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

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

Titel: The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared Kostenlos Bücher Online Lesen
Autoren: Jonas Jonasson
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and the west of Sweden, and considering that Allan Karlsson is said not to have a valid passport?’
    Prosecutor Ranelid inhaled deeply, and said he had not made himself clear. There was no doubt whatsoever as to the fact that Allan Karlsson, Julius Jonsson, Benny Ljungberg and Gunilla Björklund were innocent of what they were accused of.
    ‘No doubt whatsoever, as I said,’ Ranelid repeated, having at the last second managed to convince himself of the matter.
    But those damned journalists were not satisfied with that.
    ‘You have previously in some detail described the chronology and geography of the three presumed murders. If the suspects are now suddenly innocent, what does the new course of events look like?’ wondered the reporter from the local paper.
    Enough was enough. The representative of the local paper should not think he could beat up on Prosecutor Ranelid.
    ‘For technical reasons in connection with the investigation, I am unable for the time being to say any more,’ was Prosecutor Ranelid’s closing comment before he got up from his chair.
    ‘Technical reasons in connection with the investigation’ had more than once saved a prosecutor in a tight spot, but this time it wouldn’t work. For several weeks, the prosecutor had trumpeted the reasons why the four were guilty, and now the press thought it only right that he devote at least a minute or two to explaining their innocence. Or as the know-it-all from Dagens Nyheter put it:
    ‘How can it be secret “for technical reasons” to tell us what a number of innocent people have been doing?’
    Prosecutor Ranelid stood there on the edge of a precipice. Almost everything indicated that he would fall over, straight away or in a day or two. But he had one advantage over the journalists. Ranelid knew where Allan Karlsson and the others were holed up. After all, Västergötland was a large county. This would be his final chance. Prosecutor Ranelid said:
    ‘If for once you could let me have my say! For technical reasons in connection with the investigation I am, for the time being, unable to say any more. But at three tomorrow, I shall arrange a new press conference in these premises and on that occasion I intend to describe exactly what happened, as you have asked me to do.’
    ‘Where exactly in Västergötland is Allan Karlsson just now?’ asked one journalist.
    ‘I am not saying,’ said Prosecutor Ranelid and left.
     
    How could it possibly have ended up like this? Prosecutor Ranelid sat in his room with the door locked and smoked a cigarette for the first time in seven years. He had been going down in Swedish criminal history as the first prosecutor to convict murderers whose victims’ bodies had not been found. And then suddenly, the bodies had turned up. And in the wrong places too! And besides, victim number three was still alive, the one who had been the deadest of them all. Just think, what damage number three had done to Ranelid.
    ‘I should kill the devil as a punishment,’ the prosecutor muttered to himself.
    But now it was a matter of saving his honour and his career, and for that reason a murder was not the best solution. The prosecutor went over the catastrophic press conference in his mind. In the end, he had been very clear about the fact thatKarlsson and his henchmen were innocent. And all of this was because he… actually didn’t know. What had actually happened? Bolt Bylund must have died on that inspection trolley. So how the hell could he die again several weeks later a whole continent away?
    Prosecutor Ranelid cursed himself for being so quick to meet the press. He ought to have talked to Allan Karlsson and his henchmen first, investigated everything – and then decided what the media needed to know.
    And in his current predicament – in the aftermath of the catastrophic statements about the innocence of Karlsson and his henchmen – if he were to pull them in ‘to help with enquiries’ it would be seen as simply harassing them. Yet Ranelid didn’t have many options. He had to find out what had happened… and he had to do so before three the following day.
    Otherwise, in the eyes of his colleagues he would no longer be a prosecutor but a clown.
     
    Chief Inspector Aronsson was in excellent spirits sitting in the hammock at Bellringer Farm drinking coffee, and with a pastry to dip into it too. The hunt for the disappearing centenarian was over; besides, the sympathetic old man no longer had a warrant out for

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