The Little Old Lady Who Struck Lucky Again! (38 page)

‘Where will we move to? You must tell us,’ Rake grumbled.

Martha lifted up her floral-patterned cloth bag and searched for the folder. Although it was plastic, the papers inside had got all wrinkled. She had sniffled and cried a little because she,
too, liked living in the old house, and now she had a bad conscience for forcing her friends to move on once again. In future, she must plan things better. If they were going to commit more crimes,
then she must make sure it didn’t lead to such turmoil in their life.

‘It
is
a pity that we must leave Värmdö, but we can come back again later. Anyhow, just have a look at this place; it isn’t bad at all, don’t you think?’
Martha said, opening the folder and pulling out some papers. ‘Brains and I looked on the Internet and we found this. I think the prospects are good that we can stay hidden yet still be quite
comfortable.’ She unfolded a map on the table and laid out some photos that showed both the house and the area surrounding it.

The others were a bit grumpy because they hadn’t been involved in planning this from the beginning, but then they realized that they had had more than their hands full as it was, and that
perhaps it was, after all, for the best that Martha and Brains had planned for them. Towards midnight, the friends had agreed as to what course of action they should take, and could allow
themselves a few hours of sleep. Now it was a question of sink or swim.

‘We must pack all our stuff secretly so that the Bandangels don’t realize that we are leaving. And not only that, we should have everything ready before they come back,’ said
Christina, a tremble in her voice.

‘Yes, indeed, but we’ll manage that,’ said Rake, and he patted her on the cheek. His little ‘affair’ with Lillemor, and Christina’s strong reaction, had made
him want to look after her better. He had been egoistical and stupid, and even though it had been exciting to be with Lillemor, he didn’t want to risk losing Christina for good. Of course he
liked his Christina best! He always had done. Strange that she couldn’t grasp that!

Early next morning, they started to pack. A red-eyed Anna-Greta had been forced to abandon her vinyl record collection and even though they had promised that she could take one box of her
favourites, that didn’t really help much. After all, she had twenty large boxes full of LPs that she would now have to leave behind in the old house.

‘When everything’s calmed down we can come back and fetch the boxes,’ Martha consoled her. ‘Besides, we’re moving far from Stockholm, so you’ll be able to
devote lots of time to Gunnar. That will be nice, won’t it?’

Reluctantly, Anna-Greta agreed to pack all her records away in the cellar, and then muttered something about how criminal activities had started to destroy her private life. She and Gunnar got
on so nicely in the old house and they had looked forward to many evenings together where they could have eaten well, surfed on the Internet and listened to their records together. He had
introduced her to Jussi Björling and Harry Brandelius, as well as Teleman’s and Verdi’s fantastic compositions. Now she would have to put it all in the cellar and she could not
even take her old treasury of horn music with her. At the next meeting she would raise the question of their private lives and insist on lowering the level of their criminal ambitions. They
couldn’t just keep going on with robberies and writing ransom demands. Of course they ought to do everything they could for those who found themselves in difficult circumstances, but surely
they didn’t have to be in such a hurry like stressed teenagers.

There was a lot of stuff that had to be moved. Anders and Emma came to help. They arrived in a Volvo estate and had even attached quite a large trailer. The personal belongings of the League of
Pensioners were loaded into the back of the Volvo, but there wasn’t room for it all and Anders would look after the rest and drive it out to them later. They needed the trailer for another
purpose. Together with Rake, Anders attached the trailer to the minibus and then they filled it with all the whisky they had left in the earth cellar, and topped that with some bottles of liqueur
and champagne.

‘Pity about all the booze,’ said Rake, and he patted one of the boxes sadly.

‘OK, ready? I’m starting up now,’ said Anders, and he rolled down the hill until he got as far as the corner out to the road. They had gathered there earlier in the morning and
discovered that that was the only place where you couldn’t see either their own big old house or the yellow house. That way, nobody would be able to see that the cars and boats were gone.
Anders pulled up the handbrake, got out of the minibus and looked about him.

‘Yes, this should do nicely, just a little bit further,’ he noted, before getting back into the bus again. Then he reversed a bit closer to the ditch so that the trailer was leaning
over at an ominous angle and now blocked the road.

