The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules

by Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg

  Katia inhaled deeply and tried to say in as roundabout a way as possible that five elderly people had disappeared from the retirement home.

  When Martha and Brains returned from their museum visit, they rested for quite a long time. Towards the end of the evening they ordered champagne and gathered everyone together for dinner. They had been inspired, and now that they had slept a little they were in a really good mood. They might even be considered rather giggly. When they were ordering food, Brains had ticked the special wedding menu, with three courses including wedding cake, by mistake. Martha had caught sight of the order in time and changed it to an ordinary luxury menu. Then she blushed bright red and thought about Freud. Perhaps Brains had subconsciously done what he longed for deep inside? She glanced in his direction and saw that he was looking at her.

  ‘I’ve been downstairs and have read the newspapers in the library,’ Brains said after having poured out a glass of champagne for each of them. He put the bottle down. ‘There was no mention of us, but I caught sight of some policemen. They weren’t in uniform, but it was obvious who they were—they all looked as if they trained at the same gym and they had the same crew cut hairstyle. They were questioning the staff.’

  The police? The theft that had for the most part been an unreal game now immediately seemed serious. A certain unease spread through the room because, regardless of the circumstances, they still had some respect for the authorities. Their loot lay hidden in shoes and socks in the wardrobe, which was perhaps not the best of hiding places. They had had so much else to think about and they were, of course, busy planning the next crime.

  ‘Brains and I explored the museum today and we found some weak points,’ said Martha after they had been served dessert. Brains flashed her an encouraging look.

  ‘Tell us more!’ said Rake, putting down his dessert spoon. Christina wiped away a lick of chocolate mousse from the corner of her mouth, and Anna-Greta leaned forward.

  ‘This is how it is. The museum is going to open a new exhibit called ‘Sins and Desires’,’ Martha went on. ‘We peeped in and saw that it was extremely sinful and erotic, with several indecent paintings.’

  ‘I can keep watch there,’ Rake volunteered.

  ‘Early in the morning there usually aren’t very many visitors in the exhibit rooms, so most of the security guards will probably be in that room,’ said Martha.

  The others nodded in agreement.

  ‘I propose that we seize the opportunity then. We can fool them all if we work as a team.’

  Again the others agreed, and Martha got the feeling that they had gained some experience from their earlier crime.

  ‘You, Anna-Greta, have a crucial role. I want you to go into the room with the old Dutch masterpieces. You must have your walking stick with you, and you will go and stand in front of one of the Rembrandt paintings, lean forward and point at the painting so that you break the seal to the alarm.’

  ‘But my stick is all warped. You remember—from the steam room.’

  ‘Exactly, and it should be too.’

  ‘But then the alarm will go off.’

  ‘And that’s what it should do too. But listen, I’m not going into all the details at this stage. For now, we are only going through the basic outline.’

  ‘That’s good, otherwise the meeting would never end,’ Christina murmured, having realized that she had forgotten to paint her nails. She must do that before going to bed.

  ‘There are a lot of fancy alarms at the museum,’ Martha went on, ‘and they have surveillance cameras in every room. But I noticed that there was a large humidifier on the floor under the camera that covers the room with the Impressionists. You only have to step up onto that and spray the lens with black paint. Christina, you are little and nimble and can manage that.’

  ‘What, me?’

  ‘Yes, or would you rather faint?’

  ‘Go for the fainting, that’s more comfortable,’ Rake said as he took hold of her hand under the table. ‘I can spray the lens. Or maybe we only need to put a lens cover over it?’

  ‘I’ll take care of it,’ said Christina. ‘You are needed for greater and more important tasks.’

  ‘OK, we’re agreed on that then.’ Martha settled the issue. ‘So if you, Anna-Greta, activate the alarm in the Rembrandt room, then you, Christina, can spray the camera when I give the word. And you, Brains, cut the cable to the paintings while I stand in front of you. Will that work?’

  Now they all started talking at once, and a long discussion ensued before they could settle on who would do what. When they had finally agreed on a plan, some important problems still remained unresolved.

  ‘How shall we get the paintings out?’ Brains questioned. ‘We can’t run down the stairs.’

