I don’t know. Time disappears from this part of my story too. I could well have gone on cleaning all night. I can see myself opening the kitchen drawers, emptying them, wiping them out. I can see myself scrubbing behind the radiators with a bottle brush. Yes. I must have been at it for a long time. Perhaps I didn’t sleep at all that night. Now I come to think of it, it was light outside when I was doing my last job, wiping down the phone with Ajax.
I made some sandwiches for Börje, put them on the coffee table with a glass of milk. Then I sat with him for quite a long time. If I’d been able to say to him, ‘Börje, I’m off now,’ would it have made any difference? Would he have said something, something along the lines of, ‘Dolly, I want you to know I’ve always…’?
I doubt it. And of course at the time I didn’t know I was leaving. I just knew I was going into town to take part in an ‘event’, and that the home care service would come round while I was out to give me a few hours’ respite.
But I just sat there beside him. Looked at the same spot on the wall as he was looking at. Perhaps I said something, perhaps I said, ‘Forgive me,’ perhaps—
Anyway. Let’s move on.
The only things I took with me were the piece of paper with my instructions, and my handbag. My beloved handbag. As the subway trains are so often late, I was out in plenty of time, and in position half an hour before it was due to start. Before I was due to start it.
The envelope was where Majken had said it would be, taped to the bottom of a rubbish bin on the way out of the subway station. It contained only two security tags and a note: ‘Good luck! M.’
I suddenly felt nervous. I didn’t understand why Majken had given the most important aspect of the plan to me. OK, this Ragna had more to do, but if I didn’t play my role correctly, there was a risk that the whole thing would go wrong.
Perhaps it was another test. Or…I laughed to myself. Perhaps it was a favour. After all, I was the only one who wouldn’t be doing something punishable by law.
I looked at the people passing by on the street. Lots of people. My anxiety subsided slightly. I thought that all these people, all these strangers are also involved in secret contexts unknown to me. They all have their roles to play in businesses, clubs, love and friendship. They all stand outside a closed door or an open door sometimes, palms sweating, not knowing how to begin.
I was not alone. And unlike most of them, I had a script to follow.
I had synchronised my watch with the speaking clock before I left the apartment, in accordance with Majken’s instructions. At nineteen minutes past eleven I began to walk towards the main entrance of the NK department store. I weaved my way through people who were rushing around in their lunch break and reached the door at exactly twenty past. Without hesitating I walked in through the magnetic security readers.
The alarm went off, triggered by the security tag in my pocket. I stopped for a moment to let the security guards see me. When one of them came over to me and said, ‘Excuse me,’ I turned to face him.
‘Why is the alarm going off?’ I asked.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘it appears you have something that…’
‘That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard,’ I said, heading away from him into the store. ‘I’ve only just walked in.’
The guard followed me. The alarm carried on beeping. When I had lured him perhaps twenty metres into the store, the woman who must be Ragna came towards me. I bumped into her and she fell, slowly and deliberately, clutching her chest.
I carried on into the store with the security guard following me. Ragna let out a scream, then lay there like a dead person. The other guard left his post to help her. All the shop assistants were looking in Ragna’s direction. The alarm was still going off.
Of course I couldn’t see what happened next by the doors. Nobody could see, because everyone’s attention was focused on Ragna. But I know that four women with big bags and boxes left the building at that moment. The items they were carrying would have set off the alarm, if it hadn’t already been going off, and no one had thought to turn it off amid the general hullabaloo.
I stopped by the escalators and let the guard catch up with me. I threw my hands wide open, then reached into my pockets where, much to my surprise I found the security tag and held it out to him.
‘What kind of stupid joke is this?’ I asked.
The alarm was switched off. The security guard took the tag, turning it over and over again as if he’d never seen anything like it.
‘Why have you got this?’
‘You tell me,’ I said. ‘Somebody must have put it in my pocket. What kind of a place is this, anyway?’
