The Little Old Lady Behaving Badly Read online

  “I know,” he suddenly said and immediately looked a little happier. “We don’t need to stay at the Grand Hotel for eighty thousand kronor a night. We can rent an aerial work platform, a skylift.”

  “A skylift!” they all shouted and looked much brighter.

  “Yes, absolutely. We’ll rent a really high skylift, pretend that the drainpipe needs repairing and take it home with us. Then the loot is ours.”

  “Fantastic, Brains. To think that you can come up with such things! But do you really believe it will be as easy as you say?” Martha wondered.

  “Yes, of course. There are lots of different skylifts and you can get a driver’s license for them in one day.”

  “All right, then,” said Martha pulling out her notepad and a pen. “You know what, I think it would be best if you men take care of this. And then we others can be on standby down on the ground as best we can.”

  Brains and Rake exchanged some quick glances, nodded and got up. They went up to the liquor cabinet. Brains found it hard to choose among the cognac bottles, but eventually took out the most expensive.

  “A drop of this, then we’ll certainly work out how to do it.”

  And that’s what they did. Operation Drainpipe was now the boys’ own project.

  THE COUNTDOWN TO OPERATION DRAINPIPE WAS FINISHED, and Brains and Rake had gone about the task with great seriousness. Since Rake was still troubled by headaches after his concussion, Brains had to do the lion’s share. In a very decisive and bellowing voice, which sounded most authoritative, he had announced to the rental company in Solna that he needed to rent a skylift for a delicate renovation job at the Grand Hotel. The hotel with its fine old traditions was going to get a very important but secret visit from the other side of the Atlantic, so it was urgent. Then there had been no problem about renting a skylift, and Martha couldn’t praise him enough for his energetic efforts. But since neither of the elderly gentlemen thought that they could carry out the mission, Christina’s son Anders had been sent on a course in Oskarshamn and been given a driver’s license. A one-day course at the company called Motivera had left him thinking that he had now mastered virtually every skylift in the whole world and the driver’s license had given him an impressive degree of self-confidence. In fact, so much so that Christina was a little worried.

  “But, my boy, do you really think you can disconnect that drainpipe from the skylift platform and then bring it down without anything going wrong?” she asked.

  “No problem. I know exactly how to do it,” answered Anders.

  “It’s one thing to drive the skylift, but you must carry out a tricky job too,” said Martha.

  “Ah, it’s actually pretty simple. You’ve just got to use your common sense,” said Anders. He was going to get a large sum for the task after the millions had been recovered and he was very eager. As usual, he was unemployed and he needed all the contributions he could get.

  “But aren’t you going to practice first?” Christina wondered.

  “No, no, Mom, it’s a piece of cake!”

  Anders sounded very cocky and this made Christina nervous. Self-confident men who “can do everything” are always a great source of worry.

  IT WAS AN EARLY SUNDAY MORNING, WITH ALMOST NO TRAFFIC and only a few people outside the hotel. Shortly after midnight, the League of Pensioners had cordoned off the area outside the Cadier bar with orange plastic cones and hung up a sign: WORK IN PROGRESS. And that was true, after all, even though it wasn’t an ordinary job. The idea was that Anders would dismantle the part of the drainpipe with the money in it, replace it with a similar metal pipe and then descend to ground level again. Once on solid ground, it was simply a question of loading the money into the minibus and driving back to Djursholm, while Anders, for his part, returned the skylift to the rental company. Since the owner of the skylift had only advertised his services on a popular site on the Internet he would probably not be a serious entrepreneur and there would be no invoices and receipts. No, the plan seemed to be airtight. Besides, Anders had checked the diameter, joints and lengths of the drainpipe. Everything was well prepared.

  The sun was shining and it was one of those early late-summer mornings when the air was clear and the colors vivid. Inside the minibus, the League of Pensioners sang an Evert Taube ballad. This gave them strength and self-confidence, which they really needed now. They all felt ready for action. On a morning like this, it was simply impossible not to be in a good mood and be very optimistic. Brains laid his hand over Martha’s.

