The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules (23 page)

Nothing is hopeless and you should never give up
, thought Nurse Barbara while she browsed through the papers on her desk.
Love is like politics. Almost like buying shares on the stock exchange. You never know which way it will go
. She had invested her future in Ingmar, and soon something must happen. She took out her white handkerchief and dried the sweat from her brow. Over in the general lounge two elderly men sat barely awake, and Dolores had dozed off on the sofa. Barbara saw them, but without taking it in. In her head there was only Ingmar. He had problems with his wife. She had returned with the children but then gone back to England
the week after. At first, he hadn’t spoken so much about his marriage, but she had noticed that he had become silent and thoughtful. When finally she asked what was wrong, he told her that his wife had fallen in love with a British businessman in London. No man likes to be cut out, so she realized she must console him. She stayed the night with him and now she had several pairs of shoes and dresses in his wardrobe. She felt as if she had caught her fish and was slowly but surely reeling it in.

‘Ingmar, darling, what’s going to happen now?’ she ventured to ask some weeks later.

‘My wife and I have some things to sort out, but then, dearest, then!’

Her and him. She quickly realized that he was serious about this when he introduced her to his children.

‘This is my colleague, Barbara. I hope you will get on well together,’ he had said as he introduced her to them. Ingmar had started grumbling more about everything he had to do. ‘A pity I have so much overtime, darling, but we’ve got the evenings and the entire nights together.’

‘I can help you,’ she said in a sprightly tone, and she went on working to make herself indispensible.

Now they shared a home and a weekday life. At the end of each day she couldn’t wait to finish work to get home in time to make dinner. Just as if she and Ingmar were already married. She felt she was approaching the goal.
Soon
, she thought.
Soon!

It was lucky that things seemed to be working out between her and Ingmar, because at work she had problems. Since the art theft at the National Museum nothing had been the same.

‘Why should we sit here? I want a bit of action,’ said Sven, aged eighty-four.

‘And I want to go on a boat trip on Lake Mälaren,’ his friend Selma, eighty-three, nagged.

‘Can’t we all go shopping?’ Gertrude, who was eighty-six, interposed as she tugged on Nurse Barbara’s sleeve. ‘Some new clothes would cheer me up.’

The oldies went on like that, and when things were at their worst, Nurse Barbara searched frantically for the red pills. She searched and searched but she couldn’t find them. Things didn’t get any better when she went to the chemist’s.

‘Those pills weren’t profitable, so we have stopped making them,’ she was informed. The new pills she was offered cost much more. Barbara asked Ingmar what they should do.

‘Goodness, we can’t afford such expensive pills,’ he answered. ‘You’ll have to entertain the oldies instead.’ He laughed and gave her a hug.

In the retirement home, things were beginning to get out of hand. Nobody at Diamond House went to bed at eight o’clock, as they were meant to, and they refused to eat the food they were served. And the weirdest of them all was Dolores, who was ninety-three. She went around with a shopping trolley full of blankets and old newspapers and claimed it contained money.

‘I’ve been given several million,’ she said every day, pointing at the shopping trolley and looking most satisfied. ‘My son is extremely generous, I must say. To think that I am so well off.’

Barbara smiled and agreed because that was the best you could do with old people—smile and agree with them. She had learned that on a course.

Dolores hummed to herself, patted her shopping trolley and beamed. ‘My millions,’ she said and giggled.

‘Congratulations,’ everybody said at the home. They got together to give Dolores a fancy cream cake with green marzipan, which was her favourite. A week later, Dolores had painted the trolley handle sky blue because, as she said, the money was a gift from heaven.

Barbara’s days became all the more stressful. What she really needed was more staff at Diamond House, but every time she broached the subject Ingmar said he was sorry but they couldn’t spend so much money.

‘You see, my darling,’ he explained, ‘if Diamond House becomes even more profitable, then we can open more retirement homes. Then, sweetie, I will be rich.’

We will be rich
, she thought, but didn’t say it out loud. Instead, she proposed several ways to cut costs to make him happy. She was even a bit ashamed of one of her suggestions.

‘If we make the present staff redundant and then employ immigrants instead, we can give them lower wages. They won’t dare grumble but will be glad to have a job,’ she had ventured, uncertain as to how he would react.

‘My darling, you are wonderful,’ he had answered, and from that day on he had regarded her with new eyes. She could sense his respect, and now she felt not only like his woman, but also like his business partner.