The guard stood there with the tag in his hand, wondering what to make of the situation. I walked back towards the doors.
The other guard and three shop assistants were gathered around Ragna, who was lying on her side looking in my direction. Our eyes met for a second, then two of the assistants helped her to her feet. I waited for a moment until the third assistant had given Ragna her big bag, then I walked out. The alarm went off again.
Ragna waved goodbye to the people who had helped her, then carried her bag out through the beeping magnetic barriers. My guard came hurrying towards me, still carrying the first security tag in his hand. I walked back into the store, put down my handbag and spread out my arms as if to say, ‘Go on, search me!’
The alarm was switched off, the other tag was found in my other pocket, and the two guards held a brief conference in subdued voices. I waited, an irritated expression on my face. The sweat was pouring down my back. The conference ended with no agreement on what I could possibly be accused of. My guard shook his head and said, ‘OK, you’re free to leave’.
I almost pushed my luck by saying something about reporting them and so on, but decided to leave it. My guard already looked more than suspicious. So I left. This time the alarm remained silent. It struck me that I could probably have taken something with me. If the alarm went off again, would they have stopped me? Maybe, maybe not.
I would like to have tried.
From NK I walked slowly down to the meeting point on Biblioteksgatan. The fear, which I had kept well hidden while I was in the store, began to subside, replaced by the usual sense of relief, but greater than usual. It felt as if my entire rib cage was filled with helium, my hands as light as birds. I laughed, applauded myself. I had played my role to perfection. Majken would be pleased with me.
From a distance it looked quite funny: five women of a certain age gathered around a silver VW Beetle with the bonnet open. Just the way men sometimes stand, discussing carburettors and points. All it needed was for one of them to start kicking the tyres.
As I got closer I could see that the engine had been replaced by NK bags. Then I remembered that the engine is at the back in a Beetle, and the boot is at the front. I recognised Ragna and the first woman, the one who gave me the nightdress in exchange for the Armani bag.
So here they were. Shoplifters united. Gathered around a silver Beetle full of stolen goods. A woman I hadn’t seen before turned towards me as I approached. I realised straightaway that it was Majken.
How should I describe her?
Let me put it like this: there are two ways of ageing. In some cases, age distorts the appearance, the face we had when we were twenty or thirty. It puffs up, becomes wrinkled or slack. When you see a face like that, you can just about imagine what the person once looked like, but now she is spoiled, ruined.
In other cases people look as if they were always meant to be that age and to have that appearance, however old they might be. There are wrinkles and grey hair, but it’s just as it should be, if you know what I mean.
As you have perhaps worked out, Majken belonged to the latter category. She wasn’t exactly beautiful in the classical sense. Her hair was peppered with black and white, swept back. A square face with prominent cheekbones, a bit like one of those Inuit. An Eskimo. I don’t know; I thought she looked like
someone who had spent her whole life living on a little island. Although she hadn’t, of course.
She was tall, the tallest of the group, as tall as me. There was nothing sweet about her. When she caught sight of me her thin lips broke into a smile, and she came to meet me.
‘Dolores!’ she said. ‘Welcome to the gang!’
We hugged briefly and I could feel that her limbs lacked any sign of an old woman’s frailty. Her eyes were dark brown, almost black; her nose was big, curved like a beak. Oh, now I’ve got it. Sorry, but I’ve been trying to find this picture, and it’s just come to me.
The way you picture those women in Greek tragedies: Antigone, Medea, do you know what I mean? No. Well. But that’s what she looked like, anyway. She introduced me to the others. I don’t need to make up any names.
Well, what did you expect?
Of course Ragna isn’t called Ragna, what do you take me for? Did you think I was going to give you a list?
Majken was called Majken, but I assume you know that by this stage. It doesn’t matter anymore. She has gone to her rest among her mothers, to misrepresent the Greeks. Mis-rep-re-sent. Good grief, what do you learn at the police academy these days, ha ha. To misquote, to create a variation.
