Martha rapidly mixed in some banknotes with the crumpled newspaper and added some more newspaper from the old papers in her wardrobe. Then on top of it all she put a thick layer of five-hundred-kronor notes and topped this in turn with blankets and the shawl. When the shopping trolley was full again, she examined it closely from every angle and wasn’t satisfied until it looked exactly like it had before. Then she crept back through the lounge and opened Dolores’s door a few inches to hear if she was still snoring. And she was. Martha then pressed the peak of her cap again to turn the LED lights on. In the weak light she moved into the room as silently as possible. She carefully rolled the trolley up to the bedside table and left it just as she had found it. Dolores suddenly stopped snoring and Martha gave a start. For quite some time she stood absolutely still while Dolores stretched out an arm and seemed to want to get up; she reached out in front of her, opened her eyes and stared straight ahead. Martha arched back, tried to think of an excuse for being there and was just going to open her mouth and say sorry when Dolores closed her eyes again and rolled over onto her side. Then she snorted, pulled the covers over her shoulders and let out a loud fart. Martha didn’t move a muscle. She waited and stared nervously at the bed. Not until Dolores started snoring again did Martha dare make a move. She hurried out through the door. Back in her own room, she sank down on her bed, exhausted.
‘Goodness, what an adventure!’ she exclaimed, but at that very moment she heard a mysterious noise. She winced and was so frightened that she almost fell off the bed. With her hand clenched in front of her chest, she stared at the door. Now it was completely silent. Martha waited. Nothing could be heard, and she became bolder. She put a hand on the bedside table and slowly got up. Then she heard the sound again. It sounded like—yes, of course, she had sat on the banknotes. Before she went to sleep she must make sure she wrapped a blanket around them so that they wouldn’t rustle. The theft must not be discovered under any circumstances. It would mean the end of their criminal career.
Sixty-Three
‘I have been longing for this moment,’ said Brains the next day when he had hugged Martha and stood there with his arm around her waist. He wanted to say so much but couldn’t find the right words. Instead he hugged her again and they stood there a long while without saying anything. The glazed entrance to Diamond House looked different now from how he remembered it, not nearly as dreadfully ugly as he had imagined. It had, of course, been built in a boring 1940s style, but, after all, Martha lived there. He felt how she leaned her head against his chest.
‘At last!’ was all she managed to say, and then came the tears. ‘At last,’ she said again, and Brains thought of all the tender words he had heard in films and in TV series. That was just what he felt like, but it sounded so silly to say those words. So he just mumbled, and stroked her hair rather clumsily.
‘Hello, don’t you recognize me?’ Rake called out, coming up to them. As usual, he had his cravat around his neck, and during his prison stay he had even acquired a beard from ear to ear—a Newgate fringe, Martha thought it was called. He grinned happily, patted Brains on the back and gave him a big hug.
Martha smiled as she looked at the friends she hadn’t seen for so long. It just felt wonderful to be standing beside them again, and the tiredness after the adventure of the previous night meant that she could hardly stop crying. Rake looked great even though he smelt of tobacco. Brains was the one who held her attention, though; after all, he was the only man she had ever written poems to—although admittedly they had mainly been about various ideas for crimes.
‘Martha, dear,’ said Rake, kissing her on both cheeks like a real Frenchman—probably because he wanted to make an impression with his new beard.
‘Oh, that itches,’ Martha couldn’t stop herself from blurting out, but quickly she added something more friendly: ‘How nice it is to see you again.’ Then he smiled and pinched her lovingly on her cheek before returning to Christina. They seemed to greet each other a long time, and Rake’s cravat became crooked and Christina’s eyes had a shiny gleam. Martha had seen how she had stood beside the window all morning and kept a lookout for his arrival, and time after time she had combed her hair even though she had just been to the hairdresser’s. Now he was here at last.
While they all hugged each other, Anna-Greta kept herself in the background. She was of course glad to see Brains and Rake, and she had given them a hug as well, but Gunnar was nowhere to be seen. She still hadn’t got over the confusion of the Internet transfers. She looked totally dejected. Martha saw that something was amiss and went to console her.
