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Zara’s reply was surprisingly free from condescension, and almost sounded sympathetic.

“That’s the problem. We made it too strong. We forgot how greedy we are. Do you own an apartment? ”

“Yes. ”

“Have you got a mortgage on it? ”

“Hasn’t everyone? ”

“No. And a mortgage used to be something you were expected to repay. But now that every other middle-income family has a mortgage for an amount they couldn’t possibly save up in their lifetimes, then the bank isn’t lending money anymore. It’s offering financing. And then homes are no longer homes. They’re investments. ”

“I’m not sure I completely understand what that means. ”

“It means that the poor get poorer, the rich get richer, and the real class divide is between those who can borrow money and those who can’t. Because no matter how much money anyone earns, they still lie awake at the end of the month worrying about money. Everyone looks at what their neighbors have and wonders, ‘How can they afford that? ’ because everyone is living beyond their means. So not even really rich people ever feel really rich, because in the end the only thing you can buy is a more expensive version of something you’ve already got. With borrowed money. ”

Nadia looked like a cat who’d just seen someone skating for the first time.

“I heard a man who worked in a casino say that no one gets ruined by losing, they get ruined by trying to win back the money they lost. Is that what you mean? Is that why the stock market and housing market crash? ”

Zara shrugged.

“Sure. If that makes it feel better. ”

Then the psychologist suddenly, and without quite knowing why, asked a question that knocked the air out of her patient’s lungs: “So do you feel more guilty about the customers you haven’t lent money to, or the ones you’ve lent too much to? ”

Zara looked untroubled, but she was holding on to the arms of the chair so tightly that when she eventually let go her palms were bloodless. She hid it by rubbing them, and evaded eye contact by counting windows. Then she let out a quick snort.

“You know something? If people who worry about animal welfare were really bothered about animal welfare, they wouldn’t tell me to eat happy pigs. ”

Nadia rolled her eyes. “I don’t see what that’s got to do with my question. ”

Zara shrugged.

“All this talk about organic farming, adverts for free-range chickens and happy pigs… isn’t it more unethical of me to eat a happy pig? Surely it’s better if I eat a pig that’s lived a terrible life than one of those carpe diem pigs with a family and friends? The farmers say happy pigs taste better, so I can only assume that they wait until the pig has just fallen in love, maybe just after it’s had kids, when it’s at its absolute happiest, and then it gets shot in the head and vacuum packed. How ethical is that? ”

The psychologist sighed.

“I’ll take that to mean that you don’t want to talk about your customers and how much they’ve borrowed. ”

Zara dug her fingernails hard into her palms.

“Have you ever thought about how vegans always talk about saving the planet, as if the planet needed you? The planet will survive for billions of years even without human help. The only people we’re killing are ourselves. ”

It wasn’t much of an answer, as usual. Nadia looked at the time, then regretted doing so at once because Zara noticed and got to her feet, as usual. Zara never liked to be asked to leave, and that tends to make you more alert to the way people check the time, and the second time they look you get to your feet. Nadia felt embarrassed and stammered, “We’ve got some time left… if you’d like… I haven’t another appointment after this. ”

“Well, I’ve got things to do, ” Zara replied.

Nadia composed herself and asked straight out, “Can you tell me one personal thing about yourself? ”

“Sorry? ”

Nadia stood up and moved her head in an attempt to catch Zara’s eye.

“In all the time we’ve spent talking to each other, I get the sense that you’ve never told me anything truly personal about yourself. Anything at all. What’s your favorite color? Do you like art? Have you ever been in love? ”

Zara’s eyebrows rose as far as they could go.

“Do you think I’d sleep better if I were in love? ”

Nadia burst out laughing.

“No. I was just wondering. I know very little about you. ”

Of all the moments they shared, this was one of the most remarkable.

Zara stood behind her chair for several minutes. Then she took a deep breath and actually told Nadia something about herself that she had never told anyone: “I like music. I play… music, very loud, as soon as I get home. It helps me gather my thoughts. ”

“Only when you get home? ”

“I can’t play it that loud in the office. It only works if I listen to it at very, very high volume. ”

Zara tapped her forehead as she said that, as if to illustrate what it was that didn’t work.

