‘Well,’ said Salim. ‘We … kind of ran away yesterday. She spent the day looking for us. She even called the police.’
‘Salim!’ said Lionel. ‘Your mom must have been going crazy!’ Then he looked sorry. I guessed that he was remembering where Aunt Gloria was at the moment. ‘Look, you’re having a hard time. I’m not going to yell at you. Do what you want this morning. Just stay quiet, and don’t make Sandra mad at you. Deal?’
‘Deal,’ said Salim. ‘Thanks, Lionel.’
Lionel smiled at him. I was still worried. Was I reading his emotions correctly?
‘Hey, Lionel!’ said Salim. ‘One more thing. Were you here on Monday afternoon?’
‘Monday?’ asked Lionel. ‘Huh. Yeah, I was. I’ve been working extra shifts lately. Why?’
‘No reason,’ said Salim. ‘Don’t worry!’
Lionel shrugged and then went back to his seat. I saw him breathe out heavily as he sat down.
But I was very relieved that Lionel wasn’t paying attention to us any more. We were going to be left alone, and this was good because we had detective work to do, and we were finally in the right place to do it. We could go and see where the painting had hung, and see if it helped us work out how the thief might have taken it.
First, we were going to climb the Guggenheim ramp. We hadn’t been able to do this on Thursday, because it had been full of the maintenance crew, but now it was empty, so we could. I had been wanting to do this since I had first read about it. I was excited.
We started at the bottom, and began to climb up. The light falling from the black and white skylight at the top of the Guggenheim was calm and pale, and the strips of light that lit the ramps from the triangular light fixtures above (or below, depending on how you look at each level) were soft on the empty walls. That morning the lights on the second and third floors were still off, though, because no one had been back in to fix anything since the painting had been stolen.
I remembered that the lights were a very interesting thing about the Guggenheim. When it was first built, there were no lights in the plans. Frank Lloyd Wright thought that all light should be natural, and did not include lights in his original design, but after he died, they were added.
All the paint on the ramp walls was new, the brush strokes reaching the very edges of the bank of triangular light fixtures. I sniffed, and I could smell it, and also smell the ghost of the smoke in the air. It made my good feeling falter. I also saw where the police had been: the marks of their feet on the floor that had not been cleaned yet, and police tape stretched across the tower gallery from where In the Black Square had been stolen.
As I walked upwards, the sweep of the Guggenheim wrapped around me. Salim and Kat stopped on the third floor and hung over the edge, shoulders pressed against each other, whispering and pointing, but I carried on, all the way to the top, where I looked up at the big black and white skylight and saw the one shattered pane showing the real blue of the sky. Then I turned and walked down again. I looked at the shiny stone surface of the floor as I walked, and saw myself mirrored dimly in it: two Teds, one light and one shadow. I circled round, through six complete rotations, or 2,160 degrees, and then came down again onto the rotunda floor. I walked up and down three more times, and I felt calmer than I had been for days. My head was full of circles, and that helped me see something that I should have seen before.
I came up behind Salim and Kat.
‘I know what’s wrong with the way the painting went missing,’ I said to them.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Whichever Way You Look at It
They both jumped. I realized that I had made my voice too loud.
‘Look!’ I said, trying to be more quiet. I pointed down at the packing crates on the rotunda floor. ‘I should have noticed it as soon as we came in. They’ve been moved around since the day the painting was stolen, and opened, but there are still ten of them, just like there were on Thursday. None of them are missing.’
‘So?’ asked Kat, raising her eyebrows.
‘Which crate did the thief put the painting in?’ I asked. ‘We know that Effortless Light Removals took a crate out of the museum’s loading bay on Thursday morning. So we thought that the thief must have put the painting in one of these crates and taken it to the back entrance. We thought that was how the thief stole the painting. But we don’t know that. It’s just a theory. And I’ve realized that it’s wrong. I remember that there were ten crates when we first arrived on Thursday, and there are still ten this morning.’
‘Ted!’ said Kat. ‘Oh, my— you’re incredible!’
