Читать книгу A Multitude of Sins: Golden Brown, The Stranglers and Strange Little Girls - Hugh Cornwell - Страница 11

Jan rushes up to me in the café clutching the daily paper.

‘Look who’s on the front cover!’ he exclaims.

Half of the front page is a CCTV picture of an armed gunman in a bank in downtown Lund. He has shoulder-length blond curls and looks suspiciously like our elusive friend Kai. The lone stranger has heisted the bank earlier that day and shot a guard while making his escape. The guard is in hospital fighting for his life. Take? About twenty-five grand.

‘Do you think it could be Kai?’ I ask.

‘It certainly looks like him, and his hair would be that long by now,’ says Jan.

We immediately wonder where he could be. PLEASE NOT IN OUR HOUSE!

We can’t find Gyrth or Mike. Hans has seen the picture too and agrees that it could be Kai. Jan and I head out to the house at Södra Sandby, wondering if the police will catch up with the gunman and confirm our suspicions. Still no word from Gyrth, and Mike hasn’t seen him either.

That evening I get a phone call from Gyrth.

‘Hey, Hugh! I’ve got an old friend staying with me, and he’d really like to see you.’

‘Is it who I think it is?’ I ask.

‘Yes. He’d like to play some music. Can you and Jan bring over some guitars and amplifiers and we can have a jam. Bring some wine too.’

Jan and I arrive at Gyrth’s house and there is Kai, looking tanned from his jaunt around Europe and pleased to see us. After the greetings I want to clear something up with him.

‘Look, Kai, it’s great to see you, but there’s something I’m not happy about, and I want to be honest with you.’

‘Sure, Hugh,’ he says. ‘Go ahead.’

‘Well, I don’t mind about you robbing the bank. After all, they’re insured and nobody loses out, but I don’t agree with this shooting. I mean, how can you live with yourself? What if this guy dies? Where’s the morality in that?’

‘Hey, Hugh, I understand what you’re saying. Believe me, I don’t feel good about it. But I repeatedly warned everyone in the bank not to try to stop me or I’d have to use the weapon. And the poor guy took no notice. I figured it was his decision …’

At this moment there is a noise outside and Kai is immediately on his feet pulling out a handgun and taking cover. Gyrth goes to the door, opens it and steps outside.

‘It’s OK,’ he says as he comes back inside the house. ‘Probably some animal wandering around.’

Kai puts the gun away and carries on from where he was.

‘… so I had to react. I think he’s gonna pull through. They say he’s off the critical list now.’

A little later everyone has relaxed and after some wine we set up the amps and play some music. Gyrth’s house is isolated in the middle of the country so there’s no fear of the noise disturbing any neighbours. A bit later, after more wine and some dope, we are all checking out the handgun, which is a new experience for me, probably for everyone except Kai. I have an idea. I have recently met a young journalist who lives in Malmö.

‘Hey, Kai, how do you fancy doing an interview with a newspaper while you’re on the run? I know a cool jour no who would do it, and we could get him to help the band in return. We need a PA system for our gigs and he can guarantee the loan. I’ve already tried but it’s a lot of money and they need someone Swedish to sign it.’

‘Sure, it would be a gas,’ he says. ‘Anything to help the band.’

The journalist agrees to do the interview in return for signing the loan, knowing that his career will take off with this interview. I pick him up, blindfold him and drive him out to Gyrth’s house. He has a camera with him so he can take some photos of Kai. The interview goes well. Kai has the ‘I’m a misunderstood criminal, and although I rob banks, I don’t mean to harm anybody, and I warned the guard beforehand’ angle down and pictures are taken of him and the journalist together, throwing all the money around like kids playing in the snow. I re-blindfold the journalist and drive him home. The following Sunday the interview is all over the front page of the national newspaper and they’ve used the picture of Kai throwing the money up in the air. It’s an exclusive interview with Sweden’s ‘No.l Most Wanted Criminal’ and it sells truckloads. The journalist’s career is made overnight and we go into the music shop the following week and sign the papers for the PA system. By the way, the guard makes a full recovery from his gunshot wound.