“What sort of music? ” Nadia asked gently.

“Death metal. ”

“Wow. ”

“Is that a professional opinion? ”

Nadia giggled, which was embarrassing and highly unprofessional—you certainly aren’t taught how to giggle in psychology courses.

“It was just so incredibly unexpected. Why death metal? ”

“It’s so loud that it makes your head silent. ”

Zara’s knuckles turned white around the handle of her handbag. Nadia noticed, so she pulled a pad of paper from one of her desk drawers, wrote something, and handed Zara a note.

“Is that a prescription for sleeping pills? ” Zara asked.

Nadia shook her head.

“It’s the name of a good pair of headphones. There’s an electronics store down the street. Buy them, then you can listen to music no matter where you are, as soon as things start to feel difficult. Maybe that would help you to get out more? Meet people? Maybe even… fall in love. ”

Of course the psychologist regretted saying that last bit at once. Zara didn’t respond. She tucked the note in her handbag, stared at the letter at the bottom of it, closed it quickly. As she was leaving Nadia called out anxiously, worried that she had gone too far:

“You don’t have to fall in love, Zara, that wasn’t what I meant! I just meant it might be time to try something new. I just think you should give yourself… just give yourself the chance of… getting fed up with someone! ”

Zara stood in the elevator. As the doors closed she thought about loans. The ones we grant and the ones we refuse. Then she pressed the emergency stop button.

While the hostage drama was going on, out in the street Jack was trying to think of some other way to contact the bank robber rather than let Jim go up with the pizzas. He thought and thought and thought, because young men may be absolutely certain about almost everything nearly all of the time, but even for Jack it would have been easier to be one hundred percent certain that the bomb wasn’t a bomb if he didn’t need to send his dad into the stairwell to test the theory.

“Hang on, Dad, I’ve…, ” he began, then raised his phone and said to the negotiator: “Before we go in with the pizzas I want to try to get a better idea of what’s going on. I can get into the building that’s on the other side of the street. I might be able to see into the stairwell windows from there. ”

The negotiator sounded skeptical.

“What difference would that make? ”

“None, maybe, ” Jack admitted. “But I might be able to tell if it’s a bomb or not through the window, and before I send my colleague in I want to know that I’ve exhausted all options. ”

The negotiator put his hand over his phone and talked to someone else, one of the bastard bosses, perhaps. Then he came back and said: “Yes. Okay, yes. ”

He didn’t tell Jack that he was impressed that he had called his dad his “colleague” in such a critical situation, but he was.

So Jack went into the building on the other side of the street. The negotiator stayed on the line, and one and a half floors later he wondered: “What… what are you doing? ”

“I’m going up the stairs, ” Jack replied.

“Isn’t there an elevator? ”

“I don’t like elevators. ”

The negotiator sounded like he was hitting his head with his phone.

“So you’re prepared to go into a building containing a bomb and an armed bank robber, but you’re scared of elevators? ”

Jack hissed back: “I’m not scared of elevators! I’m scared of snakes and cancer. I just don’t like elevators! ”

The negotiator sounded like he was grinning.

“Can’t you call in reinforcements? ”

“All the staff we have at our disposal are here, the whole lot. They’re maintaining the cordon and evacuating the surrounding buildings. I’ve called in backup, but they’re both waiting for their wives. ”

“What does that mean? ”

“That they’ve been drinking. Their wives will have to drive them here. ”

“Drinking? At this time of day? The day before New Year’s Eve? ” the negotiator wondered.

“I don’t know how you do it in Stockholm, but here we take New Year’s seriously, ” Jack replied.

The negotiator laughed.

“Stockholmers don’t take anything seriously, you know that. At least, nothing important. ”

Jack grinned. He hesitated briefly as he went up a few more steps before asking the question he had been wanting to ask for a while.

“Have you been involved in a hostage drama before? ”

The negotiator hesitated before replying.

