The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye: Continuing Stieg Larsson's Millennium Series (14 page)

“I get it,” Blomkvist said reflectively.

“Lisbeth is now in isolation and she’s being treated with deep suspicion. Of course, there are many points in her favour. No-one seems to believe that someone so slight could have delivered such a devastating punch. And no-one can understand why Olsen would take the blame – and be backed by Faria – if he wasn’t the one who hit Benito. But Mikael, for such an intelligent woman, Lisbeth is being exasperatingly dumb.”

“What do you mean?”

“She won’t say a word about what happened. She has only two things to communicate, she says.”

“And what are they?”

“One, that Benito got what she deserved. And two, that Benito got what she deserved.”

Blomkvist laughed, he had no idea why. He knew the situation was serious.

“So what do you believe
really
happened?” he asked.

“My job isn’t to believe, it’s to defend my client,” Giannini said. “But purely as a hypothesis: Benito is exactly the type of person Lisbeth can’t tolerate.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“That’s why I’m calling. You can help me with Faria. I’m going to represent her too – on the issues which led to her imprisonment, that is – at Lisbeth’s request. Lisbeth seems to have carried out some research into her background while in prison, and it might make a compelling, major story for you and the magazine. Faria’s boyfriend Jamal Chowdhury was killed by falling in front of a Tunnelbana train. Could we meet up this evening?”

“I’m supposed to see Holger Palmgren at 9.00.”

“Say hi from me please. He seems to have been trying to get in touch with me today. On second thoughts, why don’t we have dinner together before? Shall we say 6.00 at Pane Vino?”

“O.K.,” Blomkvist said. “Good.”

He rang off and looked over towards the Grand Hôtel and Kungsträdgården, wondering whether to go back to the seminar. Instead he Googled a few things on his mobile and it was nearly twenty minutes before he headed back in.

As he hurried past the table in the entrance with its display of books, something peculiar happened. He ran straight into Mannheimer. Blomkvist wanted to shake his hand and compliment him on the discussion on stage. But Mannheimer looked so nervous and unhappy that Blomkvist said nothing and watched him disappear out into the sunlight.

Blomkvist stood there for a minute, thinking. Then he went into the auditorium and looked for Malin. She was no longer in her seat. He could have kicked himself for having taken so long. Did she lose patience and head off? He scanned the room. An older man was now talking up on the podium, pointing at curves and lines on a white screen. Blomkvist ignored him. Eventually he spotted Malin standing at the bar over to the right. Glasses of red and white wine had been lined up as refreshment during the break. Malin, glass in hand, looked crestfallen.

Faria Kazi leaned against the cell wall and closed her eyes. For the first time in ages she longed to see herself in a mirror. She felt a glimmer of hope, even though there was still fear in her body. She thought about the fact that the prison warden had apologized, and about her new lawyer, Annika Giannini, and the policemen who had questioned her. And of course she thought about Jamal.

In the pocket of her trousers was a brown-leather holder containing the business card Jamal had given her after the debate at Kulturhuset.
JAMAL CHOWDHURY
, it read,
BLOGGER, WRITER, PH.D. BIOLOGY (UNIVERSITY OF DHAKA)
, and then his e-mail address and mobile number. Underneath it in a different font was a web address:
www.mukto-mona.com
. The card was crumpled and the lettering was rubbing off. Jamal must have printed it himself. She never asked and why would she have? She had no way of knowing that this card would become her dearest possession. The night after they first met she had studied it under her blanket while she recalled their conversation and remembered every crease and line in his face. She should have called him right away. She should have got in touch that very evening. But she was young and innocent, and she did not want to appear too eager. Above all, how was she to know that soon everything would be taken away from her, her mobile, the computer, even the freedom to walk in the neighbourhood in her niqab?

Sitting in her cell now, with the faint first light stealing into her life, she remembered again the summer’s day when her aunt Fatima admitted that she had lied for her sake, and Faria had found herself a prisoner in her own home. She was locked in and told that she was to be married off to a second cousin she had never met who owned three textile factories in Dhaka. Three! She had lost track of the number of times she had heard that number.

“Just imagine, Faria. Three factories!”

