The Little Old Lady Behaving Badly

by Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg

  “You know what, when I see a successful mission like this it makes me think we ought to become robbers for real,” said Martha and she raised her glass.

  “But aren’t we already?” Brains wondered.

  Nobody said anything but just looked at the piles of notes until Martha opened her mouth again.

  “Now listen, for the time being this is a rather uninteresting and more of a philosophical problem. We have more serious things to think about. How do we distribute several thousand moldy smelling five hundred-kronor banknotes to those in need?”

  27

  HOME CARE AND THE HEALTH SERVICES SHALL NOT BE GIVEN moldy money,” said Christina decisively and they all mumbled in agreement. Their mood had indeed become slightly dampened when the League of Pensioners realized that ten thousand nasty-smelling five hundred-kronor banknotes would be hard to deal with. The people who received these stink bombs would start wondering, so something must be done.

  “Now listen, let’s turn on the sauna so that the banknotes will dry. Do we have some vinegar? It’s simply a question of pouring vinegar into some bowls and leaving them to stand there a while among the banknotes, that’ll take away the smell,” Christina explained, being knowledgeable about household tricks.

  “But we must hide the money,” said Anna-Greta.

  “Nobody’s going to damn well look for money in a sauna that smells of vinegar,” said Rake.

  “Exactly,” said Martha and she disappeared. She was gone a while and then returned in triumph with two large laundry bags. “When we have got rid of the worst of the smell, we can put the banknotes in these and then store the bags in the laundry room. That’ll be a good hiding place.”

  “Where did you get ahold of those bags? They are the kind that commercial laundries use,” said Anna-Greta.

  “Precisely. I found them in Bielke’s shed. We can borrow them for the time being.”

  “Poor old Bielke. Can’t he have anything left in peace?” wondered Brains.

  “Ah, we’re only going to borrow them a few days,” Martha decided. “Now we can turn on the sauna and go and have a little rest. We need some sleep after all this hullabaloo.”

  The others nodded and yawned widely, happy to now be able to sleep for a while. Brains turned on the sauna at sixty degrees Celsius and Christina and Anna-Greta covered the banknotes with two large light-blue duvet covers with a rabbit pattern from IKEA. Then they went off to their respective rooms, satisfied with the day’s achievements. They had got ahold of their five million and could start up their Robin Hood activity as soon as the money had dried. For Martha and her friends, there was nothing they liked better than handing out money to those in need, so, even though they were exhausted, they were all in the best of spirits. Five satisfied retirees went to bed and soon the old Djursholm villa was filled with loud snoring (they didn’t all have a special dental device). The seniors, who had been so excited earlier, now slept soundly with a big smile on their lips and dreamed of bank robberies and good food. Totally ignorant of the fact that the sauna thermostat was faulty.

  “WHAT THE HELL!” THE RETIRED CHIEF INSPECTOR, BLOMBERG, swore as he read the text message on his cell phone. Jöback and his cronies at the station had commissioned him to do some additional investigation in connection with the Nordea bank robbery. And now they had asked him to go to the Buttericks joke shop of all places! His mission was to find out who had bought masks representing Margaret Thatcher, Elton John, Pavarotti and Brad Pitt recently. Blomberg stared at the display while his face grew redder and redder. What a task! That was a simple job for a trainee! Were they teasing him? He was so insulted that he could hardly swallow and his cat, Einstein, who realized that his owner was angry, jumped up onto his knee, pawed him and put his head in Blomberg’s lap. With shaking hands, Blomberg stroked the purring cat and calmed down a little. His dear Einstein had an unusual ability to sense when something was not quite right, and just now Blomberg was so furious that even a china cat would have reacted. No way was he going to do that shit job. No, he would spend a bit of time in front of the computer one evening and simply collect some information about masks and prices and suchlike. That would have to do. And he was going to send them a bill too, if nothing else because they had insulted him! Besides, he needed to bring in some money to his detective agency firm, otherwise sooner or later the tax authorities would start questioning his accounts. You had to earn some money too, not just make deductions.