  ‘We’ll take the elevator. And because it is rather compact, we will have to target small paintings.’

  ‘Small paintings without an alarm,’ said Christina, who had started to think like a real villain. ‘Small enough that we can put them in the basket of a walker.’

  ‘Exactly. We are not out after a Liljefors or a Rembrandt,’ said Martha.

  ‘And not something like The Coronation of Gustav III by Pilo,’ said Anna-Greta, giving a loud neigh. Her father, a well-known lawyer, had had many valuable paintings at home in Djursholm, and from her childhood she knew quite a lot about art. Ever since her student days, she had gone to gallery openings and art exhibions, and after becoming a pensioner she had improved her knowledge and studied art history at university. Pilo’s painting of Gustav III … that painting must be at least five metres wide and two metres high.

  ‘I’ve had a look at what sort of paintings they have,’ Martha continued. ‘There are some small works by August Strindberg and Anders Zorn, but they are meticulously wired up with alarms and firmly attached to the wall. Some of the other smaller paintings are only protected by a surveillance camera or a movement sensor, and one or two presumably don’t have any alarm at all.’

  ‘Really? How brilliant!’ Christina exclaimed in delight and started to plan what she would buy with the money. She had a tendency to spread her lipsticks and nail files all over the place and was in need of a beauty box—for example, a Titan beauty box in a pretty colour.

  Their dinner turned into a sing-song beside the grand piano. Later on the playing cards came out. Rake sat with a beer and said they ought to play with real money. Anna-Greta pointed out that he didn’t have any, and even if they—in the course of time—were to be flush with money, what mattered was the here and now. With that, his proposal lost the vote. This made Rake a bit grumpy, and he whispered something into Christina’s ear. He and Christina had spent some summers in Finland in their youth and both of them knew a little Finnish. So while the bridge game went on, Rake sang a Finnish folk song and then, making up a verse himself, he told Christina which cards he held in his hand.

  ‘I’ve learned five languages, and you insist on singing in Finnish. Can’t you sing in Turkish, Greek or some other language I know?’ Brains grumbled.

  But Christina and Rake explained that Finnish folk songs simply couldn’t be replaced with any others, and during the entire card session they continued to sing, providing hints in the verses so that they won most of the hands. It wasn’t until Rake saw the prize—a bag of pistachio nuts that Anna-Greta had found in the bar cupboard—that he suggested they should go to see a film instead. With that, they marched off to the hotel cinema and enjoyed the skilfully made English film The Great Bank Robbery—where all the villains got away with their heist. Martha and Brains made copious notes, but Anna-Greta fell asleep and started snoring. When her snores became as loud as her neighs of laughter, they woke her up and agreed to call it a night.

  By then, Brains had filled his notepad and had drawn lines back and forth between various squares and seasoned the whole lot with a sudoku puzzle and parts of a crossword.

  ‘Should the police happen to catch sight of this, they won’t understand anything,’ he said, p
leased as punch, and he winked at Martha. ‘I have learned a thing or two about false trails.’

  Martha had such a nice cosy feeling inside that she simply had to smile.

  A few hours later, Brains woke up. The first light of morning was filtering through the curtains and he felt cold. Brains heard Rake’s voice. Yes, his friend was standing outside the door and bawling for all he was worth. Brains went and opened the door.

  ‘I’m freezing to death,’ Rake complained. He asked for a warm blanket and a glass of the hard stuff. When Brains had filled a glass for him, Rake sat down. He had slept with the window open, he said. And as it got colder he had retreated deeper and deeper under the covers. In doing so, he hadn’t noticed that the temperature in the room had gone below zero. As a result, the radiator had frozen and then started to leak. When he woke there was water on the floor.

  ‘“We’re sinking, we’re sinking, man the lifeboats!” I shouted out in panic and rushed to the door,’ said Rake, emptying his glass.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘It’s true! I phoned reception, but the staff down there didn’t believe me—just like you. You should have seen their faces when they saw the water.’

  ‘Rake, stop telling stories!’ Brains replied, knowing all too well Rake’s night-time excursions, which usually involved a quest for food or drink of some sort.

