The Girl in the Spider's Web (Millennium series Book 4) (31 page)

“Wouldn’t you like to invite me to your place instead, for a glass of wine or two?” she said. “That would be nicer.”

“Well …” He hesitated.

He badly needed to sleep, to be in good shape for tomorrow. Yet he said:

“Of course. I’ve got a bottle of Barolo in the wine rack,” and for a second he thought something exciting might be about to happen after all, as if he were about to embark on an adventure.

But his uncertainty would not abate. At first he could not understand why. He did not normally have a problem with this kind of situation – he had more success than most when it came to women flirting with him. This particular encounter had developed very quickly, but he was not unused to that either. So it was something about the woman herself, wasn’t it?

Not only was she young and exceptionally beautiful and should have had better things to do than chase after burned-out, middle-aged journalists. It was something in her expression, and in the way she switched between bold and shy, and the physical contact. Everything he had at first found spontaneous increasingly seemed to him to be affected.

“How lovely, and I won’t stay long. I don’t want to spoil your story,” she said.

“I’ll take full responsibility for any spoiled stories,” he said, and tried to smile back.

It was a forced smile and in that instant he caught a strange twitch in her eyes, a sudden icy chill which in a second turned into its very opposite, full of affection and warmth, like an acting exercise. He became more convinced that there was something wrong. But he had no idea what, and did not want his suspicions to show, at least not yet. What was going on? He wanted to understand.

They continued on up Bellmansgatan – not that he was thinking of taking her back to his place any longer, but he needed time to figure her out. He looked at her again. She really was gorgeous. Yet it occurred to him that it was not her beauty which had first captivated him. It was something else, something more elusive. Just then he saw Rebecka Mattson as a riddle to which he ought to have the answer.

“A nice part of town, this,” she said.

“It’s not bad.” He looked up towards the Bishops Arms.

Diagonally across from the pub, just a bit higher up by the crossroads with Tavastgatan, a scrawny, lanky man in a black cap was standing under a streetlight studying a map. A tourist. He had a brown suitcase in his other hand and white sneakers and a black leather jacket with its fur collar turned up, and under normal circumstances Blomkvist would not have given him a second glance.

But now he observed that the man’s movements were nervous and unnatural. Perhaps Blomkvist was suspicious to begin with, but the distracted way he was handling the map seemed more and more contrived. Now he raised his head and stared straight at Blomkvist and the woman, studying them for a brief second. Then he looked down at his map again, seeming ill at ease, almost trying to hide his face under the cap. The bowed, almost timid head reminded Blomkvist of something, and again he looked into his companion’s dark eyes.

His look was persistent and intense. She gazed at him with affection, but he did not reciprocate; instead he scrutinized her. Then her expression froze. Only in that moment did Blomkvist smile.

He smiled because suddenly the penny had dropped.

23.xi, Evening

Salander got up from the table. She did not want to pester August any longer. The boy was under enough pressure as it was and her idea had been crazy from the start.

One always expects too much of these poor savants, and what August had done was already impressive. She went out onto the terrace again and gingerly felt the area around the bullet wound, which was still aching. She heard a sound behind her, a hasty scratching on paper, so she turned and went back inside. When she saw what August had written, she smiled:

She sat down and said, without looking at him this time, “O.K.! I’m impressed. But let’s make this a little harder. Have a go at 18,206,927.”

August was hunched over the table and Salander thought it might have been unkind to throw an eight-digit figure at him right away. But if they were to stand any chance of getting what she needed they would need to go much higher than that. She was not surprised to see August begin to sway nervously back and forth. But after a few seconds he leaned forward and wrote on his paper: 9419 × 1933.

“Good. How about 971,230,541?”

August wrote: 983 × 991 × 997.

“That’s great,” Salander said, and on they went.

Outside the black, cube-like office building in Fort Meade with its reflective glass walls, not far from the big radome with its dish aerials, Casales and Needham were standing in the packed car park. Needham was twirling his car keys and looking beyond the electric fence in the direction of the surrounding woods. He should be on his way to the airport, he said, he was late already. But Casales did not want to let him leave. She had her hand on his shoulder and was shaking her head.

“That’s twisted.”

“It’s out there,” he said.

“So every one of the handles we’ve picked up for people in the Spider Society – Thanos, Enchantress, Zemo, Alkhema, Cyclone and the rest – what they have in common is that they’re all …”

“Enemies of Wasp in the original comic-book series, yes.”

“That’s insane.”

“A psychologist would have fun with it.”

“This kind of fixation must run deep.”

“I get the feeling it’s real hatred,” he said.

“You will look after yourself over there, won’t you?”

“Don’t forget I used to be in a gang.”

“That’s a long time ago, Ed, and many kilos ago too.”

