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

containing information and documentation concerning a deceased Swedish citizen. Eight minutes later, a second fax arrived, on the same theme, but this time dispatched from the embassy in Latvia.
    The official on duty in the ministry immediately recognised the names and pictures of the dead men – he had recently read about them in the tabloids. A bit strange, the official reflected, that the men had died so far from Sweden, because that hadn’tbeen the impression given in the newspaper. But that was for the police and prosecutor to sort out. The official scanned the two faxes and then created an e-mail containing all the relevant information about the two victims.
    Prosecutor Ranelid’s life was about to fall apart. The case of the triple-murdering centenarian was to be the professional breakthrough that Ranelid had waited such a long time for, and that he so richly deserved.
    But now it transpired that victim number one, who had died in Södermanland, died again three weeks later in Djibouti. And that victim number two, who died in Småland, did the same again in Riga, Latvia.
    After ten deep breaths through the open office window, Prosecutor Ranelid’s brain started to work again. Must phone Aronsson, Ranelid concluded.
    And Aronsson must find victim number three. And there must be some DNA-link between the centenarian and number three.
    Otherwise Ranelid had made a fool of himself.
     
    When Chief Inspector Aronsson heard Ranelid’s voice on the phone, he immediately started to tell him how he had just located Allan Karlsson and that the said Karlsson was now under arrest (even though he was spending that arrest standing in the kitchen brewing some coffee for Aronsson).
    ‘As regards the others, I suspect that they are in the vicinity, but I think it is best that I should first call in reinforcements…’
    Prosecutor Ranelid interrupted the inspector’s report and told him despairingly that victim number one had been found dead in Djibouti, and victim number two in Riga, and that the chain of circumstantial evidence was disintegrating.
    ‘Djibouti?’ said Chief Inspector Aronsson. ‘Where is that?’
    ‘I’ve no idea,’ said Prosecutor Ranelid, ‘but as long as it is more than twenty kilometres from Åker’s foundry village itweakens my case dramatically. Now, you have to find victim number three!’
    At that very moment a newly awoken Per-Gunnar Gerdin stepped out onto the veranda. He nodded politely but somewhat warily towards Chief Inspector Aronsson, who stared at him wide eyed.
    ‘I think that number three has just found me,’ he said.

Chapter 23
    1968
    The duties involved in Allan’s position at the Indonesian Embassy in Paris were not arduous. The new ambassador, Mrs Amanda Einstein, gave him a room of his own and said that Allan was now free to do whatever he wanted.
    ‘But it would be kind of you if you could help as an interpreter if things should ever get so bad that I need to meet people from other countries.’
    Allan responded that he couldn’t exclude that things would get exactly as bad as that, considering the nature of the assignment. The first foreigner in line would surely be waiting the very next day, if Allan had understood correctly.
    Amanda swore when she was reminded that she would have to go to the Élysée Palace for accreditation. The ceremony would last no more than two minutes but that was more than enough for someone who had a tendency to say something stupid, a tendency that Amanda thought she had.
    Allan agreed that now and then something unsuitable did come out of her mouth, but that it would be fine with President de Gaulle, as long as she made sure that she only spoke Indonesian during her two minutes, and otherwise just smiled and looked friendly.
    ‘What did you say he was called?’ asked Amanda.
    ‘Indonesian, speak Indonesian,’ said Allan. ‘Or even better, Balinese.’
     
    Upon which Allan went out for a walk in the French capital. He thought that it wouldn’t do any harm to stretch his legs after fifteen years in a beach chair, and also he had just seen himself in a mirror at the embassy, and was reminded that he hadn’t hada haircut or a shave since some time after the volcanic eruption in 1963.
    It turned out, however, that it was impossible to find an open barbershop. Everything was closed, virtually everybody seemed to have gone on strike and now they were occupying buildings and demonstrating and pushing cars onto their sides and