She smiled to herself. She was getting close to her goal, and much faster than she had expected.

‘We must be granted temporary release soon, don’t you think?’ Martha said one day when she was washing up after lunch. The rain had stopped, and she and her friends intended to take a walk. It had been the rainiest summer for decades, and now and then Martha found herself worrying about the banknotes in the drainpipe. She prayed that Rake had sealed the garbage bags as well as he had claimed, and that the tarred ropes would bear the weight. Nobody had been able to check them, since they hadn’t yet been granted any temporary release, and now more than six months had passed.

‘No release this week either, but don’t you worry, Martha. The money will be waiting for us when we get out,’ said Anna-Greta, and she put a dirty serving dish in the sink. Martha squeezed some more dishwashing liquid into the sink, and while she scraped the dish clean she thought about how calm and harmonious Anna-Greta had become. While she herself worried about the future, Anna-Greta played the gramophone or sewed prison clothes together with the others in the sewing workshop.

In no time, Anna-Greta had become popular among the inmates. Particularly when she described the various types of bank accounts and money transfers available.

‘I like being here because the girls have respect for my knowledge,’ said Anna-Greta. ‘They listen to me in a totally different way than at the bank.’

That I can believe
, Martha thought, but didn’t say it out loud.

Christina, too, was satisfied. She was often in the workshop, where they made screen prints on T-shirts. Every day, she talked about some new slogan that a trendy advertising agency had thought up. Sometimes the rhymed slogans sounded just too silly, and Martha wondered if they really had been printed on the T-shirts. Then Christina admitted that the slogans
could
have been used, but that she had actually made them up herself. Her silly rhyming slogans became quite tiresome, and she didn’t stop until the workshop got a large order from a Russian company. She couldn’t rhyme those words at all.

Martha felt quite comfortable in the prison too, although sometimes it was odd to have so many criminals around you. None of the inmates actually admitted that they had committed crimes, but they had obviously done something to end up in jail. The worst part was that the most heinous criminals lorded it over the others. Like Liza, for example. Martha gave a start when the serving dish slipped into the water.

‘I won’t be calm until we have given the paintings back and recovered the money,’ she sighed, scrubbing the dish with a brush.

‘But Martha, the money in the drainpipe won’t run away,’ Christina consoled her. ‘It might drip away.’

‘There is no hurry, surely. We’re doing nicely here, I think,’ Christina went on. ‘It’s such fun doing screen printing, and we don’t have to visit the gym in secret.’

‘Exactly,’ Anna-Greta chirped in. ‘I can play my Swedish gospel music as much as I like. Have you thought about that, girls? That if prisoners have it as good as this, then old people in retirement homes ought to have the same?’

‘Of course,’ said Christina.

‘Abroad they have more respect for the elderly. In some places you can be president after you’re seventy,’ said Martha.

‘Here in Sweden you get put aside when you are fifty,’ said Anna-Greta. ‘We aren’t worth anything. On the news yesterday, some pensioners complained about how they couldn’t cross at traffic lights in time before the lights switched back to red. Then the civil servant responsible said that they certainly could cross in time, because the office had estimated the time needed.’

‘Bring the guy here, and I’ll push my walker right into his crotch,’ said Martha. ‘No, when I come to think of it, that isn’t enough. For that, we need a proper wheelchair.’

‘I know what,’ said Anna-Greta suddenly. ‘We can turn the whole thing upside down. We can turn all the retirement homes into prisons, and all the prisons into retirement homes.’

‘That would be a pity for the prisoners,’ said Christina.

Silence reigned in the room for a long time while they all reflected upon this. Martha put her brush aside and looked at the others.

‘Now listen! We managed to change our own situation, didn’t we? It’s high time we started helping others.’

‘But the millions in the drainpipe won’t go very far,’ said Anna-Greta.

‘You know what? Yesterday the clergyman was here with a new poem from Brains. It was some sort of utopian poem
about a robbery. The idea was that you didn’t commit the crime yourself, but just got hold of the money afterwards.’

‘Ready money, I like that.’ Anna-Greta smiled.

‘No, no more crimes,’ Christina protested. ‘I’m longing to see Rake.’

‘But it’s not
us
who are going to commit the crime, Christina. We shall only take care of the money
afterwards
,’ said Martha.

‘Well, it seems we have a new business idea,’ Anna-Greta commented. ‘Stealing stolen money …’

‘Commit a crime, and you’ll feel in your prime,’ Christina tittered.

