The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared (6 page)

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 hand, 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.’ 

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.’

Superintendent Krook replied by turning off the ceiling light and slamming the door. The next morning, the first thing he did was phone ‘that loony bin’ in Uppsala to tell them to come and get Allan Karlsson.

But Bernhard Lundborg’s colleagues turned a deaf ear. Karlsson’s treatment was complete, and now they had others to castrate and analyse. If only the police superintendent knew how many people the nation must be saved from: Jews and gypsies and Negroes and imbeciles and others. The fact that Mr Karlsson had blown his own house to bits did not qualify him for a new journey to Uppsala. Aren’t you allowed to do what you want with your own house? We live in a free country, don’t we?

Police Superintendent Krook hung up. He could make no headway with these big city types. He regretted that he had not let Karlsson bike away the previous evening.

And that is why Allan Karlsson, after a morning of
negotiations
, was back on his bicycle with the trailer in tow. This time he had food for three days in neat packets, and double blankets to keep him warm if the weather turned cool. He waved goodbye to Superintendent Krook, who didn’t wave back, and then turned north, because that direction seemed to Allan to be as good as any.

By afternoon, the road had taken him to Hälleforsnäs, and that was far enough for one day. Allan stopped beside a grassy slope, spread out a blanket and opened one of his food packets. While he chewed away at a slice of syrupy bread with salami, he studied the industrial premises that he’d happened to choose for 
his picnic site. Outside the factory was a heap of cannon pipes from the foundry. Perhaps the people who made cannons could use someone to make sure that they went off when they were meant to go off. There was no point in biking as far away from Yxhult as possible. Hälleforsnäs would do as well as anywhere else. If there was work to be had, that is.

Allan’s assumption that the presence of cannon pipes might mean work for him was perhaps a little naive. Nevertheless it turned out to be exactly right. After a short talk with the director, during which Allan omitted details of certain recent life events, he secured employment as an ignition specialist.

‘I am going to like it here,’ thought Allan.

The manufacture of cannons was at a low point at the foundry in Hälleforsnäs, and the orders continued to decline. The minister of defence, in the aftermath of the First World War, had reduced the funds available to the military, while King Gustaf V sat in the palace gnashing his teeth. The defence minister, a man with an analytic bent, realised with hindsight that Sweden should have been better armed when the war broke out, but that didn’t mean that there was any point in arming now, ten years later.

The consequences for the Hälleforsnäs foundry were that production was switched to more peaceful products, and the workers lost their jobs.

But not Allan – ignition specialists being hard to come by. The factory owner had hardly believed his ears and eyes when Allan appeared one day and turned out to be an expert on explosives of every type. Up until then, he had been forced to rely entirely upon the ignition specialist he had, and that was not a good thing, because the man was a foreigner, could hardly speak Swedish, and had black hair all over his body. He also doubted whether the man was reliable. But the owner had not had much choice.

Allan, on the other hand, did not think of people in terms of their colour. He had always found Professor Lundborg’s ideas strange. But this man sounded as if he was black and Allan was curious to meet his first black man. It was with longing that he read the advertisements in the paper announcing that Josephine Baker was to appear in Stockholm, but he had to settle for Estebán, his white but dark skinned, Spanish ignition specialist colleague.

Allan and Estebán got along well, and shared a room in the workers’ barracks next to the foundry. Estebán told Allan his dramatic story. He had met a girl at a party in Madrid and secretly embarked upon a fairly innocent relationship with her, without realising that she was the daughter of the prime minister, Miguel Primo de Rivera. De Rivera was not a man you argued with. He governed the country as he wished, with the King trailing helplessly along behind him. ‘Prime minister’ was a polite word for ‘dictator’, in Estebán’s opinion. But his daughter was a knockout.

Estebán’s proletarian background had not in any way
appealed
to his potential father-in-law. So in his first, and only, meeting with Primo de Rivera, Estebán was informed that he had two alternatives. One was to disappear as far away from Spanish territory as possible, the other was to receive a bullet through his neck on the spot.

While Primo de Rivero cocked his rifle, Estebán said that he had at that moment decided in favour of the first alternative, and backed rapidly out of the room without so much as a glance in the direction of the sobbing girl.

As far away as possible, thought Estebán, and went north, and then even further north and finally so far north that the lakes froze to ice in the winter. He had been in Sweden ever since. He had got the job at the foundry three years earlier with some interpreting help from a Catholic priest and, may God
forgive him, a made-up story about having worked with
explosives
back at home in Spain, when in actual fact he had mainly picked tomatoes.

Gradually, Estebán had managed to learn workable Swedish and had become a fairly competent ignition specialist. And now, with Allan at his side, he became a real professional.

Allan felt at home in the workers’ barracks. After a year, he could make himself understood in the Spanish that Estebán taught him. After two years, his Spanish was virtually fluent. But it took three years before Estebán gave up his attempts to impose his Spanish variety of international socialism on Allan. He tried everything, but Allan was not susceptible. Estebán could not understand that particular facet of his best friend’s personality. It wasn’t that Allan took an opposite view of the ways of the world and argued accordingly. No, he simply had no opinion whatsoever.

