The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules (12 page)

The day before the big ransom was to be paid, the five friends took a taxi to the Viking Line ferry terminal, where they bought their tickets. Anna-Greta paid in cash, of course. The League of Pensioners sat waiting to go on board. They didn’t have their own walkers with them, as they had left these in the Princess Lilian suite in the Grand Hotel. Brains had pocketed all of his tools and they were now using frames supplied by the shipping line. They went on board the Viking Line ferry and once there put their walkers and some small items in their cabins. Then they discreetly went down the corridor, took the stairs to the car deck and walked out via the car ramp, off the ferry and onto the quay. If anybody was after them, then they would have been fooled. These five passengers were actually going on a totally different ferry.

When they were back in the Viking terminal, they fetched the Urbanista shopping trolleys they had stored there, ordered a taxi to the Silja Line terminal at Värta docks on the other side of Stockholm and managed to arrive just before the
Silja Serenade
ship departed. Martha was very proud of this little outflanking movement. The League of Pensioners’ feint, as she called it. Now the police and other authorities could
search for them all they liked on the Viking
Mariella
ferry, while in actual fact they were comfortably ensconced on the Silja Line’s flagship
Silja Serenade
. Rake had asked her what the point of this bothersome extra outing was, and Martha had explained that she had read about leading pursuers off the trail in many crime novels. If you led them down a sidetrack, you would gain time. And hadn’t they agreed to have a bit of fun before they ended up in prison?

The five of them joked merrily about robberies and thefts while they queued for their cabins on
Silja Serenade
. The passengers standing closest to them cast an amused glance at the happy-go-lucky group of pensioners and couldn’t help but smile. Perhaps growing old wasn’t so bad after all? When Martha and the others had got their plastic key cards, they didn’t go directly to the cabins but wheeled their black shopping trolleys to the elevator and pressed the button to go down to the car deck. Once they were down there, amidst the lorries and cars, nobody paid them any attention and they could walk unhindered along the side of the ship towards the ramp. En route they examined every partition and recess, searching for a good place to hide things. It was damp, there were pools of water here and there and it smelt of diesel, but that didn’t bother them. They were all concentrating deeply on their purpose. Close to the ramp they caught sight of the partition meant for boots and rain clothes. A wooden box and two large duffel bags could be seen on the floor.

‘Here!’ said Martha triumphantly, and they carefully pushed their black shopping trolleys in among the rain clothes. To be on the safe side, they looked over their shoulder to ensure that nobody had seen them and then quickly went
on their way. Admittedly, they were not going to get the ransom until the return journey to Stockholm, but this way they could test whether the shopping trolleys would be left in peace or whether the police had set up a trap, and this would give them a little bit of distance from the stolen goods.

The morning sun shone into the Princess Lilian suite, making the grand piano and the grey carpet sparkle. The young hotel cleaner, Petra Strand, puffed the cushions on the sofa and shook them out the window. She had vacuumed the carpets and cleaned the bathroom as well as dusting all the furniture. She straightened her back and fluffed up her newly washed red hair with her fingers. Now she had finished cleaning the room, the fun part was next. She was going to make an inventory of the decorations in the various rooms and see what could be improved. She was admittedly only a cleaner, but when the hotel management found out that she studied art, surely they would want to hear her opinion about colour schemes and fittings and decorations. Even though mainly older people were guests at the Grand Hotel, the Internet revolution meant that many younger millionaires had also started to stay there. She was exactly the right person to help the management of the hotel adjust to the times and see to it that their new clients felt at home.

Petra threw a glance at the sunlit palace across the water in front of the hotel, put her duster into the cleaning trolley and then walked all round the suite. While she studied the decorations, carpets and textiles, she thought about what could be improved. The dominant colours in the suite were
white, grey and black, and she liked the deep-pile wall-to-wall carpet, which had a slightly silverish tone. The turquoise floral bedspreads matched the magnificent view, and even the rooms with the somewhat lighter shades were stylish. But … something was lacking: the decoration in the 330 square metres of the suite did, without doubt, need something more. Perhaps some new paintings?

