The Girl Who Lived Twice (30 page)

September 9

Berger shook her head again. No, she said, she had no idea how it had all happened, but she made it clear that she did not like their choice of words. She’s not some Little Miss Perfect or tone-deaf moralist. She’s actually damned good. She writes with passion and power, and you should be proud instead of complaining, so get out of here and do some work.

“Now,” she said.

“Yes, yes,” they mumbled. “We just thought—”

“What did you think?”

“Oh, forget it.”

The two young reporters, Sten Åström and Freddie Welander, slunk out of her office and she sent them on their way with a few more angry words. But sometimes she wondered too, there was no denying it. How the hell had it come about? It was the unexpected consequence of a romance, a night at a hotel, that much she knew, but still…Catrin Lindås.

She was the last person on earth Berger would have expected to find writing for
Millennium.
But Lindås had delivered a staggering disclosure, her story borne along by a raw fervour, and before it had even been published, Defence Minister Forsell had resigned and his undersecretary, Svante Lindberg, had been arrested, there being reasonable grounds to suspect him of murder, blackmail and aggravated espionage. Yet none of the information that had already trickled out into the media and caused banner headlines, day after day, hour by hour, had robbed the magazine of its kudos or dampened eager expectations for the latest edition.

“In view of the revelations to be published in the next issue of
Millennium,
I will be resigning my position in the government,” Forsell had vouchsafed in his press release.

It was nothing short of fantastic, and the fact that some of her own staff were unable to rejoice at their success, but felt it necessary to bad-mouth the person who had delivered the scoop, only went to show how envious journalists can be. They also complained about having to cooperate with the German magazine
Geo,
in which a Paulina Müller, a writer none of them had ever heard of, had written an article about the scientific work which had helped to identify the Sherpa Nima Rita.

Blomkvist himself had not written a single line, although he had of course done the groundwork. He had spent most of the time lying in a daze of morphine, coping with the pain and a series of operations. The doctors had been reassuring: He would probably be able to walk normally again within half a year, and that was a great relief. Yet he remained taciturn and downhearted and only occasionally, as when they were discussing her divorce, did he sound like his old self again. He had laughed when she told him that she was having a romance with a man called Mikael.

“How convenient,” he had said. But he did not want to talk about himself or his ordeal.

He was bottling up his suffering and she worried about him. With any luck he would open up a little today. He was going to be allowed home, and she thought she would visit him that evening. But first she was going to look through his story about troll factories, which he had not wanted to publish and had only reluctantly sent her. She put on her spectacles and started reading. OK, not a bad beginning, all things considered, she thought. He did know how to write an introduction, but then…she could understand why he had not been happy with it.

It sagged. He was being too complicated. He was trying to say too much at once, and she went to get herself some coffee before crossing out a sentence here and there. But then…what on earth was this? Towards the end of the article there was a clumsy addition which said that a man called Vladimir Kuznetsov not only owned troll factories in Russia, but was ultimately responsible for them. He was also the man behind the hate campaign which had preceded the murders of LGBTQ people in Chechnya, and that was not previously known.

She checked. No, all she could find online about Kuznetsov was almost…endearing. He was apparently a restaurateur and a bit of a character, an ice-hockey fan who also specialized in cooking bear steak and organizing lavish parties for the ruling elite. But Blomkvist’s article said something very different. It identified him as the person who had launched the disinformation and hacker attacks that triggered the stock market crash that summer. He was the driving force behind a large proportion of the lies and hatred spreading across the world. How sensational was that? And what the hell was Blomkvist playing at? How could he hide that kind of revelation deep inside the story, and dish it up without a shred of evidence?

Berger read the piece again and saw that Kuznetsov’s name contained a link to a number of documents in Russian and so she called over Irina, their editor and researcher who had helped Blomkvist earlier that summer. Irina was stocky, with large horn-rimmed spectacles and a crooked, warm smile. Immediately she settled down on Berger’s chair and immersed herself in the material, translating it aloud, and at the end they looked at each other and murmured:

“Bloody hell.”

