocking on the door again, it opened a couple of inches. The man looked out and said: “Fireworks.”

  “I don’t follow,” Jim said.

  “I want fireworks, the sort I can see from the balcony. Then I’ll let the hostages go.”

  “Seriously?”

  “And no cheap rubbish, either, don’t try to trick me! Proper fireworks! All different colors, the sort that look like rain, the whole lot.”

  “And then you’ll release the hostages?”

  “Then I’ll release the hostages.”

  “That’s your only demand?”

  “Yep.”

  * * *

  So Jim went back down the stairs, out to Jack in the street, and told him all this.

  * * *

  But it’s worth pointing out again that Jim really isn’t good at telling stories. He’s completely hopeless, in fact. So he may not have remembered everything entirely accurately.

  61

  Roger was right that time when he looked at the plans and said that the top floor of the building had probably once been one single, large apartment. Then, when the elevator was installed, the apartment was split in two and sold as two separate apartments, which led to a number of creative solutions, among them the double wall in the living room and the abandoned ventilation duct above the closet. That was left intact, ign
ored for years, until, like people you think have become superfluous with age, it suddenly made itself known again. Because in winter cold air would blow in from the attic of the old building: the insulation up there is poor and the air finds its way down in the form of a draft in the closet. You have to sit right at the back, on a chest full of wine, to notice it. Not a bad place to smoke, of course, if you’re that way inclined, but apart from that the vent hasn’t served any purpose at all for many years. Not until a real estate agent realized that the space was just large enough for a fairly small real estate agent to climb up and hide so she didn’t get shot by an armed bank robber.

  The opening in the ceiling was so tight that she had only just managed to squeeze through, which of course meant it was far too tight for Lennart not to get stuck, so much so that when he tried to pull himself free, the rabbit’s head finally came loose. He fell backward from the hatch, off the stepladder, and landed heavily on the floor. Horrified, the real estate agent leaned past the rabbit’s head and out of the hatch to see if he’d killed himself, whereupon she, too, promptly lost her balance and tumbled through the hole, landing on top of him. Anna-Lena’s foot was trapped beneath them and she fell over, too. The stepladder wobbled and in turn fell over, hitting the hatch on the way and swinging it shut with a bang. The rabbit’s head remained up there.

  * * *

  Roger, Ro, and the bank robber heard the commotion from out in the apartment and came rushing over to see what was going on. Everyone inside the closet tried to crawl out, and everyone outside tried to figure out which limbs to pull on, not altogether unlike trying to untangle the wiring of the Christmas lights the Christmas after the Christmas when you had a row with your wife about brothels and ended up stuffing the whole lot into the box, thinking: “I’ll sort the whole darn mess out next Christmas!”

  When they were all finally back on their feet, they stared in unison at Lennart’s underpants, because it had become difficult not to, even if Lennart himself had no idea what was going on until Anna-Lena howled: “You’re bleeding!”

  Lennart, now free of the rabbit’s head, leaned over quite a way to see past his stomach, and, sure enough, blood was dripping from his underpants.

  “Oh no,” he groaned, then stuck his hand inside his underwear and pulled out a small, leaking bag that looked like the sort of thing you hope your child won’t notice when you pass it on the motorway. He ran toward the bathroom, but tripped over the edge of the carpet in the living room and fell headfirst, and the bag of blood flew out of his hands and the contents exploded across the floor.

  “What the…?” Roger exclaimed.

  Lennart gasped breathlessly: “Don’t worry! It’s stage blood! I had a bag of it in my underpants, because sometimes you need that little bit extra in the whole ‘rabbit on the toilet’ routine to really frighten people away.”

  “I didn’t order this!” Anna-Lena was quick to point out.

  “No, it’s an optional extra,” Lennart confirmed, getting clumsily to his feet.

  “Go and put some pants on,” Julia said sharply.

  “Yes, please do,” Anna-Lena pleaded.

  Lennart obeyed them and set off toward the closet. When he came back out, Zara had just come in from the balcony. It was the first time she’d seen him with clothes on, without the rabbit’s head. It was an improvement, she had to admit to herself. She didn’t hate him.

  * * *

  The rest of them were staring at the blood on the carpet and floor, uncertain about what they ought to do now.

  “Nice color, anyway,” Ro said.

  “Very modern!” Estelle nodded, because she’d heard on the radio recently that murder was fashionable in popular culture at the moment.

  Roger, in the meantime, was naturally feeling an increasing need for information, so he turned to the real estate agent and interrogated her: “Where the hell have you been?”

  Embarrassed, the Realtor adjusted her rather too large and very crumpled jacket.

  “Well, you see, when the viewing started I was in the closet.”

  “What for?” Roger demanded.

