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

seemed only to bring him bad luck.
    But The Violence lived on, and the members retained the misspelled jackets. Lately, however, the club had changed its focus. Now it concentrated on stealing cars and on rolling back the speedometer. Or as the new leader of the group, Bucket’s little brother, used to say: ‘Nothing makes a car prettier than when you suddenly discover it has driven only half the mileage.’
    Bucket was occasionally in touch with his brother and the old life, but had no wish to be back there.
    ‘What a fuck-up,’ was how Bucket concisely summed up his own history.
    It was tough to think in new ways and equally tough to remember the old. Better to have a third beer and then, in accordance with the Boss’s orders, check in to the hotel.
     
    It was almost dark when Chief Inspector Aronsson, accompanied by the police dog-handler and Kicki, the dog, arrived at Åker village, after the long walk along the railway track from Vidkärr.
    The dog hadn’t reacted to anything along the way. Aronsson wondered if she actually realised that they were working, not just out on an evening stroll. But when the trio came to the abandoned inspection trolley, the dog stood to attention, or whatever it was called. And then she raised one paw and started to bark. Aronsson’s hopes were raised.
    ‘Does that mean something?’ he asked.
    ‘Yes, it certainly does,’ answered the dog-handler.
    And then he explained that Kicki had different signs, depending on what she wanted to convey.
    ‘Well then, what is she trying to tell us?!’ asked the increasingly impatient Aronsson and pointed at the dog which was still standing on three legs and barking.
    ‘That,’ said the dog-handler, ‘means that there has been a dead body on the trolley.’
    ‘A dead body? A corpse?’
    ‘A corpse.’
    Chief Inspector Aronsson saw in his mind’s eye how the Never Again member killed the unfortunate centenarian Allan Karlsson. But then this new information merged with what he already knew.
    ‘It must be the exact opposite,’ he mumbled and felt strangely relieved.
     
    The Beauty served beef and potatoes with lingonberries and beer, followed by a glass of bitters. The guests were hungry, but first they needed to know what sort of animal they had heard from the barn.
    ‘That was Sonya,’ said The Beauty. ‘My elephant.’
    ‘Elephant?’ said Julius.
    ‘Elephant?’ said Allan.
    ‘I thought I recognised that sound,’ said Benny.
    The former hot-dog-stand owner had been struck by love at first sight. And now, at second sight, he felt no different. This constantly swearing redhead with the full figure seemed to have popped straight out of a novel!
    The Beauty had discovered the elephant early one August morning in her garden stealing apples. If she had been able to talk she would have said that the previous evening she had absconded from a circus in Växjö to look for something to drink, because the elephant keeper had gone to do the same in town instead of doing his job.
    When darkness fell the elephant had reached the shores of Helga Lake and decided to do more than simply quench herthirst. A cooling bath would be very nice, the elephant thought, and waded out in the shallow water.
    But suddenly it wasn’t so shallow any more, and the elephant had to rely on her innate ability to swim. Elephants in general are not as logical in their thinking as are people. This elephant was a prime example; she decided to swim two and a half kilometres to the other side of the cove to reach firm ground again, instead of just turning around to swim four metres back to the shore.
    The elephantine logic had two consequences. One was that the elephant was quickly declared dead by the circus people and police who rather belatedly thought to follow her tracks all the way to Helga Lake and out in the fifteen-metre deep water. The other was that the still-very-much-alive elephant, under cover of darkness, managed to spirit herself all the way to The Beauty’s apple orchard, without a single soul observing her.
    The Beauty didn’t know that, of course, but afterwards she worked out most of what happened when she read in the local paper about an elephant that had disappeared and was now declared dead. How many elephants could be running around in that area, and at that particular time? The dead elephant and the still-very-much-alive elephant were presumably the same item.
    The Beauty began by giving the elephant a name. She became Sonya, after