When Benny and Julius came out again – one with a newly purchased petrol can, the other with a newspaper under his arm and his mouth full of sweets – the Mustang was gone.
‘Didn’t I park the Mustang here?’ asked Julius.
‘Yes, you did,’ said Benny.
‘Do we have a problem now?’ asked Julius.
‘Yes, we do,’ said Benny.
And then they took the unstolen Passat back to Lake Farm.
The Mustang was black with two bright yellow stripes running the length of the roof. A really deluxe specimen that Bucket’s little brother and his buddies would get good money for. The theft had been just as accidental as it had been easy. Less than five minutes after the unplanned seizure, the car was safely tucked away in The Violence’s garage.
The next day, they changed the number plates before the little brother let one of his henchmen take the car to their business companions in Riga. Using false number plates and documents, the Latvians would arrange for a car to be sold as a private import back to somebody in The Violence, and magically a stolen car had now become a legal car.
But this time things didn’t go as planned, because the car from the Swedes started to stink while it stood in the garage in Ziepniekkalns in Riga’s southern suburbs. The garage boss looked for the cause and discovered a corpse under the back seat. He turned the air purple with his swearing, and ripped off all the number plates and anything else that could provide a clue as to where the car had come from. Then he started to dent and scratch the bodywork of the once fantastic specimen of a Mustang and didn’t stop until the car looked like a write-off. Next he went out and found a drunk and in exchange for four bottles of wine persuaded him to drive the wreck to the scrap yard for destruction — corpse and all.
The friends at Lake Farm were ready to depart. They were of course somewhat worried about the theft of the Mustang with the corpse, but then Allan pointed out that it was what it was, and that thereafter whatever will be will be. Besides, in Allan’s opinion, there was good reason to hope that the car thieves would never contact the police. Car thieves generally tended to keep a certain distance from the police.
It was now six o’clock in the evening, and they needed to be on their way before it got dark, because the moving bus was large and the roads for the first part of the journey were small and winding.
Sonya was standing in her stall on wheels. All tracks of the elephant had been carefully swept away from the farmyard and barn. The Passat and Benny’s old Mercedes were left behind, as they hadn’t been involved in anything illegal and besides what else could they do with them?
The bus started on its way. The Beauty had at first intended to drive herself, after all she knew perfectly well how to drive a bus. But then it transpired that Benny was an almost-truck-driver and had every possible category included in his driving licence, so it was best that he got behind the wheel. There was no reason to act more illegally than they had already.
When he reached the mailbox, Benny turned left. According to The Beauty, by snaking along gravel roads they would eventually reach Åby and then get to the main road. It would take just over half an hour to get there, so meanwhile they could discuss the not unimportant question of where they were actually going.
Four hours earlier, the Boss had been sitting impatiently and waiting for the only one of his henchmen who hadn’t yet disappeared. As soon as Caracas returned from his errand, whatever it was, he and the Boss would set off south — but not on their bikes and not in uniform. Now it was time to be careful.
The Boss had already started to doubt his previous strategy with the Never Again symbol on the club jackets. From the beginning, the point had been to create a feeling of identity and fellowship in the group, and to make outsiders respect them. But firstly, the group was much smaller than the Boss had once imagined. Keeping a quartet together consisting of Bolt, Bucket, Caracas and himself, he could manage without jackets. And the tinge of illegality in their activities meant that the club jacket as a signal became counterproductive. Bolt’s orders for the transaction in Malmköping had been somewhat contradictory in this respect: on the one hand he was to travel there discreetly by public transport and on the other hand he was to wear the club jacket with the Never Again symbol on the back to make sure the Russian knew who he was dealing with.
And now Bolt was on the run… or whatever it was that had happened. And on his back he had a sign which more or less said: ‘Any questions, phone the Boss.’
Damn it! thought the Boss. When this mess was over, he would burn all the jackets. But where the hell was Caracas? Their planned departure time was now!
Caracas turned up eight minutes later and explained the delay by the fact that he had been at 7-Eleven and bought a watermelon.
‘Thirst-quenching and tasty,’ Caracas explained.
‘Thirst-quenching and tasty? Half the organisation has disappeared together with fifty million crowns, and you go off to buy fruit?’
‘Not fruit, a vegetable,’ said Caracas. ‘In the same family as cucumbers, in fact.’
That did it for the Boss, who picked up the watermelon and split it open on Caracas’ head. Upon which Caracas started to cry and said that he didn’t want to be in the club any more. He had had nothing but shit from the Boss since first Bolt and then Bucket vanished, just as if it had been him, Caracas, who was behind it. No, the Boss would have to manage as best he could, Caracas was going to phone for a taxi, drive to the airport and fly all the way home to his family in… Caracas. Then at least he could get his real name back.
‘¡Vete a la mierda!’ Caracas howled, and rushed out of the door.
The Boss sighed. Everything was getting messier and messier. First Bolt had disappeared, and in retrospect the Boss had to admit that he should not have taken out his frustration on Bucket and Caracas. And then Bucket disappeared and the Boss in retrospect had to admit that he should not have taken out his frustration on Caracas. And then Caracas disappeared – to buy a watermelon. And the Boss now in retrospect had to admit that he… should never have whacked him over the head with the melon.