“It’s not a question of weight. What is it they say? You can take the boy out of the ghetto …”

“Yes, yes.”

“You can never get rid of it. Besides, I’ll have help from the N.D.R.E. in Stockholm. They’re itching as much as I am to put that hacker out of action once and for all.”

“What if Ingram finds out?”

“That wouldn’t be good. But, as you can imagine, I’ve been preparing the ground a bit. Even exchanged a word or two with O’Connor.”

“I figured as much. Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Yep.”

“Shoot.”

“Ingram’s crew seems to have had full insight into the Swedish police investigation.”

“They’ve been eavesdropping on the police?”

“Either that or they have a source, maybe an ambitious soul at Säpo. If I put you together with two of my best hackers, you could do some digging.”

“Sounds risky.”

“O.K., forget it.”

“That wasn’t a no.”

“Thanks, Alona. I’ll send info.”

“Have a good trip,” she said, as Needham smiled defiantly and got into his car.

Looking back, Blomkvist could not explain how he had worked it out. It might have been something in the Mattson woman’s face, something unknown and yet familiar. The perfect harmony of that face might have reminded him of its very opposite, and that together with other hunches and misgivings gave him the answer. True, he was not yet absolutely sure of it. But he had no doubt that something was very wrong.

The man now walking off with his map and brown suitcase was the very figure he had seen on the security camera in Saltsjöbaden, and that coincidence was too improbable not to be of some significance, so Blomkvist stood there for a few seconds and thought. Then he turned to the woman who called herself Rebecka Mattson and tried to sound confident:

“Your friend is heading off.”

“My friend?” she said, genuinely surprised. “What friend?”

“Him up there,” he said, pointing at the man’s skeletal back as he sauntered gawkily down Tavastgatan.

“Are you joking? I don’t know anyone in Stockholm.”

“What do you want from me?”

“I just want to get to know you, Mikael,” she said, fingering her blouse, as if she might undo a button.

“Stop that!” he said roughly, and was about to lose his temper when she looked at him with such vulnerable, piteous eyes that he was thrown. For a moment he thought he had made a mistake.

“Are you cross with me?” she said, hurt.

“No, but …”

“What?”

“I don’t trust you,” he said, more bluntly than he intended.

She smiled sadly and said, “I can’t help feeling that you’re not quite yourself today, are you, Mikael? We’ll have to meet some other time instead.”

She moved to kiss his cheek so discreetly and quickly that he had no time to stop her. She gave a flirtatious wave of her fingers and walked away up the hill on high heels, so resolutely self-assured that he wondered if he should stop her and fire some probing questions. But he could not imagine that anything would come of it. Instead he decided to tail her.

It was crazy, but he saw no alternative, so he let her disappear over the brow of the hill and then set off in pursuit. He hurried up to the crossroads, sure that she could not have gone far. But there was no sign of her, or of the man either. It was as if the city had swallowed them up. The street was empty, apart from a black B.M.W. backing into a parking space some way down the street, and a man with a goatee wearing an old-fashioned Afghan coat who came walking in his direction on the opposite pavement.

Where had they gone? There were no side streets for them to slip into, no alleys. Had they ducked into a doorway? He walked on down towards Torkel Knutssonsgatan, looking left and right. Nothing. He passed what had been Samir’s Cauldron, once a favourite local of his and Berger’s; now called Tabbouli, it served Lebanese food. They might have stepped inside.

But he could not see how she would have had time to get there; he had been hot on her heels. Where the hell was she? Were she and the man standing somewhere nearby, watching him? Twice he spun around, certain that they were right behind him, and once he gave a start because of an icy feeling that someone was looking at him through a telescopic sight.

When eventually he gave up and wandered home it felt as though he had escaped a great danger. He had no idea how close to the truth that feeling was, yet his heart was beating fiercely and his throat was dry. He was not easily scared, but tonight he had been badly frightened by an empty street.

The only thing he did understand was who he needed to speak to. He had to get hold of Holger Palmgren, Salander’s old guardian. But first he would do his civic duty. If the man he had seen was the person from Balder’s security camera, and there was even a minimal chance that he could be found, the police had to be informed. So he rang Bublanski.

It was not at all easy to convince the chief inspector. It had not been easy to convince himself. But he still had some residual credibility to fall back on, however many liberties he had taken with the truth of late. Bublanski said that he would send out a unit.

“Why would he be in your part of town?”

“I have no idea, but it wouldn’t hurt to see if you can find him, would it?”

“I suppose not.”

“The best of luck to you in that case.”

“It’s damn unsatisfactory that the Balder boy is still out there somewhere,” Bublanski said reproachfully.

“And it’s damn unsatisfactory that there was a leak in your unit,” Blomkvist said.

