LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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