The Little Old Lady Who Struck Lucky Again! (40 page)

‘Now we just walk nice and calmly and try to avoid attracting attention,’ Martha whispered on their way in, but she had hardly said that before she heard a strange noise behind her.
She turned round but, despite looking in every direction, she couldn’t see anything close to her. It was not until she rolled the cleaning trolley towards the Wishing Well that she noticed
she was trailing a cable. By mistake, they had taken the mop with Brains’s built-in compass saw and now the cable snaked along on the floor behind them. If only it had been the battery-driven
mop, but this was the first prototype, the one with a cable. Thankfully, the museum had so few staff that nobody noticed anything. There wasn’t a guard in sight.

‘Don’t say we’ve got that robot vacuum cleaner with us too,’ Martha mumbled, but then she remembered that Emma had taken care of that. For a short while she felt
relieved, until she noticed that there was something about the long brush. It felt unusually heavy. But perhaps she was just imagining things because she was so nervous, and, besides, there was
nothing she could do about it now anyway.

‘Right, I think we’ll start by cleaning around the Wishing Well,’ she said and she tried to sound calm and controlled.

Christina nodded, and the two ladies made their way as discreetly and nonchalantly as possible towards the Wishing Well with their cleaning trolley. The water glittered magically and in the
restricted light you could see the shining coins that museum visitors had thrown in. It was here and now that they should start their much-practised cleaning session and make use of the well. First
sweep and wipe the floor, and then in with the gold! Everything ought to work nicely. It was just that when Martha put down the brush, she realized that things were not right. The floor brush was
not an ordinary floor brush, but a battery-driven lawn mower. Brains had long since considered that lawn mowers were too large and unwieldy for ladies and had thought up a new variety. To make it
especially attractive for women he had designed it to look like cleaning equipment and this was evidently just such an apparatus. As everyone knows, you should never be in a hurry when you pack
things, and now Martha – unaware of the error – put down the heavy, but elegantly designed floor brush and the apparatus started up with a hop followed by a deep roar, which would have
frightened a horse to death. With a noisy clinking and clonking sound the apparatus set off across the stone floor at a wild speed with Martha hanging on for all she was worth, like a tail. She
tried to make it stop, but the floor brush was not even an ordinary lawnmower, it was evidently a hotted-up version.

‘What’s going on?’ Christina shouted in a shrill voice.

‘I’m chasing a floor brush,’ Martha hissed in reply.

At that moment, amidst the thunderous racket, a school class stormed into the room. The noise from the school children drowned the sound of the lawnmower just as effectively as any underground
explosions. The entire room vibrated.

‘Oh look, wow that’s great!’ a girl shouted out the very same moment that the floor brush rammed the railings around the Wishing Well and got stuck. The engine was racing but
finally Martha, with shaking hands, managed to find the on/off switch. Still somewhat shocked, she leaned against the railings to get her strength back, only to be resuscitated quickly by Christina
again.

‘Martha, I think there’s one thing we’ve forgotten,’ her friend said.

‘Just one thing?’ Martha answered.

‘Just feel this, and then you’ll see. The rubbish bags are too heavy. We’re not going to manage to lift them over the railings and throw them into the Wishing Well.’

‘Oh God, not that too!’

Martha fumbled in her pockets for find her mobile so that she could phone for help but then she realized she had forgotten her iPhone and left it in the car. She and Christina had, of course,
only intended to walk past the Wishing Well with their cleaning trolley and then discreetly slip the rubbish bags with the gold into the water when nobody was watching, and then get out of there.
Now they were standing, dressed in their white cleaner overalls, with the trolley full of stolen gold while the room was filling up with raucous schoolchildren. Christina started to fumble for her
blood pressure pills and Martha searched in her pockets for her Jungle Roar pastilles. Then a gang of shouting boys rushed up to them making enough noise to wake the dead.

‘A lady as old as you can’t work as a cleaner, can she?’ said the oldest with a cap and a dental brace, pointing at Martha. His mate, who was chewing some gum, grinned
widely.

‘No, when you are as old as me, then you’re dead,’ Martha answered and gave him a piercing look. ‘Listen to me, lad, I am at least working, but you and your mates are
just shouting and making a disturbance. I bet you can’t even lift up a rubbish bag!’

