Hard Action

Many Thanks to Dennis for editing this story.

*

It was a sad day for me when my best friend in our area of a small Scandinavian town, Jerry Bergman and his wife Christine hosted a goodbye party in his house. Both Jerry and his wife had got new and better paid jobs in a larger town about 350 kilometers away.

Of course we were happy for them and knew that we would meet again a couple of times a year, but both my wife Wilma and I would miss our almost weekly connections with them in the past.

Jerry could have been described to "have the thumbs in his palms", which meant that that he was completely unable to do any practical work with his hands but he was a real nerd about computers and electronic matters. Christine was lousy in cooking but a real expert in tax matters. In fact it was she who had been offered the promotion to a top job at the larger town.

Wilma is very good at cooking, that is why she always gave Christine a hand when she hosted dinners for their relatives and friends. As owner of a small construction company, I did a lot of jobs on their house, which was rewarded with money saving advice about taxes and heavy discounts on the best electronic items and very useful computer programs.

The Bergmans had sold their house to some Alf and Laura Johansson, whom we had never heard about. Though it was two houses between Johansson's house and ours, they invited us and nine other couples from the neighborhood to a barbeque to introduce themselves.

Laura Johansson was a rather nice woman in her mid thirties and to my surprise she seemed to feel a bit uneasy in the crowd of their new neighbors. Her husband Alf seemed to be the quite opposite. He bragged a bit too much to be regarded serious and he was overdoing his attempts to be a good host to the visiting wives. I hardly got to know him because he spent most of the time attending to the prettiest wives, like my Wilma and Anne Ericsson from the house next to them.

At least Anne wasn't impressed of her new neighbor because she told me, "What a damn swarmy type we have here."

But to my surprise, Wilma seemed to appreciate Alf's fawning for her and rewarded him with bright smiles for all his silly jokes and ingratiating comments about her.

Back home after the party Wilma turned mad when I told her, "That damn Alf acted as a shameless pussy hound and to my disappointment it was obvious for everybody that it was only the newly divorced Lisa Wilkins and you, Wilma who were flattered with his interest."

She shouted back to me. "What the hell do you mean by that?"

"Just what I said, other wives regarded him to be embarrassing. Anne Ericsson told me that she wasn't happy at all to get such swarmy type into the next house."

She continued shouting, "Anne always said so and so, why in the hell didn't you marry that sweet pretty Anne instead of a slut as me?"

"Because she was already taken."

"Poor you, but please remember that nobody forced you to marry a shameless slut as me."

The truth was that I had neither seen nor knew anything about Anne when I married Wilma and our marriage had been very happy until a big quarrel eight years ago when a divorce had been very close.

The reason for the quarrel was that I suspected Wilma was cheating with somebody at her job and intended to divorce her. My problem was that the husband is the last one to know and in my case it was too late to find out the truth. Though several important circumstances were against Wilma, she denied all kind of cheating and due to my failure of getting her to confess anything or find the man she cheated with, I gave up the divorce when I failed to get any real evidence about her cheating. Wilma and our children had cried a lot about my intentions. Even our legal system says that rather free a convict when there are doubts about the guilt.

We returned to a chilly marriage, which remained in that level for several months until I had a two-nights affair at a conference. Though revenge fucks says to be bad solutions to marriage problems, it worked for me because Wilma and I began a slow return to a good marriage again. But if Wilma had found out about my wrongdoings, she had probably divorced me.

However, Wilma and I didn't have any further arguing about Alf Johansson after the quarrel we had immediately after his party and I heard nothing about him until Anne Ericsson rang me a week later. She asked me; "Do you know anything about that Alf, I've heard rumors that he's been in jail for cheating fortunes from several women?"

"Nothing at all. Wilma and I had some arguing about him after the party but not a word about him from anybody else since then."

"I've got curious and tried to find something on the net but there are at least a thousand Johansson who are using Alf as their first name and the tax office says he has a secret social security number by court order."

