The Girl in the Spider's Web

People with a photographic memory are also said to have an eidetic memory.

Research shows that people with eidetic memories are more likely to be nervous and stressed than others.

Most, though not all, people with eidetic memories are autistic. There is also a connection between photographic memory and synaesthesia — the condition where two or more senses are connected, for example when numbers are seen in colour and every series of numbers forms an image in the mind.

Chapter 12

Jan Bublanski had been looking forward to a day off and a long conversation with Rabbi Goldman of the Söder congregation about certain questions which had been troubling him recently, chiefly concerning the existence of God.

It would be going too far to say that he was becoming an atheist. But the very notion of a God had become increasingly problematic for him and he wanted to discuss his persistent feelings of the meaninglessness of it all, which were often accompanied by dreams of handing in his notice.

Bublanski certainly considered himself to be a good investigator. His record of clearing up cases was on the whole outstanding and occasionally he was still stimulated by the job. But he was not sure he wanted to go on investigating murders. He could learn some new skill while there was still time. He dreamed about teaching, helping young people to find their path and believe in themselves, maybe because he himself suffered from bouts of the deepest self-doubt — but he did not know which subject he would choose. He had never specialized in one particular field, aside from that which had become his lot in life: sudden evil death and morbid human perversions. That was definitely not something he wanted to teach.

It was 8.10 in the morning and he was at his bathroom mirror. He felt puffy, worn out and bald. Absent-mindedly he picked up I.B. Singer’s novel, The Magician of Lublin, which he had loved with such a passion that for many years he had kept it next to the lavatory in case he felt like reading it at times when his stomach was playing up. But now he only managed a few lines. The telephone rang and his mood did not improve when he recognized the number: Chief Prosecutor Richard Ekström. A call from Ekström meant not just work, but probably work with a political and media element to it. Ekström would otherwise have wriggled out of it like a snake.

“Hi, Richard, nice to hear from you,” Bublanski lied. “But I’m afraid I’m busy.”

“What...? No, no, not too busy for this, Jan. You can’t miss out on this one. I heard that you’d taken the day off.”

“That’s right, and I’m just off to...” He did not want to say to his synagogue. His Jewishness was not popular in the force “... see my doctor,” he went on.

“Are you sick?”

“Not really.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? Nearly sick?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, in that case there’s no problem. We’re all nearly sick, aren’t we? This is an important case, Jan. The Minister of Enterprise has been in touch, and she agrees that you should handle the investigation.”

“I find it very hard to believe the minister knows who I am.”

“Well, maybe not by name, and she’s not supposed to be interfering anyway. But we’re all agreed that we need a big player.”

“Flattery no longer works with me, Richard. What’s it about?” he said, and immediately regretted it. Just asking was halfway to saying yes and he could tell that Ekström accepted it as such.

“Last night Professor Frans Balder was murdered at his home in Saltsjöbaden.”

“And who is he?”

“One of our best-known scientists, of international renown. He’s a world authority on A.I. technology.”

“On what?”

“He was working on neural networks and digital quantum processes, that sort of thing.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“He was trying to get computers to think, to replicate the human brain.”

Replicate the human brain? Bublanski wondered what Rabbi Goldman would make of that.

“They say he’s been a victim of industrial espionage in the past,” Ekström said. “And that’s why the murder is attracting the attention of the Ministry of Enterprise. No doubt you’re aware of the solemn declarations the minister has made about the absolute requirement to protect Swedish research and new technology.”

“Maybe.”

“It would seem that this Balder was under some sort of threat. He had police protection.”

“Are you saying he was killed while under police protection?”

“Well, it wasn’t the most effective protection in the world. It was Flinck and Blom from the regular force.”

“The Casanovas?”

“Yes. They were assigned the duty late last night at the height of the storm and the general confusion. But in their defence it has to be said that the whole situation was a total shambles. Balder was shot while our men were dealing with a drunk who had turned up at the house, out of nowhere. Unsurprisingly, the killer took advantage of that moment of inattention.”

“Doesn’t sound good.”

“No, it looks very professional, and on top of it all the burglar alarm seems to have been hacked.”

“So there were several of them?”

“We believe so. Furthermore, there are some tricky details.”

“Which the media are going to like?”

“Which the media are going to love,” Ekström said. “The lush who turned up, for example, was none other than Lasse Westman.”

“The actor?”

“The same. And that’s a real problem.”

“Because it’ll be all over the front pages?”

“Partly that, yes, but also because there’s a risk we’ll end up with a load of sticky divorce issues on our hands. Westman claimed he was there to bring home the eight-year-old son of his partner. Balder had the boy there with him, a boy who... hang on a moment... I want to get this right... who is certainly Balder’s biological son, but who, according to a custody ruling, he’s not competent to look after.”

“Why wouldn’t a professor who can get computers to behave like people be capable of looking after his own child?”

“Because previously he had shown a shocking lack of responsibility. He was a completely hopeless father, if I’ve understood it right. It’s all rather sensitive. This little boy, who wasn’t even supposed to have been at Balder’s, probably witnessed the killing.”

“Jesus! And what does he say?”

“Nothing.”

“Is he in shock?”

“He must be, but he never says anything anyway. He’s mute and apparently disabled, so he’s not going to be much good to us.”

“I see. So there’s no suspect.”

“Unless there was a reason why Westman appeared at precisely the same time as the killer entered the ground floor. You should get Westman in for questioning.”

“If I decide to take on the investigation.”

“As you will.”

“Are you so sure of that?”

“In my view you have no choice. Besides, I’ve saved the best for last.”

“And that is?”

“Mikael Blomkvist.”

“What about him?”

“For some reason he was out there too. I think Balder had asked to see him, to tell him something.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“So it would seem.”

“And then he was shot?”

“Just before Blomkvist rang the bell — and it seems the journalist caught a glimpse of the killer.”

Bublanski snorted. It was an inappropriate reaction in every conceivable way and he could not have explained it even to himself. Perhaps it was nerves, or a feeling that life was repeating itself.

“I’m sorry?” Ekström said.

“Just got a bit of a cough. So you’re worried that you’ll end up with a private investigator on your back, one who’ll show you all up in a bad light.”

“Hmm, yes, maybe. We’re assuming that Millennium have already got going with the story and right now I’m trying to find some legal justification for stopping them, or at least see to it that they’re restricted in some way. I won’t rule out that this case is to be regarded as a matter affecting national security.”

“So we’re saddled with Säpo as well?”

“No comment.”

Go to hell, Bublanski thought. “Are Olofsson and the others at Industry Protection working on this?”

“No comment, as I said. When can you start?” Ekström said.

“I’ll do it, but I have some conditions,” Bublanski said. “I want my usual team: Modig, Svensson, Holmberg and Flod.”

“Of course, O.K., but you get Hans Faste as well.”

