The Little Old Lady Behaving Badly

by Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg

  The first customer was the community’s very own Mrs. Grumpy. Her real name was Amanda Skogh and she was notorious for snooping around the properties finding fault. Nils had said that she was rather bothersome and that they must be nice to her. Martha had done her best, and now Amanda bought a whole bottle. After her came a group from a local choir, from the nearby church, together with the reverend. Martha, who loved singing, started chatting and after selling them an old vinyl record and a couple of Anna-Greta’s embroidered pillowcases, she suggested that they should have a little sing-along, for example an Evert Taube ballad. This got all of them in a jolly mood, and it ended up with the choir members all buying a bottle of Martha’s drink. Some had a taste first, and asked how the drink could be so strong, but then she told them that it was her granny’s recipe, and it contained many special spices and that this wasn’t just your everyday fruit drink you found in the supermarkets.

  “You see, I’ve used real organic ingredients,” she boasted.

  After a while, four novices from the medieval convent in Vadstena came to Martha’s table. They were visiting the gardens to see if they could find any medieval plants that had been imported by monks way back in the fifteenth century. Martha said she was sorry she couldn’t help them, but instead she sold three pillowcases, two vinyl records with Salvation Army music and eventually persuaded them to buy some bottles too. Some of the choir members returned to buy a few more bottles, further reducing her stock. Business was thriving and a couple of hours later Martha had almost nothing left. That was when she caught sight of Amanda Skogh, who was rather unsteadily making her way along Salad Lane path, a waffle in her hand. She sang joyfully and greeted everybody she met, asking them if they wanted to taste her waffle. She waved her arms, took dance steps and sang so loudly that everybody stared at her in dismay. She had only just left when the church choir came staggering in from the left. The reverend was rambling on and touching the breasts of the sopranos, while the tenors and the stylish basses were competing to see who could sing the loudest. And right behind them came the four novices with their habits somewhat askew. They were, of course, respectfully attired, but they were chasing the lovely sounding basses, giggling as they lifted their skirts, sidestepping all the while. Business came to a halt and the visitors stared. Had the church folk eaten too many fermented berries, like elk in the forest, or were they genuinely under the influence?

  “And what are you doing this evening, reverend?” wondered the pretty little novice Yvonne when she caught sight of the cleric, and she winked seductively, but then, luckily, the other novices intervened. Because if they hadn’t stopped her, she would certainly have pinched him on the bottom. Martha was quite shocked and wondered if it was always like this at harvest festival time. And when there was so much chaos that she didn’t think it could get any worse, she suddenly heard a weird gobbling sound. A badger came stumbling out onto Salad Lane with bits of bread hanging out of its mouth. It wobbled to one side and then to the other and finally fell into the ditch with its paws in the air. Martha watched this in astonishment, shook her head and thought it was now high time she returned home. With only one solitary vinyl record (a yodelling ballad singer) and one bottle left, she thought she had done well for the day.

  “I saved this for us,” she said when she got home, and she pulled out a bottle of her fizzy drink and a picnic basket full of waffles. “Now we’re going to stuff ourselves!”

  The gentlemen still hadn’t come home, so the ladies settled on the terrace and ate and drank while conversing with gaiety, with the hammock rocking and the evening passing. Soon you could hear verses of romantic songs when the merry, light female voices broke out in spontaneous vocal harmony.

  WHEN BRAINS AND RAKE CAME HOME LATER IN THE EVENING, they heard shrieks and laughter well before they reached the cabin. People were dancing and singing in the yard and cheerful voices could be heard from the community gardens. They had hardly opened the gate before they discovered the reverend behind a bush, cuddling a loudly giggling first soprano. Tipsy basses and tenors were wandering around and when Rake and Brains entered the little cafe, a new shock awaited them. There they saw a group of novices who seemed to have passed out sitting at the table with their heads resting on their arms. They were snoring.

  “Oh my God!” said Rake.

  “Yes, well,” said Brains, “he doesn’t seem to be here anyway! We’d better get home.”

