ednesday, 11th May–Wednesday, 25th May 2005

The fugitives and the presumed dead managed successfully to keep themselves out of sight at Bellringer Farm. The farm lay 200 metres from the main road, and from that angle the farmhouse and the barn concealed the farmyard from view. This created a free zone for Sonya. She could have a little walk between the barn and the small wood behind the farm.

Life on the farm was generally quite enjoyable. Benny regularly dressed Pike’s wounds and administered a sensible and limited amount of medicine. Buster liked the open views of the Västgöta plain, and Sonya liked it anywhere as long as she didn’t go hungry and as long as her benefactor and feeder – The Beauty – was there with a friendly word now and then. Recently, the old guy had joined them too and the elephant thought that made things even better.

For Benny and The Beauty, the sun was always shining whatever the weather, and if they hadn’t been on the run from the Law, they would probably have got married right away. Once you’ve reached a certain age, it is easier to sense when everything feels exactly right.

At the same time, Benny and Bosse became better brothers to each other. When Benny had managed to make Bosse understand that he was a grown-up even though he drank fruit juice instead of vodka, things went much more smoothly. And Bosse was impressed by everything that Benny knew. Perhaps it hadn’t been quite so dumb or such a waste of time to go to university? It was almost as if his little brother had become a big brother, and that actually felt really good, Bosse thought.

Allan didn’t make much of a fuss about anything. He sat in his hammock all day long, although the weather had become more as it usually was in Sweden in May. Sometimes Pike sat down near him for a little chat.

During one of these conversations, it transpired that they had a shared image of what nirvana was. Both of them thought that this perfect and absolute harmony was to be found in a beach chair under a parasol in a sunny and warm climate where the staff served chilled drinks of various sorts. Allan told Pike what a delightful time he had had on the island of Bali once upon a time, when he was vacationing with money he had got from Mao Tse-tung.

But when it came to what should be in the glasses, Allan and Pike differed. The centenarian wanted vodka cola or possibly vodka grape. On more festive occasions, he preferred vodka straight up. Pike Gerdin, on the other hand, liked more colourful liquids — best of all something orange turning into a golden yellow a bit like a sunset. And there had to be a little parasol in the middle. Allan wondered what on earth Pike wanted with a parasol in his glass. You couldn’t drink it. Pike answered that while Allan had been out and seen the world, and certainly knew a lot more about this and that than a simple ex-con from Stockholm, this was something Allan didn’t have a clue about.

And so this friendly bickering on the theme of nirvana went on for a while. One of them was about twice as old as the other, and the other about twice as big as the first, but they got along pretty well.

As the days and then weeks passed, journalists found it harder to keep the story alive – the story, that is, about the suspected triple murderer and his henchmen. After only a day or two, TV and the national and local newspapers had stopped reporting, according to the old-fashioned and easily defensible standpoint that if you didn’t have anything to say, you said nothing.

The evening papers, the Swedish tabloids, held out longer. If you had nothing to say, you could always interview somebody who didn’t realise that he too had nothing to say. The Express toyed with the idea of using Tarot cards to help them home in on Allan’s whereabouts, but dropped it. That was enough about Allan Karlsson. Go and nose out the next piece of shit… as one said in the trade. If nothing else was available, you could run an article on the latest miracle diet. That always worked.

So the media were letting the mystery of the centenarian disappear into oblivion – with one exception. In the local paper, there were a number of reports about various items related to Allan Karlsson’s disappearance, like, for example, that the ticket office at the bus station had now been fitted with a security door as protection against future attacks. And that Director Alice at the Old People’s Home had decided that Allan Karlsson had forfeited the right to his room and it would be allocated to someone else, someone who ‘was more appreciative of the care and warmth of the staff’.

In every article, however, there was a short recap of the events that the police believed were a result of Allan Karlsson climbing out of his window at the Old People’s Home.

The local paper happened to have a dinosaur of a publisher (cum editor-in-chief), a man with the hopelessly outdated attitude that a citizen is innocent until the opposite is proven. So the paper was careful about which people in the drama they identified by name. Allan Karlsson was indeed Allan Karlsson, but Julius Jonsson was the ‘67-year-old’ and Benny Ljungberg was the ‘hot-dog-stand proprietor’.

This in turn led an angry gentleman to phone Chief Inspector Aronsson at his office. The man said he had a tip about the missing Allan Karlsson, the man suspected of murder.

Chief Inspector Aronsson said that a tip was just what he needed.

Well, the man had read all the articles in the local paper and thought very carefully about what had happened. While he didn’t have as much information as the chief inspector, it seemed to him that the police hadn’t checked up properly on the foreigner.

‘And I am certain that is where you will find the real villain,’ said the man.

‘Foreigner?’ said Chief Inspector Aronsson.

‘Yes, I don’t know whether he is called Ibrahim or Muhammed, because the newspaper, always call him the “hot-dog-stand proprietor”, as if we don’t know that he is a Turk or an Arab. No Swede would open a hot-dog stand. That would only work if you’re a foreigner and don’t pay any taxes.’

‘My,’ said Aronsson. ‘That was a lot all at once. But you can be a Turk and a Muslim at the same time, or for that matter an Arab and a Muslim, in fact that is quite likely.’

‘So he’s a Turk and a Muslim! Even worse! Then check his background thoroughly! And his damned family’s. He’ll have one hundred relatives here, and they’ll all be living on welfare.’

‘Not a hundred,’ said the chief inspector. ‘The only relative he has is actually a brother…’

And that was when an idea started to germinate in Chief Inspector Aronsson’s brain. A few weeks earlier Aronsson had ordered an inquiry into the families of Allan Karlsson, Julius Jonsson and Benny Ljungberg. The inquiry had been to see if a female, preferably with red hair, sister or cousin or a child or grandchild happened to be living in Småland. This was before they had identified Gunilla Björklund. The results had been meagre. Just one name had turned up, and at the time it didn’t seem the slightest bit relevant, but now? Benny Ljungberg had a brother who lived just outside Falköping. Was that where they were all holed up? The chief inspector’s thoughts were interrupted by the anonymous informant.

‘And where does the brother have his hot-dog stand? How much tax does he pay? This mass immigration has to stop!’

Aronsson said that he was grateful for the man’s tips even though the hot-dog-stand proprietor in this case was called Ljungberg and was utterly Swedish. Whether or not Ljungberg was Muslim, Aronsson couldn’t say. Nor did it interest him.

The man said that he thought he detected something offensive in the chief inspector’s answer and that it showed clear signs of socialism.

‘There are a lot of people who think like me; we are growing in numbers. You’ll see in the elections next year.’

Chief Inspector Aronsson told the anonymous man to piss off, and hung up.

Aronsson phoned Prosecutor Ranelid to tell him that early the next day he intended, with the permission of the prosecutor, to go to Västergötland to follow up a new tip in the case of the centenarian and his companions. (Aronsson didn’t think he needed to tell the prosecutor that he had known about the existence of Benny Ljungberg’s brother for several weeks.) Prosecutor Ranelid wished Aronsson good luck.

It was almost 5 p.m. and the prosecutor was tidying up for the day while whistling silently to himself. Should he write a book about the case? The Greatest Victory of Justice. Would that be the right title? Too pretentious? The Great Victory of Justice. Better. And more humble. It fitted the writer’s character perfectly.