  Blomberg returned to the daily reports. Since he had started his detective agency he had made a habit of always reading the daily reports from all the police districts in Stockholm and every morning he scanned the various events that had taken place during the night. He was just about to have his second cup of coffee when he noticed a weird report that had been logged by the Norrmalm police district. According to a night guard at the Grand Hotel, a pensioners’ club from the City Fire Station had tested a fire hose on the quay at five in the morning. But the thing was that that sort of test was always carried out in the daytime and there was no fire station with that name. Blomberg googled and soon found:

  It’s a peaceful day in the three-story LEGO® City Fire Station. The fire chief sips his coffee in his office while a firefighter repairs the truck and another takes a well-earned nap. Spring into action when the alarm bell rings! Slide the firefighters down the pole, load them into the fire truck, van and helicopter to save the day in LEGO® City! There’s tons of fun to be had in this massive building set with three vehicles, big, transparent windows and two retracting garage doors. Includes five mini-figures: a fire chief, pilot and three firefighters with assorted accessories.

  The City Fire Station was a LEGO set for children! Good God, somebody who was interested in fire stations must have played a practical joke on the staff at the Grand Hotel or there was something fishy going on. Blomberg put his cup down so hard that it almost broke. The Grand Hotel was right next to the National Museum where there had been several serious robberies. Indeed, a single valuable painting in the museum was worth the equivalent of a lifetime’s income for an ordinary worker, so criminals were more than ready to target paintings and antiques. Perhaps the Fire Brigade Gang were actually preparing to rob the museum? Blomberg was now very keen. The security cameras outside the hotel might show something; he ought to check those recordings. Then he remembered his old friend Eklund, who was a captain on the Waxholm ferries that served the archipelago. Weren’t they moored close to the Grand Hotel, and the captains sometimes slept on board? He might have seen or heard something. Blomberg pushed Einstein onto the floor, fished out his cell and dialed the number. Eklund answered almost immediately and after some idle chatter about weather and water conditions, Blomberg got to the point.

  “Did something happen outside the Grand Hotel last night? Yes, it fucking well did!” Eklund shouted into the phone. “Some raving lunatics woke me at five in the morning. And guess what? It was a gang of seniors who were playing with a fire hydrant! They must have had a screw loose, every one of them. I tried to stop them, but fell down and hurt my knee.”

  “Oh, nasty, that can be painful.”

  “Yes, it bloody well can. But what on earth were those nuts up to?”

  “What did they look like?”

  “There were five of them. Four had their backs to me, unfortunately, so I couldn’t see their faces. But they had those black firemen uniforms. And there was an old woman who paced back and forth in front of the National Museum with a walker.”

  “A walker?”

  “Yeah, one of those Zimmer frames but with wheels. It was as if she was in charge of the rest of the gang. Then they connected a hose to the fire hydrant and that’s when all hell broke loose! You should have seen it! Those seniors stuck the nozzle up a drainpipe, right next to the Cadier bar, and turned on the hydrant. Then there was a hell of a noise. I couldn’t see any more because I was lying on the deck holding my knee. But I did see them drive off afterwards in a sort of minibus with a ramp on
the back.”

  “Like the taxi minibuses, for the elderly and people with a disability?” Blomberg felt his pulse increase. “So they were really old, then, those people in the City Fire Station?”

  “You can say that again! The old woman had her walker and the others walked slowly and carefully and with hunched backs. Together, they must have been several hundred years old.”

  This rang yet another bell for Blomberg. The seniors had been close to the National Museum in the middle of the night. They were, of course, planning a robbery. That was crystal clear. They were going to use the fire hose to break in with. It would probably be really easy to break a window with the jet of water. The pressure of water from a fire hydrant and a large dimension hose with the right nozzle could be extremely powerful. Blomberg got up and walked around the room with his cell in his hand while he tried to think. He recalled the theft of two paintings, a Monet and a Renoir worth thirty million. That coup at the National Museum was still something of a mystery and his colleagues had spent a long time on the case. The crooks had never been caught, nor had the criminal league that robbed Handelsbanken sometime later, and on both occasions some elderly people had been seen on the camera footage. They included an older woman who featured on the footage, a woman that he himself had believed to be involved. But the lack of evidence had meant that they couldn’t pin her to the crime, but now, what if it was her again! Blomberg looked up at the ceiling with his cell against his ear and thought. All the members of the Old Fellows Gang were locked up, and besides, there hadn’t been any women members. The same applied to the Gorbachev robbers. But nevertheless, the police still had three unsolved robberies that had been carried out by elderly people: the theft of the paintings at the National Museum, the robberies at Handelsbanken and Nordea. What if it was the work of one and the same group? A new gang with elderly members, including women? Yes, where one of the members was an old woman. The League of Pensioners.

