The Little Old Lady Who Struck Lucky Again!

by Ingelman-Sundberg, Catharina

  ‘Hello, I’m Lillemor. Neighbour. I’m the person who lives in the brick house on the other side of the road,’ said a deep woman’s voice.

  ‘Oh, yes, right,’ said Rake.

  Martha went to the porch to have a look.

  ‘Thought I’d see if I could come and get acquainted.’ The woman had bushy eyebrows, jet-black hair and bright-red lips. Without waiting for an answer, she stepped right in.

  ‘Yes, why not,’ came a mumbled response from Rake. ‘We’re sitting in the kitchen.’ Like a gentleman he helped her off with her coat and showed her in. Martha and the others cautiously said hello, while Rake straightened his cravat and felt in his pocket for his comb.

  ‘What about a cup of tea?’ Rake offered.

  ‘A quick cup,’ Martha added, and thought about the meeting that they still hadn’t finished. She had just been about to describe how they could get into the bank vault, and she wanted some feedback from the others. Now, however, Rake’s thoughts were very far from bank robberies. On his way to fetch the teapot, he brushed past Martha.

  ‘Didn’t you say that we should be on good terms with our neighbours?’

  Martha thought about a doormat that Anna-Greta had made. It had the slogan: ‘If you’re beautiful, rich and unmarried, then I’m at home’. And this raven-haired woman didn’t have a ring on her finger and looked very unmarried. As if she could devour a man in one big gulp. There was nothing wrong with her self-confidence either, she had already sat down at the kitchen table and dipped her long fingers into the bowl with chocolate wafers. With an elegant movement she fished up a wafer between her red-painted nails and popped it into her mouth. She looked around her in the kitchen with curiosity and even peered into the library as if she wanted to memorize every little detail. When she had finished the wafer and got a cup of tea from Rake, she pulled out a pack of cards.

  ‘I can tell your fortunes, if you like,’ Lillemor said with a dazzling white smile.

  ‘Our fortunes?’ Rake raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Yes, I work with Tarot cards. I can foretell the future.’

  Before Martha could stop her, she had laid out two rows of Tarot cards in a cross. She turned towards Rake and said in a veiled voice: ‘Tell me your personal identity number!’

  Rake tugged at his cravat. ‘Well, now, that isn’t the sort of thing you hand out indiscriminately,’ he said and looked as if there was nothing he would like better than to reveal the exact date of his birth. Down to the hour and minute.

  ‘I must have those numbers to be able to judge your potentials in life. Let us begin by looking at the challenges waiting for you this year.’

  ‘Challenges? Yes, we men are always facing difficult tasks,’ said Rake, his cheeks beginning to redden slightly.

  The fortune-teller lowered her eyelids and nodded.

  ‘When I sailed out on the oceans, there were often storms and once—’ Rake went on.

  ‘What about the Arcana?’ the fortune-teller cut in and put her hand over his. ‘Your date of birth!’

  Rake looked at the others, embarrassed, then leaned forward and whispered something. The special personal identity number that Anna-Greta had arranged for them when they returned to Sweden would hardly do. He must use his own, or at least one pretty close to it. He decided on the same year but a date earlier than his own birthday.

  ‘Well, if you need it for your prophesies . . . ’

  ‘The Arcana, yes. You see, I add up the year, the month and the days, and that gives me a number. Then I see a pattern. But I don’t think we will bother about the Minor Arcana which deal with the small events in life, because I can see something big here. Let us go directly to the Major Arcana.’

  ‘That will probably be for the best.’ Rake nodded.

  Lillemor turned the top card over. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘it’s just as I thought,’ and she looked up with an overflowing smile. ‘You are enlightenment, warmth, riches, success, joy and harmony . . .’

  ‘Yes, perhaps I am,’ said Rake, now with his cheeks glowing bright red.

  ‘But, of course, you are not a high priest.’

  ‘Oh no, that’s Martha,’ Rake let slip rather too quickly.

  Lillemor picked up a new card.

  ‘Here I can see a lot of exciting things that are going to happen to you during the coming year.’

