The Little Old Lady Who Struck Lucky Again!

by Ingelman-Sundberg, Catharina

  ‘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 Le
ague 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.

  All five of them had, however, been a bit careless about their physical condition so now they would have to make sure they got back into shape before they could even begin to think up any new crimes. Martha looked on Blocket.se and eventually found some cheap equipment from a gym that had closed. An exercise treadmill, dumbbells, ropes and rowing machines were stored in the garden shed until a gym was ready in part of the cellar. She rubbed her hands in delight and looked forward to becoming fitter again.

  At their new house, Christina often sat in the library or on the veranda. She had bought a whole lot of classics as well as a big box of English detective stories. While she organized them on the shelves, she hummed to herself or quoted lines of well-known poems. She hadn’t felt so good for ages.

  Brains was happy with life too. He had got hold of an old motorcycle which he worked on out in the yard. What he had really wanted was a Harley-Davidson but that was too expensive, so he’d had to settle for a bike from the First World War.

  Rake inspected the greenhouse and thought about what he would like to grow in there. Tomatoes were a must, but perhaps cucumbers and grapes too. Then he wandered around in the garden, had a good look at the fruit bushes and started planning what he would sow in the spring. Now and then he glanced up at the neighbouring house. The woman he had glimpsed behind the curtains seemed exciting. She had jet-black hair.

  Anna-Greta had been checking an online auction site and finally had found a fancy vinyl gramophone together with fifteen large boxes of vinyl records. Her friends had grumbled at first, but after she had agreed that she wouldn’t play her favourite religious song and her accordion music more than once a day, they went along with it. The collection also included a lot of records with choral music, and that was practical, of course, if they wanted to learn some new songs for their repertoire. Admittedly, they didn’t sing quite so often nowadays, as they couldn’t perform with their choir The Vocal Chord now that they were on the run, but they couldn’t drop music completely.

  Every time Anna-Greta put on a record, she thought of her old love, Gunnar. She had met him onboard a cruise ship when the League of Pensioners were midway through their first major robbery. He had come to visit her while she was in prison for her part in the art heist and her criminal activity hadn’t seemed to bother him. In those moments when she thought of him, she wandered around a room or stared absent-mindedly out through a window. Anna-Greta had phoned him several times but had only got through to an answering service. Now she regretted not keeping in better touch with him while she was living in Las Vegas. Even though she was surrounded by her friends, she did actually feel a bit lonely.

  When they had all settled down in their new home, Martha gathered the friends together in the library for an important meeting.

  ‘We can’t call ourselves the League of Pensioners any longer because that name is notorious in Sweden. We must give ourselves a new name,’ she said.

  ‘I think we should go with a name that sounds more international,’ mused Rake, who had travelled the most in his younger days.

  They discussed Halloween, Angel Birds, Grey Oldies, Hidden Diamonds and a whole lot of other titles before finally settling on Outlaw Oldies.

  ‘It’s got a contemporary feel to it,’ Martha said enthusiastically and then she and Brains went down to the newly purchased letter box by the road and glued on the name with big black letters. From now on, all the post was to be sent to Outlaw Oldies, Myrstigen 2, Norra Lagnö, Värmdö. The five pensioners had acquired a new home and a new life. And a new, dangerous, challenging name.

  8

  The lights were on upstairs in the eighteenth-century house further up the slope where the group of bachelors lived. The old wooden building had white mullioned windows, a very solid-looking front door and brown-stained wooden front steps. But the decorative banisters on the steps were painted black and resembled wings and the handrails had been painted white and red. The colours were no coincidence as the people who lived in the house were in fact a proud gang of bikers who had climbed quite high in the biker hierarchy. Bandangels had their sights set on being part of Mad Angels. If they did as they were told, they would be admitted as members of the respected club, according to the Yellow Villa, the greatest club around.

  ‘It’s time to collect our bloody money!’ said Tompa, as he got up from the armchair and went into the hall. His trousers sounded like an old leather sofa, and his heavy boots made the floor creak. Tompa Eriksson and Jörgen Smäck, two beefy bikers dressed in black, put on their leather jackets and pulled on steel-capped boots. From the hat rail they took their knuckledusters, gloves and helmets. Then they looked for their scarves and pulled their hoods on before leaving the house.

  It was a cold day and they wrapped the scarves a few extra times round their necks. Then they carefully put on their helmets before kick-starting their motorbikes. The engines came to life with a roar and the two men rolled down the slope. Down by the row of letter boxes by the road, Tompa stopped to see if they’d received any post. He was just about to unlock the letter box when he glanced at the box next to it.

  ‘Just look at this! Outlaw Oldies, what the fuck!?’

  The two men looked at each other and Tompa nervously revved his engine a few times.

  ‘Who the hell are these outsiders? They don’t belong here.’

  ‘No, damn it, they must be sent packing!’

  ‘We’ll have to check up on them. But not just now . . .’ Tompa revved his engine and he and Jörgen disappeared with a roar down the road.

  When they reached the pizzeria in the Östermalm district of central Stockholm, Tompa felt an irritating sense of discomfort. Something was bugging him, but he tried to repress the feeling as best he could. He had a job to do and this wasn’t the time to start mulling over things. He took off his helmet and strode into the pizzeria closely followed by his mate. When he first joined the gang, he had hated this type of task, but after a while he had got used to it. People who didn’t pay, only had th
emselves to blame. The two men walked quickly through the dining area and straight into the office. The owner, who sat in front of his desk with a half-eaten pizza, a can of beer and a pile of papers, gave a start. Tompa stood in front of him with his hands by his sides.

  ‘The money!’

  ‘It’s on its way.’

  ‘You said that last week too.’

  The owner took out a bunch of keys, unlocked a desk drawer and, with trembling hands, opened a little metal cash box. There were a few five-hundred-kronor notes inside.

  ‘Look for yourselves. This is all I’ve got at the moment.’

  ‘You’ll have to cough up the money NOW!’

  ‘I promise.’

  ‘You said that last time, too!’

  Jörgen directed some hard, well-aimed punches at the man’s face, causing him to fall to the floor. He continued to punch the pizzeria man until he huddled up whining.

  ‘Tomorrow, I promise, you’ll get your money after lunch.’

  ‘And we’d bloody well better get it, do you understand?’ said Tompa, kicking the man in the stomach. In a rage he also kicked the cash box so that the banknotes flew off in all directions. Then the two bikers left the premises as if nothing had happened.

  In the evening, Tompa couldn’t stop thinking about the letter box. A rival gang as neighbours – that was all he needed! The huge LCD telly was on the highest volume and there were some empty beer cans on the coffee table. Next to them were a bowl of nuts and an opened packet of crisps. Shrieking American voices, shrill film music and the sound of people shooting wildly around them filled the room. Jörgen was half-asleep in the armchair with the remote in his hand. Tompa took a handful of nuts.