The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared (30 page)

It takes time to get from Eskilstuna to Falköping. Prosecutor Conny Ranelid needed to get up at dawn (and after sleeping badly all night too) to get to Bellringer Farm by ten o’clock. And the meeting couldn’t run longer than one hour or his plan would be ruined. The press conference was supposed to start at three.

Conny Ranelid was close to tears as he drove down the road.
The Great Victory of Justice
, that was what his book would have been called. Hah! If there was any justice at all in this world, then lightning would strike that damned farm and everyone there would burn to death. Then Prosecutor Ranelid could say whatever he wanted to the journalists.

Chief Inspector Aronsson slept late. He woke up at nine, with a bit of a bad conscience about the events of the previous day. He had drunk champagne with the potential delinquents, and he had clearly heard Karlsson say that they would make up a story for Prosecutor Ranelid. Was he about to become an accomplice — accomplice to what, in that case?

When the chief inspector had reached his hotel the previous evening, he looked up John 8:7 in the Gideon Bible in his room. This had been followed by a couple of hours of bible reading in a corner of the hotel bar, in the company of a gin and tonic, followed by another gin and tonic followed by another gin and tonic.

The chapter in question was about the woman who committed adultery and whom the Pharisees had taken before Jesus to place him in a dilemma. If according to Jesus the woman should not be stoned for her crime, then Jesus was
rejecting Moses (the Book of Leviticus). If, on the other hand, Jesus was on the same side as Moses, then he would be battling with the Romans who had the monopoly on the death sentence. Would Jesus go against Moses or the Romans? The Pharisees thought that they had the Master cornered. But Jesus was Jesus and after thinking it over he said:

‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone!’

Jesus had thus avoided arguing with Moses
and
with the Romans, or for that matter with the Pharisees. The Pharisees went off, one by one (men, in general, are of course not in the slightest bit free of sin). Finally, only Jesus and the woman remained.

‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’

‘No one,’ she answered.

‘Then neither do I condemn you,’ Jesus declared. ‘Go now and sin no more.’

The chief inspector still had his policeman’s sense of smell intact and he was sure he could smell a rat. But Karlsson and Jonsson and Ljungberg and Ljungberg and Björklund and Gerdin were, as of yesterday, declared innocent by Prosecutor Ranelid, and who was Aronsson to call them delinquents? Besides, they were actually a rather appealing bunch and – as Jesus so rightly pointed out – who was in a position to cast the first stone? Aronsson thought back to some darker moments of his own life, but above all he grew angry over how Prosecutor Ranelid had wished the thoroughly pleasant Pike Gerdin dead, just to serve his own purposes.

‘No, damn it! You’ll have to sort this out yourself, Ranelid,’ said Chief Inspector Aronsson and headed for the hotel’s breakfast room.

Cornflakes, toast and egg were washed down with coffee and the two big national dailies, both of which cautiously suggested
that the prosecutor had made something of a fiasco of the case of the disappearing centenarian who was eventually both accused of murder and declared innocent. The newspapers did, however, have to admit that they didn’t know enough about it. The centenarian himself couldn’t be found, and the prosecutor didn’t want to tell them any more until Friday afternoon.

‘As noted, Ranelid, you’ll have to sort this out yourself,’ Aronsson murmured.

Then the chief inspector ordered a taxi and arrived at
Bellringer
Farm at 9.51, just three minutes before the prosecutor.

There was no meteorological risk of what Prosecutor Ranelid so devoutly wished for: a lightning strike on Bellringer Farm. But it
was
cloudy and chilly. So the inhabitants of the farm planned to meet in the spacious kitchen.

The previous evening the group had agreed on an alternative story to present to Prosecutor Ranelid, and to be on the safe side they had rehearsed the story at breakfast too. Now they were reasonably sure of their roles for the morning’s performance, allowing for the fact that the truth is always much simpler to remember than its opposite. He who tells a big lie can easily find himself in big trouble, so now the members of the group had to think carefully before they opened their mouths.

‘Damn and hell,’ was how The Beauty summarized the general tension before Chief Inspector Aronsson and Prosecutor Ranelid were led into the kitchen.

