THE ENTIRE GROUP BOARDED THE AIRCRAFT, MADE THEMSELVES comfortable in their seats and slept all the way to Stockholm. And then they had some luck, because there is no other way to describe their progress through customs at Stockholm Arlanda Airport. To be on the safe side, Christina had bought a little children’s roulette game with lots of pretend banknotes. She had also gone to a souvenir shop and bought some bags of coral, pretty little stones and shells which she mixed with the real diamonds—just in case—but everything went well without any troubling questions. Christina explained this by telling her friends that she had swayed her hips a bit more, and that had evidently been a good thing.
“Hmm,” said Rake and Brains in unison, and then they mumbled something about that not making much difference nowadays, because the customs officials were used to it. They added the final bit of the explanation at the very last moment because what they really thought (and neither of them dared say it out loud) was that hip-swaying ladies in their late seventies didn’t have the same effect as younger talent.
And then there was the briefcase with the dollar banknotes. For some reason, a customs official became interested in it.
“Can I have a look?” he asked, stopping Martha.
“Monopoly!” Martha cried out shrilly, and she pulled out some dollars. “I know, I shouldn’t gamble but what does it matter as long as it’s pretend money. Do you want some?” And she smiled so suavely that the official simply couldn’t help but smile too.
“What? Er no, no,” he said and waved her on.
When the gang of pensioners had finally staggered out from the airport terminal, they were relieved and shaken, but also confused and in their rush they happened to get into an illegal taxi. So when they reached Djursholm the driver charged them an obscenely high price; it was actually about ten times as much as what it ought to have cost.
“Yes, right,” said Martha, and she started to look for her purse in her handbag. “I’ll pay, I’ll deal with this,” she told her friends in a tired voice and asked them to get out and take their luggage. When that was done, she arduously maneuvered herself out of the front seat and closed the door. Then she rolled up a bundle of banknotes and gave them to the driver through the side window.
“Here you are, and that includes a tip. I might have paid a bit too much, but you are really one of the best taxi drivers I have ever traveled with!” she said in a friendly tone. She raised her hand as a farewell and pulled out her cell. The driver smiled, lit a cigarette and looked contentedly at the bundle of banknotes. He inhaled a few times, then unraveled the bundle. And stared. There was only just about enough to cover the cost of gas, lots of small denominations. He angrily opened his door to chase the old lady, but stopped almost right away. She was standing a few meters away with her cell by her ear and one hand on her hip.
“Now you listen to me, you taxi fraudster! You shouldn’t con old ladies. I have phoned the police,” she said briefly, putting the cell back in her handbag. She looked so threatening and determined that the driver backed off, swore at her, made a rude sign with his finger and then drove off.
“Oh my God, you haven’t just phoned the police, have you?” Christina wondered, horrified.
“Are you crazy? I was just frightening him. I am allergic to that sort of bad behavior.”
“But why did you ask the driver to take us to Bielke’s address, then?” Brains wondered and he looked around at the garage entrance. When he had got out of the taxi and taken out his suitcase, he had discovered, to his surprise, that they were outside the neighbor’s house, not their own.
“It is best that nobody knows where we live.”
“Poor Bielke, he does seem to inherit all kinds of problems!” mumbled Brains. “By the way, why has he got a motorboat outside his garage?”
“Yes, it wasn’t there before. And the hedges have been trimmed and the lawn cut. What if he is on his way home?” said Anna-Greta.
“I couldn’t care less, because now I just want to go to sleep,” roared Rake, who had had enough of all the chattering, and nobody objected because they too were completely exhausted. They walked slowly across to their own house and when they went in through the front door they were so tired that they all went up to their rooms and went to bed with their clothes on. And they didn’t hide the briefcases in the sauna, but slipped them under a bed. They didn’t want these banknotes—and perhaps even the diamonds—to smell of vinegar.