Chapter 27
Britt-Marie doesn’t know if it’s Kent or Sven’s voice she hears first.
Sven comes because Vega has called him; Kent comes because Omar has called him.
The police car and the BMW both come plowing into the parking area.
The two men come stumbling in, white-faced, standing crestfallen inside the door and looking at the shot-to-pieces fluorescent tube on the ceiling.
Then they stare at Britt-Marie. She sees their fear.
Sees how they are plagued by bad conscience because they weren’t here to protect her.
She sees how much this pains them, this missed opportunity to be her hero.
They gulp. They don’t seem to know which foot to stand on.
Then they instinctively do what almost all men in that situation would do.
They start arguing with each other about whose fault this is.
“Is everyone okay?” Sven asks first of all, but he’s interrupted by Kent, who points across the premises with his whole arm and orders everyone:
“Now let’s take it easy until the police get here!”
Sven spins around like an offended mannequin.
“What do you think I’m wearing, you damned yuppie! A carnival outfit?”
“I mean the real police, the kind that can stop robberies!” splutters Kent.
Sven takes two small, angry steps forward and lifts his chin:
“Of course, of course, you would have stopped it with your wallet if you’d been here!”
Their white faces turn red in an instant.
Britt-Marie has never seen Sven angry in this way before, and judging by the facial expressions of Vega, Omar, and Somebody, none of them have either.
Kent, who immediately senses his leadership position in the room is under threat, tries to raise his voice even more to take command of the situation.
“Are you okay, kids?” he asks Omar and Vega.
“Don’t you ask them if they’re okay! You don’t even know these children!” Sven says, cutting him off and furiously pushing Kent’s pointing hand away, then turns to the children and points with his own whole arm. “Are you okay, kids?”
Vega and Omar nod, confused. Somebody tries to say something but she doesn’t have a chance. Kent pushes in front of Sven and waves the palms of his hands about.
“Everyone calm down now so we can call the police.”
“I’m standing right here!”
Britt-Marie’s ears are still ringing. She clears her throat and says:
“Please, Kent. Please, Sven. Can I just ask you to calm yourselves dow—”
But the men are not listening to her. They continue rowing and gesticulating as if she were something you could just switch off with a remote control.
Kent snorts something about how Sven couldn’t “protect a hand with a glove” and Sven snorts back that he’s sure Kent is “very brave inside his BMW with the doors locked.” Kent yells that Sven shouldn’t get ideas about himself because he’s nothing but “a copper in a little crappy village,” and Sven yells back that Kent shouldn’t think he can just come here and “buy people’s admiration with business cards and shit like that!
” Upon which Kent yells that “the kid wants to be a bloody entrepreneur, doesn’t he!
” Upon which Sven yells that “being an entrepreneur is not a job!” Upon which Kent rails at him, “What, so you want him to be a cop instead, do you? Huh? What sort of pay does a policeman take home?” Upon which Sven flies into a rage: “We get a two and a half percent raise every year and I have very good yields on my pension funds! I’ve done a course in it! ”
Britt-Marie tries to step between them, but they don’t notice her.
“I’ve done a cooouuurse,” Kent imitates disdainfully.
“Hey! It’s an offense to pull at a policeman’s uniform, damn it!” roars Sven and grabs hold of Kent’s shirt.
“Watch the shirt! Do you have any idea how much this cost?!”
“You vain ponce, no wonder Britt-Marie left you!”
“Left me?! You think she’ll be staying here with you, you glorified security guard?!”
Britt-Marie waves her arms as hard as she can in front of them, trying to make them see her.
“Please, Kent! Please, Sven! Stop at once! I just mopped this floor!”
But it’s useless, as each of the men has just employed their respective right arms to put the other in a headlock, and they have started tottering about doubled over in a swearing, panting dance, and seconds later, with a mighty crash, the front door of the pizzeria shatters into splintered wood when the two men tumble through it like drunken bears.
They land in an indecorous pile in the gravel and, in so doing, seem to draw even more attention to their physical imperfections.
Britt-Marie runs forward and stares at them. They stare up at her, suddenly silent and well aware of the trouble they have caused.
Kent tries to get on his feet first.
“Darling, you can see for yourself, can’t you? The bloke is a complete idiot!”
“He started it!” Sven protests at once, crawling to his feet next to Kent.
And that’s the point when Britt-Marie has had enough. Enough of the whole thing. She’s been shouted at and pushed and threatened with pistols and now she has to mop the floor one more time because of splinters of wood all over the pizzeria. Enough is enough.
They don’t hear her the first, second, or third time. But then she fills her lungs with air and says as emphatically as she can:
“I should like to ask you to leave.”
When they still don’t listen to her she does something she hasn’t done in twenty years, not since one of her flowers was blown off the balcony. She yells.
“Get out of here! The pair of you!”
The pizzeria grows more silent than it could possibly have been even if a new pistol-wielding robber had stepped inside.
Kent and Sven are left standing with their mouths wide open, making noises that would probably have been words if they had closed their mouths between the syllables.
Britt-Marie digs her heels even deeper into the floor and points at the broken door.
“Get out. At once.”
“But for God’s sake, darl—” Kent begins to say, but Britt-Marie chops her bandaged hand through the air in what could probably have qualified as a new form of martial arts and abruptly silences him.
“You might have asked how I hurt my hand, Kent. You might have asked, because then I might have believed that you actually cared.”
“I thought, oh, come on now, darling, I thought you’d got your hand caught in the dishwasher or some shit like that . . . you know how it is. I didn’t think it was anything seri—”
“Because you didn’t ask!”
“But . . . darling . . . don’t get all piss—” stammers Kent.
Sven sticks out his chest towards him.
“Exactly! Exactly! Get out of here, you bloody yuppie, Britt-Marie doesn’t want you here! Don’t you underst—” he starts saying, brimming with self-confidence.
But Britt-Marie’s hand cleaves the air in front of him so that he staggers back at the draft.
“And you, Sven! Don’t tell me what I feel! You don’t know me! Not even I know myself, quite clearly, because this is certainly not normal behavior for me!”
Somewhere on the premises Somebody is trying not to laugh.
Vega and Omar look as if they’d like to keep notes so they never forget any of the details.
Britt-Marie collects herself and adjusts her hair and brushes some wooden splinters from her skirt and then places her bandaged hand neatly in the other, and clarifies in an altogether well-meaning, considerate way:
“Now I’m going to clean in here. Good afternoon to you both.”
The bell above the door tinkles dolefully and halfheartedly behind Kent and Sven. They stay outside for a good while yelling, “See what you’ve done?” at each other. Then everything goes silent.
Britt-Marie starts cleaning.
Somebody and the children hide in the kitchen until she has finished. They daren’t even laugh.