The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules (17 page)

Crewman Janson drove in among the sheds in the Värta docks area. He stopped the car in front of the gate and opened it with his remote control. The quay was deserted and, besides a solitary dockworker who was snoozing on a pallet, he didn’t see a soul. He drove on and braked at Hall 4B. Allanson stepped out of the car, unlocked the shed and with deft hand signals directed his mate, who reversed in with the trailer. Janson turned off the engine and jumped out.

Although they had only rented the shed for the last nine months, it was already getting full. Down one long side stood pallets, a compressor and car tyres, and along the other you could see rows of shelving filled with things. There were car parts, contraband alcohol, copper piping and all manner of junk. But most of the space was taken up with bicycles. They would have sold them directly to Estonia, but the police had been tipped off and they had been forced to lie low for a while.

‘Let’s see what we have this time,’ said Janson with a glance at the trailer.

‘A crate of Finnish vodka isn’t bad at all!’

‘What about the roof box?’

They tried the lock. Allanson picked up a screwdriver and poked with it a moment until there was a click and the lock opened.

‘Do you remember that time when the roof box was full of dirty laundry?’

Janson grinned and opened the lid. Inside lay a cat cage, cat food, some blankets and tins of food. Two pairs of skis and poles could be just seen underneath that.

‘Fuck!’

‘We can take it to Lost Property,’ said Allanson.

‘Pah, throw the rubbish away!’

‘What about these, the shopping trolleys?’ Allanson cut off the lock and undid the zipper. ‘What the hell! Paper … who on earth fills a whole shopping trolley full of old newspapers?’

‘There must be some Chinese porcelain or something like that underneath.’ Janson said, and he eagerly started to pull out the paper. But the floor got covered with paper without him finding anything. Allanson raised his eyebrows and had a closer look at the trolley.

‘Perhaps there are drugs in the handle. It’s best we take it easy. Did you see that little hole up at the top? Perhaps they’ve put some shit in it. I don’t want to get involved in anything.’

‘Nor me. We’ll dump it. But what about the other shopping trolley?’

‘It’s bound to be the same crap,’ said Janson. But nevertheless, he opened the lid and looked inside. He groaned. ‘Newspaper in this too.’

‘Has it got a hole in the handle?’

Janson felt with his fingers.

‘Oh yes, there’s a hole in this too.’

‘And this one?’ Janson kicked the third shopping trolley.

‘Mmm, no hole here, but what the fuck, feel how it rustles. I don’t get it, three trolleys with newspaper. Let’s just dump the lot.’ Allanson threw the shopping trolleys back onto the trailer and looked around in the shed.

‘You know, we’ll have to try to sell this stuff soon.’ He nodded towards the innermost part of the shed where the bikes were stacked along the short side. Three weeks previously, they had raided cycle stalls in the city and got several trailer loads of bikes.

‘Next week perhaps. The weekend journey should be good, and I’ve asked the Estonians to pay in euros,’ said Janson.

‘Good, but we must push off now.’

Janson sat behind the wheel of the car and pulled out. After Allanson had pushed the door shut and locked the shed, he jumped into the car. He pulled out a cigarette, lit it and wound down the window. A few raindrops landed on his face.

‘It’s going to rain. Get moving!’ he said.

‘You know what? Those shopping trolleys are water resistant. We can save them,’ Janson said.

‘That rubbish? Why bother?’

‘One, at least?’ Janson insisted, having completely forgotten about the hole in the handle.

‘Are you going to drag the shopping trolley around like an old lady?’ his mate sneered.

Janson didn’t listen, but got out of the car and grabbed one of the trolleys off the trailer. Then he opened the shed door and put the trolley on a pallet right next to the entrance. By the time
he had done this and had locked the door again it was raining heavily.

‘A shopping trolley like that is great. It is useful if we want to move something and keep it dry. We’ll have a use for it sooner or later.’

‘All right, but if you turn up with a hat with a veil too, then I’m going to look around for some new friends!’

The men drove to the skip further along the quay and threw in the garbage bags and the two other shopping trolleys. They took the roof box and a few of the smaller items to the Lost Property office. This routine had gained them a reputation as reliable and trustworthy employees.

