The Little Old Lady Who Struck Lucky Again! (6 page)

The next morning customs officer Carlsson woke with a heavy hangover and stumbled out into the hall. Hardly looking what he was doing, he fumbled for the morning paper in the
letter box until he realized that his wife had taken it hours ago. He yawned and tried to swerve round a pair of children’s wellington boots on the floor; instead he tripped and fell right
onto the golf bag. A crunching sound from inside the bag indicated that something had broken, and he got up somewhat shaken. A golf bag? But he didn’t play golf. Then he remembered that silly
old lady and he stood the bag up. The chrome handle on one of the walking sticks had broken off. He looked inside and discovered something shiny. Curious as to what it was, he shook the handle and
a whole lot of tiny stones fell onto the floor. Granite, bits of gravel, quartz crystal and some bits of polished glass. The old lady had talked about diamonds, could she have been telling the
truth? He shook the other walking sticks. There was nothing special about them other than the fact that all the handles could be unscrewed. Inside them, too, were stones of various sizes and
colours. Ah, now he understood; it was a way of giving the handle a bit of weight so that the walking sticks acquired the right stability and balance. Cheap and practical. And that old age monster
had teased him and said it was diamonds! Hadn’t she said something about having gemstones in her navel too? He looked at the broken handle and realized it would be hard to repair. How could
he explain that he’d taken home something from the customs hall – which was strictly forbidden – and then, to cap it all, had happened to break it? Perhaps it would be for the
best to forget all about it and keep his mouth shut.

Still sleepy, he went to fetch the brush and pan but then he changed his mind. No, breakfast first. He slouched into the kitchen, turned the espresso machine on, made some cheese sandwiches and
sat down with the morning paper. He read a while and ate his breakfast and was just going to get another sandwich when his eye fell on the dog’s empty food bowl. Oh yes, of course, he must
give the dog something to eat and he ought to feed the fish too. Yesterday he had bought a tin of powdered fish food and some dog food too. Carlsson got up, went past the aquarium and out into the
hall where he’d left his briefcase. When he saw the gravel and tiny stones on the floor he had an idea. Hadn’t his son said something about wanting some fancier stones in his aquarium?
Carlsson whistled, fetched the brush and pan and carefully swept up all the small stones. Then he tipped them into the water and carefully smoothed the stones out on the bottom of the tank. Having
done that, he took the packet of fish food and sprinkled some into the water. Satisfied, he took a step back. Pretty little stones they were. The aquarium really glimmered.

The large old country house out in the Stockholm archipelago was situated on a slope with a view across the sea and, even on a grey, windy day, the place was indescribably
beautiful. In the summer the jetty would bask in the evening sun and just above the shoreline was a well-tended garden with a terrace to sit on, a large storage shed, a cellar and a greenhouse.

‘Just the thing!’ Martha exclaimed, looking happily at the others. She and the League of Pensioners were walking around the garden, delighting in its features. Rake pictured what he
could grow in the greenhouse while Christina inhaled the cold smell of the cellar and thought about all the good food she could store here. In the two large sections in the cellar there was plenty
of room for potatoes, plums, apples and other fruit and the previous owner had set up wide shelves along the walls where you could keep everything from milk and mead to wines. A brown-stained door
led from the earth cellar to the storage shed where you could keep all the tools and other things necessary to look after the garden. Next to that lay a large old-fashioned woodwork shed with a
carpenter’s bench and a lathe. Brains noted with delight that the previous owner had left a set of tools and he enthusiastically stroked the bench, dreaming of everything he could make there.
He smiled happily and took Martha by the hand.

‘Old girl, I believe this will suit us very nicely,’ he said. ‘I think we should buy this house.’

The estate agent carried on with the viewing and said in a loud voice:

‘Norra Lagnö here on Värmdö is a peaceful and select environment with beautiful old country houses,’ he said. ‘It is estimated to have been built at the end of
the nineteenth century. This would suit you well, surely?’

‘Thank you, but we aren’t quite that old,’ answered Martha looking up at the big old house. It looked exactly like the picture they had seen advertised in the local paper. The
house did look very old and had seen better days, but so had they, so it didn’t matter, she thought.

