I’M FED UP WITH THAT DAMNED OLD LADY. HER AND HER GANG of seniors, they’ll have to go.” Kenta took a deep drag on his cigarette and blew out the smoke. “I’d finally got my pizzeria going and then that riff-raff turn up. It’s wiped out my place.” He waved his cigarette in the direction of the empty pizzeria.
He sat talking with the Weasel in a corner of the pizzeria in Hornsberg, Bella Capri. He had been able to take over the place when the former owner had become too old, and he had renovated the premises with money he had borrowed from his mother. At first, it all went well and he had had many customers, both young and old, but since the seniors had opened Silver Punk he had lost customers. Not only did they have good food there on the barge, but it was also cheap. It had become popular for younger people to hang around there. He sighed.
“They’re on some damned health trend over there. What the fuck. I’ve tested vegetarian pizza but it doesn’t work.”
“They’re earning money with that restaurant but refuse to fork out for protection money. Fucking riffraff!” The Weasel drummed with his fingers on the beer bottle. It would soon be opening time, but that didn’t make much difference. The pizzeria had almost no customers before six in the evening and only a few young people and down-and-outs later in the evening. The old women had said they were going to open a restaurant for retirees and neither of them had seen the place as a threat. But now everybody seemed to have found their way there. The Silver Punk restaurant, what a fucking name anyway.
“Isn’t there a way to get someone committed to an old folk’s home?” Kenta went on. “Let’s send an SOS. That old lady fucking attacked us. And fucking hard too.”
The Weasel couldn’t help smiling but he turned his head away so that his friend wouldn’t see. Kenta could hardly walk after the whacking from Martha, and had been obliged to abstain from women for a whole week.
“Fucking unlucky. Wonder what she had in that waist bag?”
“A fucking big wrench I’d say, or one of those boules cannon balls, it was third-degree,” said Kenta with a wry face. He remembered the quick hand movement and the hard blow that had made him back away so fast that he almost fell over. A fucking old lady had battered him! He had been so astonished that he’d almost lost it, and, with his hand raised to thump her, he had at the last second realized that he couldn’t beat up an old woman. Just one blow and she would have dropped down dead. No, luckily he had been able to restrain himself.
“Like I said, that gang of seniors must be stopped! It’s bad enough that the old lady has figured out that we don’t own the barge. She refuses to use our cash-in-hand cleaners, she doesn’t get her food deliveries via us, she refuses to pay protection money and she’s thrown us out of the coatroom. Every damn thing has gone wrong!” Kenta flicked the ash from his cigarette onto the floor. His hands shook.
“And now they want to buy another barge, I’ve heard,” sighed the Weasel. “Fucking assholes!”
“Walker assholes!”
“It’s time to put a stop to them once and for all. I’ve had enough.”
“Yep. How shall we do it? The usual?”
“Yeah, the same again.”
FORMER CHIEF INSPECTOR BLOMBERG LIFTED UP EINSTEIN FROM the keyboard and put him down on the floor with a thud. Thank God the computer was turned off, otherwise it could have ended in disaster. The number of times the creature had laid on X and Z and had had his tail on ENTER meant that it could take at least half a day to clean the computer. The last time the damned cat had also managed to press the DELETE key too, so some of the files had disappeared. And however hard Blomberg had tried, he hadn’t been able to restore them. In his anger he had banged the hard drive on the table and in a flash had lost even more files. After that, it had taken him several weeks to collect the reports, camera images and important PMs from the police department again. Luckily, he still had access to their system. Now he had learned that he must have a backup on two hard drives—because he didn’t want to do without the cat. No, he loved Einstein. Cats were honest. They did what they wanted and not what somebody else wanted. They certainly didn’t wag their tails for just anybody, but chose their master with considerable care.
Blomberg switched the computer on, and stretched out his hand for some chocolate. His fingers fumbled in the box of Aladdin chocolates until he noticed that it only contained sticky remains. Einstein was sitting on the floor licking his lips. Damn it! For a moment Blomberg considered throwing the creature out, but then he realized that it was his own fault for having left the box open on the table. And besides, perhaps it was just as well that the cat had gobbled up the chocolates. Since he had become a retiree, he had put on several kilos in weight. Perhaps it was his new sedentary life and the fact that he had started baking. He ought to stop baking those tasty pastries for a while.
Blomberg put on his spectacles and peered at the computer screen, and while the cat washed his whiskers, he went through what had happened during the night. Nothing much, evidently. What about the Nordea bank robbery investigation? He scrolled down and peered. Nothing new there either. He had long since ruled out the Old Fellows Gang and the Gorbachev robbers, and Jöback and those amateurs at the Kungsholmen station could think what they wanted. No, he was looking for a completely new constellation, but hadn’t got anywhere yet. He was stuck. The talk with Eklund, the captain of one of the Waxholm ferry boats, hadn’t led to anything and the mysterious league had not yet carried out any new robberies that could give them away.
And what about the camera images? Unfortunately, he had lost all the comparative material from earlier bank robberies in Stockholm in a virus attack, but a few sequences had for some reason survived in his iPad. He fetched the tablet and clicked his way to the valuable sequence. Yet again he watched how the old lady made several calls from her cell outside the Handelsbanken branch office the same day the bank was robbed. Something stirred in his memory. He had noticed an elderly lady with the same posture on the camera images from Drottninggatan right next to the Buttericks joke shop. He went across to his computer again and found the file. Yes, it was her, slightly hunchbacked, but still quite sprightly and wasn’t she wearing Ecco shoes? Buttericks was the only shop in Stockholm where you could buy masks of Margaret Thatcher and Pavarotti, and those were the masks used in the Nordea robbery. Blomberg’s hand dipped eagerly down into the box of Aladdin chocolates and he picked up some remains. He licked his fingers while he stared at the screen. Hmm . . . that Ecco old lady had actually visited the shop the week before the Nordea robbery and when she came out she was carrying a package.
Blomberg looked at the images in slow motion this time, leaned back and whistled. Captain Eklund had mentioned an old lady outside the Grand Hotel. What if that was the same person? Perhaps it was a long shot, but nevertheless . . . He ought to take his iPad and show Eklund. Besides, now when he looked at her in slow motion it was as if the woman was somehow familiar, as if he had seen her before. Or was it simply that all old ladies looked the same? Ah, he didn’t really know; to be honest, he mainly noticed younger blondes. Blomberg yawned and scratched his neck.
The police still hadn’t arrested anybody for the bank robberies, or for that notorious theft of the paintings at the National Museum. But the crooks were out there somewhere. What if he could solve this? What a triumph it would be! It would be really great to put Jöback and his cronies in place. But if he was to succeed, he would have to get out and do some undercover work so that he could make some progress. Why not have a closer look at pensioners’ clubs, restaurants, bingo halls and old folk’s homes? That league with the seniors must, after all, be somewhere out there, because they wouldn’t be at nightclubs or punk places. Or was it hip flop nowadays? Blomberg yawned yet again, got up and went across to the fridge to get a cold beer. Or was it hip bop? He found a Carlsberg and with a noisy click followed by a slow hissing, he sank down into his favorite armchair. He would catch that League of Pensioners; he wasn’t going to give up. He had a short break, drank the beer and then rolled up his shirt sleeves. With determined steps, he returned to the computer. If there was to be any result, he must get to work.