About two weeks later I am just getting up at the house when Jan wanders into the kitchen.

‘There seems to be an armed soldier in the garden, with a rifle aimed at the house,’ he remarks casually.

I’m not sure if I’ve heard correctly, having just got up, so I follow him to the living room window and look out. Sure enough, I see the same soldier squatting down with his weapon pointing at us, just like in a war exercise. My immediate thought is … hide the dope.

I collect up all the bits and pieces lying around and bury them at the bottom of a packet of cornflakes. There is a knock at the door. Jan and I look at each other, both thinking, you go and open the door.

I decide that, as the legal tenant of the property, it is my responsibility to open the door whatever or whoever is on the other side of it. I descend the stairs to the ground floor and open the door. A rather thin gentleman with a faint smile stands in front of me. He is wearing a suit that smells of bureaucracy and he has a limp macintosh on top.

‘Mr Cornwell?’ he asks.

‘Yes,’ I admit nothing.

‘Good morning. I am Sergeant Persson of the Lund Constabulary and I have a warrant to search this house. May I come in?’ he asks affably.

I open the door fully and three or four armed soldiers appear from behind him and storm up the stairs. I wonder what they were expecting. Then the penny drops (finally) about a mile inside my dope-soaked brain. I decide to be as helpful as I can without behaving suspiciously; after all, I am an alien, however legal my presence in Sweden appears to be.

‘Please come in, Sergeant,’ I offer.

We go up to the kitchen where Jan is standing by watching the soldiers comb every inch of our living space. It seems that about another five or six soldiers have come in on our tails and there is a lot of milling about, and I have to avoid bumping into the marauding soldiers whilst entertaining Sergeant Persson.

‘When was the last time you saw Kai Hansson?’

‘Oh, about a year ago. We used to play music together downstairs in the cellar.’

I offer to show him the cellar and do so. We go back upstairs to the kitchen where one of the soldiers has found two dried marihuana branches (left over from our crop of fine Georgian grass which we had harvested the summer before from the field outside the house – more later, see ‘Drugs’ chapter). He waves the evidence under my nose.

‘Of course, this would normally be an offence but at the moment I am looking for something else. Are you sure you haven’t seen or heard from Hansson since last year?’ he says.

Before I can answer, a soldier comes up and excitedly reports something he has unearthed. Persson seems more alert.

‘There seems to be a bed in the attic which has been slept in recently. What have you got to say?’ he demands.

‘Ah!’ I reply, ‘My waterbed has developed a leak and I’ve been forced to sleep up there.’

Persson is thinking a likely story until I show him my poor waterbed, which I should have built a frame for to limit the pressure on the seams, but never got around to. It looks very sorry for itself and I show him the leaking seams, like a doctor showing off a special patient to a student. Sergeant Persson is not looking that happy. He’s been here half an hour and hasn’t come up with any leads, just a few leaks. He seems to have accepted my story about when I last saw Kai, and after about an hour he musters the troops and they make a bedraggled exit from the house. They take with them:

A pair of crutches which remain the property of the hospital. Jan has forgotten to take them back to the hospital in Lund after a broken leg had healed up;

A pair of temporary number plates which Freddy Hässelvick (one of our lodgers) had neglected to take back, once he had re-registered his VW Beetle after moving from Switzerland; they belong to the Swedish licensing authority; and two dried marihuana branches.

Jan and I watch the convoy of about six vehicles leave the property and check if they turn left or right at the main road. If they turn right we guess they are heading for Gyrth’s; if they turn left they are heading back to Lund to get the search warrant for Gyrth’s. They turn left.

