Ingrid was very excited when she arrived home the following day. She couldn’t stop hugging Friday and Melanie, she was so glad to see them. This made Magnus, her bodyguard, very nervous. He preferred people to stay two metres away from the princess at all times – especially Friday. He’d read an intelligence report about her detention for alleged terrorist activity and, unlike the judicial system, he did not believe in the principal of ‘innocent until proven guilty’. Eventually, Ingrid got fed up with Magnus. She made him go and stand ten metres away and stop glowering at her friends.
‘You must have terrible jet lag,’ said Melanie. ‘What is the time difference between Norway and the Galapagos Islands? It must be enormous. Wouldn’t you like to take a nap?’
‘Oh no,’ said Ingrid. ‘I flew first class. I slept the whole way on the plane. I want to take you to see the sights of Oslo!’
‘That sounds lovely,’ said Melanie. ‘We haven’t seen much so far. We spent a lot of time admiring your driveway yesterday.’
Ingrid looked puzzled.
‘But never mind about that. Where are were going to go first?’ asked Friday, changing the subject. She didn’t want to get Saba in trouble. ‘The Viking Ship Museum? Vigeland Park? Akershus Fortress?’
‘I suppose we could go to those places,’ said Ingrid. ‘But I was planning to focus more on Oslo’s cultural highlights – starting with the best waffle shop in all of Norway!’
‘I like your plan,’ said Melanie.
‘Don’t worry, we will walk past historic buildings on the way,’ Ingrid assured Friday.
‘We’re walking?’ asked Friday. ‘Is that safe, with you being a royal princess?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Ingrid. ‘I am wearing my blue cardigan and glasses, so everyone will leave me alone.’
Ingrid actually dressed a lot like Friday, except somehow, on her, a cardigan and jeans looked smart and elegant.
‘Does that really work?’ asked Melanie. ‘Surely everyone knows you wear a blue cardigan and glasses all the time.’
‘Well, yes,’ agreed Ingrid. ‘But the people of Norway know that when I’m wearing the blue cardigan, I want to be left alone. When I’m wearing a pretty dress and opening some building or another, then I’m there in my official capacity as a princess and they can give me flowers and ask for selfies and all those things.’
‘Good system,’ said Melanie.
So, Ingrid, Friday and Melanie left through a back door of the palace and set out, walking straight down the driveway that led into Oslo’s main shopping boulevard. Amazingly, people did leave them alone. From the double takes of passers-by, clearly people did recognise Ingrid, but no one approached her. Whether that was the power of the blue cardigan, or Magnus glowering at everyone as he trailed close behind, Friday could not be sure.
It was a beautiful day and there were crowds of people out – wandering about in the sunshine or sitting in outdoor cafes. The further the three girls got from the palace, the more they blended in and there were less heads snapping round to get a second look as they walked past.
‘Down here,’ said Ingrid, ducking into a side street. This was a less fancy neighbourhood. There was graffiti on doorframes, gum trodden into the bitumen sidewalk and weeds growing between the cracks of the gutters. But Ingrid had a huge smile on her face. ‘There it is!’
Ingrid stopped outside a lurid pink and orange shop with a neon sign saying ‘Harald’s Vaffel’. Friday had not expected the waffle shop to look grungy.
‘Harald makes the best waffles, in the traditional Norwegian way,’ gushed Ingrid.
‘With ice cream?’ asked Melanie.
‘Well, you can get it like that, if you are a tourist who knows no better,’ said Ingrid. ‘But the authentic Norwegian way to eat a waffle is with jam, sour cream and brown cheese.’
‘You lost me at brown,’ said Melanie.
‘It is delicious, trust me,’ said Ingrid.
‘People in England eat cheese with fruit cake,’ said Friday. ‘The savoury and sweet flavours combined can be delightful.’
‘Yes, but cheese is not meant to be brown,’ said Melanie. ‘Not unless something is wrong with the cow.’
They looked in through the window. There were polaroid photographs of all the menu items on the wall. The waffles did look good, but the brown cheese definitely looked brown.