‘There have been problems with the broadband connection at Diamond House,’ she said.
‘Is that right?’
‘Yes, the whole building has had computer problems. Not even a fifteen-year-old hacker could have managed to transfer anything.’
‘Oh, you don’t say!’ replied Anna-Greta and immediately looked almost happy.
‘It looks as if the money has sorted itself out anyway,’ said Martha with an artful smile. She didn’t say any more until she was certain that Dolores hadn’t noticed anything.
When they had afternoon coffee, Martha sat with her knitting on her knee, but instead of participating in the conversation she kept looking out of the corner of her eye towards Dolores’s room. When the door opened, she dropped her ball of yarn from pure fright, and not until Dolores started to go around the lounge with her trolley as usual and talk about her generous son did Martha relax. Relieved, she turned to the others and said: ‘Now then. Come up to my room after dinner.’
After a dreadful stew with overcooked beans and cold mashed potatoes in a plastic trough, Martha thought that something tasty would be nice. She laid out coffee and wafer biscuits, a bilberry pie and—of course—cloudberry liqueur. Brains was the first to knock on her door.
‘Do you need any help?’ he asked, placing a carton with an ice cream gateau on the table. ‘I thought we ought to celebrate.’ Then he plucked up courage, leaned forward and gave her a little kiss on the mouth. Martha felt such a warm sensation that she simply had to kiss him back, and they stood there with their arms around each other for such a long time that they completely forgot about the frozen gateau. If there hadn’t been a knock on the door just afterwards, it would probably have melted and run onto the floor.
‘Shouldn’t that gateau be in the freezer?’ said Rake when he came in, pointing at a pool of pear ice cream already surrounding the carton.
‘But ice cream is tastiest like this,’ Brains maintained and quickly put out some dishes. When they had all sat down, the cups had been filled, and each and every one of them had enjoyed some soft ice cream, Martha knocked on the table.
‘Now please listen. I hope you don’t feel conned now that we have landed back at Diamond House again.’
‘But Martha, for heaven’s sake,’ they exclaimed with one voice. ‘We aren’t going to be here long. Cheers to a fellow villain!’
They all raised their glasses and drank, but this time without having to mime when they sang the traditional drinking songs. They all joined in at full volume. Then they listened patiently while Rake sang ‘Towards the Sea’, after which Anna-Greta did her interpretation of an old pop song.
When they had finished singing and had told of adventures and ridiculous situations from their time in prison, Martha took charge again.
‘I have found the missing shopping trolley.’
‘Really? Fantastic!’ exclaimed Brains.
‘How in heaven’s name did you manage that?’ wondered Rake.
‘Don’t say it was full of money too,’ said Anna-Greta. ‘Impossible, I can hardly believe it,’ Christina said in a muffled voice—she had a bad cold again.
Then Martha described her nocturnal expedition to Dolores’s room, after which she let on just how much money she had seen.
‘There could have been as much as five million in the trolley.’
Several gasps could be heard, and
Rake sat bolt upright.
‘Five million!’
‘Ssshh,’ Martha hushed him, went up to her bed and patted the bedspread. ‘Here’s most of the money. But the person who has the paintings is demanding a reward. “Hide 100,000 SEK in a stroller. Put it near the back entrance to the Grand Hotel at 13.00 on 30 October. Keep away and don’t involve the police,” it said on the note.’
‘Note? Can I see it?’ said Rake.
‘Sorry, but I had to eat it. Destroying the evidence, you know.’
‘Well, you certainly didn’t care about the bureaucracy,’ mumbled Rake.
Martha made her apologies and told them about the warders she had had with her and how she had swallowed the message at the last second.
‘Last night I put aside one hundred thousand in a pillow case. Two hundred five-hundred-kronor notes, if I didn’t lose count. Are we agreed that we should put two hundred beauties in the stroller?’
‘Beauties?’
‘Yes, money of course,’ said Martha.