Her first impression was that the works of art were a little ‘tame’ and she would rather see more dashing colours adorning the walls. A large painting depicting a sailing ship had been hung up above the bed in one of the bedrooms, there was an etching in the corridor next to the kitchen, and two small still lifes hung on the walls in the library. She came to a halt in front of two small oil paintings above the grand piano. They looked fairly decent, but no more than that. One of them portrayed some small cargo vessels and fishing boats in an estuary, and the other was some sort of Paris exterior with a man and a woman at a café. The painting with the river motif was dominated by brown, dirty-grey colours and had far too many vessels and boats in relation to the area of water. The Paris exterior wasn’t much better. The woman at the café was shown from behind and the man looked strange with his long hair, enormous moustache and a hat which didn’t fit with the period. There was too much of everything, and it would have been enough to have just the woman’s hat in the painting. Nevertheless, the motif seemed familiar. She had a closer look. It did actually remind her of a work by Renoir. The great masters were often copied but the results were usually poor. This was by one of the many artists who had clearly failed. Regardless,
the two paintings didn’t look good above the grand piano. She would rather see a large modern painting there. Why not an Ola Billgren, a Cecilia Edefalk or a Picasso? Quickly she lifted down the two paintings, put them on her cleaning trolley and took the elevator down to the annex.

The rooms in the annex were being renovated and the paintings from these rooms had been taken down, and they leaned against the wall in some of the rooms which were going to be repainted. Petra looked through the paintings and studied each one carefully. One of them reminded her of a genuine Chagall, and the largest, a Matisse-like watercolour, would look perfect above the grand piano.

She left the paintings from the Princess Lilian suite on the trolley, put the other two under her arm and went up with them. With great enthusiasm, she hung first one and then the other above the piano. Then she took a few expectant steps back into the centre of the room. Her eyes lit up. It looked so very much better this way! The management would be really pleased!

After the League of Pensioners had installed themselves in their cabins and rested a while, they changed and went up to the dining room. Martha kept a sharp lookout to make sure that they were not being observed. After all, it was a bit scary to be demanding a ransom, but it was very exciting at the same time.

‘Á la carte or smorgasbord?’ Martha asked when they went into the dining room.

‘Smorgasbord, of course,’ they all chimed and headed off to queue for the buffet delicacies. Rake and Christina stood next to each other and chatted, while Martha kept company with Brains and Anna-Greta. In the cabin, before they had gone up for dinner, Anna-Greta had asked a strange question.

‘What is it that causes men to be interested in certain women but not in others?’ Anna-Greta wondered out loud.

Martha had tried to make light of such a question, but then she saw that Anna-Greta was serious.

‘You must be well dressed, joyful and an extrovert,’ she said with a glance at Anna-Greta’s outfit. Her skirt in a greyishbrown and black with a dirty-green pattern was more like camouflage than design. The only advantage was that it was not very visible.

‘Well dressed? I don’t understand that,’ said Anna-Greta with a glance at Martha’s purse belt.

‘Yes, you must wear beautiful clothes, have some make-up on and flirt a little,’ Martha attempted to explain.

‘And you think that is what you do?’

‘Not me, no, but in general that’s it,’ said Martha vaguely, thinking that it would be a good idea if Anna-Greta met somebody because she evidently felt herself excluded. Christina and Rake seemed to have something going and she mainly socialized with Brains.

‘But you know what is so delightful about life?’ Martha tried again. ‘You never know what is going to happen—and it is never too late to hope.’

‘Any more clichés?’ Anna-Greta snorted, and Martha
immediately stopped speaking. She had only wanted to encourage her. What she really wanted to say was that Anna-Greta was too formal and correct, dressed in a very dull way and laughed like a horse—but no, she couldn’t do that.

They finished their meal with a helping of cream trifle in the dining room. By this point, Anna-Greta was in a better mood, and by the second glass of wine, she was talking and laughing as usual. Martha was relieved to see this but thought that they ought to take more care of her. To outsiders, Anna-Greta always gave the impression of being so prickly, but like everyone else, she wanted to experience love and friendship too.