There was a squeal of tyres behind them. Friday didn’t think much of it – just someone taking the corner too fast. But then there was the screech of the car coming to a sudden halt, the acrid smell of burning brake pads and the slam of a door. Friday started to turn, but she was bumped from behind and over-balanced into the shop window.
‘There you are!’ exclaimed a man. ‘Quick! Get in!’
When Friday righted herself, she looked up to see a big burly man had grabbed Ingrid by the shoulder.
‘I’m taking you to –’ continued the man, but that’s when a tornado of violence exploded. Magnus had lagged behind to give Ingrid some privacy. Now he rushed forward and leapt on the attacker. You don’t become bodyguard for the Crown Princess of Norway unless you’re good at your job. The attacker was handcuffed, footcuffed and tasered multiple times in less than ten seconds.
‘Stop, stop, stop,’ cried the attacker. ‘I’m with Interpol! I’m Agent Hans Olsen. I’m with Interpol!’
Magnus paused before tasing him a fourth time.
‘My ID is in my pocket,’ said the attacker. ‘My chest pocket.’
Ingrid reached into his jacket. She pulled out a leather-covered ID badge and inspected it. Friday peeked over her shoulder. It was legitimate. He was an Interpol agent.
‘Why are you attacking the princess?’ demanded Magnus.
‘I’m not,’ said the attacker. ‘I thought she was a girl called Friday Barnes. The palace told me I could find her here. I was told she was a short, brown-haired girl wearing a cardigan.’
Friday and Ingrid looked at each other. They were about the same height and had a similar hair colour.
‘Why do you want her?’ asked Magnus. ‘Is she still a terrorist?’ He pulled Ingrid away from Friday just in case.
‘Hey! I was cleared of all charges,’ protested Friday.
Magnus glowered some more.
‘Governor Offredi told me to find you,’ Agent Olsen explained to Friday. ‘We need your help. There has been a robbery at the Munch.’
‘The munch?’ asked Melanie. ‘Is that a restaurant?’
‘No, the Munch,’ said Friday. ‘It’s Oslo’s new Edvard Munch Museum. He’s the artist who painted The Scream – the ghostly expressionist portrait screaming on a bridge at sunset.’
Melanie shook her head, ‘No, not ringing a bell.’
‘You know, The Scream,’ said Friday. She slapped her hands either side of her face and mimed horrified screaming.
‘Oh, that scream,’ said Melanie. ‘I’ve seen it on jigsaw puzzles.’
‘It expresses the way Edvard Munch felt when viewing the Norwegian sunset,’ said Ingrid. ‘It is the primal scream of nature.’
Magnus was still glowering at Agent Olsen. ‘You just assaulted a royal princess,’ he accused.
‘I didn’t mean to,’ said Agent Olsen.
‘Yes,’ said Friday. ‘He meant to assault me. And I don’t mind. If there’s a problem at the museum I’d like to help.’
‘We need to check his credentials, to prove he is who he says he is,’ said Magnus.
‘There’s no time,’ said Agent Olsen. ‘The Munch is in lockdown. We can’t hold people indefinitely. We need to figure out what happened before we let people go.’
‘I can’t let you go with this man, your highness,’ Magnus told Ingrid. ‘It could be a trap.’
Ingrid nodded. ‘I know, I am a princess, I must be sensible,’ she turned to Friday. ‘But you don’t have to be. Go with him. I’ll meet you back at the palace. I need to speak with my father anyway. We have things to discuss.’
‘Oh dear, no brown cheese and jam then,’ said Melanie. ‘What a shame.’
‘Don’t worry, Harald does takeaway packs,’ said Ingrid. ‘We can eat when you get back.’
Friday got into the car with Agent Olsen, and was surprised when Melanie slid in next to her. ‘You don’t have to come, you know,’ Friday told her. ‘It may not be safe.’
‘Ingrid is buying brown cheese. I’m pretty sure I’ll be safer with you,’ said Melanie. ‘Besides, you need a wingman to watch your back.’
