The Girl in the Spider's Web (Millennium series Book 4) (13 page)

“Someone’s coming!”

Blom did not move. He felt that he was being watched and almost unconsciously he fingered the service weapon at his hip and thought of his mother and his ex-wife and his children, as if something serious really was about to happen. Flinck was shouting again, now with a desperate tone in his voice, “Police! You! Stop right there!” and then Blom ran up towards the road, although it did not seem the obvious option even then. He could not rid himself of the apprehension that he was leaving something threatening and unpleasant down there by the steel bins. But if his partner shouted like that, he did not have a choice, did he? And he felt secretly relieved. He had been more frightened than he cared to admit and so he hurried off and came stumbling up onto the road.

Up ahead, Flinck was chasing after an unsteady man with a broad back and clothes that were far too thin and, even though he hardly fitted the description of a “quick bastard”, Blom ran after him. Soon afterwards they brought him down by the side of the ditch, right next to a couple of letterboxes and a small lantern which cast a pale light over the whole scene.

“Who the hell are you?” Flinck bellowed with surprising aggression – he had been scared too – and the man looked at them in confusion and terror.

He was not wearing a hat, he had hoarfrost in his hair and in the stubble on his chin and you could tell that he was cold and in pretty bad shape. But above all there was something extraordinarily familiar about his face.

For a few seconds Blom thought that they had arrested a known and wanted criminal and he swelled with pride.

Balder had gone back to the bedroom and tucked August in again, perhaps to hide him under the blanket if anything should happen. Then he had a completely crazy thought, prompted by the sense of foreboding he had just felt, which was accentuated by his conversation with Warburton. Probably his mind was just clouded by panic and fear.

He realized it was not a new idea but something which had been developing in his subconscious during many sleepless nights in California. So he got out his laptop, his own little supercomputer connected to a series of other machines for sufficient capacity, and opened the A.I. program to which he had dedicated his life, and then …

He deleted the file and all of the back-up. He barely thought it through. He was like an evil God snuffing out a life, and perhaps that was exactly what he
was
doing. Nobody knew, not even he himself, and he sat there for a little while, wondering if he would be floored by remorse and regret. It was incomprehensible, wasn’t it? His life’s work was gone, with just a few taps of a key.

But oddly enough it made him calmer, as if at least one aspect of his life was now protected. He got to his feet and once more looked out into the night and the storm. Then the telephone rang. It was Flinck, the second policeman.

“I just wanted to say that we apprehended the man you saw,” the policeman said. “In other words, you can relax. We have the situation under control.”

“Who is it?” Balder said.

“I couldn’t say. He’s very drunk and we have to get him to quieten down. I just wanted to let you know. We’ll get back to you.”

Balder put the mobile down on the bedside table, next to his laptop, and tried to congratulate himself. Now the man was under arrest, and his research would not fall into the wrong hands. Yet he was not reassured. At first he did not understand why. Then it hit him: the man who had run along the trees had been anything but drunk.

It took a full minute or more before Blom realized that they had not in fact arrested a notorious criminal but rather the actor Lasse Westman, who did often enough play bandits and hit men on screen, but who was not himself wanted for any crime. The realization did not make Blom feel any calmer. Not just because he suspected it had been a mistake to leave the area of the trees and the bins down there, but because this whole episode could lead to scandal and headlines in the press.

He knew enough about Westman to be aware that whatever that man did all too often ended up in the evening papers, and you could not say that the actor was looking particularly happy. He puffed and swore as he scrambled to get to his feet and Blom tried to work out what on earth the man was doing out here in the middle of the night.

“Do you live in the area?” he said.

“I don’t have to tell you a fucking thing,” Westman hissed, and Blom turned to Flinck in an attempt to understand how the whole drama had begun.

But Flinck was already standing a little way off talking into his mobile, apparently with Balder. He probably wanted to show how efficient he was by passing on the news that they had seized the suspect, if indeed he was the suspect.

“Have you been snooping around Professor Balder’s property?” Blom said.

“Didn’t you hear what I said? I’m not telling you a fucking thing. What the hell, here I am strolling around perfectly peacefully and along comes that maniac waving his pistol. It’s scandalous. Don’t you know who I am?”

“I know who you are, and if we have overreacted then I apologize. I’m sure we’ll have a chance to talk about it again. But right now we’re in the middle of a tense situation and I demand that you tell me at once what brought you here to Professor Balder – oh no, don’t you try to run away now!”

