The Little Old Lady Who Struck Lucky Again! Read online

  ‘What are you laughing at?’ Olle Marling bellowed.

  ‘It was just a little practical joke.’ Tompa tried to smooth things over. Then the ex-girlfriend leaned forward and whispered something in Olle’s ear. Suddenly, the Mad Angels president understood what a fool they had made of him. His entire body was shaking in anger, and, blinded by fury, he rushed down from the stage. Tompa backed away but Rake didn’t have time.

  ‘You idiots and your raffle! Is this meant to be funny? Give me the shop dummy! I’m going to take something with me!’ he roared, grabbing the mannequin and storming out of the building. He almost knocked Brains and Rake over on his way out, and it took them a while to compose themselves and regain their balance.

  ‘Err, that’s our mannequin…!’ they shouted as loud as they could.

  But Olle Marling didn’t hear them. He was already on the way to his bike with the dummy in his arms.

  Brains and Rake hurried after him. They got to the front steps just in time to see the Mad Angels president accelerate away on his bike down the hill. ‘Munin’ was tied on in a sitting position, without a helmet and with the red shawl blowing in the wind.

  Olle Marling drove at full throttle towards the direction of the town with the mannequin on the back of his bike. Not far from the clubhouse in Orming, he forgot the speed limit. When he turned off from the main road he was doing at least a hundred kilometres an hour. The police radar check was hidden out of sight and he discovered it too late. A well-built, uniformed police officer waved him into the lay-by and Olle had no choice but to stop. He swore and tried to keep his face turned away so as not to blow alcohol fumes right in the face of the authorities. The policeman lit up his face with a torch.

  ‘How fast were you going then?’

  ‘About fifty, no more.’

  ‘Lucky for you that our radar apparatus is a bit wonky, otherwise you’d be done for speeding. That must have been at least a hundred. Right, blow into this!’ The policeman was holding a breathalyser tube.

  ‘No, I’m stone sober,’ Olle protested.

  ‘And you expect me to believe that? Blow!’

  He held out the breathalyser. Olle’s lips tensed. He didn’t know how he could get out of this. Should he fill his mouth with tobacco, chew some Vicks throat pastilles? But he didn’t have anything with him that could fool the apparatus.

  ‘What a lot of midges!’ exclaimed Olle, swearing and waving his hands.

  The policeman looked around and, somewhat confused, started waving his hand too. Then Olle leaned forward and made sure the policeman’s hand hit him.

  Olle exclaimed and dropped the breathalyser which landed on the Tarmac. He swiftly allowed his bike’s front wheel to roll over it.

  ‘What happened?’ said the policeman. ‘You hit it so it went flying,’ replied Olle, rolling the front wheel back and picking up the squashed apparatus. ‘Sorry, not my fault,’ he went on, handing over the broken bits.

  ‘Then it will have to be a blood test! And hello, what have we got here? Your mate hasn’t got a helmet on. That’ll be a fine.’

  ‘It’s just a—’

  The policeman pulled his report pad out.

  ‘Have a look for yourself!’ Olle snapped as he unscrewed the head. The policeman almost fainted.

  ‘Not easy to see that in the dark,’ he mumbled and put his report pad back in his pocket. And now he had completely forgotten the blood test. Olle grinned widely, put the head back on, raised his hand in farewell and set off again.

  30

  In police headquarters at Kungsholmen, rapid steps could be heard and a door was roughly pulled open with unnecessary force. Chief Inspector Blomberg swore like a trooper and slammed the door behind him. Had the people at the forensics lab been out in the sun too long? He had been waiting for the analysis of the blood stains outside the Handelsbanken branch and was hoping for a breakthrough in the investigation. But now? To start with, they’d taken a very long time to test the samples, and now, when finally they sent an answer, it was ludicrous. His hand shook as he held the telephone.

  ‘DNA from a horse! What are you playing at, you nitwits! We want the lab reports on the blood from the Handelsbanken robbery, not from the Solvalla racecourse!’ he shouted.