‘Look! Apple trees and redcurrant bushes,’ the estate agent went on, pointing at some trees and bushes that framed the path up towards the house. ‘And when it gets warmer you
can drink your coffee in the lilac arbour if you wish.’ He pointed to where some outdoor furniture could be seen under a tarpaulin. Then he took the outside steps two at a time, unlocked the
front door and showed Martha and her friends into the porch.

The old house smelt of wood and of days gone by and the floor creaked. But there was an air of cosiness already in the porch.

‘What are the neighbours like?’ Christina asked.

‘Very pleasant. Some bachelors live higher up the slope and a single middle-aged woman opposite.’

‘Single? Well now!’ said Rake.

The old pensioners hung up their overcoats but kept their shoes on. None of them had been indoctrinated in a nursery school.

‘Just look at the view!’ the estate agent went on, and opened the doors to the glazed veranda. Out in the bay you could see two giant ferries from Finland on their way in towards
Stockholm. A little boat with an outboard looked like a tiny shell next to them.

‘Yes, a superb view, but what about the house?’ Martha asked. The diamonds in Brains’s navel had only given them a few million, but their budget was still more limited than
expected. Despite having gone out to Arlanda airport several times, they still hadn’t found the golf bag. Martha and Anna-Greta had asked at Customs, been in touch with Lost Property and gone
back to Customs again. Rake and Brains had tried too, but in vain. It wasn’t easy when they didn’t have a proper baggage tag, let alone a label on the bag. And besides, they had to be
careful when they went nosing around. The police must not get wind of the fact that the League of Pensioners were back in Sweden.

‘It feels as if the staircase wobbles a bit,’ said Martha on her way up to the first floor.

‘Yes, it does creak a little, but wood is a live material. A newly built house can’t compare with a fine old country house. This is vintage.’

‘Vintage?’

‘Old and valuable,’ said the estate agent and showed them one of the bedrooms. Brains rocked the floorboards to see how much they moved.

‘Carpenter ants, are they vintage too?’ he said, and pointed at some ants that had emerged from the cracks.

The estate agent pretended not to hear, and opened the French windows on to a large terrace. Before them lay the open bay. The sea glistened, seagulls flew over the ice and the two giant ferries
from Finland were now silhouettes on the horizon.

‘Completely irresistible, isn’t it?’

‘They’re only small boats. Not like when I sailed in the Indian Ocean,’ said Rake.

‘That was in the old days,’ Anna-Greta interposed. ‘
Pretend
that this is the Big Ocean.’

‘Pretend!?’ Rake snorted. ‘The Indian Ocean doesn’t freeze over!’

‘But it’s all water,’ mumbled Christina, although she immediately regretted the remark when she saw his horrified look. As a young man, Rake had sailed the high seas, and he
was very proud of it too. Who went on such long voyages nowadays? From now on, he deserved more appreciation and praise, she decided. Christina did rather like him after all, and was even a bit in
love with him, so she ought to show him that. They spent every day together so it was easy to take each other for granted. But Rake could also show a little appreciation, a bunch of flowers would
have been wonderful. On the way up to the first floor, she took hold of his arm, stood on tiptoe and gave him a little light kiss on the cheek.

‘A lot of roof tiles are broken, the gutters are full of rotten leaves and the chimney is cracked. This isn’t for us. You should never buy a house in poor repair,’ said Brains
after they had looked at everything.

‘Yes, you’ll have to sell this rambling old place to somebody else,’ Rake filled in.

‘But it’s the
setting
you pay for,’ the estate agent emphasized.

‘Could you phone for a taxi – OAP rate?’ Martha went on, all according to the plan they had decided upon before the viewing. With their pretended lack of interest, they were
hoping to save many hundreds of thousands of kronor. Perhaps even millions. The elderly bunch nagged on and on. It wasn’t until the estate agent had lowered the price by almost two million
that the League of Pensioners then relented and finally clinched the deal. They were surprised by quite how much they had managed to lower the price by.

