The Little Old Lady Who Struck Lucky Again! Read online

  ‘We ought to see if they mention the bank robbery on the news this evening. It’s been unusually quiet for a while.’ Martha got up and went into the library. The others looked at each other, picked up their things and hesitantly followed after her. Rake extinguished the oil lamps and looked out across the bay again. Now the water was dark and still. Rake gathered up his Tarot cards and thought about his son, Nils, who was out at sea for the majority of the year. It occurred to Rake that it would be nice if he could invite him to the house, then they could rent a yacht and sail around for a few days. The islands here might not be a match for those outside Göteborg across on the west coast, but Nils ought to see a bit of them anyway. Rake recalled how they had often visited the Maritime Museum together. Now that his son was grown up they hardly ever saw each other. But this coming summer perhaps things could be different. Rake nodded silently to himself and steered his steps towards the library. Martha had already turned the TV on.

  ‘Yes, it’s weird that they haven’t said any more about the bank robbery,’ commented Brains. ‘That must mean they don’t have any leads.’

  ‘Pity for them! Ten million kronor are missing and the police don’t have a clue about the perpetrators.’ Anna-Greta smiled and squeezed Gunnar’s hand. The others quickly exchanged glances. Nowadays Gunnar almost never went home; he spent most of his time here in the old house. He and Anna-Greta were always sitting in front of the computer, and after supper one of them would sneak into the other’s room when they thought nobody was watching.

  The opening jingle of the TV news could be heard and Martha now turned up the volume so that Anna-Greta could hear. Her friend still refused to use a hearing aid.

  ‘Perhaps it was rather rash of us to hand out the money so soon after the robbery. What if the police link the bank robbery with all the gifts to the retirement homes?’ Rake said.

  ‘Oh no, nobody cares at all what goes on in retirement homes, we don’t need to worry,’ Martha said.

  ‘Besides, we haven’t handed everything out yet; we’ve got lots more in the cellar and other orders are awaiting delivery. I’ve sent off for some more stuff,’ Anna-Greta pointed out. ‘It should arrive any day now.’

  ‘Quiet, now they’re interviewing the police.’ Christina hushed everybody so that she could hear. She poured out a cup of coffee and listened attentively. The reporter interviewed a Chief Inspector Blomberg who looked most concerned, and when he started to talk about a professional international gang being involved in a bank robbery, the friends burst out laughing. The reporter asked whether the police had any leads, but the chief inspector just shook his head and said: ‘No comment!’ However, he did want to get in touch with shoe shops that sold Oldvan boots.

  ‘Martha, couldn’t you have tied the laces a bit better?’ Rake complained.

  ‘For goodness’ sake, a stiff on a stretcher can’t rob a bank, even a policeman must understand that,’ Martha hissed in answer.

  ‘We would like the public to get in touch with any information they might have,’ Chief Inspector Blomberg went on. ‘We would gratefully welcome any observations made in the vicinity of the bank.’ The reporter nodded enthusiastically and Blomberg twice cleared his throat before going on: ‘After the explosive was detonated inside the bank vault, we can see two badly injured people being carried out on stretchers and taken to an ambulance on the CCTV But the strange thing is that nobody has seen them since.’

  ‘No, quite right,’ Christina joyfully exclaimed. ‘We’ve fooled the lot of you! Haha!’

  ‘We are hoping for the injured parties to get in contact with the police,’ Blomberg went on.

  ‘Right you are, I shall immediately ask the mannequins to phone you,’ Rake joked.

  ‘But the casualties must have been taken to hospital,’ the reporter pointed out. ‘Can’t you trace them there?’

  ‘Of course, but, like I said, we don’t want to make all the details public yet. We would, however, welcome more tips.’

  Then the news programme moved on to the latest news about the bad working conditions and pay for women and Rake thought it was time to turn the TV off.

  ‘Nobody seems to suspect us yet,’ Martha summarized and took a chocolate wafer biscuit. She ought to be a bit more careful about her weight, but she wasn’t going to worry about that just now, not on a Friday evening. ‘Perhaps we could phone in some misleading anonymous tips, such as that two injured people have been seen at a camping site or something like that?’