‘You’re going to fight off the bad guys for me?’ asked Friday.
‘Maybe not,’ said Melanie. ‘But I’ll scream to let you know when they’re coming.’
‘You’d probably be asleep and not notice they’re coming,’ said Friday.
‘Well you don’t want a stressful wingman,’ said Melanie.
Agent Olsen pulled out into traffic and Friday set to work. ‘Take us through what happened.’
‘An hour ago, The Scream was taken off the wall,’ said Agent Olsen. ‘You’ve got to understand – the museum is brand new. It has the very latest technology.’
‘I’m not surprised, after the 2004 robbery,’ said Friday.
‘What happened?’ asked Melanie.
‘The old Munch Museum was robbed by a heavily armed gang,’ explained Friday.
‘It was terrible,’ agreed Agent Olsen. ‘No one wanted that to happen again, so the new Munch was built with the highest level of security. All the glass is bullet-proof. No one can bring any personal items inside. Everyone has to pass through metal detectors. The Scream in particular is monitored with state-of-the-art electronic surveillance. There was a sensor in the frame. As soon as it came off the wall, the entire museum went into lockdown. Literally, the external doors all locked. No one could get in or out.’
‘So the painting and the thief are still in the gallery,’ said Friday.
‘Yes,’ said Agent Olsen. ‘At least we assume so, but we can’t find them. The police have interviewed staff and visitors. They have thoroughly searched the building. But they’ve found nothing.’
‘Wasn’t there video surveillance?’ asked Friday.
‘Yes,’ said the guard, ‘but the cameras in The Scream’s room were disabled.’
‘How?’ asked Friday.
‘We don’t know,’ said the guard. ‘The cameras are ten feet off the ground.’
‘That’s the first mystery, then,’ said Friday.
‘We can’t hold people much longer,’ said Agent Olsen. ‘Some of the visitors have started talking about their “human rights”. The staff aren’t happy about being detained either. They’ve contacted their union and the union rep is outside, complaining that he can’t come in to help them complain.’
‘The irony,’ said Melanie.
‘On top of all that,’ continued Agent Olsen. ‘Among the visitors is a large group of senior citizens from a care home. They need to get back, because they need to take their regular scheduled medications.’
‘So there’s a ticking clock,’ observed Friday.
The Munch was right on the harbour, so it only took Agent Olsen a few minutes to get there from the central shopping district. It was a huge museum built on an old dock. The building had been designed in the latest style of avant-garde architecture. As a result, it looked more like a terrifying giant air-conditioning vent than a building that humans would inhabit.
‘Did the architect want to scream too?’ asked Melanie as they pulled up outside. ‘It’s a very angry-looking building.’
Friday had not thought of buildings as expressing emotions before, but this one was definitely not relaxing.
‘Follow me,’ said Agent Olsen, ducking under the police tape and flashing his badge at the officer in charge of the perimeter.
The entire entrance lobby could be seen through a glass wall. From the inside, the museum’s Chief of Security saw Agent Olsen approaching and waved to a guard to let them in. The chief was clearly important, because she wasn’t wearing a uniform. She was a tall woman who exuded authority. She beckoned for them to approach. She couldn’t come over herself, because she was being yelled at by a well-dressed elderly man in a suit.
Friday’s self-taught Norwegian was not adequate to work out exactly what the man was saying, but she got the gist that he thought something was ‘outrageous’ and that a lot of time had passed and that he was going to make a ‘complaint’.
Several dozen apathetic high-school students watched on, boredom oozing from every pore. Although, they were of that age where teenagers would act bored even if a meteor was hurtling to earth and they only had three seconds to live.
The Security Chief nodded along while she was berated, but without expressing any sympathy or contrition. When the elderly man paused to draw breath, she interrupted.
‘Thank you for sharing your concerns,’ she said in very polite Norwegian. She motioned for a uniformed officer to come forward. ‘Perhaps you would like to yell at my assistant for a moment, while I consult my colleague?’ The man in the suit looked like he wanted to harangue her further, but she had already walked away to speak to Agent Olsen.
