In Chap­ter 30 of “The Art Thief,” the nar­ra­tive cen­ters around Bre­itwieser, who finds him­self in a new, grim prison in Switzer­land. He is escort­ed to an inter­view room where he meets Alexan­dre Von der Müh­ll, the art-crime detec­tive who has pur­sued him for six years. Unlike pre­vi­ous encoun­ters with law enforce­ment, Bre­itwieser feels an unusu­al rap­port with Von der Müh­ll, who, rather than intim­i­dat­ing him, uses psy­cho­log­i­cal tac­tics and flat­tery to gain his trust. As they con­verse in French—transitioning to a more infor­mal dynamic—Von der Müh­ll encour­ages Bre­itwieser to con­fess to his crimes, sug­gest­ing that it may lead to a lighter sen­tence.

Over the course of near­ly a month, they meet for hours dai­ly, dis­cussing an exten­sive range of thefts across Europe. Von der Müh­ll pro­vides Bre­itwieser with art-relat­ed mate­ri­als dur­ing their ses­sions and occa­sion­al­ly dri­ves him around, facil­i­tat­ing a sense of cama­raderie that dis­arms the thief. How­ev­er, Bre­itwieser is care­ful to dimin­ish the role of his accom­plices, includ­ing Anne-Cather­ine and his moth­er, in the thefts, repeat­ed­ly insist­ing that he alone is respon­si­ble.

Despite Von der Mühll’s aware­ness of their par­tic­i­pa­tion through sur­veil­lance evi­dence, he allows Bre­itwieser to main­tain this nar­ra­tive to keep him coop­er­a­tive. As their dis­cus­sions evolve, the detec­tive care­ful­ly nav­i­gates around the top­ic of paintings—Breitwieser’s prin­ci­pal area of theft—until he is inclined to bring it up direct­ly. When pressed, Bre­itwieser reluc­tant­ly reveals that he has stolen six­ty-nine Renais­sance paint­ings.

This admis­sion marks a sig­nif­i­cant turn­ing point in their dis­cus­sions, as the detec­tive per­ceives the poten­tial mag­ni­tude of the art crime. The urgency is clear; the more time the paint­ings remain hid­den, the more their con­di­tion dete­ri­o­rates. Bre­itwieser, how­ev­er, express­es con­fu­sion about their where­abouts, lead­ing to the rev­e­la­tion that he believed they were in the attic, but now has no idea where they might be after the police search.

To aid in recov­er­ing the stolen works, Von der Müh­ll seeks per­mis­sion for Breitwieser’s moth­er to vis­it Switzer­land with immu­ni­ty from pros­e­cu­tion. Dur­ing their meet­ing, despite the detec­tive’s inquiry about the paint­ings, she adamant­ly denies knowl­edge of them, leav­ing Bre­itwieser bewil­dered as she implores him to deny their exis­tence. This moment under­scores the ten­sion and secre­cy sur­round­ing the art theft, set­ting the stage for fur­ther intrigue as the inves­ti­ga­tion unfolds .