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“For God’s sake, darling, you’re supposed to say that to the Realtor, not me. ”

Wounded, Anna-Lena nodded, then thought out loud: “I was just practicing. ”

Zara could hear them from where she was standing looking out over the railing on the balcony. The same swirling panic inside her, the same nausea, the same quivering fingertips every time she saw the bridge. Maybe she was fooling herself by thinking that one day it would feel better, or perhaps worse, so unbearable that she herself went and jumped. She looked down from the balcony but wasn’t sure it was high enough. That’s the only thing someone who definitely wants to live and someone who definitely wants to die have in common: if you’re going to jump off something, you need to be pretty damn sure of the height. Zara just wasn’t sure which of those she was: just because you don’t much like life doesn’t necessarily mean you want the alternative. So she had spent a decade seeking out and attending these apartment viewings, standing on balconies and staring at the bridge, balancing right in the middle of all that was worst inside her.

She heard new voices from inside the apartment. It was the other couple, the younger pair, Julia and Ro. One of them was a blonde, the other had black hair, and they were squabbling noisily the way you do when you’re young and think that every feeling fluttering about in all your hormones is completely unique. Julia was the one who was pregnant, and Ro was the one who was irritated. One was dressed in clothes that looked like she’d made them herself out of capes she’d stolen from murdered magicians, the other as if she sold drugs outside a bowling alley. Ro (that was a nickname, of course, but the sort that had stuck to her for so long that even she used it to introduce herself, which was just one of the many reasons Zara found her irritating) was walking around and holding her phone up toward the ceiling, repeating: “There’s, like, no signal at all in here! ” while Julia snapped back: “Well, that’s terrible, because then we might actually have to talk to each other if we lived here! Stop trying to change the subject the whole time, we need to make a decision about the birds! ”

They very rarely agreed about anything, but in Ro’s defense she didn’t always know that. Fairly often when Ro asked Julia “Are you upset? ” Julia would reply “NO! ” and Ro would shrug, as carefree as a family in an advertisement for cleaning products, which obviously only made Julia even more upset, because it was perfectly obvious that she was upset. But this time even Ro was aware that they were arguing, because they were arguing about the birds. Ro had had birds when she and Julia got together, not as lunch but as pets. “Is she a pirate? ” Julia’s mom had asked the first time it was mentioned, but Julia put up with the birds because she was in love and because she couldn’t help wondering how long birds could actually live.

A very long time, as it turned out. When Julia eventually realized this and tried to deal with the situation in an adult way by sneaking out of bed one night and letting them out of a window, one of the wretched creatures fell all the way to the street and died. A bird! Julia had to invite some of the neighbors’ children in for a soda the next day when Ro was at work so she could blame one of them when Ro found the cage open. And the other birds? They were still sitting in the cage. What sort of insult to evolution was it that creatures like that managed to stay alive?

“I’m not going to have them put down, and I don’t want to talk about it anymore, ” Ro said, sounding hurt and looking around the apartment with her hands deep in the pockets of her dress. Her dress had pockets because she appreciated looking nice, but still liked to have somewhere to put her hands.

“Okay, okay. So what do you think of the apartment, then? I think we should take it! ” Julia said breathlessly, because the elevator was broken and every time Ro said, “We’re pregnant, ” to family and friends as if it were a team sport, Julia felt like pouring molten wax in her ears when she was asleep. Not that Julia didn’t love Ro, because she did, so much that it was almost unbearable, but they had looked at more than twenty apartments in the past two weeks and Ro always found something wrong with every single one of them. It was as if she didn’t actually want to move. But Julia woke up every night in their current apartment to play every pregnant woman’s favorite game, “kick or gas? ” and then she couldn’t get back to sleep because both Ro and the birds snored, so she was more than ready to move anywhere right now, as long as it had more than one bedroom.

“No signal, ” Ro repeated morosely.

“Who cares? Let’s take it! ” Julia persisted.

“Well, I’m not sure. I need to check the hobby room, ” Ro said.

“That’s a walk-in closet, ” Julia corrected.

“Or a hobby room! I’m just going to get the tape measure! ” Ro nodded cheerfully, because one of her most charming and simultaneously most infuriating characteristics was that no matter what they’d just been arguing about, she could be in a wonderful mood in the blink of an eye if she thought about cheese.

