Benny didn’t think it was part of his job to argue with his employers, so he did as he was told. His chef’s hat ended up in the rubbish, and the chocolate milk went in the boot. But Julius wanted to keep the suitcase on the back seat with him. Allan had to sit in the front where he could stretch out his legs properly.
So the only hot-dog-stand manager in Åker went and sat in the driver’s seat of what a few minutes earlier had been his own Mercedes, now honourably sold to the two gentlemen in Benny’s company.
‘And where do you two gentlemen want to go?’ asked Benny.
‘What about north?’ said Julius.
‘Yes, that would be fine,’ said Allan. ‘Or south.’
‘Then we’ll say south,’ said Julius.
‘South it is,’ said Benny.
Ten minutes later, Chief Inspector Aronsson arrived at Åker. By following the railway tracks, he discovered an old inspection trolley behind the factory.
But the trolley provided no obvious clues. The workers in the yard were busy loading cylinders of some type into containers. None of them had seen the trolley arrive. But just after lunch they had seen two elderly men walking along the road, one of them dragging a large suitcase. They were headed in the direction of the service station and the hot-dog stand.
Aronsson asked if there were really only two men, not three. But the workers hadn’t seen a third person.
Driving to the service station and the hot-dog stand, Aronsson considered this new information. But it was harder than ever to make sense of it all.
First, he stopped at the hot-dog stand. He was getting hungry, so it was perfect timing. But it was closed. It had to be tough to run a hot-dog stand out in this wilderness, Aronsson thought, and continued on to the service station. There, they had seen nothing and heard nothing. But at least they could sell Aronsson a hot dog, even though it tasted of petrol.
After his quick lunch, Aronsson went to the supermarket, the flower shop and the estate agent. And he stopped and spoke to any natives who had ventured out with dogs, prams or a husband or wife. But nobody had seen two or three men with a suitcase. The trail simply came to an end somewhere between the foundry and the service station. Chief Inspector Aronsson decided to return to Malmköping. At least he had a pair of slippers that required identification.
Aronsson phoned the county police chief from his car and updated him. The county police chief was grateful because he was giving a press conference at the Plevna Hotel at two o’clock and so far he had had nothing to say.
The police chief had something of a theatrical bent; he was not inclined to understatement. And now Chief Inspector Aronsson had given him just what he needed for today’s show.
So the police chief pulled out all the stops during the press conference, before Aronsson had time to get back to Malmköping to stop him (which he wouldn’t have succeeded in doing anyway). The police chief announced that the police had to assume that Allan Karlsson’s disappearance had developed into a kidnapping, just as the local newspaper’s website had suggested the previous day. The police now had information that Karlsson was alive but in the hands of people from the underworld.
There were of course a lot of questions, but the police chief skilfully avoided them. What he could tell the press was that Karlsson and his presumed kidnappers had been seen in the little village of Åker as recently as around lunchtime that very day. And he urged the police authority’s best friend – the General Public – to keep their eyes open.
To the disappointment of the police chief, the TV team hadn’t stayed around for his dramatic announcement. They would surely have been hooked if that sluggard Aronsson had managed to dig out the kidnapping story a little earlier. But at least the national tabloid was there, as were the local paper and a reporter from the local radio. And at the back of the hotel dining room stood another man whom the police chief didn’t recognise. Was he from the national news agency?
Bucket wasn’t from a news agency. But he was becoming convinced that Bolt had skipped town with all the dough — in which case he was now as good as dead.
When Chief Inspector Aronsson arrived at the Plevna Hotel, the press had dispersed. On his way, Aronsson had stopped off at the Old People’s Home and they had confirmed that the slippers did indeed belong to Allan Karlsson. (Director Alice sniffed at them and nodded with a disgusted look on her face.)
Aronsson had the misfortune to stumble upon the county police chief in the hotel lobby. The chief told him about the press conference and ordered him to solve the crime, preferably in such a way that it didn’t contradict what the police chief had said to the press.
Then the police chief went on his way. He had a lot of work to do. It was, for example, high time to appoint a prosecutor to the case.
Aronsson sat down with a cup of coffee to reflect on the latest developments. He decided to focus on the relationship between the three trolley passengers. If the farmer had been wrong about Karlsson and Jonsson’s relationship to the trolley’s third passenger, then it might be a hostage drama. The police chief had just said as much at his press conference, but since he was rarely right, that might be a black mark against the kidnapping theory. Besides, witnesses had seen Karlsson and Jonsson walking around in Åker – with a suitcase. So the question was, had the two old men, Karlsson and Jonsson, somehow managed to overpower the young and strong Never Again member and throw him into a ditch?
An incredible but not impossible idea. Aronsson decided to call in the Eskilstuna police dog again. The dog and her handler would need to take a long walk all the way from the farmer’s fields to the foundry in Åker. Somewhere in between, the Never Again member had disappeared.
Karlsson and Jonsson themselves managed to disappear into thin air somewhere between the back of the foundry and the service station – a distance of 200 metres. They disappeared from the face of the earth without anyone noticing. The only thing along the route was a closed hot-dog stand.