‘Wait,’ said Salim. ‘Yeah, but – what if the crate was already waiting in the loading bay? Maybe we’ve just been wrong about which crate the thief used? They might have just carried the painting through the museum and packed it up in a crate that was already there.’
‘Oh! That could be it,’ said Kat. ‘That would still work. Except – hold on. How long would that take? We’ve been saying that the people who came out earlier had less chance to steal the painting, but we don’t know yet exactly how long they’d need.’
‘The alarm went off at ten twenty-one a.m.,’ I said. ‘Sarah said that the van was booked for ten forty, but she also said that the driver arrived a bit earlier than he was meant to. This is anecdotal evidence, but it is believable because it was backed up by Billy. He said that it came at ten thirty-four, remember? That is thirteen minutes after the alarm went off. So the painting must have been in the loading bay by then.’
‘Wait, Ted!’ said Kat. She was flicking through her notebook. ‘Look at this! The van came at ten thirty-four. But the fire engine only came at ten thirty-two. If it takes more than two minutes to get from the tower gallery to the loading bay, then we’re totally right – there’s no way Hank could have stolen the painting, or any of the fire crew. Salim, how can we work out how long it takes to go from the second-floor tower gallery all the way to the loading bay?’
‘Er,’ said Salim, ‘you’d need a museum pass to get to the loading bay. Only staff and crew can go there. I sometimes borrow Mum’s pass, but I don’t have it now.’
‘Well, we’ve got a member of staff right here,’ said Kat. ‘Why don’t we ask him?’ She pointed down at Lionel.
‘Wait!’ I said. ‘What if Lionel is the thief? He will not want us re-enacting the crime.’
Salim frowned. ‘That’s true, Ted,’ he said. ‘Um – OK, we don’t have to tell him what we’re doing. I’ll say we’re playing a game, all right? He’ll believe me. He trusts me.’
I wasn’t sure, but I didn’t know what else to say to stop Salim. Kat and I leaned forward on the edge of the ramp and watched as Salim ran down to where Lionel was, and he and Lionel talked. Lionel shrugged and handed a flat card to Salim. Salim came running back up to us, beaming.
‘Easy!’ he said. ‘Lionel’s way too nice. We just have to get it back to him by his lunch break.’
‘Right!’ said Kat. ‘Let’s do this. Salim, go to the door of the second-floor gallery, where the painting was taken from. Ted and I will stay up here on the ramp so we can watch. Ted, when I say go, you start timing with that fancy watch of yours, and Salim, you walk from the gallery to the loading bay, then come back into the main space and go out of the main entrance. Remember that when you’re going to the loading bay you need to walk, not run, like you’re carrying a huge painting and it’s really smoky so you can’t see properly. Ready?’
Salim nodded. I nodded. I was excited. I was also glad that the cameras were still down, so Lionel couldn’t see exactly what we were doing from his position at the Guggenheim main door.
Salim ran down the ramp of the Guggenheim and then in through the doorway of the tower gallery, below us. Kat and I watched him get into position.
‘GO!’ shouted Kat. I pressed the timer button on my weather watch, and after thirty seconds Salim came walking out of the tower gallery again, his arms stretched out and his feet shuffling, like he was holding a big painting. Salim, I though
t, was a very good actor.
He shuffled carefully down the triangular stairs, and then opened a door and went hobbling through it. I looked at my weather watch. Five minutes and five seconds had passed.
Two minutes and thirty-two seconds later, Salim came back through the door, this time running instead of shuffling, and went out of the main entrance. I looked down at my weather watch.
‘Seven minutes and fifty seconds,’ I said to Kat.
Kat’s lips turned down.
‘Auntie Glo came out of the Guggenheim after seven minutes,’ she said. ‘That’s what you told us, Ted. And she was the last person out. Is there any other way the thief could have done it?’
I thought. ‘The ramp would take even longer,’ I said. ‘The distances are even further.’
‘But if even Auntie Glo didn’t have time to do it—’ said Kat.
