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

two minutes, Julius had managed to buy a hot-dog, an orange soft drink and Benny’s silver 1988 Mercedes, along with Benny himself as chauffeur, all for 100,000 crowns.
    Allan looked at the owner of the hot-dog stand.
    ‘Have we bought you too, or just hired you?’ he asked finally.
    ‘The car has been bought, the chauffeur has been hired,’ Benny answered. ‘A hot-dog is included in the price. Can I tempt you with a Viennese wurst?’
    No, he couldn’t. Allan just wanted an ordinary boiled sausage if that was all right. And besides, said Allan, 100,000 for such an old car was an extremely high price even if itincluded a driver, so now it was only fair that he throw in a bottle of chocolate milk too.
    Benny agreed instantly. He would be leaving his kiosk behind and a chocolate milk more or less made no difference. His business was losing money anyway; running a hot-dog stand in a small village had turned out to be just as bad an idea as it had seemed at the beginning.
    In fact, Benny informed them, even before the two gentlemen had so conveniently turned up, he had been toying with plans to do something different with his life. But private chauffeur, well he hadn’t pictured that.
    In light of what the hot-dog-stand manager had just told them, Allan suggested that Benny load an entire carton of chocolate milk into the boot of the car. And Julius, for his part, promised that Benny would get his own private chauffeur’s cap at the first opportunity, if only he would take off his hot-dog-stand chef’s hat and leave the stand because it was time for them to be on their way.
    Benny didn’t think it was part of his job to argue with his employers, so he did as he was told. His chef’s hat ended up in the rubbish, and the chocolate milk went in the boot. But Julius wanted to keep the suitcase on the back seat with him. Allan had to sit in the front where he could stretch out his legs properly.
    So the only hot-dog-stand manager in Åker went and sat in the driver’s seat of what a few minutes earlier had been his own Mercedes, now honourably sold to the two gentlemen in Benny’s company.
    ‘And where do you two gentlemen want to go?’ asked Benny.
    ‘What about north?’ said Julius.
    ‘Yes, that would be fine,’ said Allan. ‘Or south.’
    ‘Then we’ll say south,’ said Julius.
    ‘South it is,’ said Benny.
     
    Ten minutes later, Chief Inspector Aronsson arrived at Åker. By following the railway tracks, he discovered an old inspection trolley behind the factory.
    But the trolley provided no obvious clues. The workers in the yard were busy loading cylinders of some type into containers. None of them had seen the trolley arrive. But just after lunch they had seen two elderly men walking along the road, one of them dragging a large suitcase. They were headed in the direction of the service station and the hot-dog stand.
    Aronsson asked if there were really only two men, not three. But the workers hadn’t seen a third person.
    Driving to the service station and the hot-dog stand, Aronsson considered this new information. But it was harder than ever to make sense of it all.
    First, he stopped at the hot-dog stand. He was getting hungry, so it was perfect timing. But it was closed. It had to be tough to run a hot-dog stand out in this wilderness, Aronsson thought, and continued on to the service station. There, they had seen nothing and heard nothing. But at least they could sell Aronsson a hot dog, even though it tasted of petrol.
    After his quick lunch, Aronsson went to the supermarket, the flower shop and the estate agent. And he stopped and spoke to any natives who had ventured out with dogs, prams or a husband or wife. But nobody had seen two or three men with a suitcase. The trail simply came to an end somewhere between the foundry and the service station. Chief Inspector Aronsson decided to return to Malmköping. At least he had a pair of slippers that required identification.
     
    Aronsson phoned the county police chief from his car and updated him. The county police chief was grateful because he was giving a press conference at the Plevna Hotel at two o’clock and so far he had had nothing to say.
    The police chief had something of a theatrical bent; he was not inclined to understatement. And now Chief Inspector Aronsson had given him just what he needed for today’s show.
    So the police chief pulled out all the stops during the press conference, before Aronsson had time to get back to