“No way!”

“Sorry, Jan, that’s not negotiable. You should be grateful you get to choose all the others.”

“You’re the bitter end, you know that?”

“I’ve heard it said.”

“So Faste’s going to be our own little mole from Säpo?”

“Nonsense. I happen to think that all teams benefit from someone who thinks differently.”

“Meaning that when the rest of us have got rid of all our prejudices and preconceived notions, we’re stuck with somebody who will take us back to square one?”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“Faste is an idiot.”

“No, Jan, he isn’t. He’s just...”

“What?”

“Conservative. He’s not someone who falls for the latest feminist fads.”

“Or for the earliest ones either. He may have just got his head around all that stuff about votes for women.”

“Come on, Jan, get a grip. Faste is an extremely reliable and loyal investigator, and I won’t listen to any more of this. Any other requests?”

How about you go take a running jump? Bublanski thought. “I need to go to my doctor’s appointment, and in the meantime I want Modig to lead the investigation,” he said.

“Is that really such a wise idea?”

“It’s a damned wise idea,” he growled.

“O.K., O.K., I’ll see to it that Zetterlund hands over to her,” Ekström said with a wince.

Ekström was now far from sure he should have agreed to take on this investigation.

Alona Casales rarely worked nights. She had managed to avoid them for a decade and justified her stance on the grounds that her rheumatism forced her from time to time to take strong cortisone tablets, which not only turned her face into the shape of a full moon, but also raised her blood pressure. She needed her sleep and her routine. Yet here she was, at 3.10 in the morning.

She had driven from her home in Laurel, Maryland, in a light rain, past the sign saying “N.S.A. NEXT RIGHT — STAFF ONLY”, past the barriers and the electric fence, towards the black, cube-like main building in Fort Meade. She left her car in the sprawling parking area alongside the pale blue golf-ball-like radome with its myriad dish aerials, and made her way through the security gates up to her workstation on the twelfth floor. She was surprised by the feverish atmosphere there and soon realized that it was Ed Needham and his young hacker team who were responsible for the heightened concentration hanging over the department.

Needham looked like a man possessed and was standing there bawling out a young man whose face shone with an icy pallor, a pretty weird guy, Casales thought, just like all those young genius hackers Needham had surrounded himself with. The kid was skinny and anaemic-looking with a hairstyle from hell, and had strangely rounded shoulders which shook with some sort of spasm. Maybe he was frightened. He shuddered every now and then, and it did not help matters that Needham was kicking at his chair leg. The young man looked as if he were waiting for a slap, a clip across the ear. But then something unexpected happened.

Needham calmed down and ruffled the boy’s hair like a loving father. That was not like him. He did not go in for demonstrative affection. He was a cowboy who would never do anything as dubious as hug another man. But perhaps he was now so desperate that he was prepared to give normal humanity a go. Ed’s zip was undone and he had spilled coffee or Coca-Cola on his shirt. His face was an unhealthy flushed colour, his voice hoarse and rough from shouting. Casales thought that no-one of his age and weight should be pushing himself so hard.

Although only half a day had gone by, it looked as if Needham and his boys had been living there for a week. There were coffee cups and fast-food remnants and discarded caps and college jerseys everywhere, and a rank stench of sweat and tension in the air. The team was clearly in the process of turning the whole world upside down in their efforts to trace the hacker. She called out to them in a hearty tone:

“Go for it, guys!... Fix the bastard!”

She did not really mean it. Secretly she thought the breach was amusing. Many of these programmers seemed to think they could do whatever liked, as if they had carte blanche, and it might actually do them some good to see that the other side could hit back. Here in the Puzzle Palace their shortcomings only showed when they were confronted with something dire, as was happening now. She had been woken by a call saying that the Swedish professor had been murdered at his home outside Stockholm, and even though that in itself was not a big deal for the N.S.A. — not yet, at any rate — it did mean something to Casales.

The killing showed that she had read the signs right, and now she had to see if she could move forward one more step. She logged in and opened the diagrammatic overview of the organization she had been tracking. The evasive Thanos sat right at the top, but there were also names of real people like the member of the Russian Duma Ivan Gribanov, and the German, Gruber.

She did not understand why the N.S.A. gave such low priority to the matter, and why her superiors kept suggesting that other, more mainstream law-enforcement agencies should be taking care of it. They could not rule out the possibility that the network had state backing, or links to Russian state intelligence, and that it was all to do with the trade war between East and West. Even though the evidence was sparse and ambiguous, there were indications that western technology was being stolen and ending up in Russian hands.

But it was difficult to get a clear view of this tangled web or even to know whether any crime had been committed — perhaps it was purely by chance that a similar technology had been developed somewhere else. These days, industrial theft was an altogether nebulous concept. Assets were being borrowed all the time, sometimes as a part of creative exchanges, sometimes just dressed up to seem legitimate.

Large businesses, bolstered by threatening lawyers, regularly scared the living daylights out of small companies, and nobody seemed to find it odd that individual innovators had almost no legal rights. Besides which, industrial espionage and hacker attacks were often regarded as little more than routine research in a competitive environment. You could hardly claim that the N.S.A. crowd were helping to raise ethical standards in the field.

On the other hand, it was not so easy to view murder in relative terms, and Casales took a solemn vow to leave no stone unturned in trying to unseat Thanos. She did not get far. In fact she only managed to stretch her arms and massage her neck before she heard puffing and panting behind her.

Needham looked dreadful. His back must have given out on him too. Her own neck felt better just looking at him.

“Ed, to what do I owe this honour?”

“I’m thinking you and I are working on the same problem.”

“Park your butt, old man.”

“You know, from my limited perspective...”

“Don’t knock yourself, Ed.”

“I’m not knocking myself at all. It’s no secret I couldn’t care less who’s high or low, who thinks this and who thinks that. I focus on my own stuff. I protect our systems, and the only thing that really impresses me is when people are good at their jobs.”

“You’d hire the Devil himself if he was any good in I.T.”

“I can respect just about any enemy, if he knows what he’s doing. Does that make sense to you?”

“It does.”

“As I’m sure you’ve heard, a rootkit’s been used to access our server and install a R.A.T., and that program, Alona, is like pure music. So compact and beautifully written.”

“You’ve met a worthy opponent.”

“Without a doubt, and my guys feel the same way. They’re putting on this outraged patriotic act or whatever the hell it is we’re supposed to do. But actually they want nothing more than to meet that hacker and pit their skills against his, and for a while I thought: O.K., get over it! Maybe the damage isn’t so great after all. This is just one genius hacker who wants to show off, and maybe there’s a silver lining. I mean, we’ve already learned a lot about our vulnerability chasing after this clown. But then I began to wonder if maybe I was being conned — maybe the whole performance on my mail server was just a smokescreen, hiding something altogether different.”

