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

Johnny Engvall didn’t have any luck south of the city either. Eastern Malmö awaited him the next day, but he decided to perform a pre-investigation now. He was on his way to see the medium Esmeralda, as a cry for help with his genuine sorrow over Kenneth.

What if she really had the gift she claimed? What if Johnny could at least send one final greeting to his brother, and receive one in return? Just think: what if the brothers could even open a two-way line of communication, so that neither would have to feel lonely ever again?

Johnny was making good time. Apparently Esmeralda’s office was also her home. It was in Rosengård, just four or five blocks away now. But – what on earth?

Suddenly, there it was.

The hearse.

Parked.

It was the right vehicle. But the nearby buildings were numerous and tall, so he couldn’t just go knocking on doors.

Johnny climbed out, walked over to the hearse and felt the bonnet, which was warm. It had recently been driven. Since the parking slip displayed on the windscreen was valid until the next morning, it had probably finished moving for the day.

The plan would just have to be to keep watch until Sabine Jonsson and crew appeared.

‘No rash decisions, Johnny,’ he said to himself. ‘No rash decisions.’

It was almost one o’clock. Esmeralda was waiting just blocks away.

Johnny decided to carry out the visit. Again: ‘No rash decisions.’

For some unfathomable reason, then, the Nazi with the automatic weapon in Märsta had now surfaced in Malmö and hunted down Esmeralda the Medium. It couldn’t be a coincidence. Unless it was a coincidence. It had to be a coincidence!

No matter how the friends racked their brains, they couldn’t find a single crack in their façade. There was no link between Sabine Jonsson on the one hand and the apartment seven kilometres south-east of central Malmö on the other.

Julius was the one listed on the rental contract. There was no connection anywhere between him and Sabine. Not in her company, not for the apartment in Märsta.

‘There’s literally no way…’ said Julius.

At which point he realized that Allan, Julius and Sabine had presented ID, all three of them, to the police in Eskilstuna. And with that, he was listed on the police system along with his friends. But did this Johnny have access to that?

Still, their conclusion was that the Nazi had booked an appointment with Esmeralda in order to execute as many of them as he could during the séance.

But in that case why the hell had he booked it under his own name?

Their revised conclusion was that it was impossible to draw any conclusions. The friends decided to go with the flow. Perhaps the Nazi really had just sought out one of many mediums and only happened to be in Malmö. There was really no way they could believe this. But it wasn’t possible either to believe the alternative.

‘I’m going mad,’ said Julius.

‘Me too,’ said Allan, to appear supportive.

‘You already are,’ said Sabine.

So this was how it would go.

During the séance, Sabine, a.k.a. Esmeralda, would receive Johnny the Nazi on her own while Allan and Julius hid in the apartment, as armed as the circumstances would allow. If the mood turned threatening, they would step forward and… Well, what?

A weak plan, as all three were aware. Still, Julius went shopping and returned with a baseball bat and an airgun.

‘Not exactly Kim Jong-un, are we?’ Allan said. ‘And I can’t lift the bat. Hand over the pistol!’

Meanwhile, Sabine prepared herself in her own way. She made coffee and ground four sleeping pills into a mug. It couldn’t hurt for their potential murderer to become sleepy before he started murdering. She became dizzy just from taking a test sip of the mixture. She couldn’t taste anything funny.

At the last moment, she thought of moving the hearse four blocks away. On the off chance that luck was on their side, they might as well let sleeping dogs lie.

The minutes crept by. Eleven. Quarter past. Seventeen past. Ten to twelve. Twenty past. Twenty to.

At one on the dot, the doorbell rang.

This was it.

Allan in the kitchen with the airgun. Julius with the baseball bat in the hall cupboard. Sabine, fully equipped with medallions and all. The séance room was reasonably dark, with a tasteful coffin in one corner, and myrrh, a crimson cloth and warm stones on the table.

Sabine opened the door nervously, and welcomed—

‘Minister Wallström? What are you doing here?’

‘Oh, I see you recognize me. I’m looking for a Julius Jonsson. And his friend Allan Karlsson. We’re acquaintances, and I have a few questions I need to ask.’

Sabine thought she’d been ready for anything. But not this. Had the minister for foreign affairs used a fake name to request…

Before she could ride that train of thought any further, another person popped up behind the minister. Her bodyguard? No.

‘Hi, I’m Johnny. Am I in the right place?’

The minister for foreign affairs had scared Inspector Bäckman off any further investigation of Karlsson and Jonsson. But that didn’t mean she could let the matter go. What had happened to them since their return to Sweden? Someone had fired an automatic weapon into a shop where they were presumed to be?

The minister was struck by a dizzying thought. What if the North Korean security service were operating in Swedish territory and trying to execute Swedish citizens? After all, it was only recently that the life of a North Korean had been taken in Malaysia – it was a long step from there to doing the same to a Swede in Sweden, but perhaps not too long?

But… the method? Going from poison to shooting wildly?

And why hadn’t Karlsson and Jonsson reported the incident to the police? Because they were afraid? They hadn’t seemed particularly terrified in front of either Kim Jong-un or Donald Trump. Who could be worse than them?

All of this and more nagged at the minister. She had a Malmö address for Julius Jonsson, but couldn’t see herself travelling all the way from Stockholm for some sort of private investigation of two diplomats to whom she herself had wrongly supplied diplomatic passports.

Not until she happened to have reason to go there on business.

For more than a year, border patrol between Denmark and Sweden had been a source of irritation to both nations. Refugees in need journeyed all the way through Europe, and when they arrived in Denmark, the Danes gladly helped send them on across the Sound to Sweden.

That worked, until it didn’t any more. Once little Sweden had accepted more refugees than all the rest of Europe combined, with the exception of Germany, the system collapsed. There was nowhere for the refugees to live. The country was unable to investigate their refugee status within a reasonable amount of time, much less offer them a dignified future. What was more, a frighteningly large percentage of the children who arrived alone were seventeen-year-old boys, whether or not they were seventeen. They had been sent off as vanguards by family somewhere in the most miserable corner of the world, whose head of household had, as the only remaining source of pride, the task of making sure the whole family survived. Others had grown up on the street and were schooled in crime but nothing else. Still others were heroin addicts: how else could they have endured?

The rest of Europe laughed at silly Sweden. Few came to the inverse conclusion: that if the rest of the EU countries had followed the lead of Sweden and Germany, the refugee situation would have been manageable. Trying to collect gold stars in heaven, before the Day of Judgment, was out.