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!
‘Wake up!’ Martha hollered, raising her friend’s legs up in the air. The security guard hurried to her side.
‘Help us! A man tried to steal her handbag—he ran that way!’ said Martha, pointing towards the Dutch room. The guard looked confused, but when Martha tried to lift up her unconscious friend, he helped her. Together, they got Christina back onto her feet and leaned her against the walker. The guard picked up her handbag and handed it over. Then Christina came to her senses.
‘Is it finished now?’ she asked.
‘Catch him, catch the thief, he ran that way,’ Martha shouted shrilly, trying to drown out Christina’s voice. ‘He had a beard and long brown hair and smelt horrid.’ Martha pointed again. The walker was overloaded and she expected it to collapse at any minute. Brains had worked out how much weight her walker could carry, including the paintings—but that had not included Christina’s sixty kilos. Martha sneaked a look at Brains and caught his eye.
‘I’ll look after her,’ Brains said to the guard. ‘She’s my wife. I shouldn’t have turned my back. She must be very shocked.’
The security guard nodded, somewhat perplexed, and hurried towards the alarm which was still sounding. When he had disappeared, Martha cast a final glance at the place where the Monet had hung. She looked, closed her eyes and opened them again. Instead of inventory being undertaken there was a handwritten sign. Martha had to adjust her glasses: back soon, she read.
‘Oh my God! It’s the sign that Christina hung up when she went down to buy something in the shop!’ Martha exclaimed. She was just about to rush forward and take it down when a group of tourists entered the room.
‘We’ve no choice, we must leave,’ Brains hissed.
‘But the sign—’
‘Nobody knows who put it there. Come on!’
Martha swallowed, took a deep breath and pretended to be unperturbed. Slowly and majestically, she and Brains pushed their walkers towards the elevator, closely followed by Christina. Martha had given Christina a fruit pastille, and when they had reached the elevator her cheeks had reacquired quite a nice colour. Martha patted her encouragingly on the cheek, opened the elevator door and pushed both Christina and the walker with the paintings in. Then she pressed the down button. Now they just had to wait for Anna-Greta.
In the entrance lobby, Rake heard the elevator descending. He removed the out of order sign and opened the elevator doors.
Christina stepped out of the elevator and Rake stepped in, taking her place. Once inside, he closed the doors and quickly switched his walker with Martha’s. After he had done that, he covered the two stolen paintings in her basket with his own coat and put her winter coat on the walker, which would now go back up with the elevator again. He carefully opened the elevator doors. When Christina gave the sign that the coast was clear he quickly left the elevator together with the loot.
‘Righto,’ he mumbled and put the out of order sign back on the doors. Then he smiled encouragingly at Christina, took out his comb and combed his hair neatly.
‘Right, off we go,’ he said, and he walked calmly out of the museum with Christina, supported on Martha’s walker, which was somewhat more wobbly than his own and now weighed down with valuable art.
That maddening shrieking noise! The alarm was absolutely unbearable and Anna-Greta wished she could have rushed straight out of the room. Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined that an alarm could be so loud. And she had only leaned forwards and poked at Rembrandt’s The Kitchen Maid. Then all hell had broken loose. When the alarm’s howl filled the exhibit hall, she got such a fright that she almost forgot to lie down on the floor as planned. She flopped onto the floor a bit too quickly and exclaimed, ‘Ouch, ouch!’, and it didn’t get any better when three security guards rushed towards her. Just as they were about to throw themselves at her, they noticed what kind of person was lying there.
‘Stop, look, it’s an old lady!’ the first security guard yelled—just in time to stop the others from pouncing on her.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, I don’t know what happened. I must have lashed out with my stick when I tripped,’ Anna-Greta shouted, in an effort to be heard above the alarm. At the same time she attempted to get back onto her feet. One of the guards helped her up and handed over her walking stick.
‘But it’s completely crooked,’ he said.
‘That’s probably why I fell,’ Anna-Greta shouted in response. ‘I really do apologize profusely.’
The guards looked perplexed.
‘The alarm!’ said Anna-Greta with her hands over her ears.
One of the guards rushed away to turn it off, while the others remained with her. She brushed the dust off her clothes.
‘Did you see a bearded man with long brown hair running through here?’ the first guard asked her.
‘Oh yes, indeed. There was a young bearded man here a little while ago. He seemed very nice. Unfortunately, I don’t know where he’s gone. I just fell down.’
‘Young and kind?’
‘Oh yes, I wish he were my son.’
‘Usch, we’ll go back,’ the other guard mumbled.
‘Was there a thief?’ Anna-Greta wondered.
‘Nothing’s been stolen, as far as we know,’ said the guard.
‘Well, that’s good.’ Anna-Greta smiled and leaned some of her weight on her walking stick. It misbehaved again and she would have fallen over once more if the second guard hadn’t caught her. ‘I really ought to buy a new walking stick, don’t you think? This one is rather dangerous.’
‘Indeed, madam, and now you really must take care,’ said the guard, holding her by the arm. ‘Are you all right?’
Anna-Greta nodded.
‘Right then, we must report back that it was a false alarm, but if you see the bearded man again, please contact us. We are sitting over there,’ he said, pointing to the room with the temporary exhibit.
‘Ah, I see, that’s where you are—well, enjoy yourselves,’ Anna-Greta said before she could stop herself. Then she thanked them for their help and limped off towards the elevator. She hurried as much as she dared without arousing attention, sincerely hoping that she wasn’t walking suspiciously fast. To her relief, Martha and Brains were waiting for her at the elevator. Martha had come up in the elevator with Rake’s walker and her winter coat, and so far everything was going well.
‘Hurry now!’ Martha urged, and when all three had entered the elevator she quickly pressed the down button. Once back in the entrance lobby, they looked cautiously around, waited while a visitor walked past and then discreetly stepped out of the elevator. Brains immediately removed the out of order sign, but then he had second thoughts and hung it up again. Then they went towards the main entrance at a leisurely pace. Reaching the door, Martha put her coat on just as the first police officers were rushing into the museum. Martha, Brains and Anna-Greta politely stepped aside and let them pass before continuing through the door and down the outer steps. Out on the street they headed straight towards the Grand Hotel.
The police officers arriving in the second car also happened to catch a glimpse of the group of old people before jumping out of the car and rushing into the museum. Inside the lobby they came to a halt: the elevator was out of order and they would have to use those long stairs.