The Accidental Further Adventures of the Hundred-Year-Old Man

by Jonas Jonasson

  The pension manager looked curiously at Sabine’s many tools of the trade and cautiously asked what Mrs Undertaker planned to use all that for. Sabine told it like it almost was: they weren’t only undertakers but had an additional speciality in which they established contact with those they had just helped send into the ground. At this Mrs Lundblad’s enthusiasm was set aflame. Did Mrs Undertaker mean to say she could establish contact with Börje?

  The old woman had brought up her deceased spouse time and again in the short period they’d been in her company. In under twenty-four hours Sabine knew everything worth knowing about the spouse’s previous doings, like, for example, that he had been dead for fifteen years. Background knowledge was, after all, everything in the field of clairvoyance.

  Why not? A dress rehearsal could only be an advantage before they started their operation for real.

  The performance that followed made quite an impression on Allan and Julius. If they hadn’t known better they would have believed that the dead man really was talking to his widow from the other side, via Sabine. The husband swore his eternal love to his widow and sounded distressed when he learned that the cat had died eight years earlier at the age of sixteen. When asked point-blank, he promised he had stopped smoking.

  It would have been a resounding success if only the manager had avoided being struck with heart failure when her deceased husband said he pined for her so badly that he cried himself to sleep each night.

  ‘Oh, my,’ said Julius, as the old woman pitched forward and landed with her nose on the table.

  Sabine jumped out of her séance chair in horror and turned on the ceiling light as Julius took a closer look at the old woman.

  ‘Is she dead?’ Sabine asked.

  ‘I think so,’ said Julius.

  The only one who remained calm was Allan.

  ‘Then they’ll soon be together again,’ he said. ‘If the old man was lying about his smoking, he’d better snuff it out soon.’

  Sabine snapped at Allan and his lack of respect, saying that now she was sure there was something wrong with him. Then she gathered up her things and called an urgent crisis meeting in the kitchen. For the time being they would leave the old woman where she was.

  They sat down at the kitchen table, Sabine, with creases on her forehead, Julius, with pen and paper, and Allan, with a ban on speaking.

  ‘We can’t stay here,’ said Sabine. ‘But where will we go, and why?’

  Julius praised her for the brilliant performance she’d just given; he imagined they could rake in some good money from it. Somewhere the customer base was sufficiently large. Time for a snap decision. He wrote ‘Stockholm’ on his paper. Under that ‘Gothenburg’. And under that, ‘Malmö’.

  Stockholm was ruled out immediately: there were far too many Nazis there. Julius wrote No.

  What about Gothenburg? Sweden’s second-biggest city. Hmm.

  Or Malmö? With its proximity to Copenhagen. Almost four million people lived there, if you counted both sides of the bridge.

  Julius wrote Yes. Their destination was determined by a vote of two to nil, with one vote declared invalid. All that was left was to decide what to do with the dead woman.

  ‘Not call the police,’ said Julius.

  No, presenting a dead elder to the police the day after they’d found a living one in a coffin seemed like asking for trouble.

  Julius took a peek at the woman’s ledger. Two guests from Greece were booked two days later. The woman wouldn’t have to be alone for longer than that.

  ‘When you’re dead, you’re dead,’ said Julius. ‘It’s not as if she’ll suffer more.’

  And that was that. Mrs Lundblad remained where she was.

  ‘Good decision,’ said Allan.

  ‘Weren’t you supposed to keep quiet?’ said Sabine.

  * * *

  Inspector Holmlund’s weekend had been ruined. He almost wished he hadn’t stopped those three coffin marauders. Even before his Sunday afternoon coffee break, they had cost him time and mental effort in the form of two phone calls, one stranger than the next.

  The first was from an old woman who ran a pension outside the city. She was upset and wanted to know if it was possible to report three specific people for attempted murder. The trio had spent one night at her pension and offered her a séance, the possibility to converse with her husband. When she had fainted in shock, they left her there at the table and had since vanished.

  ‘Hold on,’ said Inspector Holmlund. ‘Who is it they tried to kill? You? Your husband? Or someone else?’

  ‘Me, of course. My husband is already dead.’

  ‘Since when? Didn’t you speak to him?’ The inspector wasn’t entirely familiar with how clairvoyance worked.

  The woman explained. When her husband, who had died fifteen years previously, told her how much he missed her, it was as if all the oxygen vanished from her brain, and that was the last thing she recalled. The medium and the others must have thought she had died too, but she wouldn’t go that easily. The old woman was tougher than that and now she demanded justice.

  What Inspector Holmlund wanted was to focus on the essentials. But he didn’t say so. Instead he explained how the law works: speaking with someone who is dead, at which point someone who isn’t faints, does not fall under the definition of attempted murder. It does not, as far as the inspector could understand, fall under any definition at all. There was no scale of penalty for general tomfoolery. ‘Unfortunately,’ he added.

  And he’d hardly hung up when the phone rang again.

  This time a man introduced himself as a ‘concerned citizen’. He wished to know more about what had happened during the crackdown against a hearse the previous day.