  ‘No, it’s best to lie low. Remember the boot.’

  ‘But that isn’t a problem, is it? We’ve still got it.’

  ‘But when it fell onto the pavement it might have left a footprint,’ Brains pointed out.

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear!’ Martha groaned. ‘So stupid of me not to tie the laces better, but it isn’t so easy. Mannequins nowadays are so slim that they look like famine victims, the lot of them, just like the fashion models too. I did tie the laces as tightly as I could.’

  She blushed a little, because suddenly she realized how silly she had been. The boots were, of course, her own. But as they had been on the mannequin it simply hadn’t occurred to her that they could leave footprints. And they wouldn’t have done if one hadn’t fallen off. Perhaps she should burn the pair of boots now, to be on the safe side. Martha took a deep breath to propose doing just that, when suddenly they heard a weird noise from down the hill. At first it sounded like an approaching hail storm, but then it turned into a loud rumble.

  ‘What is it?’ she exclaimed and sat up straight in the armchair. ‘Motorbikes! It must be an entire biker gang!’

  ‘They must be having a meeting, they have clubs for that,’ said Brains, who had read about Grandidos and Mad Angels over the years.

  ‘On a Friday evening? No, more like a party. They’ve been running around all day up there, shifting crates of beer and all sorts of stuff,’ said Rake, who had noticed what they had been busy doing when he walked slowly past Lillemor’s house earlier in the day. Through the window he had seen Tompa inside and that worried him. Did she hang out with the Bandangels boss? He hadn’t dared tell the others that he had often seen Tompa at Lillemor’s house. Now his conscience was troubling him. Might he have said too much to her about himself and his friends? He couldn’t remember.

  The sound of the engines got louder and became a roar when more and more motorbikes zoomed up the hill and into the yard of the yellow house. Martha and the others sneaked up to the window.

  ‘Just look at that!’ Christina whispered when a gang of beefy men dressed in black got off their bikes, stretched and then adjusted their leather waistcoats. ‘They look like Mad Angels. At any rate, they’ve all got a skull with wings on their backs.’

  ‘Uff, that gives me the creeps,’ Anna-Greta exclaimed.

  ‘What shall we do?’ Christina asked anxiously, dropping her nail file.

  ‘You can relax, Christina my dear. Those sorts of people don’t want any bother where they live. We should be happy to have them as neighbours,’ Rake consoled her.

  ‘But they don’t live here, they’re just going to have a party here. And how peaceful is it going to be with twenty hotted-up motorbikes?’ Christina sighed.

  ‘But just look at those machines,’ said Brains with a glisten in his eyes as he pressed his whole face against the window. Another two bikes, three cars and an Opel minibus came up the hill and stepped outside the Bandangels’ house. It said: KENTHA’S HEAVY METAL BAND on the minibus, and some long-haired young men stepped out. They each lit a cigarette and then started to unload a set of drums, some guitars and a few amplifiers which they somehow managed to carry into the shed.

  ‘Oh my God, there’ll be no sleep tonight,’ Rake sighed.

  ‘I know!’ Martha cut him off. ‘If the Bandangels are having a party night, then I think we should have a party too. Then we won’t be disturbed by all their noise.’

  ‘Aha, female logic,’ said Rake.

  ‘That’s a great idea!�
� Brains nodded enthusiastically. ‘We’ve got lots of wine in the cellar.’

  ‘And don’t forget the champagne. We must celebrate the fact that so much time has passed since the robbery and we haven’t been found out,’ Christina chirped.

  ‘That’s right, you’d better watch out, Mad Angels, here we come!’ snorted Anna-Greta, clapping her hands in delight. ‘Hold on tight, it’s party time!’