  “Were they wearing masks?” Blomberg asked, now quite sweaty with excitement.

  “No, not that I could see. But like I said, they moved slowly. I bet you they were over seventy at least.”

  “Eklund, I’m coming to see you so we can talk a bit more,” Blomberg exclaimed, then added a few polite phrases and ended the call. He immediately felt decidedly exhilarated. Seniors on the rampage at five o’clock in the morning. It sounded almost too good to be true. He would soon have them behind bars.

  EARLY THE NEXT MORNING EVERYONE IN THE LEAGUE OF PENSIONERS woke up in an unusually good mood. After endless troubles and worries about what they should do, they had finally succeeded with their Operation Drainpipe. It was such a great achievement that Rake thought they should celebrate with coffee and something strong to go with it, but then Christina protested and maintained that they must limit all this drinking. This morning she planned a yoga session so it was a great deal better that they drank a nourishing fruit smoothie instead, one of her specials with lime, orange, apple and banana.

  “Or we can do an ordinary good old gymnastics session. Then you can have tea with cloudberry liqueur afterwards,” Martha tempted them, thinking that Christina’s health interest went a bit too far sometimes. Her friend threw an irritated look at her.

  “Martha, it is only yoga that makes your body supple,” she snapped back.

  “But gymnastics makes you supple and improves your general condition,” Martha claimed.

  “Now listen, girls, calm down! Before we start swinging our legs this way and that, we have to sort out the sauna, don’t we? That is the most important thing. After all, there’s five million down there,” Brains reminded them.

  “Yes, you are right,” said Martha. “First, we’ll put all the moeny in the laundry bags. Then we can do some gymnastics.”

  “Or yoga,” said Christina.

  “You go down to the sauna and I’ll clear the breakfast table,” Anna-Greta offered, and without waiting for an answer she started to gather up the cups. “I’ll come down later.”

  The others nodded and got up and headed for the cellar. But as soon as they opened the door to the stairs they sensed something was wrong. A hot, pungent vinegar smell hit them and made them hesitate.

  “Oops, this doesn’t bode well,” Martha mumbled and she hurried down the stairs. When she reached the sauna door she saw that the little square window up near the ceiling had acquired a light red covering and when she opened the door she was met by a sour, sticky vinegar mist. She coughed and backed out again.

  “What’s the matter?” Brains wondered and he opened the cellar window to be on the safe side before opening the sauna door again.

  “Oh goodness, yech!” was all he managed to utter before he too withdrew.

  Not until they had opened the window and cellar door as wide as possible and got a crosswind did they venture to open the sauna door again, and then they waited some time before actually daring to go in. But despite the door having been open for more than fifteen minutes the temperature was still over seventy degrees and the air unpleasantly pungent. They all realized that something unexpected must have happened. Something very unexpected.

  “The thermostat,” said Brains. “Something must have broken. It hasn’t worked like it should have.”

  The vinegar in the bowls had turned into steam and the moist hot vinegar-filled air had settled on the light-blue duvet covers like brown, unsymmetrical drops. And now the bedclothes with the little rabbits on them looked rather weird, to put it mildly. Martha went up to the covers to pull them aside but hesitated.

  “Something tells me that we are about to have an unpleasant surprise,” she said. “The duvet covers were from IKEA and were very cheap.” Her voice sounded thin and sort of eery.

  “Yes, right. Buying cheap can be expensive in the long run,” said Rake and he pulled the covers aside so that banknotes flew in all directions.