“Such as?”

“Such as a search for certain pieces of information.”

“Now I’m curious.”

“You should be. We’ve identified which areas the hacker was checking out and basically it’s all related to the same thing, the network you’ve been working on, Alona. They call themselves the Spiders, don’t they?”

“The Spider Society, to be precise. But I think it’s some kind of joke.”

“The hacker was looking for information on that group and their connections to Solifon and that made me think, maybe he’s with them and wants to find out how much we know about them.”

“That sounds possible. They know how to hack.”

“But then I changed my mind.”

“Why?”

“Because it looks like the hacker also wanted to show us something. You know, he got himself superuser status which gave him access to documents maybe even you haven’t seen, highly classified stuff. But actually the file he uploaded is so heavily encrypted that neither he nor we have the slightest chance of reading it unless the fucker who wrote it gives us the private keys. Anyway...”

“What?”

“The hacker revealed through our own system that we cooperate with Solifon too, the same way the Spiders do. Did you know that?”

“No, my God, I did not.”

“I didn’t think so. But unfortunately what Solifon does for the Spiders, it also does for us. It’s part of our own industrial-espionage efforts. That must be why your project is such low priority. They’re worried your investigation will drop us in the shit.”

“Idiots.”

“I’d have to agree with you there. Probably now you’ll be taken off the job completely.”

“That would be outrageous.”

“Relax, there’s a loophole. And that’s why I dragged my sorry ass all the way over to your desk. Start working for me instead.”

“What do you mean?”

“This goddamn hacker knows things about the Spiders, and if we can crack his identity we’ll both get a break and then you’ll be able to see your investigation through.”

“I see what you’re saying.”

“So it’s a yes?”

“It’s a sort of,” she said. “I want to focus on finding out who shot Frans Balder.”

“And you’ll keep me informed?”

“O.K.”

“Good.”

“Tell me,” she said, “if this hacker is so clever, won’t he have covered his tracks?”

“No need to worry about that. No matter how smart he’s been, we’ll find him and we’ll flay him alive.”

“What happened to all that respect for your opponent?”

“It’s still there, my friend. But we’ll crush him all the same and lock him up for life. No fucker breaks into my system.”

Chapter 13

Once again Blomkvist did not get much sleep. He could not get the events of the night out of his head and at 11.15 he gave up.

He went into the kitchen where he made himself two sandwiches with cheddar and prosciutto and a bowl of yoghurt and muesli. But he did not eat much of it. He opted instead for coffee and water and some headache pills. He drank five glasses of Ramlösa, swallowed two Alvedon, took out a notebook and tried to write a summary of what had happened. He did not get far before the telephone started ringing.

The news was out: “Star reporter Mikael Blomkvist and T.V. star Lasse Westman” had found themselves at the centre of a “mysterious” murder drama, mysterious because no-one was able to work out why Westman and Blomkvist of all people, together or separately, had been on the scene when a Swedish professor was shot in the head. The questions seemed to be insinuating something sinister and that was why Blomkvist quite candidly said that he had gone there, despite the lateness of the hour, because Balder had asked to speak to him urgently.

“I was there because of my job.”

He was being more defensive than he needed to be. He wanted to provide an explanation for the accusations out there, although that might prompt more reporters to dig into the story. Apart from that he said “No comment”, and if that was not the ideal response it was at least straightforward and unambiguous. After that he turned off his mobile, put his father’s old fur coat back on again and set out in the direction of Götgatan.

So much was going on at the office that it reminded him of the old days. All over the place, in every corner, there were colleagues sitting and working with concentration. Berger was bound to have made one or two impassioned speeches and everybody must have been aware of the significance of the moment. The deadline was just ten days away. There was also the threat from Ove Levin and Serner hanging over them and the whole team seemed up for the fight. They all jumped to their feet when they saw him and asked to hear about Balder and the night, and his reaction to the Norwegians’ proposal. But he wanted to follow their good example.

“Later, later,” he said, and went to Andrei Zander’s desk.

Zander was twenty-six years old, the youngest person in the office. He had done his time as an intern at the magazine and had stayed on, sometimes as a temp, as now, and sometimes as a freelancer. It pained Blomkvist that they had not been able to give him a permanent job, especially since they had hired Emil Grandén and Sofie Melker. He would have preferred to take on Zander. But Zander had not yet made a name for himself, and he still had a lot to learn.

He was a superb team player, and that was good for the magazine, but not necessarily good for him. Not in this cynical business. The boy was not conceited enough, although he had every reason to be. He looked like a young Antonio Banderas, and was quicker on the uptake than most. But he did not go to any lengths to promote himself. He just wanted to be a part of it all and produce good journalism and he thought the world of Millennium. Blomkvist suddenly felt that he loved everyone who loved Millennium. One fine day he would do something big for young Zander.

“Hi, Andrei,” he said. “How are things?”

“Not bad. Busy.”

“I expected nothing less. What have you managed to dig up?”

“Quite a bit. It’s on your desk, and I’ve also written a summary. But can I give you some advice?”

“Good advice is exactly what I need.”

“In that case go straight to Zinkens väg, to see Farah Sharif.”

“Who?”

“A seriously gorgeous professor of computer science. She’s taken the whole day off.”

“Are you saying that what I really need right now is an attractive, intelligent woman.”

“Not exactly that, no. Professor Sharif just called and was under the impression that Balder had wanted to tell you something. She thinks she knows what it may have been all about, and she’s keen to talk to you. Maybe to carry out his wishes. I think it sounds like an ideal place to start.”

“Have you checked her out otherwise?”

“Sure, and we can’t altogether rule out the possibility that she has an agenda of her own. But she was close to Balder. They were at university together and have co-authored a couple of scientific papers. There are also a few society-page photos which show the two of them together. She’s a big name in her field.”

“O.K., I’ll go. Will you let her know I’m on my way?”

“I will,” Zander said, and gave Blomkvist the address. So Blomkvist left the office almost immediately, just as he had the previous day, and began to leaf through the research material as he was walking down towards Hornsgatan. Two or three times he bumped into people, but he was concentrating so hard that he scarcely apologized, and when at last he raised his head, his feet had not taken him as far as Farah Sharif’s place.

He had stopped off at Mellqvist’s coffee bar and so he drank two double espressos standing up. Not just to get rid of his tiredness. He thought a jolt of caffeine might help with his headache, but afterwards he wondered if it had been the right cure. As he left the coffee shop he felt worse than when he had arrived, but that was because of all the morons who had read about the night’s dramatic events and were making idiotic remarks. They say that young people want nothing more than to become celebrities. He ought to explain to them that it is not worth aspiring to. It just drives you nuts, especially if you haven’t slept and you’ve seen things that no human being should have to see.