‘Precisely, we must think big, otherwise the money won’t be enough for investments in our country’s accommodation for the elderly,’ said Martha. ‘Brains mentions it in his poems. He’s got something in the pipeline.’

‘But what do the guards have to say about that?’ wondered Anna-Greta.

‘Pah, everything he writes is between the lines. It’s about a bank robbery, girls. Not the
perfect
crime, but the
ultimate
crime.

‘As long as we don’t lose the old guys on the way,’ said Christina.

‘Or the money,’ Anna-Greta added.

Martha pulled the plug out of the sink and hung up the brush.

‘But we have at least learned a little since last time, haven’t we?’

The others agreed about that, and when Martha had wiped the kitchen sink they fetched their coats and went out
to the grounds. While they walked along the path they had a lively discussion about the future. One of the secrets of a happy life, they concluded, was to have something to look forward to. And the
ultimate crime
, what could be better than that?’

At breakfast the next day, they discovered that Liza’s place was empty.

‘Isn’t Liza coming?’ Martha wondered.

‘Haven’t you heard the latest?’ one of the girls answered. ‘She got a temporary release yesterday and hasn’t come back. She’s at large.’

Martha stopped in her tracks. Her hand shook, and without noticing it she spilt hot porridge on the table.

‘Have you seen a curly haired girl who chews gum?’

The chief barman at the Grand Hotel stopped Petra on her way into the elevator with her cleaning trolley. She was busy with the last of the Flag suite and only had the floor to do. She halted. A curly haired girl?

‘No.’

‘The woman was in her mid-thirties, I should think. She talked about cleaning and wondered if she could get some work experience here. I told her to see the housekeeper.’

‘Why didn’t she go directly to her?’

‘A lot of people ask at the bar first. She wondered what it was like working at the hotel and if I knew who cleaned here.’

‘Inquisitive type.’

‘She wanted to get in touch with one of the cleaning staff, so I thought that if you—’

‘Forget it, I’ve got another exam coming up soon. She can talk to somebody else.’

‘It was perhaps stupid, but I gave her your name. You are always so good with people.’

‘Well, tell her to contact somebody else, anyway. Sorry.’

Petra went into the elevator and on her way up to the Flag suite wondered who the curly haired girl could be. Then she shrugged her shoulders, wheeled the trolley into the suite and got out the vacuum cleaner. After a while she forgot the whole thing.

Liza hurried out from the underground and looked around her. She turned her back on the light blue university buildings and started to walk towards the student residences. During the last few days she had sneaked in and out of the Grand Hotel and mingled with the cleaning staff but had still not found any paintings. She had been about to give up when the chief barman had mentioned a temporary cleaner who studied art history. Then she had asked, ‘How can I get in touch with her? Perhaps we can share a full-time job.’

The chief barman had said that he couldn’t provide any personal details, but she had already felt his gaze. It was the usual. He looked more at her low-cut top than at her face.
Without hesitating, she asked him for a cigarette, took an alluring step forwards and put her hand on her hip.

‘Is there a decent hotel somewhere nearby which isn’t too expensive?’ she asked.

The chief barman polished the same wine glass for the second time.

‘You’ve got af Chapman, the youth hostel on the ship, and there are some cheap places in the suburbs.’

‘But the youth hostel is full, and hotels in the suburbs … do you really think so?’ she said, sitting on one of the bar stools. She elaborately crossed one leg over the other and pulled her skirt up so that it got caught on the edge of the seat of the stool.

‘Hang on, I’ll give you a hand,’ said the chief barman. He fiddled a long time with the cloth of her skirt before managing to free it. ‘Incidentally, perhaps I can arrange something cheap for you in the annex. If I do, you must be out of there before the construction workers start at seven in the morning.’

‘As long as it isn’t too expensive.’

‘Nothing is free,’ he said and winked.

After he finished work in the evening, he went to see Liza in the annex, and the next morning she knew the names of all the cleaners at the hotel. A few days later she even got hold of the name of the temporary cleaner who lived in the Frescati student residences and studied at the National Library. Liza had a hunch about this girl, so she tried to find out as much information about her as she could. Petra Strand was in the habit of sitting in the library until it closed, and she didn’t come home until about six. Liza looked at her watch: it was half past four so she had plenty of time. After a while
she reached the address and found the girl’s name on a door down a corridor on the second floor. Liza checked that she was alone in the corridor, then pushed her steel comb into the slit above the lock and twisted it. There was a click and the door opened.