Allan had the same problem. Estebán was a good friend. It wasn’t his fault that he had been poisoned by those damned politics. He certainly wasn’t the only one.

The seasons came and went for some time before Allan’s life took a new turn. It started when Estebán received the news that Primo de Rivera had resigned and fled the country. Now, proper democracy was just round the corner, perhaps even socialism, and Estebán didn’t want to miss that.

So he planned to go home as soon as possible. The foundry was getting fewer and fewer orders because Señor Defence Minister had decided that there wouldn’t be any more wars. Estebán was sure that both ignition specialists would be fired any day. What did his friend Allan have in mind for the future? Did he want to come along to Spain?

Allan thought about it. On the one hand, he wasn’t interested in any revolution, Spanish or otherwise. It would probably only lead to a new revolution, in the opposite direction. On the other
hand, Spain was actually abroad, just like every other country except Sweden, and after having read about countries abroad all his life perhaps it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to experience them for real. On the way, they might even meet up with a black man or two.

When Estebán promised that they would meet at least one black man on the way to Spain, Allan had to say yes. The two friends then discussed more practical matters. In doing so they came to the conclusion that the owner of the foundry was a ‘stupid bastard’ (that was exactly how they put it) and did not deserve their consideration. They decided to wait for that week’s wages and then discreetly disappear.

So it was that Allan and Estebán got up at five in the morning the following Sunday to depart by bicycle with trailer attached in a southerly direction, leading – eventually – to Spain. On the way, Estebán planned to stop outside the foundry owner’s residence to deliver a complete sample – liquid and solid – of the results of his morning visit to the lavatory in a jug with milk that was placed early every morning at the factory owner’s gate. Estebán had been forced to put up for a long time with being called ‘the ape’ by the factory owner and his two teenage sons.

‘Revenge is not a good thing,’ Allan warned him. ‘Revenge is like politics, one thing always leads to another until bad has become worse, and worse has become worst.’

But Estebán insisted. Just because you had slightly hairy arms and didn’t speak the foundry owner’s language that didn’t make you an ape, did it?

Allan had to agree, so the two friends arrived at a reasonable compromise. Estebán would limit himself to pissing into the milk.

That same morning witnesses had sneaked to the
foundry-owner
that Allan and Estebán had been seen on bikes with trailers on the way towards Katrineholm, or perhaps even
further south, so the foundry owner was prepared for the coming week’s immediate decrease in staff. He sat brooding on the veranda of his lavish foundry owner’s villa while he sipped the glass of milk that Sigrid had kindly served him, together with an almond biscuit. The foundry owner’s mood darkened because there seemed to be something wrong with the biscuits. They had a distinct taste of ammonia.

The foundry owner decided to wait until after church to tell Sigrid off. For the time being, he would drink another glass of milk, hoping to remove the unpleasant taste in his mouth.

So it was that Allan found himself in Spain. It took them three months to make their way down through Europe, and on the way he got to meet more black men than he ever dreamed of. But after the first one, he lost interest. It turned out that there was no difference other than the colour of their skin, except of course that they spoke weird languages, but the whites did that too, from southern Sweden onwards. Professor Lundborg must have been frightened by a black man when he was a child, thought Allan.

Allan and his friend Estebán came to a land in chaos. The King had fled to Rome and been replaced by a republic. The Left called for
revolución
, while the Right was terrified by what had gone on in Stalin’s Russia. Would the same thing happen here?

For a moment Estebán forgot that his friend was incorrigibly apolitical and tried to drag Allan in the direction of revolution. But Allan stuck to his habit of not getting involved. It seemed all too familiar, and Allan was still unable to understand why everything always had to become the exact opposite of what it was.

An unsuccessful military coup from the Right was followed by a general strike from the Left. Then there was a general election. The Left won, and the Right got grumpy, or was it the other way around? Allan wasn’t really sure. In the end, there was war.

Allan was in a foreign country and had no better idea than to follow half a step behind his friend Estebán, who joined the army and was immediately promoted to sergeant when his platoon leader realised that Estebán knew how to blow things up.

Allan’s friend wore his uniform with pride and looked forward to his first contribution to the war. The platoon was ordered to blow up a couple of bridges in a valley in Aragon, and Estebán’s group was told to deal with the first bridge. Estebán was so exalted by the trust placed in him that he got up onto a rock, grabbed his rifle in his left hand, raised it in the air and shouted:

‘Death to fascism, death to all…’

He didn’t manage to finish the sentence before half of his head and one shoulder were shot away by what might possibly have been one of the first enemy mortars fired in the war. Allan was about twenty metres away when it happened, and thus avoided being dirtied by the parts of his comrade that were spread around the rock that Estebán had been stupid enough to stand on. One of the soldiers in Estebán’s group started to cry. For his part, Allan looked around at what was left of his friend and decided that it wasn’t worth picking up the bits.

‘You should have stayed in Hälleforsnäs,’ said Allan and suddenly felt a sincere longing to be chopping wood outside his little house in Yxhult.

The mortar that killed Estebán may well have been the first in the war, but it certainly wasn’t the last. Allan considered going home, but suddenly the war was all around him. Besides, it was one hell of a long walk back to Sweden, and nobody was waiting for him.