The meeting with Prosecutor Conny Ranelid was more fun for some than for others. This is how it went:

‘Well, to start with I would like to thank you for letting me come,’ said Prosecutor Ranelid. ‘And I must apologize on behalf of… er… on behalf of the prosecutor’s office for the fact that several of you had warrants out for your arrest quite without
cause. Having said that, I would very much like to know what happened, from the moment you, Mr Karlsson, climbed out of the window at the Old People’s Home and right up to the present. Would you like to begin, Mr Karlsson?’

Allan had no objection to that. He thought that this might turn out to be fun.

‘I can indeed, Mr Prosecutor, even though I am old and decrepit, and my memory isn’t what it used to be. But I do remember that I climbed out of that window, yes I do. And there were some very sound reasons for that, very sound reasons. You see, Mr Prosecutor, I was on my way to see my good friend Julius Jonsson here, and you don’t show up to visit him without a bottle of vodka and that is exactly what I had been able to obtain after sneaking off to the local state-run alcohol store when nobody was looking. In fact, nowadays you don’t even have to go all the way to the state-run alcohol store, you can simply knock on the door of… well, I won’t tell you his name, Mr Prosecutor, because that isn’t why you are here, but he sells privately imported vodka for less than half the regular price. Anyway, this time Eklund wasn’t at home – oh dear, now I’ve told you his name – and I had no choice but to buy the vodka at the state store. Then I managed to get the bottle into my room and usually at that point I’m home and dry, but this time I was going to take it out again, and the Director was on duty and she has eyes in the back of her head and everywhere else, I can tell you, Mr Prosecutor. It’s not easy to fool Director Alice. So I thought that the window was the best route on this occasion. It was my hundredth birthday that day, and who wants to have his birthday drink confiscated then?’

The prosecutor thought that this might drag on. This old Karlsson geezer had already been babbling for quite a while without really saying anything. And in less than an hour, Ranelid had to be on his way back to Eskilstuna.

‘Thank you, Mr Karlsson, for the interesting insights into your difficulties in acquiring a drink on your big day, but I hope you’ll forgive me for asking you to be more disciplined in the telling, we don’t have much time, as I am sure you understand. What about the suitcase and the meeting with Bolt Bylund at the bus station?’

‘Well, now, how did that happen? Per-Gunnar phoned Julius who phoned me. According to Julius, Per-Gunnar wanted me to take charge of those bibles and I didn’t want to say no because I…’

‘Bibles?’ Prosecutor Ranelid interupted.

‘If you will allow me, Mr Prosecutor, perhaps I can give a little background information?’ said Benny.

‘By all means,’ said the prosecutor.

‘Well, it’s like this. Allan is a good friend of Julius at Byringe, who in turn is a good friend of Per-Gunnar, the man that the prosecutor thought was dead, and Per-Gunnar in turn is a good friend of mine, and I am partly the brother of my brother Bosse, the man who is our host today, partly the fiancé of Gunilla, she is the beautiful lady at the head of the table, and Gunilla busies herself with exegesis and thus has something in common with Bosse who sells bibles – to Per-Gunnar for example.’

The prosecutor sat there with a pen in his hand, but it had all been said so quickly that he hadn’t jotted down a single word.

‘Exegesis?’

‘Yes, the interpretation of the Bible,’ The Beauty explained.

Interpretation of the Bible? thought Chief Inspector Aronsson, who sat in silence beside the prosecutor. Was it even possible to interpret the Bible when you swore as much as Aronsson had heard The Beauty swear the previous evening? But he said nothing. This was for the prosecutor to sort out, once and for all.

‘Interpretation of the Bible?’ said Prosecutor Ranelid, but decided in the very same second to move on. ‘Never mind, tell
me instead what happened with the suitcase and Bolt Bylund at the bus station.’

Now it was Per-Gunnar Gerdin’s turn to get in on the act.

‘Would you, Mr Prosecutor, allow me to say something?’

‘Absolutely,’ answered Prosecutor Ranelid. ‘As long as what somebody says will shed some light on this business, the devil himself can have a say.’

‘Please mind your language,’ said The Beauty and rolled her eyes. (The chief inspector was now completely certain that they were making fun of the prosecutor.)

‘I don’t think “the devil” is a fully adequate description of my humble self since I found Jesus,’ said Per-Gunnar Gerdin. ‘You, Mr Prosecutor, will of course have heard that I led an
organisation
called “Never Again”. The name originally referred to the fact that its members would never find themselves behind bars again even though there might be no lack of legal reasons for such a measure, but as of late the name has acquired another meaning. Never Again shall we be tempted to break the law, not that written by man and absolutely not that written in Heaven!’