  A friendly female voice asked him to behave like a gentleman when he spoke to her. Then she described the blood samples, the reliability of the tests and all the work they had put in when doing the analysis. She stubbornly maintained that the blood had come from the pavement outside the bank, and his protests got him nowhere. Before the end of the call he was absolutely convinced that somebody was playing a joke on him. An old, grey-haired policeman, on the wrong side of his sixtieth birthday, was somebody you could make a bit of fun of. They would be sitting there doubled over in laughter when they had their coffee break at the lab. At least he would soon be retiring!

  In a rage, Blomberg sat down in front of his computer and pushed aside a heap of ring files. He had intended to sneak off early from the office but on his way out he had bumped into the head of the crime squad, Superintendant Strömqvist. He had given him some extra tasks and even had the audacity to ask him to do overtime. That superintendent had also withdrawn his earlier promise to Blomberg about being able to retire early, blaming the change on the recent complicated cases and heavy workload at the office.

  ‘We need every man we’ve got,’ he had said. ‘When the bank robbery has been solved we’ll look at your application again.’

  Blomberg was thinking that he’d soon be a pensioner, but now he wasn’t even going to be allowed to work reduced hours. No, he was still stuck working full time – and overtime. All their resources were to be concentrated on the Handelsbanken robbery. They seemed to be just treading water in the investigation, and even after questioning all their contacts they had no leads. Blomberg had been asked to interview people working in shops that sold fireworks. Blomberg felt like a fool going around asking such questions. He remembered the conversation he had had in one shop in Karlaplan. He had, admittedly, forgotten to show his warrant card, but, nevertheless . . .

  ‘Have you got any fireworks?’

  ‘Not at this time of the year. But we do have bags of seeds that you can hang in the trees for the birds . . .’

  That was the stupid sort of conversation that his investigation resulted in, and, considering that millions of fireworks had been sold in Sweden for the New Year celebrations, the task felt hopeless. There were no other leads except for a single footprint in the snow. That was really strange. A bank robber couldn’t be one-legged, could he? In addition to this, the police hadn’t been able to cordon off the crime scene soon enough, so virtually every Stockholmer who had passed the bank had left footprints. He took a chocolate and tried to calm his nerves. The greatest mystery was those two victims who had disappeared after the explosion. The witnesses had seen two wounded people who were carried away on stretchers and put into the ambulance, but none of the A & E departments of the hospitals in the Stockholm area had admitted any such patients at that time. At least they had managed to secure some blood samples from the scene, and, if only the lab stopped muddling up the test results, that ought to provide some clues.

  At every crime there are always so many false alarms. Blomberg sighed again. He was getting nowhere, he needed help. He would ask his boss for reinforcement: he needed an experienced detective; he had more important things to do. All those millions he had fished up from the account in Las Vegas must be used. He was not going to delay the meeting with Birgerson, the expert at Beylings Legal Firm.

  It had stopped raining and now a cold wind blew in from the water down in the docks. The containers were still wet and the Tarmac shone. Blomberg shivered and pulled up his collar. It was always so cold in Sweden. Weather like this ought to be against the law – yes, it should be a criminal offence! Blomberg gave a start; he seemed to think of nothing but crime nowadays.

  ‘This is where your goods end up. Nice, isn’t it?’


  Lawyer Birgerson pointed at the former workshop down in the harbour. He had driven Blomberg to the old area where they used to look after island boats. Now it had been converted into a storage area where you could rent space. Beylings had rented a large unit. Blomberg was reminded of the old Eriksberg shipyard in Göteborg with huge hanger-like premises and where large diesel engines and boats had once been built. This was something similar. These halls were enormous.

  ‘Most of this will have been moved on within a month, and then you can rent this space,’ said Birgerson, gesturing with his hand towards the sailing boats on their stands, and a row of lorries. ‘As soon as you’ve acquired your stuff, we can take over ownership on paper so that nothing can be traced to you. Then, when everything is quiet, you can sell.’

  ‘But more than two hundred million – that’ll be a lot of goods.’

  ‘It’s OK. We’ll buy a Beneteau Swift Trawler, a few motor sailing vessels, some veteran boats and yachts. That will add up to quite a lot. Then we can put in some bids for Rolls-Royces, mobile homes and Porsches too. But all that takes up a lot of space. Why not invest in art and diamonds? We’ve got special storage units for that, with the right temperature and humidity. And then there is property, of course, but there can always be problems with tenants, so we charge quite a large fee to administer that.’

