riday, 27th May 2005

It takes time to get from Eskilstuna to Falköping. Prosecutor Conny Ranelid needed to get up at dawn (and after sleeping badly all night too) to get to Bellringer Farm by ten o’clock. And the meeting couldn’t run longer than one hour or his plan would be ruined. The press conference was supposed to start at three.

Conny Ranelid was close to tears as he drove down the road. The Great Victory of Justice, that was what his book would have been called. Hah! If there was any justice at all in this world, then lightning would strike that damned farm and everyone there would burn to death. Then Prosecutor Ranelid could say whatever he wanted to the journalists.

Chief Inspector Aronsson slept late. He woke up at nine, with a bit of a bad conscience about the events of the previous day. He had drunk champagne with the potential delinquents, and he had clearly heard Karlsson say that they would make up a story for Prosecutor Ranelid. Was he about to become an accomplice — accomplice to what, in that case?

When the chief inspector had reached his hotel the previous evening, he looked up John 8:7 in the Gideon Bible in his room. This had been followed by a couple of hours of bible reading in a corner of the hotel bar, in the company of a gin and tonic, followed by another gin and tonic followed by another gin and tonic.

The chapter in question was about the woman who committed adultery and whom the Pharisees had taken before Jesus to place him in a dilemma. If according to Jesus the woman should not be stoned for her crime, then Jesus was rejecting Moses (the Book of Leviticus). If, on the other hand, Jesus was on the same side as Moses, then he would be battling with the Romans who had the monopoly on the death sentence. Would Jesus go against Moses or the Romans? The Pharisees thought that they had the Master cornered. But Jesus was Jesus and after thinking it over he said:

‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone!’

Jesus had thus avoided arguing with Moses and with the Romans, or for that matter with the Pharisees. The Pharisees went off, one by one (men, in general, are of course not in the slightest bit free of sin). Finally, only Jesus and the woman remained.

‘Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?’

‘No one,’ she answered.

‘Then neither do I condemn you,’ Jesus declared. ‘Go now and sin no more.’

The chief inspector still had his policeman’s sense of smell intact and he was sure he could smell a rat. But Karlsson and Jonsson and Ljungberg and Ljungberg and Björklund and Gerdin were, as of yesterday, declared innocent by Prosecutor Ranelid, and who was Aronsson to call them delinquents? Besides, they were actually a rather appealing bunch and – as Jesus so rightly pointed out – who was in a position to cast the first stone? Aronsson thought back to some darker moments of his own life, but above all he grew angry over how Prosecutor Ranelid had wished the thoroughly pleasant Pike Gerdin dead, just to serve his own purposes.

‘No, damn it! You’ll have to sort this out yourself, Ranelid,’ said Chief Inspector Aronsson and headed for the hotel’s breakfast room.

Cornflakes, toast and egg were washed down with coffee and the two big national dailies, both of which cautiously suggested that the prosecutor had made something of a fiasco of the case of the disappearing centenarian who was eventually both accused of murder and declared innocent. The newspapers did, however, have to admit that they didn’t know enough about it. The centenarian himself couldn’t be found, and the prosecutor didn’t want to tell them any more until Friday afternoon.

‘As noted, Ranelid, you’ll have to sort this out yourself,’ Aronsson murmured.

Then the chief inspector ordered a taxi and arrived at Bellringer Farm at 9.51, just three minutes before the prosecutor.

There was no meteorological risk of what Prosecutor Ranelid so devoutly wished for: a lightning strike on Bellringer Farm. But it was cloudy and chilly. So the inhabitants of the farm planned to meet in the spacious kitchen.

The previous evening the group had agreed on an alternative story to present to Prosecutor Ranelid, and to be on the safe side they had rehearsed the story at breakfast too. Now they were reasonably sure of their roles for the morning’s performance, allowing for the fact that the truth is always much simpler to remember than its opposite. He who tells a big lie can easily find himself in big trouble, so now the members of the group had to think carefully before they opened their mouths.

‘Damn and hell,’ was how The Beauty summarized the general tension before Chief Inspector Aronsson and Prosecutor Ranelid were led into the kitchen.

The meeting with Prosecutor Conny Ranelid was more fun for some than for others. This is how it went:

‘Well, to start with I would like to thank you for letting me come,’ said Prosecutor Ranelid. ‘And I must apologize on behalf of… er… on behalf of the prosecutor’s office for the fact that several of you had warrants out for your arrest quite without cause. Having said that, I would very much like to know what happened, from the moment you, Mr Karlsson, climbed out of the window at the Old People’s Home and right up to the present. Would you like to begin, Mr Karlsson?’

Allan had no objection to that. He thought that this might turn out to be fun.