Westman was probably not trying to escape at all. He was only having trouble keeping his balance. Then he cleared his throat rather dramatically and spat right out into the air. The phlegm did not get far but flew back like a projectile and froze to ice on his cheek.

“Do you know something?” he said, wiping his face.

“No?”

“I’m not the bad guy in this story.”

Blom looked nervously down towards the water and the avenue of trees and wondered yet again what he had seen there. And still he remained standing where he was, paralysed by the absurdity of the situation.

“Well then, who is?”

“Balder.”

“How so?”

“He’s taken my girlfriend’s son.”

“Why would he have done that?”

“You shouldn’t bloody well be asking me! Ask the computer genius in there! That bastard has absolutely no right to him,” Westman said, and fumbled in the inside pocket of his coat.

“He doesn’t have a child in the house, if that’s what you think,” Blom said.

“He sure as hell does.”

“Really?”

“Really!”

“So you thought you’d come along here in the middle of the night, pissed as a newt, and fetch the child,” Blom said, and he was about to make another crushing comment when he was interrupted by a sound, a soft clinking sound coming up from the water’s edge.

“What was that?” he said.

“What was what?” answered Flinck, who was standing next to him and did not seem to have heard anything at all. It was true that the sound had not been all that loud, at least not up here.

Yet it still made Blom shudder. He was just about to go down to investigate when he hesitated again. As he looked around anxiously he could hear another car approaching.

It was a taxi which drove past and stopped at Balder’s front door, and that gave Blom an excuse to stay up on the road. While the driver and the passenger settled up he cast yet another worried look down to the water and thought that he could hear something more, and this sound was no more reassuring.

He did not know for sure, and now the car door opened and a man climbed out whom Blom, after a moment’s confusion, recognized as the journalist Mikael Blomkvist, though God only knew why the hell all these celebrities had to congregate out here in the middle of the night.

21.xi, Early Morning

Balder was standing in the bedroom next to his computer and his mobile, looking at August, who was whimpering uneasily in the bed. He wondered what the boy was dreaming. Was it about a world which he could even understand? Balder wanted to know. He felt that he wanted to start living, no longer bury himself in quantum algorithms and source codes and paranoia.

He wanted to be happy, not tormented by that constant weight in his body; he wanted instead to launch himself into something wild and magnificent, a romance even. For a few intense seconds he thought about the women who had fascinated him: Gabriella, Farah, others too.

He also thought about the woman who it turned out was called Salander. He had been spellbound by her, and as he now remembered her he saw something new in her, something both familiar and strange: she reminded him of August. That was absurd, of course. August was a small autistic boy, and while Salander was not that old either, and there may have been something boyish about her, otherwise she was his polar opposite. Dressed in black, a bit of a punk, totally uncompromising. Still it occurred to him now that her eyes had that same strange shine as August’s when he had been staring at the traffic light on Hornsgatan.

Balder had encountered Salander during a lecture at the Royal Institute of Technology in the course of a talk he was giving on technical singularity, the hypothetical state when computers become more intelligent than the human being. He had just begun by explaining the concept of singularity in terms of mathematics and physics when the door opened and a skinny girl in black strode into the lecture hall. His first thought was that it was a shame there was no other place for junkies to go. Then he wondered if the girl really was an addict. She did not seem strung out, but on the other hand she did look tired and surly, and did not appear to be paying any attention to his lecture. She just sat there slouched over a desk. Eventually, in the middle of a discussion of the moment of singularity in complex mathematical calculation, the point where the solution hits infinity, he asked her straight out what she thought of it all. That was mean. Why should he pick on her? But what had happened?

The girl looked up and said that, instead of bandying fuzzy concepts about, he should become sceptical when the basis for his calculations fell apart. It was not some sort of real-world physical collapse, more a sign that his own mathematics were not up to scratch, and therefore it was sheer populism on his part to mystify singularities in black holes when it was so obvious that the main problem was the absence of a quantum mechanical method for calculating gravity.

With icy clarity – which set off a buzz in the hall – she then presented a sweeping critique of the singularity theorists he had quoted, and he was incapable of coming up with any answer other than a dismayed: “Who the hell are you?”

That was their first contact. The girl was to surprise him a few times more after that. With lightning speed or just one bright glance she immediately grasped what he was working on and, when he realized that his technology had been stolen, he had asked for her help. That had created a bond between them – they shared a secret.

Now he was standing there in the bedroom thinking of her. But his thoughts were interrupted. He was overcome by a new chilling sense of unease and he looked through the doorway towards the large window overlooking the water.