It would have made no difference to her if they had said three hundred and thirty-three. She found the cousin, whose name was Qamar Fatali, repulsive. In photographs he looked arrogant and mean, and it was no surprise that he was a Salafist and an outspoken opponent of the secular movement in Bangladesh. Nor was she amazed to learn that it was a matter of life and death to Qamar that she remain a virgin and be a good Sunni Muslim woman until the moment he arrived to save her from the West.

At that time nobody in the family knew about Jamal, but there were other factors being held against her, not just suspicions about what she had really been up to while she was not at Fatima’s. There were also old, innocent Facebook pictures, gossip which was supposed to confirm that she had “made a whore” of herself.

The front door was security-locked from the inside and since two of the brothers, Ahmed and Bashir, were out of work, there was always somebody at home to keep an eye on her. She did not have much to do other than clean and cook and serve the household, or lie in her room and read whatever she could get her hands on: the Koran, Tagore’s poetry and novels, biographies of Muhammad and the first caliphs. But most of all she liked to daydream. Just thinking about Jamal made her blush. She knew she was being pathetic, but that was her family’s gift to her – because all joy had been taken from her, the mere memory of a walk along Drottninggatan could make the world quake.

She was already living in a prison then, but she never allowed herself to give in to feelings of resignation or hopelessness. Instead she became furious, and gradually she drew less and less comfort from her memories of Jamal. Just thinking of a conversation where words had flown free made every exchange at home feel inhibited and stiff, and not even God was compensation for that. There was nothing spiritual or generous about God, not in her family. He was little more than a hammer with which to beat people over the head, an instrument for small-mindedness and oppression, exactly as Imam Ferdousi had said. She began to suffer from shortness of breath and palpitations, and in the end she could stand it no longer. She had to escape this life, come what may.

It was already September. The weather was getting cooler and her eyes gained a new sharpness, constantly on the lookout for possible escape routes. That was just about all she thought of. At night she dreamed of running away, and in the morning she would wake up still fantasizing about it. Often she would steal a look at Khalil, her youngest brother. He too was affected: he was no longer allowed to watch his American or English T.V. series, or even see his best friend Babak because he was a Shia. Sometimes Khalil looked at her with such pain, as if he perfectly understood what she was going through. Could he help her?

She became obsessed by the idea, and also by telephones. She began to follow her older brothers around the apartment, keeping her distance. Her eyes were fixed on their hands as they fiddled with their mobiles and keyed in security codes. But above all she noticed how sometimes they forgot their telephones on tables and chests of drawers, and in less conspicuous places like the top of the television or next to the toaster or the electric kettle in the kitchen. Occasionally there would be a comic interlude when the brothers could not find their mobiles and argued and rang each other, and then swore even more when the mobiles were set to silent and they had to track down the muted buzzing.

She was beginning to realize that these farces were a big chance for her. She had to seize opportunities when they arose, though she knew how much was at stake. It was not only a matter of the family’s honour. She was also putting her father’s and her brothers’ financial futures at risk. Those three bloody factories would be a heaven-sent windfall and make them all prosperous. If she thwarted that, the consequences would be dire, and it did not surprise her that the snare was being pulled tighter.

A poison spread throughout the apartment, and now it was no longer just self-righteousness and greed that shone in her older brothers’ eyes. They were beginning to be afraid of her. Sometimes they forced more food on her because Qamar, it was said, liked his women to have curves, and it would not do for her to become too thin. She was not allowed to become impure, and definitely not free. They watched over her like hawks.

She might have resigned herself to the situation and given up. But then things came to a head one morning in the middle of that September two years ago. She was eating her breakfast and Bashir, the oldest brother, was fiddling with his telephone.

Malin took a sip of her red wine at the makeshift bar in the Fotografiska Museum. Blomkvist had left her happy and upbeat, yet now she was looking like a withered flower, her fingers buried in her long hair.

“Hello there,” he said quietly. The presentation was still going on.

“Who was calling?” she asked.

“Just my sister.”

“The lawyer?”

Blomkvist nodded. “Did something happen?”

“No, not really. I just had a word with Leo.”