And now, he was all alone in his hunt for… Well, he didn’t even know what he was hunting. Would he find Bolt? But then had Bolt pinched the suitcase? Could he be so stupid? And what had happened to Bucket?
The Boss drove a car that reflected his standing in society, the latest BMW X5. And most of the time he drove it extremely fast. The police in the unmarked car shadowing him passed the time counting the number of traffic violations he committed during the journey from Stockholm down to Småland, and after 300 kilometres they agreed that the man behind the wheel in the BMW in front of them ought to be deprived of his driving licence for the next four hundred years if everything he had done so far on the journey went to court, which of course it never would do.
Be that as it may, the journey took them past Åseda where Chief Inspector Aronsson intercepted his Stockholm colleagues, thanked them for their help and informed them that he would take over the surveillance himself.
With the help of the GPS in the BMW, the Boss had no trouble getting all the way to Lake Farm. But the closer he came, the more impatient his driving. His already illegal speeds increased so much Chief Inspector Aronsson had trouble keeping up. He had to keep a certain distance so that Per-Gunnar ‘Boss’ Gerdin wouldn’t notice that he was being shadowed, but now Aronsson was beginning to lose sight of his quarry. It was only on the really long straight stretches that he could occasionally glimpse the BMW until… he couldn’t see it any more!
Where had Gerdin gone? He must surely have turned off somewhere, or…? Aronsson slowed down. He could feel the sweat breaking out on his forehead. This was definitely not what was supposed to happen.
There was a road off to the left, perhaps the BMW had gone that way. Or had it continued straight ahead and then gone to… Rottne, wasn’t that the name of the place? Unless Gerdin had turned off earlier?
That must be what happened. Aro
nsson turned around and then turned down the side road where he thought Gerdin must have gone.
The Boss stood on the brakes to slow down from 180 to 20 and quickly steered his way onto the gravel road indicated by the GPS. Now there were only 3.7 kilometres left to his destination.
Two hundred metres from the mailbox at Lake Farm the road made a final turn, and round the bend the Boss saw the rear end of a moving bus that had just manoeuvred its way out from the exit that the Boss was being directed towards. What should he do now? Who was in the bus? And was anyone still left at Lake Farm?
The Boss decided to let the bus go on its way. He turned down a winding track, which led him to a farmhouse, a barn and a lakeside shed that had seen better days.
But no Bucket. No Bolt. No oldie. No biddy with red hair. And absolutely no grey suitcase with wheels.
The Boss took another minute to inspect the place. It was obviously empty of people, but behind the barn two cars had been hidden: a red VW Passat and a silver-coloured Mercedes.
‘The right place, that’s for sure,’ said the Boss. But a few minutes too late.
And so he decided to catch up with the moving bus. That shouldn’t be too hard; it had a start of only three or four minutes on the winding gravel road.
The Boss pressed his foot down on the accelerator and disappeared in a cloud of dust. The fact that a blue Volvo was approaching from the direction in which he had originally come did not concern him one bit.
At first, Chief Inspector Aronsson was pleased to have regained visual contact with Gerdin, but considering Gerdin’s speed, the chief’s enthusiasm for the chase diminished. There was no way he would be able to keep up. Might it be better to go and have a look at the place? Gunilla Björklund was the name on the mailbox.
‘It wouldn’t surprise me if you’re a redhead, Gunilla,’ said Chief Inspector Aronsson.
So that is how Aronsson’s Volvo arrived in the same farmyard as Henrik ‘Bucket’ Hultén’s Ford Mustang had nine hours earlier, and that Per-Gunnar ‘Boss’ Gerdin’s BMW had a few minutes ago.
Chief Inspector Aronsson could see, just as the Boss had, that Lake Farm was abandoned. But he did devote a bit more time than the Boss had to searching for various pieces of the puzzle. He found one in the form of that day’s newspapers in the kitchen, and some fresh greens in the fridge. So they hadn’t broken camp until earlier that very same day. Another bit of the puzzle was of course the Mercedes and the Passat behind the barn. One of those told Aronsson a great deal, and he guessed that the other one belonged to Gunilla Björklund.
Two more clues were waiting to be discovered by Chief Inspector Aronsson. First, he found a revolver lying on the edge of the wooden floor of the farmhouse veranda. What was it doing there? And whose fingerprints were on it? Aronsson guessed Bucket Hultén, and he carefully slipped the revolver into a plastic bag.
The other discovery was in the mailbox when Aronsson was leaving. Among the day’s post there was an official letter from the Vehicle Licensing Authority which confirmed that a 1992 yellow Scania K113 had changed owners.
So you are driving around in a bus, the chief inspector said to himself.
The bus wound its way slowly through the forest. It didn’t take long for the BMW to catch up. But on the narrow road the Boss couldn’t do much more than just stay behind and fantasize about who was in the bus and whether they were transporting a grey suitcase with wheels.