‘Oh yes, sure I can!’ the youngster laughed out loud and his mate smirked.

‘That’s just empty boasting. You couldn’t even lift this up out of the trolley.’

‘What? You think that’s heavy?’ His mate came to life.

‘We can lift up those rubbish bags and throw them into the well, but you can’t! I bet you don’t dare throw them into the Wishing Well!’ Martha scorned him.

She affected a superior laugh, and more than that was not needed. The boy waved to his mates and the next moment they had brusquely pushed her aside.

‘I’ll show you!’ said the boy with the dental brace, and he gave her a challenging look. Then he grabbed hold of one of the bags, lifted it up and threw it down into the well.
That was the signal for the others, and now they, too, threw down the rest of the bags to the accompaniment of gorilla-like roars.

‘What about that, then, Granny?’ The boy with the brace grinned.

‘Oh goodness me! Gosh, you are strong, you boys, aren’t you!’ said Martha, and clapped her hands in pretend admiration.

Then she walked off with Christina, with the mop cable trailing behind them. The two ladies discreetly withdrew towards the entrance and this time, when Martha went out to the street, there
were, thankfully, no policemen waiting for her. She and Christina could calmly walk back to the car. They put the cleaning trolley in the back, made sure the brush-cum-lawnmower and the mop-cum-saw
were pushed in too, and closed the door. Then they drove off and hooted when they passed Anders and the others on Narvavägen. Admittedly, nobody had started to chase them yet, but both Martha
and Anders drove out of town as fast as they possibly could. Because, even though they had actually given back Sweden’s ancient gold treasures, the League of Pensioners was still guilty of
many spectacular robberies. It would probably be best to lie low for a while until everything had blown over.

The depressing November darkness rolled across the district early in the afternoon and the rain was cold and heavy. In the dusk among the fir trees, the landscape was deserted
except for a tiny flickering light far away. Deep in the forest, if you got close enough, you could see a building with some weak light visible from the windows. As if somebody actually lived there
in the midst of this rocky terrain, which was almost entirely covered with forest. If you dared to go closer, you could indeed see an old dry-stone wall around a little smallholding. Behind it was
a well-maintained cottage and, behind that, a little yard with a minibus and a Volvo estate. Candles were burning on the windowsills. Outside the little town of Vetlanda in southern Sweden, there
had been yet another power cut.

‘It is rather cosy with candles, don’t you think?’ said Martha. ‘But, Brains dear, perhaps you can start up the generator? We want to get onto the Internet.’ She
patted the lifeless computer where they had now run out of battery power. Since Anna-Greta had taught her a bit about computers, she was always wanting to surf the web and that wasn’t so easy
here in deepest Småland.

‘Yes, Brains, darling, we must get online. It’s important that we make our payments in time,’ Anna-Greta added.

Their plans for the project All Inclusive were fully underway and it was important to keep the payments up to date. They used gift vouchers and bank cards which were handed out every week via a
flower delivery service to the country’s retirement homes and other needy parties. The Las Vegas money – or rather the profit from the sales of the Beyling warehouse goods (depending on
how you looked at it) – had meant that they could buy three blocks of flats in good positions in the posh district of Östermalm in Stockholm and the money they got in from rent was used
for charity purposes. Gunnar and Anna-Greta saw to it that the money went direct to retirement homes, nursing homes, schools, theatres, museums and other institutions they wished to support, and
the recipients received the money together with a bunch of flowers. The flower delivery was not really necessary, but Martha thought it was so much nicer to hand out money in that way, even though
the League of Pensioners sometimes varied the routine, and sent the money together with a basket of fruit. The Las Vegas income had also been sufficient to pay for a little old forest farm in
Småland for themselves, and they had a delightful old building with outhouses, a stable, a woodshed and a large workshop where Brains could experiment. They intended lying low here until the
hunt for the gold robbers was over. Because, even though they had taken the loot back, you never knew what the police might do.