Jan and I sum up their performance: apart from taking away their ‘booty’, they have failed to locate my dope at the bottom of the cornflakes packet (ha, ha, the old hiding places are always the best) and haven’t even taken statements from Jan and myself – surely not standard police procedure, but maybe Sweden has a different set of procedures? (Note: I must look that one up). Plus, they must have been aware of the fact that Gyrth was just as much of a suspect as me, so why did they not have their warrant ready for him at the same time? In fact, I would have carried out the two raids simultaneously. We decide to award them: NULS POINTS.

We immediately phone Gyrth up and warn him that he can expect a visit in a couple of hours, so he buries a fresh delivery of hashish out in the woods. Sure enough, at around midday Sergeant Persson drops in for tea at Gyrth’s house with a few friends and finds nothing. Fortunately, Kai had already left Gyrth’s for another trip around Europe – he even sent me the occasional picture postcard from Greece and Italy. I was genuinely pleased to receive them and realized how fond I was of him. I was even looking forward to seeing him again.

At the end of the summer, he showed up at the house in Södra Sandby. We had recently been lucky enough to get quite a few gigs in the area and the band’s name was gaining a following. Kai was keen to know all about our progress but said he couldn’t stick around to see us play as he was heading back to Hawaii. He wanted to continue being our fairy godmother and gave us a lot of brand-new banknotes which he had no way of disposing of, as serial numbers had been posted in every shop and bank in Sweden. He also left us a set of keys to his Ford Transit van that he was going to leave at Copenhagen airport. All we had to do was go over, pick it up and the van was ours.

Jan and I went over our plan to pick up the Transit. We had no papers for it, just the keys. If we were stopped exiting the car park we would be finished. Then we had to negotiate getting the vehicle onto a car ferry, and then into Sweden. At least it had Swedish plates. Every time we discussed it, the challenge grew more and more difficult. We were convinced we wouldn’t get away with it. We fixed a date to make the collection and it turned out to be a beautiful late summer’s day. We entered the long-term car park at Copenhagen airport and there she was, parked amongst all the BMWs and Mercedes, a beautiful, battered, blue Transit. Kai had, after all, driven the thing all over Europe. We felt extremely conspicuous getting in and turning the motor over. She started up first time. Jan and I looked at each other as if to say, ‘This is it’, and I pulled away towards the exit.

Not one thing out of the ordinary happened on the way back to Lund. No paperwork checks, no police questioning, no breakdowns, no suspicious customs, no nothing. When we arrived back it felt like I’d been dreaming, it couldn’t have gone more smoothly. I rang Gyrth and told him the good news: JOHNNY SOX HAD A VAN!

That autumn we did a lot of gigs around the south of Sweden and thanks to Kai the petrol tank was always full. Jan had the bright idea that we could use the new banknotes late at night in the unmanned automatic fuel stations with no fear of being detected, as none of them had CCTV. By Christmas, a story appeared in the papers that a lot of the stolen notes from the Lund robbery had mysteriously turned up all over southern Sweden in petrol stations.

Kai Hansson was to appear once more in Johnny Sox’s career, albeit in a more peripheral fashion. The following summer, we’d secured a couple of gigs in the Stockholm area and decided to drive up via Jan’s parents’ farm where we could stay overnight and break up the journey. They were, as ever, extremely welcoming and we left the next morning in the Transit with our bellies full and looking forward to Stockholm. Hans was intending to drop by and see his parents who lived on the outskirts. As we drove, we were listening to music on the radio when a news bulletin broke in. The King of Sweden was on his deathbed and there were regular updates on his condition. But this bulletin had a different piece of news:

‘Armed police have surrounded the Svenska Bank building in Stortorget in Stockholm where two armed men have taken the staff of the bank hostage. They are threatening to kill the hostages if their demands are not met. Police negotiators are attempting to set up a line of communication with the two robbers in the hope of securing the immediate release of the hostages.’