  Rake gave a start. What could she actually see in the cards? Surely she couldn’t predict bank robberies, could she?

  ‘Life is waiting for you. I can see a new relationship. Yes, I see—’

  ‘A new woman?’ Rake asked.

  ‘If you are ready. Love is the strongest force in the universe. We Tarot interpreters have signed an oath of confidentiality so you can tell us everything,’ she went on, and she angled her head to one side and leaned forward so that the cleavage in her neckline was visible. At that point Martha got up.

  ‘I realize you have interesting things to talk about, but you’ll have to do that later. We were going to have a meeting.’

  Martha felt a hard kick to her shins and Rake looked daggers at her.

  ‘Now I haven’t had time to tell you your fortune, but we can do that another time,’ Lillemor proposed and then gathered together the cards without taking her eyes off the stylish man with the cravat. ‘I live in the brick-built house, below the boys in Bandangels.’

  ‘Ah, I see. But perhaps we can do that fortune-telling another time?’ Martha decided and gestured to Rake to show their neighbour into the porch. Not until the front door had shut again did Christina open her mouth.

  ‘Fortune-tellers are not experts on robbing banks, so we don’t have any use for her. The best thing to do is to return to our meeting!’

  She sounded so decisive that nobody thought of saying otherwise out of pure surprise. But Rake had gone up to the window and was looking down towards the brick house.

  13

  Martha sat in the kitchen sipping a cup of tea with lemon in it. The day for the great bank robbery was approaching. There was no going back. The League of Pensioners must get hold of some more money.

  ‘Now things are warming up it is best to be prepared,’ mumbled Martha, reaching out to pick up the brochure she had got hold of at the security seminar the previous week. You can learn a lot at Stockholm University, she thought, and couldn’t help but smile. She had gone out to Frescati, the modern campus on the edge of the city, and then found the right lecture theatre and sat down right at the back. Then she had listened to the experts’ advice about security and how to react in the event of a robbery. For Martha, it was a question of ‘know your enemy’. In this case, the enemy was the general public, who would try to sound the alarm and stop presumptive bank robbers. The instructions were clear:

  Remain calm

  Do not try to stop them

  Do as the robbers say (that sounded good)

  Observe, try to remember what you see (less good)

  Sound the alarm when you can do so without risk

  In other words, it shouldn’t be so very difficult to rob a bank. Pleased with what she read, Martha closed the brochure and glanced towards the library. The dry needles from the Christmas tree had formed a soft, brown carpet under the spiny branches, and they had long since finished the mulled wine and the ginger biscuits of the festive season. The robbery was to take place after Twelfth Night when the workers were busy building Citybanan, the new underground line. In Stockholm they had decided to make a six-kilometre-long tunnel under the city centre to improve communications. They would be detonating charges for the new train tunnel and, what was even better, the city council advertised the exact times of the explosions.

  Martha got up from the kitchen table, rolled up the blueprints and put them back into the hiding place in the pipe in the cellar. As she passed the Christmas tree again, she was reminded of the times she had celebrated Christmas with her son. Her baby’s father had left her when the little boy was only two years old. She had grown very close to her only son. Today
he would have been forty years old if he had been able to grow up. She felt a sudden pain in her chest. Even though it was so long ago, she still mourned him. Losing a child was a loss that never really healed. Perhaps it was the greatest sorrow there was. That was why she must always keep herself occupied – so that she wouldn’t remember; indeed, quite simply so that she wouldn’t have time to remember. Her son had drowned when he was only five years old, when his life had hardly begun. How could anyone else ever be able to understand how much it hurt and that the sorrow never seemed to leave her? Martha pulled out her hanky and blew her nose. Then she sat in silence for a long time and stared out through the window before she went down into the porch. She put on her boots and winter coat, picked up her bag, and went outside. Although she had been in other relationships, she had never married. There didn’t seem to be much point when she was too old to have children.