Blomkvist went up Hornsgatan, past McDonald’s and the Co-op, cut across to Ringvägen, and as he glanced to the right he stiffened, as if he had seen something significant. But what? It was just a street crossing with a high traffic-accident rate and vast volumes of exhaust fumes, nothing more. Then it came to him.

It was the very traffic light Balder had drawn with his mathematical precision, and so once again Blomkvist puzzled over the choice of subject matter. It was not an in any way unusual crossing; it was run down and banal. Maybe that was the point.

The work of art is in the eye of the beholder, and even that tells us no more than that Balder had been here, and had maybe sat on a bench somewhere studying the traffic light. Blomkvist went on past Zinkensdamm sports centre and turned right onto Zinkens väg.

Detective Sergeant Sonja Modig had been running around all morning. Now she was in her office and looked briefly at a framed photograph on her desk. It showed her six-year-old son Axel on the football pitch after scoring a goal. Modig was a single parent and had a hell of a time organizing her life. She was expecting to have a hellish time at work in the next few days too. There was a knock on the door. It was Bublanski at last, and she was supposed to be handing over responsibility for the investigation. Not that Officer Bubble looked as if he wanted to take responsibility for anything at all.

He was looking unusually dashing in a jacket and tie and a freshly ironed blue shirt. He had combed his hair over his bald patch. There was a dreamy and absent look on his face, as if murder investigations were the last thing on his mind.

“What did the doctor say?” she asked.

“The doctor said that what matters is not that we believe in God; God is not small-minded. What matters is for us to understand that life is serious and rich. We should appreciate it and also try to make the world a better place. Whoever finds a balance between the two is close to God.”

“So you were actually with your rabbi?”

“Yes.”

“O.K., Jan, I’m not sure if I can help with the bit about appreciating life. Apart from by offering you a piece of Swiss orange chocolate which I happen to have in my desk drawer. But if we nail the guy who shot Professor Balder then we’ll definitely make the world a little better.”

“Swiss orange chocolate and a solution to this murder sounds like a decent start.”

Modig broke off a piece of chocolate and gave it to Bublanski, who chewed it with a certain reverence.

“Exquisite,” he said.

“Isn’t it?”

“Just think if life could be like that sometimes,” he said, pointing at the photograph of the jubilant Axel on her desk.

“What do you mean?”

“If joy could express itself with the same force as pain,” he said.

“Yes, just imagine.”

“How are things with Balder’s son?” he said.

“Hard to tell,” she said. “He’s with his mother now. A psychologist has assessed him.”

“And what have we got to go on?”

“Not much yet, unfortunately. We’ve found out what the murder weapon was. A Remington 1911 R1 Carry, bought recently. We’re going follow it up, but I feel sure we’re not going to be able to trace it. We have the images from the surveillance cameras, which we’re analysing. But whatever angle we look at we still can’t see the man’s face, and we can’t spot any distinguishing features either — no birthmarks, nothing, only a wristwatch which is just about visible in one sequence. It looks expensive. The guy’s clothes are black. His cap is grey without any branding. Jerker tells me he moves like an old junkie. In one picture he’s holding a small black box, presumably some kind of computer or G.S.M. station. He probably used it to hack the alarm system.”

“I’d heard that. How do you hack a burglar alarm?”

“Jerker has looked into that too and it isn’t easy, especially not an alarm of this specification, but it can be done. The system was connected to the net and to the mobile network and sent a feed of information to Milton Security over at Slussen. It’s not impossible that the guy recorded a frequency from the alarm with his box and managed to hack it that way. Or else he’d bumped into Balder when he was out walking and stole some information electronically from the professor’s N.F.C.”

“What’s an N.F.C.?”

“Near Field Communication, a function on Balder’s mobile which he used to activate the alarm.”

“It was simpler in the days when burglars had crowbars,” Bublanski said. “Any cars in the area?”

“A dark-coloured vehicle was parked a hundred metres away by the side of the road with the engine running on and off, but the only person to have seen it is an old lady by the name of Birgitta Roos; she has no idea what make it was. Maybe a Volvo, according to her. Or like the one her son has. Her son has a B.M.W.”

“Oh, wonderful.”

“Yes, so the investigation is looking a bit bleak,” Modig said. “The killers had the advantage of the night and the weather. They could move around the area undisturbed, and apart from what Mikael Blomkvist told us we’ve only got one sighting. It’s from a thirteen-year-old, Ivan Grede. A slightly odd, skinny figure who had leukaemia when he was small and who has decorated his room entirely in a Japanese style. He has a precocious way of expressing himself. Young Ivan went for a pee in the middle of the night and from the bathroom window he saw a tall man by the water’s edge. The man was looking out over the water and making the sign of the cross with his fists. It looked both aggressive and religious at the same time, Ivan said.”

“Not a good combination.”

“No, religion and violence combined don’t as a rule bode well. But Ivan wasn’t sure that it really was the sign of the cross. It looked like it, but there was something else too, he says. Maybe it was a military oath. For a while he was afraid that the man was going to walk into the water and drown himself. There was something ceremonial about the situation, he said, and something aggressive.”

“But there was no suicide.”

“No, the man jogged on in the direction of Balder’s house. He had a rucksack, and dark clothes, possibly camouflage trousers. He was powerful and athletic and reminded Ivan of his old toys, he said, his ninja warriors.”

“That doesn’t sound good either.”

“Not good at all. Presumably this was the man who shot at Blomkvist.”

“And Blomkvist didn’t see his face?”

“No, he threw himself to the ground when the man turned and shot at him. It all happened very quickly. But according to Blomkvist the man looked as if he had military training and that fits with Ivan Grede’s observations. I have to agree: the speed and efficiency of the operation point in that direction.”

“Have you got to the bottom of why Blomkvist was there?”

“Oh, definitely. If anything was done properly last night, it was the interviews with him. Have a look at this.” Modig handed over a transcript. “Blomkvist had been in touch with one of Balder’s former assistants who claimed that the professor had been targeted by a data breach and had his technology stolen. The story interested Blomkvist. But Balder had been living as a recluse and had virtually no contact with the outside world. All the shopping and errands were done by a housekeeper called... just a second... Fru Rask, Lottie Rask, who incidentally had strict instructions not to say a word about the son living in the house. I’ll come to that in a moment. Then last night I’m guessing that Balder was worried and wanted to get some anxiety off his chest. Don’t forget, he had just been told that he was subject to a serious threat. Plus his burglar alarm had gone off and two policemen were guarding the house. Perhaps he suspected that his days were numbered. No way of knowing. In any case he called Mikael Blomkvist in the middle of the night and said he wanted to tell him something.”

“In the olden days in situations like that you would call a priest.”