“Yes. Yes, I have. ”

“How did it end? ”

“He let the hostages go and came out after we’d spent four hours talking. ”

Jack nodded tersely and stopped at the next-to-last floor. He peered out of the landing window through a small pair of binoculars. He could see the wires on the floor of the landing opposite, they were hanging out of a box that someone had written something on with a marker. He wasn’t absolutely certain, but from where he was standing it looked very much like the letters C-H-R-I-S-T-M-A-S.

“It isn’t a bomb, ” he said into his phone.

“What do you think it is, then? ”

“Looks like outdoor Christmas lights. ”

“Well, then. ”

Jack carried on up to the top floor—if the bank robber hadn’t closed the blinds, he might be able to see into the apartment.

“How did you get him out? ” he asked.

“Who? ”

“The hostage taker. Last time. ”

“Oh. All the usual, I suppose, a combination of what you get taught. Don’t use negatives, avoid can’t and won’t. Try to find something you’ve got in common. Find out what his motivation is. ”

“Was that really how you got him out? ”

“No, of course not. I was joking. ”

“Seriously? ”

“Yes, seriously. We talked for four hours and then he suddenly fell silent. And of course that’s the first thing we get taught…”

“To keep him occupied? Not to let the line go quiet? ”

“Exactly. I didn’t know what to do, so I took a chance and asked if he wanted to hear a funny story. He said nothing for a minute or so, then he said: ‘Well? Are you going to tell me or not? ’ So I told him the one about the two Irish guys in a boat, if you know that one? ”

“No, ” Jack said.

“Okay, two Irish brothers are out at sea fishing. A storm blows up, and they lose both oars, they’re convinced they’re going to drown. Then suddenly one of the brothers spots something in the water, and manages to grab hold of a bottle. They pull the cork out and POOF! A genie appears. He grants them one wish, anything they want. So the two brothers look around at the stormy sea, they’re stuck out there with no oars, several miles from shore, and the first brother is thinking about what to ask for when the second brother cheerfully blurts out: “I wish the whole sea was Guinness! ” The genie stares at him like he’s an idiot, then says, okay, sure, let’s go for that. And POOF! The sea turns into Guinness. The genie vanishes. The first brother stares at the second brother and snaps: “You bloody idiot! We had one single wish and you wished the sea was Guinness! Do you have any idea what you’ve done? ” The second brother shakes his head in shame. The first brother throws his arms out and says…”

The negotiator left a dramatic pause, but didn’t have time to deliver the punch line before Jack cut in from the other end of the line.

“Now we have to piss in the boat! ”

The negotiator let out an affronted snort so loud that the phone shook.

“So you had heard it after all? ”

“My mom liked funny stories. Is that really what got the hostage taker to give up? ”

The line was quiet a little too long.

“Maybe he was worried I was going to tell him another one. ”

The negotiator sounded like he wanted to laugh as he was saying this, but didn’t quite succeed. Jack couldn’t help noticing. He had reached the top floor now, and looked out of the window at the balcony on the other side of the street. He stopped in surprise.

“What the…? That’s weird. ”

“What? ”

“I can see the balcony of the apartment where the hostages are being held. There’s a woman standing on it. ”

“A woman? ”

“Yes. Wearing headphones. ”

“Headphones? ”

“Yes. ”

“What sort of headphones? ”

“How many different types are there? What difference does that make? ”

The negotiator sighed.

“Okay. Stupid question. How old is she, then? ”

“Fifties. Older, maybe. ”

“Older than fifty, or older than in her fifties? ”

“For God’s… I don’t know! A woman. A perfectly ordinary woman. ”

“Okay, okay, calm down. Does she look scared? ”

“She looks… bored. She definitely doesn’t look like she’s in any danger, anyway. ”

“That sounds like an odd hostage situation. ”

“Exactly. And that definitely isn’t a bomb in the stairwell. And he tried to rob a cashless bank. I said from the start, we’re not dealing with a professional here. ”

The negotiator considered this for a few moments.

“Yes, you might well be right. ”

He was trying to sound confident, but Jack could hear his doubt. The two men shared a long silence before Jack said, “Tell me the truth. What happened in that last hostage drama you were involved in? ”

The negotiator sighed.

“The man released the hostages. But he shot himself before we managed to get in. ”

Those words would follow Jack throughout the day, right next to his skin.