I promised her to keep my eyes open and try to find out something about this Alf.

Then Wilma had met Laura at the supermarket and invited the Johansson's for dinner without asking me. It was too late for any objection, why I decided to be cool and collect information. To my great surprise the dinner went very well. Both Laura and Alf had very good social talents, so I must confess that it was a pleasant evening. No attempts from Alf to show any extra interest for Wilma.

The only problem was that they avoided talking about themselves, so I didn't have very much to tell Anna. The only thing I found out was that both of them had been married before and Laura had two kids who were living with their father. However, in these days such families are common why they were neither any strange nor unusual family.

As Laura didn't know many people in our town it was usually she who contacted Wilma on different matters and Alf still kept a low profile, quite a different from their first party. He did it even when the four of us went out dancing an evening. Though he danced several tunes with Wilma, he always kept his hands at correct places.

I can't explain why I got curious about why Alf had turned to a perfect gentleman. Of course, he was always friendly and polite but somehow I suspected that it wasn't the real Alf. Just as I had expected, Wilma didn't share my opinion about him.

Then one day I got my chance when Wilma told me that Alf had asked her if she could join him for shopping a birthday gift for Laura after work the next day and she had agreed to do that.

Nothing strange with that because Alf's driving license was cancelled for speeding.

I had no objections but placed my sound operated mini recorder in Wilma's car.

The next day Wilma left for their shopping just as they had planned and when she was back an hour later I invented an errand to my job and took her car. Of course, I couldn't stay away long enough for listen to everything but the beginning of the recording sounded interesting.

After some polite small talk Alf asked her, "Did Eric had many objections before he let you go shopping alone with a handsome guy as me?"

Wilma sounded a little surprised when she replied, "No, not at all, why should he?"

Alf said with a laugh, "Because I've noted that he is very jealous and probably suspects we are going to some hotel now for having a good time. Shall we prove him right darling?"

Wilma began to laugh and replied, "You are really hot for the porridge, aren't you Alf? Isn't shopping something sexy for Laura hot enough?"

Alf continued laughing and said, "You are a very hot temptation for a real man Wilma. Those nice legs of yours can get even a mummy to be hard."

Even she continued laughing and replied, "Aren't they always hard of quite different reasons."

Thereafter they got serious for a while when Alf told Wilma he intended to give Laura a set of sexy underwear and stockings and asked her if she knew the best shop for that.

Wilma replied that a friend of hers worked in such shop with parking in a rather close distance from the shop.

Alf accepted that suggestion and asked her, "Does Eric use to buy sexy underwear for you?"

She replied laughed again, "That's my secret."

He went on, "Of course, you are gorgeous in everything. Even in that pantyhose and white cotton panties I can bet that you are wearing right now."

"Even what I'm wearing right now is my secret and will remain my secret."

Then she parked the car and asked him some further questions about what he wanted her to buy because she told him that going to that shop with a strange man would create some unwanted gossip. He understood and obviously showed her some kind of a picture of what he wanted because she asked, "Just like that?"

"As similar as possible and the laced stay up stockings too."

After asking for Laura's size, Wilma left for the shop and a few moments later Alf phoned somebody and said, "Sebastian here and everything is fine............. Yes, it is Alf now.................Yes I need you to make the DVD we have talked about............The payment is as we said..........Yes, I've found the perfect woman for my intentions............Yes, she is married but her husband is some kind of a wimp...Piece of cake.............Yes we are already well acquainted, right now she and I are in town shopping sexy underwear for Laura ...................No, I haven't got any real chance to seduce her yet..........Of course I would like to do that the natural way and use her as my private sex-toy before persuading her to work for me but now with the limited time I don't have any other choice than use the nasty tricks and blackmail her to work for me with Laura .................Yes next Saturday will be fine..........Yes it is the 26th.........Of course you'll get your time with her ...........By the way, do you still have the stun-gun? .........Good, we can need it in case her wimp husband will try to interfere...........My boss pays for everything........... I'll call you again. Bye.

