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

Sweden

Johnny was sitting at a café on Gustav Adolfs Torg in Malmö, having his morning cup of coffee. With it he ate a salad, which he’d asked to have rinsed an extra time, since he belonged to the group of neo-Nazis who accepted the research that said the rampant levels of homosexuality in society were caused by toxins in food.

Perhaps Gustav Adolfs Torg was not the best place to take one’s meals, but you can’t get hung up on every detail. Gustav IV Adolf had been generally useless as king. He’d picked a fight with Napoleon, suffered a resounding defeat, and by the time it was all over he had lost both Finland and his own royal title. He was dethroned, exiled, and died a few years later penniless and alcohol-soaked, at a pub somewhere in Switzerland. He began as a king, was demoted to count, lived for a few years as Colonel Gustavsson, and ended up a drunk. Not exactly an illustrious career.

After his salad, it was time to take out his city map again, as he’d done every morning for the past few days. Johnny had already worked his way through downtown, the harbour area, and Arlöv and its environs. Next up were the western and southern neighbourhoods. His task was to drive up one street and down the next until he found the hearse, either parked or on the move.

But it wasn’t easy to concentrate. Johnny kept thinking about his brother. And he couldn’t drop his musings about the pension bitch outside Eskilstuna. Had she really spoken with her dead husband?

Sabine Jonsson was, after all, chairperson of the board of something called Other Side AB, specialists in clairvoyance. She’d obviously moved from that to the coffin trade, but she had demonstrably returned to the clairvoyant at the pension.

One idea might be to force her to contact Kenneth while holding a knife to her throat. But could he trust her? What if big brother said, during the séance, that little brother ought to let the medium live? In that case, who would be speaking? Kenneth or Sabine Jonsson?

No, the woman who must die was not an option as a point of contact between the brothers. But there had to be others, right? On the one hand, it was impossible to believe in all this. On the other, Johnny felt that Kenneth was still around, always by his side. That must mean he was out there somewhere, in another dimension. It had to mean it.

Johnny searched online and got hits all over the country. When he limited the search to southern Skåne, only about two dozen remained. Most could be ruled out because they didn’t offer what Johnny was after. As he sifted through them, it struck him that Sabine Jonsson might show up in an ad. She was already dumb enough to drive around in her hearse, but that extra step of actually informing the person who was searching for her of her whereabouts? No, no one was that stupid.

At last he had four names left: Bogdan, Angelique, Harriet and Esmeralda.

Bogdan went out of the window straight away. Harriet didn’t sound enough like a medium. Angelique? That name gave Johnny porn-star vibes. And obviously the porn industry was run by Jews.

That left Esmeralda. Might be a wog, but he could always find out.