The shrill ring of the telephone cut through the room and Chief Inspector Petterson glared at the apparatus. He had been talking on the phone all day long and didn’t want to take yet another call. Besides, he hated the ringing tone. It sounded like the Norwegian national anthem and he had become fed up with that after the last skiing world championship. Petterson lifted the receiver.
‘What! Paintings found in the elevator? A large gilded frame, two paintings, you think they are Renoir and Mon—no, no, don’t touch anything … no, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING, I forbid it! We’ll come at once!’
Chief Inspector Petterson gasped. Could it really be true? He had been convinced that the paintings had been sold on the international market long ago. The woman on the phone had sounded quite certain. Best to hurry. He grabbed Inspector Strömbeck and together they drove at high speed to the National Museum. They parked on the quay beside the Cadier bar outside the Grand Hotel, and just as Petterson closed the car door, he saw a banknote on the pavement. He bent down and picked up a five-hundred-kronor note, but when he looked around he couldn’t see anyone nearby.
‘Who the hell scatters five-hundred-kronor notes around?’ he muttered, putting it into his jacket pocket.
In the museum lobby they were met by a uniformed guard. He showed them to the elevator, the same elevator that had been out of order the last time they had been there. Now instead of out of order a sign on the door said simply closed. A group of pensioners who had booked a guided tour of the ‘Sins and Desires’ exhibit were standing in a circle outside the elevator doors.
‘We demand that you start the elevator immediately. How are we going to get upstairs otherwise? Do you expect us to fly?’ an elderly lady complained as soon as she caught sight of the guard.
‘Or do you intend to carry us up the stairs?’ a grumpy-looking man joined in.
‘Take it easy, take it easy,’ Chief Inspector Petterson urged them and pushed his way through to the elevator. ‘We are police. I’m afraid you must wait a little.’
‘The police?’ A distinguished-looking woman wearing an elegant suit held out her hand.
‘I am the director of the museum,’ she said.
‘Chief Inspector Petterson.’
‘The paintings are in here.’ The director pressed the button to open the elevator doors. An unpleasant smell spread through the lobby.
‘Is this some sort of joke? The remains of a stroller—and what is that? Good God, a baby doll with a little pink bonnet.’
‘No, can’t you see the paintings? You said that I was absolutely forbidden to touch anything so I haven’t taken the paper off, but I recognize the frames,’ the director said, pointing.
‘Oh well, in that case.’ Chief Inspector Petterson bent down and with feverish eagerness put his hands into the stroller.
‘Be careful, the stroller can pinch your fingers,’ Strömbeck warned him.
Petterson stopped, but only for a moment. He had worked so long on this case that he couldn’t restrain himself.
‘It would be fantastic if the art robbery could finally be solved,’ he said, digging deeper in the innards of the stroller. ‘What the hell?!’ Swearing, he took a step back, pulled out the dirty diaper and threw it onto the floor.
‘I am so terribly sorry, chief inspector, but the p-p-paintings—’ the director stuttered.
With fast, jerky movements, Petterson wiped his hands on his pants and continued somewhat more cautiously. Only the gilded frame stuck out, and he pulled out his penknife.
He ripped off a large piece of the paper and threw it on the floor. At that moment he heard a gasp and saw the director cover her face with her hands.
‘Oh my God!’ she exclaimed.
Chief Inspector Petterson pulled off the rest of the paper and took a step back. He recognized the painting and had seen it many times. In the fancy gilded frame was the well-known motif of a little girl in tears, the painting that almost every Swede had a copy of hanging in the outhouse at their summer cottage. Without a word, Chief Inspector Petterson put the painting down on the floor and started on the other one. This time he wasn’t so careful. He made some quick slits in the paper and then ripped it off.
‘I might have known!’
The painting depicted a skipper with a sou’ wester and a pipe.
‘Kitsch!’ the director gasped.
‘So you don’t think the police have more important things to do?’ said Petterson, his voice rising to a falsetto. ‘Not to mention this.’ He held up the baby doll and sat it astride the frame so roughly that the little pink hat fell off.
‘If only I’d known, I really am sorry,’ said the director as her cheeks turned bright red. Then a guffaw was heard. Inspector Strömbeck had been standing on the side and had filmed the whole incident. Now he couldn’t restrain himself any longer.
‘For the investigation,’ he said, grinning. ‘I’ll put this on the net.’
‘Like hell you will! Just think, if that got into the papers …’
‘Yeah, right. “Police tricked. The League of Pensioners has struck again.”’ Strömbeck burst out laughing.
‘Stop it!’ yelled Petterson. He stood there in silence for a few moments. ‘Do you remember? Martha Andersson said that she had wanted to give the paintings back to the museum, but they had been stolen from the suite at the Grand Hotel. So how do we explain this? Now we’ve got the frames but not the paintings.’
‘We will have to look to see who came here with the stroller. We do have the film from the surveillance cameras, after all.’
‘What? CCTV images? No, not again!’ Petterson groaned.
‘Now listen, I know what we can do,’ said Strömbeck, now in a serious voice. ‘We’ll send out a press release saying that we have found the paintings. Then the real villains will be uncertain. We’ll lure them out into the open, quite simply. That can give us some leads.’
‘That sounds too far-fetched. What if the press want to look at the paintings?’
‘Then we’ll say that they can but they will have to wait, since the paintings are being examined.’
‘What shall we do with these, then?’ Petterson wondered, pointing at the painting of the girl in tears. Strömbeck managed a wide smile.
‘Yard sale?’
‘No, there could be some valuable DNA here,’ said Petterson.
‘That’s just what I said,’ the museum director pointed out. ‘In that case, we can store the paintings in the museum warehouse for the time being.’
‘Don’t forget the stroller,’ said Strömbeck. ‘What an installation! A Frozen Moment by … yes, whoever the artist is.’
‘This isn’t the Modern Museum. At the National Museum we only have proper paintings,’ the director said sharply.
‘Yes, we understand,’ said Chief Inspector Petterson. ‘Regardless, we have made no progress in the investigation. The paintings are still missing and—’
‘Yes, exactly, the paintings are still missing and a lot can happen yet,’ Strömbeck noted.