The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules

by Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg

  ‘There must be several years’ planning behind this,’ said his colleague Inspector Rolf Strömbeck, a bearded man of upper middle age, as he sorted the papers on his desk. ‘Imagine getting away without leaving any tracks or other leads. We don’t have fingerprints and we can’t see anyone suspicious on the pictures from the surveillance cameras either. I just don’t understand this.’

  ‘The camera that covered the room with the French Impressionists was not on—the thieves had pulled out the plug.’ Petterson sighed. ‘Pah, let’s go and get a cup of coffee.’

  The two men got up and then remained standing beside the refreshment table where the coffee machine stood along with a selection of fruit and biscuits. This was Chief Inspector Petterson’s sixth cup of coffee that day. The coffee was hot and smelt of old plastic, but at least it provided him with some much-needed caffeine. There must be other clues; it was just a question of discovering them. That set him to thinking about the museum visitors.

  ‘It’s time to map out who was at the museum that day and bring them in for questioning. There must surely have been other people there besides those confused old folks that the security guards mentioned.’

  ‘The old people talked of a man with brown hair that one of the old girls thought was terribly kind. She even wished that he was her own son,’ sighed his colleague.

  ‘But one of the other old girls accused him of being a thief. He is said to have tried to snatch her handbag. Those poor pensioners must have been shocked by the alarm.’

  Petterson went quiet and started ruminating about old age. To think that you could become so confused. Would he himself end up like that? From now on he ought to eat more fruits and vegetables; he had heard that such a diet was good for your brain. He grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl and nodded to his colleague.

  ‘Shall we take a look at the signs? They are all that the thieves left behind.’

  ‘As if we’re going to be any the wiser for those …’

  They returned to the investigation room and sat down at the desk. There lay the three signs that had been found at the museum: out of order, inventory being undertaken, and back soon.

  Chief Inspector Petterson tried to remember what had happened. The signs had delayed the police, and several hours passed before they realized that the elevator actually worked. Then there were the other two signs. The police officer in charge at the scene of the crime had thought that everything was as it should be in the room for nineteenth-century French paintings, and had directed their efforts to searching for stolen paintings in the other exhibit rooms. They had concentrated on the temporary exhibit, ‘Sins and Desires,’ where every painting was scrutinized closely. It was only when one of the curators established that there were no paintings missing from the new exhibit that they enlarged the scene-of-crime investigation to include the other areas. After that, they had started studying the two signs in the Impressionist exhibit with renewed interest. inventory being undertaken … Petterson had sent a group of colleagues down to the storerooms to see if the paintings were there, while his technical staff checked through ledgers and computer files. The police devoted a great deal of time and effort to this, but when no Renoirs or Monets were found, they realized that those were indeed the paintings that had been stolen. They weren’t just any old paintings. Claude Monet’s Schelde scene and the work by Renoir had been stolen once before. It was incredible that it could happen again!

  ‘Smart thieves,’ said Petterson, pointing at the inventory being undertaken sign. ‘What a red herring!’

  Inspector Rolf Strömbeck looked at the sign for a long time, put a portion of tobacco under his gum and nodded. ‘And we fell for it—so simple yet so damned cunning.’

  ‘The sign saying back soon, what about that? Do you know what that’s about?’

  ‘I’ve never seen anything like it in all my years in the police force,’ his comrade answered. ‘Who can have put up such a sign, and why?’

  ‘It is at any rate handwritten, while the other signs have been printed on an ordinary printer. That is somebody’s handwriting.’

  ‘But was the back soon sign written by somebody who discovered the theft and then ran off to sound the alarm? In which case, we ought to get in touch with the person concerned as soon as possible.’ He chewed the tip of his pen while he pondered. ‘We ought to ask that person to step forward, but the question is, how do we go about doing that?

  Chief Inspector Petterson thought over various alternatives, but couldn’t decide on a good one.

  ‘If we say we’re looking for a person who has written a sign with the words back soon, then we’ll get replies from all over Sweden—and you can guarantee that none of those will be the thieves. No professional criminal leaves such an obvious trail. The printed signs have been handled with gloved hands, but this one has distinct fingerprints in the actual ink. Can you see the thumbs in the corner? The black ink must have been sticky.’ Petterson pushed the sign across to his colleague.

  ‘You know what? This sign doesn’t lead anywhere. I can only see one use for it.’ Strömbeck got up, opened the door and hung the back soon sign on the handle outside. ‘Now we’ll take a walk and eat lunch in town. Then at least we’ll have a bit of peace for a while.’

  Twenty-Six

  The day before the big ransom was to be paid, the five friends took a taxi to the Viking Line ferry terminal, where they bought their tickets. Anna-Greta paid in cash, of course. The League of Pensioners sat waiting to go on board. They didn’t have their own walkers with them, as they had left these in the Princess Lilian suite in the Grand Hotel. Brains had pocketed all of his tools and they were now using frames supplied by the shipping line. They went on board the Viking Line ferry and once there put their walkers and some small items in their cabins. Then they discreetly went down the corridor, took the stairs to the car deck and walked out via the car ramp, off the ferry and onto the quay. If anybody was after them, then they would have been fooled. These five passengers were actually going on a totally different ferry.