‘Where have you been?’ the chief demanded. ‘Interpol told me they were on high alert for exactly this type of crime after the robbery at the Bilbao Guggenheim. They knew the Munch would be a target, and yet you just disappear!’
‘That’s not fair,’ said Agent Olsen.
‘How many museum exhibits have been stolen in Norway over the last five years now?’ demanded the chief. ‘Two dozen? Three dozen? When is Interpol going to take the situation here seriously?’
‘Our agency had just sent a new top analyst to Oslo,’ said Agent Olsen. ‘I was fetching her.’
The Chief of Security looked past Agent Olsen, through Friday and focused on Melanie. Melanie was, as ever, dressed very nicely, but she undeniably looked sixteen.
‘This is your top analyst?’ she asked.
‘No, I don’t know who she is,’ admitted Agent Olsen.
‘Interpol has been trying to recruit her too,’ said Friday. ‘She’s a human lie detector and she’s freakishly good at archery.’
‘This is their expert,’ said Agent Olsen, indicating Friday.
‘Is this some sort of joke?’ asked the chief.
‘Oh no,’ Agent Olsen assured her. ‘She’s going to be honoured with the Order of the Star of Italy for foiling the robbery of the Museo Galileo last month.’
‘That was her?’ asked the chief.
‘Yes,’ said Agent Olsen. He turned to Friday, ‘That was you, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, I solved that one,’ said Friday. ‘Getting people to underestimate me is one of my key tactics.’
‘You do it very well,’ said the chief.
Melanie chuckled. ‘Burn.’
‘Ow! Stop hitting me, please!’ cried a security guard a short distance away. The chief spun around. An old lady was bashing one of the guards over the head with her handbag.
‘Excuse me,’ muttered the chief as she rushed over to intervene. ‘Madam, you’ve been allowed to use the bathroom three times. You don’t need to hit Freidrick if you want to go again.’
Some of the high-school students had started playing soccer with a wadded-up ball of paper floor plans. When it bounced off an oil painting on the wall, the chief abandoned Freidrick to his fate and hurried over to put a stop to the game. Controlling this crowd was obviously something that needed the chief’s full attention. Friday decided to get on with her investigation.
‘Can you show me the scene of the crime?’ Friday asked Agent Olsen.
‘Follow me,’ he said.
Agent Olsen led them up a staircase to the second floor and into a long gallery with just one huge picture on the wall. ‘Munch painted several monumental paintings,’ explained Agent Olsen. ‘This is the largest.’
Friday looked up at the picture as they strode past. It was a massive canvas, in the same expressionist style as The Scream, depicting a woman sitting on a beach holding a baby and surrounded by lots of naked people.
‘That doesn’t look like a very inviting beach,’ said Melanie.
‘I guess when they do get warm weather here, they’re really determined to enjoy it,’ said Friday.
‘The Scream’s room is through here,’ said Agent Olsen at the end of the gallery. Friday and Melanie followed him through. The room they stepped into was very large and the walls were all painted white. There were several paintings in Munch’s distinctive style on the side walls, but the end wall was bare. A picture frame lay on the floor in front of it.
‘That’s where it hung,’ said Agent Olsen.
Friday slowly walked the full length of the room, taking in every window, air vent and display. The description of The Scream was still on the wall, next to where the painting had been. Friday leaned in and read the card.
Skrik (The Scream)
Edvard Munch 1893
91 cm × 73.5 cm
Oil, tempera, pastel and crayon on cardboard.
Friday looked around the rest of the room. She particularly noted the cameras. There was one diagonally opposite the empty wall, but it had been smashed. The broken camera was dangling from the ceiling by its wires.
‘This camera didn’t catch who smashed it?’ asked Friday.
‘No,’ said Agent Olsen. ‘It was pointed at the picture on the wall. The person who struck it must have been standing directly below, out of frame.’
‘Then they would have been picked up by that camera,’ said Friday, pointing to the security camera at the opposite end of the room.
