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

five days ago. Now, Bucket had started to despair.
    His concentration was no longer top notch either. So he didn’t notice the red-haired woman when she drove into the car park in a red VW Passat instead of the expected silver Mercedes. But as she had the good taste to walk right under Bucket’s nose on her way into the store, he didn’t miss her. He couldn’t be certain that it was the right woman, but she was about the right age, and she did have exactly the right hair colour.
    Bucket phoned the Boss in Stockholm, but he wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic. It was primarily Bolt they were hoping to find, or at least that damned geriatric.
    Still Bucket was told to make a note of the number plate and then discreetly follow the redhead to see where she went. Then he was to report back again.
    Chief Inspector Aronsson had spent the last four days at the hotel in Åseda. The idea had been that he would be close to the centre of events when new witnesses turned up.
    But none did, and Aronsson was just about to set off for home when his colleagues in Eskilstuna phoned. They had got some results from the bug they had planted on the Never Again troublemaker Per-Gunnar Gerdin.
    Gerdin, or the Boss as he was known, had been something of a celebrity several years earlier in connection with the establishment of a criminal organisation in the maximum security prison where he resided. The media had taken note, even printing Gerdin’s name and picture. The enterprise had fizzled out as a result of a letter Per-Gunnar Gerdin’s mother had sent him, but that part of the story never reached the media.
    A couple of days earlier, Chief Inspector Aronsson had ordered Gerdin’s phone bugged, and now they had a bite. The conversations were taped, transcribed and then sent by fax to Åseda:
    ‘Hello?’
    ‘Yes, it’s me.’
    ‘Anything new?’
    ‘Maybe. I’m sitting outside the supermarket and I just saw a red-haired biddy go in to do some shopping.’
    ‘Just the biddy? Not Bolt? Not a hundred-year-old?’
    ‘No, just the biddy. I don’t know if…’
    ‘Was she driving a Mercedes?’
    ‘Err, I didn’t have time to see… but there wasn’t a Mercedes in the car park, so she must have been driving something else.’
    [Silence for five seconds]
    ‘Hello?’
    ‘Yeah, I’m still here, I’m thinking, damn it. Somebody has to.’
    ‘Yeah, but I only…’
    ‘There must be more than one red-haired woman in Småland…’
    ‘Yeah, but she’s the right age, according to…’
    ‘Follow her in your car, write down the number plate, don’t do anything stupid, but find out where she’s going. And make damned sure no one sees you. Then report back to me again.’
    [Silence for five seconds]
    ‘Did you get that?’
    ‘Well, err, yeah. I’ll be in touch as soon as I know more…’
    ‘And next time, call my pay-as-you-go mobile. Haven’t I told you to use it for all business calls?’
    ‘Yeah, sure, but isn’t that only when we do business with the Russians? I didn’t think you’d have it turned on now that…’
    ‘Idiot.’ [followed by grunting and then the conversation ends]
    Chief Inspector Aronsson read the transcript and then put the new bits of the puzzle into place.
    The ‘Bolt’ that was mentioned must be Bengt Bylund, one of the known members of Never Again, now presumably dead. And the one who phoned Gerdin was presumably Henrik ‘Bucket’ Hultén, hunting down Bolt somewhere in Småland.
    Aronsson now had proof that he was on the right track:
    Somewhere in Småland, as he had previously surmised, was Allan Karlsson, together with Julius Jonsson, Benny Ljungberg and his Mercedes, together with a red-haired lady, of unknown age. Still she could hardly be particularly young because she had just been called a biddy. On the other hand, for somebody like Bucket you wouldn’t have to be very old to become a biddy.
    At Never Again in Stockholm they thought that Bolt was also with the group. Did that mean he was on the run from his own lot? Otherwise why hadn’t he been in touch? Because he was dead, of course! But the Boss hadn’t fathomed that, so the Boss thought that Bolt was hiding in Småland together with… but where did the redhead come into the picture?
    So Aronsson ordered a family background check on Allan, Benny and Julius. Was there possibly a sister or a cousin or some other relative who lived in Småland and who happened to have the right colour of hair?
    ‘But she’s the right age,