  ‘Please, can you fill the glass and lend me some warm socks too?’

  ‘That’s enough for now. We must get some sleep.’

  Rake was always ready to tell lots of tall tales.

  ‘You do know that truth beats fiction, don’t you?’ Rake ventured, and indicated the empty glass. ‘Just a little more?’

  Brains shook his head.

  ‘Rake, I’ll see you in the morning. Make sure you are in good shape then. We’ve got our second crime to commit.’

  ‘I’m well aware of that. That’s why I couldn’t sleep. But the story about the radiator wasn’t so bad, was it? Worth a glass of the hard stuff, don’t you think?’

  ‘Rake, go back to bed!’

  ‘Sorry I disturbed you. I thought you’d be awake too.’

  ‘Well, I certainly am now!’

  ‘Yes, well, sorry. But the story is true. It must have happened to someone, somewhere, at some point.’

  After his friend had left, Brains stared at the door for a long time. It wasn’t easy being a member of a gang. Even if you did everything right yourself, others could mess things up. He was already worried about Christina. Now he would have to keep an eye on Rake too.

  Twenty

  What a magnificent building! The National Museum exuded power and influence. Martha looked up at the monumental hall and the enormous staircase and felt very little. All those huge, famous paintings—and here was her small, humble self standing before them. The mural-like paintings with the scenes from Swedish history towered above her. The thought of what she was about to do—commit the art theft of the century—did nothing to soothe her nerves. After all, she had been a PE teacher during her working life, not a thief. They had discussed their plans time after time, putting the finishing touches to every part, but just one little mishap could derail the whole thing. Martha felt some consolation in the fact that they had rehearsed the theft of the paintings in the Princess Lilian suite. Now all they had to do was stay calm and not forget anything. She went up to the ticket office and paid for their tickets. The museum had only just opened for the day and they had unanimously chosen the earliest time to go so that they could be as undisturbed as possible. They assumed that the security guards would not be on their toes at this time of the morning.

  ‘Welcome to the museum, madam. Are you cold?’ the cashier enquired when she saw that Martha had not taken her gloves off.

  ‘My rheumatism,’ Martha answered with a smile and returned to the others.

  She looked up at the staircase. The steps were as high as tombstones. Why did the paintings have to hang so very high up on the walls? Wouldn’t it suffice if they were hung fairly high up? Surely half that height would have been more than enough. She handed the tickets out to her friends, and they all swiped them through one of those little scanners and proceeded to the elevator.

  ‘I wonder whether we can all fit in at once,’ said Brains.

  ‘It’s probably best if we go in with our walkers facing forward,’ Martha advised. She was eager to have time to check the layout of the room upstairs.

  The elevator went up very slowly and it seemed to take an eternity before it reached the second floor. Martha felt the tension increase, and she hoped that Rake would remember to put up the out of order sign on the elevator. It was a very simple trick, but they were sure it would work. Brains had printed out the sign on his computer, glued it onto a piece of cardboard, and then made two holes for a piece of string so that they could hang it up. Martha was proud of how they had thought of so many details. Rake was also keeping watch down by the elevator doors. He hadn’t liked being given that task. Not until Martha had explained that the success of the robbery depended on him had he given in and agreed.

  Having arrived on the second floor, the four of them started to walk towards the exhibits. The following day would be the opening for the sensational ‘Sins and Desires’ display in the temporary exhibit hall. Or was it Desires and Sins that the exhibit was called? Martha couldn’t really remember. But it was indecent, nevertheless. Martha had assumed that most of the security guards would congregate there today. They would certainly be taking the opportunity to have a close look before the exhibit opened to the public.

  They walked in the direction of the great halls. As expected, nobody was there yet, but it wouldn’t be long before visitors started arriving on the second floor, so they had to act immediately. Supported by her warped walking stick, Anna-Greta turned to the left towards the Dutch masterpieces while the others went off to the French nineteenth-century paintings. They all tried to walk nice and slowly, and Brains had greased the wheels of the walkers with his special rapeseed oil mixture. After a while, Christina suddenly stopped.

