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

Sweden

The Americans returned to Los Angeles without touching base with Johnny and without letting him touch base with them. There is nothing you can say to a person who has buried one of the brotherhood in a pale blue coffin with bunnies on it. Perhaps you could beat the bastard to death, but that was the problem. Kenneth’s little brother was spared because he was Kenneth’s little brother. With that, the Stockholm branch closed; it died with its founder. All planned future payments to the Aryan Alliance would be immediately cancelled.

Yet Johnny still wanted to be optimistic about the future. Once those guilty of the coffin mix-up were properly executed, he would try to contact Los Angeles again.

Via the thoroughly distressed woman at the morgue he came to learn that Kenneth had at least ended up in the right coffin, but the coffin had ended up in the wrong place. Now that it had been returned, it was time for a new funeral. Unfortunately the pastor in charge was indisposed after sustaining injuries from a bad fall. Johnny dropped the idea of finding a new pastor. There was no time. He bought a bouquet of tulips at the closest corner shop and paid an evening visit to the battered man at the hospital. The pastor thanked him for his concern, told him of his fractured nose and the crack in his right cheekbone, and said he could probably be back in service within six to eight weeks.

‘You’ve got two and a half,’ said Johnny.

Meanwhile, Kenneth would stay at the morgue. Johnny, seeking to comfort himself, reasoned that it was no colder there than in the ground.

His priorities were clear. Before anything else, the coffin marauders must float in a puddle of their own entrails. Thanks to the coffin shop’s website, he knew he was looking for one Sabine Jonsson. But he’d spoken to a man on the phone when ordering the coffin – probably the man next to her in the car when they’d fled. If Johnny could just find Sabine and the hearse, he would get the strange man too.

It didn’t take long to learn more about the woman, via the internet.

She was the CEO and only permanent board member of Die with Pride AB. The other member was one Allan Emmanuel Karlsson, who had to have been the man next to her in the car; he could no longer hide his identity. Sabine had also been a board member of Other Side AB, which had since been liquidated. Other Side AB? What the hell was that?

Oh, right, the internet. Other Side had specialized in clairvoyance! They talked to people who had departed life on earth. Johnny brushed aside the sudden urge to spend one more moment with Kenneth. One last conversation. No, dammit! There was no point in believing all that nonsense.

Sabine Rebecka Jonsson and Allan Emmanuel Karlsson. In a black hearse registered to the company. With a residential address they seemed utterly unlikely to return to. He would find them, he knew it. He just didn’t know how.