Two weeks later, they moved in. For help with the practicalities of running the house, they were going to employ Christina’s out-of-work son, Anders, who was a man in his
fifth decade with two children, along with his younger sister, Emma, who was on maternity leave.

Emma had nothing against someone else looking after the baby. Life as a stay-at-home mum with a baby was not for her, and she was pleased that she had married a younger man. He was quite happy
to look after Malin, and actually liked doing so. Of course, Emma loved her daughter but was always going on about how a child shouldn’t become too attached to her mother – something
she had read in a newspaper. Emma had a weakness for all the fashionable ideas and always followed new diets and slimming programmes.

One grey day in November, Emma and Anders drove out to Myrstigen to take a look at the new home their mother had moved into with her old choir friends. Anders parked his old Volvo outside the
rambling country house, scratched his beard stubble and looked up at the building which had definitely seen better days.

‘I don’t think we want to get involved with all the maintenance work,’ he said pulling a face. His sister nodded.

‘We’ll help them with the everyday things; they’ll have to get professionals to do the big jobs.’

‘Of course, we’ll give them a hand so that they’ll at least have some sort of order,’ Anders surmised. ‘And since they pay in cash perhaps me and the wife can still
afford to live in the city centre. People with ordinary incomes can’t afford that any longer.’

While the brother and sister carried furniture and boxes, furnished the rooms and did various errands, Anna-Greta bought everything the League of Pensioners needed on the Internet. She loudly
and joyfully provided a running commentary as she bought everything from furniture and household equipment to gardening tools and books on Blocket.se. Anders, who knew lots about cars, helped her
to purchase an old Volkswagen minibus in good condition, a spacious vehicle which would serve as their private OAP transportation.

For several days, the gang were busy getting the house into order, and with lots of laughter they furnished the big living room on the ground floor and their own bedrooms. Brains and Rake had
both fallen for the same spacious bedroom. It had striped wallpaper and a view of the sea. When Brains realized that it was the only room from which you could see the ships out at sea, he let Rake
have it. But it didn’t really matter so much because he got an even bigger room that was next door to Martha’s.

The beige-coloured country house with its white window frames and many mullioned windows was a miracle of fancy carpentry details and it suited them perfectly. Besides a hall and the bedrooms on
the first floor, there was a library, a dining room, a kitchen and a lovely glazed veranda on the ground floor. Long ago it would have been the summer residence of a rich family from the city.
There would have been lots of children there and household staff too. Now it all belonged to the League of Pensioners.

‘I think Mum will be comfortable here,’ said Anders when they were all installed.

As long as she keeps calm and doesn’t end up behind bars, of course,’ Emma answered.

‘You don’t think they’re going to commit more crimes, do you?’ Anders asked his sister.

Emma shrugged her shoulders and grinned.

‘I couldn’t possibly say.’

The old country house started to feel more like a proper home and the League of Pensioners did indeed feel at home there. The bedrooms were cosy. Martha loved her flowery
wallpaper and Anna-Greta and Christina were very pleased with the wooden floors and the light colours of the walls. The library looked like a scene from a Carl Larsson painting. The wooden
panelling and the skirting boards were painted in pale pastel shades and up by the ceiling was a ribbon of flowers and twigs.

‘This is almost too good to be true,’ said Anna-Greta. ‘Not having to live in an institution. This is even better than the Grand Hotel.’

‘I’m so pleased that Anders and Emma came to help. I heard on the radio about the home-help services paid for by the council,’ Christina told them. ‘One woman had seventy
different home-helpers in six months!’

‘It’s a disgrace, it can’t go on like that,’ Rake muttered and clenched his fist. ‘You shouldn’t be allowed to treat people like that!’

‘Exactly. That’s why we should go on working, so that we can help more people so they get to have it as good as us,’ said Martha.

And then they all smiled and imagined all the joy their donations could bring about. Their deceptions and robberies had indeed paid very well so far.

Despite their stay in Las Vegas being successful, they still hadn’t amassed the five hundred million they wanted. So they couldn’t start taking it easy yet, in
Martha’s opinion. They must get some more money in. Perhaps they could carry out a new robbery, a little innocent one, something that would provide some money but not be too demanding of
them.