“So now you call a journalist. Well, it’s pure speculation. We only know what Balder said on Blomkvist’s voicemail. Apart from that we have no idea what he was planning to tell him. Blomkvist says he doesn’t know either, and I believe him. But I seem to be pretty much the only one who does. Ekström, who’s being a massive nuisance, by the way, is convinced Blomkvist is holding back things which he plans to publish in his magazine. I find that very hard to believe. Blomkvist is a tricky bugger, we all know that. But he isn’t someone who will knowingly, deliberately sabotage a police investigation.”

“Definitely not.”

“Ekström is coming on strong and saying that Blomkvist should be arrested for perjury and obstruction and God knows what else.”

“That’s not going to help.”

“No, and bearing in mind what Blomkvist is capable of I think we’re better off staying on good terms with him.”

“I suppose we’ll have to talk to him again.”

“I agree.”

“And this thing with Lasse Westman?”

“We’ve just spoken to him, and it’s not an edifying story. Westman had been to every bar in town — Konstnärsbaren, Teatergrillen, Café Opera, Riche, you get the idea — and was ranting and raving about Balder and the boy for hours on end. He drove his friends crazy. The more Westman drank and the more money he blew, the more fixated he became.”

“Why was this important to him?”

“Partly it was a hang — up. You get that with alcoholics. I remember it from an old uncle. Every time he got loaded, he got something fixed in his mind. But obviously there’s more to it than that. At first Westman went on about the custody ruling, and if he had been a different person one might believe that he really was concerned for the boy. But in this case... I suppose you know that Westman has a conviction for assault.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“He had a relationship some years ago with some fashion blogger, Renata Kapusinski. He beat the crap out of her. I think he even bit her rather badly in the cheek. Also, Balder had intended to report him. He never sent in the paperwork — perhaps because of the legal position he found himself in — but it clearly suggests that he suspected Westman of being violent towards his son as well.”

“What are you saying?”

“Balder had noticed unexplained bruises on the boy’s body — and in this he’s backed up by a psychologist from the Centre for Autism. So it was...”

“... probably not love and concern which drove Westman out to Saltsjöbaden.”

“More likely it was money. After Balder took back his son, he had stopped or at least reduced the child support he had agreed to pay.”

“Westman didn’t try to report him for that?”

“He probably didn’t dare to, in the circumstances.”

“What else does the custody ruling say?” Bublanski said, after a pause.

“That Balder was a useless father.”

“Was he?”

“He certainly wasn’t evil, like Westman. But there’d been an incident. After the divorce, Balder had his son every other weekend, and at that time he was living in an apartment in Östermalm with books from floor to ceiling. One of those weekends, when August was six, he was in the sitting room — with Balder glued to his computer in the next room as usual. We don’t know exactly what happened. But there was a small stepladder propped against one of the bookshelves. August climbed it and probably took hold of some of the books higher up and fell and broke his elbow. He knocked himself unconscious, but Balder didn’t hear anything. He just kept working and only after several hours did he discover August lying on the floor next to those books, moaning. At that he became hysterical and drove the boy to A. & E.”

“And he lost custody altogether?”

“Not only that. He was declared emotionally immature and incapable of taking care of his child. He was not to be allowed to be alone with August. But frankly, I don’t think much of that ruling.”

“Why not?”

“Because it was an uncontested hearing. The ex-wife’s lawyer went at it hammer and tongs, while Balder grovelled and said he was useless and irresponsible and unfit to live and God knows what else. What the tribunal wrote was malicious and tendentious, to my mind. To the effect that Balder had never been able to connect with other people and had always sought refuge with machines. Now that I’ve had time to look into his life a little, I’m not that impressed by how it was dealt with. His guilt-laden tirades and self-criticism were taken as gospel by the tribunal. At any rate Balder was extremely cooperative. As I said, he agreed to pay a large amount of child support, forty thousand a month, I believe, plus a one-off payment of nine hundred thousand kronor for unforeseen expenses. Not long after that he took himself off to America.”

“But then he came back.”

“Yes, and there were a number of reasons for that. He’d had his technology stolen, and maybe he identified who had done it. He found himself in a serious dispute with his employer. But I think it had also to do with his son. The woman from the Centre for Autism I mentioned, she’d been very optimistic about the boy’s development at an early stage. But then nothing turned out as she’d hoped. She also received reports that Hanna Balder and Westman had failed to live up to their responsibilities when it came to his schooling. It had been agreed that August would be taught at home, but the special-needs teachers seem to have been played off against each other. Probably the money for his education was misappropriated and fake teachers’ names used, all sorts of stuff like that. But that’s an altogether different story which somebody will have to look into at some point.”

“You were talking about the woman from the Centre for Autism.”

“That’s right. She smelled a rat and called Hanna and Westman and was informed that everything was fine. But she had a feeling that wasn’t true. So against normal practice she made an unannounced home visit and, when they finally let her in, she could tell that the boy was not doing well, that his development had stagnated. She also saw those bruises. So she rang Balder in San Francisco, had a long conversation with him and soon after that he moved back and took his son with him to his new house in Saltsjöbaden, disregarding the custody order.”

“How did he manage that, seeing as Westman was so keen to get the child support?”

“Good question. According to Westman, Balder more or less kidnapped the boy. But Hanna has a different version of the story. She says that Frans turned up and seemed to have changed, so she let him take August. She even thought he would be better off with his father.”

“And Westman?”

“According to her, Westman was drunk and had just landed a big part in a new T.V. production, and was feeling cocky and over-confident. So he agreed to it. However much he may have gone on about the boy’s welfare, I think he was glad to be rid of him.”

“But then?”

“Then he regretted it, and on top of everything else he was sacked from the series because he couldn’t stay sober. He suddenly wanted to have August back, or not so much him, of course...”

“The child support.”

“Exactly, and that was confirmed by his drinking pals. When Westman’s credit card was rejected during the course of yesterday evening, he really started ranting and raving about the boy. He bummed five hundred kronor off a young woman in the bar to pay for a taxi to Saltsjöbaden in the middle of the night.”

Bublanski was lost in his thoughts for a while and gazed once again at the photograph of Modig’s son.

“What a mess,” he said.

“Right.”

“Under normal circumstances we would be close to solving this one. We’d find our motive somewhere in that custody battle. But these guys who hack alarm systems and look like ninja warriors, they don’t fit the picture.”

“No.”

“There’s something else I’m wondering about.”

“What’s that?”

“If August can’t read, then what was he doing climbing up to reach those books?”

Blomkvist was sitting opposite Farah Sharif at her kitchen table with a cup of tea, looking out at Tantolunden park. Even though he knew it was a sign of weakness, he wished he did not have a story to write. He wished he could just sit there without having to press her for information.

She did not look as if talking would do her much good. Her whole face had collapsed and the intense dark eyes, which had looked straight through him at the front door, now seemed disoriented. Sometimes she muttered Balder’s name like a mantra or an incantation. Maybe she had loved him. Farah was fifty-two years old and a very attractive woman, not beautiful in a conventional way surely but with a regal bearing. He had surely loved her.