  When they were back in the Viking terminal, they fetched the Urbanista shopping trolleys they had stored there, ordered a taxi to the Silja Line terminal at Värta docks on the other side of Stockholm and managed to arrive just before the Silja Serenade ship departed. Martha was very proud of this little outflanking movement. The League of Pensioners’ feint, as she called it. Now the police and other authorities could search for them all they liked on the Viking Mariella ferry, while in actual fact they were comfortably ensconced on the Silja Line’s flagship Silja Serenade. Rake had asked her what the point of this bothersome extra outing was, and Martha had explained that she had read about leading pursuers off the trail in many crime novels. If you led them down a sidetrack, you would gain time. And hadn’t they agreed to have a bit of fun before they ended up in prison?

  The five of them joked merrily about robberies and thefts while they queued for their cabins on Silja Serenade. The passengers standing closest to them cast an amused glance at the happy-go-lucky group of pensioners and couldn’t help but smile. Perhaps growing old wasn’t so bad after all? When Martha and the others had got their plastic key cards, they didn’t go directly to the cabins but wheeled their black shopping trolleys to the elevator and pressed the button to go down to the car deck. Once they were down there, amidst the lorries and cars, nobody paid them any attention and they could walk unhindered along the side of the ship towards the ramp. En route they examined every partition and recess, searching for a good place to hide things. It was damp, there were pools of water here and there and it smelt of diesel, but that didn’t bother them. They were all concentrating deeply on their purpose. Close to the ramp they caught sight of the partition meant for boots and rain clothes. A wooden box and two large duffel bags could be seen on the floor.

  ‘Here!’ said Martha triumphantly, and they carefully pushed their black shopping trolleys in among the rain clothes. To be on the safe side, they looked over their shoulder t
o ensure that nobody had seen them and then quickly went on their way. Admittedly, they were not going to get the ransom until the return journey to Stockholm, but this way they could test whether the shopping trolleys would be left in peace or whether the police had set up a trap, and this would give them a little bit of distance from the stolen goods.

  The morning sun shone into the Princess Lilian suite, making the grand piano and the grey carpet sparkle. The young hotel cleaner, Petra Strand, puffed the cushions on the sofa and shook them out the window. She had vacuumed the carpets and cleaned the bathroom as well as dusting all the furniture. She straightened her back and fluffed up her newly washed red hair with her fingers. Now she had finished cleaning the room, the fun part was next. She was going to make an inventory of the decorations in the various rooms and see what could be improved. She was admittedly only a cleaner, but when the hotel management found out that she studied art, surely they would want to hear her opinion about colour schemes and fittings and decorations. Even though mainly older people were guests at the Grand Hotel, the Internet revolution meant that many younger millionaires had also started to stay there. She was exactly the right person to help the management of the hotel adjust to the times and see to it that their new clients felt at home.

  Petra threw a glance at the sunlit palace across the water in front of the hotel, put her duster into the cleaning trolley and then walked all round the suite. While she studied the decorations, carpets and textiles, she thought about what could be improved. The dominant colours in the suite were white, grey and black, and she liked the deep-pile wall-to-wall carpet, which had a slightly silverish tone. The turquoise floral bedspreads matched the magnificent view, and even the rooms with the somewhat lighter shades were stylish. But … something was lacking: the decoration in the 330 square metres of the suite did, without doubt, need something more. Perhaps some new paintings?

  Her first impression was that the works of art were a little ‘tame’ and she would rather see more dashing colours adorning the walls. A large painting depicting a sailing ship had been hung up above the bed in one of the bedrooms, there was an etching in the corridor next to the kitchen, and two small still lifes hung on the walls in the library. She came to a halt in front of two small oil paintings above the grand piano. They looked fairly decent, but no more than that. One of them portrayed some small cargo vessels and fishing boats in an estuary, and the other was some sort of Paris exterior with a man and a woman at a café. The painting with the river motif was dominated by brown, dirty-grey colours and had far too many vessels and boats in relation to the area of water. The Paris exterior wasn’t much better. The woman at the café was shown from behind and the man looked strange with his long hair, enormous moustache and a hat which didn’t fit with the period. There was too much of everything, and it would have been enough to have just the woman’s hat in the painting. Nevertheless, the motif seemed familiar. She had a closer look. It did actually remind her of a work by Renoir. The great masters were often copied but the results were usually poor. This was by one of the many artists who had clearly failed. Regardless, the two paintings didn’t look good above the grand piano. She would rather see a large modern painting there. Why not an Ola Billgren, a Cecilia Edefalk or a Picasso? Quickly she lifted down the two paintings, put them on her cleaning trolley and took the elevator down to the annex.

  The rooms in the annex were being renovated and the paintings from these rooms had been taken down, and they leaned against the wall in some of the rooms which were going to be repainted. Petra looked through the paintings and studied each one carefully. One of them reminded her of a genuine Chagall, and the largest, a Matisse-like watercolour, would look perfect above the grand piano.