“You know perfectly well that you’re not going to be allowed to store cheese in my walk-in closet, ” Julia declared sternly, seeing as their current apartment had a storeroom in the basement that Julia referred to as the Museum of Abandoned Hobbies. Every third month Ro would become obsessed with something, 1950s dresses or bouillabaisse or antique coffee services or CrossFit or bonsai trees or a podcast about the Second World War, then she would spend three months studying the subject in question with unstinting devotion on Internet forums populated by people who clearly shouldn’t be allowed Wi-Fi in whatever padded cell they were locked up in, and then she would suddenly get fed up and immediately find a new obsession. The only hobby that had remained constant since they got together was that Ro collected shoes, and nothing could sum up a person more clearly than the fact that she owned two hundred pairs of shoes, yet always managed to have the wrong ones on when it was raining or snowing.

“No, I don’t know that perfectly well! Because I haven’t measured it yet, so I don’t know if there’d be room for the cheese in there! And my plants also need…, ” Ro began, because she had just decided to start growing plants under heat lamps in the hobby room. Which was a walk-in closet. Or a…

In the meantime Anna-Lena was running her hand over a cushion cover and thinking about sharks. She’d been thinking about them a lot recently, because in their marriage, she and Roger had come to resemble sharks. That was a source of silent sorrow for Anna-Lena. She kept rubbing the cushion cover and distracted herself by thinking out loud: “Is this from IKEA? Yes, it’s definitely from IKEA. I recognize it. They do a floral version as well. The floral version’s nicer. Honestly, the things people do these days. ”

You could have woken Anna-Lena in the middle of the night and asked her to recite the IKEA catalog. Not that there’d be any reason to, of course, but you could if you wanted to, that’s the point. Anna-Lena and Roger have been to every IKEA store in the whole country. Roger has many faults and failings, Anna-Lena knows people think that, but Anna-Lena is always reminded that he loves her in IKEA. When you’ve been together for a very long time, it’s the little things that matter. In a long marriage you don’t need words to have a row, but you don’t need words to say “I love you, ” either. Once when they were at IKEA, very recently, Roger had suggested when they were having lunch in the cafeteria that they each have a piece of cake. Because he understood that it was an important day for Anna-Lena, and because it was important to her it was important to him as well. Because that’s how he loves her.

She went on rubbing the cushion cover that was nicer in the floral pattern and glanced over at the two women in a way Anna-Lena thought was discreet, the pregnant one and her wife. Roger was looking at them as well. He was holding the Realtor’s prospectus with the layout of the apartment in his hand, and grunted: “For God’s sake, darling, look at this! Why do they have to call the small room ‘child’s room’? It could just as well be a perfectly ordinary damn bedroom! ”

Roger didn’t like it when there were pregnant women at apartment viewings, because couples expecting a baby always bid too much. He didn’t like children’s rooms, either. That’s why Anna-Lena always asks Roger as many questions as she can think of when they walk through the children’s section in IKEA. To help distract him from the incomprehensible grief. Because that’s how she loves him.

Ro caught sight of Roger and grinned, as if they weren’t really at war with each other.

“Hi! I’m Ro, and that’s my wife, Julia, over there. Can I borrow your tape measure? I forgot mine! ”

“Absolutely not! ” Roger snapped, clutching his tape measure, pocket calculator, and notepad so hard that his eyebrows started to twitch.

“Calm down, I only want to—” Ro began.

“We all have to take responsibility for our own actions! ” Anna-Lena interrupted sharply.

Ro looked surprised. Surprise made her nervous. Nervousness made her hungry. There wasn’t much she could eat in the immediate vicinity so she reached for one of the limes in the bowl on the coffee table. Anna-Lena saw this and exclaimed: “Dear me, what on earth are you doing? You can’t eat those! They’re viewing limes! ”

Ro let go of the lime and stuffed her hands in the pockets of her dress. She went back to her wife, muttering: “No. This apartment isn’t us, hon. It’s nice and all that, but I’m getting bad vibes here. Like we could never be our best selves here, yeah? Remember me saying I’d read about we-energies that month when I was thinking of becoming an interior designer? When I learned that we had to sleep facing east? And then forgot if it was your head or your feet that… well… never mind! I just don’t want this apartment. Can’t we just go? ”

