The Spider-Man of Paris

Paris, the night of 19-20 May 2010. Vjeran Tomic — a career thief and climber the French press would soon call the Spider-Man of Paris — works for an hour on a window of the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Loose bolts on a removable iron grille. He climbs in. He has come for one painting: a Léger he had identified on previous visits as a paying tourist. He plans to be inside for under five minutes.

He smashes a glass case to take the Léger. Nothing happens. No alarm. No movement of guards. No response of any kind. The motion-detection system, the inquiry would later establish, had been broken for eight weeks. The contractor responsible had filed three written reports identifying the fault. The reports had been received and filed. The repairs had been authorised. The repairs had not been carried out.

Tomic stands in the silent gallery. He moves, room to room. Picasso, "Le Pigeon aux petits pois". Matisse, "La Pastorale". Modigliani, "La Femme à l'éventail". Braque, "L'Olivier près de l'Estaque". He cuts each canvas from its frame. He rolls them. He climbs back out. Total time inside: between five and ten minutes. Total estimated value: a hundred million euros.

Not one of the five paintings has ever been recovered. Tomic was convicted in 2017. He was a competent climber, not a supernatural one. The paintings left the Musée d'Art Moderne not because of his brilliance, but because of an unread email.

Maren and Ellis on the night that Paris lost five masterpieces because somebody had not followed up on a contractor's report.