  The sinking moon cast a blue-white light over the snow when she walked across to the woodwork shed. A bit further away she could see the lights from some of the huge ferries that went to Finland, and from up the slope she could hear the bellowing sound of the bikers’ music, of a type she thought was called heavy metal. Brains and Rake had been busy in the carpentry shed all day, secretly preparing the equipment that was needed for the bank coup. Now Martha couldn’t restrain her curiosity any longer, she simply had to see what they were doing. In the evenings, she and Brains had gone through the robbery plans before presenting them to the others. Martha and Brains were very close and shared most of their thoughts. But for once, Brains had been secretive and had insisted that he wanted to surprise her.

  ‘You shouldn’t always have to be thinking of everything, my friend. Now it’s high time that you let the rest of us give you a hand,’ Brains had said and he’d stroked Martha on the cheek.

  ‘Bank robberies, Martha dear, are not always so easy. The banks have so many alarms installed all over the place, and the police react immediately to them. So we must be smarter than them, do you see?’ Brains had said that morning and given her a wink. That was spot on. Martha had a weakness for uncomplicated solutions, they fooled lots of people. If something was sufficiently simple, nobody fathomed anything. Not least engineers and policemen. With something really ingenious you could win time and avoid getting caught. Martha stamped the snow off her boots and pushed the shed door open. It smelt of sawdust and glue and the machines all seemed to be running at maximum capacity. There were planks on the floor, metal sheeting and tarred roofing felt, and on a shelf she could see a pointed, tube-formed thingimajig she didn’t recognize. It reminded her of an old-fashioned artificial leg made of metal. There was so much noise in the carpentry shed that she got right up to the milling machine before Brains noticed her. He turned the machine off, smiled proudly and nodded towards the adjacent room.

  ‘We will be finished soon. We’re just going to make one more as a reserve, and polish the others.’

  Martha stared and, without thinking, took a step back. On the work bench lay several fake pistols and over by the wall Rake was pretending to shoot with them.

  ‘Bang, bang,’ Rake shouted as he cocked the trigger.

  ‘But what in heaven’s name are you cooking up?’ Martha gasped.

  ‘We’re preparing the robbery, of course,’ said Brains. ‘Don’t they look good? Absolutely convincing.’

  ‘Bang, bang, bang,’ Rake continued.

  Martha picked up one of the black-painted fake guns as if it was a poisonous snake.

  ‘But, Brains, dear, what on earth are you thinking of? We don’t want to get ourselves killed, do we?’

  ‘They’re only made of wood.’

  ‘Hands up!’ the classic English words came from Rake as he approached them with a smile and a black gun in his hand. ‘That frightened you, right? They look really good, don’t they? I painted them with metallic black paint so they look just like the real thing.’

  ‘Why do men always want to shoot? Dear me, no!’ sighed Martha, taking the guns and dropping them into her big flowery bag. ‘Besides, the police can start shooting at you.’

  ‘But what are you doing? We haven’t finished them yet,’ Rake protested.

  ‘No fake guns! There won’t be any shooting here, no way! Now it’s high time that you stopped playing those computer games. After just a few weeks, they’ve influenced you. What about reading a book instead?’

  Martha did a quick about-turn and left the carpentry shed. And completely forgot what she had put in her bag.

  14

  The taxi turned off at Stureplan, went up Sturegatan and passed the corner of Handelsbanken before turning into Karlavägen. Martha was now right in the city centre.

  ‘I wonder, perhaps . . .’ she muttered to herself.

  ‘Are you sure you can’t see the entrance you’re looking for? Now we’ve driven round the same block several times.’

  The taxi driver glanced impatiently in the rear-view mirror and sighed while crawling along so slowly that the cars behind started to toot. Martha had asked him to drive slowly enough for her to scrutinize the surroundings. How else would they know which escape routes they should choose? They had taken a taxi instead of their minibus because Christina had told them about all the surveillance cameras in the city centre. They were everywhere and after a robbery the police went through all the recordings from the cameras close to the scene of the crime. It would definitely look suspicious if a minibus with a wheelchair ramp on the back was seen slowly driving past the bank again and again.