  Chief Inspector Blomberg leaned against the wall, pulled out his handkerchief and wiped his brow several times. It almost made him dizzy. Birgerson was talking about millions as if they were popcorn; indeed, the lawyer seemed to have lost contact with reality. Perhaps that was what happened when you only thought about money. Money, money, money.

  ‘Apart from the luxury boats, could we perhaps buy some Bentleys and Porsches?’ Blomberg stuttered. ‘And then, of course, the big spring art auction has one or two nice things.’

  ‘Quite right. Art is the way to go!’

  ‘But what happens if there’s a break-in or the whole warehouse burns down?’ Blomberg asked, thinking that a fire in this oily hall could destroy not only all the stuff stored here, but also all his dreams of a comfortable retirement. Birgerson unlocked the doors to the heated units deep inside the warehouse, turned on the light and smiled.

  ‘A break-in? Do you mean one that has been arranged, or an ordinary one?’

  Blomberg moistened his lips.

  ‘Err, an ordinary break-in. What if somebody comes and steals stuff?’

  Birgerson nodded, and with a light touch of his finger on a control panel, the storage shelves and rows of paintings started to move on the grey-painted rails on the floor.

  ‘Fire and theft? We’re insured. We are Folksam’s best customer.’ He laughed. ‘Some people are busy with insurance fraud . . .’

  Blomberg felt a shiver go down his back. This was a different world, one which he didn’t fit into. But having gone this far, he must go on.

  ‘We take twenty-five per cent as a commission and that includes administration and storage costs,’ Birgerson churned on. ‘On the other hand, you avoid tax and detailed questions from nosey authorities, and we take care of everything. Like I said, it’s good business for both of us. And anything you store here will be safe. We have security staff and the whole area is wired up with alarms.’

  When Blomberg drove home that afternoon, he had the car radio on full volume. He sang along with Frank Sinatra’s ‘My Way’ while he drummed his fingers on the steering wheel in time with the music. His meeting with Birgerson had gone off well despite everything, and after their visit to the harbour they had gone through everything once again in the legal firm’s office and they had given him some insider tips about suitable cars and boats to buy, and also suggested he should invest in established artists whose paintings were steadily increasing in value. When he sold his investments, the firm would put the money into various accounts in New Jersey and the West Indies. So this was how the big boys did it. Blomberg’s face was one big smile. He would never again have to worry about money. Those IT courses he had gone on had finally turned out to be very profitable!

  By the time he had stepped into his flat, and was met by a meowing Einstein, other thoughts began to make themselves felt. Seeing as he had so much money now, perhaps he could share some of it? He could donate to the homeless too. He got out a tin of cat food but stopped when he saw the red label announcing a special price. He always bought food and cat litter when it was on special offer, but on these tins he saw that the best-before date had passed. He hoped Einstein wouldn’t notice. He put some spoonfuls of Whiskas in a dish and poured some water into the bowl next to it. The cat trotted expectantly up to the dish with his tail in the air, but once he sniffed at the old food he turned his back on it and demonstrated his dissatisfaction by going and lying down on Blomberg’s bed. Damned cat! Blomberg thought, how the hell could the creature read the labels?

  He returned to his ponderings. Why should he give his money away? After all, he had struggled his whole life. No, no way! Now he was going to have some fun, see his capital grow, and be successful.

  Pleased with his decision, he went into his bedroom and looked forward to a night’s well-earned sleep. Einstein wasn’t on the bed any longer; he had moved into the cat basket. Blomberg yawned, put on his pyjamas and got ready to slip between the sheets. But just as he was about to do so, he stopped abruptly. Yesterday’s cat food had also been a bargain buy and Einstein had got his revenge.

  31

  It was now high time to do something. The League of Pensioners had no money left and things were looking really bad for many retirement homes. The moment had come when Martha would have to inform everybody about their precarious situation. To lessen the shock she had chosen one of Stockholm’s best coffee shops, Delselius in Gustavsberg. Failures and disappointments must be presented when people have their stomachs full. Even Julius Caesar had operated in the same way.

