The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules by Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg

to order. ‘I believe I have come up with the perfect crime.’
    An expectant silence ensued and even Rake paid attention.
    ‘Only about fifty metres from here is the National Museum. They’ve got more than ten thousand paintings there, including many old masterpieces, and you know what I think?’ She looked around triumphantly. ‘It stands to reason that they can’t all be wired up with alarms. If we steal a painting to the value of three or four million, that ought to earn us two or three years in prison.’
    Nobody applauded, but Martha could see the interest in their eyes.
    ‘And how do you intend for us to go about doing this?’ Brains wondered.
    ‘Nothing complicated. We just have to create a distraction, then one of us takes down a painting or two and we hurry out. Much the same as what we practised at the spa reception,’ explained Martha.
    ‘We can’t exactly run,’ Anna-Greta reminded them.
    ‘That’s precisely why we must distract the guards.’
    ‘We can streak and run naked through the exhibit halls,’ Rake suggested.
    ‘You need to be younger for that, you dirty old man,’ Anna-Greta snorted.
    ‘Don’t say that. At our age, we would arouse even more attention,’ Christina remarked. ‘But I certainly have no intention whatsoever of running naked through the museum.’
    Martha was getting annoyed with such ridiculous suggestions and tried to move the conversation along. ‘I was thinking of a different sort of distraction …’
    ‘Now hold on. This isn’t as simple as you think. What do we do about the surveillance cameras, for example?’ Brains queried.
    ‘We cover them up. Then we take the paintings down and walk out, calm and cool. We just pretend that we are not the thieves,’ said Martha.
    ‘Pretend that we are not the thieves? Now you must explain what you mean,’ said Rake, who was beginning to get impatient.
    ‘We put the paintings in the basket of my walker and then I simply put my coat over them.’
    ‘Your coat over a huge old masterpiece while the alarm is ringing?’ Rake said, rolling his eyes.
    ‘Don’t be so negative,’ Martha hissed.
    ‘But if somebody asks what we are doing, what do we say?’ Christina asked.
    ‘You don’t have to answer everything,’ was Martha’s retort.
    ‘How do we know which paintings are connected to an alarm?’ Brains asked, and immediately started to think about various possibilities to short-circuit the alarm system.
    ‘I should think Rembrandt and Van Gogh are,’ Martha explained, ‘and probably Paul Gauguin. But perhaps Carl Larsson won’t be and he sells for high prices at Bukowskis.’
    ‘Ahah, the auctioneers,’ said Anna-Greta knowingly. ‘So first we are going to steal expensive paintings and then try to sell them at Bukowskis? I don’t think that will work. People will recognize them as stolen artwork.’
    ‘That’s why I have thought of something else,’ said Martha. ‘We are not going to just steal paintings like your average simple thief.
We are going to kidnap them
. Nothing will be destroyed, nobody is going to be robbed in person, and nobody will be sorry. The owner—in this case the museum—only needs to pay a few million to us and then they’ll get the paintings back.’
    A little ‘Ooooh’ went round the table and even Rake had to admit that Martha had thought this through properly.
    ‘A few million—but Martha, dear, you make it all sound so simple,’ said Anna-Greta. ‘The National Museum does not have much money.’
    ‘Of course it does! There are the donations, for a start. They can take the money from the Friends of the National Museum. They will cough up. These paintings at the museum are national treasures.’
    ‘Well, I like the idea,’ Christina piped up, ‘but how would we actually go about the kidnapping?’ She looked expectantly at the others. She had started to acquire a taste for adventure, and she had had so much fun robbing the spa that she was keen to commit new