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

Passat to drive to Rottne for supplies.
    Buster sat as he always did in the passenger seat and licked his chops when the car headed for the supermarket. Afterwards, The Beauty wondered whether in fact Buster had seen the newspaper headlines – the one for The Express was lit up outside the shop and had two photos, one at the bottom of old man Julius, and one at the top of very-old man Allan. The headline read:
    ‘Centenarian kidnapped by criminal gang. Hunt on today for notorious master thief – Police’.
    The Beauty turned bright red in the face, her thoughts flying in all directions. She was furious and immediately abandoned plans to buy supplies, because those three sly devils would be out of her house before lunch! But first The Beauty went into the pharmacy to pick up the medicine that Benny had ordered the night before, and then she bought a copy of The Express to find out in more detail what on earth was going on.
    The more The Beauty read, the angrier she became. But at the same time she couldn’t really piece it all together. Was it Benny who was Never Again? Was Julius a master thief? And who had kidnapped whom? They all seemed to get along so well.
    In the end, her anger won over her curiosity. Whatever had happened, she had been conned. And you didn’t con Gunilla Björklund and get away with it! ‘My beauty!’ Hah!
    She sat in her car and read the article once more: ‘On his hundredth birthday on Monday, Allan Karlsson disappeared from the Old People’s Home in Malmköping. The police now suspect that he has been kidnapped by the criminal organisation Never Again. According to information received by The Express , the master thief Julius Jonsson is involved.’
    This was followed by a mish-mash of information and witness statements. Allan Karlsson had been seen at the bus station in Malmköping, then he had climbed on the bus to Strängnäs, and this had made a member of Never Again furious… But hang on… ‘…blond man in his thirties…’ That did not describe Benny. The Beauty felt… relieved?
    The confusion continued when she read that Allan Karlsson had been seen the day before on a rail inspection trolley in the middle of the Södermanland forest, together with master-thief Jonsson and the Never Again member who had been so angry with him. The Express could not give an exact description of the relationship between the three men, but the current theorywas that Allan Karlsson was in the clutches of the others. That at least was the opinion of farmer Tengroth in Vidkärr.
    Finally, The Express had yet another scoop. According to the assistant at the nearby service station, the proprietor of a local hot-dog stand, by the name of Benny Ljungberg, had disappeared without a trace the day before, close to the last known location of the centenarian and the master thief.
    The Beauty folded the paper and placed it in Buster’s mouth. Then she headed back to her farmhouse in the forest, where she now knew her visitors consisted of a centenarian, a master thief and the proprietor of a hot-dog stand. This last one was handsome as well as charming and clearly had some medical knowledge, but there was no room for romance here. For a moment, The Beauty was more sad than angry, but she worked up to fury again just as she drove into her yard.
    The Beauty pulled The Express out of Buster’s mouth, unfolded the first page with the pictures of Allan and Julius, and started swearing and shouting before reading aloud from the article. Then she demanded an explanation and promised that all three of them would be on their way in five minutes, come what may. Then she folded the paper again and put it back in Buster’s mouth, crossed her arms, and ended with a frigid:
    ‘Well?’
    Benny looked at Allan who looked at Julius who strangely enough broke into a smile.
    ‘Master thief,’ he said. ‘I’m a master thief. Not bad!’
    But The Beauty was not impressed. She was already red in the face and became even redder when she informed Julius that he would soon be a very beaten-up master thief if The Beauty didn’t immediately find out what was going on. And then she told the assembled guests what she had already told herself, namely that nobody conned Gunilla Björklund at Lake Farm and got away with it. To put force behind her words, she pulledan old shotgun down from the wall. It didn’t work, of course, The Beauty admitted, but it would serve well to smash the skulls of master thieves, hot-dog-stand