He had started to walk back down the stairs by the time the negotiator cleared his throat.

“Okay, Jack, can I ask you a question? Why did you turn down that job in Stockholm? ”

Jack considered lying, but couldn’t summon up the energy.

“How do you know about that? ”

“I talked to one of the bosses before I set off. Asked her who was on the scene locally. She said I should talk to Jack, because he’s bloody good. She said she’d offered you a job several times, but that you keep turning it down. ”

“I’ve got a job. ”

“Not like the one she’s offering. ”

Jack snorted defensively.

“Oh, all you Stockholmers think the world revolves around your bloody city. ”

The negotiator laughed.

“Listen, I grew up in a village where you had to drive forty minutes if you wanted to buy milk. Back there we used to think your town was metropolitan. To us, you were the Stockholmers. ”

“Everyone is someone else’s Stockholmer, I guess. ”

“So what’s your problem, then? Are you worried you wouldn’t be able to cope with the job if you took it? ”

Jack rubbed his hands on his pants.

“Are you my psychologist or something? ”

“Sounds like you could do with one. ”

“Can’t we just focus on the job in hand? ”

The negotiator hesitated and took a deep breath before asking: “Does your dad know you’ve been offered another job? ”

Jack was about to swear, but the negotiator never got to hear what, because at that moment Jack looked out of the window in the stairwell and saw that his dad was no longer waiting in the street like he’d been told.

“What the hell?! ” Jack exclaimed. Then he ended the call and ran.

Zara had just stepped out onto the balcony when Jack saw her. That was just after she had told the bank robber out in the hall not to do anything silly, and she needed fresh air, more than ever. If all you saw was the rear view of Zara heading toward the balcony, you’d probably think she was impatient. You needed to see her face to understand that she was feeling fragile. She had surprised herself back there, had lost control, felt things. For anyone else that might perhaps merely have been vaguely uncomfortable, like when you discover you’re starting to share the same taste in music as your parents, or biting into something you think is chocolate but turns out to be liver pâ té, but for Zara it unleashed a feeling of complete panic. Was she starting to develop a sense of empathy?

She rubbed her hands carefully with sanitizer, counted the windows of the building on the other side of the street over and over again, tried to take deep breaths. She had been in the apartment too long, these people had shrunk her customary distance, and she wasn’t used to that. Out on the balcony she pressed herself up against the wall of the building so no one down in the street could see her over the railing. She clamped the headphones over her ears and turned the volume up until the shrieking noise of the music drowned out the shrieking noise inside her head. Until the bass was thudding harder than her heart.

And just there, perhaps she found it. A truce with herself.

She could see winter making itself comfortable across the town. She liked the silence of this time of year, but had never appreciated its smugness. When the snow arrives autumn has already done all the work, taking care of all the leaves and carefully sweeping summer away from people’s memories. All winter had to do was roll in with a bit of freezing weather and take all the credit, like a man who’s spent twenty minutes next to a barbecue but has never served a full meal in his life.

She didn’t hear the balcony door open, but she felt a furry ear on her hair as Lennart stepped out and stood beside her. He tapped gently on one of the earphones.

“What? ” she snapped.

“Do you smoke? ” Lennart asked, because even though he hadn’t managed to remove the rabbit’s head, there was a small hole in the snout that he was fairly certain he’d be able to smoke through.

“Certainly not! ” Zara said, putting the headphone back over her ear.

Lennart was surprised, even if that wasn’t visible through the unchanging ambivalence of the rabbit’s head. Zara looked like someone who smoked, not because she liked it so much as to make the air worse for other people. The rabbit tapped on the headphone again and she removed it with the utmost reluctance.

“What are you doing out on the balcony, then? ” he wondered.

Zara took a long, hard look at him, starting from his white socks, via his bare legs and his nonelasticated underpants, to his bare torso, where the chest hair had started to go gray.

“Do you really think you’re in any position to question other people’s life choices? ” she asked, but didn’t sound anywhere near as annoyed as she had hoped, which was annoying.