  “Huh, what have we got here? Banknotes that stink of vinegar, and they look damn awful too,” Rake noted and he kicked some brownish five hundred-kronor notes.

  “Help, the notes are discolored and seem to have acquired the pattern from the duvet covers too,” said Brains.

  “Yes, exactly. Look, lots of tiny bunny rabbits!” Christina sniffled and held up two of the banknotes against the light. “Five million full of rabbits!”

  Martha, Brains and Rake started to stir the pile of banknotes while Christina, sobbing, tried to stop her tears.

  “If we put the banknotes behind glass and frame them, then perhaps we can exhibit them at the Museum of Modern Art,” said Martha, in an attempt to brighten their mood.

  “Then we can even frame Anna-Greta’s tights too,” Rake said.

  “That wasn’t the slightest bit funny,” Christina retorted between sobs.

  “Hello down there, how’s it going?” Anna-Greta called out from the kitchen, but she didn’t get any answer. Then she suspected that something was wrong and when she went down to the others, to be on the safe side she took a bottle of aquavit flavored with elderberry and five schnapps glasses on a tray.

  “What about a little something to perk us up this morning. We more than deserve it,” she said.

  “Deserve? I’m not sure what we deserve, to be honest,” said Martha and she showed her some banknotes.

  “Oh my God, what has happened?” exclaimed Anna-Greta almost dropping everything on the floor.

  “This,” said Martha, holding up one of the banknotes close to her spectacles. Anna-Greta put the tray down on the stairs and stared at the five hundred-kronor note a long while. She was completely silent, so silent that the others became worried. Then came that strange sound from her stomach, a sound that grew in strength and turned into a veritable thunder bomb.

  “I BEG YOUR PARDON, A RABBIT?!”

  “IKEA,” Christina sighed.

  “The duvet covers were a special offer,” Brains explained.

  Anna-Greta went down on her knees (a maneuver she could now do fairly well after Christina’s yoga se
ssions) and poked around in the pile of banknotes.

  “Hmm. It is the top layer that is somewhat the worse for wear, but it isn’t too bad.”

  “What do you mean?” Rake asked. “We’ve just destroyed five million!”

  “No we haven’t! In fact, this has solved a big problem.”

  “And I thought we now faced a big problem.”

  “On the contrary. I’ve just realized that this is a wonderful way to launder money.”

  “Don’t say you’re going to put thousands of five hundred-kronor notes in the washing machine. Or did you just want to put them in the dryer, perhaps?” said Rake.

  “Not at all. Listen to me. We’ll contact the Bank of Sweden. According to the 2014 regulations about the redemption of banknotes and coins, the bank is obliged to redeem notes that are damaged.”

  “Is that true?” Martha exclaimed in delight.

  “Even banknotes with rabbits?” Christina wondered and she blew her nose.

  “Well, we could perhaps wash them first,” Anna-Greta suggested.

  “I know, the cleaning show on TV demonstrates how you remove stains,” Christina informed them. “There must be some good tips from that.”

  “I know, we’ll scrub off a number or two and then we’ll put the damaged banknotes in a carefully sealed envelope and send it to the Bank of Sweden in Broby. If we stick to an amount under ten thousand, we can get them exchanged for new ones. It’ll take a bit of time, but that doesn’t matter.”

  “Will they exchange the banknotes?” Christina looked as if she was about to faint.

  “Absolutely,” said Anna-Greta. “They will even put the money in a bank account that we stipulate. The Bank of Sweden is legally obliged to do this—unless the money comes from a crime or from criminal activity—but we don’t need to tell them that.”

  Then Anna-Greta held a little lecture about how you remove stains with acetone and water in the right combination. And they all agreed that they ought to wash the banknotes in slightly different ways so that nobody would suspect that they came from the same source. For the same reason, they ought to post their envelopes to the Bank of Sweden spread out over time so that nobody in the bank gets suspicious. The two bags in the laundry room in the cellar could quite simply be their own little home bank—without any hidden fees and such nonsense—from which they could take out money when needed.