This sounded to us like the latest escapade of someone we knew. It had been eight-months since our last news of Kai, and although he had told us of his plan to return to Hawaii, the possibility of him getting bored and returning to crime seemed very feasible. He had maintained an amazing run of luck since we had known him, and this could have been fuelling his appetite for armed robbery. When we arrived at Hans’ parents’ house, we piled into their living room and remained glued to the TV to follow developments at the siege. The police chief was interviewed in front of the bank and although there was no imminent resolution of the crisis, he reported that the hostages were all well. The robbers had asked for five million in cash and a plane fuelled ready for their use at Stockholm airport. He then added that one of the robbers was known to the police and they believed it to be Kai Hansson.

That evening, a radio station had set up a phone line to the bank and two of the young female bank tellers were being interviewed live on air. They said that they were being treated very well and it was the first time they had ever eaten caviar and drunk champagne. They also intimated that their captors were very charming hosts …

Next morning we greedily consumed the daily papers. The poor old King of Sweden had been relegated to page ten, behind page after page of large-scale pictures from the bank siege. There was even a profile of Kai and a pretty good picture of him. But how was he going to get out of this one? It seemed to us that his showmanship had got the better of him this time and it was all a bit too ambitious.

Our gigs took place in the next couple of days and the siege continued. It seemed to reach a stalemate as we headed back to Lund. And then something happened which took everyone by surprise. The radio station that had set up the interviews with the hostages broadcast a phone call they had received from Hawaii. Kai’s voice swept across Sweden: ‘The police don’t know what they’re doing. That’s not me in that bank siege. I’m sunning myself on the beach here in Hawaii, thank you very much.’

The police were humiliated. The siege ended with the gunmen giving themselves up the next day and the hostages were all released unharmed. The police flew to Hawaii and arrested Kai, who came back with them to Sweden to stand trial for his various crimes. He was given eight years in prison.

Meanwhile, back at the hospital, my research muddled along throughout all these dramatic events. My professor was a trifle worried at my lack of results and so had introduced me to a surgeon, Stig Colleen, who needed some help on a project. At that time, the fastest diagnostic test for vitamin B12/folic acid deficiency took at least eighteen hours, which in certain cases was not quick enough to save a life. Stig had a theory that we could devise a test that took only forty-five minutes. It involved a technique called Gas Chromatography, and so I started to work with urine samples from patients, running them against normal samples. You had to be careful not to suck the urine sample up into your mouth when pipetting it.

About a year later, we were able to publish our successful results. After this, the professor put me together with another doctor with yet another idea, but I was starting to realize that I was being diverted from my original project. I could understand why it was happening because funding was short and my wages had to be justified against results. However, this was the point at which I started to lose my enthusiasm. It came to a head when my professor called me into his office. I had felt that this meeting had been on the cards for a while.

‘Well, Hugh, how’s it all going?’ he asked amiably.

‘Not as well as I had hoped, I’m afraid,’ I replied.

‘Oh?’ he offered.

‘In fact, I was thinking of leaving,’ I confessed.

He seemed uncomfortable and probed me further.

‘And when were you thinking of leaving?’

Here goes: ‘How about the end of this week?’ I suggested.

He became even more uncomfortable and fiddled with his diary.

‘I seem to be away at a conference the rest of this week.

Could we make it the end of next week?’

‘Of course,’ I affirmed.

He seemed very relieved that a mutually satisfactory solution had been reached. Maybe he was about to end my research appointment at that meeting anyway, and I had spared him some awkwardness. Regardless, I immediately felt a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. My mentor Dr Kai Lindstrand and the laboratory girls were very sad to learn the news, and we were all quite tearful. I mopped up my operations there and found myself waking up at the house in Södra Sandby about ten days later, unemployed but alive. In fact, the sun was shining.

There was no longer any reason to stay in Sweden so I explained this to the rest of the members of Johnny Sox. Gyrth was keen to move operations to the US, but I thought the UK would be a better bet, as life was a bit easier there if you were down and out. Eventually, we agreed to head to London first, and then on to New York if we had no luck. I packed a small bag with a few possessions and clothes, leaving a whole flat full of stuff behind me in Lund. Jan did the same and we picked up our guitars and left Sweden with Gyrth, Cindy and their child, plus Chicago Mike on his own.