In front of it stood a tall figure in dark clothes and a tight black cap with a small lamp on his forehead. He was doing something to the window. He pulled across it with a swift and powerful movement, like an artist starting work on a fresh canvas, and before Balder had time to cry out, the entire window fell in and the figure moved towards him.

Jan Holtser usually told people that he worked on industrial security issues. In actual fact he was a former Russian special forces soldier who spent his time breaking into security systems. He had a small skilled staff and, for operations like this one, the preparations were as a rule so painstaking that the risks were not as great as one might imagine.

It’s true that he was no longer a young man, but for fifty-one he kept himself in good shape with hard training and was known for his efficiency and ability to improvise. If fresh circumstances cropped up, he thought about them and took them into consideration in his planning.

His experience tended to make up for his lack of youthful vigour, and occasionally, in the limited circle within which he could talk openly, he would speak of a sort of sixth sense, an acquired instinct. He had learned over the years when to wait and when to strike, and although he had been through a bad patch a couple of years earlier and betrayed signs of weakness – humanity, his daughter would say – he now felt that he was more accomplished than ever before.

He was once more able to take pleasure in his work, that old sense of excitement. Yes, he did still dose himself with ten milligrams of Stesolid before an operation, but that was only because it enhanced his accuracy with weapons. He remained crystal clear and alert at critical moments, and most important: he always carried out the tasks he was assigned. Holtser was not someone who let people down or bailed out. That was how he thought of himself.

And yet tonight, even though his client had stressed that the job was urgent, he had considered calling it off. The bad weather was a factor. But the storm in itself would never have been enough to get him to consider cancelling. He was Russian and a soldier, and had fought in far worse conditions than these, and he hated people who moaned about trivial things.

What bothered him was the police guard, which had appeared out of nowhere. He did not think much of the policemen on the property. From his hiding place he had seen them snooping around with the vague reluctance of small boys told to go outside in bad weather. They would rather have stayed sitting in their car talking rubbish, and they were easily frightened, especially the taller of the two, who seemed to dislike the dark and the storm and the black water. As he stood there staring in among the trees a little while ago, he had looked to be terrified, presumably because he had sensed Holtser’s presence, but that was not something that worried Holtser. He could have slit the man’s throat swiftly and soundlessly.

Still, the fact of policemen was not good news.

Their presence considerably raised the level of risk; above all it was an indication that some part of the plan had leaked out, that there was a heightened readiness. Maybe the professor had started to talk, in which case the operation would be meaningless, it might even make their situation worse. Holtser was determined not to expose his client to any unnecessary risks. He regarded that as one of his strengths. He always saw the bigger picture and, despite his profession, he was often the one who counselled caution.

He had lost count of the number of criminal gangs in his home country which had gone under because they had resorted too often to violence. Violence can command respect. Violence can silence and intimidate, and ward off risks and threats. But violence can also cause chaos and a whole chain of unwanted consequences.

All those thoughts had gone through his mind as he sat hidden behind the trees and the line of bins. For a few seconds he was resolved to abort the operation and go back to his hotel room. Yet that did not happen.

A car arrived, occupying the policemen’s attention, and he spotted an opportunity, an opening. Without stopping to evaluate his motivations he fitted the elastic of the lamp over his head. He got out the diamond saw from his left-hand jacket pocket and drew his weapon, a 1911 R1 Carry with a custom-made silencer, and weighed them, one in each hand. Then, as ever, he said:

“Thy will be done, amen.”

Yet he could not shake off the uncertainty. Was this right? He would have to act with lightning speed. True, he knew the house inside out and Jurij had been here twice and hacked the alarm system. Plus the policemen were hopeless amateurs. Even if he were delayed in there – say the professor did not have his computer next to his bed, as everyone had said, and they had time to come to his aid – Holtser would be able to dispose of them too without any problem. He even looked forward to it. He therefore muttered a second time:

“Thy will be done, amen.”

Then he disengaged the safety on his weapon and moved rapidly to the large window overlooking the water. It may have been due to the uncertainty of the situation, but he felt an unusually strong reaction when he saw Balder standing there in the bedroom, engrossed in something, and he tried to persuade himself that everything was fine. The target was clearly visible. Yet he still felt apprehensive: Should he call the job off?