He scratched his big, lifeless rabbit’s ears and replied: “I don’t smoke, either, not really. Just at parties. And when I’m being held hostage! ”

He laughed, she didn’t. He fell silent. She put the headphone back on her ear, but of course he tapped on it again immediately.

“Can I stand out here with you for a while? I’m worried Roger might hit me again if I go back in there. ”

Zara didn’t answer, just put the headphone back in place, and the rabbit tapped on it at once.

“Are you here on safari, then? ”

She glared at him in surprise.

“What does that mean? ”

“Just an observation. There’s always someone like you at every apartment viewing. Someone who doesn’t want the apartment, but is just curious. On safari. Test-driving a lifestyle. You get to recognize that sort of thing in my job. ”

The look in Zara’s eyes was poisonous, but her mouth remained closed. Being seen through isn’t pleasant, you tend to pull your clothes a little tighter when it happens, especially if you’re usually the one who sees through other people. Her instinct was to say something cruel to put a bit of distance between them, but instead she found herself asking: “Aren’t you cold? ”

He shook his head and she had to duck to avoid one of his ears. Then he patted his furry face and chuckled: “Nope. They say seventy percent of your body heat gets lost through your head, so seeing as I’m stuck in here, I suppose I’m only losing thirty percent right now. ”

That isn’t the sort of thing a man dressed in tight underwear usually boasts about in freezing temperatures, Zara noted. She put the headphones back on again, hoping that would be enough to get rid of him, but even before he tapped on the headphone again she had already guessed that his next sentence was going to start with the word “I. ”

“I’m really an actor. This business of disrupting apartment viewings is only a sideline. ”

“How interesting, ” Zara said in a tone that only the child of a telesales operative would interpret as an invitation to go on talking.

“Times are tough for people in the cultural sector, ” the rabbit nodded.

Zara pulled the headphones down around her neck in resignation and snorted.

“So that’s your excuse for exploiting the fact that times are tough for people selling apartments, too? How come you people in the ‘cultural sector’ never think capitalism is any good except when you’re the ones profiting from it? ”

It just slipped out, she didn’t really know why. Between his ears she caught a glimpse of the bridge. The ears wavered thoughtfully in the December wind.

“Sorry, but you don’t strike me as the sort of person who feels sorry for people trying to sell apartments, ” he said.

Zara snorted again, more angrily.

“I don’t care about sellers or buyers. But I do care about the fact that you don’t seem to appreciate that your ‘sideline’ is manipulating the economic system! ”

The rabbit’s head was stuck in a rictus grin while Lennart was thinking hard inside it. Then he said what Zara considered to be the stupidest thing that could ever come out of anyone’s mouth, rabbit or human: “What have I got to do with the economic system? ”

Zara massaged her hands. Counted the windows.

“The market is supposed to be self-regulating, but people like you spoil the balance between supply and demand, ” she said wearily.

Of course the rabbit responded at once by saying the most predictable thing possible: “That’s not true. If I wasn’t doing this, someone else would. I’m not breaking the law. An apartment is the largest investment most people make, and they want the best price, so I’m just offering a service that—”

“Apartments aren’t supposed to be investments, ” Zara replied gloomily.

“What are they supposed to be, then? ”

“Homes. ”

“Are you some sort of communist? ” the rabbit chuckled.

Zara felt like punching him on the nose for that, but instead she pointed between his ears and said: “When the financial crisis hit ten years ago, a man jumped off that bridge because of a property market crash on the other side of the world. Innocent people lost their jobs and the guilty were given bonuses. You know why? ”

“Now you’re exaggerat—”

“Because people like you don’t care about the balance in the system. ”

Lennart chuckled superciliously inside the rabbit’s head. He still hadn’t realized who he’d embarked on a discussion with.

“You need to calm down, the financial crisis was the banks’ fault, I don’t make the—”

“The rules? Is that what you were about to say? You don’t make the rules, you just play the game? ” Zara interrupted wearily, seeing as she’d rather drink nitroglycerin and go on a trampoline than have to listen to yet another man lecturing her about financial responsibilities.