The sun shone in the room and made Chief Inspector Petterson sweat. He got up and opened the window but closed it just as quickly when a gust of wind blew his papers onto the floor. Swearing to himself, he picked them up again and instead took off his jacket. Then he sat down, dried his face with a handkerchief and picked up the case file on the top of the pile. What a huge investigation it had become! Now six men were involved—six highly trained police officers who were trying to find the missing paintings and the ransom money. He sighed. It was a very peculiar case: they had five confessions but both the masterpieces and the money had vanished. He had never been involved in anything remotely similar. Although that officious old lady had brandished one of the missing banknotes, that wasn’t enough to secure a conviction in court. Old people did, after all, have a tendency to mix dreams and reality, and they could have got that banknote from anywhere at all.
But regardless, the prosecutor had wanted to keep them on remand so that the police would have time to collect evidence. So far, however, they hadn’t got very far, but they had sent fingerprints and DNA samples to the forensic laboratory in Linköping for analysis. That might lead to results. Petterson phoned his colleague.

‘Hello, Strömbeck. We must search the hotel today.’

‘Yes, I know, I’ve phoned them. You know what? The pensioners evidently stayed in the Princess Lilian suite. Like film stars! This is just crazy!’

‘Hmm, sounds lovely to me. Then that part of their story is true at least. But the bit about hanging up paintings worth thirty million in the room, I don’t believe that,’ said Petterson.

‘The paintings that disappeared when they were in Finland,’ Strömbeck added. ‘They could have made all that up, and how can we get any evidence for something that has disappeared?’

‘That’s just the point. And the old lady claims that they went on the
Silja Serenade
to Helsinki,’ said Petterson. ‘But they are registered as having boarded Viking Line’s
Mariella
and some of their belongings were found on that ship.’

‘Perhaps they just
call
the ship
Silja Serenade
,’ Strömbeck hazarded a guess. He had been involved in many complicated investigations and knew that you had to relieve the atmosphere when you got bogged down with details.

‘Jesus, not even the ship is right,’ Petterson sighed.

‘Searching their rooms at the retirement home might lead to something,’ their colleague Inspector Lönnberg, who had been temporarily assigned to them from Norrmalm and was working in the same room, said in his leisurely manner. He had spoken to the staff at Diamond House earlier and might
be able to see things from a new angle. ‘The thefts are thoroughly planned. There must be notes in a drawer somewhere … bits of paper they’ve forgotten.’

‘You are right. Take two men with you to Diamond House,’ Petterson said.

The inspector nodded, got up and fetched his coat. Admittedly it was sunny outside, but there was quite a cold wind.

‘A search in a retirement home,’ Lönnberg sighed, standing in the doorway. ‘This job never ceases to amaze me.’

‘Don’t forget to look in the cake tin too,’ Strömberg teased him as he entered the room. ‘Or why not under the mattress?’

‘We must actually take this seriously,’ said Petterson in a biting tone. ‘We can’t ignore the case just because five elderly people confess to the same crime.’

‘But could five pensioners have carried out an art theft that no professional criminal has previously managed? To be honest, I think they are making fun of us,’ said Lönnberg.

‘Yes, that’s a very likely explanation, because despite the fact that both the paintings and the ransom money are missing, the old pensioners are going on and on about it being the perfect crime,’ sighed Petterson.

The men couldn’t help but exchange smiles.

‘They said that they were going to receive the money in two shopping trolleys which they then intended to switch with two identical trolleys which they had filled with newspaper. But then—and listen carefully,’ Petterson went on, ‘then they say that
all the money must have blown overboard.’

‘Ten million doesn’t blow overboard—nor do shopping trolleys,’ Strömbeck protested. ‘What do the surveillance cameras show?’

‘Not much. The seamen who work there, Janson and Allanson, usually hose down the deck and evidently dirt and salt have splashed onto the lens. I don’t understand why they even bother to have those cameras there. As soon as you need them, nothing can be seen on the film. I’ve gone through them. It’s like studying porridge. In a few sequences you can see what look like dark shadows with umbrellas. As if drivers would go around with umbrellas on the car deck! No way! But otherwise Janson and Allanson didn’t notice anything special either, and they certainly didn’t see a group of elderly people or the shopping trolleys.’

‘My bet is that the money is in that cake tin at the retirement home,’ said Strömbeck with a wide grin.

‘No, now we’re going to the hotel,’ said Petterson, getting up. ‘But don’t forget that we are looking for a
changed
Renoir, one with a newly painted hat and moustache.’

When they finally reached the Grand Hotel, the detectives discreetly showed their badges and asked to see where the quintet of pensioners had stayed.

‘Are you looking for those lovely pensioners? The ladies who were staying in the Princess Lilian suite?’ asked the girl in reception. She smiled courteously. ‘Why?’