Zara was standing out on the balcony. She gathered the wreckage of her feelings into an expression of derision and went back into the apartment. Just as she walked in, the pregnant woman let out a yelp. At first it sounded like a roar of guttural rage from an animal that’s just been kicked, but eventually the words became clearer:

“No! That’s enough, Ro! I can take the birds and I can take your awful taste in music and I can take a whole load of other crap, but I’m not leaving here until we’ve bought this apartment! Even if I have to give birth to our child right here on this carpet! ”

The apartment fell completely silent. Everyone was staring at Julia. The only person who wasn’t was Zara, because she was standing just inside the balcony door and staring at the bank robber. One second passed, then two, in which Zara was the only person in the room who had realized what was about to happen.

Then Anna-Lena also caught sight of the figure in the ski mask and cried out: “Oh, dear Lord, we’re being robbed! ” Everyone’s mouths opened at the same time but no words came out. Fear can numb people at the sight of a pistol, switch off everything except the brain’s most important signals, silence all background noise. Another second passed, then one more, in which all they heard was their own heartbeats. First the heart stops, then it races. First comes the shock of not understanding what’s happening, then comes the shock of realizing precisely what’s happening. The survival instinct and fear of dying start to fight, making space for some surprisingly irrational thoughts in between. It’s not unusual to see a pistol and think: Did I switch the coffee machine off this morning? instead of: What’s going to happen to my children?

But even the bank robber was silent, just as scared as all the others. After a while the shock gradually turned to confusion. Anna-Lena sputtered: “You are here to rob us, aren’t you? ” The bank robber seemed to be about to protest, but didn’t have time before Anna-Lena started to tug at Roger like he were a green curtain, crying: “Get your money out, Roger! ”

Roger squinted skeptically at the bank robber and was evidently engaged in a complicated internal struggle, because on the one hand Roger was very cheap, but on the other he wasn’t particularly enamored with the thought of dying in an apartment with this much potential for renovation. So he pulled his wallet from his back pocket, where men like him always keep their wallets except when they’re at the beach, when they keep it in their shoe, but found nothing of use in it. So he turned to the person closest to him, who happened to be Zara, standing over by the balcony door, and asked: “Have you got any cash on you? ”

Zara looked shocked. It was hard to work out if that was because of the pistol or the question.

“Cash? Seriously, do I look like a drug dealer? ”

The bank robber’s eyes, visible through the repeatedly adjusted holes in the sweaty mask, were darting around the room.

Eventually the bank robber shouted: “No…! No, this isn’t a robbery… I just…, ” then corrected that statement in a breathless voice: “Well, maybe it is a robbery! But you’re not the victims! It’s maybe more like a hostage situation now! And I’m very sorry about that! I’m having quite a complicated day here! ”

That’s how it all began.

Witness Interview

Date: December 30

Name of witness: Anna-Lena

JACK: Hello, my name’s Jack.

ANNA-LENA: I don’t want to talk to any more policemen.

JACK: I can certainly understand that. I’ve just got a few brief questions.

ANNA-LENA: If Roger was here he’d have told you that you’re all idiots, the whole lot of you, for managing to lose a bank robber who was trapped inside an apartment!

JACK: That’s why I need to ask my questions. So that we can find the perpetrator.

ANNA-LENA: I want to go home.

JACK: Believe me, I do understand that, we’re just trying to work out what happened inside the apartment. Can you tell me what happened when the perpetrator first came in with the pistol?

ANNA-LENA: That woman, Zara, she had her shoes on. And the other one, Ro, was going to eat one of the limes. You don’t do things like that at apartment viewings! There are unwritten rules!

JACK: Sorry?

ANNA-LENA: She was going to eat one of the limes. The viewing limes! You can’t eat the viewing limes, because the Realtor’s put them there as decoration, they’re not for eating. I was about to go and find the agent and tell her, to get Ro thrown out, because you just can’t behave like that. But at that very moment that lunatic burst through the door waving a pistol.

JACK: I see. And then what happened?

ANNA-LENA: You should talk to Roger. He’s got a very good memory.

JACK: Roger’s your husband? And you’d gone to look at the apartment together?