  The inspector told him, since concerned citizens had a tendency to transform from concerned to displeased, which increased the workload many times over for those who only wished to get away relatively unscathed. It had been a case of three people in a hearse who found themselves at a routine checkpoint, which had led to a brief interrogation in which all uncertainties had been cleared up. It could not in any way be described as a ‘crackdown’.

  The concerned citizen would not be deterred. He wanted to know where the hearse had gone after the interrogation.

  What was wrong with people? The inspector didn’t have time for this! But perhaps if he tossed the concerned customer at the old woman they could bother one another instead. Good idea!

  ‘I can’t rule out that the people you’re enquiring after spent the night just outside Eskilstuna. For further information I recommend you call Mrs Lundblad at Klipphällen Pension. A lovely woman. I’m sure you’ll have much to talk about.’

  Click. The concerned citizen hung up. He didn’t seem as concerned any longer. Great.

  Johnny had no intention of calling Mrs Lundblad. But he would pay her a visit. Along with her three guests, if they were still there. Three, incidentally? Sabine Jonsson, Allan Karlsson and who else?

  Oh, well, he could always ask the third to introduce himself before he slit his throat.

  One week had passed since Kenneth’s accident; one day since the cancelled funeral. Johnny missed his brother something fierce.

  * * *

  Next stop, Malmö. Two of the three were in the front seats of the vehicle; the third was on his back with his black tablet in the coffin at the rear, with a closed lid and freshly drilled ventilation holes. They made their way down Highway 55.

  South of Strängnäs, Allan opened the lid for a moment. ‘I lived around here before they tried to lock me up in the home in Malmköping. I blew my house sky-high, or else we could have swung by to take a look.’

  ‘You blew up your own house?’ said Sabine.

  ‘Ignore him,’ said Julius.

  After Malmköping, the trio ended up on the E4 again, north of Norrköping this time. From there they headed south along Sweden’s busiest highway.

  Allan noticed that Sabine and Julius snapped at him no matter what he sai
d, unless he talked about the terror attack. They were all upset by what had happened in the capital city.

  He told them that the country seemed preoccupied by the tragic and bewildering incident. Several people had died. The terrorist had been apprehended, to be sure, and had confessed, adding that Allah was the greatest of them all. Allan wasn’t sure how much blame could be placed with Allah for the attack: you never know with gods – they all have their issues. According to the Bible, one deliberately took the lives of ten children in a bet with Satan.

  Sabine had never heard of this, but Julius had. ‘The Book of Job, Old Testament,’ he said.

  And then he said no more. He shuddered at the memory of his tyrannical father, who had forced him to be confirmed fifty-two years earlier. Even if the boy had spent most of that time stealing Bibles to sell (twenty-five öre per Bible, two for forty), something had stuck with him.

  The international press was reporting that Sweden had lost its innocence, that this heaven on earth had been punished for its generous attitude towards the so-called refugees.

  Allan muttered over what he read. In just his brief time on earth, Sweden had been afflicted with leftists who blew up boats, right-wingers who blew up editorial offices, and Red Army factions who blew up embassies. And then there was the guy who wanted to kidnap a Swedish minister and lock her into a box. And those who wandered around here and there, shooting foreigners at random until they could be arrested and put behind bars.

  What they all had in common was that they had their reasons – including the one who heard voices and killed the Swedish minister for foreign affairs because of them. What the man who’d shot the prime minister on the street was thinking, however, was impossible to know. Partly because he himself was dead now, partly because it might have been someone else.

  It was all genuinely sad, of course. But when it came to Sweden’s innocence, Allan suspected that had gone out of the window back in the days of the Vikings.

  ‘What are you mumbling about back there?’ Julius wondered.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Allan.

  Everything had been so much easier before the tablet.

  Duller. But easier.

  The hundred-and-one-year-old surfed on. That was what he did, these days.

  It turned out that the dustmen had run into problems in Alvesta in Småland. Someone had discovered that the municipal company Alvesta Refuse AB had been abbreviated as ARAB for thirty-five years. The citizen complained, in a petition to the local authority, that this abbreviation suggested that Arabs, in general, smelt bad.

  This was a news item to Allan’s liking, and perfectly necessary to share with the group.

  ‘Don’t people have lives any more?’ Julius wondered.

  ‘Alvesta isn’t too far from here, is it?’ Allan said. ‘Should we head over and have a look?’

  ‘At what?’ Sabine asked.

  Allan didn’t quite know, so he didn’t respond. But he did give his black tablet a kiss to thank it for the refuse truck news. All was forgiven.

  The journey continued southwards. As they approached Värnamo it began to get dark. With the aid of Allan’s tablet, Sabine found another pension, of the more rustic sort. It was run by an older woman, rather like the one who had just landed on the table nose-first.

  ‘We’re not holding any séances with this new one, right?’ said Julius.

  Sweden

  It was already night-time when Johnny Engvall arrived at Klipphällen Pension. There was no hearse parked outside; he was too late.

  The manager of the pension, who had not, in fact, died at the séance table, was in the kitchen cooking a new batch of pea soup when she received a surprise visitor.