‘Right that’s perfect,’ he said, pleased, and got out again. Then he went round to the back of the bus and opened the doors. Together with Brains and Rake, he pushed out some
cartons of whisky which fell onto the road. Then he opened the bonnet, took out the sparking plugs and gave them to Brains.

‘Now the most depressing part.’ Rake sighed and pushed out some more boxes of champagne and liqueur which fell onto the whisky so that many of the bottles got smashed. Slowly the
precious drink dripped onto the gravel and seeped down into the ditch.

‘This is just too sad,’ muttered Rake, who always found it hard to see precious drops going to waste. He purposefully went up to the trailer and dipped his hand in one of the
aromatic puddles. Then he licked his fingers and thumb for a long time, savouring the taste.

The Copenhagen meeting had gone on a bit longer than expected, but in the end the committee made the decision that the Bandangels had waited for, for such a long time. Their
club had been admitted into Mad Angels as full members. The successful way in which the Bandangels had emptied the storehouse in the Stockholm docks had tilted the decision in their favour.
Beylings had lost everything when they hadn’t paid in those ten million, and now the motorbike gang had acquired lots of goods worth so much more. Tompa and Jörgen cheered when they
heard the decision and then knocked back so many beers that they had to sing and roar out all the time. On the Saturday evening, the celebrations knew no bounds. They ran riot along the
Ströget and in the early hours of the following morning, Tompa, now drunk and crazy, had put swimming trunks on a statue of the Little Mermaid, making her look quite ridiculous. She
didn’t look any better when he added a hat and sunglasses, and painted her lips with motor oil. In the end, Jörgen had been forced to stop him, when Tompa carved the Bandangels logo on
her tail fin and added an ‘I love you’. Luckily, Tompa was always in a happy mood when he was drunk, so he had nothing against Jörgen deleting the logo, and, joyfully singing, they
wandered along the shore until they finally collapsed on a park bench. When they woke up at dawn, they hobbled back to the hotel in a lovely sunrise, fell asleep and didn’t wake up until
lunchtime, when they had more or less recovered. Tompa lay half awake, looking rather the worse for wear, when his mobile rang.

‘Who’s ringing now?’ he complained, picking up the phone.

‘Lillemor,’ he said, and he pointed at the mobile when Jörgen gave him a questioning look.

‘Oh yeah, the hocus-pocus woman,’ mumbled Jörgen, and he watched as Tompa listened with half-closed eyes and hummed and hawed now and then without saying much.

‘Sure, we’ll come right away, old girl!’ Tompa said finally, and he smiled and put the mobile on the bedside table. He turned towards Jörgen. ‘She’s quite a
laugh, that Lillemor. She sounded totally pissed and said that all our stuff had gone.’

‘What if she’s right? What if Beylings have been there and taken all their stuff back?’

‘She was pissed out of her mind. Nope, cool it.’

‘But to be on the safe side, I think we’d best leave now,’ said Jörgen. And that’s what they did.

It was early evening when Tompa, Jörgen and four other Bandangels members came roaring into Myrstigen. On their way up the hill they could see that something was wrong and they screeched to
a halt. The oldies’ minibus was stuck there with one wheel in the ditch while the big trailer blocked the road. Here and there lay boxes and broken bottles in the road, and some whisky
bottles of the very finest sort had rolled into the ditch.

Tompa exclaimed, ‘Those old people shouldn’t be allowed to drive!’

The bikers got off their bikes and looked at the mess.

‘Well, perhaps it’s not such a bad thing? Just look at what they’ve left: whisky and champagne. Let them keep on driving! Let’s just take a few bottles!’
Jörgen suggested.

‘Yeah, we’ll just help ourselves!’ said Tompa, grabbing a bottle. The boys started to walk round the trailer to see how they could lift it away from the road. Then there was a
sudden rustling in the bushes and Martha came from down by the beach.

‘Oh dearie me, sorry about this, it all went wrong! I tried to drive and I shouldn’t have done,’ she started to explain, throwing up her hands. ‘But we’ve phoned
for a tow truck so it’ll all be sorted soon. Why not have a drink with us down in the sauna in the meanwhile? We’ve got some pickled herring and vodka too.’

Tompa and Jörgen looked at the trailer, thought it over and glanced down towards the bay.