Blissfully unaware of the danger only five metres behind them, the friends in the bus discussed the situation as it had developed and quickly concluded that things would certainly calm down if they could find somewhere to hide for a few weeks. That had been their intention at Lake Farm, of course, but that good idea had suddenly become terribly bad after they received the unexpected visitor and Sonya sat down on him.
The problem now was that Allan, Julius, Benny and The Beauty had one thing in common: an almost total absence of relatives and friends. How were they going to find someone who would shelter a yellow bus with four people, a dog and an elephant?
Allan explained his lack of relatives and friends by the fact that he was one hundred years old, and they had died from one cause or another and that anyway they would have been dead by now for reasons of age. Few people were lucky enough to survive everything, year after year.
Julius said that his speciality was enemies, not friends. He would like to deepen his friendship with Allan, Benny and The Beauty, but now wasn’t really the time or place.
The Beauty admitted that she had been extremely antisocial during the years following her divorce so for her too, there was nobody to contact and ask for help.
That left Benny. He had a brother, didn’t he? The angriest brother in the world.
Julius wondered whether they could bribe the brother, and then Benny’s face lit up. They did have millions in the suitcase! They might not be able to bribe him, because Bosse was more proud than greedy. But now they were getting into semantics. And Benny had the solution. He would tell his brother that he wanted to do the right thing after all these years.
Having worked that out, Benny phoned his brother and didn’t manage to do more than say who he was before he was informed that Bosse had a loaded shotgun and that his little brother was welcome to visit if he wanted a load of pellets up his bum.
Benny said that such a fate was not something he desired, but that he – together with some friends – planned to visit anyway, because he wished to settle their financial dealings. There was, you might say, a certain disagreement between the two brothers over Uncle Frasse’s money.
Bosse replied that his brother should stop expressing himself in such a bloody complicated way. And then he got straight to the point:
‘How much have you got with you?’
‘What about three million?’ asked Benny.
Bosse said nothing for a few moments. He was thinking the situation over. He knew his brother well enough to feel certain that Benny would never call and joke about something like that. My little brother is filthy rich! Three million! Absolutely fantastic! But… perhaps he even had more?
‘What about four million?’ Bosse tried.
But Benny had decided once and for all that he would never allow his big brother to steamroller him again, so he said:
‘We can of course stay at a hotel instead, if you think we are too much trouble.’
Bosse said that his little brother had never been any trouble. Benny and his friends were heartily welcome and if Benny wanted to settle the old differences with two million – or even three and a half if he felt like it – then that was just a plus.
Bosse gave Benny directions to his house; he thought it would take them a couple of hours to get there.
Everything seemed to be working out for the best. And now the road was going to be both wide and straight.
That was just what the Boss needed too, a wider and straighter road. For ten minutes, he had been stuck behind the bus while the BMW had been telling him that he hadn’t filled up with petrol since Stockholm, but when had he had time?
The nightmare he feared was running out of petrol there in the middle of the forest and not being able to do anything except just look on as the yellow bus disappeared in the distance, perhaps with Bolt and Bucket and the suitcase or whoever and whatever it happened to contain.
So the Boss acted with the energy and drive that he thought became a boss of a criminal club in Stockholm. He put his foot down on the accelerator, and in a second had passed the bus, continuing for another 150 metres before he put the BMW in a controlled skid and stopped, so his car now blocked the road. Then he pulled out his revolver and prepared to meet the vehicle he had just overtaken.
The Boss was of a more analytical bent than his now dead or emigrated assistants. The idea of using his car to block the road and force the bus to stop originated of course in the fact that he was about to run out of petrol. But the Boss had also made the completely correct assumption that the bus driver would choose to
stop. His conclusion was based on his belief that in general people do not deliberately ram other people on the roads, risking the lives and health of both.
And indeed, Benny stood on the brakes as soon as he saw the BMW. The Boss had been right – about that, anyway.
But in his calculations, he had failed to take into account the risk that the bus’s load might include an elephant weighing in at several tons. Had he done so, he would then have considered the effect this might have on the bus’s braking distance, not least bearing in mind that they were still on a gravel road.
Benny really did do his very best to avoid a collision, but his speed was still almost 50 kph when the fifteen-ton bus, elephant and all, torpedoed the car in its path, upon which the car was thrown up into the air and flung twenty metres landing hard against an eighty-year-old fir tree.
‘That was probably number three,’ Julius guessed.
All the two-legged passengers in the bus jumped out (easier for some than for others) to inspect the demolished BMW.
Hanging over the steering wheel, looking suspiciously dead, was a man the friends did not know, and he was still holding a revolver of exactly the same make as thug number two had threatened them with earlier that day.
‘They must have thought it would be third time lucky,’ said Julius. ‘They can think again.’
Benny lamely objected to Julius’ light tone. Surely it was enough to be killing one thug a day, but today they had already reached two and it wasn’t yet six in the evening. There was time for more if they were unlucky.
Allan proposed that they hide corpse number three somewhere because no good at all could come of being too closely associated with people you have done away with, unless you wanted to admit to people that you’d done away with them and Allan didn’t think that the friends had any reason to do that.
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared Page 14