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

believe that they came from Skövde in the middle of Sweden. But before he sold them, he injected half a litre of sugar solution into each melon.
    ‘That makes them twice as heavy – good for me! – and three times as tasty – good for the consumer!’
    ‘That is also thoughtful of you,’ said Allan. Still without irony.
    The Beauty thought that there must be one or two consumers who for medical reasons should not gobble down a wholelitre of sugar solution, but she didn’t say anything. Besides, the watermelon tasted almost as heavenly as the chicken.
     
    Chief Inspector Göran Aronsson sat in the restaurant at the Hotel Royal Corner in Växjö and ate chicken cordon bleu. The chicken, which didn’t come from Västergötland, was dry and tasteless. But Aronsson washed it down with a bottle of good wine.
    By now, the prosecutor would surely have whispered in some reporter’s ear, and the next day the pack of journalists would be out in force again. Prosecutor Ranelid was probably right in assuming that there would be lots of tipoffs about the whereabouts of the yellow bus with the smashed front. While he was waiting for them, Aronsson might as well stay where he was. He had nothing else to do: no family, no close friends, not even a sensible hobby. When this strange chase was over, he was definitely going to have his life overhauled.
    Chief Inspector Aronsson ended the evening with a gin and tonic, and while he drank, he sat there feeling sorry for himself and fantasized about pulling out his service pistol and shooting the pianist in the bar. If he had managed to stay sober and carefully thought through what he already knew, the story would most certainly have developed differently.
     
    That same evening in the editorial offices of The Express they had a short semantic discussion before deciding on the billboards for the next day. In the end, the head of the news desk decided that one dead person could be murder, two dead people could be double murder, but three dead people could not be called mass murder as some of his colleagues wanted to. But he managed a nice headline in the end:
Missing
CENTENARIAN
Suspected of
TRIPLE MURDER
    They had a late evening at Bellringer Farm with one and all in very good spirits. Amusing stories were trotted out one after the other. Bosse was a hit when he pulled out the Bible and said that now he would tell them the story of how he, quite involuntarily, came to read the whole book from beginning to end. Allan wondered what devilish method of torture Bosse had suffered, but that wasn’t what lay behind it. No outsider had forced Bosse to do anything, no, Bosse’s own curiosity was responsible.
    ‘I’m sure I’ll never be that curious,’ said Allan.
    Julius asked whether Allan could stop interrupting Bosse for once so that they could hear the story, and Allan said that he could. Bosse went on:
    One day some months earlier he had received a phone call from an acquaintance at the recycling centre outside Skövde. The two of them had got to know each other at the racetrack. This acquaintance had learned that Bosse’s conscience was flexible and that Bosse was always interested in opportunities that might provide new sources of income.
    The recycling centre had just received a pallet with half a ton of books that were to be pulped, because they had been classified as waste and not as literature, presumably because of some defect. Bosse’s acquaintance had become curious as to what sort of literature it was, and he had opened the packaging only to find a bible (his acquaintance had been hoping for something of a totally different kind).
    ‘But this wasn’t just your standard bible,’ said Bosse, and passed a specimen around so they could see for themselves. ‘We are talking ultra thin in genuine leather with golden letteringand stuff… And just look at this: a list of characters, maps in colour, index…’
    His acquaintance had been just as impressed as his friends now were, and instead of pulping the goodies, had phoned Bosse and offered to smuggle the books out of the recycling centre in exchange for… say a thousand crowns.
    Bosse jumped at the chance, and that very same afternoon he found himself with half a ton of fancy bibles in his barn. But try as he might, he couldn’t find anything wrong with the books. It was driving him crazy. So one evening he sat down in front of the fire in the living room and started to read, from ‘In the beginning…’ onwards.