‘Then the method we thought was used to steal the painting is impossible,’ I said.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Occam’s Razor
There is a theory called Occam’s Razor, which says that the simplest explanation is true. I have read about it in my encyclopaedia, but I had not connected it to this case until now. Taking the missing painting all the way to the back door of the Guggenheim, while the building was full of smoke, was not a very simple or easy thing to do. So what if they had done something else instead?
‘Could the thief have left an empty crate in the loading bay earlier that morning for the van to pick up, to make us and the police think that the painting was inside it?’ asked Salim. ‘And then – they might have hidden the painting somewhere else? It’s misdirection! Right, Ted?’
I nodded. Misdirection is something that Salim, as a practical joker, understands. So do I. It is what magicians use to make you look the wrong way when they are doing a trick. It is always something that is meant to catch your eye, like a bright red scarf or a white rabbit – or a removal van.
‘And that’s why there wasn’t just one removal van, but two!’ said Salim. ‘Effortless Light Removals, then Elephant Removals. I’ve been wondering about that. It didn’t make sense. But it does, if they’re meant to keep the police chasing the wrong lead for ages. Of course!’
Kat and Salim’s eyes were both wide, and Kat was jumping up and down on her toes.
‘The one thing we know for sure is that the painting is gone,’ I said. ‘So if the crate and the van weren’t used, there are … four possibilities for how the painting was taken out of the museum.’
I was thinking quickly. I was excited, because I was looking at the case in a new way. I counted my ideas off on my fingers on my left hand: thumb, index, middle, ring. I kept my right-hand fingers tucked into my right palm.
‘One, the painting was taken out from above, through the broken skylight and down the scaffolding. Two, it was hidden somewhere for a while, somewhere the police didn’t see it, then taken out of the back entrance, but later than we have been thinking – after the van left. Three, it was taken out of the front entrance, but we didn’t see it leave. Four, it spontaneously combusted.’
‘Te-ed!’ groaned Kat. She had taken out the notebook from her backpack and had been scribbling my thoughts into it as I spoke. ‘It isn’t four. Stop saying that! Come on! It’s got to be one of the other possibilities. If it was one, it must have been Gabriel the builder.’
‘Gabriel and someone from the museum,’ said Salim. ‘Because we still know that the thief took Mum’s credit card out of her purse to book the vans. Mum’s card was in her office, behind a secure door, and Gabriel doesn’t have a museum pass, so that means someone else would have needed to be involved. OK, so if it was one, it’s at least eight feet from the ramp to the skylight. If someone stood below it and held up the picture, then someone else could lean down and pull it through.’
Eight feet is 2.43 metres, or 243 centimetres. The painting was 97.5 centimetres by 93.3 centimetres. The shortest person working in the Guggenheim was Lana, who (using empirical evidence) I estimated to be 1.62 metres or five feet and four inches. If you add her height to In the Black Square’s, you make 259.5 centimetres, which is enough. Lionel was taller, five feet and nine inches or 1.75 metres. Both of these heights were definitely plausible, which means possible.
‘What if Gabriel is the answer?’ Kat asked. ‘What if the thief stole the painting, ran back up to the top of the ramp and passed it out to Gabriel? It could be! We have to go outside now and question him. This could be it!’
THIRTY-NINE
One
Kat went storming out of the main door. (Storming is a figure of speech that means walking quickly and angrily. I like it very much.)
‘Wait!’ said Lionel. ‘Where are you going? Give me back my pass!’
But Kat ignored him. She rushed past the policeman, who looked at us when we went by but didn’t try to stop us, to the bottom of the grid of scaffolding that covered the Guggenheim. I had not liked the scaffolding when I first saw it, but now I realized that I did like the way its metal poles were held together to make squares. It looked so solid, but it could be folded away into nothing but lines.
Then Kat began to wave her arms and jump up and down. ‘HEY!’ she yelled upwards. A very little stick figure stuck its head over the side of the fourth level of boxes. It was wearing a hard hat and an orange boiler suit.
‘WHAT?’ he shouted back down.
‘WE NEED TO TALK TO YOU, GABRIEL!’ Kat screamed, her earrings and her hair flying as she moved. Her fingers bunched up into her palms and then burst outwards, as though her hands were dancing. Salim took a picture of her, the corners of his mouth turning up as he put the camera to his eye. I thought I would like to see how Salim saw Kat at that moment.