ANNA-LENA: Yes. Roger said it would be a good investment. Is this table from IKEA? Yes, it is, isn’t it? I recognize it. They do it in ivory as well. That would have gone better with the walls.

JACK: I have to confess that I’m not responsible for the way our interview rooms are furnished.

ANNA-LENA: Just because it’s an interview room doesn’t mean it can’t look nice, does it? Seeing as you were already in IKEA. That ivory table is right next to this one in the self-service area. But you still picked this one. Well, everyone makes their own choices.

JACK: I’ll see if I can raise it with my boss.

ANNA-LENA: Well, that’s up to you.

JACK: When Roger said the apartment was a “good investment, ” did that mean that you wouldn’t be settling there? You’d just buy it and sell it on later?

ANNA-LENA: Why are you asking that?

JACK: I’m just trying to understand who was in the apartment, and why, so that we can rule out the possibility that any of the hostages was in any way connected to the perpetrator.

ANNA-LENA: Connected?

JACK: We think someone may have helped him.

ANNA-LENA: And you think that could have been me and Roger?

JACK: No, no. We just need to ask a few routine questions, that’s all.

ANNA-LENA: So you think it was her, that Zara?

JACK: I haven’t said that.

ANNA-LENA: You said you think someone helped the bank robber. That Zara was dodgy, I could see it the moment I set eyes on her, she was obviously too rich to want that apartment. And I heard that pregnant woman tell her wife that Zara looked like “Cruella de Vil. ” I think that’s from a film? It sounds dodgy, anyway. Or do you think it was Estelle who helped the bank robber? She’s almost ninety, you know. Are you going to start accusing ninety-year-olds of helping criminals now? Is that how modern policing works?

JACK: I’m not accusing anyone.

ANNA-LENA: Roger and I never help anyone else at an apartment viewing, I can promise you that. Roger says that the moment we walk in it’s war and we’re surrounded by enemies. That’s why he always wants me to tell everyone that the apartment needs a lot of work done to it and that the cost of that would be very expensive. As well as the smell of damp. Things like that. Roger’s a very good negotiator. We’ve made some extremely good investments.

JACK: So you’ve done this before? Bought an apartment only to flip it?

ANNA-LENA: There’s no point in an investment if you don’t sell, Roger says. So we buy, Roger does the renovations, I sort out the decor, then we sell and buy another apartment.

JACK: That sounds like an unusual thing for two people who are retired to do.

ANNA-LENA: Roger and I like working on projects together.

JACK: Are you okay?

ANNA-LENA: Yes.

JACK: You look like you’re crying.

ANNA-LENA: I’ve had a very trying day!

JACK: Sorry. That was insensitive of me.

ANNA-LENA: I know Roger doesn’t always come across as particularly sensitive, but he is. He likes us to have a project in common because he’s worried we’d run out of things to talk about otherwise. He doesn’t think I’m interesting enough to be with all day unless we’ve got a project.

JACK: I’m sure that’s not true.

ANNA-LENA: What would you know about that?

JACK: I guess I don’t know anything at all. Sorry. I’d like to ask a few questions about the other prospective buyers now.

ANNA-LENA: Roger’s more sensitive than he seems.

JACK: Okay. Can you tell me anything about the other people at the viewing?

ANNA-LENA: They were looking for a home.

JACK: Sorry?

ANNA-LENA: Roger says there are two types of buyer. Those who are looking for an investment, and those who want a home. The ones who are looking for a home are emotional idiots, they’ll pay anything because they think all their problems will just disappear the moment they move in.

JACK: I’m not sure I understand.

ANNA-LENA: Roger and I don’t let our feelings get in the way of our investments. But everyone else does. Like those two women at the viewing, the one who was pregnant and the other one.

JACK: Julia and Ro?

ANNA-LENA: Yes!

JACK: You think they were the sort who were “looking for a home”?

ANNA-LENA: It was obvious. People like that go to viewings thinking that everything would feel better if only they were living there. That they’d wake up in the mornings and not find it hard to breathe. They wouldn’t have to look in the bathroom mirror with an invisible weight in their chest. They’d argue less. Maybe touch each other’s hands the way they did when they were first married, back when they couldn’t help it. That’s what they think.