  28

  Kentha’s Heavy Metal Band were playing, and a hit from Iron Maiden was blaring out at top volume inside the club room. The lights had been turned off, and in front of the tables covered with empty beer cans, lit up by red and white candles, was a gang of half-drunk bikers and their girls. Drums and guitars were accompanied by loud roars and the unison clapping of hands when the Mad Angels bellowed in time to the music. Alongside the length of the bar counter, leather-clad types rocked back and forth grasping beer cans or with a stiff drink in their hands. Tompa, with his arm around the mannequin, was more drunk than sober. He had an empty whisky glass in his hand and talked and laughed at the same time as he hammered the beat with his left foot. With hazy eyes, he looked across the room with a happy smile on his lips. The place was jam-packed! Mad Angels had arrived with ten men, and fourteen of the Bandangels members were there as well as a whole bunch of real knockout babes. All of them had come to celebrate the Bandangels’ fifth anniversary in their new club rooms, and he and Jörgen had already received lots of praise for the set-up. The president of Mad Angels had said that at the next Mad Angels meeting the committee would recommend the Bandangels as full members. Tompa hadn’t felt so good since he got his first motorbike. He winked at a sexy blonde at one of the tables, and raised his glass. The girls they had invited were really dishy! Some of them belonged to the Mad Angels gang and you couldn’t touch them, but many of them were single. Tompa felt hopeful for the night ahead. That blonde one with the long hair and the high heels looked promising. He raised his whisky glass and winked at her again. The next second, a heavy fist landed on his shoulder.

  ‘I saw that. Don’t lay a hand on my woman!’ shouted a hundred-kilo giant in jeans and a black leather waistcoat. Tompa swivelled round and gasped for breath when he saw the silver logo on the guy’s chest. It was the vice-president of Mad Angels – Lennart Möre! The guy nodded towards the blonde girl and held up his fist so that Tompa felt the knuckle dusters with the Mad Angels emblem against his nostrils. He swallowed and tried to look cool.

  ‘No, no, take it easy. I’ve got a girl,’ Tompa lied. ‘I was only thinking about the prize-giving.’

  ‘The prize-giving? What prize-giving? Have you got permission from us?’ the vice-president asked.

  ‘Did I say prize-giving? No, I mean the raffle, of course. We need someone who can draw the raffle tickets, you know, and so I wanted to ask one of the guests.’ Tompa tried to wriggle out of it as best he could.

  ‘A raffle? Tombola and all that stuff? Well, if you want to. But just so you know, if you so much as look at my woman again, I’ll smash your nose.’

  ‘Take it easy, I promise. And the raffle is going to be good. You can win booze, iPads and we’ve even got some biker gear,’ he ventured to add.

  ‘Well, make this one of the prizes too. I want to win it!’ said the vice-president and he thumped the shop dummy so hard that her head became crooked and the helmet fell to the floor.

  ‘The dummy! Yeah, sure. We’ll include that,’ said Tompa, picking up the helmet and putting it back on the dummy’s head again. His hands shook and he tried to think about what to do. Jörgen had been against the raffle so Tompa had shelved the idea, but now he had spouted on with all this raffle talk so as not to get his face smashed in. So he must arrange something anyway. And why not? They had all those boxes of booze from the oldies as well as all the boxes they had carried in from the delivery lorry. Tompa felt a bit bolder.

  ‘You know what, we’ll start selling raffle tickets in half an hour and then we’ll pick the winning tickets,’ he said, leaning the dummy against the bar counter and hurrying across to the house. He had helped his mum with her charity bazaar just before Christmas and they had had lots of those raffle-ticket rings left over. He just needed to find them.

  Brains and Rake were rummaging around inside the cellar looking for something good to drink, while Christina shone her torch on the labels and suggested this and that. In a happy mood, they chose a few bottles of Rhine wine and sang as loud as they could while they were at it. Christina wanted to put some bottles of red wine in the basket of her Zimmer frame too and had decided on a fine Bordeaux. She was just about to do so when something startled her.

  ‘Oh dear, someone’s knocked over the mannequin.’ She bent down to lift it up again, but immediately realized that there was only a heap of clothes there. ‘Oh my God! Where’s our “Munin” mannequin? Have you hidden it?’