  Somewhat confounded they walked down Carrot Lane while tipsy property owners waved and wanted to treat them to a glass. But the men declined as graciously as they could and continued toward their own cabin. They stopped beside the gate. Somebody had been digging in the border where they had buried the fusel alcohol–soaked loaves.

  “Oh my God!” exclaimed Rake again.

  “There’s a smell of fusel alcohol,” Brains declared and he hurried to grab a shovel and rake to sweep away the evidence. Just as he and Rake had finished, they caught sight of Martha, who was holding an empty soda bottle in her hand while the others were singing and supporting one another as best they could.

  “Oh, so tasty, nothing beats a homemade lingonberry fruit drink,” Martha slurred after which Christina burst out in uncontrollable giggling and Anna-Greta followed up with an explosion of machine gun neighing.

  “Why—” Martha began, looking at Brains with shiny eyes, “why on earth didn’t you say that the bottles contained spirits!”

  “What?! What have you done?”

  “Oh, nothing special. I just mixed lingonberry extract, spices and water,” she giggled. “The result was heavenly! I sold it all.”

  “The spirits!” groaned Brains and Rake.

  “No, lingonberry fruit drink,” said Martha. And then the ladies dissolved into such convulsions of laughter that it was simply impossible to talk to them. Rake and Brains had to help them into the cabin.

  19

  THE FOLLOWING DAY EVERYBODY SLEPT A LONG TIME IN THE Slottsskogen community and nobody could remember that it had ever been so quiet on an ordinary morning in September. Apart from the chirping of birds and some snores that could be heard through open windows, it was remarkably silent. The church choir was sleeping off their intoxication in the congregation’s guest flat, while the reverend, who had been caught with his first soprano, had been taken home by his angry wife. Deeply repentant, he tossed and turned on the hard, uncomfortable living room sofa without being able to sleep, but what could he do when he had been banished from the bedroom? The novices for their part, who had never drunk so much liqueur in all their lives—they had never tasted a drink as good as this—were wondering why they were still there in the community since they had train tickets for their return journey to Vadstena the previous evening. Besides, they had a dreadful headache of a kind they had never encountered before, a throbbing pain which didn’t ease up despite their kneeling and many prayers. And those plants from the fifteenth century—they had forgotten to ask about them, and the carrots, beets and apples they had bought instead were actually the same ones they had brought with them and donated to the vegetable stall. In some weird way, everything had been sort of topsy-turvy, and the only thing that they could agree upon was that God was almighty and that the lingonberry fruit drink had been amazingly tasty.

  The League of Pensioners themselves sat inside the cabin and lay low. They didn’t dare venture out. Since people had danced and sung instead of buying, the property owners had never sold so little as they had this year. And with unsold vegetables, burning headaches and empty cash boxes, they were all a bit irritable. And inside Nils’s cabin too, there was a lively discussion.

  “But Martha, dear, didn’t you notice that the bottles were full of spirits?” Brains sighed and shook his head.

  “But for heaven’s sake, I’ve got a cold and didn’t have time to take a taste. I’ve said I’m sorry!”

  Martha was ashamed for having been so careless, but at the same time she found it hard to keep a straight face. Because it had been
a hilarious evening and many a participant would surely remember this harvest festival for decades to come. But be that as it may, it would perhaps be for the best if she and her friends were to move on, because it was only a matter of time before the talk about the seniors in Nils’s cabin would spread. Five elderly retirees crammed together in a tiny cabin of only twenty-six square meters, yes, what on earth were they doing there? And the League of Pensioners were, after all, on the wanted list in Sweden and abroad. Martha looked at her friends around the dining table. It wasn’t ideal here, of course it wasn’t, but where else could they go? During the two weeks they had kept themselves hidden there they had listened to the news every day without hearing any more about the Nordea bank robbery, and that had made her uneasy. Were the police keeping a low profile, or had the crime now become a lower priority? Perhaps they could even go back to the villa in Djursholm? Here in this community it didn’t feel as safe as it had before.

