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

Egyptian watchman sat on a barge which had just emerged from the southern end of the Suez Canal. He noticed a terrible stench from the cargo.
    Finally he couldn’t stand it any longer. He wet a rag and tied it around his nose and mouth. In one of the wooden boxes he found the explanation: a half-rotten corpse.
    The Egyptian seaman deliberated. He had no desire to leave the corpse there to ruin the rest of the journey. Besides he would almost certainly be subjected to long police interrogations in Djibouti, and everybody knew what the police were like in Djibouti.
    Moving the body himself wasn’t a pleasant thought either, but in the end he made up his mind. First he emptied the corpse’s pockets of everything of value – he deserved something for his trouble – and then he shoved it overboard.
    And that is how what had once been a young man of slight build, with long blond and greasy hair, a scraggly beard and a denim jacket with the words Never Again on the back, was turned with a splash into fish food in the Red Sea.
     
    The group at Lake Farm split up just before midnight. Julius went upstairs to sleep, while Benny and The Beauty got into the Mercedes to visit the health clinic in Rottne after hours. Halfway there they discovered Allan under a blanket on the back seat. He woke up and explained that he had gone out for a breath of fresh air and once outside he had realised that the car would be a good place to sleep because the stairs up to the bedrooms were a bit too much for his shaking knees, after such a long day.
    ‘I’m no longer ninety,’ he said.
    The duo had become a trio for the nocturnal exercise, but it didn’t matter. The Beauty described her plan in more detail. They would get into the clinic with the help of the key The Beauty had forgotten to return when she resigned. Once inside, they would log in to Doctor Erlandsson’s computer and in Erlandsson’s name send a prescription for antibiotics, made out in The Beauty’s name. For that you needed Erlandsson’s password, but that was no problem said The Beauty, because Doctor Erlandsson was not just pompous, he was also a fool. When thenew computer system was installed a couple of years earlier, it was The Beauty who had to teach the doctor how to file electronic prescriptions, and she was the one who chose his username and password.
    The Mercedes arrived at the intended crime scene. Benny, Allan and The Beauty got out and inspected the surroundings before committing the actual crime. At that moment a car passed slowly by. The driver was as surprised by the trio as they were by him. A single living being awake at that time of night in Rottne was a sensation. On this particular night there were four.
    But the car drove on and darkness and silence settled on Rottne once more. The Beauty led Benny and Allan in through the staff entrance in the back, and then to Doctor Erlandsson’s room. There she turned on Doctor Erlandsson’s computer and logged in.
    Everything went according to plan and The Beauty giggled happily until suddenly, she let loose a long stream of curses. She had just realised that you couldn’t simply send a prescription for ‘one kilo of antibiotics’.
    ‘Write Erythromycin, Rifamin, Gentramicin and Rifampin, two hundred and fifty grams each,’ said Benny. ‘Then we can attack the inflammation from several different angles.’
    The Beauty looked admiringly at Benny. Then she invited him to sit down and spell it all out. Benny did and added various other medicines, useful to have on hand in case of future bad luck.
    Breaking out of the clinic was just as easy as breaking in. And their journey home was without incident. Benny and The Beauty helped Allan upstairs and when it was almost half-past two in the morning, the last light was turned off at Lake Farm.
    After ten at night there weren’t many people awake in that sleepy area. But in Braås, about twenty kilometres from Lake Farm, a young man lay in bed turning restlessly, desperate fora cigarette. It was Bucket’s little brother, the new leader of The Violence. Three hours earlier, he had finished his last cigarette and soon felt an unstoppable need to have another. He cursed himself for having forgotten to buy fags before everything shut for the evening.
    At first he had intended to hold out until the following morning, but by midnight he couldn’t stand it any longer. That was when he got the idea of reliving old times, of simply gaining entry to a newspaper