That was much worse crap than I ever could have expected. I continued listening to the recorder and when Wilma was back from the sop they talked about what she had bought there. Alf sounded to be satisfied with that because he offered to break for coffee at a café, but she told him there was no time for that because she had a lot to do at home.

Alf didn't give up so easy, he asked, "What about tomorrow? Can't you tell Eric you are going out with the girls so I can show you how grateful I'm with a dinner at a nice place?"

"Grateful for what?"

"You fixing Laura's birthday present."

"You are a funny guy, friends don't need dinner for such simple favor. You can do something for me in the future. But not that what that big smile in your face shows you're thinking about."

Both had a good laugh and then their chat turned to polite small talk.

One thing was for sure. I had a problem, a serious problem, indeed. The simplest solution had been letting Wilma listen to the recording, but she had been angry as a swarm of wasps for my secret recording of her. If Wilma or I had accused Alf for his talking crap, he could easily say that it was a faked call because he suspected that I didn't trust Wilma and had placed a recorder in her car. Though I knew that something serious would happen at the 26th. I had to keep quiet until I find out some way to protect her.

I contacted Anne the next day giving her the information that I suspected both Laura and Alf to be involved in some crap but I had not any real details yet. We agreed to continue our efforts to find out further information about him.

My research on the web didn't gave anything because Johansson is the most common name here and his secret social security number kept all public information unavailable for me though my efforts to find a forgotten backdoor somewhere.

Anne and I were sure that Alf had been involved in something and subscribed to a national newspaper's text archive but so far she hadn't found anything useful. I contacted one of the worst scandal magazines and offered to pay well for everything about Alf Johansson, but no hits.

I began to be desperate and asked them to search for Laura Johansson and got bingo.

The magazine faxed me the articles about her, which gave me a real surprise. Laura Johansson had been an average middle class wife, mother of two and married to engineer with a good job.

Then Laura had read an article in the magazine about a conman by name Sebastian Stiernglans, began written letters to him and after a while she began driving to the jail to visit him.

Laura's husband became suspicious and forced her to confess that Sebastian and she had sex during her visits at the open jail. Laura's husband filed for divorce and got the custody of their children. Six months later Laura married Alf Sebastian Stiernglans, who obviously took his wife's surname as his. The simple reason for that common name must given him some protection when he was chased by his old victims.

Knowing Alf's old name it was like opening a water tap. Sebastian Stiernglans that sounded like a man from a noble family. He had been a successful con man specialized on middle-aged wealthy women.

Some of the women had accused him of drugging and blackmailing them when they had refused to give him the "loan" he was asking for. However, Sebastian had ended in a "white collar jail" for three years. In a big need of cash he had sold his story to a "Gossip Magazine" and after the story was printed, his days in jail got lightened up with number of letters from "jailbird groupies". Some of them even visited him and such a jail has private visiting rooms where the inmates are alone together with their visitor. He even got some pussy on the side after he had met Laura.

Wilma and I got involved in a very serious quarrel when she told me that she had promised Alf to do some cooking a dinner for him and two visiting old friends when Laura was visiting her parents. I told her not to go because Alf was an infamous conman and his friends obviously were some old convicts Alf had met in jail.

That arguing didn't any sense because in her opinion everybody had right to a second chance and as far as she knew Alf had never done anything wrong as long as we had knew him. Wilma refused to change her opinion even after she had read the articles I had bought from the "Gossip Magazine".

After some further arguing with Wilma I gave up my efforts persuade her to skip that cooking for Alf but at last she agreed to a compromise that I should go with her to Alf and she promised not to tell him about that in advance.

When Anne knew Alf's previous alias, she found out some further information about his jail trips. To Alf's benefits must been said that he had never used any kind of violence and almost all of his time in the custody of the state had been in open jails. Some of his con business had even been in such stupid level that we got many good laughs when we read about them.

