The Little Old Lady Who Struck Lucky Again!
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To Lena Sanfridsson, Barbro von Schönberg and
Inger Sjöholm-Larsson – my warm and sincere
thanks for an unforgettable effort!
One thing is certain,
you can never drink too much champagne . . .
Martha, aged seventy-nine
Contents
Epigraph page
Prologue
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Epilogue
Acknowledgements
A Note on the translation
The League of Pensioners Character Profiles
Reading Group Questions
THE LITTLE OLD LADY WHO BROKE ALL THE RULES
THE EXTRA ORDINARY LIFE OF FRANK DERRICK, AGE 81
THE TIME OF THEIR LIVES
Prologue
When seventy-nine-year-old pensioner Martha Andersson put the cheese, the Argentinian sausage and the delicious lobster pâté in her big flowery bag, it marked the start of a new life.
Humming contentedly to herself over the buzzing of the supermarket’s overhead air conditioning, she thought a drink of cloudberry liqueur with some tasty snacks would be perfect before the evening’s gambling session. Martha just loved living in Las Vegas – it was the place where anything and everything could happen.
Eager to return to the comfortable suite at The Orleans Hotel & Casino, where she was staying with her four oldest friends, she turned and, as bossy as ever, announced to the pensioners trailing behind her:
‘My friends! Let’s go back to the hotel and recharge our batteries!’
She pushed her short white hair under the wide brim of her yellow sun hat and took a firm grip of her shopping bag with her nicely manicured hands. Her black Ecco shoes sounded loudly as she led the way. Her fellow pensioners Oscar ‘Brains’ Krupp, Bertil ‘Rake’ Engström, Anna-Greta Bielke and Christina Åkerblom nodded and paid politely for their goods at the check-out before they followed Martha out of the shop. It was just over six months since they had left Sweden after making it onto the Most Wanted list with their Robin Hood-style art robbery. They had been keeping a low profile ever since. But now they had had enough. Their motto was: if you are bored, you are not living. So it was high time to do something fun.
Outside the department store a dog was waiting for them alongside their Zimmer frames. The cocker spaniel yapped and jumped up at Martha’s aromatic bag. The five friends – or The League of Pensioners, as they sometimes called themselves – helped to exercise Barbie, the hotel receptionist’s dog. Martha bent down to stroke and calm the dog and then, when everyone was ready, she strode forth, leading the way again.
The white hotel buildings towered high above their grey heads and the Tarmac glistened. The neon signs blinked, the heat was oppressive and a police car drove past at high speed. After just a few steps, Martha was soaking with perspiration. Panting, she turned into Hayes Street, pulled out her fan and started to hum a jolly traditional Swedish children’s song about climbing mountains. Soon the League of Pensioners would make themselves as unforgettable in Las Vegas as they had in Stockholm.
1
The staff in the De Beers Diamond Shop further along the street ought to have behaved with more caution. But instead the security doors were opened immediately and the guards politely stepped aside when the three bearded, impatient, young men entered the shop. Two of them had guide dogs, and the third helped his friends across to the counter. The female assistant gave them a welcoming smile, her look full of friendliness. The men courteously said hello and asked to look at cut diamonds. Then, to reinforce their meaning, they whipped out their pistols and yelled: ‘Give us the diamonds!’
The shop assistant and her colleagues reacted instinctively and discreetly started groping about for the alarm button. At the same time, they pulled out all the drawers with the shimmering diamonds. Their hands shook as they placed the diamonds on the counter. Two of the men pushed the guards up against the wall and disarmed them while the third man quickly stuffed the diamonds into specially sewn collars worn by the guide dogs. The glimmering diamonds were quickly followed by a dark-blue sapphire and some rough diamonds from the workshop that had not yet been cut. The robbers emptied the drawers and didn’t notice when the assistant finally managed to press the alarm button. When the alarm sounded, they swept the last of the gemstones into the dog collars, then zipped them shut and hurried out. The last of the three men to leave had short-circuited the electrics so that the security doors would lock themselves after he stepped out the door.
Out on the pavement, the three men took off their wigs but kept their sunglasses on. Then they calmly walked down the street as if nothing had happened. The trick with the guide dogs was something they had used before. It worked well and made people less suspicious. Now the men just looked like completely ordinary pedestrians, and they leisurely went round the corner and into Hayes Street where their car was parked. After a hundred metres or so, they couldn’t resist looking back to see if they were being followed, but in doing so they took their attention off the path ahead and managed to bump right into a gang of pensioners who almost filled the whole pavement. The five elderly men and women were singing for all they were worth and took small dance-like steps behind their Zimmer frames. All the robbers could do was stare at them.
‘Watch up!’ Martha exclaimed, her English not being its best if she didn’t have time to think. Then she and her elderly friends continued along the street towards the three men and their dogs, singing a jolly children’s marching song. They had sung in the same choir for thirty years, and they liked singing loudly and happily together.
