‘Have you ever had any sort of collaboration with his gallery in Visby?’
‘Not since I’ve been the director here.’
‘Do you know if anyone has been in contact with Muramaris, the gallery in Visby, or any other enterprise on Gotland?’
‘I don’t think so.’
Jacobsson turned to Fogestam. ‘Have you interviewed all the staff?’
‘The interviews are still being conducted. I don’t think they’re finished yet.’
‘I’d like a list of the employees.’
‘Of course. I’ll take care of it. But there are no indications that this was an inside job.’
‘The thief was very familiar with the site,’ Jacobsson pointed out.
‘Yes, but the blueprints of the building are available to anybody who bothers to look for them.’
‘By the way, what else is on display in the current exhibition?’ she asked Sommer.
‘Swedish art from the early 1900s to 1930s. And of course we have paintings from the prince’s personal collection. Some of them are on permanent display and are never moved. Many of the works of art are much more valuable than the Dardel painting. We have works by Liljefors and Munch that could raise a significantly higher price than “The Dying Dandy”. Why was that the only painting that the thieves took? It’s incomprehensible.’
On their way to the room where the painting had hung, Sommer took the opportunity to tell Jacobsson about Waldemarsudde, since this was her first visit.
‘The prince was a broad-minded person who supported the Swedish artists of his day,’ he explained. ‘His home was finished in 1905, and it became a gathering place for free-thinking people; the social life flourished out here. He was personal friends with many of the artists. And he himself became a great landscape painter. His collection contains more than two thousand works,’ Sommer went on enthusiastically, as if forgetting why Fogestam and Jacobsson were there.
‘Do you have other paintings by Nils Dardel here?’
‘We’ve borrowed three other paintings for this exhibition. And Dardel did a pencil sketch of Prince Eugen that is part of his collection. No other paintings were stolen.’
They entered the bright, beautiful areas that were the former living quarters of the prince. They immediately noticed a strong floral scent. The rooms were furnished in a style typical of Sweden in the early 1900s. Fresh flowers filled all the rooms, in accordance with the prince’s wishes. There were scarlet amaryllis, shimmering blue hyacinths, and great bouquets of tulips in assorted colours.
Jacobsson knew that Prince Eugen had never married, and he’d had no children. She wondered whether he might have been homosexual, but didn’t dare ask.
The dominant room was the prince’s drawing room. Light flooded in through the tall French windows and on to the yellow silk wallpaper. Most eye-catching was the large painting titled ‘Stromkarlen’ by Ernst Josephson, with the motif of the fiddle-playing Nacken spirit sitting on the rocks by a roaring river. Sommer stopped there.
‘This painting has been set into the wall and can’t be moved. It was the prince’s favourite.’
The naked young man who was the central figure was handsome and sensitive-looking; there was something both tragic and tender about the scene. The position of the painting was well chosen. It was highly visible, and the gilded fiddle of the river sprite harmonized with the yellow silk wallpaper in the room.
The floor creaked under their feet as they passed through the rooms: the conservatory, with its marvellous view of the city and Stockholm’s estuary; the dark-green library, its shelves filled with art-history books, and its ostentatious fireplace.
Finally the museum director ushered them towards the dining room, where ‘The Dying Dandy’ had hung. The room was still cordoned off, so they had to make do with looking inside from the doorway. The dining room had light-green walls, an impressive crystal chandelier, and elegant Rococo furniture typical of the eighteenth century. One of the walls was noticeably bare. The frame had been removed to be examined by the police technicians.
‘Yes, well,’ sighed Sommer, ‘that’s where it was.’
‘Isn’t the painting quite large?’ asked Jacobsson.
‘Yes, it is. Almost six feet wide and four feet tall.’
‘So he must have stood on something to be able to cut it out of the frame.’
‘Yes, that’s right. We found one of those ultra-light aluminium ladders in the room. He didn’t bother to take it with him.’
‘And the sculpture? Where did you find it?’
‘Right in front, on that little table.’
‘Where is it now?’
‘The police have taken it.’
Jacobsson stared at the bare wall and then at the table in front. A triangular pattern was emerging. Egon Wallin — Muramaris — ‘The Dying Dandy’. At the moment it seemed impossible to figure out how everything fitted together. By stealing the sculpture from Wallin’s gallery and placing it here, the thief obviously wanted to tell them something. Was the thief who took the painting the same person who had killed Egon Wallin?
It suddenly seemed highly likely.
48
The theft at Waldemarsudde was of course the top story on all the TV news programmes, and Johan received much praise for his efforts at the morning meeting the following day. Regional News had been the first to report that the perpetrator had entered the museum and then made his escape across the ice. Of course, the other news editors at Swedish TV got their hands on some of Johan’s material and used it in their own reports. As soon as a reporter returned to television headquarters, he was supposed to share his material with everyone there. That way all of the reporters could make use of the interviews and pictures that were available. But Johan had begun to resist this way of operating. He didn’t want to run the risk of not being able to edit his own story just because he had to spend all his time providing material and information for everybody else. He also thought it was wrong that he and the cameraman, who worked hard to obtain unique images and exclusive interviews, should have to dole these out like free sweets to children and then see them be chopped into pieces for different broadcasts. That was no fun, nor did it do anything for his professional pride. Both he and the cameraman suffered. So he had started objecting to this procedure, and that in turn had provoked reactions from both management and his colleagues. It was certainly not a good strategy for anyone angling for a rise in salary, or who had ambitions about climbing the career ladder. On the other hand, he thought it might make it easier for him to be transferred to Gotland, if a permanent position was ever established on the island. Then the Stockholm office would be rid of a difficult reporter.
Even though he was now back in Stockholm, he couldn’t help wondering what was happening with the murder investigation on Gotland. When the morning meeting was over, he spent a few hours trying to get information. He tried ringing both Knutas and Jacobsson, but without any luck. Pia Lilja was at home in bed with the flu, so she had nothing useful to tell him. Finally he had to settle for talking to Lars Norrby. Johan asked him if anything new had happened in the investigation.
‘Well, nothing that I can really discuss at the moment.’
‘But there must be something you can tell me. We have to keep the viewers interested in the story, and that’s to your benefit too. So that anyone who happens to have information will contact the police.’
‘Don’t try any of your tricks on me. I’ve been in this job too long.’
Johan could hear that Norrby was smiling. He was still in the good graces of Visby’s police force after the drama of the previous year, so he decided to keep trying to get more information. After making various attempts to prise something out of the police spokesman for a good fifteen minutes, he finally had the man where he wanted him. When Johan asked if Jacobsson was away, since he hadn’t been able to get hold of her on the phone, Norrby replied that she’d gone to Stockholm on police business.