  ‘My cousin lives somewhere round here. The address was Karlavägen something and as soon as I see the front door then I’ll know where I am. So silly of me not to bring his telephone number along. He’s invited us to a party, you see.’

  ‘Just one more time round the block, but then I’ve got to finish my work day. The wife’s waiting at home.’

  ‘Well, then,’ said Martha, ‘I think the big door over there looks familiar. Just drop us off a bit further down the street, and we’ll find our way.’

  ‘Good luck!’ mumbled the taxi driver, and he drove to the pavement and stopped. The meter stood at 888 kronor.

  Martha picked up her handbag, opened it and screamed.

  In her bag were the fake guns! She had intended burning them, but they had got completely mixed up among the powder and make-up that filled her bag. For a fraction of a second she had thought they were real and had reacted. The taxi driver jumped out and pulled open the door to the back seat.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘My heart is a bit wonky sometimes,’ Martha complained, and put her left hand over her chest. She could hardly tell him about the guns. But it seemed as though she didn’t have to, as, the very next second, Martha felt two moist lips pressed against her mouth, accompanied by an overpowering smell of garlic.

  ‘Bbb . . . whaa . . . whaa!’ could be heard from Martha before Brains decisively pushed the kiss-of-life taxi driver away, and held Martha in his arms.

  ‘It’s all right. She does scream like that sometimes, but it isn’t as bad as it sounds,’ Brains reassured the driver while at the same time managing to get Martha out of the vehicle.

  ‘But shouldn’t we take her to hospital?’ the concerned driver asked.

  ‘No, no. You know women, they always exaggerate things.’ Brains smiled as he paid for the journey. The others climbed out, rather confused, and when the taxi driver drove off they asked what had really happened.

  ‘This is what!’ said Martha, and she opened her bag so that the guns were visible again. Then Christina crumpled up in a faint.

  It took a while to revive her, but after two sugary sweets she was back on her feet. Martha regretted that they were making such a display of themselves. They had dressed in dark-grey coats they’d bought from a charity shop and left their Zimmer frames at home specifically so that they would melt into the crowd – and cause as little attention as possible.

  ‘How are you feeling, Martha?’ Brains asked. ‘You
really frightened me. And then that taxi driver too—’ He abruptly stopped at that point because he realized that, for a brief moment, he felt something that resembled jealousy. The taxi driver had almost kissed his . . . his woman!

  ‘Everything’s OK with me,’ said Martha. ‘Just as long as he doesn’t remember us,’ she added, but she realized at the same time that the chances of that were poor.

  ‘Was it really such a good idea, this taxi journey? How many times have we slowed down right outside Handelsbanken? What if they suspected something?’ sighed Rake.

  ‘Before a bank robbery, you must always check the escape routes and iron out all the details,’ said Christina, who had now livened up. ‘This was absolutely necessary. That fortune-teller can spout on all she wants about ominous events in the future, but it doesn’t mean she is right.’

  Rake opened his mouth to protest, but managed to restrain himself. Lillemor had become a sensitive topic of conversation. Over the last week she had knocked on the door almost every day with new predictions about Rake’s future. Of course he wanted to hear what she had to say. But now Christina had become grumpy and thought that enough was enough. He had maintained that he wanted to sort out certain things in his life. And also excused his interest by saying that it was best to know what might happen to you if you really were going to rob a bank. But since he couldn’t breathe a word about the actual robbery, none of the others thought this was an acceptable explanation. The fact that he blushed in a suspicious manner every time anyone mentioned Lillemor was much more telling.

  When the taxi had disappeared round the corner, the five friends walked up Flora’s Rise in the Humlegården Park, where they had a good view of the bank and its immediate vicinity. They had the park behind them, with the national library, the tree-lined paths, the lawns, and, on the other side of Sturegatan, you could see the entrance to Handelsbanken. They had a good look around, crossed the street to the other side and went past the bank door one last time before Martha thought it was time to head for home. For their return journey they first took the underground to Slussen, and then a taxi out to Värmdö. It had been a trying day and they needed some rest.