  “I was nervous. I always am before any big viewing, so I usually shut myself in the bathroom, for a couple of minutes to give myself a pep talk. You know, ‘You can do this! You’re a strong, independent real estate agent and this apartment will be sold, by you!’ But the bathroom was occupied, so I went into the closet. And then I heard…”

  She gestured politely but nervously toward the woman standing in the middle of the room with her mask in one hand and the pistol in the other. Estelle intervened helpfully and said: “Yes, this is the bank robber, but she isn’t dangerous! She’s just been holding us hostage, but we’ve been very well looked after. We’re going to get pizza!”

  The bank robber nodded apologetically to the real estate agent and said: “Sorry. Don’t worry, this isn’t a real pistol.”

  The real estate agent smiled in relief and went on: “Well, I was in the closet, and then I heard someone scream ‘We’re being robbed.’ And then I suppose I acted on instinct.”

  “What do you mean by on instinct?” Roger wanted to know.

  The real estate agent started to brush off her jacket.

  “I’ve actually got several viewings over the next few weeks. The House Tricks Real Estate Agency has a duty to its clients. So I thought, I can’t die. That would have been irresponsible of me. And then I discovered the hatch in the ceiling, so I climbed up there and hid.”

  “All this time?” Roger wondered.

  The real estate agent nodded so hard that her back creaked. “I hoped I might be able to crawl out of the other end somehow, but I couldn’t.” Then she seemed to think of something important and clapped her hands together and exclaimed: “Well, goodness, look at me standing here chattering away. First and foremost, HOW’s TRICKS? How lovely that so many of you were able to come to this viewing, is there anyone who’d like to make an offer on the apartment straightaway?”

  The assembled gathering didn’t look particularly impressed by the question. So the agent threw her arms out happily.

  “Would you like to look around a bit more? No problem! I haven’t got any other viewings today!”

  Roger’s eyebrows sank.

  “Why are you even holding a viewing the day before New Year’s Eve? I’ve never experienced that before. And I’ve attended quite a few viewings, I can tell you.”

  The real estate agent looked as cheerful as only a real estate agent who’s recently been released from a confined space can look.

  “It was one of the seller’s requests, and I didn’t mind, because at the House Tricks Real Estate Agency, every day is a working day!”

  The others collectively rolled their eyes at this. All except Estelle, who shivered and asked: “It’s cold in here, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is, isn’t it? Cooler than Roger had budgeted for!” Ro exclaimed, to lighten the mood, then regretted it at once because Roger’s mood didn’t seem to have been lightened at all.

  Julia, who by now was aching in most parts of her body, and who had run out of patience altogether, elbowed her way past them all and went and closed the balcony door. Then she went over to the open fireplace and started to sort out the wood.

  “We might as well light a fire while we wait for the pizzas.”

  The bank robber stood in the middle of the room with the pistol in her hand, for all the good that was doing. She looked at the group of hostages, which had now grown by one more person, which the bank robber could only assume would increase the length of her prison sentence proportionately. So she sighed: “You don’t have to wait for the pizzas. You can all go now. I’ll give up and let the police do… well, whatever they’re thinking of doing. You can all go first, I’ll wait here, so that no one else gets hurt. I never meant to… take anyone hostage. I just needed money for the rent so my ex-husband’s lawyer wouldn’t take my daughters away from me. It was… sorry… I’m an idiot, you didn’t deserve any of th
is… sorry.”

  Tears were streaming down her cheeks, and she was no longer making any attempt to stop them. Maybe it was the fact that she looked so small that got to the others. Or maybe they each in turn found themselves thinking about what they’d actually experienced that day, and what it had meant for them. Suddenly they all started to protest at the same time, talking over each other:

  “But you can’t just…,” Estelle began.

  “You haven’t hurt anyone!” Anna-Lena went on.

  “There must be some way of solving this,” Julia nodded.

  “Perhaps we could find a way out?” Lennart suggested.

  “We certainly need a bit of time to gather all the information before you let us go!” Roger declared.

  “And the bidding hasn’t even started yet,” the real estate agent piped up.

  “We could just wait for the pizzas, couldn’t we?” Ro suggested.

  “Yes, let’s have something to eat. This has all turned out to be rather pleasant, hasn’t it, getting to know each other like this? And that’s all thanks to you!” Estelle beamed.

  “I’m sure the police won’t shoot you. Not much, anyway,” Anna-Lena said comfortingly.

  “Why don’t we all go outside with you? They won’t fire if we all leave at the same time!” Julia insisted.

  “There must be a way out, if it’s possible to sneak into a viewing, then it must be possible to sneak out,” Lennart pointed out.

  “Let’s all sit down and make a plan!” Roger demanded.

  “And make bids on the apartment!” the real estate agent added hopefully.

  “And eat pizza!” Ro said.

  * * *

  The bank robber looked at each of them in turn for a long time. Then she whispered gratefully: “Worst hostages ever.”