“We’ve identified
our
leak.”

“You have? That’s fantastic.”

“It’s not all that fantastic, I’m afraid. We believe there may have been several leaks, most of which did minimal damage except maybe for the last.”

“Then you’ll have to make sure you put a stop to it.”

“We’re doing all we can, but we’re beginning to suspect …” And then he paused.

“What?”

“Nothing .”

“O.K., you don’t have to tell me.”

“We live in a sick world, Mikael.”

“We do?”

“A world in which paranoia is a requirement.”

“You could be right about that. Good night, Chief Inspector.”

“Good night, Mikael. Don’t do anything silly now.”

“I’ll try not to.”

Blomkvist crossed over Ringvägen and went down into the Tunnelbana. He took the red line towards Norsborg and got off at Liljeholmen, where for about a year Holger Palmgren had been living in a small, modern apartment. Palmgren had sounded alarmed when he heard Blomkvist’s voice on the telephone. But as soon as he had been assured that Salander was in one piece – Blomkvist hoped he wasn’t wrong about this – he made him feel welcome.

Palmgren was a lawyer, long retired, who had been Salander’s guardian for many years, ever since the girl was thirteen and had been locked up in St Stefan’s psychiatric clinic in Uppsala. He was elderly and not in the best of health, having suffered two strokes. For some time now he had been using a Zimmer frame, and had trouble getting around even so. The left side of his face drooped and his left hand no longer functioned. But his mind was clear and his long-term memory was outstanding – especially on Salander.

No-one knew Lisbeth Salander as he did. Palmgren had succeeded where all the psychiatrists and psychologists had failed, or perhaps had not wanted to succeed. After a childhood from hell, when the girl had lost faith in all adults and in all authority, Palmgren had won her confidence and persuaded her to open up. Blomkvist saw it as a minor miracle. Salander was every therapist’s nightmare, but she had told Palmgren about the most painful parts of her childhood. That was why Blomkvist now keyed in the front-door code at Liljeholmstorget 96, took the lift to the fifth floor and rang the doorbell.

“My dear old friend,” Holger said in the doorway, “it’s so wonderful to see you. But you’re looking pale.”

“I haven’t been sleeping well.”

“Not surprising, when people are shooting at you. I read about it in the paper. A dreadful story.”

“Appalling.”

“Have there been any developments?”

“I’ll tell you all about it,” Blomkvist said, sitting on a yellow sofa with its back to the balcony, waiting for Palmgren to settle with difficulty into a wheelchair next to him.

Blomkvist ran through the story in broad outline. When he came to the point of his sudden inspiration, or suspicion, on the cobblestones in Bellmansgatan, he was interrupted:

“What are you saying?”

“I think it was Camilla.”

Palmgren looked stunned. “
That
Camilla?”

“The very same.”

“Jesus,” Palmgren said. “What happened?”

“She vanished. But afterwards I felt as if my brain were on fire.”

“I can well understand. I was sure Camilla had disappeared off the face of the earth.”

“And I had almost forgotten that there were two of them.”

“There were two of them alright, very much so: twin sisters who loathed each other.”

“I remember that,” Blomkvist said. “But I need to be reminded of as much as you can tell me, to fill the gaps in the story as I know it. I’ve been asking myself why on earth Salander got involved in this story. Why would she, the superhacker, take an interest in a simple data breach?”

“Well, you know the background, don’t you? The mother, Agneta Salander, was a cashier at Konsum Zinken and lived with her twin daughters on Lundagatan. They might have had quite a nice life together. There wasn’t much money and Agneta was very young and had had no opportunity to get an education. But she was loving and caring. She wanted to give her girls a good upbringing. It was just …”

“That the father came to visit.”

“Yes, the father, Alexander Zalachenko. He came from time to time and his visits nearly always ended in the same way. He assaulted and raped Agneta while the girls sat in the next room and heard everything. One day Lisbeth found her mother unconscious on the floor.”

“And that was the first time she took revenge?”

“The second time. The first was when she stabbed Zalachenko several times in the shoulder.”

“But now she firebombed his car.”

“Yes. Zalachenko burned like a torch. Lisbeth was committed to St Stefan’s psychiatric clinic.”

“And her mother was admitted to Äppelviken nursing home.”

“For Lisbeth that was the most painful part of the story. Her mother was then twenty-nine, and she was never herself again. She survived at the nursing home for fourteen years, with severe brain injuries and suffering a great deal of pain. Often she could not communicate at all. Lisbeth went to see her as frequently as she could, and I know she dreamed that her mother would one day recover so they could talk again and look after each other. But it never happened. That if anything is the darkest corner of Lisbeth’s life. She saw her mother wither away and eventually die.”