  “Now we’ll figure this out and then we’ll have one less problem, just you wait and see, Martha dear.”

  “I’m really happy about that, I can assure you. It feels so good that you are here, it makes me calm.”

  Brains gave her hand an extra squeeze and Martha felt very warm all over. It was really lovely to have a life partner like she had when they ran into problems. The task was difficult and in the worst-case scenario they could get caught.

  “That’s nice, Anders is already here,” said Brains pointing to a large truck with a skylift next to the Cadier bar. “Now everything is ready to go!”

  ANDERS, WHO HAD BEEN IN SOLNA AND HAD FETCHED THE truck, had driven up to the Grand Hotel and parked next to the Cadier bar. When he caught sight of the familiar minibus he got out and made a thumbs-up sign to the others. The cones were still in place even though the warning sign hung at a bit of an angle. Besides the minibus with Christina and her friends, there was nobody to be seen in the vicinity. The Waxholm archipelago local ferry boats rocked in their moorings and on the other side of the bay the royal castle was reflected in the shiny surface of the water. Anders seemed pleased as he looked at the Rothman 270, a skylift that he had heard a great deal about on his training course. The skylift was mounted on a truck and looked solid and stable.

  “How’s it going?” Christina wondered when she arduously climbed out of the minibus with the others and went across to Anders. “You will be careful, won’t you, so that you won’t get stuck or fall down?” she said, looking anxiously at the transport basket at the end of the long hydraulic arm.

  “No problem, Mother. This is a top-notch skylift. It can be steered up and down and sideways, and the basket can rotate so you can get at everything. It couldn’t be better,” he answered, humming while he fastened the belt with the control panel around his waist.

  “Nice belt you’ve got there,” said Brains, prodding his waist. The skylift started buzzing.

  “No, no, don’t touch!” Anders exclaimed, horrified.

  “Just joking. You will work discreetly, right?”

  “Yes, of course! With a skylift more than twenty meters high I shall be as invisible as I can!”

  “I meant noise. If you accelerate slowly it won’t be so loud.”

  “Yes, I shall select silent mode,” Anders muttered and climbed into the basket. He took a few steps inside it, but by mistake bumped into the basket railing so that the control panel was squeezed. The joystick was pushed right up, the engine accelerated and he disappeared up into the air.

  “Oh good God!” exclaimed Anna-Greta, clasping her hands together. Christina didn’t dare look.

  Anders was sweating up there in the basket. Accompanied by a strong buzzing noise, he was going higher and higher and not until the skylift had almost reached its maximum height did he regain control of the beast. Somewhat shaken, he looked out over the edge of the basket railing and quickly drew back when he saw how high up he was. He suddenly felt dizzy. Vertigo, oh heavens above, he suffered from acrophobia and he hadn’t even thought about that!

  He avoided looking down and tried to concentrate. Anna-Greta’s tights were stuffed deep down inside the drainpipe’s second section, counting from the balcony gutter, so he needed to steer the basket so that he was right next to the pipe. With trembling fingers he gripped the control panel’s joystick and steered it so that the basket ended up in the right place. Whew! He heaved a sigh of relief. He had managed it. As long as
he took things slowly and didn’t look down, it would be OK. But the drainpipe looked rustier, now that he was up close, than it had when he had reconnoitered earlier with binoculars. To start with, he was worried about how Anna-Greta’s tights had fared in the damp mess inside the pipe, but he consoled himself when he remembered that they in turn were wrapped inside black trash bags and secured with Rake’s seaman’s knots. It should be OK.

  He carefully maneuvered the basket so that he came close up to the pipe joint. He stopped there and leaned forward to twist the pipe loose. His hands took a firm grip of the metal and he tried to turn the pipe. But however hard he struggled, he couldn’t budge that section. He tried again but nothing moved. The pipe had rusted and the joint was no more. Anders felt a growing panic. He couldn’t take the entire drainpipe, could he? But what if he tried to unscrew two sections at once, would that work? But then he must go almost up to the balcony of the Princess Lilian suite. Anders tried to think of what was best. What had he learned at the skylift course? Well, the best strategy was to use very small movements and take it nice and easy, as the course instructor had explained.