  Brains and Rake shook their heads.

  ‘It must be here somewhere,’ said Brains looking about him. ‘The cellar has been locked.’

  They searched and searched, but only ‘Hugin’ was still there. However hard they looked, there was no sign whatsoever of ‘Munin’. The mannequin with half of the money from the Handelsbanken robbery had disappeared.

  ‘Five million vanished into thin air. This is just too much,’ Christina stuttered.

  ‘Good thing it wasn’t all ten million,’ Brains sighed.

  Rake, for his part, didn’t manage to articulate a sensible word, just a load of angry sounds. Then he blurted out a rapid stream of all the swear words he had learned during his years at sea, and finished by saying: ‘How the hell could this have happened? We can’t just steal lots of money and then lose it again all the time. We must bloody well make sure we get it back!’

  ‘Preferably not lose anything at all,’ Christina mumbled.

  ‘This is VERY hard to explain,’ Brains moaned, and he took off his cap and put it back on again several times. ‘We’d better go out and have a look around to see if there are any tracks. The mannequin can’t just have flown away!’

  The three friends left the cellar and shone their torches on the ground outside, but they couldn’t find any tracks at all. In a dejected mood, they shuffled back to the house to tell the others.

  Tompa searched among the boxes in the shed. Now it was a matter of quickly putting together some prizes. The first prize ought to be a whole box of whisky and they could also raffle some goodies from the other boxes too. But first he must check what they contained. Some of the boxes were clearly labelled, but on others there was just the name of a firm. Tompa thought about all the fancy stuff the neighbours had in their cellar: lamps, mobile phones, household equipment, iPads, rugs and lots of other stuff. There must be a lot of valuable things in these boxes too, so why not simply have one or two of the bigger boxes as prizes? It was their fifth anniversary after all! He quickly fetched the trolley and loaded some of the boxes together with the cartons of booze. Now Mad Angels would have an evening they would never forget.

  When Tompa returned to the clubhouse, Kentha’s Heavy Metal Band was going full steam. Drunk bikers were dancing while the vice president was rocking with the mannequin, trying to get it to drink beer. Tompa wheeled in the goodies and waited until they had finished dancing. Then he piled the boxes up on the stage and got hold of Kentha’s mike.

  ‘We’ve got an anniversary here today and we’re going to have a raffle with some stonking prizes! Each ticket costs only ten kronor, and here are the prizes.’ He patted the boxes and pointed at the labels. ‘The first prize is a box of Glenfield’s prime whisky and then we’ve got champagne, mobile phones and a few surprise boxes. But no more than ten raffle tickets per person. OK?’

  The announcement was met with drunken bellowing and applause, and Tompa had to shout into the microphone several times to quieten everyone down.

  ‘Anybody like to help sell the raffle tickets?’ He held up his mum’s rings of tickets.

  ‘A raffle! Soon you’ll be getting us
to do a ring dance and a sing-song,’ Jörgen muttered in disgust.

  ‘Of course we’ll help, Tompa,’ said Jörgen’s girl, Elisabeth, and she got hold of her boyfriend. ‘Now we’re going to sell these raffle tickets!’

  Jörgen raised his hand in a dismissive gesture but changed his mind when he saw her face. Reluctantly, he did as he was told and started to sell the tickets to those in the clubhouse. Tompa looked at them and felt happy. What a great evening!

  29

  When Rake rushed into the library and told the others that the mannequin had disappeared, they all laughed and clapped their knees in delight at the amusing joke. It wasn’t until Christina and Brains loudly shouted that it was actually true, that everyone turned quiet.

  ‘Has the money gone? It can’t be true! HAS THE MONEY GONE?’ Martha found it hard to breathe and had to reach out for her asthma medicine.

  ‘Have we lost our loot again? We really do seem incapable of keeping track of anything!’ Anna-Greta exclaimed. ‘If this had been at the bank, then we would all have been fired. No, next time it’d be best if we stole money on the Internet.’