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

according to…’ Bolt had said. According to what? What somebody had said to them? Someone who had seen the group in Småland and phoned to tip them off? What a pity the bug hadn’t been activated earlier.
    And by now, of course, Bucket would have followed the redhead from the supermarket and then either dropped the case if she turned out to be the wrong redhead, or… Bucket now knew where Allan Karlsson and his friends were holed up. In that case, the Boss would soon be on his way down to Småland too, to make Allan and his companions spill the beans as to what had happened to Bolt and his suitcase.
    Aronsson phoned Conny Ranelid, the prosecutor in charge in Eskilstuna. At first Ranelid had not been particularly interested, but his engagement increased with every new complication that Aronsson reported in to him.
    ‘Now, don’t let Gerdin and his henchman slip away,’ said Prosecutor Ranelid.
     
    The Beauty put two shopping bags from the supermarket in the boot of her VW Passat and set off for home.
    Bucket followed at a safe distance. When they reached the main road, he was supposed to phone the Boss (on his pay-as-you-go phone, of course, as Bucket had some survival instinct) to inform him of the make of the car the redhead was driving and its number plate.
    The two cars drove out of Rottne but the redhead soon turned off down a gravel road. Bucket recognised it. He had once come in last at a car rally here. His then girlfriend hadbeen the map-reader; halfway through the rally she had realised she was holding the map upside down.
    The gravel road was dry, and the redhead’s car left a cloud of dust behind it. Bucket could safely follow her without even keeping her in sight. But then after a few kilometres the cloud of dust suddenly disappeared. Damn it!
    First, he started to panic, but then he calmed down. The chick must have turned off somewhere along the road. Barely one kilometre back on the road, Bucket thought he had solved the puzzle. A little track went off to the right next to a mailbox. She must have gone down there.
    Bearing in mind how things soon developed, you could say that Bucket was a little too enthusiastic. He sent the car and himself at a decent speed down the little track, wherever it might lead. The idea of being discreet and cautious was discarded early on.
    Bucket was driving too fast, and before he realised it the track had come to an end and was replaced by a little yard. And if he had been driving just a little faster, he wouldn’t even have had time to stop but would have driven straight into the old man who was standing there feeding an… an… elephant?
    Allan had quickly found a new friend in Sonya. They had quite a lot in common. One had climbed out through a window one day and thus given his life a totally new direction, while the other had waded out into a lake with the same result. And both of them had – before that – been out and about and seen some of the world. Furthermore, Sonya had deep furrows on her face, more or less like a wise centenarian, Allan thought.
    Sonya was not about to do circus tricks for just anybody, but she happened to like this old man. He gave her fruit, scratched her trunk and chatted with her in a friendly way. She didn’t understand much of what he said, but that didn’t matter. It was pleasant. So when the old man asked Sonya to sit down, she sat down, if he asked her to turn around, she was happy to do justthat. She even showed him how she could stand up on her back legs, although the old man didn’t know the command for that. The fact that she got an apple or two for her trouble and an extra bit of scratching on her trunk was a pure bonus. Sonya could not be bought.
    While this was going on, The Beauty liked to sit on the veranda steps with Benny and Buster, a cup of coffee and some doggy treats for the dog. They looked on while Allan and Sonya bonded in the yard, and Julius fished for perch down at the lake.
    The spring heat wave continued. The sun had been shining a whole week and the weather forecasters were predicting that the high pressure would continue.
    Benny, who apart from all his other skills was an almost-architect, had sketched out how the bus that The Beauty had just purchased could be fitted out to suit Sonya. When The Beauty discovered that Julius was not just a thief but also a former timber merchant and he knew how to handle a hammer and nails, she said to Buster that these friends were not bad. It was a good thing