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

Björkman’s story, together with the fax from Eskilstuna, tells us that Karlsson, at 3.20 in the afternoon, give or take a few minutes, and then the Never Again member, about four hours later, got off at Byringe Station before walking towards an unknown destination. The former is one hundred years old, dragging a suitcase with him; the latter is about seventy-five years younger.
    Chief Inspector Aronsson closed his notebook and drank the last of the coffee. It was 10.25 a.m.
    ‘Next stop, Byringe Station.’
     
    At breakfast, Julius told Allan everything that he had accomplished and plotted during the early morning hours while Allan still slept.
    First, the unfortunate accident in the freezer-room: when Julius realised that the temperature had been below freezing for at least ten hours during the evening and night, he had armed himself with the crowbar and opened the door. If the young man was still alive, he wouldn’t be even close to as awake and alert as he would need to be to stand up to Julius and his crowbar.
    But the crowbar safety measure was unnecessary. The young man sat hunched up on his empty box, his threatening and kicking days over. He had ice crystals on his body and his eyes stared coldly out at nothing – dead as a butchered elk, in short.
    Julius thought it was too bad, but also very convenient. They wouldn’t have been able to let that wild man out just like that. Julius turned the fan off and left the door open. The young man was dead, but he didn’t have to be frozen solid.
    Julius lit the stove in the kitchen to keep the place warm, and checked on the money. It wasn’t the thirty-seven million that he had hurriedly estimated the evening before. It was exactly 50 million.
    Allan listened to Julius’ account with interest, while he ate his breakfast with a better appetite than he’d had for as long as he could remember. He didn’t say anything until Julius reached the money part.
    ‘Fifty million is easier to split into two than thirty-seven. Nice and equal. Would you be so kind as to pass me the salt?’
    Julius did as Allan requested, saying that he would probably have been able to divide thirty-seven into two as well if it hadbeen necessary, but he agreed that it was easier with fifty. Then Julius became serious. He sat down at the kitchen table opposite Allan, and said that it was high time they left the disused station for good. The young man in the freezer could do no more harm, but who knows what he might have stirred up behind him on the way here? At any moment there could be ten new young men standing there shouting in the kitchen, each one just as ornery as the one who was done shouting.
    Allan agreed, but reminded Julius of his advanced age and pointed out that he wasn’t as mobile as he once had been. Julius promised to see to it that there would be as little walking as possible involved. But get away they must. And it would be best if they took the young man in the freezer with them. It would do the two old men no good if people found a corpse in their wake.
    Breakfast was done with, now it was time to get going. Julius and Allan lifted the dead young man out of the freezer and into the kitchen where they put him in a chair while they gathered their strength.
    Allan inspected him from top to toe, and then said:
    ‘He has unusually small feet for someone so big. He has no use for his shoes any more, does he?’
    Julius answered that although it was clearly cold outside at this time of the morning, there was a greater risk that Allan would get frostbitten toes than that the young man would. If Allan thought that his shoes would fit, then he should go ahead and take them. If the young man didn’t object, that meant he agreed.
    The shoes were a bit too large for Allan, but solid and much better suited to being on the run than a pair of well-worn indoor slippers.
    The next step was to shove the young man out into the hall and tip him down the steps. When they all three found themselves out on the platform, two standing and one lying down, Allan wondered what Julius had in mind now.
    ‘Don’t go anywhere,’ Julius said to Allan. ‘Not you, either,’ he said to the young man, and jumped down from the platform and headed for a shed at the end of the station’s only siding.
    Shortly afterwards, Julius rolled out of the shed on an inspection trolley.
    ‘Vintage 1954,’ he said. ‘Welcome aboard.’
    Julius did the heavy pedalling at the front. Just behind him, Allan