“Yes! Well, no! But…”

Zara had spent enough of her life in committee rooms with the target market for cuff links to be able to predict the rest of this guy’s monologue, so she decided to save her time and his larynx: “Let me guess where you’re going with this: you don’t care about the seller of this apartment, you don’t care about Roger and Anna-Lena, either, you only care about yourself. But you’re going to try to defend yourself by saying that it isn’t possible to cheat the housing market, because the market doesn’t really exist, it’s a construct. Just numbers on a computer screen. So you don’t have any responsibility, do you? ”

“No…, ” Lennart began, but didn’t even manage to take a breath before Zara stormed on.

“Then you’ll dredge up some pop-psychological nonsense about money not having any value because that’s also a construct. And then we get to the history lesson, where clever old you gets to teach silly, ignorant me about economic theory and how the stock market came about. Maybe you feel like telling me about Hanoi 1902, when the city tried to fight a plague of rats by offering the inhabitants a reward for every rat they killed and whose tail they handed over to the police. And what did that lead to? People started breeding rats! Do you have any idea how many men have told me that story to illustrate how selfish and untrustworthy ordinary people are? Do you know how many men like you every single woman on the planet meets every day, who think that every thought that pops into your tiny little male brains is a lovely present you can give us? ”

Lennart had backed away three steps toward the railing by this point. But Zara had got into her stride now, so all he had time to say was: “I—, ” before she snapped: “You what? You what? You’re not the greedy one, everyone else is? Is that what you were about to say? ”

The rabbit shook its ears.

“No. No, I’m sorry. I didn’t know anyone had jumped off that bridge. Did you know…? ”

Zara’s cheeks were throbbing, her throat was bright red beneath the headphones. She was no longer talking to Lennart, but exactly who she was talking to probably wasn’t clear even to her, but it felt like she’d been waiting ten years to yell at someone. Anyone at all. Herself most of all. So she roared: “People like you and me are the problem, don’t you get that? We always defend ourselves by saying we’re only offering a service. That we’re just one tiny part of the market. That everything is people’s own fault. That they’re greedy, that they shouldn’t have given us their money. And then we have the nerve to wonder why stock markets crash and the city is full of rats…”

Her eyes were wild with rage, and little clouds of smoke kept puffing breathlessly out of her nostrils. The rabbit didn’t reply, those unblinking eyes just looked at her as she tried to get her pulse under control. Then there was a hacking sound from inside the head, and at first Zara thought the old bastard was having a stroke, then realized that this was what Lennart sounded like when he was laughing, really properly, from deep in his stomach. He held his arms out.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about anymore, to be honest. But I give up, you win, you win! ”

Zara’s eyes narrowed, from fear as much as anger. It was easier to talk to the rabbit than other people, because she didn’t have to look Lennart in the eye. She wasn’t prepared for what that was going to do to her. She leaned forward and stretched her fingers out on her thighs, bent and straightened them, over and over again. Then she said in a quieter voice: “I win, do I? Do Anna-Lena and Roger win? He’s trying to get rich and she’s trying to make him happy, and all they’re really doing is postponing an inevitable divorce. But that probably just makes you happy, because then they’ll have to buy two apartments. ”

At that, something happened. Lennart raised his voice for the first time.

“No! That’s not enough! Because… because… I don’t believe that! ”

“So what do you believe, then? ” Zara snapped back, and—regardless of whatever it was that had led her to this point—her voice finally broke. She screwed her eyes shut and clenched her fists around the headphones. She had been waiting ten years for someone to ask her that question. So it almost floored her when he said:

“Love. ”

Lennart picked up and dropped the word so carelessly, as if it weren’t a big deal at all. Zara wasn’t prepared for it, and that sort of thing can make a person angry. Lennart’s voice became more muffled inside the rabbit’s head, hurt now: “You’re talking like I’d be happy if people got divorced. No one can go to two thousand apartment viewings and not realize that there’s more love in the world than the opposite. ”

Not even Zara had an answer to that. And he still didn’t seem to be freezing, the idiot in the rabbit’s head, which just made her more annoyed. Stop talking about love and feel cold, for God’s sake, like any normal idiot, she thought, and prepared to fire back with some devastating remark. But all she heard herself ask was: “What do you base that on? ”

The rabbit’s ears quivered.

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