The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared

because the newspaper, always call him the “hot-dog-stand proprietor”, as if we don’t know that he is a Turk or an Arab. No Swede would open a hot-dog stand. That would only work if you’re a foreigner and don’t pay any taxes.’
    ‘My,’ said Aronsson. ‘That was a lot all at once. But you can be a Turk and a Muslim at the same time, or for that matter an Arab and a Muslim, in fact that is quite likely.’
    ‘So he’s a Turk and a Muslim! Even worse! Then check his background thoroughly! And his damned family’s. He’ll have one hundred relatives here, and they’ll all be living on welfare.’
    ‘Not a hundred,’ said the chief inspector. ‘The only relative he has is actually a brother…’
    And that was when an idea started to germinate in Chief Inspector Aronsson’s brain. A few weeks earlier Aronsson had ordered an inquiry into the families of Allan Karlsson, Julius Jonsson and Benny Ljungberg. The inquiry had been to see if a female, preferably with red hair, sister or cousin or a child or grandchild happened to be living in Småland. This was before they had identified Gunilla Björklund. The results had been meagre. Just one name had turned up, and at the time it didn’t seem the slightest bit relevant, but now? Benny Ljungberg had a brother who lived just outside Falköping. Was that where they were all holed up? The chief inspector’s thoughts were interrupted by the anonymous informant.
    ‘And where does the brother have his hot-dog stand? How much tax does he pay? This mass immigration has to stop!’
    Aronsson said that he was grateful for the man’s tips even though the hot-dog-stand proprietor in this case was called Ljungberg and was utterly Swedish. Whether or not Ljungberg was Muslim, Aronsson couldn’t say. Nor did it interest him.
    The man said that he thought he detected something offensive in the chief inspector’s answer and that it showed clear signs of socialism.
    ‘There are a lot of people who think like me; we are growing in numbers. You’ll see in the elections next year.’
    Chief Inspector Aronsson told the anonymous man to piss off, and hung up.
     
    Aronsson phoned Prosecutor Ranelid to tell him that early the next day he intended, with the permission of the prosecutor, to go to Västergötland to follow up a new tip in the case of the centenarian and his companions. (Aronsson didn’t think he needed to tell the prosecutor that he had known about the existence of Benny Ljungberg’s brother for several weeks.) Prosecutor Ranelid wished Aronsson good luck.
    It was almost 5 p.m. and the prosecutor was tidying up for the day while whistling silently to himself. Should he write a book about the case? The Greatest Victory of Justice . Would that be the right title? Too pretentious? The Great Victory of Justice . Better. And more humble. It fitted the writer’s character perfectly.

Chapter 20
    1953–68
    Mao Tse-tung provided Allan and Herbert with false British passports. Their journey took them by aeroplane from Shenyang, via Shanghai, Hong Kong and Malaysia. Soon, the former Gulag-escapees were sitting under a parasol on a white beach just a few metres from the Indian Ocean.
    It would all have been perfect if only the well-meaning waitress didn’t constantly get everything wrong. Whatever Allan and Herbert ordered to drink, they got something different — if they got anything at all, sometimes the waitress lost her way altogether on the beach. The last straw for Allan was when he ordered a vodka and Coca-Cola (‘a bit more vodka than cola’) and got – Pisang Ambon, a vibrantly green banana liquor.
    ‘Enough is enough,’ said Allan and was going to complain to the hotel manager and ask for a new waitress.
    ‘Over my dead body!’ said Herbert. ‘She is absolutely charming!’
    The waitress was called Ni Wayan Laksmi; she was thirty-two years old and should have been married off long ago. She looked nice, but wasn’t from a fine family, didn’t have any money, and on top of that it was known that she was about as intelligent as a kodok , Balinese for frog. So Ni Wayan Laksmi had been left over when boys chose girls and girls chose boys on the island (in so far as they had a choice).
    It hadn’t really bothered her very much, because she had always felt rather uncomfortable in male company, and in female company, in any company at all, in fact. Up until now! There was something really special about one of the two new white men at the hotel. His