Rake sat with Brains in the luxury bathroom of their suite and listened to exotic drum music from the loudspeakers. The green light pulsated and steam rose up from the stones. He stretched out to reach the water ladle and gave Brains a questioning look.
‘A little more steam, don’t you think?’
Brains grunted and Rake took that as a ‘yes’. He poured a ladle of water onto the stones and leaned back with a satisfied sigh. He was so pleased about all the praise he had received. After that night visit to Brains he had finally fallen asleep but had subsequently woken with a persistent headache. At that point, he had doubted whether he should take part in the robbery at all, but after an ice-cold shower he had managed to pull himself together. Now Martha had said that it was thanks to him that the robbery had succeeded. And that was of course true. He had undoubtedly had the greatest responsibility, and if it hadn’t been for him they would never have got the paintings out of the museum. The music streamed out into the sauna room, and he hummed along with it.
‘Shall we throw some more water onto the stones?’ He stretched out to pick up the ladle.
‘No, take it easy, it’ll get too hot. This isn’t an international competition for sauna bathers,’ said Brains.
‘Don’t worry. We aren’t in Finland, we just want to get clean.’ Rake laughed and threw on a little more water, which resulted in clouds of steam. ‘Incidentally, this reminds me of the steam room,’ he went on, holding his hands in front of his face when the steam reached him. ‘And the safes.’
‘The security boxes? I’ve already forgotten about that robbery. Stealing a Renoir and a Monet—that beats everything,’ said Brains as he raised his beer bottle. ‘And without machine guns and diversionary fires, too. Cheers to you, you old crook!’
The men clinked their beer bottles and Rake thought that this was one of the best moments of his life. They had been gone from the retirement home for only four days and he had already experienced more during that time than during the whole of the previous year.
A heavy knocking on the door gave him a start.
‘Listen, you two, hurry up. You must come out and look at something,’ Martha called out. Rake threw up his hands, spilling the beer.
‘I don’t know how you can tolerate the way she bosses everyone around.’
‘That’s just what is so good about her, Rake. She keeps track of us all. Without her, we wouldn’t be here.’
Rake went quiet for a moment; he hadn’t thought of that. ‘But I prefer Christina. She is quieter and doesn’t make such a song and dance of things. And she is pretty, too—indeed, I would say elegant.’
‘She’s a lovely woman, but all sorts of women make the world go round, don’t you agree?’
‘Oh, yes, you should have seen when I was a sailor on the boats to the Philippines, the women there! One of them had such enormous—’ Rake exclaimed, but was cut short by more knocking on the door.
‘Rake, we can talk about that later,’ said Brains, getting up. ‘We’d better find out what she wants.’
The men wrapped their towels around them, took their bottles of beer and opened the door. For a brief moment Brains felt a flutter of butterflies in his tummy. Surely the police hadn’t already tracked them down? Then he saw Martha’s determined look.
‘Have you thought about where we will keep the paintings while we’re waiting for the ransom money?’ she barked.
Brains and Rake looked at each other in confusion.
‘No, not exactly.’
‘And nor had we. But now Christina has hidden them. I want you to try to find them!’
‘Oh God, how childish!’ said Rake.
‘This will be fun,’ Brains chuckled.
And with that they started to hunt around the Princess Lilian suite, wrapped in their wet towels, for two stolen paintings worth about thirty million kronor. But try as they might, they couldn’t find either of them.