‘I can indeed, Mr Prosecutor, even though I am old and decrepit, and my memory isn’t what it used to be. But I do remember that I climbed out of that window, yes I do. And there were some very sound reasons for that, very sound reasons. You see, Mr Prosecutor, I was on my way to see my good friend Julius Jonsson here, and you don’t show up to visit him without a bottle of vodka and that is exactly what I had been able to obtain after sneaking off to the local state-run alcohol store when nobody was looking. In fact, nowadays you don’t even have to go all the way to the state-run alcohol store, you can simply knock on the door of… well, I won’t tell you his name, Mr Prosecutor, because that isn’t why you are here, but he sells privately imported vodka for less than half the regular price. Anyway, this time Eklund wasn’t at home – oh dear, now I’ve told you his name – and I had no choice but to buy the vodka at the state store. Then I managed to get the bottle into my room and usually at that point I’m home and dry, but this time I was going to take it out again, and the Director was on duty and she has eyes in the back of her head and everywhere else, I can tell you, Mr Prosecutor. It’s not easy to fool Director Alice. So I thought that the window was the best route on this occasion. It was my hundredth birthday that day, and who wants to have his birthday drink confiscated then?’

The prosecutor thought that this might drag on. This old Karlsson geezer had already been babbling for quite a while without really saying anything. And in less than an hour, Ranelid had to be on his way back to Eskilstuna.

‘Thank you, Mr Karlsson, for the interesting insights into your difficulties in acquiring a drink on your big day, but I hope you’ll forgive me for asking you to be more disciplined in the telling, we don’t have much time, as I am sure you understand. What about the suitcase and the meeting with Bolt Bylund at the bus station?’

‘Well, now, how did that happen? Per-Gunnar phoned Julius who phoned me. According to Julius, Per-Gunnar wanted me to take charge of those bibles and I didn’t want to say no because I…’

‘Bibles?’ Prosecutor Ranelid interupted.

‘If you will allow me, Mr Prosecutor, perhaps I can give a little background information?’ said Benny.

‘By all means,’ said the prosecutor.

‘Well, it’s like this. Allan is a good friend of Julius at Byringe, who in turn is a good friend of Per-Gunnar, the man that the prosecutor thought was dead, and Per-Gunnar in turn is a good friend of mine, and I am partly the brother of my brother Bosse, the man who is our host today, partly the fiancé of Gunilla, she is the beautiful lady at the head of the table, and Gunilla busies herself with exegesis and thus has something in common with Bosse who sells bibles – to Per-Gunnar for example.’

The prosecutor sat there with a pen in his hand, but it had all been said so quickly that he hadn’t jotted down a single word.

‘Exegesis?’

‘Yes, the interpretation of the Bible,’ The Beauty explained.

Interpretation of the Bible? thought Chief Inspector Aronsson, who sat in silence beside the prosecutor. Was it even possible to interpret the Bible when you swore as much as Aronsson had heard The Beauty swear the previous evening? But he said nothing. This was for the prosecutor to sort out, once and for all.

‘Interpretation of the Bible?’ said Prosecutor Ranelid, but decided in the very same second to move on. ‘Never mind, tell me instead what happened with the suitcase and Bolt Bylund at the bus station.’

Now it was Per-Gunnar Gerdin’s turn to get in on the act.

‘Would you, Mr Prosecutor, allow me to say something?’

‘Absolutely,’ answered Prosecutor Ranelid. ‘As long as what somebody says will shed some light on this business, the devil himself can have a say.’

‘Please mind your language,’ said The Beauty and rolled her eyes. (The chief inspector was now completely certain that they were making fun of the prosecutor.)

‘I don’t think “the devil” is a fully adequate description of my humble self since I found Jesus,’ said Per-Gunnar Gerdin. ‘You, Mr Prosecutor, will of course have heard that I led an organisation called “Never Again”. The name originally referred to the fact that its members would never find themselves behind bars again even though there might be no lack of legal reasons for such a measure, but as of late the name has acquired another meaning. Never Again shall we be tempted to break the law, not that written by man and absolutely not that written in Heaven!’

‘Is that why Bolt smashed up a waiting room, beat up an official and then kidnapped a bus driver and his bus?’ asked Prosecutor Ranelid.

‘Oh dear, now I can definitely feel a certain sarcasm in the air,’ said Per-Gunnar Gerdin. ‘But just because I myself have seen the light, doesn’t mean that my colleagues have done the same. One of them has indeed gone to South America to do missionary work, but the two others came to an unfortunate end. I had entrusted Bolt with the task of collecting the suitcase with two hundred bibles on Bosse’s route from Uppsala home to Falköping. I was going to use the bibles to spread joy among the worst villains in the country, if you will excuse my language, Mr Prosecutor.’

Up until now, the owner of Bellringer Farm, Bosse, had kept quiet. But at this juncture he placed a heavy grey suitcase on the kitchen table and opened it. Inside lay a large number of super slim bibles bound in genuine black leather, with golden lettering, notations, three marking ribbons, maps in colour and more besides.

‘You will not encounter a more magnificent bible experience than this, Mr Prosecutor,’ said Bosse Ljungberg with conviction. ‘Would you allow me to present you with a copy? We must all seek the light, Mr Prosecutor!’

Unlike the others, Bosse actually meant what he said. And the prosecutor must have had an inkling of that, because he began to waver in his conviction that all this bible talk was just pretence. He accepted Bosse’s bible and thought that immediate salvation might be his only option.

‘Can we once and for all get back to the business at hand?’ he asked. ‘What happened to that damned suitcase in Malmköping?’

‘No swearing!’ lectured The Beauty.

‘Perhaps it’s my turn again?’ Allan said. ‘Well, you see, I went to the bus station a little earlier than I had expected, because Julius asked me to. Bolt Bylund had previously phoned Per-Gunnar in Stockholm and had been – if you, Mr Prosecutor, will again excuse my language – a bit tipsy! And as you will know, Mr Prosecutor, or perhaps as you may not know because I don’t know your drinking habits, but anyhow… where was I? Yes, you know, Mr Prosecutor, how when vodka goes in, common sense goes out, or whatever the saying is. I, myself, in a state of inebriation, have said more than I should have in a submarine at a depth of two hundred metres in the middle of the Baltic Sea…’

‘In the name of God, get to the point!’ said Prosecutor Ranelid.

‘No blasphemy!’ urged The Beauty.

Prosecutor Ranelid put one hand on his brow while he inhaled deeply a few times. Allan Karlsson went on:

‘Well, Bolt Bylund had phoned Per-Gunnar in Stockholm to say that he was resigning from Per-Gunnar’s Bible Club, and that instead he intended to join the Foreign Legion but that first of all – and at this point you ought to sit down, Mr Prosecutor, because what I am going to say is dreadful – he intended to make a bonfire of the bibles in the main square in Malmköping!’

‘To be more precise, he is said to have yelled “those damn fucking bibles”,’ said The Beauty.

‘No wonder, then, that I was sent out to find Mr Bolt and take the suitcase from him before it was too late. We often have little time, and sometimes we have even less time than we can possibly imagine. Like, for example, on the occasion when General Franco in Spain very nearly got blown to bits before my very eyes.’

‘What has General Franco in Spain got to do with this story?’ wondered Prosecutor Ranelid.

‘Nothing whatsoever, Mr Prosecutor, other than that I let him serve as an illustrative example. You can never have too much clarity.’

‘In that case, what if you, Mr Karlsson, were to bring some clarity to this matter? What happened to the suitcase?’

‘Well, Mr Bolt didn’t want to give it to me, and my physique didn’t really allow me to try to take it by force, not just my physique for that matter. In principle I think it’s terrible the way people—’

‘Stick to the subject, Mr Karlsson!’

‘Yes, my apologies, Mr Prosecutor. Well, when Mr Bolt, in the middle of everything, needed to visit the station’s public conveniences, then I took my chance. Together with the suitcase, I got on the Strängnäs bus which took me to Byringe and old Julius here, or Julle as we sometimes say.’

‘Julle?’ said the prosecutor, as he felt he had to say something.

‘Or Julius,’ said Julius. ‘Nice to meet you.’

The prosecutor sat in silence for a few moments. Now he had actually started making some notes, and he seemed to be drawing connecting lines between the notes.

‘But, Mr Karlsson, you paid for the bus journey with a fifty-crown banknote and wondered how far it would get you. How does that fit in with having a deliberate intention of travelling to Byringe and nowhere else?’

‘Hah!’ said Allan. ‘I know perfectly well what it costs to travel to Byringe. I just happened to have a fifty-crown note in my wallet and I simply had a bit of fun with the driver. That’s not against the law, is it, Mr Prosecutor?’

Prosecutor Ranelid didn’t bother to answer.

‘Briefly, what happened next?’

‘Briefly? Briefly, Julius and I, we had a nice evening together, until Mr Bolt came and tried to unbolt the door, if you will excuse the pun, Mr Prosecutor. But since we had a bottle of vodka on the table, and you will perhaps remember from earlier in my tale that that is what I had with me – a bottle of vodka – and, to be honest, not just one bottle but two, one shouldn’t tell untruths about less important details and anyhow who can judge what is more or less important in this tale, that is for you, Mr Pros —’

‘Go on!’

‘Yes, my apologies. Well, Mr Bolt calmed down when he realised there was roast elk and vodka on the menu. During the course of the late evening, he even decided not to burn the bibles in gratitude for the state of inebriation he had been afforded. Alcohol does indeed have its positive sides, don’t you think, Mr Pros —’

‘Go on!’

‘In the morning, Mr Bolt had the worst hangover. I personally haven’t been there since 1945 when I did my best to drink Vice President Truman under the table with the help of tequila. Unfortunately, President Roosevelt went and died that same day so we had to break off the party early, and that was probably lucky for me because I can’t begin to describe what my head felt like the next day. You could say I only felt slightly better than Roosevelt.’

Prosecutor Ranelid blinked rapidly. In the end, his curiosity got the better of him:

‘What are you talking about? Were you drinking tequila with Vice President Truman when President Roosevelt died?’

‘Perhaps we shouldn’t get bogged down in details, or what do you think, Mr Prosecutor?’

The prosecutor said nothing.

‘Mr Bolt was, in any case, not in a condition to help us pedal the inspection trolley when it was time to travel to Åkers Foundry the following morning.’

‘He wasn’t even wearing shoes, I understand,’ said the prosecutor. ‘How can you explain that, Karlsson?’

‘If you, Mr Prosecutor, had only seen what a hangover Mr Bolt had that morning… He could just as well have been sitting there in nothing but underpants.’

‘And your own shoes, Karlsson? They were later found in Julius Jonsson’s kitchen.’

‘Yes, I borrowed some shoes from Julius of course. If you are one hundred years old, you sometimes find yourself going out in slippers, as you’ll discover yourself, Mr Prosecutor, if you wait forty or fifty years.’

‘I don’t think I’ll survive that long,’ said Prosecutor Ranelid. ‘The question is whether I’ll survive this conversation. How do you explain that when the inspection trolley was found, a police dog could smell traces of a dead body?’

‘You tell me, Mr Prosecutor. Mr Bolt was of course the last person to leave the trolley, so perhaps he could have told us himself, if he hadn’t had the misfortune to die over there in Djibouti. Do you, Mr Prosecutor, think that I might be the origin of that smell? I’m not dead, that much is for sure, but I am dreadfully old… Can the smell of a dead person sort of come a bit early?’

Prosecutor Ranelid was getting impatient. So far they had covered less than one of the twenty-six days. And ninety per cent of what came out of the mouth of the old geezer was pure nonsense.

‘Go on!’ said Prosecutor Ranelid.

‘Well, we left Mr Bolt sleeping on the trolley and went for a refreshing walk to the hot-dog stand, which of course was run by Per-Gunnar’s friend Benny.’

‘Have you also been in prison?’ asked the prosecutor.

‘No, but I’ve studied Criminology,’ said Benny quite truthfully, before making up a story about how he had once interviewed inmates in a big prison and had then met Per-Gunnar.

Prosecutor Ranelid seemed to note something down again, after which he monotonously ordered Allan Karlsson to ‘go on!’

‘By all means. Benny was originally going to drive me and Julius to Stockholm so that we could give the suitcase with bibles to Per-Gunnar. But now Benny said he wanted to make a detour via Småland to see his fiancée, Gunilla…’

‘Peace be with you,’ said Gunilla and nodded towards Prosecutor Ranelid.

Allan went on:

‘Benny was of course the one who knew Per-Gunnar best and Benny said that Per-Gunnar could wait a few days for the bibles, he didn’t think there was anything with a topical news value in them, and you have to admit he is right about that. But you can’t wait in all eternity, because when Jesus actually returns to Earth then all the chapters on his imminent return become obsolete…’

‘Stick to the subject!’

‘Of course, Mr Prosecutor! I shall absolutely stick to the subject, otherwise things can go badly wrong. I probably know that better than anyone. If I hadn’t stuck to the subject in front of Mao Tse-tung in Manchuria then I would almost certainly have been shot then and there.’

‘That would undeniably have saved us a lot of trouble,’ said Prosecutor Ranelid.

‘Anyhow, Benny didn’t think that Jesus would have time to return while we were in Småland, and to the best of my knowledge Benny was right about that —’

‘Karlsson!’

‘Oh yes. Well, the three of us drove to Småland without first telling Per-Gunnar, and that of course was a mistake.’

‘Yes, it was,’ Per-Gunnar Gerdin added at this point. ‘I suppose I could have waited a few days for the bibles, that wasn’t the issue. But, you see, Mr Prosecutor, I thought that Bolt had come up with something stupid together with Julius, Allan and Benny. Because Bolt had never liked the idea that Never Again should start spreading the Gospel. And of course I didn’t feel any better after reading the papers!’

The prosecutor nodded. Perhaps there was something here that resembled logic after all. Then he turned to Benny:

‘But when you read about a suspected kidnapping of a centenarian – why didn’t you contact the police?’

‘Well, the thought did occur to me. But when I raised it with Allan and Julius they refused to allow it. Julius said that on principle he never spoke to the police, and Allan said that he was on the run from the Old People’s Home and absolutely didn’t want to be returned to Director Alice just because the newspapers and TV had got this and that wrong.’

‘You never talk with the police on principle?’ said Prosecutor Ranelid to Julius Jonsson.

‘I have had a little bad luck in my relations with the police over the years. But there have been exceptions, like my time with Chief Inspector Aronsson yesterday, and for that matter with you, Mr Prosecutor, today. Would you like some more coffee?’

Yes, the prosecutor would indeed. He needed all the energy and strength he could muster to get this meeting into some sort of order and then to be able to present something to the media at three o’clock. Something that was true, or at least credible.

But the prosecutor didn’t want to let Benny Ljungberg off the hook.

‘And why didn’t you phone your friend Per-Gunnar Gerdin? You must have realised that he would read about you in the newspaper.’

‘I thought that perhaps the police and prosecutor were not yet aware of the fact that Per-Gunnar had met Jesus, and that therefore his telephone line was bugged. And you, Mr Prosecutor, have to admit that I was right.’

The prosecutor mumbled something, made a note, and regretted that he had happened to let that detail slip out to the journalists, but done was done. He turned to Per-Gunnar Gerdin.

‘Mr Gerdin, you seem to have been tipped off as to where Allan Karlsson and his friends were situated. Where did that tip come from?’

‘Regrettably, we’ll probably never know. My colleague took that information with him to his grave. Or to the scrap yard to be exact.’

‘And what was the tip?’

‘That Allan, Benny and his girlfriend had been seen in Rottne in Småland. A friend of Bucket called, I think. I was mainly interested in the information as such. I knew that Benny’s girlfriend lived in Småland and that she had red hair. So I ordered Bucket to make his way to Rottne and stand outside the supermarket. Because you have to eat…’

‘And Bucket was happy to oblige, in the name of Jesus?’

‘Well, not exactly, you’ve hit it on the head there, Mr Prosecutor. One can say a lot about Bucket, but… religious? No, he was never that. He was, if anything, even more upset than Bolt as to the new direction the club had taken. He talked of going to Russia or the Baltic countries and getting into the narcotics business there… Have you ever heard anything so dreadful? He might have done so, but you’ll have to ask him yourself… No, that’s not possible…’

The prosecutor looked somewhat suspiciously at Per-Gunnar Gerdin.

‘We had a tape recording, exactly as Benny Ljungberg just assumed. In it, you refer to Gunilla Björklund as an “old biddy” and a little later in the conversation you swear as well. What does the Lord think about that?’

‘Ah, the Lord is quick to forgive, as you will soon see if you open the book you have just been given.’

‘“Whoever’s sins you forgive, they are forgiven,” says Jesus,’ Bosse chipped in.

‘The Gospel according to John?’ said Chief Inspector Aronsson, who thought he recognised the quote from the hours he spent in the corner of the hotel bar the previous evening.

‘Do you read the Bible?’ Prosecutor Ranelid wondered in amazement.

Chief Inspector Aronsson didn’t answer, but smiled piously at Prosecutor Ranelid.

‘I spoke in that way – swearing and suchlike – because I wanted Bucket to recognise the style from the old days; I thought that it might make him follow orders,’ explained Per-Gunnar Gerdin.

‘And did he?’ wondered the prosecutor.

‘Yes and no. I didn’t want him to make himself known to Allan, Julius, Benny and his girlfriend, because I thought that his rather uncouth manner wouldn’t really go down well with the group.’

‘It certainly didn’t,’ The Beauty added.

‘How come?’ wondered Prosecutor Ranelid.

‘Well, he came charging up to my farm and was smoking and swearing and wanted alcohol… I can put up with a great deal, but I can’t abide folk who have to resort to expletives.’

Chief Inspector Aronsson managed to avoid choking on his cake. The Beauty had as recently as the previous evening been sitting on the veranda and swearing almost without a pause for breath. Aronsson felt more and more certain that he never wanted to find out the truth in this mess. Things were all right as they were. The Beauty went on:

‘I am pretty sure he was drunk already when he arrived, and, just think, he came in a car too! And then he went around waving his pistol to show off, boasting and saying that he was going to deal drugs in… Riga, I think it was. So I roared out, yes, Mr Prosecutor, I roared out “No weapons on my land!” and made him put his gun down on the veranda. I don’t think I’ve ever met a more bad-tempered and unpleasant man…’

‘Perhaps it was the bibles that made him lose his temper,’ Allan said. ‘Religion can so easily stir up people’s feelings. Once, when I was in Tehran —’

‘Tehran?’ the prosecutor blurted out.

‘Yes, it was a few years ago, that’s for sure. Things were more organized down there in those days, as Churchill said to me when we left there by plane.’

‘Churchill?’ said the prosecutor.

‘Yes, the prime minister. Or perhaps he wasn’t prime minister just then, but earlier. And later, in fact.’

‘I know bloody well who Churchill was, I just… You and Churchill together in Tehran?’

‘No swearing, Mr Prosecutor!’ said The Beauty.

‘Well, not together exactly. I was living for a while with a missionary. And he was an expert at getting people to lose their tempers.’

And losing his temper was exactly what Prosecutor Ranelid was doing. He had just realised that he was trying to get the facts out of a hundred-year-old geezer who claimed he had met Franco, Truman, Mao Tse-tung and Churchill. But Ranelid losing his temper didn’t bother Allan. He continued:

‘Young Mr Bucket walked around like a human thundercloud the entire time he was at Lake Farm. He only brightened up once, and that was when he finally left. Then he lowered the window of his car and shouted out: “Latvia, here I come!” We chose to interpret that as meaning he was on his way to Latvia, but you, Mr Prosecutor, are much more experienced in police matters so perhaps you have a different interpretation?’

‘Idiot!’ said the prosecutor.

‘Idiot?’ said Allan. ‘I’ve never been called that before. Dog and rat, yes, Stalin let those two epithets slip out when he was at his angriest, but never idiot.’

‘Then it’s about time,’ said Prosecutor Ranelid.

Per-Gunnar Gerdin interrupted:

‘Now, now, no need to be angry because you can’t just lock up anyone you feel like, Mr Prosecutor. Do you want to hear the rest of the story, or not?’

Yes, the prosecutor wanted to hear it, so he mumbled an apology. Or perhaps ‘wanted’ was not the right word… he simply had to hear it. So he let Per-Gerdin go on:

‘So, about Never Again, Bolt went off to Africa to become a French Legionnaire, Bucket to Latvia to start a drug business, and Caracas went home to… well, he went home. All that is left is little me, all on my own, with Jesus by my side, of course.’

‘Oh yes? Pull the other one,’ muttered the prosecutor. ‘Go on!’

‘I made my way down to Lake Farm to see Gunilla, Benny’s girlfriend. Bucket had at least phoned and told me the address before he left the country.’

‘Umm, I have some questions about that,’ said Prosecutor Ranelid. ‘The first is to you, Gunilla Björklund. Why did you go off and buy a bus a few days before you left – and why did you leave?’

The previous evening, the friends had decided to keep Sonya out of it all. Just like Allan, she was on the run, but unlike Allan she had no citizen’s rights. She probably would not be regarded as Swedish and in Sweden, just like in most countries, you don’t count for much if you are a foreigner. Sonya would probably be deported or sentenced to life in a zoo or both.

‘It’s true that the bus was purchased in my name,’ said The Beauty, ‘but it was actually Benny and me who bought it together and we bought it for Benny’s brother Bosse.’

‘And he was going to fill it with bibles?’ Prosecutor Ranelid burst out. He was no longer capable of minding his manners and temper.

‘No, with watermelons,’ Bosse answered. ‘Do you want to taste the sweetest watermelons in the world, Mr Prosecutor?’

‘No, I don’t,’ Prosecutor Ranelid answered. ‘I want to bring some clarity to what remains of the story and then I want to go home and quickly get through a press conference and then I want to take a holiday. That’s what I want. And now let’s move on. Why the hell… umm, why on earth did you leave Lake Farm just when Per-Gunnar Gerdin arrived?’

‘But they didn’t know I was on the way there,’ said Per-Gunnar Gerdin. ‘Are you finding it hard to follow, Mr Prosecutor?’

‘Yes, I am,’ said Prosecutor Ranelid. ‘Einstein would find it hard to follow if he had to listen to this nonsense talk.’

‘Now that you mention Einstein…’ said Allan.

‘No, Mr Karlsson,’ said Prosecutor Ranelid in a firm voice. ‘I don’t want to hear what you and Einstein did together. Instead, I want Mr Gerdin to explain how the “Russians” come into the picture.’

‘The Russians?’ said Per-Gunnar Gerdin.

‘Yes, the Russians. Your deceased colleague Bucket talks of “the Russians” in your bugged telephone conversation. You complained that Bucket hadn’t called your pay-as-you-go phone, and Bucket answered that he thought that only applied when you did business with the Russians.’

‘That isn’t something I want to talk about,’ said Per-Gunnar Gerdin, mainly because he didn’t know what to say.

‘But I do,’ said Prosecutor Ranelid.

There was silence around the table. The papers hadn’t mentioned the bit about the Russians in Gerdin’s telephone conversation, and Gerdin himself hadn’t remembered it. But then Benny said:

‘Yesli chelovek kurit, on plocho igraet v futbol.’

They all stared at him.

‘“The Russians” refers to me and my brother,’ Benny explained. ‘Our father – may he rest in peace – and our Uncle Frasse – may he also rest in peace – were a bit red. So they made me and my brother learn Russian as children and friends and acquaintances nicknamed us “the Russians”. That was what I just said, but in Russian of course.’

Like so much else this particular morning, what Benny had said had very little to do with the truth. He had simply tried to get Pike Gerdin out of a tight spot. Benny had almost completed a BA in Russian (he never handed in his final essay) but that was some time ago and all Benny could remember in a hurry was:

‘If you smoke, you won’t be much good at soccer.’

But it worked. Allan was the only one there who understood what Benny had said.

It was all too much for Prosecutor Ranelid: First, all these idiotic references to historic figures, and then people speaking Russian…

‘Can you explain, Mr Gerdin, how you were first rammed and killed by your friends, and then rose up from the dead and are now sitting here and… eating watermelon? And can I taste that melon, after all?’

‘But of course,’ said Bosse. ‘The recipe is secret though! Or as the saying goes: “If the food is going to be really tasty then you don’t want the Food Inspector watching you when you make it.”’

That was not a saying that either Chief Inspector Aronsson or Prosecutor Ranelid had ever heard before. But Aronsson had once and for all decided to keep as quiet as possible, and Ranelid now wished for nothing more than to bring it all to a conclusion… whatever that was… and leave. So he didn’t ask for an explanation. Instead, he noted that the watermelon in question was the tastiest he had ever bitten into.

Per-Gunnar Gerdin explained how he had come to Lake Farm just as the bus was driving away, how he had gone to look around before he realised that the bus had probably carried off his friends, and how he had then chased it, overtaken it, and lost control of his car in a skid – and, well, the photos of the wrecked car were not unfamiliar to the prosecutor, he supposed.

‘No surprise that he caught up with us,’ Allan added, after having been quiet for a while. ‘He had more than three hundred horsepower under the hood. Not like the Volvo PV444 that took me to visit Prime Minister Erlander. Forty-four horsepower! That was a lot in those days. And I wonder how many horsepower Gustavsson had when he turned into my yard by mistake —’

‘Shut it… please Mr Karlsson, before you finish me off,’ said Prosecutor Ranelid.

The chairman of Never Again continued his story. He had, of course, lost a little blood in the wrecked car, or actually quite a lot, but he was soon bandaged and he hadn’t thought it necessary to go to hospital for as little as a light wound, a broken arm, concussion and a few broken ribs.

‘Besides, Benny did study Literature,’ said Allan.

‘Literature?’ repeated Prosecutor Ranelid.

‘Did I say Literature? I meant Medicine.’

‘I have studied Literature too,’ said Benny. ‘My absolute favourite is probably Camilo José Cela, not least his first novel from the 1940s, La familia de —’

‘Get back to the story.’

The prosecutor, in his appeal, had happened to look at Allan, so Allan said:

‘If you’ll excuse us, Mr Prosecutor, we’ve told you everything. But if you absolutely want to hear us talk some more then I can probably remember one or two adventures from my time as a CIA agent – or even better from my trip across the Himalayas. And do you want the recipe for making vodka from goats’ milk? All you need is a beet and a bit of sunshine. And some goats’ milk of course.’

Sometimes your mouth seems to go its own way while your brain stands still, and that was probably what happened to Prosecutor Ranelid when – contrary to what he had just decided – he happened to comment on Allan’s latest nonsense:

‘You crossed the Himalayas? At a hundred?’

‘No, don’t be silly,’ said Allan. ‘You see, Mr Prosecutor, I haven’t always been a hundred years old. No, that’s recent.’

‘Can we move on…?’

‘We all grow up and get older,’ Allan continued. ‘You might not think so when you are a child. Take young Mr Kim Jong Il, for example. That unfortunate child sat crying on my lap, but now he is head of state, with all that entails…’

‘Never mind, Karlsson.’

‘I’m sorry. You wanted to hear the story of when I crossed the Himalayas, Mr Prosecutor. Well, for several months my only company was a camel, and say what you will about camels, they aren’t much fun…’

‘No!’ exclaimed Prosecutor Ranelid. ‘I don’t want to hear that at all. I just… I don’t know…’

And then Prosecutor Ranelid was silent for a few moments, before saying in a quiet voice that he didn’t have any more questions… except possibly that he couldn’t understand why the friends had stayed in hiding for several weeks when there was nothing to hide from.

‘You were innocent, weren’t you?’

‘But innocence can mean different things depending on whose perspective you adopt,’ said Benny.

‘I was thinking along the same lines,’ said Allan. ‘President Johnson and de Gaulle for example. Who was guilty and who was innocent when it came to their bad relationship? Mind you, I didn’t bring that up when we met, we had other things to talk about, but —’

‘Please, Mr Karlsson,’ said Prosecutor Ranelid. ‘I beg you, please be quiet.’

‘You don’t have to go down on your knees, Mr Prosecutor. I shall be quiet as a mouse from now on, I promise you. During my hundred years, my tongue has slipped only twice. First when I told the West how you build an atom bomb, and then when I did the same for the East.’

Prosecutor Ranelid slowly got up, and with a nod quietly thanked them for the melon, for the coffee and the cake, for… the conversation… and for the fact that the friends at Bellringer Farm had been so cooperative.

After which he got into his car and drove away.

‘That went well,’ said Julius.

‘Indeed it did,’ said Allan. ‘I think I covered most of it.’

In his car, Prosecutor Ranelid’s mental paralysis gradually lost its hold. He went over the story he’d been told, adding something here, deleting something there (mainly deleting), and patching and polishing until he felt he had a nicely tidied-up story that would actually work. The only thing that really worried the prosecutor was that the journalists just wouldn’t believe that the hundred-year-old Allan Karlsson already carried the scent of death.

Then Prosecutor Ranelid had an idea. That damned police dog… Could they blame it all on the dog?

If Ranelid could make it sound as if the dog was crazy, unimagined possibilities appeared for the prosecutor to save his own skin. The story would then be that there never was a corpse on the inspection trolley in the Södermanland forest, and that’s why it hadn’t been found. But the prosecutor had been fooled into believing the opposite, and that in turn led to a number of logical conclusions and decisions – which had turned out to be completely wrong. But you couldn’t blame the prosecutor for that. It was the dog’s fault.