Blomkvist had just made it back to his apartment on Bellmansgatan on crutches, and could not understand what Berger was going on about on the telephone. But then he was not particularly alert. He was full of morphine and his head was heavy, and he was haunted by flashbacks.

At first Salander had been there with him at the hospital, which had lent him a degree of calm; perhaps he felt better with a person by his side who knew exactly what he had been through. But just as he was getting used to having her around, she left without a word of goodbye. There was uproar, of course. The doctors and nurses ran around looking for her, as did Bublanski and Modig, who had not finished questioning her as a witness. As if that made any difference to her.

Salander was gone, and he took it badly.
Bloody hell, Lisbeth, why are you always running away from me? Can’t you see that I need you?
But he would just have to live with it, and he compensated for her absence by cursing with rage and increasing his intake of painkillers.

At times, in that no-man’s-land between night and day, he was driven to the edge of madness and, if he did manage to drop off during those hours, he would dream about the furnace in Morgonsala. How his body was gradually pushed into that sea of fire and consumed by the flames, and then, when he woke with a start or a scream, he would look down at his legs in bewilderment, to make sure that they were not burning.

He was most calm in the afternoons, when he had visitors, and sometimes he almost forgot about himself; or at least he managed to keep the memories of the glassworks at bay. And he was altogether taken by surprise when a black woman with sparkling eyes appeared, a bouquet of flowers in her arms. She was wearing a bright-blue suit with flared trousers and her hair was neatly braided. She looked like a runner or dancer and moved almost soundlessly. At first he could not think why she looked familiar, and then it dawned on him: It was Kadi Linder, the boardroom professional and psychologist whom he had met in the doorway of what was now her apartment at Fiskargatan.

Kadi had come to see if there was anything she could do to help, she said, deeply moved by what she had read about him in the newspapers, but she seemed also to want to tell him something else. Seeing her fidget and look somewhat awkward, he asked what was troubling her.

“I got an e-mail,” she said. “Actually, e-mail isn’t the right word. My screen blinked, and as if by magic there was this file about Freddy Carlsson at Formea Bank. You know, that guy who’s been getting at me and bad-mouthing me for years because I said he was dishonest in
Veckans Affärer.
”

“I vaguely remember that,” he said.

“Well, that file contained unequivocal proof that, when he was in charge of the bank’s business in the Baltic, Freddy had engaged in sophisticated money-laundering activities, and I saw that he wasn’t just casually dishonest but actually a criminal through and through.”

“Good grief.”

“But that wasn’t what surprised me the most. It was the message just below the link to the file.”

“What did it say?”

“Something like ‘I’ve been keeping an eye on the security cameras in case someone hasn’t realized I’ve moved.’ That was all, and at first I had no idea what it meant. There was no sender and no name. But then I thought of your visit and the dramatic events at Morgonsala. And the penny dropped: I’d bought Lisbeth Salander’s apartment, and that made me—”

“You don’t need to be worried,” he interrupted her.

“Worried? Oh no, my God, not at all, I was starstruck! I could see that the file on Freddy Carlsson was Salander’s way of making up for any hassle I might have because of her. Frankly, I was overwhelmed, and it made me want to help the two of you even more.”

“That’s not at all necessary,” he said. “It’s already good of you to come to see me.”

In a move so inspired that he surprised himself, Blomkvist then asked Kadi if she might consider becoming chair of the magazine’s board of directors, bearing in mind
Millennium
’s exposed position in the media market and all the aggressive attempts to buy them up. She lit up at that and at once said yes, and the very next day he got Erika and the others to agree to the idea.

Catrin had of course been his most frequent visitor at the hospital, not just because they were virtually a couple now, but also because he was working with her on her report. He read successive drafts and they discussed the story over and over. Both Lindberg and Engelman had been arrested, and so had Ivan Galinov. Annika Giannini, who paid the occasional sisterly visit to Blomkvist’s bedside, told him that Lindberg would in all likelihood receive a life sentence for his treason and certainly faced confiscation of his illicit gains. It looked like the end for Svavelsjö M.C., although perhaps not for Zvezda Bratva, whose protectors were too powerful.

