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

peace, sometimes for days at a stretch. Allan devoted those days to all kinds of reading: the daily newspapers of course, but also books from the hospital’s extensive library. Add to that three square meals a day, an indoor toilet, and a room of his own, and you can see why Allan found it very comfortable to be locked up in an asylum. The atmosphere had been a little unpleasant only once, and that was when Allan asked Professor Lundborg what was so dangerous about being a Negro or a Jew. For once, the professor didn’t respond with silence, but bellowed that Karlsson should mind his own business and not interfere in other people’s affairs. Allan was reminded of that time many years ago when his mother had threatened to box his ears.
    The years passed and the interviews with Allan became few and far between. Then parliament appointed a committee to investigate the sterilization of ‘biologically inferior individuals’ and when the report was issued, Professor Lundborg suddenlyhad so much to do that Allan’s bed was needed for somebody else. In the spring of 1929, Allan was pronounced rehabilitated and fit once again to enter society, and was sent out onto the streets with just enough cash to get him a train ticket to Flen. He had to walk the last few miles to Yxhult, but Allan didn’t mind. After four years behind bars, he needed to stretch his legs.

Chapter 5
    Monday, 2nd May 2005
    The local newspaper lost no time in printing a story about the old man who had disappeared into thin air on his hundredth birthday. As the newspaper’s reporter was starved for real news from the district, she managed to imply that you could not exclude the possibility of kidnapping. According to witnesses, the centenarian was all right in the head and probably wasn’t roaming around confused.
    There is something special about disappearing on your hundredth birthday. The local radio station soon followed the local newspaper, and then came national radio, the websites of the national newspapers and the afternoon and evening TV news.
    The police in Flen had to hand the case over to the county crime squad, which sent two police cars with uniformed police officers and a Detective Chief Inspector Aronsson who was not in uniform. They were soon joined by assorted reporters who wanted to help search every corner of the area. The presence of the mass media in turn gave the county police chief reason to lead the investigation himself and perhaps to appear on camera in the process.
    Initially the investigation involved the police cars driving back and forth across the municipality, while Aronsson interrogated people at the Old People’s Home. The mayor, however, had gone home, and turned off his phone. In his opinion, only harm would come from being involved in the disappearance of an ungrateful geriatric.
    A scattering of tips did come in: everything from Allan being seen on a bike, to him standing in line and behaving badly at the pharmacy. But these, and similar observations, could soon for various reasons be dismissed.
    The head of the county police organized search parties with the help of about a hundred volunteers from the area, and he was genuinely surprised when this produced no results. Up to now he had been pretty certain that it was an ordinary case of a demented person disappearing, despite the statements of witnesses as to the good quantity of marbles possessed by the hundred-year-old man.
    So the investigation didn’t at this stage go anywhere, not until the police dog borrowed from Eskilstuna arrived at about half-past seven in the evening. The dog sniffed a few moments at Allan’s armchair and the footprints among the pansies outside the window before it set off towards the park and out the other side, across the street, into the grounds of the medieval church, over the stone wall, coming to a halt outside the bus station waiting room.
    The waiting room door was locked. An official told the police that the station locked its doors at 7.30 in the evening on weekdays, when the official’s colleague finished work for the day. But, the official added, if the police absolutely couldn’t wait until the following day, they could visit his colleague at home. His name was Ronny Hulth and he was sure to be listed in the telephone directory.
    While the head of the county police stood in front of the cameras outside the Old People’s Home and announced that the police needed the public’s help to continue with search parties