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

side of the road, and prepared to die.
    But it turned out that his time had not come, although his mobile phone wasn’t so lucky. It met with a rapid death under one of the young man’s boots. And a whole stream of death threats directed at the driver’s relatives spewed out of the young man’s mouth, designed to avert any possible thought of the driver contacting the police instead of turning the bus around and continuing the journey to Flen.
    Then the young man got off and let the driver and the bus escape. The poor driver was so terrified that he didn’t dare turnthe bus round, but continued all the way to Strängnäs, parked in the middle of Trädgårds Street, walked in shock into the Delia Hotel where he rapidly downed four glasses of whisky. Then to the bartender’s horror, he started to cry. After a further two glasses of whisky, the bartender offered him a telephone in case he wanted to phone somebody. The bus driver started to cry again – and called his girlfriend.
     
    The young man thought he could make out tracks in the gravel on the road, tracks of a suitcase on wheels. This would be over in no time, which was a good thing, because it was getting dark.
    Off and on, the young man wished that he had done a bit more planning. It struck him that he was standing in a rapidly darkening forest, and it would soon be pitch black. what would he do then?
    These troubled thoughts ended abruptly when he first caught sight of a shabby, partly boarded-up, yellow building near the bottom of the hill. And when somebody turned on a light on the upper floor, the young man mumbled:
    ‘Now I’ve got you, old geezer.’
    Allan quickly stopped peeing. Then he carefully opened the toilet door and tried to hear what was happening in the kitchen. Soon enough his worst fear was confirmed. Allan recognised the young man’s voice, bellowing at Julius Jonsson to reveal where ‘the other old bastard’ was.
    Allan snuck over to the kitchen door, silently because he was wearing bedroom slippers. The young man had grasped Julius by both ears, the same hold he had earlier practised on the little man at the station in Malmköping. while he shook poor Julius, he continued his interrogation. Allan thought the young man should have been satisfied with finding the suitcase which was standing right in the middle of the room. Julius grimaced but made no move to answer. Allan reflected that the old timbermerchant was quite a tough guy, and looked around for a suitable weapon. Amidst the junk he saw a small number of candidates: a crowbar, a plank, a container of insect spray and a packet of rat poison. Allan first settled on the rat poison but couldn’t just then figure out a way to get a spoonful or two into the young man. The crowbar, on the other hand, was a bit too heavy for the centenarian to lift, and the insect spray… No, it would have to be the plank.
    So Allan took a firm hold of his weapon and with four sensationally fast steps – for his age – he was right behind his intended victim.
    The young man must have sensed that Allan was there, because just as the old man took aim the youth loosened his hold on Julius Jonsson and spun around.
    He received the plank slap bang in the middle of his forehead, stood still where he was and stared for a second before he fell backwards and hit his head on the edge of the kitchen table.
    No blood, no groaning, nothing. He just lay there, with his eyes closed.
    ‘Good one,’ said Julius.
    ‘Thanks,’ said Allan, ‘now where’s that dessert you promised?’
     
    Allan and Julius sat down at the kitchen table, with the long-haired youth unconscious at their feet. Julius poured the brandy, gave one glass to Allan and raised his own in a toast. Allan raised his glass.
    ‘So,’ said Julius when they’d emptied their glasses. ‘I’m betting that’s the owner of the suitcase?’
    Allan realised that it was time for him to explain a thing or two in more detail.
    Not that there was so much to explain. Most of what had happened during the day was hard for Allan himself to understand. But he described the events – his defection from thehome, his spontaneous seizure of the suitcase at the station in Malmköping, and the fear at the back of his mind that the young man who now lay on the floor would probably quickly catch up with him. And he sincerely apologised for the fact that Julius now sat there with red and throbbing ears. But Julius said that Allan most certainly shouldn’t