JACK: You’ll have to excuse me, but it looks like you’re crying again?

ANNA-LENA: Don’t tell me what I’m doing!

JACK: Okay, okay. But you seem to have put a fair amount of thought into how people behave at apartment viewings, is that fair to say?

ANNA-LENA: Roger does most of the thinking. Roger’s very intelligent, you know. You need to know your enemy, he says, and all your enemy wants is to get it over with. They just want to move in and have done with it and never have to move again. Roger isn’t like that. We saw a documentary about sharks once, Roger’s very interested in documentaries, and there’s a particular type of shark that dies if it stops moving. It’s something to do with the way they absorb oxygen, they can’t breathe unless they’re moving the whole time. That’s how our marriage has ended up.

JACK: Sorry, I’m afraid I don’t understand.

ANNA-LENA: Do you know what the worst thing about being retired is?

JACK: No.

ANNA-LENA: That you get too much time to think. People need a project, so Roger and I became sharks, and if we didn’t keep moving, our marriage wouldn’t get any oxygen. So we buy and renovate and sell, buy and renovate and sell. I did suggest that we try golf instead, but Roger doesn’t like golf.

JACK: Sorry to interrupt, but I wonder if we might be getting a little off the point here? You only have to tell me about the hostage situation. Not about you and your husband.

ANNA-LENA: But that’s the problem.

JACK: What is?

ANNA-LENA: I don’t think he wants to be my husband anymore.

JACK: What makes you say that?

ANNA-LENA: Do you know how many IKEA stores there are in Sweden?

JACK: No.

ANNA-LENA: Twenty. Do you know how many Roger and I have been to?

JACK: No.

ANNA-LENA: All of them. Every single one. We went to the last one fairly recently, and I didn’t think Roger had been keeping count, but when we were in the cafeteria having lunch Roger suddenly said we should each have a piece of cake as well. We never have cake in IKEA. We always have lunch, but never cake. And that was when I knew that he’d been keeping count. I know Roger doesn’t seem romantic, but sometimes he can be the most romantic man on the planet, you know.

JACK: That certainly sounds romantic.

ANNA-LENA: He can seem hard on the surface, but he doesn’t hate children.

JACK: What?

ANNA-LENA: Everyone thinks he hates children because he gets so angry when real estate agents put “children’s room” on the plans. But he only gets angry because he says children push the price up like you wouldn’t believe. He doesn’t hate children. He loves children. That’s why I have to distract him when we’re walking through the children’s section in IKEA.

JACK: I’m sorry.

ANNA-LENA: Why?

JACK: Sorry, I took that to mean that you couldn’t have children. And if that’s the case, I’m sorry.

ANNA-LENA: We’ve got two children!

JACK: I apologize. I misunderstood.

ANNA-LENA: Have you got children?

JACK: No.

ANNA-LENA: Our two are about your age, but they don’t want kids of their own. Our son says he’d rather focus on his career, and our daughter says the world’s already overpopulated.

JACK: Oh.

ANNA-LENA: Can you imagine what a bad parent you must have been for your children not to want to be parents?

JACK: I’ve never thought about that.

ANNA-LENA: Roger would have been such a good grandfather, you know. But now he doesn’t even want to be my husband.

JACK: I’m sure things will work out between you, no matter what’s happened.

ANNA-LENA: You don’t know what’s happened. You don’t know what I’ve done, it was all my fault. But I just wanted to stop, it’s been nothing but one apartment after the other for years now, and in the end I’ve had enough. I’m looking for a home, too. But I had no right to do what I did to Roger. I should never have paid for that darn rabbit.

It’s harder than you might think to take people hostage when they’re idiots.

The bank robber hesitated, the ski mask was itching, everyone was staring. The bank robber tried to think of something to say, but was forestalled by Roger holding one hand up and saying: “We haven’t got any cash! ”

Anna-Lena was standing just behind him, and immediately repeated over his shoulder: “We haven’t got any money, understand? ” She rubbed her fingertips together in illustration, because Anna-Lena always seemed to think that Roger spoke a language that only she understood, as if he were a horse and Anna-Lena some kind of equine translator, so she was always trying to interpret what he said to the rest of the world. When they were in a restaurant and Roger asked for the check, Anna-Lena would always turn to the waiter and mouth the words “Check, please” while simultaneously pretending to write on the palm of her hand. Roger would no doubt have found this incredibly irritating if he ever bothered to pay attention to what Anna-Lena did.

