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

when he got out.
    After that, it didn’t help that the Boss sliced up a couple of Yugoslavs in the lunch line and generally acted like a violent psychotic. His authority was damaged. Of the thirty recruits so far, twenty-seven dropped out. Besides Bolt and Bucket, only a Venezuelan named José Mariá Rodriguez stayed on, the latter because he was secretly in love with the Boss, which he never dared admit to anybody, even himself.
    The Venezuelan was given the name Caracas, after the capital city of his home country. However much the Boss threatened and swore, no one else joined his club. And one day, he and his three henchmen were released.
    At first, the Boss thought of abandoning the whole idea of Never Again, but Caracas happened to have a Colombian comrade with a flexible conscience and dubious friends, and after one thing and another, Sweden (through Never Again) became the transit country for Eastern Europe for the Colombiannarcotics trade. The deals got bigger and bigger, and there was neither need nor staff to activate the branches ‘robbery’ and ‘extortion’.
     
    The Boss convened a war council in Stockholm with Bucket and Caracas. Something had happened to Bolt, the clumsy idiot who had been entrusted with the task of carrying out the club’s largest transaction so far. The Boss had been in contact with the Russians in the morning and they swore that they had received the merchandise – and handed over the payment. If Never Again’s courier had run off with the suitcase then that wasn’t the Russians’ problem.
    The Boss assumed for the time being that the Russians were telling the truth. Would Bolt voluntarily have skipped town with the money? No, he dismissed the idea; Bolt was too stupid for that. Or too wise, however you wanted to look at it.
    Somebody must have known about the transaction, have waited for the right moment in Malmköping or on Bolt’s journey back to Stockholm, knocked out Bolt and grabbed the suitcase.
    But who? The Boss presented the question to the war council and didn’t get an answer. The Boss wasn’t surprised; he had long ago decided that his henchmen were idiots, all three of them.
    Anyhow, he ordered Bucket out into the field, because the Boss thought that the idiot Bucket was still not quite as big an idiot as the idiot Caracas. The idiot Bucket would thus have a greater chance of finding the idiot Bolt, and perhaps even the suitcase with the money.
    ‘Go down to Malmköping and poke around a bit, Bucket. But don’t wear your jacket; police are all over the town. A hundred-year-old guy has disappeared.’Julius, Allan and the corpse rolled along through the forest. At Vidkärr they had the misfortune to meet a farmer. The farmer was there inspecting his crops when the trio came racing by on the inspection trolley.
    ‘Good morning,’ said Julius.
    ‘Nice day,’ said Allan.
    The corpse and the farmer didn’t say anything. But the farmer stared at the trio for a long time as they went off into the distance.
    The closer the trolley got to the local steel works, the more worried Julius got. He had thought they might pass a lake on the way and that they’d be able to dump the corpse in it. But they didn’t. And before Julius had time to worry any further, the trolley rolled into the foundry yard. Julius applied the brakes just in time. The corpse fell forwards and hit his forehead on an iron handle.
    ‘That would have been really painful if the circumstances had been a little different,’ said Allan.
    ‘There are undoubtedly advantages to being dead,’ said Julius.
    Julius climbed down from the trolley and positioned himself behind a birch tree to survey the area. The enormous doors into the factory halls were open, but the yard seemed deserted. Julius looked at his watch. It was ten past twelve. Lunchtime, he realised as he spotted a large container. Julius announced that he intended to go off and do a bit of reconnaissance. Allan wished Julius the best of luck and asked him not to get lost.
    There wasn’t much risk of that, because Julius was only going to walk the thirty metres to the container. He climbed in and was out of Allan’s sight for just over a minute. Once back at the trolley, Julius announced that he now knew what to do with the corpse.
    The container had been packed half-full of steel cylinders of some sort, each one of them in a protective wooden box with a lid. Allan was totally exhausted once the heavy corpse was finally in place