Forsell, however, looked as if he would come out of it reasonably well, and at times Blomkvist thought that Catrin was being too easy on him. But Forsell had, after all, given them the scoop. And besides, he liked the man, so he supposed it was a concession he would have to live with. In any case it was bound to be a relief for Rebecka and the boys.

It was particularly heartening that Nima Rita had been cremated according to Buddhist custom back home in Tengboche, Nepal. There was also to be a memorial service, and Bob Carson was coming over from Denver. Fredrika Nyman would be there too. Everything seemed to be falling into place. Yet somehow none of it made him really happy. He felt that he was on the sidelines, especially now that Erika was babbling excitedly at him over the telephone. What on earth was she talking about?

“Who’s Kuznetsov?” he said.

“Have you completely lost your marbles?”

“What do you mean, my marbles?”

“You’ve hung him out to dry.”

“I have?”

“What drugs are they giving you?”

“Nowhere near enough.”

“And it’s a lousy piece of writing too.”

“I did warn you.”

“But in your usual lousy style you’ve emphasized very clearly that it was Vladimir Kuznetsov who set off this summer’s stock market crash. He was also one of the people behind the murders of homosexuals in Chechnya.”

He had no idea what she was talking about. He hobbled over to his computer and opened up his old article.

“That sounds pretty crazy.”

“Not half as crazy as your reaction to my questions.”

“It must be…” He did not finish his sentence, but then he did not have to either. The same thought had occurred to Erika.

“Is this something to do with Lisbeth?”

“I honestly don’t know, Erika,” he said, shocked. “But tell me now. Kuznetsov, you say.”

“You’ll have to read it yourself. Irina is busy translating the documents and the evidence that was attached. But it’s an absolutely mind-boggling story. Kuznetsov’s the one the Crazy Sisters sing about in ‘Killing the World with Lies.’ ”

“In what?”

“Sorry, I keep forgetting that you lost touch somewhere around Tina Turner.”

“Pack it in.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“At least give me a chance to look into it.”

“I’ll pop over this evening and we can talk about it.”

He thought about Catrin, who was meant to be coming over late that afternoon.

“Let’s meet up tomorrow, that’ll give me time to get my head around a bit more of this.”

“OK. And how are you feeling, by the way?”

He gave it some thought. And decided that she deserved a serious answer.

“It’s been pretty tough.”

“I can imagine.”

“But now…”

“What?”

“I’ve just begun to feel alive again.”

He was in a hurry to hang up.

“I have to…” he went on.

“Get in touch with a certain person.”

“Something like that.”

“Take care then,” she said.

He ended the call and tried again what he had tried to do countless times from hospital—get hold of Salander. He had not seen a single sign of life since she had vanished, had heard nothing at all of her except that she had sent that message to Kadi Linder, and he was worried. It was part of his general anxiety, a creeping unease which was always worst at night and early in the morning. He was afraid that she was unable to stop; that she would seek out new shadows from her past, and that eventually she would run out of luck. It was—he could not get the thought out of his mind—as if she were predestined for a violent end, and he could not bear the thought.

He picked up his mobile. What would he write this time? The clouds were rolling in outside. The wind was picking up and rattling the windowpanes and he felt his heart beat in his chest. Memories of the gaping furnace in Morgonsala washed over him and he toyed with the idea of making his message sound quite strict: She must get in touch. Otherwise, he would go mad.

But in the end it was lighthearted—as if he were afraid to show how worried he was.

But there was no answer. The hours passed and day turned to night and Catrin came. They kissed and shared a bottle of wine, and for a while he forgot his troubles. They didn’t stop talking until they both fell asleep at around eleven, entwined in each other’s arms. He woke up three hours later with a feeling of impending doom and nervously picked up his mobile. But there was nothing from Salander. He reached for his crutches, limped into the kitchen and sat there until dawn, thinking about her.