‘WHAT DO YOU WANT WITH ME?’ yelled Gabriel, taking off his sunglasses.
‘COME DOWN AND WE’LL TELL YOU!’ said Salim.
This seemed to work. Gabriel came swinging down the scaffolding and landed on the ground, his big arms folded. He put his glasses up on his helmet and I saw that his cheek below his eye was stained with a bruise.
‘We want to ask you about Thursday,’ said Salim. ‘When the smoke alarm went off, you were late for the roll call and we want to know why.’
‘Why is it any of your business?’ asked Gabriel.
‘Because,’ said Salim. ‘Er—’
‘Because,’ said Kat firmly, ‘Salim’s mum’s been arrested for stealing that painting. We know she didn’t do it, because we know her, so we’re trying to find out who else might have taken it. And … you were outside the top of the Guggenheim, so you might have looked through the skylight and seen what was happening.’
Kat was being clever, I realized. She was not accusing Gabriel of stealing In the Black Square. She was behaving as though we only thought he might be a witness.
‘I didn’t see anything,’ said Gabriel. ‘Why would I? Kid, as soon as the alarm sounded I got off the scaffolding. Ask any of the tourists who were there.’
‘Yeah, but—’ said Kat. Then she spoke fast. ‘Yeah, but my brother saw you coming to join everyone outside the museum later. Where had you been?’
‘I’m not answering that,’ said Gabriel, very quickly. ‘No way. It’s got nothing to do with you.’
That was when Salim’s brain began to work properly again. ‘Please,’ he said suddenly. ‘I’ve got to know what happened. My mum’s going to be put in prison. Please help.’
Gabriel scowled. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I’ve got nothing to do with this. Yeah, I was late for the roll call, but it didn’t have anything to do with the robbery. Swear up and down.’
I imagined a swear word moving up and down. It was a strange thought.
‘Look. Just before the alarm went off, I got a call from my, uh, ex-friend. He heard that I, uh, had a new, uh, friend, and he was, uh, mad at me.’
Gabriel’s face had turned red, and he was looking away from us, down at the ground. This meant that he was embarrassed about what he was saying – or was he ly
ing? I couldn’t tell.
‘Anyway, like I said, he was mad, and he came here to argue with me. I climbed off the scaffolding to 88th Street to calm him down – and when I got back, everyone was outside the museum and Gloria was taking roll call.’
‘How do we know you’re telling the truth?’ asked Kat. This was a good question. Gabriel’s story definitely seemed shady to me.
‘This!’ said Gabriel. He pointed to the bruise on his face. ‘I got it during our talk. He hit me, all right? Now leave it!’ he said angrily. ‘That’s the truth. I wasn’t up on the scaffolding, so I didn’t see anything. And I was with – uh, my ex-friend until I came out to the roll call, so I couldn’t have stolen any painting. I’m going back to work now. And, look – don’t tell anyone else about this, all right?’
‘All right,’ said Kat at once.
Gabriel turned and swung himself back up onto the scaffolding.
I looked at Kat. She looked at me. She shook her head. I knew I was missing important information, but I also knew what Kat was telling me: that whatever the reason for Gabriel’s red face, his bruise meant that he had not stolen In the Black Square. It was an empirical fact. I remembered seeing him rubbing his face and yawning when he joined the roll call. I had thought he was tired, but now I realized that he was rubbing his face and moving his jaw because he had just been hit.
‘Kat, why are you so sure that Gabriel wasn’t lying?’ I asked.
‘Because of his story,’ said Kat. ‘He’s gay. All that stuff about friends? He meant boyfriends. It was his ex-boyfriend who came to argue with him. That’s why he looked strange. He was worried we’d judge him.’
I thought about this. One of Kat’s friends is a boy, and has a boyfriend. He is not embarrassed about it at all, because it is no different to a girl having a boyfriend (Kat explained this to me), but I knew that some adults haven’t been told this properly.
‘Boyfriends shouldn’t hit you!’ I said, concerned.