He did not. Instead he tensed the muscles in his right arm and with all his strength drew the diamond cutter across the window and pushed. The window collapsed with a disturbing crash and he rushed in and raised his weapon at Balder, who was staring hard at him, waving his hand as though in a desperate greeting. The professor began to say something confused and ceremonious which sounded like a prayer, a litany. But instead of “God” or “Jesus” Holtser heard the word “disabled”. That was all he managed to catch, and in any case it did not matter. People had said all sorts of things to him.

He showed no mercy.

Quickly and almost soundlessly the figure moved through the hallway into the bedroom. In that time Balder registered with surprise that the alarm had not gone off and noticed a motif of a grey spider on the man’s jersey, also a narrow, oblong scar on his pale forehead below the cap and the lamp.

Then he saw the weapon. The man was pointing a pistol at him. Balder raised his hand in a vain attempt to protect himself. But even though his life was on the line and fear had set its claws into him he thought only of August. Whatever else happened, even if he himself had to die, let his son be spared. He burst out:

“Don’t kill my child! He’s disabled, he doesn’t understand anything.”

Balder did not know how far he got. The whole world froze and the night and the storm seemed to bear down on him and then everything went black.

Holtser fired and as he had expected there was nothing wrong with his aim. He hit Balder twice in the head and the professor collapsed to the floor like a flapping scarecrow. There was no doubt that he was dead. Yet something did not feel right. A blustery wind swept in off the sea and brushed across Holtser’s neck as if it were a cold, living being, and for a second or two he had no idea what was happening.

Everything had gone according to plan and over there was Balder’s computer, just as he had been told. He should just take it and go. He needed to be efficient. Yet he stood there as if frozen to the spot and it was only after a strangely long delay that he realized why.

In the large double bed, almost completely hidden by a duvet, lay a small boy with unruly, tousled hair watching him with a glassy look. Those eyes made him uncomfortable, and that was not just because they seemed to be looking straight through him. There was more to it than that. But then again it made no difference.

He had to carry out his assignment. Nothing must be allowed to jeopardize the operation and expose them all to risk. Here was someone who was clearly a witness, especially now that he had exposed his face, and there must be no witnesses, so he pointed his weapon at the boy and looked into his glowing eyes and for the third time muttered:

“Thy will be done, amen.”

Blomkvist climbed out of the taxi in a pair of black boots and a white fur coat with a broad sheepskin collar, which he had dug out of the cupboard, as well as an old fur hat that had belonged to his father.

It was then 2.40 in the morning. The Ekot news bulletin had reported a serious accident involving an articulated lorry which was now blocking the main Värmdö road. But Blomkvist and the taxi driver had seen nothing of that and had travelled together through the dark, storm-battered suburbs. Blomkvist was sick with exhaustion. All he had wanted was to stay at home and creep into bed with Erika again and go back to sleep.

But he had not felt able to say no to Balder. He could not understand why. It might have been out of some sense of duty, a feeling that he could not allow himself any easy options now that the magazine was facing a crisis, or it might have been that Balder had sounded lonely and frightened, and that Blomkvist was both sympathetic and curious. Not that he thought he was going to hear anything sensational. He was coldly expecting to be disappointed. Maybe he would find himself acting as a therapist, a night watchman in the storm. On the other hand, one never knew, and once again he thought of Salander. Salander rarely did anything without good reason. Besides, Balder was a fascinating figure, and he had never before given an interview. It could well turn out to be interesting, Blomkvist thought, as he looked about him in the darkness.

A lamp post cast a bluish light over the house, and a nice house it was too, architect-designed with large glass windows, and built to look a little like a train. Standing by the letterbox was a tall policeman in his forties, with a fading tan and somewhat strained, nervous features. Further down the road was a shorter colleague of his, arguing with a drunk who was waving his arms about. More was happening out here than Blomkvist had expected.

“What’s going on?” he said to the taller policeman.

He never got an answer. The policeman’s mobile rang and Blomkvist overheard that the alarm system did not seem to be working properly. There was a noise coming from the lower part of the property, a crackling, unnerving sound, which instinctively he associated with the telephone call. He took a couple of steps to the right and looked down a hill which stretched all the way to a jetty and the sea and another lamp post with the same bluish light. Just then a figure came charging out of nowhere and Blomkvist realized that something was badly wrong.

Holtser squeezed the first pressure on the trigger and was just about to shoot the boy when the sound of a car could be heard up by the road, and he checked himself. But it was not really the car. It was because of the word “disabled” which cropped up again in his thoughts. He realized that the professor would have had every reason to lie in that last moment of his life, but as Holtser now stared at the child he wondered if it might not in fact be true.