‘Stroller’—Christina had blown her nose and could manage ‘m’ and ‘n’ again—‘Anders and Emma can certainly help us with that. I’ll say I can babysit for them, and then we’ll borrow their stroller. Malin is six months old now. It will be perfect.’
‘The baby too? Six months and a criminal,’ said Anna-Greta with a joyful pony-like giggle.
‘Now, now, it won’t be as bad as that.’ Martha tried to gloss over any complications, but the plan she had envisaged would mean just that. Six months and a criminal.
Sixty-Four
Thank God it wasn’t raining, and there was no snow either. It was perfect weather for shady deals.
‘Now, we must conduct ourselves calmly and sensibly,’ said Martha, keeping a lookout down the street. Her voice was tense and she noticed that herself. No delivery van yet. Why was it taking so long?
‘Don’t worry. We’ll manage this,’ said Brains.
‘But what if somebody discovers us?’ asked Martha.
‘You ought to have thought of that before you ordered four cartons of disposable diapers and a stroller,’ muttered Christina. She was still grumpy because she hadn’t been allowed to arrange it all with her children. Anders and Emma had, of course, strollers and blankets aplenty, and she hadn’t understood why Martha would rather squander money on unnecessary purchases.
‘Motherly love can dazzle strategic thinking,’ Martha had answered, and Christina had been in a bad mood since then. Martha must try to appease her friend, but she would have to wait for the right opportunity. Now it was time for the Big Delivery.
They had held a big purchase meeting two days earlier. The first item on the agenda was ‘Suitable diapers’. They had all patiently listened to Christina’s talk about little Malin and her nocturnal habits. Christina babbled on about her grandchild and how much pee a certain brand of diapers absorbed—while really all they were concerned about was which diapers would hide the most banknotes. Brains and Rake yawned, Anna-Greta drummed her fingers on her computer and Martha tried to bring everyone to order.
‘The diapers should be able to hide five-hundred-kronor notes, darling,’ said Martha. ‘They must be big enough to cover the notes completely, and they should have a good leakage barrier so that no banknotes will fall out. I vote for Bambo.’
Brains, Rake and Anna-Greta immediately put up their hands to agree and therefore decided the vote.
‘Typical that you all decide, you who haven’t a clue as to what you are talking about,’ Christina muttered. ‘What do you know about diapers?’
‘Nothing, but that’s how things work in real life, sweetie,’ Rake consoled her. ‘Those who don’t know decide for those who do.’
When they came to the next item, ‘Purchase of stroller’, the discussion heated up considerably.
‘It would have been lovely to cooperate with your children, Christina,’ said Martha, ‘but unfortunately Emma’s stroller could be traced right back to us. We must have a stroller that can’t be traced and if we get a double stroller, we will also have room for both paintings.’
‘Quite right,’ Anna-Greta chipped in. She sat at her computer busily googling different strollers on the Internet. ‘This one—Akta Gracilia—an umbrella stroller, is cheaper than the others. We’ll take this.’
‘But it has had bad reviews,’ Christina objected. ‘I’ve heard that the handles and bolts can loosen and, in the worst case scenario, the entire stroller can fold up like a fox trap.
‘Not this model. It’s “Best in Test”,’ Anna-Greta went on. ‘And it has a rain cover with a zipper and a stroller lock.’
‘But if it is a double stroller, isn’t it going to look strange if we only have one baby?’ Brains asked.
‘We’ll have to buy an authentic-looking baby doll, then,’ Martha suggested. ‘I, at any rate, can’t manage to squeeze out a baby at my age, that’s for sure.’
‘Is that meant to be funny? You are crazy,’ Christina muttered. ‘You’ve got me and my children to help with this, and then you go and propose that we buy a plastic doll. No, now I’ve had enough!’ She rushed out of the room in tears.
They all looked at each other in horror and realized that sooner or later they would have to involve Anders and Emma, otherwise Christina would tire of it all and perhaps drop out. Martha fetched a box of Belgian chocolates and passed it to Rake, who quickly hurried after Christina to console her. It took quite some time and nobody really felt like saying anything because all you could hear was Christina’s sobbing. Finally, they heard footsteps approaching and the relief was great when Rake came in with Christina again. She had chocolate round her mouth but hadn’t forgotten the doll.