“It didn’t go well?”

“It was great.”

“So why are you looking so glum?”

“We said all sorts of nice things. How wonderful I was looking, how fantastic he’d been on stage, how much we’d missed each other – blah, blah, blah. But I could tell right away that something was different.”

“In what way different?”

Malin hesitated. She looked right and left, as if to be sure that Mannheimer was not within earshot.

“It felt … empty,” she said. “As if they were all empty words. He seemed troubled to see me here.”

“Friends come, friends go,” Blomkvist said in a kind tone.

“I know, and I can survive without Leo, for heaven’s sake. But still, it bothered me. We were after all … for a while we were really …”

Blomkvist chose his words carefully. “You were close.”

“We were. But it wasn’t just that we’ve grown apart. It felt weird somehow. For instance, he says he got engaged to Julia Damberg.”

“Who?”

“She used to be an analyst at Alfred Ögren. She’s pretty, gorgeous even, but not the sharpest pencil in the box. Leo never liked her that much. He used to say she was childish. I can’t get my head around them suddenly getting engaged.”

“Tragic.”

“Stop that!” she spat. “I’m not jealous, if that’s what you think. I’m …”

“Yes?”

“Puzzled. Confused, to be honest. Something strange is going on.”

“You mean something more than his planning to marry the wrong woman?”

“You’re not right in the head, Blomkvist. You do know that, don’t you?”

“I’m only trying to understand.”

“Well, you can’t understand,” she said.

“Why not?”

“Because …” She hesitated, fumbling for words. “… because I’m not there myself yet. There’s something I have to check first.”

“I wish you’d stop being so bloody enigmatic!”

Malin looked at him in alarm.

“Sorry,” he said.

“
I’m
the one who should be sorry,” she said. “I’m making a bit of a meal of it.”

Blomkvist made an effort to sound sympathetic. “So, tell me, what’s going on?”

“I keep coming back to that time he was sitting in his office, in the middle of the night. Something doesn’t add up. To begin with, Leo must have heard me when I came back from the lift, because he suffers from hyperacusis.”

“From
what
?”

“Extreme sensitivity to sound. He hears incredibly well, the softest footstep, a butterfly fluttering by. I can’t imagine how I forgot about it. But when that chair squeaked before he started speaking today and he had that agitated reaction, it all came back to me. What do you think, Mikael, shall we push off? I can’t stand all this buy-and-sell talk,” she said, and drained her glass of wine.

Faria Kazi was waiting to be called for questioning again, but she was not dreading it as much as she thought she would. Twice already she had not only told them about the bullying and abuse in the maximum security unit, but she had also managed to lie. It wasn’t easy. The police kept pushing her about Lisbeth Salander.

Why had Salander been in her cell? What part had Salander played in the drama? Faria wanted to shout out:
It was Salander and not Alvar Olsen who saved me!
But she kept her promise. She thought it would be best for Salander. When was the last time anyone had stood up for her? She could not remember.

Once again she recalled the breakfast at home in Sickla when her brother Bashir had been sitting next to her, tapping on his mobile and drinking tea. It was a beautiful day. The sun was shining out there in a world which was off limits to her. The days when the family had subscribed to a morning newspaper were long gone, and it was even longer ago that their father would have the P1 morning news programme on the radio. The family had cut itself off from society.

Bashir looked up from his tea.

“You know why Qamar’s taking his time, don’t you?”

She looked out at the street.

“He’s wondering if you’re a whore. Are you a whore, Faria?”

She didn’t answer. She never replied to questions like that.

“This little shit of a heretic has been looking for you.”

Now she could not help herself. “Who would that be?”

“Some traitor from Dhaka,” Bashir said.

Maybe that should have made her angry. Jamal was no traitor. He was a hero, a man who had risked his life for a better, more democratic Bangladesh. But she felt nothing but elation. It was hardly surprising that she had thought about Jamal night and day – she was locked up with nothing to do. But he was free and no doubt going to seminars and receptions all the time. He could easily have met another woman who was far more interesting than she was. Now, with Bashir spitting out his insults, she knew that Jamal wanted to see her again, and in her barricaded world this was greater than anything.