I didn't regard Alf as any problem but had some fear about his friend who had promised bring a stun gun with him and now Alf had told Wilma about two friends instead of the one he mentioned in my recording. That would make it a bit difficult depending on what kind characters those two men were.

Anne and her family would be away that evening and that was okay for me because I didn't want her involved in any quarrel with jailbirds. Of course, I had a bunch of friends who would not hesitate to give me a hand, but if if I had a bunch of them to watch my wife and nothing happened to Wilma and it would probably not happen, the friends would find it amusing.

Therefore it had to be a family affair.

At the 26th Wilma and I walked to Alf's house and I noted a rather new Mercedes on his driveway. We rang the bell and I heard that Alf unlocked the entrance door before opening it and locked it again when we were in.

I noted a glimpse of surprise in Alf's eyes when he saw me but he kept the mask and pretended to be glad because I was with Wilma. Two guys were sitting in his living room and he introduced the small skinny one as Roland and the other, who was in my size, as Robert. I got a feeling that the situation was under control, at least so far.

Alf left Wilma and me alone in the kitchen beginning to fix the dinner. When he came back a few minutes later he asked me help him to choose a good wine from his collection. I accepted and we went down to his small tempered wine room in the basement. Alf had much less number of wine bottles compared to what Jerry had during his time in the house.

However, Alf asked for my opinion about some bottles at the lowest shelf and when I knelt down to the floor for taking a look, Alf rushed out from the room, locked the door and switched off the light from the outside.

I had built that room for my friend Jerry and knew that screaming would be without any meaning. I was sure that the music from the stereo played was on such level that Wilma would not be able to hear any sounds from basement. However, what could she have done alone against Alf and the two friends? Wilma wasn't able to do anything at all, not even protect herself.

My very first thing to do was curse myself for being such easy victim for a conman's simple trick. The second thing was cursing myself for leaving my cell phone in a pocket of my jacket in Alf's hall. Alf and his friends must been sure now that I had panicked, locked in a chilly small dark well-isolated room in a basement with my lovely wife left to be used at the perverted pleasures for Alf and his cohorts, whoever they were.

However, I didn't panic but got worried, very much worried. Not because of the darkness or because been trapped into that room. I was worried about what Alf did to Wilma for the time being? Did she try to fight him or was she involved in Alf's dirty game?

The darkness was not any problem because in the key chain to the house key in my pocket was one of the small LED flashlight. I switched on the flashlight and switched off air cooler. The room was only about 1.5 x 1.5 meter with about one-meter high shelves on three of the walls, and above the shelves were large framed posters showing pictures from wine cellars. The simple reason I could remain calm was that I had built the room for my friend Jerry there was a small window at the wall opposite to the door. Not visible as it was covered by a sheet of 25 mm thick plaster and a large poster. The space between the glass, painted with black tar on its inside and the plaster was isolated with Rock Wool.

The only thing I had to do was grip the poster frame and pull it away from the plaster sheet on the wall, use a wine bottle to make a hole and then pull away enough plaster and Rock Wool to free the window. After that it was a piece of cake to open the window and climb out.

Though the breaking out had not taken many minutes there were no time to loose for getting help. I had to act alone, act fast and act with some kind of plan. The experience from my army service in an armored unit wasn't of any advantage in that situation. My only advise was try to remember a few episodes from a book written by British ex-SAS man in which he praised surprise as a great favor during their missions.

To be alone and rescue Wilma from three men in a well-locked house sounded as a mission impossible but as there were no other options available it had to be done and done fast.

Within a few seconds I had a plan. It was simple but contained so much surprise effect that I could do some action before Alf or his cohorts could do me any harm with their stun gun, if they really had one.

I knew where Jerry used to keep a spare key to a small workshop and storeroom for gardening equipment. To my great pleasure it was still where Jerry had left it and I noted that Alf had obviously bought every thing Jerry used to have in this room. I took a crowbar and a small grass mower with a 3,5 hp Briggs & Stratton engine.