The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared Read Free Page B

harvester.
    The Hudiksvall District Electrical Company stuck up the poles, with cables criss-crossing fields and meadows in the area, and when it was harvest time, on one single morning the cables were pulled down in twenty-six locations by twenty-two different newly bought combine harvesters. The entire region had no electricity for weeks, as harvests were lost, and milking machines stopped working. It was not long before the farmers’ fury – at first directed against the Hudiksvall District Electrical Company – was turned against young Julius.
    ‘The town slogan “Happy Hudiksvall” was not on many people’s lips at that time, I can tell you,’ Julius said. ‘I had to hide at the Town Hotel in Sundsvall for seven months and then I ran out of money. Shall we have another swig of the hard stuff?’
    Allan thought that they should. The elk had been washed down with beer too, and now Allan felt so comprehensively satisfied that he began to be almost afraid of dying.
    Julius continued his story. After being nearly run down by a tractor in the centre of Sundsvall (driven by a farmer with a murderous look in his eyes), he realised that the locals weren’t going to forget his little mistake for the next hundred years. So he moved a long way south and ended up in Mariefred where he did a bit of small-time thieving for a while until he tired of town life and managed to acquire the former station building in Byringe for 25,000 crowns he happened to find one night in a safe at the Gripsholm Inn.
    Here at the station, he now lived essentially via handouts from the state, poaching in his neighbour’s forest, small-scale production and sale of alcoholic spirits from his home-distilling apparatus, and resale of what goods he could get hold of from his neighbours. He wasn’t particularly popular in the neighbourhood , Julius went on, and between mouthfuls Allan answered that he could imagine as much.
    When Julius suggested having one final snifter ‘for dessert’, Allan answered that he had always had a weakness for desserts of that kind, but that first of all he must seek out a toilet if there possibly happened to be one in the building. Julius got up, turned on the ceiling lamp since it was starting to get dark, and then pointed to the stairs saying that there was a functional lavatory on the right. He promised to have two newly poured drams ready and waiting when Allan returned.
    Allan found the toilet where Julius had said it would be. He stood in position to pee, and as usual the last drops didn’t quitemake it to the bowl. Some of them landed softly on his pee slippers instead.
    Halfway through the process, Allan heard a noise on the stairs. His first thought was that it was Julius, going off with his newly stolen suitcase. The noise got louder. Somebody was climbing the stairs.
    Allan realised that there was a chance that the steps he heard outside the door belonged to a slightly built young man with long, greasy blond hair, scraggly beard and a denim jacket with the words Never Again on the back. And that, if it was him, then it probably wasn’t going to be a pleasant encounter.
     
    The bus returning from Strängnäs arrived at Malmköping station three minutes early. The bus carried no passengers and the driver had accelerated a little bit extra after the last bus stop to have time to catch his breath before continuing the journey to Flen.
    But the driver had barely lit his cigarette before a slightly built youth with long, greasy blond hair, scraggly beard and a denim jacket with the words Never Again on the back, arrived.
    ‘Are you going to Flen?’ the driver asked a little hesitantly, because there was something about the young man that didn’t feel right.
    ‘I’m not going to Flen. And neither are you,’ answered the young man.
    Hanging around waiting for four hours for the bus to come back had been a bit too much for what little patience the youth could muster. Besides, after half that time he had