  Nice and easy, yes, and—most particularly—nice and slow! He steered the basket toward the first roof ridge, around the sharp copper edging and in toward the sloping roof. This was going very nicely indeed, and if the Princess Lilian suite was empty this weekend, it should all work out very well. Slowly, oh so slowly, he steered the basket so that it stopped right under the upper opening of the drainpipe. Once again, he breathed deeply, flexed his muscles and tried to twist the pipe. He twisted, pulled, shook—he did everything he could to loosen the damned pipe but nothing moved. Not even if he had the best anti-rust liquid in the world, could he manage this. The old metal drainpipe ought to have been replaced years ago.

  But luckily he had a plan B. He had taken Brains’s invention with him, a long fishing rod with a fishing line that had several barbed special hooks. “If something goes wrong, you can always resort to the fishing trick,” Brains had said, and patted him on the back. Anders had wanted to avoid this. Dangling a fishing line down a drainpipe was not exactly his thing . . .

  He moved the joystick downwards and the skylift went a bit higher. If there were guests in the suite, he hoped that they wouldn’t wake up. He looked down to the street below and could see the faces of the others looking up at him. Oops, he got all dizzy again. He felt a strange hollow sensation in his stomach, his legs seemed to lose their strength and he sank down against the basket’s railing. The skylift on the course hadn’t been anywhere near as high as this. But if he could just get hold of the drainpipe and hold on to it. No, he must pull himself together. He breathed deeply a few times until he felt that he had control again. Then he steered the basket toward the uppermost part of the drainpipe. When he was about one and a half meters above the top opening, he stopped, extended the fishing rod, held it over the opening and lowered the hooks. He moved the rod a little sideways until he felt that something was stopping the line. It didn’t seem to be hard and it was slightly uneven. Besides, it was on one side of the pipe without blocking it completely, just like the sack of money would be. It must be the package with the tights. Lovely! He started to jiggle the line so that the barbs on the hooks would catch, and he felt rather silly. Not only was he standing there with a fishing line down a drainpipe, but he was also jiggling it, too. At that very moment, he heard a sound and when he looked up he saw a girl wearing only panties standing on the balcony of the Princess Lilian suite. She called out into the suite.

  “Darling, somebody is standing there fishing in the drainpipe.”

  “Yes, right, sweetie, but come back inside now. Don’t stand out there and ruin your good reputation.”

  “Don’t be silly. It’s true, I promise. There’s a fellow out there fishing in the drainpipe. With a real fishing rod.”

  “Has he caught any fish?” A loud laugh could be heard from inside the suite. “Come on now, come in. You’ve drunk too much again.”

  “But look yourself, then!”

  “Ha, ha! I hope he gets a good catch. What about something nice for breakfast? Can you get us a mackerel?”

  “Now you’re being stupid!”

  “What about pike?”

  “Idiot!”

  Anders heard angry steps and realized that the woman had gone inside to the man. Or perhaps, very simply, gone to fetch him? Anders quickly pulled up the line and put the fishing rod back in the basket. He had better get out of there, and quickly. He pushed the joystick right down but happened to nudge the rotation control too. He found himself whirling around and around at high speed in the basket while the skylift went back and forth under the balcony like a windshield wiper. Then the man came out.

  “What the hell?”

  “I told you there was a fellow out here fishing.”

  “Fishing? But this is a fucking monster!”

  Anders pulled the control panel closer, there was a roaring sound and the next second the basket started to descend rapidly down to the truck. With a final effort, Anders managed to stop the descent just in time and land softly. Trembling, he stepped down onto the street.

  “What happened?” Martha asked.

  “Er, the machinery got jammed.” Anders shrugged his shoulders as if it wasn’t a big deal.

  “So it wasn’t human error, then?” she wondered.