‘Is that why Bolt smashed up a waiting room, beat up an official and then kidnapped a bus driver and his bus?’ asked Prosecutor Ranelid.

‘Oh dear, now I can definitely feel a certain sarcasm in the air,’ said Per-Gunnar Gerdin. ‘But just because I myself have seen the light, doesn’t mean that my colleagues have done the same. One of them has indeed gone to South America to do missionary work, but the two others came to an unfortunate end. I had entrusted Bolt with the task of collecting the suitcase with two hundred bibles on Bosse’s route from Uppsala home to Falköping. I was going to use the bibles to spread joy among the worst villains in the country, if you will excuse my
language
, Mr Prosecutor.’

Up until now, the owner of Bellringer Farm, Bosse, had kept quiet. But at this juncture he placed a heavy grey suitcase on the kitchen table and opened it. Inside lay a large number of super slim bibles bound in genuine black leather, with golden lettering, notations, three marking ribbons, maps in colour and more besides.

‘You will not encounter a more magnificent bible experience than this, Mr Prosecutor,’ said Bosse Ljungberg with conviction. ‘Would you allow me to present you with a copy? We must all seek the light, Mr Prosecutor!’

Unlike the others, Bosse actually meant what he said. And the prosecutor must have had an inkling of that, because he began to waver in his conviction that all this bible talk was just pretence. He accepted Bosse’s bible and thought that immediate salvation might be his only option.

‘Can we once and for all get back to the business at hand?’ he asked. ‘What happened to that damned suitcase in Malmköping?’

‘No swearing!’ lectured The Beauty.

‘Perhaps it’s my turn again?’ Allan said. ‘Well, you see, I went to the bus station a little earlier than I had expected, because Julius asked me to. Bolt Bylund had previously phoned
Per-Gunnar
in Stockholm and had been – if you, Mr Prosecutor, will again excuse my language – a bit tipsy! And as you will know, Mr Prosecutor, or perhaps as you may not know because I don’t know your drinking habits, but anyhow… where was I? Yes, you know, Mr Prosecutor, how when vodka goes in, common sense goes out, or whatever the saying is. I, myself, in a state of inebriation, have said more than I should have in a submarine at a depth of two hundred metres in the middle of the Baltic Sea…’

‘In the name of God, get to the point!’ said Prosecutor Ranelid.

‘No blasphemy!’ urged The Beauty.

Prosecutor Ranelid put one hand on his brow while he inhaled deeply a few times. Allan Karlsson went on:

‘Well, Bolt Bylund had phoned Per-Gunnar in Stockholm to say that he was resigning from Per-Gunnar’s Bible Club, and that instead he intended to join the Foreign Legion but that first of all – and at this point you ought to sit down, Mr
Prosecutor
, because what I am going to say is dreadful – he intended to make a bonfire of the bibles in the main square in Malmköping!’

‘To be more precise, he is said to have yelled “those damn fucking bibles”,’ said The Beauty.

‘No wonder, then, that I was sent out to find Mr Bolt and take the suitcase from him before it was too late. We often have little time, and sometimes we have even less time than we can possibly imagine. Like, for example, on the occasion when General Franco in Spain very nearly got blown to bits before my very eyes.’

‘What has General Franco in Spain got to do with this story?’ wondered Prosecutor Ranelid.

‘Nothing whatsoever, Mr Prosecutor, other than that I let him serve as an illustrative example. You can never have too much clarity.’

‘In that case, what if you, Mr Karlsson, were to bring some clarity to this matter? What happened to the suitcase?’

‘Well, Mr Bolt didn’t want to give it to me, and my physique didn’t really allow me to try to take it by force, not just
my
physique for that matter. In principle I think it’s terrible the way people—’

‘Stick to the subject, Mr Karlsson!’

‘Yes, my apologies, Mr Prosecutor. Well, when Mr Bolt, in the middle of everything, needed to visit the station’s public
conveniences
, then I took my chance. Together with the suitcase, I got
on the Strängnäs bus which took me to Byringe and old Julius here, or Julle as we sometimes say.’