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

the bus was driving away, how he had gone to look around before he realised that the bus had probably carried off his friends, and how he had then chased it, overtaken it, and lost control of his car in a skid – and, well, the photos of the wrecked car were not unfamiliar to the prosecutor, he supposed.
    ‘No surprise that he caught up with us,’ Allan added, after having been quiet for a while. ‘He had more than three hundred horsepower under the hood. Not like the Volvo PV444 that took me to visit Prime Minister Erlander. Forty-four horsepower! That was a lot in those days. And I wonder howmany horsepower Gustavsson had when he turned into my yard by mistake —’
    ‘Shut it… please Mr Karlsson, before you finish me off,’ said Prosecutor Ranelid.
    The chairman of Never Again continued his story. He had, of course, lost a little blood in the wrecked car, or actually quite a lot, but he was soon bandaged and he hadn’t thought it necessary to go to hospital for as little as a light wound, a broken arm, concussion and a few broken ribs.
    ‘Besides, Benny did study Literature,’ said Allan.
    ‘Literature?’ repeated Prosecutor Ranelid.
    ‘Did I say Literature? I meant Medicine.’
    ‘I have studied Literature too,’ said Benny. ‘My absolute favourite is probably Camilo José Cela, not least his first novel from the 1940s, La familia de —’
    ‘Get back to the story.’
    The prosecutor, in his appeal, had happened to look at Allan, so Allan said:
    ‘If you’ll excuse us, Mr Prosecutor, we’ve told you everything. But if you absolutely want to hear us talk some more then I can probably remember one or two adventures from my time as a CIA agent – or even better from my trip across the Himalayas. And do you want the recipe for making vodka from goats’ milk? All you need is a beet and a bit of sunshine. And some goats’ milk of course.’
    Sometimes your mouth seems to go its own way while your brain stands still, and that was probably what happened to Prosecutor Ranelid when – contrary to what he had just decided – he happened to comment on Allan’s latest nonsense:
    ‘You crossed the Himalayas? At a hundred?’
    ‘No, don’t be silly,’ said Allan. ‘You see, Mr Prosecutor, I haven’t always been a hundred years old. No, that’s recent.’
    ‘Can we move on…?’
    ‘We all grow up and get older,’ Allan continued. ‘You might not think so when you are a child. Take young Mr Kim Jong Il, for example. That unfortunate child sat crying on my lap, but now he is head of state, with all that entails…’
    ‘Never mind, Karlsson.’
    ‘I’m sorry. You wanted to hear the story of when I crossed the Himalayas, Mr Prosecutor. Well, for several months my only company was a camel, and say what you will about camels, they aren’t much fun…’
    ‘No!’ exclaimed Prosecutor Ranelid. ‘I don’t want to hear that at all. I just… I don’t know…’
    And then Prosecutor Ranelid was silent for a few moments, before saying in a quiet voice that he didn’t have any more questions… except possibly that he couldn’t understand why the friends had stayed in hiding for several weeks when there was nothing to hide from.
    ‘You were innocent, weren’t you?’
    ‘But innocence can mean different things depending on whose perspective you adopt,’ said Benny.
    ‘I was thinking along the same lines,’ said Allan. ‘President Johnson and de Gaulle for example. Who was guilty and who was innocent when it came to their bad relationship? Mind you, I didn’t bring that up when we met, we had other things to talk about, but —’
    ‘Please, Mr Karlsson,’ said Prosecutor Ranelid. ‘I beg you, please be quiet.’
    ‘You don’t have to go down on your knees, Mr Prosecutor. I shall be quiet as a mouse from now on, I promise you. During my hundred years, my tongue has slipped only twice. First when I told the West how you build an atom bomb, and then when I did the same for the East.’
    Prosecutor Ranelid slowly got up, and with a nod quietly thanked them for the melon, for the coffee and the cake, for…the conversation… and for the fact that the friends at Bellringer Farm had been so cooperative.
    After which he got into his car and drove away.
    ‘That went well,’ said Julius.
    ‘Indeed it did,’ said Allan. ‘I think I covered most of it.’
     
    In his car, Prosecutor Ranelid’s mental paralysis gradually lost its hold. He went over the story he’d been told, adding