  Then Anders started swearing, stumbled into the truck and started the engine. He lowered the side window.

  “We must get out of here right away!”

  “And you were so self-assured. What happened, my boy?” Christina asked. But Anders had already raised the window again.

  “Well, that’s several thousand kronor in skylift rental down the drain. Not to mention all the millions still in the drainpipe,” Anna-Greta sighed.

  “Ugh, these machines are always a bit awkward. We’ll go home now and have a cup of tea with scones. Into the bus everybody!” Martha called out. She opened the minibus door and got into the driver’s seat.

  “Well, I vote for coffee with something strong,” Rake muttered as he got into the back seat, while Brains sat quietly. He and Rake had been in charge of this mission and he himself had intended showing Martha that he was in control of everything. And then it had turned into a fiasco. Martha glanced in the rearview mirror and saw his glum countenance. She made a U-turn and drove quickly out of the parking area in the direction of the local department store and Sveavägen. Then she said:

  “That wasn’t us. It was youth that faltered. Now we’re going home and we can plan a new attempt. It always works out in the end. If at first you don’t succeed . . .” she said.

  Brains hummed a while and said nothing, but his heart was full. He realized why he was so fond of Martha. One of the reasons was that she always had something encouraging to say. Even if Doomsday was near, she would still retain her good mood. Isn’t it interesting, she would say, this is bound to be an exciting experience. He gathered his thoughts and clasped his hands over his stomach.

  “Sometimes a failure is a good thing. You learn something and that can always give you new ideas.”

  “Just what I think,” Martha answered and her voice sounded nice and warm. “And you know what? Next time you and Rake will think up the ultimate solution.”

  “Maybe. But first we must take it easy, a change of scenery perhaps? There has been so much going on for quite a while now,” Brains said.

  “Yes, why not visit Gothenburg?” Rake suggested.

  Martha glanced at them in the rearview mirror. A change of scenery and lying low for a while didn’t entail delaying their plans. On the contrary, they could well come up with fresh ideas. And if it made Rake happy, then why not?

  14

  MARTHA AND HER FRIENDS PLAYED CARDS WHILE THE TRAIN rolled along through the Swedish countryside. Considering that they were on the wanted list, they were far too noisy and high-spirited and really ought to calm down a little, but they were all pleased to finally be
going somewhere. They had been nervous right up until they had started their journey. When they had left the Grand Hotel, Martha had almost collided with a police car, and if Brains hadn’t called out to warn her, things could have been very nasty. On the news that evening, they heard that the police had called in extra staff and intensified their investigation. That had felt very scary. In her eagerness to get hold of more money, Martha had forgotten that they were already actually on the wanted list. She didn’t see herself as a criminal; it was more a case of the League of Pensioners having taken on the task of reestablishing the good old society that had started to decay in the 1980s. But then, of course, they must be careful so that the police didn’t catch them. Because if they ended up in prison, who would help the weak and marginalized?

  Brains had been a bit down in the dumps since the failed attempt to retrieve the booty from the drainpipe, but Martha had done everything to console him. She bought wigs for them all so that they could go out and around town in a light disguise. She had gone with him twice to Clas Ohlson so that he could study the latest technical apparatus and then they had gone to flea markets and the City Mission’s charity shop to find some solid old tools. They had also been to visit a car and motorcycle fair and she had stood by his side and waited while he studied the various exhibits. She knew that if only Brains could putter around among technical objects he liked, then he would soon be his old nice and happy self. She even went so far as to take a taxi to the Delselius coffee shop in Gustavsberg and buy his favorite cakes. She did what she deemed necessary to put him in good spirits. When the atmosphere among the friends was nice and cozy, and they were all feeling happy like they used to, that was when Martha had proposed that they should now take the chance and make the trip to Gothenburg. Above all, it would do Rake good. The concussion had taken its toll and even though he pretended that everything was back to normal again, he still went to bed unusually early in the evening. On the train toward his old home city, however, he had become a lot more lively.