‘We can’t say …’

‘Oh, they were just so nice. But unfortunately they have checked out. A pop star is staying in the Princess Lilian suite now.’

‘We would like to look through the suite.’

‘That’s not possible. It’s against our policy.’

Petterson and Strömbeck waved their warrant cards demonstratively. The receptionist seemed to consider something,
made a telephone call and after a while the Grand Hotel’s housekeeper turned up. When Petterson explained the situation, she nodded and took them up to the suite. She knocked, but when nobody answered she opened the door with her master key.

‘Oh, Lord, what a mess!’ the housekeeper exclaimed before the police officers trooped past. Bottles and full ashtrays stood on the coffee table, a T-shirt lay on the sofa and up on the grand piano was a pair of red panties. On the dining table were four empty champagne bottles and on one of the chairs you could see the remains of food and some crumpled serviettes. ‘Yes, well, we haven’t cleaned in here yet …’ she explained.

Chief Inspector Petterson noted the guitar leaning against the sofa, but what were the red panties doing on the piano? Above the unmade beds two paintings were hanging at an angle, clothes had been thrown all over the place, and on the way out Strömbeck almost got tangled in a bra on the floor. The bathroom smelt of aftershave, and there was a pile of dirty laundry on the floor. Several kiss marks decorated the lower-left corner of the mirror, and on the shelf next to the electric razor you could see a hairbrush full of blond hairs.

‘Rod Stewart?’ Strömbeck asked.

‘We protect the confidentiality of all our guests,’ answered the housekeeper.

They stopped beside the grand piano and Chief Inspector Petterson recalled what Martha had said during the interrogation. Renoir and Monet had hung there. Now in their place were two colourful paintings reminiscent of Matisse and Chagall.

‘How long have these paintings been here?’ Strömbeck asked.

‘We bought those in 1952, but the suite hasn’t been here that long. Let’s see, it was opened a few years ago …’

‘And the paintings have hung here since then?’

‘I assume so.’

‘You haven’t seen a Monet or a Renoir?’

‘Chief Inspector, great art should be enjoyed by everybody. That is why we have museums. If you go to the National Museum next door then you can see them and many other fine paintings.’

Strömbeck gave his colleagues a helpless look and whispered, ‘What are we doing here?’

‘Looking for a Renoir and a Monet and ten million kronor. That’s all,’ muttered Petterson.

They had a good look round for a while but finally gave up. In the elevator on the way down they were joined by an elderly cleaning lady. At the front of her cleaning trolley was a feather duster and a garbage bag and on the shelf above it a bottle of cleaning fluid, Ajax window cleaner and some rags. There were some paintings on the trolley too.

‘And what are these?’ Chief Inspector Petterson inquired, pointing at them.

‘Paintings to go to the Salvation Army.’

‘The Salvation Army?’

‘Yes, they are poor reproductions. We should have original works of art here at the Grand Hotel, not this sort of junk,’ answered the cleaner haughtily and poked at the paintings with the feather duster.

‘I see,’ said Petterson. ‘So where does the hotel store its original paintings then?’

‘In a storeroom. There are some sculptures there too. And we have moved some paintings into the annex while they are renovating.’

A little while later, Petterson and Strömbeck had one of the hotel doormen take them to the storeroom. Together they looked carefully through all the works of art and paintings that were there and in the annex, but they couldn’t find a Renoir or a Monet. Not even a reconstruction with a painted-on moustache. Tired, they returned to the police station.

Nor had the search at the retirement home led to anything. Inspector Lönnberg had had a difficult time. A Nurse Barbara had pestered him all day and had constantly nagged about discretion, while at the same time upsetting all the other residents in the home. In the midst of it all, a religious service was being held, and he hadn’t even had a bite to eat. Not even a proper cup of coffee and a slice of cake. Four of the rooms belonging to the missing pensioners had been well cleaned and were therefore easy to search. Besides old-fashioned clothes, sensible shoes, photo albums and jars of pills, there wasn’t much there. One of the rooms, however, had looked more like a sort of storeroom and had been full of tools, screws, motors and LED lights, but none of this could be connected to the theft of the paintings. Lönnberg had searched everywhere
but not found anything of value to the investigation. If only one person had confessed to the art coup of the century, the whole thing could have been dismissed as a hoax, but because there were five of them they had to investigate. The inspector sighed. Due to the lack of other ‘evidence’, he had at least taken their hairbrushes with him. You could always check DNA, even though you had to pay through the nose for the laboratory tests in Linköping.