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

false number plates and documents, the Latvians would arrange for a car to be sold as a private import back to somebody in The Violence, and magically a stolen car had now become a legal car.
    But this time things didn’t go as planned, because the car from the Swedes started to stink while it stood in the garage in Ziepniekkalns in Riga’s southern suburbs. The garage boss looked for the cause and discovered a corpse under the back seat. He turned the air purple with his swearing, and ripped off all the number plates and anything else that could provide a clue as to where the car had come from. Then he started to dent and scratch the bodywork of the once fantastic specimen of a Mustang and didn’t stop until the car looked like a write-off. Next he went out and found a drunk and in exchange for four bottles of wine persuaded him to drive the wreck to the scrap yard for destruction — corpse and all.
     
    The friends at Lake Farm were ready to depart. They were of course somewhat worried about the theft of the Mustang with the corpse, but then Allan pointed out that it was what it was, and that thereafter whatever will be will be. Besides, in Allan’s opinion, there was good reason to hope that the car thieves would never contact the police. Car thieves generally tended to keep a certain distance from the police.
    It was now six o’clock in the evening, and they needed to be on their way before it got dark, because the moving bus was large and the roads for the first part of the journey were small and winding.
    Sonya was standing in her stall on wheels. All tracks of the elephant had been carefully swept away from the farmyard and barn. The Passat and Benny’s old Mercedes were left behind, as they hadn’t been involved in anything illegal and besides what else could they do with them?
    The bus started on its way. The Beauty had at first intended to drive herself, after all she knew perfectly well how to drive a bus. But then it transpired that Benny was an almost-truck-driver and had every possible category included in his driving licence, so it was best that he got behind the wheel. There was no reason to act more illegally than they had already.
    When he reached the mailbox, Benny turned left. According to The Beauty, by snaking along gravel roads they would eventually reach Åby and then get to the main road. It would take just over half an hour to get there, so meanwhile they could discuss the not unimportant question of where they were actually going.
     
    Four hours earlier, the Boss had been sitting impatiently and waiting for the only one of his henchmen who hadn’t yet disappeared. As soon as Caracas returned from his errand, whatever it was, he and the Boss would set off south — but not on their bikes and not in uniform. Now it was time to be careful.
    The Boss had already started to doubt his previous strategy with the Never Again symbol on the club jackets. From the beginning, the point had been to create a feeling of identity and fellowship in the group, and to make outsiders respect them. But firstly, the group was much smaller than the Boss had once imagined. Keeping a quartet together consisting of Bolt, Bucket, Caracas and himself, he could manage without jackets. And the tinge of illegality in their activities meant that the club jacket as a signal became counterproductive. Bolt’s orders for the transaction in Malmköping had been somewhat contradictory in this respect: on the one hand he was to travel there discreetly by public transport and on the other hand he was to wear the club jacket with the Never Again symbol on the back to make sure the Russian knew who he was dealing with.
    And now Bolt was on the run… or whatever it was that had happened. And on his back he had a sign which more or less said: ‘Any questions, phone the Boss.’
    Damn it! thought the Boss. When this mess was over, he would burn all the jackets. But where the hell was Caracas? Their planned departure time was now!
    Caracas turned up eight minutes later and explained the delay by the fact that he had been at 7-Eleven and bought a watermelon.
    ‘Thirst-quenching and tasty,’ Caracas explained.
    ‘Thirst-quenching and tasty? Half the organisation has disappeared together with fifty million crowns, and you go off to buy fruit?’
    ‘Not fruit, a vegetable,’ said Caracas. ‘In the same family as cucumbers, in fact.’
    That did it for the Boss, who picked up the watermelon and split it open on