‘No, they aren’t on that footage either,’ said Agent Olsen. ‘A fly landed on the lens. It caused that camera to go out of focus. The rest of the room became a blur.’
‘Really?’ said Friday. ‘A fly disabled the camera?’
Agent Olsen shrugged. ‘These things happen. That’s the problem with introducing the very latest technology – sometimes the technology is too smart for its own good. The museum is so new they hadn’t worked out all the bugs yet.’
‘In this case, the bug was actually a bug,’ Melanie observed.
Friday walked over and took a closer look at this other camera. ‘That’s an awfully stationary fly,’ she observed. Friday looked about the room. ‘Surely a museum would have anti-insect strategies? Insects could cause a lot of damage if they didn’t.’ She turned to Agent Olsen. ‘Crouch down, I want to climb up on your shoulders.’
‘What?’ asked Agent Olsen.
‘I want to have a closer look,’ said Friday, pointing up at the camera above her.
‘Do you think some of the visitors are secretly circus performers and they did elaborate acrobatics to disable the cameras?’ asked Melanie.
‘Maybe something like that,’ said Friday, before turning back to Agent Olsen. ‘Are you going to crouch down, then? You’re very tall. It’s going to be hard for me to climb up on you otherwise.’
Agent Olsen got down on one knee.
Melanie clapped excitedly. ‘I love seeing a man on one knee! Even if it isn’t Ian. Although, wouldn’t it be good if he was here?’ Melanie started getting her phone out. ‘He’d be so jealous. I’ve got to take a photo!’
Friday eventually clambered up on Agent Olsen’s shoulders. When he stood up, Friday’s face was only a foot below the camera. ‘Just as I thought,’ said Friday, reaching up and grabbing the fly. ‘It’s not a real fly. It’s made of rubber.’
‘Someone put it there?’ asked Agent Olsen.
‘This robbery was planned with brilliant simplicity,’ said Friday as she clambered down. ‘The 2004 robbery was like something out of a movie. The robbers burst in armed with guns, so all the security improvements since then have been designed to counter a similar attack. That’s why the best way to rob the Munch now was with elegance and simplicity.’
‘But who did it?’ asked Agent Olsen. ‘And how?’
‘Let’s go back downstairs and take a look at our suspects,’ said Friday. ‘It shouldn’t take long to figure out.’
When they returned to the lobby, a full-on brawl was taking place. The elderly gentleman was still yelling at the Security Chief, while the teenage students were stamping and clapping and cheering, egging him on. The old ladies had got out their thermoses and sandwiches and were enjoying a picnic while they watched, totally ignoring the museum guides who were pleading with them to stop eating in the gallery.
Friday clapped her hands to get everyone’s attention. ‘That’s enough of that, then.’
The room fell silent. Nothing about Friday exuded authority, but they were all thoroughly bored and therefore interested to see what would happen next.
‘One of you has been very naughty and stolen a painting that, apart from being worth many millions of dollars, is also the pride and joy of the nation of Norway,’ said Friday.
The visitors glanced at each other.
‘At first, the brilliance of this crime made me suspect a member of staff,’ began Friday.
‘That’s outrageous!’ The union official’s voice was muffled as he banged on the glass wall. He still had not been allowed inside. ‘The staff at the Munch are all proud professionals.’
‘The Bilbao Guggenheim was robbed by one of its staff conservators earlier this week,’ said Friday. ‘This is a very similar crime.’ All the staff turned and looked at a mousy woman sitting in the corner. Evidently, she was the only conservator at work that day.
‘It wasn’t me!’ she protested.
‘No, of course not,’ said Friday. ‘You’re not carrying the necessary equipment to commit this robbery.’
The conservator looked slightly relieved, but still nervous.
‘The thief needed a piece of equipment that could do two things,’ said Friday. ‘Number one, plant an artificial fly on a camera lens. And number two, smash a camera fixed to a ten-foot-high ceiling.’
‘But no one is allowed to bring anything into the gallery,’ said the chief. ‘All personal items have to be left in the cloak room.’