After dinner they continued the evening in the karaoke bar. The wine had them in high spirits and, experienced choir singers as they were, they felt the urge to sing. Martha stepped up onto the podium and started with ‘Yesterday’, while Rake, as usual, sang the Jussi Björling classic ‘Towards the Sea’. Even Anna-Greta plucked up courage and stood up and sang ‘My Way’ in an extremely personal interpretation, which she reinforced with even more original gestures. Afterwards, everybody gave a friendly applause, but when Anna-Greta thought of following it up with the Swedish national anthem, Martha suggested that it was time for them to go somewhere else. Anna-Greta protested heartily and it wasn’t until Martha informed her that there were sure to be many widowers in the bar that she agreed to go along. They took the elevator to the deck above.

Nurse Barbara’s cheeks were burning and she was completely exhausted after spending several hours in the cabin with
Director Mattson. She had thought that he was going to take her on a holiday to Europe where they would stay in a luxury hotel, but instead they were on an ordinary cruise trip aboard the
Silja Serenade
to Helsinki. It was a little bit of a disappointment, but when she heard his explanation she calmed down.

‘You see, my little sweetie, on European flights there is a greater risk of me meeting my colleagues. On a cruise ship I know we’ll be undisturbed and can devote ourselves completely to each other.’

With those words she had allowed herself to be appeased. It made her happy that she was so important to him. It could only mean that he was planning to marry her in the future. Soon, very soon, she would have achieved her goal. Yes indeed, he seemed to be totally engrossed. After they had boarded at half past four, they had gone directly to their cabin. Now it was past eight o’clock and she hadn’t even noticed when the ship left the harbour.

‘What do you think, shall we have a drink in the bar and get a bite to eat?’ she asked when hunger made itself felt.

‘Of course, but we must eat quickly, mind you!’ he said, pulling her towards him. ‘My little, little treasure!’

She felt the words echoing inside her head, begging to be spoken out loud:
Get divorced and marry me!
She wanted to shout this out but controlled herself. She must try to find the right occasion. Perhaps after a drink or two in the bar, she thought.

The five fugitive pensioners stood with their drinks at the bar and looked out across the dance floor. Several couples were already dancing and Martha wondered if she would dare dance
herself. After all their gym exercising she was feeling more agile than ever. She heard her friends’ laughter and reflected upon the transformation that had taken place. Just a few months earlier they had been tired and lacking in energy. Now they were a happy gang and even Anna-Greta seemed to be in good spirits. Now and then her voice cut through the murmur around them and drowned out everything, but she sounded happy and that was the most important thing. Martha thought about what she had dared to suggest earlier that evening.

‘Anna-Greta, don’t take this the wrong way, but what you asked earlier about men …’

‘Yes?’

‘Don’t talk so loudly, and try to restrain your peals of laughter. Men like to be the ones who are seen and heard.’

Martha was amazed that she had dared to be so direct, but she only meant well. Then she had taken Anna-Greta with her to the ladies’. There she had lent her a lipstick and helped her to comb her hair into a more becoming style. She had persuaded her to loosen the bun on her neck, and with her hair falling diagonally across her brow she looked more attractive. Martha had also lent her a skirt and a blouse that suited her well. But then Anna-Greta had turned into her old self. She had started to chat with an elderly gentleman and, in her eagerness, her voice had become just as piercing as usual. Then it got even louder. Martha shook her head. Soon he was bound to be put off. However, the evening wore on and the man made no attempt to leave. Instead, the two of them stood very close to one another and talked away, and when Anna-Greta let off one of her classic neighs, he didn’t even react. Had Anna-Greta finally met a soulmate? Indeed,
anything could happen once you escaped the isolation of the retirement home. Martha thought about how much they had actually achieved during their days of freedom and wished that more people in retirement homes could have such adventures. Although something was seriously wrong when you had to become a criminal to have a bit of fun in your old age!

Anna-Greta’s neighing laugh could be heard again, but now the man had put a hand on her shoulder. Lord above, he seemed to want to ask her to dance—yes, now he turned round, put his hand under her arm and started to move towards the dance floor. Martha saw that Anna-Greta really had met Mr Right. The man had a hearing aid. He had probably turned it off.

The music started up again and just as Martha was wondering whether she would dare to have a slow dance, Brains came up to her. Since she was only too willing to hold him, she hoped he would ask her to dance so that they would have a few moments together. Unfortunately, her romantic notions were spoilt because as soon as they got onto the dance floor, Brains leaned forward and whispered in her ear:

‘Nurse Barbara is here. What shall we do now?’