“Tell me, what was he like,” Blomkvist said.

“Frans?”

“Yes.”

“A paradox.”

“In what way?”

“In all sorts of ways. But mainly because he worked so hard on the one thing which worried him more than anything else. Maybe a bit like Oppenheimer at Los Alamos. He was engrossed in something he believed could be our ruin.”

“Now you’ve lost me.”

“Frans wanted to replicate biological evolution on a digital level. He was working on self-teaching algorithms — the idea is they can enhance themselves through trial and error. He also contributed to the development of quantum computers, as people call them, which Google, Solifon and the N.S.A. are working on. His objective was to achieve A.G.I., or Artificial General Intelligence.”

“And what is that?”

“It’s when something has the intelligence of a human being, but the speed and precision of a computer. If a thing like that could be created, it would give us enormous advantages within numerous fields.”

“No doubt about it.”

“There is an extraordinary amount of research going on in this area, and even though most scientists aren’t specifically aiming for A.G.I., competition is driving us in that direction. Nobody can afford not to create applications which are as intelligent as possible. Nobody can afford to put the brake on development. Just think of what we have achieved so far. Just think back to what you had in your mobile five years ago compared to what’s in there today.”

“True.”

“Before he became so secretive, Frans told me he estimated that we could get to A.G.I. within thirty or forty years. That may sound ambitious, but for my part I wonder if he wasn’t being too conservative. The capacity of computers doubles every eighteen months, and the human brain is bad at grasping that kind of exponential growth. It’s like the grain of rice on the chessboard, you know? You put one grain of rice on the first square, two on the second, four on the third, eight on the fourth.”

“And soon the grains of rice have flooded the world.”

“The pace of growth goes on increasing and in the end it escapes our control. The interesting thing isn’t actually when we reach A.G.I., but what happens after that. Just a few days after we’ve reached A.G.I., we’ll have A.S.I. — Artificial Super-Intelligence — used to describe something more intelligent than we are. After that it’ll just get quicker and quicker. Computers will start enhancing themselves at an accelerating pace, perhaps by a factor of ten, and become a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand times cleverer than we are. What happens then?”

“I dread to think.”

“Quite. Intelligence in itself is not predictable. We don’t know where human intelligence will take us. We know even less what will happen with a super-intelligence.”

“In the worst case we’ll be no more interesting to the computer than little white mice,” Blomkvist said, thinking of what he had written to Salander.

“In the worst case? We share 90 per cent of our D.N.A. with mice, and we’re assumed to be about one hundred times as intelligent. Only one hundred times. Here’s something completely new, not subject to these kinds of limitations, according to mathematical models. And it can become perhaps a million times more intelligent. Imagine that.”

“I’m certainly trying to,” Blomkvist said with a careful smile.

“I mean, how do you think a computer would feel when it wakes up to find itself captured and controlled by primitive little creatures like us. Why would it put up with that?” she said. “Why on earth should it show us any consideration, still less let us dig around in its entrails in order to shut down the process? We risk being confronted by an explosion of intelligence, a technological singularity, as Verner Vinge put it. Everything that happens after that lies beyond our event horizon.”

“So the very instant we create a super-intelligence we lose control, is that right?”

“The risk is that everything we know about the world will cease to be relevant, and it’ll be the end of human existence.”

“You are joking.”

“I know it sounds crazy, but it’s a very real question. There are thousands of people all over the world working to prevent a development like this. Many are optimists, or even foresee some kind of utopia. There’s talk of friendly A.S.I., super-intelligences which are programmed from the start to do nothing but help us. The idea is something along the lines of what Asimov envisioned in his book I, Robot: built-in laws which forbid the machines to harm us. The writer and innovator Kurzweil has visions of a wonderful world in which nanotechnology allows us to integrate ourselves with computers, and share our future with them. But there are no guarantees. Laws can be repealed. The intent of initial programming can be changed and it’s fatally easy to make anthropomorphic mistakes: to ascribe human characteristics to machines and misunderstand what drives them inherently. Frans was obsessed with these questions and, as I said, he was of two minds. He both longed for intelligent computers and he also worried about them.”

“He couldn’t help but build his monsters.”

“A bit like that, though that’s putting it drastically.”

“How far had he got?”

“Further, I think, than anyone could imagine, and that may have been yet another reason why he was so secretive about his work at Solifon. He was afraid his program would end up in the wrong hands. He was even afraid the program would come into contact with the internet and merge with it. He called it August, after his son.”

“And where is it now?”

“He never went anywhere without it. It must have been right by the bed when he was shot. But the terrible thing is that the police say there was no computer there.”

“I didn’t see one either. But then my focus was elsewhere.”

“It must have been dreadful.”

“Perhaps you heard that I also saw the man who killed him,” Blomkvist said. “He was carrying a rucksack.”

“That doesn’t sound good. But with a bit of luck the computer will turn up somewhere in the house.”

“Let’s hope so. Do you have any idea who stole his technology the first time around?”

“Yes, I do, as a matter of fact.”

“That interests me a lot.”

“I can see that. But the sad thing is that I have some personal responsibility for this mess. Frans was working himself to death, you see, and I was worried he would burn out. That was about the time he had lost custody of August.”

“When was that?”

“Two years ago. He was utterly worn out. He wasn’t sleeping, and he went around blaming himself, yet he was incapable of dropping his research. He threw himself into it as if it were all he had left in life, and so I arranged for him to get some assistants who could take some of the load. I let him have my best students. I knew, of course, that none of them was a model of probity, but they were ambitious and gifted, and their admiration for Frans was boundless. Everything looked promising. But then...”

“His technology was stolen.”

“He had clear proof of that when the application from Truegames was submitted to the U.S. Patent Office in August last year. Every unique aspect of his technology had been duplicated and written down there — it was obvious. At first they all suspected their computers had been hacked, but I was sceptical from the start — I knew how sophisticated Frans’ encryption was. But since there was no other plausible explanation, that was the initial assumption, and for a while maybe Frans believed it himself. It was nonsense of course.”

“What are you saying?” Blomkvist burst out. “Surely the data breach was confirmed by experts.”

“Yes, by some idiot show-off at the N.D.R.E. But that was just Frans’ way of protecting his boys, or it could have been more than that. I suspect he also wanted to play detective, although heaven knows how he could be so stupid. You see...” Farah took a deep breath, “I learned all this only a few weeks ago. Frans and little August were here for dinner and I sensed at once that he had something important to tell me. It was hanging in the air. After a couple of glasses he asked me to put away my mobile and began to speak in a whisper. I have to admit that at first I was simply irritated. He was going on again about his young hacker genius.”

