The remand period was coming to an end, and now a more permanent posting awaited them. Brains sat in his cell and looked through the poems he had received from Martha. Did he dare keep them? They might be confiscated and analyzed at the new place. At the same time, he doubted whether he would be able to remember everything she had written. So he would have to take them with him. If worse came to worst, he could lie and say he had written them himself.
He read through the poems again. In the first ones, Martha had been preoccupied with the money in the drainpipe; in the later poems she had presented constructive suggestions as to what they should do with the millions. Apart from contributions to geriatric care, culture and the poor, she had become sentimental. She hinted that she felt sorry for museums, which had such a difficult financial situation, and suggested that they perhaps ought to give some of the money back to the National Museum—why not as an anonymous donation via the Friends of the National Museum? Many riches, to art in return, or whatever it was she had written. Then she had said something totally different in later poems, which he interpreted as meaning that the money should stay in the drainpipe after all, but perhaps that was simply one of her usual tricks to send people down the wrong track.
The clergyman, who took a look at every poem, became all the more confused, and Brains had explained that Martha obviously wasn’t feeling very well in prison. In the two most recent poems, she had really gone to town:
So Martha wanted them to give money to others—but also be able to afford to journey to the sun. Then the Robbery Fund should become active and kept alive.
The heavenly choir’s heartfelt fund –
Fill it and keep it afloat;
God’s goodness
Sees us all …
Martha seemed to have great plans but was perhaps rather too optimistic. Even though they had stolen valuables and two famous paintings, they could hardly pull off just any robbery they wanted. It was tough in the criminal world, dangerous even. It had been interesting to take a few steps down the path of crime, but if prisons were like the remand cells he had seen so far, then they had a far better reputation than they deserved. If they were going to do something criminal again, then everything must work perfectly so that they did not get caught.
Brains found himself thinking about some very shady characters he had met in the Sollentuna remand prison. Juro, a big and strong Yugoslav, had whispered something about a bank robbery. He had spoken Croatian but Brains knew several languages and had understood it all. Brains’s father had been a carpenter in the former Czechoslovakia and his mother came from Italy. When his parents moved to Sweden and ended up in Sundbyberg, they had spoken every imaginable language, and Brains had picked up quite a lot. He became interested in languages and often listened to foreign radio stations when he was busy in his workshop. That way you learned a language without having to make an effort, he thought. So far it had worked. He had even become quite good at Croatian, thanks to his new friend in prison.
The Yugoslav must have seen when Brains sketched his inventions, because in the exercise yard some days later he had crept up to him and whispered:
‘You special technic, yes?’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that. I used to build with Lego when I was little, that’s all.’
‘No, no, you inventor man. Me know. You clever—locks and alarms.’
Oh hell, thought Brains, who wanted to keep his head down with regard to any criminal skills.
‘I studied Polhem when I was a lad and his locks are three hundred years old,’ Brains said and laughed it off.
‘Banks, you know,’ the Yugoslav went on. ‘Stoopid, much stoopid. They take money from state when bad bissness, yeah, but they not share when good bissness. I fix them, you help—’
‘There are other ways,’ Brains interrupted him. ‘The state can ask for a bonus. People make a lot of money from that.’ He tried to sound like a man of the world; he had kept up by reading the newspapers and understood that bonuses made people rich. So he wasn’t completely hopeless when it came to money issues. The Yugoslav laughed heartily and put his hand on Brains’s shoulder.
‘You know, here in Stockholm, Handelsbank at Karlaplan, yes? Close to Valhallavägen and quick to Arlanda Airport. But bank locks much difficult.’
Brains shrugged his shoulders to indicate that it was regrettable. ‘I’m not at all familiar with that sort of lock.’
The Yugoslav mafia was not something he wished to be involved with, and after that conversation he kept his distance during exercise periods. He noticed how the Yugoslav sought out other inmates there in the yard, and how he tried to milk a former bank employee for information. The man was to be tried for economic crimes and had emptied accounts for many years until his wife gave him away.
A week later the Yugoslav left the remand prison and Brains gave a sigh of relief. Juro had taken too much of an interest in him and Brains had been forced to pretend he was more stupid than he actually was. He who is silent gets information; stupid people who talk give themselves away, he used to say. But one thing he did know—Juro and his mates outside the prison had planned a large robbery.
‘Sometimes get caught, not dangerous. Just little rest in prison. Then fetch money,’ the Yugoslav had explained.
Brains pondered this and wondered if he could adopt that same attitude but develop it a bit more. Skip the crime bit but get rich anyway. That would, after all, be the ultimate solution, but as yet he hadn’t worked out how to achieve it. He needed Martha. Together they would think of something.