I only had nine years’ basic education. I wish I’d been able to go on to some form of further education, but—
Anyway. Let’s move on.
We left the others and drove out of the city. I didn’t ask where we were going. There was a remarkable self-assurance about Majken; it was in her movements, in the absence of questioning glances. I leaned back in my seat and let myself be carried along.
I said before that I am strong, I’ve always been strong. Perhaps you can understand that there is a certain amount of relief in handing over the tiller to someone else. But this too demands strength, in fact. The strength to know that you will apply the brakes, bring things to a halt when necessary. Then you can stretch yourself to your limits. Of course you can be utterly weak too, simply give yourself up with no will of your own, but that’s something else altogether.
Oh, all this is just talk. My life hasn’t given me the opportunity to know anything about stretching myself to my limits. But I know a thing or two about survival. About gritting your teeth and carrying on.
Anyway, I enjoyed sitting there in Majken’s car, enjoyed, in purely practical terms, the fact that someone else was driving me somewhere, and that there was a purpose to our trip. The heater wasn’t working so my legs were a bit cold. Just as I started to become aware of it, Majken asked, ‘Are your legs cold? There’s a blanket in the back seat.’
‘Are we going far?’
‘Not very.’
‘In that case I’ll be fine.’
We drove north towards the outskirts of the city; I’d never been there. It was like an outing. It was just after twelve o’clock on a beautiful winter’s day. Lakes and inlets were frozen, with just the odd swan swimming by outfalls, waiting for summer. I felt as if I was out for the first time in many years.
We turned into a gateway and drove up a steep hill to a tip, I don’t remember what it was called. Majken stopped the car next to the electronic items container, and we got out and opened the bonnet. It turned out that the bags from NK contained lots of small boxes. I don’t know what all that stuff is called, but it was a lot of abbreviations. CD I know, but there were other things too.
Yes, that’s it. MP3, that’s what it said on some of them. And DVB, maybe. Or DVD.
What?
No, there’s no point whatsoever. It isn’t there anymore. Or maybe it is, but Majken had two hammers in the car. One for each of us.
I’m starting to get a bit mixed up now. I think I need a little break, if that’s all right. Perhaps you could talk to me instead.
I’m sorry?
What are you saying—of course he is! Börje hasn’t set foot outside the apartment under his own steam in eight years.
Have they searched the whole apartment?
I don’t know what to say, in that case.
Are you joking? I mean, Börje can’t just have disappeared, he…
No, hang on, listen. What are we thinking? The home care service. That’s it. I haven’t been home for two days. They’ll have taken him with them, of course.
It’s the home care service, they’ve taken him, ha ha.
Where was I?
Oh yes. We took all those black, shiny things out of their boxes and put them in the boot. Or the front boot, if you like. Then we separated the packaging into plastic and cardboard. All neat and tidy. Majken insisted.
I’d never been to one of those places before, I thought it was fascinating. I only had the eco-cottage to compare it with, and this was the eco-cottage times a hundred. There were whole sofas and kitchen fittings in the containers. In a separate area there were hundreds of fridges all piled up; the only thing missing was a polar bear on the top. Televisions, stoves and armchairs in better condition than the ones I’ve got at home.
There was hardly anybody there at that time of day. A middle-aged man was unloading a trailer full of furniture. He was doing it in a mechanical way, his eyes empty. Perhaps one of his parents had died, who knows.
Anyway, eventually we got to the fun part. We picked up a few of those black machines and carried them over to the container. Majken held up a little device, no bigger than a matchbox for those long matches you use to light the fire.
‘This,’ she said, ‘is worth about five thousand.’
‘Right,’ I said.
I thought it seemed strange, I mean I’ve seen great big brand-new televisions on sale for two thousand. But I suppose it was some kind of computer, and that makes a difference, as far as I understand it.