Aronsson’s mobile rang. The police had received a new tip. This time the centenarian had been seen in Mjölby, probably kidnapped by the middle-aged man with the pony tail who sat behind the wheel of a silver Mercedes.
‘Should we check it out?’ his colleague asked.
‘No,’ said Aronsson, sighing.
Years of experience had taught Aronsson to distinguish between good and bad tips. That was a consolation when most things were clouded in mist.
Benny stopped in Mjölby to get petrol. Julius carefully opened the suitcase and pulled out a 500-crown note to pay with.
Then Julius said he wanted to stretch his legs a little, and asked Allan to stay in the car and guard the suitcase. Allan was tired after the day’s hardships, and promised not to move an inch.
Benny came back first, and got behind the wheel. Shortly after, Julius returned. The Mercedes continued its journey south.
After a while, Julius started to rustle with something in the back seat. He held out an opened bag of sweets to Allan and Benny.
‘Just look what I found in my pocket,’ he said.
Allan raised his eyebrows:
‘You stole a bag of sweets, when we’ve got fifty million in the suitcase?’
‘You’ve got fifty million in the suitcase?’ asked Benny.
‘Oops,’ said Allan.
‘Not quite,’ said Julius. ‘We gave you a hundred thousand.’
‘Plus five hundred for the petrol,’ said Allan.
Benny was silent for a few seconds.
‘So you’ve got forty-nine million, eight hundred and ninety-nine thousand, five hundred crowns in the suitcase?’
‘You have a head for numbers, said Allan.
Silence reigned until Julius said that it might be better to explain everything to the private chauffeur. If Benny then wanted to break their contract, that would be quite all right.
The part of the story that Benny found hardest to stomach was that a person had been put to death and subsequently packed for export. But on the other h
and, it had clearly been an accident, even though vodka was involved. For his part, Benny never touched the hard stuff.
The newly employed chauffeur thought it through and decided that the fifty million had most certainly been in the wrong hands from the very beginning, and that the money might be of more use to humanity now. Besides, it seemed wrong to resign on the very first day of a new job.
So Benny promised to stay on and wondered what the two old men were planning next. Until then, he hadn’t wanted to ask; in Benny’s opinion, curiosity was not a desirable quality in private chauffeurs, but now he had become a bit of a conspirator.
Allan and Julius admitted that they didn’t actually have any plan at all. Maybe they could follow the road until it started to get dark, and then spend the night somewhere where they could discuss the matter in more detail.
‘Fifty million,’ said Benny and smiled, while he put the Mercedes into first gear.
‘Forty-nine million, eight hundred and ninety-nine thousand, five hundred crowns,’ Allan corrected him.
Then Julius had to promise to stop stealing things for the sake of stealing. Julius said that it wouldn’t be easy, he had it in his blood and wasn’t suited to anything else. But he did promise, and one thing Julius knew about himself was that he rarely failed to keep his promises.
The journey continued in silence. Allan soon fell asleep. Julius ate another sweet. And Benny hummed a song whose name he didn’t remember.
A tabloid journalist who senses a story is not easy to stop. It didn’t take long for the reporters to form a much clearer picture of the true course of events than the one the county police chief had presented at the afternoon’s press conference. With a little digging around, The Express was the first to get hold of ticket seller Ronny Hulth, visit him at his home and – upon promising to find a live-in partner for Ronny Hulth’s lonely cat – manage to persuade him to follow the reporter to a hotel in Eskilstuna for the night – out of reach of the rival paper. At first, Hulth had been afraid to talk, as he remembered only too well what the young man had threatened him with. But the reporter promised that Hulth could remain anonymous and assured him that nothing would happen to him now that the police were involved in the case.
But The Express did not make do with Hulth. The bus driver, too, had been caught in the net, as had the villagers in Byringe, the farmer in Vidkärr and various people in the Åker village. All in all, this offered fodder for several dramatic articles the next day. They were of course full of incorrect assumptions, but considering the circumstances the reporter had done well.
The silver Mercedes drove on. Eventually, Julius too fell asleep. Allan was snoring in the front seat, Julius in the back with the suitcase as an uncomfortable pillow. Meanwhile Benny charted their course as best he could. Eventually Benny decided to leave the main road, continuing south, deep into the Småland forests. Here he was hoping to find suitable lodging for the night.
Allan woke up and wondered whether it wouldn’t soon be time to go to bed. That conversation woke up Julius, who looked around, seeing forest everywhere, and asked where they were.
Benny told them that they were now about twenty or thirty kilometres north of Växjö and that he had been thinking while the gentlemen slept. What he had concluded was that for reasons of security it would be best to find a discreet place to stay the night. They didn’t know who was chasing them, but if you stole a suitcase with fifty million, you should not expect to be left in peace. So Benny had turned off the road that led to Växjö, and headed towards a much humbler place called Rottne. Perhaps there might be a small hotel there where they could spend the night.
‘Smart,’ said Julius appreciatively. ‘But perhaps not smart enough.’