  “Now listen,” she began, but she was cut off by Christina’s loud laugh.

  “Amazing! You should have seen how the novices were traipsing around with their skirts lifted. I have never seen anything like it!” she said, getting up to demonstrate.

  “No, now hear me!” said Martha and she banged the salt shaker on the table. “Order in the ranks! We must go into action. We can’t hide here forever, and we must distribute the bank robbery money. How are things going with the lawyer, Anna-Greta?”

  “Mr. Hovberg? He just sent me an email saying that he had managed to register a company on the Cayman Islands. Now he only has to link a Swedish company to it. Then we can give away the money.”

  “Take the proceeds you got from selling the fruit drink too.” Rake grinned. “No, seriously though, why not give the money to the poorly paid health-care staff? Nursing assistants must get better wages. Nurses have awfully stressful situations in the ERs.”

  “Like that dark-haired girl who works at Danderyd Hospital, perhaps?” said Christina with a sharp glance at Rake.

  “All those who are paid badly shall get higher wages,” Martha interjected. “I am not going to end my life of crime until we have achieved a more just society where every person can live on their wages and their pensions.”

  “Oops, are you now going to change all of society again?” asked Brains. “But the people who work harder must get a better wage than the others, right? I mean a wage according to ability and achievement. And doctors do have more responsibility and—”

  “Ah, what do you actually mean?” Martha wondered and focused her eyes on him.

  “Well, I, er . . .” he began, and went quiet when he saw Rake’s look of warning.

  “I’ve got an idea,” said Brains. “We smuggle the money to those in need. At the Customs and Tax Museum I’ve seen how it can be done. If we buy lots of books, hollow out the inside and put some money in, then we can send them to all the nurses in the country.”

  “Yes, exactly; we can put banknotes inside bibles. Wouldn’t that be nice?” Christina said.

  “A literary way of smuggling.” Rake grinned and patted her on the cheek. “But, you know, there are seventy thousand nursing assistants in Sweden, so that would mean a lot of hard work.”

  That said, the difficulty of arranging a nice way of giving out the money became apparent to them all. How on earth could they achieve their goal?

  20

  THERE WAS A SMELL OF APPLES AND LEAVES, AND THE NIGHTS had become colder. In the old cabin, the cold made itself felt at nighttime. How much longer could they stay here and lie low? Anna-Greta glanced at her computer screen and read the latest email. Lawyer Hovberg had listed several transfers from the West Indies and the Swedish subsidiary company was now up and running. Very soon, the League of Pensioners would be in the field as the simplest of venture capitalists. No, it wouldn’t feel right until they had given the money away. It was high time to return! She closed her computer, changed her mind and opened it again. Venture capitalists, yes. What if Carl Bielke, their unpleasant neighbor, had come home? They ought to find out about that. Perhaps he was on Facebook? Then she could keep track of him. Why hadn’t she thought of that before?

  She entered her password and immediately could see files, pictures and documents on the computer screen again. She had recently joined Facebook, but didn’t dare use her own name, instead she called herself Eva von Adelsparre, which had a decidedly noble ring to it. While they had been staying in the community gardens, she had systematically made sure she became Facebook friends with her childhood friends in Djursholm as well as neighbors old and new. Almost everybody had accepted her and with a name like von Adelsparre most of them probably assumed she was an old classmate from the local school, one of those pupils whose name they had forgotten. Then she had spent an hour every day checking what her newly made friends busied themselves with nowadays. It was exciting to spy on how people lived, who their neighbors were and what their summer houses and boats looked like. Many of the Djursholm locals had fancy summer houses out in the Stockholm archipelago, but their villas in Spain or on the Riviera were even more luxurious. To think what a life they lived, those old classmates; they moved in entirely different circles than ordinary people!