  The Nazi made an effort not to scare the old woman too much. Before he squeezed what she knew out of her, he would try to get her to tell him voluntarily.

  ‘Good day to you!’ he said, hating himself for his pleasant tone.

  ‘Good day to you,’ said Mrs Lundblad. ‘Are we looking for a place to spend the night?’

  Pea soup was Johnny’s favourite. It was delicious, Swedish, and authentic. Especially with some mustard on the edge of the bowl, a piece of knäckebröd, and a big glass of milk.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘And perhaps even a bit of food?’

  Mrs Lundblad invited him to the table. The soup was almost ready. As she set two places, she said she was happy to have company, for she’d had a perfectly horrible day, she would like her guest to know.

  And she told him the tale. Johnny didn’t even have to ask.

  Three horrid people – with a hearse! – had arrived the day before. Just a few hours before the young gentleman arrived they had invited her to a séance, offering her the chance to speak with her dead husband. It had all gone well, but when she happened to faint with the excitement those louts had taken off. It was so unchristian as to be beyond words.

  Johnny really wanted to ask straight away whether she knew where they had gone, but something else took precedence.

  ‘A séance?’ he said. ‘Did you really speak with your husband, ma’am?’

  ‘Oh, yes. He’s happy up there in heaven, I now know. And imagine! He’s stopped smoking. My darling, clever Börje stopped smoking!’

  For the second time, the Nazi was struck by the thought, as absurd as it was wonderful, that he might be able to contact Kenneth on the other side. This time it took longer to put out of his mind.

  The soup was marvellous. And the old woman had probably been blonde before her hair turned white, which only made it that much better.

  ‘You’re a fantastic cook, I must say. Tell me, do you know where those horrible people went?’

  No, of course the old woman didn’t know. She had been unconscious when they left.

  ‘I understand. Did they take anything? Did they leave anything?’

  No, apparently they weren’t thieves. The only trace of them was a note left on the counter. She handed over a sheet of A4. It read:

  Stockholm – no.

  Gothenburg – hmm.

  Malmö – yes.

  Malmö!

  That was where they were going.

  ‘Would the delightful gentleman like seconds?’ asked the old woman.

  ‘No, I wouldn’t, you old bitch,’ said Johnny Engvall, and left.

  That last bit felt good.

  Sweden

  ‘And what has Trump done since last time?’ Julius started off the next day’s breakfast.

  It was time to leave: a hundred and fifty kilometres to Malmö. Where they would stay once they arrived remained to be seen. One thing at a time. On that note, Julius thought if they got Allan’s news from the black tablet over with now, they might get out of there and to the point much quicker.

  ‘Glad you asked,’ said Allan. ‘And I’d thought we could skip that for today, considering the difficult situation we’re in. But, of course, a thing or two did happen while we were sleeping, or whatever you two were doing instead. I thought I heard something through the wall.’

  ‘Get to the point,’ said Sabine.

  Right, Trump. He had appointed a new communications director, who immediately communicated that he intended to fire everyone around him, at which point he himself was dismissed.

  ‘Thanks for the update,’ said Julius, ‘so shall we—’

  ‘Hold on! I only told you that for context. They say the man behind the president’s fire-as-many-people-as-possible-in-as-little-time-as-possible strategy is our friend Bannon.’

  ‘Our friend who?’

  ‘Steve Bannon. The chief strategist. The surly red-faced man who met us at the airport in New York.’

  ‘Oh, that was his name. I didn’t know he’s the president’s chief strategist.’

  ‘Well, he’s not. Not any more.’

  * * *

  Malmö was getting closer and closer. Julius had dozed off in the passenger seat. Allan was snoozing in the coffin, always ready to play dead should the need arise. Sabine was alone wit
h her thoughts. She wasn’t happy about starting a new business in Sweden, the country where they’d managed to rile a Nazi. A foreign country would be safer. But which one? It wasn’t enough just to make contact with someone on the other side: she would also need to understand what they said. Plus it was uncertain how economically viable this might be.

  Which brought her back to her original thought.

  Olekorinko. The witch doctor. Or mganga, in the local language. The man her mother Gertrud had spoken of so often. With a business model unlike any other.

  In Africa.

  Shit, shit, shit.

  She’d sworn inaudibly. But Julius heard the silence and woke up. ‘What are you thinking about?’ he asked.

  ‘Nothing.’

  She saw no other solution than to follow the path and the Facebook campaign Allan and Julius had already prepared, where Sabine’s abilities would be advertised as ‘Medium Esmeralda’, based in Malmö – six hundred kilometres from the angry Nazi in Stockholm, but just one bridge from the gigantic Copenhagen market.

  * * *

  It’s not easy to find a business location when you’re living under the radar. Or, for that matter, a place to live. Their solution was to expose Julius to a certain amount of risk: he was the only one of the group who didn’t appear in any registry of firms. There were empty rental apartments scattered around the area, among others a two-bedroom place in southern Rosengård for just over six thousand kronor per month, only seven kilometres from central Malmö. It wasn’t the most attractive part of the city, but for that very reason it was a good option for the friends. Buying a centrally located place for three or four million was, of course, out of the question.