  Cheesecake with a base made from dinkel flour, Dutch chocolate layer cake, the Schwarzwald classic, and, to top it all, some large portions of sumptuous strawberry cream cake. Martha looked longingly at all the tasty offerings, but she had no appetite at all. Her tummy seemed to be tying itself into knots, as if she was getting a bug. She looked on as the others drank their coffee and enjoyed their cakes; she couldn’t even manage a crumb. In the end, she had to speak out. She put her coffee cup down and, forcing herself to be calm, said:

  ‘I realize that this is going to come as a shock, but we’ve no money left in the kitty. There’s nothing there, nothing at all,’ she said with an uncharacteristically shaky voice.

  ‘What are you saying? Nothing in the kitty? That can’t be true.’ Rake shook his head and demonstratively pushed his plate aside, with half of the strawberry cream cake uneaten. ‘Nobody has stolen so much in such a short time as we have. No, the money can’t be all gone, that’s simply not possible!’

  ‘Sssh!’ Christina hissed and looked around anxiously.

  Martha managed to produce a little smile, and fidgeted with her serviette.

  ‘I’m terribly sorry, but it doesn’t look good at all. We won’t, of course, give up looking for the golf bag or the money that disappeared on the Internet, no indeed not, we’ll make sure we get that capital back one way or the other, but what we need now is cash.’

  Yes, it really was as bad as that. Not only was the mannequin missing, but the Las Vegas money was also lost. And during her outings as an inspector from the Ministry of Health’s control unit for standards in retirement homes, Martha had seen even more cutbacks in spending in the places she had visited. To save electricity, the managers had turned off every other light in the corridors and now the old people could hardly see where they were going. That had made Martha so furious that she had immediately asked Anna-Greta to put in an order for ten boxes of one hundred-watt light bulbs that Emma then delivered to the various homes. But, of course, just ordering new light bulbs wasn’t enough. There was so much else to be done. Martha plucked up courage to have her say:

 
‘It’s high time we struck again! The money that we put so much hard work into collecting, that is all gone and we can’t wait until we have traced it. We must fill the kitty now!’

  So far everyone except Martha had been eating their fill, but suddenly the others, too, seemed to lose all their enthusiasm for the pastries and cakes.

  ‘We do actually have some other problems too,’ said Brains, who thought that he should use this opportunity. He told them about the powder that had been hidden behind the photographs.

  ‘White powder?’ Martha almost choked. ‘So Mad Angels haven’t just gone off with our five million. You’ve been stealing drugs from them by mistake too.’

  ‘Yes, I suppose you could put it like that,’ said Brains and he became bright red in the face. ‘Mind you, I didn’t steal it; I just couldn’t resist that fantastic picture of my old motorbike.’

  ‘You must give it back to them immediately. Thou shall not steal!’ said Martha as though she really meant it.

  ‘I’m not sure we ought to have an opinion on that,’ Rake muttered.

  ‘Pah, we only steal from the rich to give to the poor,’ said Martha. ‘And we don’t charge anything for it, unlike the banks.’

  ‘And we don’t lend money either.’ Brains followed in the same vein, but stopped himself abruptly when he remembered the money in the mannequin.

  ‘Besides, we only occupy ourselves with real money and not those immaterial loans. If only we could learn how to keep it as well, though,’ said Anna-Greta with a deep sigh.

  Martha nodded, reached for the coffee pot, and filled their cups. Even though there were certain risks in them being seen out together so soon after the bank robbery, they must enjoy themselves too. Martha had also come to realize that she did rather push the others, so the least one could expect was that she would arrange some nice get-togethers. It was just a pity that she had such bad news. However, she tried never to serve bad news without adding something hopeful at the end. Something which pointed towards a solution. She and Brains had actually discussed this. They had sat up until late the previous evening and sketched various ideas that might provide a way out from this precarious situation. They had put together a plan. Although, as for that powder that Brains had acquired by mistake, well she couldn’t face thinking about that at all. Perhaps she ought to be sensitive and diplomatic and say something like, ‘Dear friends, you’ve worked hard but unfortunately we must carry out another robbery. The biggest we’ve ever done.’ But she didn’t dare say that. Not yet. She put her serviette to one side and cleared her throat.