The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules

Petra hides the stolen paintings in a garbage bag in the hotel’s annex. During her lunch break, she buys prints of the Swedish king and the royal couple. Back at the annex, she carefully removes the paintings from their frames, staples the royal prints over the original canvases, and then puts them back. To make the expensive frames look less conspicuous, she rubs them with dirt. Petra then places the disguised paintings in a suitcase, leaves the hotel without being noticed, and takes the underground to her room. There, she hangs the two pictures over the sofa and is proud of her achievement.

Christina and Anna-Greta arrive at Hinseberg, and Martha is relieved to find that they’re enjoying prison more than the retirement home. Anna-Greta reveals that Gunnar, a man she met on the Helsinki ferry, visited her in remand prison. Martha warns her friends about Liza, explaining how Liza interrogated her, offered to find the missing paintings for a cut of the ransom, and then threatened to find them herself and cut Martha out entirely. Later, the night before Liza’s scheduled temporary release, she’s struck by a severe stomach illness. Martha caused the illness using Rake’s herbs, which she had hidden in her walker, and Liza’s release is consequently postponed.

Nurse Barbara’s relationship with Director Mattson has deepened, and she now keeps clothes at his home. Meanwhile, the residents at Diamond House have become agitated and are demanding more activities. Their usual red calming pills have been discontinued, and the replacements are too expensive. A 93-year-old resident named Dolores now constantly pushes a shopping trolley that she claims contains millions of kronor from her son. To further Mattson’s business ambitions, Barbara suggests firing the current staff and hiring cheaper immigrant labor. Mattson is thrilled with the idea, and she hopes that he considers her his business partner.

After six months in prison, the friends have yet to receive a temporary release, and Martha worries about the money they hid in the drainpipe at the Grand Hotel. Christina and Anna-Greta, however, are content with prison life. Christina enjoys screen printing, and Anna-Greta has become popular for her financial advice. Martha receives another cryptic poem from Brains, which hints at a new plan to steal money that has already been stolen from somewhere else, what she terms “the ultimate crime” (264). Their discussion is interrupted by news that Liza was granted a temporary release the day before and has not returned.

The chief barman at the Grand Hotel informs Petra that a curly-haired woman was asking about her. The woman is Liza, who has absconded from prison. Liza has sex with the barman, who allows her to stay overnight in the hotel’s annex and gives her Petra’s name. Liza then independently learns that Petra lives in the Frescati student residences and studies at the National Library. Having gathered these details, Liza now heads there to Petra’s room.

Liza breaks into Petra’s room and sees two large, ornately framed pictures of the Swedish royal family on the wall. While searching the room, she discovers postcards of the stolen Renoir and Monet paintings in the second drawer of the desk. As she starts to examine one of the heavy framed portraits, a group of students bursts into the room to surprise Petra for her birthday. Liza quickly fabricates a story about being Petra’s cousin and leaves. On the subway, she reflects on her search. The royal portraits had seemed suspiciously heavy, and the gilded frames were far too grand for the simple prints, making her suspect that there’s more to them than meets the eye.

Brains learns that he and Rake are being transferred to Asptuna, an open prison, and will not be fitted with electronic tags. The two men worry about where they’ll live after their release. Shortly after arriving at the new facility, Brains is startled to see another inmate he recognizes, Juro.

Juro approaches Brains and asks for his help disabling his electronic tag for a planned robbery. Brains, hoping to learn the details of the crime without participating, suggests that a security-van heist would be less risky than a bank. Juro responds that his plan would involve caltrops and machine guns. To gain his trust, Brains outlines a more sophisticated method involving either tampering with the van’s locks or staging a fake police checkpoint. Feigning poor health, Brains convinces Juro that he’s too old for another crime. Juro then confides that the loot will be stored in his mother-in-law’s wine cellar on Skandiavägen in Djursholm. Brains immediately writes a cryptic poem to Martha, relaying the plan.

On her first temporary release from prison, Martha is escorted by two officers. She convinces them to take her to the Grand Hotel by claiming that she lost a valuable bracelet there during her previous stay. The receptionist gives Martha a letter that was left for her. The letter is an anonymous ransom note demanding 100,000 kronor to be left in a stroller in exchange for the stolen paintings. Before her supervisors can see it, Martha chews and swallows the note.

Nurse Barbara is furious to learn that Martha and her friends are scheduled to return to Diamond House. Director Mattson, however, is pleased, seeing their notoriety as a great publicity opportunity that will justify raising the home’s fees. He tells Barbara that it’s her job to manage the pensioners. He also reveals that he’s getting a divorce and plans to expand his business by opening more retirement homes. He offers Barbara a top management position, and she accepts.

Martha, Christina, and Anna-Greta return to Diamond House and are surprised to find that the new manager, Katia, has improved conditions. To pay the 100,000-krona ransom for the paintings, Anna-Greta offers to use her savings. After she transfers the money online, the three friends go to the bank. However, the teller informs them that the account has insufficient funds. Anna-Greta becomes irate, shouting that she made the transfer herself. The teller suggests that a computer error is to blame, and a manager politely asks them to leave and return the following day.

Martha begins to suspect that Dolores’s shopping trolley contains their missing money. Dolores claims that the trolley is full of millions from her son, who works on the Finland ferries. The trolley is the correct brand, appears to have been repainted, and has a stain that looks like oil. That night, Martha finds Dolores’s door unlocked and slips inside using Brains’s cap with a built-in LED light. She takes the trolley, and in her own room, she discovers she it’s filled with 500-krona notes. Martha stuffs the cash into her duvet cover and pillowcases and then returns banknotes mixed with newspaper to the trolley, placing a thick layer of real notes on top beneath the blankets so that it looks unchanged. She silently places the trolley back by Dolores’s bed without being detected.