  She left the paintings from the Princess Lilian suite on the trolley, put the other two under her arm and went up with them. With great enthusiasm, she hung first one and then the other above the piano. Then she took a few expectant steps back into the centre of the room. Her eyes lit up. It looked so very much better this way! The management would be really pleased!

  Twenty-Seven

  After the League of Pensioners had installed themselves in their cabins and rested a while, they changed and went up to the dining room. Martha kept a sharp lookout to make sure that they were not being observed. After all, it was a bit scary to be demanding a ransom, but it was very exciting at the same time.

  ‘Á la carte or smorgasbord?’ Martha asked when they went into the dining room.

  ‘Smorgasbord, of course,’ they all chimed and headed off to queue for the buffet delicacies. Rake and Christina stood next to each other and chatted, while Martha kept company with Brains and Anna-Greta. In the cabin, before they had gone up for dinner, Anna-Greta had asked a strange question.

  ‘What is it that causes men to be interested in certain women but not in others?’ Anna-Greta wondered out loud.

  Martha had tried to make light of such a question, but then she saw that Anna-Greta was serious.

  ‘You must be well dressed, joyful and an extrovert,’ she said with a glance at Anna-Greta’s outfit. Her skirt in a greyishbrown and black with a dirty-green pattern was more like camouflage than design. The only advantage was that it was not very visible.

  ‘Well dressed? I don’t understand that,’ said Anna-Greta with a glance at Martha’s purse belt.

  ‘Yes, you must wear beautiful clothes, have some make-up on and flirt a little,’ Martha attempted to explain.

  ‘And you think that is what you do?’

  ‘Not me, no, but in general that’s it,’ said Martha vaguely, thinking that it would be a good idea if Anna-Greta met somebody because she evidently felt herself excluded. Christina and Rake seemed to have something going and she mainly socialized with Brains.

  ‘But you know what is so delightful about life?’ Martha tried again. ‘You never know what is going to happen—and it is never too late to hope.’

  ‘Any more clichés?’ Anna-Greta snorted, and Martha immediately stopped speaking. She had only wanted to encourage her. What she really wanted to say was that Anna-Greta was too formal and correct, dressed in a very dull way and laughed like a horse—but no, she couldn’t do that.

  They finished their meal with a helping of cream trifle in the dining room. By this point, Anna-Greta was in a better mood, and by the second glass of wine, she was talking and laughing as usual. Martha was relieved to see this but thought that they ought to take more care of her. To outsiders, Anna-Greta always gave the impression of being so prickly, but like everyone else, she wanted to experience love and friendship too.

  After dinner they continued the evening in the karaoke bar. The wine had them in high spirits and, experienced choir singers as they were, they felt the urge to sing. Martha stepped up onto the podium and started with ‘Yesterday’, while Rake, as usual, sang the Jussi Björling classic ‘Towards the Sea’. Even Anna-Greta plucked up courage and stood up and sang ‘My Way’ in an extremely personal interpretation, which she reinforced with even more original gestures. Afterwards, everybody gave a friendly applause, but when Anna-Greta thought of following it up with the Swedish national anthem, Martha suggested that it was time for them to go somewhere else. Anna-Greta protested heartily and it wasn’t until Martha informed her that there were sure to be many widowers in the bar that she agreed to go along. They took the elevator to the deck above.

  Nurse Barbara’s cheeks were burning and she was completely exhausted after spending several hours in the cabin with Director Mattson. She had thought that he was going to take her on a holiday to Europe where they would stay in a luxury hotel, but instead they were on an ordinary cruise trip aboard the Silja Serenade to Helsinki. It was a little bit of a disappointment, but when she heard his explanation she calmed down.

  ‘You see, my little sweetie, on European flights there is a greater risk of me meeting my colleagues. On a cruise ship I know we’ll be undisturbed and can devote ourselves completely to each other.’

&nb
sp; With those words she had allowed herself to be appeased. It made her happy that she was so important to him. It could only mean that he was planning to marry her in the future. Soon, very soon, she would have achieved her goal. Yes indeed, he seemed to be totally engrossed. After they had boarded at half past four, they had gone directly to their cabin. Now it was past eight o’clock and she hadn’t even noticed when the ship left the harbour.

  ‘What do you think, shall we have a drink in the bar and get a bite to eat?’ she asked when hunger made itself felt.

  ‘Of course, but we must eat quickly, mind you!’ he said, pulling her towards him. ‘My little, little treasure!’

  She felt the words echoing inside her head, begging to be spoken out loud: Get divorced and marry me! She wanted to shout this out but controlled herself. She must try to find the right occasion. Perhaps after a drink or two in the bar, she thought.

  The five fugitive pensioners stood with their drinks at the bar and looked out across the dance floor. Several couples were already dancing and Martha wondered if she would dare dance herself. After all their gym exercising she was feeling more agile than ever. She heard her friends’ laughter and reflected upon the transformation that had taken place. Just a few months earlier they had been tired and lacking in energy. Now they were a happy gang and even Anna-Greta seemed to be in good spirits. Now and then her voice cut through the murmur around them and drowned out everything, but she sounded happy and that was the most important thing. Martha thought about what she had dared to suggest earlier that evening.