Julius explained what he meant. In Rottne there might be, at best, a little shabby hotel that nobody ever found their way to. If three gentlemen without a reservation suddenly turned up one evening it would attract considerable attention from the villagers. Better, in that case, to find a farm or a house somewhere in the forest and bribe their way into a room for the night and something to eat.
Benny found Julius’ reasoning wise, and so he turned down the first insignificant gravel road he saw.
It had just started to get dark when after almost four winding kilometres the three men saw a mailbox at the side of the road. On the mailbox it said: Lake Farm, and next to it was an even narrower track which they presumed would lead to it. And that turned out to be correct. A hundred metres further on they came across a house. It was a proper red two-storey farmhouse with white window frames and a barn. Further along beside a lake there was something that had once been a tool shed.
The place seemed to be inhabited and Benny brought the Mercedes to a halt just in front of the entrance to the farm house. Then, out through the front door came a woman in her early forties, with frizzy red hair, wearing an even redder track suit, and with an Alsatian at her heel.
The three men got out of the Mercedes. Julius glanced at the dog, but it didn’t look as if it would attack them. In fact, it gave the guests a curious, almost friendly look.
So Julius dared to take his eyes off it. He said a polite ‘Good evening’ and explained their quest for a place to sleep and perhaps a bite to eat.
The woman looked at the motley crew in front of her: an old man, a less old man, and a… rather stylish guy, she had to admit. And the right age too. And with a pony tail! She smiled to herself and Julius thought they were set, but then she said:
‘This is not a bloody hotel.’
Allan sighed. He really was longing for something to eat and a bed. Life was exhausting now that he had decided to live a little longer. Say what you like about the Old People’s Home, at least it didn’t give him aches and pains all over his body.
Julius looked disappointed too and said that he and his friends were lost and tired, and that they were naturally prepared to pay their way if only they could stay there the night. If absolutely necessary they could skip the food bit.
‘We’ll pay a hundred thousand crowns per person if you give us somewhere to sleep,’ Julius offered.
‘A hundred thousand crowns?’ said the woman. ‘Are you on the run?’
Julius brushed her rather perceptive question aside and explained again that they had come a long way, and that although he could probably keep going, Allan here was advanced in years.
‘Yesterday was my hundredth birthday,’ said Allan in a pathetic voice.
‘One hundred?’ said the woman, almost frightened. ‘Well, I’ll be damned!’
And then she was silent for a moment.
‘What the hell,’ she finally said. ‘I suppose you can stay. But forget the hundred thousand crowns. Like I said, this is not a bloody hotel I’m running here.’
Benny gave her an admiring look. He had never heard a woman swear so much in such a short time. He thought it sounded delightful.
‘My beauty,’ he said. ‘May I pet your dog?’
‘Beauty?’ said the woman. ‘Are you blind? But sure, pet away. Buster is friendly. You can each have a room upstairs, there’s plenty of room here. The sheets are clean, but watch out for the rat poison on the floor. Dinner will be on the table in an hour.’
The woman headed past the three guests towards the barn, with Buster faithfully at her side. Benny enquired in passing what her name might be. Without turning she said it was Gunilla but that she thought ‘Beauty’ sounded fine so ‘just bloody well keep to that’. Benny promised.
‘I think I’m in love,’ said Benny.
‘I know I’m tired,’ said Allan.
At that very moment, they heard a bellowing from the barn that made even the exhausted Allan stand up straight. It must have come from a very large and possibly pained animal.
‘Cool it, Sonya,’ said The Beauty. ‘I’m on my damn way.’
Chapter 7
1929–39
The little house in Yxhult was a mess. During the years Allan had been in Professor Lundborg’s care,
the tiles had blown off the roof and lay scattered on the ground, the outdoor toilet had fallen over, and one of the kitchen windows was flapping in the wind.
Allan peed in the open air, since there was no longer a lavatory in working order. Then he went in and sat in his dusty kitchen. He left the window open. He was hungry but resisted the urge to check the larder; it wouldn’t improve his mood, he was sure.
He was sure it wouldn’t improve his mood.
He had grown up here, but home had never felt as distant as it did at that moment. Was it time to cut his ties with the past and move on? Most definitely.
Allan got out several sticks of dynamite and set about a familiar task, before packing his bike trailer with the few valuables he owned. At dusk on 3rd June 1929, he took off. The dynamite exploded as it was meant to exactly thirty minutes later. The little house was blown to bits and the neighbour’s cow had another miscarriage.
An hour later, Allan was behind bars at the police station in Flen, eating dinner while being yelled at by Superintendent Krook. The Flen police had just acquired a police car and it hadn’t taken long to catch the man who had blown his own house to bits and pieces.
This time, the offence was more obvious.
‘Negligent destruction,’ said Superintendent Krook authoritatively.
‘Could you pass me the bread?’ Allan asked.
No, Superintendent Krook could not. He could, however, dress down his poor assistant who had weakly complied with the wishes of the delinquent when he had requested an evening meal. In the meantime, Allan finished his dinner and then let himself be taken to the cells.
‘You don’t happen to have today’s paper?’ Allan asked. ‘Something to read before bed, that is.’
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared Page 6