“Hacker genius?” Blomkvist said, trying to sound neutral.

“A girl he spoke about so much that it was doing my head in. I won’t bore you with the full story, but she’d turned up out of the blue at one of his lectures and practically lectured him on the concept of singularity. She impressed Frans, and he started to open up to her — it’s understandable. A mega-nerd like Frans can’t have found all that many people he could talk to at his own level, and when he realized that the girl was also a hacker he asked her to take a look at their computers. At the time they had all the equipment at the home of a guy called Linus Brandell, one of the assistants.”

All Blomkvist said was, “Linus Brandell.”

“Yes,” Farah said. “The girl came round to his place in Östermalm and just threw him out. Then she got to work on the computers. She couldn’t find any sign of a breach, but she didn’t leave it at that. She had a list of Frans’ assistants and hacked them all from Linus’ computer. It didn’t take long for her to realize that one of them had sold him out to none other than Solifon.”

“And who was it?”

“Frans didn’t want to tell me, even though I pressed him. But the girl apparently called him directly from Linus’ apartment. Frans was in San Francisco at the time, and you can imagine: betrayed by one of his own! I was expecting him to report the guy right away and raise hell. But he had a better idea. He asked the girl to pretend they really had been hacked.”

“Why would he do that?”

“He didn’t want any traces of evidence to be tidied away. He wanted to understand more about what had happened. I suppose it makes sense — for one of the world’s leading software businesses to steal and exploit his technology was obviously far more serious than if some good-for-nothing, unprincipled shit of a student had done the same. Because Solifon isn’t just one of the most respected research groups in the U.S.A., they had also been trying to recruit Frans for years. He was livid. ‘Those bastards were trying to seduce me, and they stole from me at the same time,’ he growled.”

“Let me be sure I’ve got this right.” Blomkvist said. “You’re saying he took a job at Solifon in order to find out why and how they’d stolen from him?”

“If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s just how difficult it can be to understand a person’s motivation. The salary and the freedom and the resources obviously came into it. But apart from that, yes, I imagine you’re right. He’d worked out that Solifon was involved in the theft even before this hacker girl examined his computers. She gave him the specific information and that enabled him to dig into the mess. In the end it turned out to be much more difficult than he expected, and people started getting very suspicious. It wasn’t long before he became fantastically unpopular, so he kept more and more to himself. But he did find something.”

“What?”

“This is where it all gets sensitive. I really shouldn’t be telling you.”

“Yet here we are.”

“Yet here we are. Not only because I’ve always had the utmost respect for your journalism. It occurred to me this morning that it may not have been a coincidence that Frans rang you last night rather than Säpo’s Industry Protection Group, whom he had also been in touch with. I think he was beginning to suspect a leak there. It may have been no more than paranoia — Frans displayed a variety of symptoms of persecution mania — but it was you he called, and now I hope that I can fulfil his wish.”

“I hope you can.”

“At Solifon there’s a department called ‘Y’,” Farah said. “Google X is the model, the department where they work on ‘moonshots’, as they call them, wild and far-fetched ideas, like looking for eternal life or connecting search engines to brain neurons. If any place will achieve A.G.I. or A.S.I., that’s probably it. Frans was assigned to ‘Y’. But that wasn’t as smart as it may have sounded.”

“And why not?”

“Because he had found out from his hacker girl that there was a secret group of business intelligence analysts at ‘Y’, headed up by a character called Zigmund Eckerwald, also known as Zeke.”

“And who is that?”

“The very person who had been communicating with Frans’ treacherous assistant.”

“So Eckerwald was the thief.”

“A thief of the highest order. On the face of it, the work carried out by Eckerwald’s group was perfectly legitimate. They compiled information on leading scientists and promising research projects. Every large high-tech firm has a similar operation. They want to know what’s going on and who they should be recruiting. But Frans understood that the group went beyond that. They stole — through hacker attacks, espionage, moles and bribery.”

“But then why didn’t he report them?”

“It was tricky to prove. They were careful, to be sure. But in the end Frans went to the owner, Nicolas Grant. Grant was horrified and apparently organized an internal investigation. But the investigation found nothing, either because Eckerwald had got rid of the evidence or because the investigation was just for show. It left Frans in a tight spot. Everyone turned on him. Eckerwald must have been behind it, and I’m sure he had no trouble getting the others to join in. Frans was already perceived as paranoid and became progressively isolated and frozen out. I can picture it. How he would sit there and become more and more awkward and contrary, and refuse to say a word to anyone.”

“So he had no concrete evidence, you think?”

“Well, he did at least have the proof the hacker girl had given him: that Eckerwald had stolen Frans’ technology and sold it on.”

“And he knew that for sure?”

“Without a shadow of a doubt. Besides, he had realized that Eckerwald’s group was not working alone. It had backing from outside, in all likelihood from the American intelligence services and also...”

Farah hesitated.

“Yes?”

“This is where he was a bit more cryptic, and it may be that he didn’t know all that much. But he had come across an alias, he said, for the person who was the real leader outside Solifon. ‘Thanos’.”

“Thanos?”

“That’s right. He said that this individual was greatly feared. But he didn’t want to say more than that. He needed life insurance, he claimed, for when the lawyers came after him.”

“You said you didn’t know which of his assistants sold him out. But you must have given it a great deal of thought,” Blomkvist said.

“I have, and sometimes, I don’t know... I wonder if it wasn’t all of them.”

“Why do you say that?”

“When they started working for Frans, they were young, ambitious and gifted. By the time they finished, they were fed up with life and full of anxieties. Maybe Frans worked them too hard. Or maybe there’s something else tormenting them.”

“Do you have all their names?”

“I do. They’re my boys — unfortunately, I’d have to say. First there’s Linus Brandell, I’ve already mentioned him. He’s twenty-four now, and just drifts around playing computer games and drinking too much. For a while he had a good job as a games developer at Crossfire. But he lost it when he started calling in sick and accusing his colleagues of spying on him. Then there’s Arvid Wrange, maybe you’ve heard of him. He was a promising chess player once upon a time. His father pushed him in a pretty inhuman way and in the end Arvid had enough and came to study with me. I’d hoped that he would have completed his Ph.D. long ago. But instead he props up the bars around Stureplan and seems rootless. He came into his own for a while when he was with Frans. But there was also a lot of silly competition among the boys. Arvid and Basim, the third guy, came to hate each other — at least Arvid hated Basim. Basim Malik probably doesn’t do hate. He’s a sensitive, exceedingly smart boy who was taken on by Solifon Nordic a year ago. But he ran out of steam pretty quickly. Right now he’s being treated for depression at Ersta hospital and it so happens that his mother, whom I know vaguely, rang me this morning to tell me that he’s under sedation. When he found out what had happened to Frans, he tried to slash his wrists. It’s devastating, but at the same time I do wonder: was it just grief? Or was it also guilt?”