‘We stride across the dewy mountains, tra-la-la . . .’ they sang in parts and, as always, when they sang this song, they became a little sentimental and started to long for their home country. They were in their own little world, unaware of the goings-on around them, and they weren’t in a hurry either as Barbie had lots of exciting things to sniff at. Walking down the street they had passed lots of restaurants, casinos and jewellery shops and Martha enjoyed it all. Las Vegas was a town for adventurers, and she and her friends belonged there.
‘Move out the way!’ shouted the men with the guide dogs.
‘Why don’t you move out the way!’ Martha responded, but backed up when one of the dogs in luminous-yellow coats bared its teeth. Best to be friendly to the canine, she thought quickly and fumbled in her bag for the Argentinian spicy sausage. Brains had had the same thought and was pulling out the pâté. The big German Shepherd ignored the delicacies, growled threateningly and leapt across to try to bite Martha’s leg. Thankfully, Brains managed to push his Zimmer frame in between them, and the next moment the dog got caught by its collar in the walker basket. That was when Barbie reacted too.
Confronted by the huge German Shepherd, the little dog panicked, yapped rather pitifully and pulled so hard on her lead that Christina lost her grip. Howling, little Barbie dashed away with her lead trailing after her, upon which the other guide dog, a black Labrador, also got loose and charged after her. Barbie was, one might add, a rather sweet little doggie, and to cap it all was on heat.
‘The dog collar!’ the men shouted when they saw the Labrador disappear with the diamonds. Two of them rushed after the dog. The German Shepherd was still caught in the basket of the Zimmer frame, and one of the stressed robbers was trying to get it loose.
‘I am sorry,’ said Martha.
The man swore in response.
‘If you take it easy it goes better,’ Martha went on, leaning forward and giving good advice, in fact doing her very best in broken English. But the man ignored her and just tugged and tugged without managing to release the dog collar. Suddenly several police sirens could be heard. At the sound, the entangled robber gave a start and pulled the dog away so hard that the collar broke and was left hanging from the basket. In full panic he then set off down the street with the dog after him.
‘Hey, stop! You forgot your dog collar in the basket!’ Martha shouted, gesticulating wildly, but, instead of stopping, the man ran to his car. His companions had also heard the sirens and they gave up chasing the black Labrador and fled towards the vehicle too. Once there, they unlocked the car and threw themselves inside. With screeching tyres they disappeared round the corner, but without any dogs.
‘Weird way of going about things! They don’t seem to need their guide dogs at all,’ Martha mumbled to herself. Then she unhooked the dog collar just like she had suggested to the man. After which she caught her breath, shook her head slowly and muttered: ‘Why do people so rarely heed good advice?’
Martha’s good friend, Brains, took a quick look at the dog collar.
‘Put that in the basket for the time being. We can phone the owners later. Their name will certainly be marked on the inside.’
They all thought that was a good idea and as soon as they had succeeded in getting Barbie to come back to them, they walked off towards their hotel. Now they had a new addition to their party – the black Labrador was in tow – and once they arrived at the hotel Martha realized that they would have to look for the dog-owner too. She took off the dog’s collar and put that in the basket as well, just as the receptionist came up to them.
‘Thank you so much,’ he enthused, lifting up his little Barbie before disappearing with quick strides into the lobby with his darling in his arms. The Labrador started yapping and ran after them, but wasn’t quick enough to sneak in before the big glass doors were shut in front of its nose. Broken-hearted, it stared a long while through the glass before dejectedly wandering off with drooping ears. The League of Pensioners were left with two dog collars.
‘I’ve got a magnifying glass up in our hotel room. There’s bound to be something written in small print on the leather or there’ll be a little note inside that zipped pouch,’ said Martha, and then they all took the lift up to their suites on the fifth floor.
‘That’s what’s so strange about life; you never know what is going to happen, do you?’ she chirped a while later when she had laid the table for the evening’s drinks and snacks, and pulled out her magnifying glass. ‘Now, let’s see what it says here.’
Martha examined the inside of the collar but, however carefully she looked, she couldn’t see any letters or initials. Finally she unzipped the pouch on the collar to see if she could see a name tag inside. Then something suddenly fell onto the parquet floor. Rake bent down, picked up the pieces that had dropped on the floor and placed them on a plate.
‘Doggie snacks in the collar, that’s practical!’
2
‘Doggie snacks? I’m not sure about that,’ said Martha and she felt one of the little pieces. ‘If that were the case, the dogs in Las Vegas would hardly have any teeth left. Feel them, they’re hard as rock.’
They all leaned forward, felt the tiny objects and held them up against the light. Silence followed, then gasps could be heard.
‘My God, they look like diamonds. Real diamonds!’
Outside the hotel window, the city lights glowed. Advertising signs flashed on and off, and neon rushed around in colourful tracks. And the League of Pensioners had just stumbled across a heap of diamonds.
All five of them stared at the gemstones, put them in the palms of their hands and stroked them very gently. Before reluctantly putting the diamonds back on the coffee table.