‘That’s not true,’ said Friday. ‘To do both things, the thief would simply need a long piece of tube. They could fire the fly onto the first camera by using the tube as a blow gun, much like the famed pygmy tribes of the Amazon jungle. And they could use the same tube to reach up and smash the second camera.’
‘No one here has a long tube,’ said the chief.
‘Yes, they do,’ said Friday. ‘Three of those old ladies are carrying walking sticks. Modern walking sticks aren’t made of wood anymore. To keep them light, they’re made of hollow aluminium. They are essentially tubes with a rubber stopper on one end and a handle on the other.’
Friday walked over to the group of senior citizens. ‘Do any of you ladies have a walking stick with a handle that can be easily removed?’ she asked.
One of the ladies responded by reaching out and whacking Friday hard on the shin with her walking stick.
‘Ow!’ cried Friday.
‘I’d like to see you try to find out,’ declared the elderly lady. ‘I’m not letting you touch my stick. Not over my dead body.’ Her friends giggled.
‘Good for you, Anita,’ said one.
‘Young people today need to learn respect for their elders,’ said the other.
‘Okay,’ said Friday, hopping on one foot as she rubbed her injured shin. ‘Well, you’re on the short list. But the thief, having stolen the painting, would also need a way of smuggling it out.’
‘These women have all been searched,’ said the chief.
‘I don’t mind being searched again,’ said one of the three. ‘If that handsome devil with the blond hair does it this time.’
A young blond security guard blushed.
‘What did you get from the gift shop?’ asked Friday, pointing towards the ladies’ shopping bags.
‘A lovely mug of the Madonna painting,’ said the flirty lady. ‘I don’t care for The Scream. It’s too dramatic for my liking.’
‘Let’s narrow this down further,’ said Friday. ‘If I had to sneak a painting that was ninety centimetres by seventy centimetres out of an art gallery, what would be the best way to do that?’
‘Should you really be narrating this in front of a group of school students?’ asked Agent Olsen. ‘Are you going to give them a tutorial on art theft?’
‘Bear with me,’ said Friday. ‘The painting is just pigment on cardboard. The gift shop sells copies of The Scream printed onto posters. Which are also pigment on cardboard. Almost exactly the same size, in fact. To smuggle The Scream out, it would be so simple to roll up the original and slide it into the packaging for a poster, then pop that in a gift shop bag. No one would look twice. So now the question is – which one of you three walking-stick-carrying ladies also has a poster from the gift shop in your souvenir bag?’
There was a long pause. Everyone was looking at the three ladies. They didn’t seem to be able to fathom what had just been said to them. Then suddenly, one of the three leapt up and sprinted for the door.
Unfortunately for her, her sprinting days were behind her. When an eighty-one-year-old sprints, it’s more equivalent to a sixteen-year-old’s amble. None of the security guards raced after her because it was just so pathetic. There were dozens of police officers right outside, so she stood no chance of getting away. But that never became an issue, because when she got to the glass double door she couldn’t figure out how to open it. Apparently, the big green button to one side was neither big enough nor green enough for her to work it out.
‘There’s your culprit,’ said Friday.
‘This is the weirdest crime I’ve had since joining Interpol,’ said Agent Olsen. ‘And I spent six months investigating a counterfeit Belgian chocolate racket.’
‘It’s strangely similar to the theft in Bilbao,’ said Friday.
‘That didn’t involve an old lady,’ said Melanie.
‘It’s simple and clever in the same way,’ said Friday. ‘I’m going to run it by Bernie.’
‘Agent Bernie Barnes?’ asked Agent Olsen.
‘Yes, he’s my uncle,’ said Friday.
‘It would be great if you could get his help,’ said Agent Olsen. ‘He’s a legend at Interpol.’
‘Really?’ said Friday.
‘It shouldn’t surprise you,’ said Melanie. ‘You share the family trait.’
‘Which family trait?’ asked Friday.
‘Getting people to underestimate you,’ said Melanie.