They all missed their big old house on Värmdö, and the excitement of their life there, but they also knew that the Småland farm was only a temporary solution. Brains hadn’t
seen a real Harley-Davidson for several months and he consoled himself by going on-line and looking at pictures of them. Rake, for his part, said nothing about Lillemor, but you could see that he
brought out his Tarot cards sometimes. Christina sighed to herself but let him be. Then she realized that she could teach him to pick wild mushrooms, and, after patiently going through all the
different varieties in the forest around them, they had gone on long walks together. He became something of an expert and it wasn’t long before he was almost keener than she was. Anna-Greta
and Gunnar spent most of their time sitting in front of the computer. It was mainly their responsibility to make sure that all the money transfers worked properly, and they liked giving away so
much money. They often played their new gramophone records very loudly so that you could hear the music in all the upstairs rooms, but as they had tired of Jokkmokks-Jokke’s
‘Gulligullan’ and horn music, it didn’t matter so much. Now they often listened to gospel and Verdi, and the others liked that too.

Martha herself had calmed down a little. Since she didn’t have access to all the gym apparatuses, she settled for a thirty-minute session every day. To keep them in good form she urged the
gang to go for a one-hour walk every day, and since Rake hoped to find some mushrooms on the way, he didn’t protest like he certainly would have done otherwise.

Indeed, a great deal had happened since those dramatic last days out on Värmdö almost six months ago. In her repentant moments Martha might feel a bit sorry for the Bandangels who had
been framed with the Handelsbanken robbery, but people who made threats and engaged in extortion really deserved all they got. It would be decidedly good for them to spend a few years in prison,
and to get some nourishing food and be able to get fit. For beefy types like Tompa and Jörgen, a bit of exercise would do them the world of good. She had even heard that a stint in prison only
served to improve the status of bikers in such gangs, so perhaps the boys weren’t so angry after all.

However, Anders and Emma were not exactly in the best of moods after having been tasked with selling the big old house and storing the household effects that had been left behind in the rush.
And they were worried about Christina and her friends, who were now stuck deep in the forests of Småland, so that they had to visit them now and then to keep an eye on things. Martha had
reassured them that this was just a temporary solution and had given them a few hundred thousand kronor each. Then she had added that as soon as everything had quietened down, they would buy a new
house and engage in some more projects to improve society. But exactly what they would be, and how they would go about it, she kept secret. One thing at a time, that was her rule of thumb.

Then there was the engagement. In some way that had come to fill a larger and larger portion of her thoughts and one day, after she and Brains had had a really good time, she had even forgotten
the obligatory daily gym session! It was surely high time to tell the others, she thought, but then she remembered that Brains didn’t think they should do that until they were back living in
normal circumstances, and not obliged to be hiding out in the forest. Yes, there were a lot of consequences that followed a crime – life became much more complicated than she had expected. If
truth be told, there were lots of things to keep track of.

Martha sighed and went to make some coffee. For a change, she was going to serve coffee with egg liqueur. So much of the cloudberry liqueur had ended up in the ditch on Myrstigen that day they
left Värmdö, and she hadn’t been able to find anything similar in the nearest alcohol shop down here. They had even discussed starting to distil their own, but Anna-Greta had said
that home distilleries smelt awful and that it would be better to buy liqueur on the Internet since the alcohol monopoly would actually deliver to your door. But, as it was probably wise to lie low
a bit longer, they voted against that and instead made do with Bols Advocaat Original and egg-liqueur ice cream. And that wasn’t bad at all. A bit of a change was always stimulating.

Martha yawned and happened to catch sight of the local newspaper,
Vetlanda-Posten
, which lay on the table. It had been there since yesterday, but nobody had got round to reading it yet.
She started to look through the pages and was just about to put it aside when she noticed a little item. It was about the Historical Museum.

The museum staff had made a strange discovery inside the Gold Room. Shortly after the happy day when a guard found all the missing gold treasure in the Wishing Well, ants had started crawling
around inside the room and the maintenance man had to call in Anticimex. And down in the Wishing Well itself, the water had turned murky. An unusual variety of the Rose of Jeriko had grown up
amongst the coins and there were even rumours that a museum visitor had seen water lilies and a cannabis plant down in the well – although this was said to be a tall tale. Nobody could
explain how those plants came to be there, although the police had vague suspicions that it was in some way connected with the return of the gold by the robbers. Martha read this little news item
quickly, but gasped when she came to the final lines: