The head of the security unit had pointed out that Mr Allan was not an American and not even cleared to be alone with the vice president, but Truman dismissed the security official’s objections with the comment that today Mr Allan had done the most patriotic thing anyone could imagine.
The vice president was in excellent spirits. Straight after dinner, instead of going to Washington, he had decided to fly to Georgia where President Roosevelt was staying at a polio clinic. The president would want to hear this news directly, Harry Truman was sure of that.
‘I’ll order the food, so you can choose the drinks,’ said Harry Truman jovially and handed the wine list to Allan.
Truman turned to the head waiter, who bowed as he received a large order for tacos, enchilada, corn tortillas and salsa.
‘And to drink, sir?’
‘Two bottles of tequila,’ Allan answered.
Harry Truman laughed and asked if Allan wanted to drink him under the table. Allan answered that the last year had taught him that the Mexicans could make spirits with as much oomph in them as akvavit, but that the vice president could of course drink milk if he considered that more suitable.
‘No, I’ve given my word,’ said Vice President Truman, and he made sure the order included lime and salt.
Three hours later the two men were calling each other Harry and Allan, which goes to show what a couple of bottles of tequila can do for international relations. Allan told Truman how the local bigwig had been blown to bits and how he saved the life of General Franco. The vice president, for his part, amused Allan by imitating President Roosevelt’s attempts to get up out of his wheelchair.
When the two men were on the most jovial of terms, the head of the security staff discreetly approached the vice president.
‘Could I have a word please, sir?’
‘Go ahead,’ said the vice president in a slurred voice.
‘Preferably in private, sir.’
‘I’ll be damned if you don’t look just like Humphrey Bogart! Have you seen him, Allan?’
‘Sir…,’ said the increasingly troubled security man.
‘Yes, what the hell do you want?’ the vice president hissed.
‘Sir, it is about President Roosevelt.
‘What about that old goat?’ The vice president guffawed.
‘He’s dead, sir.’
Chapter 10
Monday, 9th May 2005
Bucket sat outside the supermarket in Rottne for four days, hoping to see his colleague Bolt, first of all, and secondly a hundred-year-old man, a red-haired woman of a slightly younger model, a guy with a pony tail (otherwise of unknown appearance) and a Mercedes. It wasn’t his idea to sit there; it was the Boss’s. Bucket had immediately reported his fortuitous conversation with his little brother and leader of The Violence in Braås about the centenarian who had most definitely been outside a health clinic in Småland in the middle of the night. That was when the Boss had ordered a watch on the town’s most popular supermarket. He assumed that a person who was out walking in Rottne in the middle of the night must be holed up somewhere thereabouts, and everyone needs to go food shopping sooner or later. The logic was indisputable. It was not for nothing the Boss was the boss. But of course that was five days ago. Now, Bucket had started to despair.
His concentration was no longer top notch either. So he didn’t notice the red-haired woman when she drove into the car park in a red VW Passat instead of the expected silver Mercedes. But as she had the good taste to walk right under Bucket’s nose on her way into the store, he didn’t miss her. He couldn’t be certain that it was the right woman, but she was about the right age, and she did have exactly the right hair colour.
Bucket phoned the Boss in Stockholm, but he wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic. It was primarily Bolt they were hoping to find, or at least that damned geriatric.
Still Bucket was told to make a note of the number plate and then discreetly follow the redhead to see where she went. Then he was to report back again.
Chief Inspector Aronsson had spent the last four days at the hotel in Åseda. The idea had been that he would be close to the centre of events when new witnesses turned up.
But none did, and Aronsson was just about to set off for home when his colleagues in Eskilstuna phoned. They had got some results from the bug they had planted on the Never Again troublemaker Per-Gunnar Gerdin.
Gerdin, or the Boss as he was known, had been something of a celebrity several years earlier in connection with the establishment of a criminal organisation in the maximum security prison where he resided. The media had taken note, even printing Gerdin’s name and picture. The enterprise had fizzled out as a result of a letter Per-Gunnar Gerdin’s mother had sent him, but that part of the story never reached the media.
A couple of days earlier, Chief Inspector Aronsson had ordered Gerdin’s phone bugged, and now they had a bite. The conversations were taped, transcribed and then sent by fax to Åseda:
‘Hello?’
‘Yes, it’s me.’
‘Anything new?’
‘Maybe. I’m sitting outside the supermarket and I just saw a red-haired biddy go in to do some shopping.’
‘Just the biddy? Not Bolt? Not a hundred-year-old?’
‘No, just the biddy. I don’t know if…’
‘Was she driving a Mercedes?’
‘Err, I didn’t have time to see… but there wasn’t a Mercedes in the car park, so she must have been driving something else.’
[Silence for five seconds]
‘Hello?’
‘Yeah, I’m still here, I’m thinking, damn it. Somebody has to.’
‘Yeah, but I only…’
‘There must be more than one red-haired woman in Småland…’
‘Yeah, but she’s the right age, according to…’
‘Follow her in your car, write down the number plate, don’t do anything stupid, but find out where she’s going. And make damned sure no one sees you. Then report back to me again.’
[Silence for five seconds]
‘Did you get that?’
‘Well, err, yeah. I’ll be in touch as soon as I know more…’
‘And next time, call my pay-as-you-go mobile. Haven’t I told you to use it for all business calls?’
‘Yeah, sure, but isn’t that only when we do business with the Russians? I didn’t think you’d have it turned on now that…’
‘Idiot.’ [followed by grunting and then the conversation ends]
Chief Inspector Aronsson read the transcript and then put the new bits of the puzzle into place.
The ‘Bolt’ that was mentioned must be Bengt Bylund, one of the known members of Never Again, now presumably dead. And the one who phoned Gerdin was presumably Henrik ‘Bucket’ Hultén, hunting down Bolt somewhere in Småland.
Aronsson now had proof that he was on the right track:
Somewhere in Småland, as he had previously surmised, was Allan Karlsson, together with Julius Jonsson, Benny Ljungberg and his Mercedes, together with a red-haired lady, of unknown age. Still she could hardly be particularly young because she had just been called a biddy. On the other hand, for somebody like Bucket you wouldn’t have to be very old to become a biddy.
At Never Again in Stockholm they thought that Bolt was also with the group. Did that mean he was on the run from his own lot? Otherwise why hadn’t he been in touch? Because he was dead, of course! But the Boss hadn’t fathomed that, so the Boss thought that Bolt was hiding in Småland together with… but where did the redhead come into the picture?
So Aronsson ordered a family background check on Allan, Benny and Julius. Was there possibly a sister or a cousin or some other relative who lived in Småland and who happened to have the right colour of hair?
‘But she’s the right age, according to…’ Bolt had said. According to what? What somebody had said to them? Someone who had seen the group in Småland and phoned to tip them off? What a pity the bug hadn’t been activated earlier.
; And by now, of course, Bucket would have followed the redhead from the supermarket and then either dropped the case if she turned out to be the wrong redhead, or… Bucket now knew where Allan Karlsson and his friends were holed up. In that case, the Boss would soon be on his way down to Småland too, to make Allan and his companions spill the beans as to what had happened to Bolt and his suitcase.
Aronsson phoned Conny Ranelid, the prosecutor in charge in Eskilstuna. At first Ranelid had not been particularly interested, but his engagement increased with every new complication that Aronsson reported in to him.
‘Now, don’t let Gerdin and his henchman slip away,’ said Prosecutor Ranelid.
The Beauty put two shopping bags from the supermarket in the boot of her VW Passat and set off for home.
Bucket followed at a safe distance. When they reached the main road, he was supposed to phone the Boss (on his pay-as-you-go phone, of course, as Bucket had some survival instinct) to inform him of the make of the car the redhead was driving and its number plate.
The two cars drove out of Rottne but the redhead soon turned off down a gravel road. Bucket recognised it. He had once come in last at a car rally here. His then girlfriend had been the map-reader; halfway through the rally she had realised she was holding the map upside down.
The gravel road was dry, and the redhead’s car left a cloud of dust behind it. Bucket could safely follow her without even keeping her in sight. But then after a few kilometres the cloud of dust suddenly disappeared. Damn it!
First, he started to panic, but then he calmed down. The chick must have turned off somewhere along the road. Barely one kilometre back on the road, Bucket thought he had solved the puzzle. A little track went off to the right next to a mailbox. She must have gone down there.
Bearing in mind how things soon developed, you could say that Bucket was a little too enthusiastic. He sent the car and himself at a decent speed down the little track, wherever it might lead. The idea of being discreet and cautious was discarded early on.
Bucket was driving too fast, and before he realised it the track had come to an end and was replaced by a little yard. And if he had been driving just a little faster, he wouldn’t even have had time to stop but would have driven straight into the old man who was standing there feeding an… an… elephant?
Allan had quickly found a new friend in Sonya. They had quite a lot in common. One had climbed out through a window one day and thus given his life a totally new direction, while the other had waded out into a lake with the same result. And both of them had – before that – been out and about and seen some of the world. Furthermore, Sonya had deep furrows on her face, more or less like a wise centenarian, Allan thought.
Sonya was not about to do circus tricks for just anybody, but she happened to like this old man. He gave her fruit, scratched her trunk and chatted with her in a friendly way. She didn’t understand much of what he said, but that didn’t matter. It was pleasant. So when the old man asked Sonya to sit down, she sat down, if he asked her to turn around, she was happy to do just that. She even showed him how she could stand up on her back legs, although the old man didn’t know the command for that. The fact that she got an apple or two for her trouble and an extra bit of scratching on her trunk was a pure bonus. Sonya could not be bought.
While this was going on, The Beauty liked to sit on the veranda steps with Benny and Buster, a cup of coffee and some doggy treats for the dog. They looked on while Allan and Sonya bonded in the yard, and Julius fished for perch down at the lake.
The spring heat wave continued. The sun had been shining a whole week and the weather forecasters were predicting that the high pressure would continue.
Benny, who apart from all his other skills was an almost-architect, had sketched out how the bus that The Beauty had just purchased could be fitted out to suit Sonya. When The Beauty discovered that Julius was not just a thief but also a former timber merchant and he knew how to handle a hammer and nails, she said to Buster that these friends were not bad. It was a good thing that she hadn’t slammed the door on them. It didn’t take Julius more than an afternoon to nail together the new bus interior according to Benny’s instructions. After which Sonya walked in and out of the bus together with Allan to test it, and Sonya seemed to like it. It was a bit of a squeeze for her, but there were two kinds of dinner to chew on, one to the left and one straight ahead, and water to drink to the right. The floor was raised and slightly sloped, and Sonya’s droppings had their own pit running along the back. The pit was filled to the brim with hay which was intended to absorb most of what might emerge during the journey.
In addition there was a substantial ventilation system in the form of holes drilled along both sides of the bus, and a glazed, sliding screen behind the driver’s cabin so that Sonya could see her benefactor and feeder while they were on the road. The bus had been transformed into a luxury elephant transporter.
The more prepared they got, the less eager the group was to set off. Life at Lake Farm had developed quite pleasantly. Not least for Benny and The Beauty, who by the third night had decided that it was a pity to wear out sheets in different rooms when they could just as well share. The evenings had been passed in front of the log fire, with good food, good drink and episodes from Allan Karlsson’s remarkable life.
But on Monday morning the fridge and the pantry had been almost empty, and it was high time for The Beauty to go off to Rottne to stock up. For reasons of security, the journey was undertaken in her old VW Passat. The Mercedes remained hidden behind the barn.
She filled one shopping bag with this and that for her and the old men, and another one with fresh, Argentinian apples for Sonya. When The Beauty got home, she gave the bag of apples to Allan and put the rest away before joining Benny and Buster on the veranda with a basket of Belgian strawberries. Julius was there too, taking a rare break from fishing.