“I don’t want your money… please, just be quiet… I’m trying to hear if…, ” the bank robber said, listening out toward the door of the apartment in an attempt to figure out if the stairwell was already full of police.

“What are you doing here if you don’t want money? If you’re going to take us hostage, you might want to be a bit more specific in your demands, ” Zara snorted from over by the balcony door, giving the distinct impression that she thought the bank robber was underperforming.

“Can you just give me a minute to think? ” the bank robber asked.

Sadly it appeared that the people in this particular apartment weren’t at all prepared to grant the bank robber that. You might think that if someone has a pistol, then people would be willing to do exactly as they’ve been asked, but some people who’ve never seen a pistol before simply take it for granted that it’s so unlikely to happen that even when it is happening, they can’t quite take it seriously.

Roger had barely ever seen a pistol before, even on television, because Roger prefers documentaries about sharks, so he held his hand up again (the other one this time, to show that he was serious) and demanded to know, loudly and clearly: “Is this a robbery or not? Or is this now some sort of hostage situation? Which way do you want it? ”

Anna-Lena looked rather uncomfortable when Roger switched hands, because nothing good ever came of Roger gesturing with both hands within the space of a few minutes, so she stage-whispered: “Might it be better not to be provocative, Roger? ”

“For God’s sake, darling, surely we have a right to accurate information? ” Roger replied, insulted, then turned to the bank robber once more and repeated: “Is this a robbery or not? ”

Anna-Lena stretched to see over his shoulder, and stuck out her thumb and forefinger, then waved them about in illustration while mouthing the words “Bang? ” twice, then adding one helpful “Robbery? ”

The bank robber took several deep breaths, eyes closed, the way you do when the children are fighting in the back of the car and you’re getting stressed and lose your temper and shout at them rather more loudly than you intended, and they suddenly get so scared that they shut up altogether, and you end up hating yourself. Because you don’t want to be that sort of parent. And the tone you use after that, when you apologize and explain that you love them but that you just have to concentrate on driving for a little while, that was the tone the bank robber used to address everyone in the apartment: “Can you… can I ask you all to just lie down on the floor and be quiet for a little while? So I can just… do some thinking? ”

No one lay down. Roger refused point-blank, saying: “Not until we know what’s going on! ” Zara didn’t want to, because: “Have you seen the state of the floor? This is why everyday people have pets, because it makes literally no difference to them! ” Julia demanded to be exempt, because: “Look, if you sit me in an armchair it’ll take me twenty minutes to get up, so I’m not going to lie down anywhere. ”

For the first time the bank robber noticed that Julia was pregnant. Ro leapt in front of her at once, holding her arms up and grinning disarmingly. “Please, don’t mind my wife, she’s just a bit hotheaded, please, don’t shoot! We’ll do exactly what you say! ”

“I’m not bloody hothead—, ” Julia protested.

“P-i-s-t-o-l! ” Ro hissed. She hadn’t looked this scared since the last time she tried to photograph her shoes and accidentally clicked the selfie button instead.

“It doesn’t even look real, ” Julia pointed out.

“Great. Let’s take a chance, then. We’re only risking our child’s life, after all, ” Ro retorted. At that point the bank robber clearly felt that enough was enough, and pointed at Julia.

“I… I didn’t notice you were pregnant. You can leave. I don’t want to hurt anyone, especially not a baby, I just need to think for a moment. ”

When he heard this, Roger was struck by an idea, an idea so brilliant that only Roger could have been struck by it.

“Yes! Go on! Off you go! ” he exclaimed. Then he marched over to the bank robber and added seriously: “I mean, you can let them all go, can’t you? You really only need one hostage, don’t you? That would make things a lot easier. ”

Roger poked his chest with his thumb repeatedly to indicate who the hostage should be, then added: “Plus the real estate agent. I can stay, with the real estate agent. ”

Julia glared suspiciously at him and snapped: “That would suit you, wouldn’t it? So you can make an offer on the apartment after the rest of us have gone! ”

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