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

hurry up and tell him what he knew. But, in fact, the chief inspector was not in a hurry.
    Allan found that reassuring and he asked the chief inspector to sit down on the hammock, so that he could get some coffee from the kitchen.
    ‘Would you like sugar in your coffee, Inspector? Milk?’
    Chief Inspector Aronsson was not one to let arrested delinquents just walk off any old way, not even to an adjacent kitchen. But there was something calming about this particular specimen. Besides, from the hammock the chief inspector would have a good view of the kitchen. So Aronsson thanked Allan for his offer.
    ‘Milk, please. No sugar,’ he said and made himself comfortable on the hammock.
    The newly arrested Allan busied himself in the kitchen (‘A Danish pastry too, perhaps?’) while Chief Inspector Aronsson sat on the veranda and watched him. Aronsson found it hard to understand how he could have been so clumsy in his approach. He had, of course, seen a solitary old man on the veranda beside the farmhouse and thought that it might have been Bosse Ljungberg’s father, and that he would certainly be able to lead Aronsson to the son and that at the next stage the son would confirm that none of the wanted persons were in the vicinity, and that the entire journey to Västergötland had been for nothing.
    But when Aronsson had come sufficiently close to the veranda, it turned out that the old man in the hammock was Allan Karlsson himself. Aronsson had acted in a calm and professional manner, if you could call it ‘professional’ to let a suspected triple-murderer go off to the kitchen to brew some coffee, but now he was sitting there and feeling like an amateur. Allan Karlsson, one hundred years old, didn’t look dangerous, but what would Aronsson do if the three other suspects also turned up, possibly in the company of Bosse Ljungberg who for that matter ought to be arrested too for harbouring a criminal? 
    ‘Was it milk but no sugar?’ Allan called out from the kitchen. ‘At my age, you forget so easily.’
    Aronsson repeated his request for milk in his coffee, and then pulled out his telephone to phone for reinforcements from his colleagues in Falköping. He would need two cars, to be on the safe side.
    But the telephone rang before he could make his own call. It was Prosecutor Ranelid – and he had some sensational news.

Chapter 22
    Wednesday, 25th May–Thursday, 26th May 2005
    The Egyptian sailor who had offered the smelly remains of Bengt ‘Bolt’ Bylund to the fish in the Red Sea had finally reached Djibouti for three days of leave.
    In his back pocket he had Bolt’s wallet with 800 Swedish crowns. The seaman had no idea what that could be worth, but he had his hopes, and now he was looking for somewhere to change money.
    The capital city in Djibouti is, rather unimaginatively, called the same as the country itself, and is a young and lively place. Lively because Djibouti is strategically placed on the Horn of Africa, right next to where the Red Sea joins the ocean, and young because the people who live in Djibouti don’t live very long. Reaching your fiftieth birthday is something of an exception.
    The Egyptian sailor stopped at the city’s fish market, perhaps intending to eat something deep-fried before continuing his search for a place to change money. Right next to him stood a sweaty man, one of the locals, restlessly switching his weight from one foot to the other, and with a feverish and roaming look in his eyes. The sailor didn’t find it strange that the sweaty man was so sweaty; it was after all at least 35°C in the shade, and besides the sweaty man was wearing two sarongs and two shirts under his pulled-down fez.
    The sweaty man was in his mid-twenties, and did not have the slightest ambition to become any older. His soul was in revolution. Not because half the population of the country was unemployed, nor because every fifth citizen had HIV or Aids, nor because of the hopeless shortage of drinking water, nor because of the way the desert was spreading across the nation and swallowing the pathetically small amount of arable land.No, the man was furious because the USA had established a military base in the country.
    In that respect, the USA was not alone. The French Foreign Legion was already there. There was a strong link between France and Djibouti. The country used to be called French Somaliland (in French of course) until it was allowed to go into business on its own in the