Jim and Jack
Jim and Jack are two police officers who arrive to investigate an attempted bank robbery at which hostages had been taken. Jim is older and more experienced than Jack. Oh, and Jim is also Jack’s father who are additionally bonded to each as a result of grief over the premature death of Jack’s mother. Jack decided to follow his father’s footsteps in part because he witnesses the suicidal jump off a bridge by a man and was overcome with the guilt of feeling helpless in the face of such tragedy.
Nadia
At the time of the bank robbery and hostage situation at the center of the narrative, Nadia is a psychologist. Many years before, however, Nadia was also drawn to that same bridge with suicidal intentions. Jack, however, was able to intervene in this case and thereby present a recurrence of tragedy. This event was equally significance in his decision to join the force. Jack had been able to save her by roughly pulling her back from the precipice of mortality with the result being she never knew who saved her and has spent much of his life since wondering.
Zara
Ten years previous to the bank robbery, the current manager of the bank, Zara, had turned down the request of a man who had applied for a loan. He is the man who despondently leaps to his death from the bridge that Jack witnesses. The mysterious suicidal man had sent Zara a letter prior to killing himself and has spent the ensuing decade dealing with emotional trauma. Recently she began seeing psychologist, a younger woman whose officer décor includes an enigmatic picture of a woman standing on a bridge, possibly contemplating jumping.
The Bank Robber
The bank robber is a bit misleading as an identifier since the whole story really kind of winds up revolving around the fact that on December 30, this unidentified woman entered a bank with the intent of robbery but failed to actually commit that crime upon discovering that it is a small-town cashless bank. The meat of the narrative is therefore not set within the bank itself, but rather the apartment building nearby to which the robber flees. It just so happens that on this particular day one of the apartments is holding an open house for showing to potential renters. The potential renters thereupon become hostages.
The Hostages
The hostages are an eclectic group each dealing with their own particular domestic and social problems. In addition to Zara, there is pregnant Julia and her partner Rob, an engineer named Roger and his wife Anne-Lena, an actor in a bunny costume named Lennart who is nevertheless routinely referred to as “the rabbit” and the strangest hostages of all—believe it or not, even stranger than Lennart—an elderly widow and husband Knut. (Knut is not a ghost, it is just he is Estelle’s favorite topic of conversation, and the reader comes to know as much if not more about him than most of the other hostages.)
