Anxious People

37

Witness Interview (Continued)

JACK: Okay, okay. Can we focus on my questions now?

ROGER: That bloody rabbit. It’s people like him who are manipulating the market. Bankers and real estate agents and bloody rabbits. Manipulating everything. It’s all just fake.

JACK: This would be Lennart that you’re talking about now? He’s on my list of witnesses, but he wasn’t wearing the rabbit’s head when he came out of the apartment. What do you mean about it all being fake?

ROGER: Everything. The whole world’s fake. They were even faking where I used to work.

JACK: I meant at the apartment viewing.

ROGER: Ha, yes, of course I got ill at work but obviously that doesn’t matter to you. People are all interchangeable in this bloody consumer society, aren’t they?

JACK: No, that’s not what I meant at all.

ROGER: Some idiot doctor decided I was “burnt-out.” I wasn’t burnt-out, I was just a bit tired. But suddenly everyone started making a fuss, my boss wanted to talk to me about my “working environment.” I wanted to work, can you understand that? I’m a man. But for the whole of that last year they just kept making up things for me to do, projects that didn’t exist. They didn’t have any use for me, they just felt sorry for me. They didn’t think I understood, but I understood all right, I’m a man, aren’t I? Do you understand?

JACK: Absolutely.

ROGER: A man wants to be looked in the eye and told the truth when he’s no longer needed. But they faked it. And now Anna-Lena’s doing the same thing. Turns out I was never a good negotiator, that bloody rabbit was doing all the work.

JACK: I understand.

ROGER: I can assure you that you don’t, you little bastard.

JACK: I understand that you feel hurt, I mean.

ROGER: Do you know what happened to that business after I left?

JACK: No.

ROGER: Nothing. Absolutely nothing happened. Everything just carried on as normal.

JACK: I’m sorry.

ROGER: I doubt that.

JACK: Could you possibly tell me more about the gap between the walls now? Show me again on the plans. How large a space are we talking about? Big enough for a grown man to stand up in?

ROGER: There. At least a yard. When they turned the old apartment into two separate ones they probably put an extra wall in rather than make the existing one thicker.

JACK: Why?

ROGER: Because they were idiots.

JACK: So they left a space here between them?

ROGER: Yes.

JACK: So you mean I could be dealing with a perpetrator who might have vanished into the wall, even if he didn’t exactly fit?

ROGER: That’s no laughing matter.

JACK: Wait here.

ROGER: Where are you going now?

JACK: I need to talk to my colleague.