‘For God’s sake, how do you think the villains will react when they find a stroller with a plastic baby doll in it?’ she exclaimed and threw out her arms.
‘They’ll realize we care about details and wanted to make everything as realistic as possible,’ Brains responded.
‘Your grandchild can have the doll to play with,’ Martha suggested, and with those words Christina calmed down. To further appease her, they let her choose freely among the cushions and baby blankets and in the end everybody was satisfied. They had agreed on a good double stroller with a rain cover and plenty of room for paintings, diapers, cushions and blankets. Then they toasted each other before going to bed.
Martha was interrupted in her musings by a van driving up the hill. The white delivery van slowed down on the crown of the hill, not far from Diamond House.
‘There it is!’ said Martha, looking pleased. The vehicle approached and stopped next to them on the pavement. The driver wound down the side window.
‘Is this Diamond House?’
‘That’s right,’ Martha answered.
‘Right, then.’ The youth opened the door, jumped down and asked for a Maya Strand. Martha nodded and signed the digital apparatus he had with him. Her handwriting was not as neat as it used to be, and she wasn’t used to signing her alias, Maya Strand. In the end she managed to produce one of those illegible signatures that important men and doctors tend to use.
Anna-Greta counted the cartons and checked the delivery note. Then the driver generously carried it all to the elevator, which required a few trips with his trolley, and finally they managed to smuggle the cartons into their rooms unseen. They had only just finished when Martha caught sight of yet another delivery van outside the window, so she hurried down again. The driver looked surprised when she claimed that the stroller was for her children, and it took a while before she realized that at her age she should have said grandchildren. But it all worked out well, and when she got back to her room again she put out glasses and fetched a bottle of champagne.
‘Well, then, dear friends. A toast! To the paintings and to art!’ she said.
‘To the Impressionists!’ Anna-Greta added.
Then, amidst triumphant cries, Anna-Greta produced some long open-faced sandwiches that she had ordered via the Internet. Marth
a locked the door, and after they had eaten the sandwiches and drunk the champagne, they filled several diapers with five-hundred-kronor banknotes. Anna-Greta was in a brilliant mood since the orders via the Internet had worked without any problem. In high spirits, she declared that the next day she would phone her bank to explain the computer complications earlier. But the others advised her not to, being of the opinion that it was best not to give anything away. It would be best if she simply told the bank to restore her accounts to how they were before the transfers—when she, or a virus, had deleted everything.
‘What if they ask about the big withdrawals I wanted to make?’ Anna-Greta asked.
‘Just say that the interest rates have gone up and you have changed your mind.’
All in all it was a lovely day, and when Gunnar turned up after dinner, Anna-Greta’s delight knew no bounds. She disappeared with him into her room and, despite it being so late in the evening, the notes of ‘Childhood Faith’ were soon heard. When Lapp-Lisa sang ‘Childhood faith, you are a golden bridge to Heaven’, the two of them sang along as usual, but then the needle got stuck at ‘golden bridge, golden bridge’. This repeated itself for quite a long time until finally a scratching sound could be heard when the needle moved across the record. Then there was complete silence and the others looked hopefully at each other. Perhaps Gunnar had quite simply deliberately prodded the gramophone with his foot? But then the record was put on once more, and ‘Childhood Faith’ was heard again but now with two places at the end where the needle stuck. At this point they all said goodnight, thanked each other for a nice day and went to their rooms.
It wasn’t long, however, before two doors opened again and Brains and Rake bumped into each other in the lounge.
‘Finding it hard to sleep,’ they both said and returned to their rooms. Shortly afterwards they each opened up their doors again, but at different times, and each of them sneaked out to see the woman that they had been missing for so long. Neither of them had crime planning on their minds, but when they considered how things turned out, they realized perhaps they ought to have made better use of their time.
The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules Page 26