  Anna-Greta took a lemon wafer and clicked her way into Facebook. Many new entries had come in. Humming, she scrolled down the start page. Somebody had been out picking mushrooms, others had posted humorous articles and—no, she must concentrate! She wrote “Carl Bielke” in the search box and hoped for the best. There now, his page came up. Yes, that was their neighbor, the around-the-world sailor with a garbage truck in his swimming pool. She breathed faster. Could it really be true? Yes, a smiling Carl Bielke had posted a picture of himself standing on a fabulous motor yacht in the multi-millions. It was one of those huge motorboats that only royalty, sheikhs and billionaires were able to afford. And the water was not dark blue like in the Baltic, but rather a greener shade like in the Mediterranean.

  Bielke had posted more pictures and soon she recognized the harbor in Saint-Tropez where she had been on a language course when she was young. In those days the French fishing village was not so well known, but now it had developed into a popular hang-out for jet-setters. But what in heaven’s name was Bielke doing there? Their neighbor was meant to be sailing around the world. The boat he was standing on was evidently his, because he called it “my motorboat.” She became curious and scrolled further. Bielke did seem to get about. The year before he had let himself be photographed on a sailing yacht in Cannes and even on a large motor yacht in Nice. One of those boats could be chartered and when she clicked on the link, she saw that it had a swimming pool and the most luxurious living room and bedroom. Ten thousand euro a week was the asking price! Good God!

  On the deck you could see smiling young ladies and crew members in white uniforms. What if he had a blog too? Yes, indeed, after a few moments she found a blog where he boasted about his luxury boats and sailing tours. Anna-Greta became curious, wrote down what types of boats they were and googled their value. She gasped in astonishment. The motor yacht in Saint-Tropez was worth more than five hundred million kronor! How could he possibly afford that? She was so fascinated that she almost choked on the wafer, and not until she had recovered from the coughing could she gather her thoughts. Oh my God! She, Martha and the others in the gang were in fact the most amateurish of amateurs. The amount the League of Pensioners had gotten from the bank robbery was nothing in comparison to this.

  Eagerly, she googled more motor yachts and luxury cruisers and discovered that some boats were for sale for more than seven hundred million kronor! And that was about seventy bank robberies at ten million a time! How could she and her friends have missed this? Now Anna-Greta’s need for order and her past as a bank official led her to wonder whether Bielke had declared his assets. She quickly clicked her way into the Swedish tax authority’s website, made a note of a telephone number she needed and then practiced a few minutes to disguise her voice before she phoned.


  “I am sorry to disturb you, but the matter concerns Mr. Carl Bielke of Auroravägen four in Djursholm. I am intending to sell a house to him. Would you be so kind as to provide me with information about his income? It would be so dreadful to be cheated . . .”

  Then she phoned the County Administration and the Enforcement Agency. While the telephone rang at the other end, she felt pleased with how well she was dealing with everything herself. Gunnar had taught her a lot and of course she missed his company sometimes. But everything was so quick and convenient now that she could handle the computer herself. In that way she could search for facts directly without having to ask nicely, to coax, to praise and put in a lot of effort in general! After just a few telephone calls she had found out what she wanted to know, and then she got up so quickly that she knocked over the coffee pot and the bowl of lemon wafers.

  “My friends,” she called out into the cottage. “You know Bielke? You won’t believe what a shady character he turns out to be!”

  And then she went and fetched Brains and Rake and said to Martha and Christina that she had something important to tell them. The friends gathered together in the cabin around the dining table, put their hands on their knees and listened. Proud and almost a little boastful, Anna-Greta told them what she had found on the Internet and then she described in detail tax evader Carl Bielke’s income and assets and yachts in the Mediterranean. The members of the League of Pensioners oohed and aahed and wondered how the man had managed to get so rich and avoid paying tax. Anna-Greta was in her element and gesticulated.

  “He has assets by the billion but he has bypassed the Swedish state and most of it is formally owned somewhere on the Cayman Islands,” she explained.

  “Disrespectful!” said Martha.

  “Oh yes, I know some others who also—” mumbled Brains.