CHIEF INSPECTOR PER JÖBACK AT THE CITY POLICE HAD HAD A hectic night. First, an elderly lady had phoned in and said that she had seen Pavarotti and Elton John outside the Nordea bank branch on Kungsholmen. The lady in question, who must have been seventy plus, had been out with her dog when she had seen them and now she was philosophizing as to whether they could have been crooks in disguise. Jöback had been friendly and had politely said that he too adored Elton John and Pavarotti, but that he didn’t really think they would rob a bank. Then the lady added that she had also noticed a lady who looked like Margaret Thatcher and that she too could have been involved. Then he said that he had noted the tip and that he would check it out, but that regrettably he must leave the station to answer an emergency call. Then he had yawned widely and put his feet up on the table.
Two hours later, he was woken up by a call from Djursholm that made him really furious. Mrs. Astrid von Bahr, the wife of a diplomat, suffered from insomnia and she had gone out onto her balcony to read and to get a bit of fresh air. Out there she had thought about her unfaithful husband—who, after forty years of marriage, had left her for a younger woman—when she suddenly heard a weird noise. It had sounded like a truck and when she’d looked up from her e-reader she had seen a garbage truck rolling backwards down a steep slope. Then she had heard a terrific crash and then everything went silent. She had listened for a long time but hadn’t heard the truck drive away again and nor had she heard any voices, and she thought that was strange.
“A garbage truck can hardly go up in smoke, Officer.”
Jöback agreed about that and he talked with her for a long time until he tired of all her theories about terrorist deeds and the mafia. Indeed, he was beginning to be too old to be on night duty since he had far too little patience. People were so incredibly stupid.
“Well, thank you for phoning,” he attempted to end the conversation, emptying his lungs in a long exhalation.
“But the garbage truck might have ended up in the ditch,” said the lady.
“Yes, that is, of course, a possibility,” said Jöback.
“Or what if somebody had hijacked it?”
“The garbage truck?” No, there aren’t any Norwegians in Djursholm, he intended to reply, but he swallowed the words.
“Then a black hole? Are there sinkholes in Djursholm?”
“Sinkholes? Oh how unpleasant!” said Chief Inspector Jöback with pretended empathy in his voice.
“Yes, isn’t it!”
“But are you sure it was a garbage truck, and not an ambulance or a fire engine?” asked Jöback.
Then the lady had accused him of teasing, but he had reassured her that he took her interest in public order very seriously. After which he thanked her for the tip, quickly brought the conversation to an end and told his police dog, Cleo, that elderly ladies should not live alone too long. At the very least, they ought to have a dog as company, just like he had. Otherwise they got too many strange ideas.
BRAINS GOT UP, WENT ACROSS TO THE TOWER WINDOW AND looked out across the garden. A few weeks had passed since the big robbery and the police had not interrogated them. The detectives did not believe the coup against the Nordea bank had been the work of Swedish robbers, but rather everything pointed to an international gang. Swedes would not have worn a Margaret Thatcher mask, said the police, nor would Pavarotti or Brad Pitt have been used. The likelihood would have been greater if they had worn an Abba mask or a mask of Björn Borg or the Swedish king. Thus the League of Pensioners had not even been named in the speculations in the media.
“One shouldn’t commit oneself to a single theory but have all one’s candles burning,” Jöback declared straight into the TV cameras, presumably inspired by a former police commissioner who used to say the same. “We are working on a broad front,” he added and looked very important.
The articles about the big bank robbery grew less and the columns all the smaller, and now the robbery hadn’t been mentioned at all for several days. The members of the League of Pensioners started to relax and Brains thought it was high time to hold a wedding. Yes, he ought to make a new attempt to talk with Martha. But it wasn’t easy. He paced around in the tower room, stopped in front of the window and looked out across the garden while he tried to collect his thoughts. A great tit flew past and settled on one of the branches outside. There were a lot of trees in the garden and, my God, they did look a mess. They grumbled about the neighbor, but their own garden was not much better. The black iron gates needed repainting and the gravel paths had patches of weeds and moss. On the slope from the house to the fence there were several oaks that should have been trimmed long ago and what had once been a fine lawn was now just high grass. Brains sighed and thought that their house with its tower looked just like one of those classic old mansions with their fancy woodwork, more or less dilapidated, typical of Djursholm. Usually inhabited by elderly ladies who played the piano and read books but who didn’t have the energy to look after the house or the garden any longer.
Both he and Rake suffered, because they couldn’t manage a garden of this size either and they didn’t dare employ a gardener as long as they busied themselves with their illegal activities. Brains stole a look at Martha. It was actually her fault because she could never relax, and was always committing them to new projects all the time, so both the house and the garden suffered as a result. And even though he had proposed, she hadn’t planned the wedding. When he paced back and forth in front of the window, he suddenly grew angry. There she sat with a book in her hand not caring about what the garden looked like. And she didn’t care about their wedding either. He went up to her.
“Martha, have you thought any more about when we can get married?” he asked, in what was an unusually sharp voice for him.
“Get married, did you say?” Martha wondered, sitting in her favorite flowery armchair and reading. She thumbed the pages a little nervously and felt the pressure from her fiancé. She was reading The Mystery of Ageing: How to Live Longer, written by one of those health journalists in one of the major dailies. Brains, for his part, had brought up an old computer that he had started to take apart; he was going to learn how it worked. But evidently he hadn’t had much success because he had abandoned the semi-demolished computer and stood by the window a long while.
“Yes, get-mar-ried,” he said, emphasizing every syllable, before returning to the computer’s innards.
Martha put her book aside and stroked Brains gently on his head in a gesture midway between a pat and a caress. There were too many things going on around her. Not only did she have to plan crimes and share out the proceeds, but she also had to eat properly, do gymnastics and keep her brain in good shape. And now Brains wanted to get married. Yes, it could be nice, and after all she did feel very fond of him, but first and foremost they must give away their newly stolen money to the people who needed it. Besides, being married wasn’t all easygoing, she had heard. Suddenly men could become so demanding. After taking you out to dinner and courting you, they suddenly wanted to own you. Before she knew it, she would be standing there baking cakes and serving him. She had heard of how a forty-year-long relationship had worked as smoothly as can be, but when the couple had moved in together in their old age, the man in question suddenly expected her to wash his socks and underwear at 6.30 in the morning. No, no way! Never ever! The wedding would have to wait a little longer. At any rate, a few months . . . but what could she blame that on now?
“Yes, Brains, darling! You know that you are the man in my life. But if we don’t hand out our bank robbery money now, then whole hospital wards will have to close. Nurses and other health-care staff must get paid more. It is high time to create a bonus for them.”
“So nurses are more important than our wedding?” Brains sniffled.
“No, not at all, my dear,” said Martha somewhat absently thinking about how they could administer a bonus and at the same time realize a Vintage Village. Besides, they must soon retrieve the millions they had hidden in a drainpipe at the Grand Hotel after a previous robbery. There was simply no time for a wedding! She didn’t dare look Brains in the eye and for a long time she fidgeted with the hem of her skirt before she met his gaze. “There is so much going on now. And it would of course be really annoying if our millions in that drainpipe start rotting away before we can get at them.”
“So a drainpipe is more important than our relationship?”
“But goodness me, my love. I didn’t mean that at all. Just that we ought to retrieve that money. The banknotes are stuffed inside Anna-Greta’s tights and they won’t last forever,” said Martha, leaning forward to give him a hug.
“So old tights are more important than—well, that’s just—!” He got up quickly, gave the computer a kick and left the room slamming the door behind him.