‘We don’t know where they come from, or who owns them. Either we go to the police or we can donate them to the Robbery Fund,’ said Martha, who looked after the interests of the joint robbery fund. That was where they kept their stolen money. They also made donations to needy institutions and less fortunate members of society from the accounts.
‘But the police . . . what if we handed them in and they thought we had pinched the diamonds? No, it would be better if we took care of the gemstones ourselves,’ Anna-Greta said, having worked in a bank all her life. ‘We’ll sell them and transfer the proceeds to the robbery fund. All additional income is welcome.’
They all nodded in agreement. Despite them all being around about eighty years of age, they worked now more than ever. They could have named their robbery fund ‘The Revolving Door’ because the money came in and went out again almost straight away. As soon as the old friends had stolen something, they gave away the booty. In Las Vegas alone there were almost seven thousand homeless people and back home in Sweden there were a lot of people in need too. So they had started to save and set a target of accumulating at least five hundred million kronor and letting that money work for them. The dividends would then be used to pay for geriatric care, culture and other things back home even after they retired from their life of crime. After all, they couldn’t go on stealing for the rest of their lives.
A week had passed since the remarkable encounter on Hayes Street and Martha and her friends were drinking coffee and munching some tasty chocolate wafers in the hotel suite that the three women were sharing. Since the meeting with the diamond thieves they had kept a low profile. In fact, they hadn’t even set foot outside the hotel and the receptionist had had to take little Barbie out himself. The friends understood that the diamonds in the dog collar must be stolen property and the robbers would now be searching for them. Unless, of course, the police had already locked them up.
‘Can we agree that we should take care of the diamonds ourselves and from now on regard them as our own?’ Martha wondered out loud when they had all drunk their coffee.
‘Absolutely! The diamonds are ours!’ the League of Pensioners exclaimed in unison and cheered, because what they liked the very best of all was to steal something that had already been stolen. In that way it was as if they had been given it. The pile of diamonds lay glistening next to the coffee pot and when the sun shone in through the panoramic window the gemstones glimmered in colourful cascades of light. Faceted gems, drop-shaped, clear and coloured diamonds. Somebody had owned these gems, but who? In Las Vegas, there were as many diamond shops as there were hot-dog stands back home in Sweden, so the owners would surely be impossible to trace. It would be best to take the gems home to Sweden, sell them there and put the proceeds into the Robbery Fund.
That decision must be celebrated! Rake got up and fetched a bottle of champagne and five glasses. He had been a waiter on the cruise ship MS Kungsholmen and with a practised and elegant touch he opened the bottle without the cork hitting any of the others, or the chandelier. And nor did the champagne bubble over the edge of the glasses. No, he was a real pro and not one drop of champagne was wasted.
‘Well, then, cheers to you all, you crooks!’ said Martha and they all joyfully trumpeted a few bars from Champagne Galop before raising their glasses and drinking. A pleasant atmosphere immediately spread in the room. All five of them were touchingly in agree
ment and now the diamonds must be smuggled home. In fact, Martha and Brains had already made certain preparations. The handles of their Zimmer frames were unscrewed and awaiting the stolen loot.
‘Are we really going to hide the diamonds here?’ Christina wondered out loud and put a few of the precious gems in one of the handles. She then shook the Zimmer frame so it rattled. ‘Just listen to that; we could be discovered!’
‘Pah, we simply fill the handles so they don’t rattle, or we could put the diamonds inside our walking sticks instead,’ Brains chipped in. He was the engineer and inventor in the gang, and now he waved his stick to accompany his idea.
‘Yes, perhaps walking sticks would be better,’ said Martha.
‘OK, we’ll mix the diamonds and gravel in the handle of one of the walking sticks. The other walking sticks we will fill just with gravel. And we’ll pack them so tight that they won’t rattle. We can put all the walking sticks in a golf bag. That ought to work,’ Brains decided.
‘Oh how clever!’ said Martha. ‘You always have such good ideas.’
‘But the diamonds worry me,’ Christina fretted. ‘I think we ought to travel home tomorrow.’
‘Not before the coup,’ Martha protested. ‘Don’t forget why we’ve come here. We can’t just abandon all our plans simply because we happened to stumble upon a few gemstones. Even if we include them, we still need millions more for the Robbery Fund. Remember that geriatric care is always in need of more money.’
‘Yes indeed. Nowadays, most things in society need financial support to work properly,’ Anna-Greta agreed.
They fell silent. When society no longer functioned as it should, others must intervene and the League of Pensioners had taken that burden upon themselves. In a world where the rich became even richer and the poor even poorer, they felt compelled to commit crimes to support the less-fortunate members of society. They were like Robin Hood – stealing from the rich to give to the poor. For a whole month the friends had been planning to rob a casino in Las Vegas. That would give them lots and lots of money, so a few diamonds was not a sufficient reason to drop the idea.