That was when a Ford Mustang roared into the yard and almost ran down both Allan and Sonya.
Sonya was the calmest of them all. She was so focused on receiving the next apple from Allan that she neither saw nor heard what happened around her. Or perhaps she did, despite everything, because she stopped in the middle of a twirl and froze with her bottom towards Allan and the new visitor.
The second calmest was Allan. He had been close to death so many times in his life that a bolting Ford Mustang hardly made any difference. If it stopped in time, so be it.
The third calmest was probably Buster. He was strictly brought up not to run off and bark when strangers came to visit. But his ears stuck up and he was all eyes, ready to follow developments.
But The Beauty, Benny and Julius all jumped up from the veranda and stood there in a row waiting to see what would happen next.
Bucket, somewhat disconcerted for a moment, got unsteadily out of his Mustang and felt about for a revolver in a bag on the floor of the back seat. He pointed it first at the elephant’s behind, then had a better idea and aimed it at Allan and the three friends standing in a row on the veranda, and then he said (perhaps rather unimaginatively):
‘Hands up!’
‘Hands up??’
That was the most stupid thing Allan had heard in a long time. What did this man think would happen? That he himself, one hundred years old, would throw apples at him? Or that the delicate lady over there would bombard him with Belgian strawberries? Or that…
‘OK, OK, do what the hell you want with your hands, but don’t try any tricks.’
‘Tricks?’
‘You keep your mouth shut, you old bastard! Tell me where that damned suitcase is — and the guy who took it.’
Well there we are, thought The Beauty. That was the end of their luck in life. Reality had caught up with them all. Nobody answered, they all racked their brains so you could hear the creaking, all except the elephant who was facing away from all the drama and thought it was time to relieve itself. And an elephant relieving itself is not something you can miss if you happen to be in the vicin
ity.
‘Oh, shit,’ said Bucket and took a few rapid steps away from the mess that poured out of the elephant… ‘Why the hell do you have an elephant?’
Still no answer. But now Buster couldn’t restrain himself any longer. He obviously felt that things weren’t quite right. And he really wanted to have a good bark at the stranger. And even though he knew the rules, he let out a deep growl. Discovering the Alsatian on the veranda, Bucket instinctively took two steps backwards, raised his revolver and looked as if he was ready to shoot.
At that point Allan’s hundred-year-old brain gave birth to an idea. It was a wild idea, and there was an evident risk that he would get shot in the process, unless of course he really was immortal after all. He took a deep breath and with a naive smile on his lips, he walked straight towards the troublemaker. And he said in his most doddery voice:
‘That really is one hell of a nice pistol you’ve got there. Is it real? Can I hold it?’
Benny, Julius and The Beauty all thought that the geriatric had lost his marbles.
‘Stop, Allan!’ Benny shouted out.
‘Yeah, stop, you old bastard, or I’ll shoot you,’ said Bucket.
But Allan kept shuffling towards him. Bucket took a step backwards, stretched out his hand with the revolver even more threateningly towards Allan, and then… he did it.
If you’ve ever stepped in a heap of sticky, very fresh, elephant shit then you’ll know it’s virtually impossible to keep your balance. Bucket didn’t know, but he quickly learned. His back foot slipped, Bucket tried to counter this with his hands, and fell helplessly, landing softly on his back.
‘Sit, Sonya, sit!’ said Allan as the final part of his daring plan.
‘No, damn it, Sonya, don’t sit,’ shouted The Beauty, who suddenly realised what was about to happen.
‘Fucking hell,’ said Bucket where he lay on his back in the elephant’s excrement.
Sonya, who stood with her back to them all, had clearly and distinctly heard Allan’s command. And the old man was nice to her, and she liked to do as he wanted. Besides, his benefactor and feeder had confirmed the order. The function of the word ‘Don’t’ to countermand an order was not something Sonya had ever grasped.