This could be brilliant, Prosecutor Ranelid thought. The story of the dog that had lost its touch just needed to be confirmed by another source and then Kicki – was that her name? — had to end her days fast. It wouldn’t do for her to prove her skills after the prosecutor had explained what happened.

Prosecutor Ranelid had a hold on Kicki’s handler since the time, some years ago, when he had managed quietly to spirit away a case of a police officer suspected of shoplifting at 7-Eleven. A police career shouldn’t end because of one muffin that somebody had forgotten to pay for, thought Ranelid. But now it was high time for the dog-handler to repay the favour.

‘Bye-bye Kicki,’ said Prosecutor Ranelid and smiled for the first time in ages.

Shortly afterwards, his telephone rang. It was the county police chief. The autopsy and identity report from Riga had just landed on his desk.

‘The compressed corpse at the scrapyard was Henrik Hultén,’ said the police chief.

‘Nice to hear that,’ said Prosecutor Ranelid. ‘And a good thing you phoned! Can you connect me to reception? I need to get hold of Ronny Bäckman, the dog-handler…’

The friends at Bellringer Farm had waved goodbye to Prosecutor Ranelid and at Allan’s suggestion had returned to the kitchen table. There was, he said, a question that needed to be resolved.

Allan started the meeting by asking Chief Inspector Aronsson if he had anything to say about what Prosecutor Ranelid had just been told. Perhaps the chief inspector would prefer to go for a walk while the friends had their meeting?

Aronsson answered that he thought the account had been clear and sound in every way possible. As far as the chief inspector was concerned, the case was closed, and if they would let him remain seated at the table he would be happy to do so. He himself was not free from sin, said Aronsson, and he was not about to throw the first or even the second stone in this matter.

‘But do me the favour of not telling me things that I don’t really need to know. I mean, if there should be alternative answers to those you just gave to Ranelid…’

Allan promised, and added that his friend Aronsson was welcome to stay.

Friend Aronsson, thought Aronsson. In his work over the years, Aronsson had made many enemies among the country’s most unscrupulous villains, but not a single friend. He thought it was about time! And so he said that if Allan and the others would like to include him in their friendship, he would be both proud and happy.

Allan answered that during his long life he had been on comradely footing with both presidents and priests, but not until now with a policeman. And since their friend Aronsson absolutely didn’t want to know too much, Allan promised not to say anything about where the group’s pile of money had come from. For the sake of friendship, that is.

‘Pile of money?’ asked Chief Inspector Aronsson.

‘Yes, you know that suitcase? Before it contained super slim bibles in genuine leather, it was filled to the brim with five-hundred-crown banknotes. About fifty million crowns.’

‘What the devil…’ said Chief Inspector Aronsson.

‘Swear if you like,’ said The Beauty.

‘Fifty million?’ asked Chief Inspector Aronsson.

‘Minus some expenses in the course of our journey,’ said Allan. ‘And now the group has to sort out who owns it. And with that I shall ask Pike to speak.’

Per-Gunnar ‘Pike’ Gerdin scratched his ear. Then he said that he would like the friends and the millions to stick together. Perhaps they could go on holiday together, because there was nothing Pike longed for more just now than to be served a parasol drink under a parasol somewhere far, far away. Besides, Pike happened to know that Allan had leanings of a similar nature.

‘But without the parasol,’ said Allan.

Julius said that he agreed with Allan that protection from rain over the vodka was not one of the necessities of life, especially if you were already lying under a parasol and the sun was shining from a clear blue sky. But he also thought that the friends didn’t need to argue about that. A shared holiday sounded great!

Chief Inspector Aronsson smiled shyly at the idea, not daring to assume he belonged to the group. Benny noted this, so he put an arm around the chief inspector’s shoulder and asked how the representative of the police force preferred to have his holiday drinks served. The chief inspector smiled and was just about to answer when The Beauty put the damper on everything:

‘I’m not taking a single step without Sonya and Buster!’

And then she was silent for a second before she added:

‘Not a snowball’s chance in hell!’

Since Benny for his part couldn’t contemplate taking a step without The Beauty, his enthusiasm rapidly evaporated.

‘Besides, I don’t suppose half of us even have a valid passport,’ he sighed.

But Allan calmly thanked Pike for his generosity with regard to how the suitcase money could best be shared. He thought a holiday was a good idea, and preferably as many thousands of miles from Director Alice as possible. If only the other members of the group could agree, they could surely sort out the transport issues and find a destination where they weren’t so fussy about visas for man and beast.

‘And how do you intend to take along a five-ton elephant on the plane?’ said Benny in despair.

‘I don’t know,’ said Allan. ‘But as long as we think positively, I’m sure a solution will appear.’

‘And the valid passports?’

‘As long as we think positively, as I said.’

‘I don’t think Sonya actually weighs much more than four tons, perhaps four and a half at the most,’ said The Beauty.

‘You see, Benny,’ said Allan. ‘That’s what I mean by thinking positively. The problem immediately became a whole ton less.’

‘I might have an idea,’ The Beauty said.

‘Me too,’ said Allan. ‘Can I use your phone?’