‘You can just leave your motorbikes here. That’s all right. They’re not in the way. Take a bottle, we can’t drink it all by ourselves,’ Martha went on, and she
pointed at the damaged cartons with the whisky bottles.

‘Herring and vodka. Yeah, why not? What do you say, lads?’ Tompa turned to the others.

The boys who had driven all the way from Copenhagen and only had two breaks were hot and tired and had absolutely nothing against going straight to a table with food waiting. Herring, and vodka
to wash it down – that was never wrong. The old girl was right. They could leave their bikes at the bottom of the hill and perhaps go for a swim afterwards, too. Several hours in that black
leather gear had left its mark. They all stank of sweat.

‘OK, then,’ Tompa and Jörgen mumbled, and the others nodded in agreement. They took off their helmets and followed Martha down to the beach. There on the terrace outside the
sauna stood a long table with various sorts of herring and several bottles of vodka. Koskenkorva from Finland, some flavoured Swedish varieties and a Smirnoff glistened in the sun, and from the
sauna you could smell the burning birch logs. It all smelt very inviting.

‘Well, now, boys, just help yourselves. There’s nothing as delightful as an early summer evening. One should enjoy it!’ said Christina briskly, and she tried to hide the fact
that her legs were trembling and her kneecaps were shaking out of step. The boys combed their sweaty hair, mumbled a thank-you and looked on with amusement as the old ladies filled their schnapps
glasses. Brains and Rake, for their part, served fancy breads and freshly baked bread while Martha put out serving dishes filled with herring, sliced eggs and beetroot.

‘Did you know, boys, that we oldies used to sing in the same choir? Now, let’s all join in and sing a traditional drinking song together!’

‘Helan går, sjung hopp fallerallan lej,’
Martha started up in a jolly tone and then the rest of the League of Pensioners, including Gunnar, sang in parts and the
Bandangels joined them as best they could and under general amusement. ‘
Skååål
!’ they all shouted out across the water as they raised their glasses and then
downed their drinks in one. The herring, bread and trimmings went the rounds, and they had hardly started eating before it was time for a new toast.

‘Now we shall sing the bumble-bee song,’ said Anna-Greta with her thunderous voice, and she held up her schnapps glass. ‘Are you ready, boys?’

And whether they were ready or not, Anna-Greta soon smothered any objections when she started singing.

‘We are little bumble-bees, that’s what we are, bzzzz, bzzzz. We are little bumble-bees, that’s what we are, bzzzz, bzzzz.’
At this point she started giggling.
‘We are little bumble-bees and here’s a toast for you, we are little bumble-bees . . .’
Then she burst out laughing and lost the thread.

Now Christina took over:
‘We are little angels, that’s what we are, swoosh, swoosh. We are little angels, that’s what we are, swoosh, swoosh. We are little angels and
here’s a toast for you . . .’

Then Martha, who realized that these giants would need more than a few schnapps to get drunk, took over and in quick succession proposed toasts for the sauna, the coming summer, the birch trees,
the cowslips and all the whisky that had spilled on the road, while Rake went round after round and made sure that the schnapps glasses were never empty. After a while, when the Bandangels had
toasted more times than they could remember, the leather gear started to feel sticky and the smell of sweat spread among them.

‘What about it, mates? We were going to go for a swim before dinner, right? Come and join us!’ Brains exclaimed, and he started to take off his shirt.

‘Yes, you go for a swim, and I’ll start making dinner,’ Martha added. ‘What about something on the grill? I’ve got some lovely lamb steaks . . .’

‘No,’ said Jörgen.

‘Now listen, boys. We’re still waiting for the tow truck and you have had such a long journey. What do you say? This evening we neighbours can provide dinner. So you can have a sauna
and go for a swim. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?’

‘Well, I’m not sure that,’ said Tompa, hesitating. He thought about the telephone call from Lillemor and that perhaps he ought to go and check that everything was as it should
be. Oh, but if he went to see her now, she would surely insist on telling his fortune and he wouldn’t be able to get away. She’d been drunk and would probably still be sleeping off her
hangover. Anyway, if anything serious had happened, then the oldies would have said something, wouldn’t they? A bit of grub first would do no harm. Lillemor could sometimes be a real fusspot.
They were better off with these old girls and guys, and that Martha, she wasn’t nearly as weird as Lillemor.