  ‘I’ve forgotten my medicines,’ she said.

  ‘But surely you don’t need them just now.’ Martha said. She looked at her with a worried expression.

  ‘They are for raising my blood pressure,’ said Christina, ashamed of her carelessness.

  ‘Then you don’t need to worry. This won’t take long, and we will soon be back at the hotel,’ Brains consoled her. ‘Besides, you are actually meant to faint.’

  Martha walked slightly behind Brains, now and then glancing at his walker. She recalled that she had wondered about the sturdy construction and had asked him why the tubes on the sides of the frame were so wide. ‘For my tools, of course,’ he had answered with a big smile. The wire cutters fitted nicely inside. After a while they reached the Impressionists and other nineteenth-century French artists. For a brief moment Martha forgot why she was there, and her interest in art took over. She was particularly fond of Cézanne, Monet and Degas, and would gladly have laid her hands on Degas’ lovely bronze sculpture of a ballet dancer as a present for Brains. But regrettably it was far too heavy. They moved on and went past the doors to the erotic exhibit, Desires and Sins—or was it Desire and Beauty? Oh dear, now she had got it muddled again. From inside the exhibit room one could hear shouts and laughter, and Martha marvelled that looking at nudity could inspire such hilarity. At least the attention of the security guards had been diverted.

  Martha and Brains exchanged furtive looks and confidently approached two small paintings signed Monet and Renoir. They pretended to study the French Impressionists, but their eyes were directed discreetly up towards the cables. These weren’t reinforced with steel tubes, but they were pretty thick. Martha laid her winter coat across the walker basket and stood to the right of Brains, while Christina discreetly positioned herself to the left. Brains quickly unscrewed the top of his walker bar and lifted out the cable cutters.

  ‘Christina, give me a bit more cover,
please,’ he whispered.

  ‘Wait, I have to do the camera lens first,’ she said and hurried across to the surveillance camera. But when she got there, she saw that the humidifier had been removed and now there was nothing to stand on. Luckily she discovered the electrical wire to the camera. She quickly pulled it out and went back to her post. Then she stood on her toes next to Brains and made herself as broad as possible.

  ‘Now we just need to wait for Anna-Greta to trigger the alarm in the Dutch room,’ Martha whispered. Christina and Brains were ready for action but found it hard to stand still. Brains was licking his lips and Christina was picking at her cuticles. Waiting. At last the alarm went off and Brains lifted the cutters up to the cable. At that moment Christina fainted, sending her handbag flying.

  ‘Oh my God, she wasn’t meant to faint now,’ said Martha, horrified. ‘She was going to cover you.’

  ‘Lift her legs up, that usually helps,’ Brains answered while he cut the first cable.

  ‘But I’ve got to stand in the way of the other surveillance camera,’ Martha answered. To be on the safe side she gave Christina’s feet a bit of a pull. A few more snips could be heard and then Renoir’s Conversation: An Impression From Paris fell forward and almost hit the floor. At the last second, they managed to catch it and push it in under Martha’s coat. The alarm was screaming madly in the other room and Martha was glad of the relative calm here among the Impressionists. In this room there was a silent alarm where the signal went directly to the police, a feature that Martha had noticed during her exploration of the museum. The diversion Anna-Greta had created had given them the few extra minutes they needed. Brains hurriedly nailed up a sign where the painting had hung, a sign that had also been printed out on the hotel’s printer and then glued onto cardboard: INVENTORY BEING UNDERTAKEN, it said.

  That was the Renoir out of the way. Next was the beautiful Monet painting From the Mouth of the Scheldt. They moved to the right and Martha saw how Brains struggled with the two cables before he finally managed to cut them. He rapidly pulled out the third sign and hung it up in place of the painting. He was stressed, and Martha could tell that he just wanted to be off. She felt the same way, but she knew that they must restrain themselves. She had already seen the doors opening at the far end of the hall and noticed that the security guards were on their way. She just managed to stash the second painting under her winter coat before one of the guards caught sight of them. Martha hurried to bend down over Christina—now was the time she really should have fainted, and only as a pretence, not for real!