She held it in the palm of her hand and hit it with the hammer, not particularly hard. It split.
‘And now,’ she said, ‘it’s worth nothing.’
She threw it in the container. I held out the biggest item I’d carried from the car, and asked, ‘What’s this?’
Majken studied it and pressed a button. Nothing happened. She pressed another button and a little screen flipped up.
‘Aha,’ she said. ‘It’s a DVD player. Portable. Expensive.’
‘How expensive?’ I asked.
She shrugged her shoulders and said, ‘Twelve, thirteen thousand. Maybe fifteen. I think people buy that sort of thing to keep the kids quiet in the back seat of the car.’
‘Fifteen thousand?’
‘Yes.’ Majken found another button and pressed it. A little tray slid out from the side of the machine. ‘You put a disk in there with a movie on it. Yes, at least fifteen. Maybe even twenty.’
I turned the object over. Twenty thousand. If for some reason I had set my mind on having one of these, I would have had to scrimp and save for at least two years, probably more. It would never have happened. It was like holding a fragment of another world in my hands.
‘Majken,’ I said. ‘I can’t, it’s too…I was brought up to…’
I held out the object to Majken. She didn’t take it, she said nothing. I looked at it again. It was square with rounded corners, matt black.
What was I brought up to do? I thought.
To have respect for money and the value of money. When a sheet was worn out, my mother saved it to make rag rugs. When a rag rug was worn out, she saved it to put over the potato bin in winter, to protect it from frost.
Today you can buy a sheet for thirty kronor, a rag rug for a hundred. The piece of equipment in my hand was worth twenty thousand, it was…power. Yes. I looked at the concealed buttons, the purity of the design, thought about the town hall where I was summoned after my second arrest. The same blank impenetrability, the same weight. Another world, the world of power.
I hit the little tray with the hammer. It broke and fell at my feet with a clatter. A terrified thrill shot through me. I whacked the screen and it shattered, minute shards of glass scattered across the metal. I gathered my strength and brought th
e hammer down in the middle so that some of the buttons were crushed before it flew out of my hand and landed on the ground. I stamped on it a couple of times, feeling it crunch under my foot.
Before I knew it I had laid into everything I had brought over with the hammer. There was a particular pleasure…I don’t know how to explain it…you know that smell you get around things that are brand new? That’s what I was dealing with. That’s what I was smashing to pieces.
Majken passed on the things she had carried over, and when I had finished there was scrap metal on the ground all around me. I got up; I felt as if I had a red veil in front of my eyes. Majken looked at the rubbish, nodded and said, ‘A hundred and fifty thousand, maybe. Shall we go and get some more?’
I nodded. We made a couple more trips. We both attacked the rest of the stuff. Bang bang. Majken estimated the total value at around half a million. I couldn’t stop laughing. We tipped the broken glass and bits of metal into the container. There were a couple of televisions in there. I had to stop myself from attacking them. I could have carried on for much longer. One million, two, five.
I twirled the hammer around in my hands. ‘If we all went into the electronics department, if we just…’ I swung the hammer through the air a couple of times. ‘How much do you think we could get through before they managed to stop us?’
‘More,’ said Majken. ‘But then we’d have to pay. Our budget won’t run to that. Unfortunately.’
‘But what if we haven’t got any money?’ I said. ‘Then they’d have to pay anyway, in the end.’
‘No,’ said Majken. ‘They’re insured against that kind of thing.’
‘But surely that’s even better. Then it’s the insurance companies, the bloody insurance companies who’d…’
Majken looked at me sadly. I fell silent, thought about it. I did know how things work, actually. The department stores recoup the costs of shoplifting through increased prices. Insurance companies do the same thing. If they don’t make enough profit, they raise the premiums. In the end it’s the ordinary individual who has to pay.
I lowered my arms. The hammer dangled loosely in my hand. I looked at the rubbish we’d just thrown in the container.