“How is he now?”

“He’s not in any danger from a physical point of view. And then there’s Niklas Lagerstedt, and he... well, what can I say about him? He’s not like the others, at least not on the surface. He wouldn’t drink himself into oblivion or even think of harming himself. He’s a young man with moral objections to most things, including violent computer games and porn. He’s a member of the Mission Covenant Church. His wife is a paediatrician and they have a young son called Jesper. On top of all that he’s a consultant with the National Criminal Police, responsible for the computer system coming into service in the new year, which means he’s had to go through security clearance. But who knows how thorough it was.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because behind that respectable facade he’s a nasty piece of work. I happen to know that he’s embezzled parts of his father-in-law’s and his wife’s fortune. He’s a hypocrite.”

“Have the boys been questioned?”

“Säpo have talked to them, but nothing came of it. At that time it was thought that Frans was the victim of a data breach.”

“I imagine police will want to question them again now.”

“I assume so.”

“Do you happen to know if Balder did much sketching in his free time?”

“Sketching?”

“Really detailed drawings of scenes.”

“No, I don’t know anything about that,” she said. “Why do you ask?”

“I saw a fantastic drawing at his home, of a traffic light up here on the intersection of Hornsgatan and Ringvägen. It was flawless, a sort of snapshot in the dark.”

“How strange. Frans wasn’t usually in this part of town.”

“There’s something about that drawing that won’t let go of me,” Blomkvist said, and he realized to his surprise that Farah had taken hold of his hand. He stroked her hair. Then he stood up with a feeling that he was onto something. He said goodbye and went out onto the street.

On the way back up Zinkens väg he called Berger and asked her to type another question in LISBETH STUFF.

Chapter 14

Ove Levin was sitting in his office with a view over Slussen and Riddarfjärden, not doing much at all except Googling himself in the hope of coming across something to cheer him up. What he found himself reading was that he was sleazy and flabby and that he had betrayed his ideals. All that in a blog written by a slip of a girl at the Institute for Media Studies at Stockholm University. It made him so furious that he even forgot to write her name in the little black book he kept, of people who would never get a job in the Serner Group.

He could not be bothered to burden his brain with idiots who had no idea what it takes and would only ever write underpaid articles in obscure cultural magazines. Rather than wallow in destructive thoughts, he went into his online account and checked his portfolio. That helped a bit, at least to begin with. It was a good day on the markets. The Nasdaq and the Dow Jones had both gone up last night and the Stockholmsindex was 1.1 per cent higher too. The dollar, to which he was rather too exposed, had risen, and according to the update of a few seconds ago his portfolio was worth 12,161,389 kronor.

Not bad for a man who had once covered house fires and knife fights for the morning edition of Expressen. Twelve million, plus the apartment in Villastaden and the villa in Cannes. They could post whatever they wanted on their blogs. He was well provided for, and he checked the value of his portfolio again. 12,149,101. Jesus Christ, was it dropping? 12,131,737. He grimaced. There was no reason why the market should be falling, was there? The employment figures had been good, after all. He took the tumble in value almost personally and could not help thinking of Millennium, however insignificant it might be in the bigger picture. He found himself getting worked up again and reluctantly he remembered the openly hostile look on Erika Berger’s beautiful face at the meeting yesterday afternoon. Things had not improved this morning.

He had just about had a fit. Blomkvist had cropped up on every site, and that hurt. Not only because Levin had so gleefully registered that the younger generation hardly knew who Blomkvist was. He also hated that media logic which said that you became a star — a star journalist or a star actor or whatever the hell it might be — simply because you found yourself in some sort of trouble. He would have been happier to read about that has-been Blomkvist who wasn’t even going to keep his job at his own magazine, not if Ove Levin and Serner Media had anything to do with it. Instead they said: why Frans Balder, of all people?

Why on earth did he have to be murdered right under Blomkvist’s nose? Wasn’t that just typical? So infuriating. Even if those useless journalists out there hadn’t realized it yet, Levin knew that Balder was a big name. Not long ago Serner’s own newspaper, Business Daily, had produced a special supplement on Swedish scientific research which had given him a price tag: four billion kronor, though God knows how they got to that figure. Balder was a star, no doubt about it. Most importantly, he was a Garbo. He never gave interviews, and that made him all the more sought after.

How many requests had Balder received from Serner’s own journalists after all? As many as he had refused or, for that matter, simply not bothered to answer. Many of Levin’s colleagues out there thought Balder was sitting on a fantastic story. He couldn’t bear the idea that, so the newspaper reports said, Balder had wanted to talk to Blomkvist in the middle of the night. Could Blomkvist really have a scoop on top of everything else? That would be disastrous. Once more, almost obsessively, Levin went onto the Aftonbladet site and was met with the headline:

The article was illustrated by a double-column photograph of Mikael Blomkvist which did not show any flab at all. Those bastard editors had gone and chosen the most flattering photograph they could find, and that made him angrier still. I have to do something about this, he thought. But what? How could he put a stop to Blomkvist without barging in like some old East German censor and making everything worse? He looked out towards Riddarfjärden and an idea came to him. Borg, he thought. My enemy’s enemy can be my best friend.

“Sanna,” he shouted.

“Yes, Ove?”

Sanna Lind was his young secretary.

“Book a lunch at once with William Borg at Sturehof. If he says he has something else on, tell him this is more important. He can even have a raise,” he said, and thought: why not? If he’s prepared to help me in this mess then it’s only fair he gets something out of it.

Hanna Balder was standing in the living room at Torsgatan looking in despair at August, who had yet again dug out paper and crayons. She had been told that she had to discourage him, and she did not like doing it. Not that she questioned the psychologist’s advice and expertise, but she had her doubts. August had seen his father murdered and if he wanted to draw, why stop him? Even if it did not seem be doing him much good.

His body trembled when he started drawing and his eyes shone with an intense, tormented light. The pattern of squares spreading out and multiplying in mirrors was a strange theme, given what had happened. But what did she know? Maybe it was the same as with his series of numbers. Even though she did not understand it in the slightest, it presumably meant something to him, and perhaps — who knows? — those squares were his own way of coming to terms with events. Shouldn’t she just ignore the instructions? After all, who would find out? She had read somewhere that a mother should rely on her intuition. Gut feeling is often a better tool than all the psychological theories in the world. She decided to let August draw.

But suddenly the boy’s back stiffened like a bow, and Hanna could not help thinking back to what the psychologist had said. She took a hesitant step forward and looked down at the paper. She gave a start, and felt very uncomfortable. At first she could not make sense of it.

She saw the same pattern of squares repeating themselves in two surrounding mirrors and it was extremely skilfully done. But there was something else there as well, a shadow which grew out of the squares, like a demon, a phantom, and it frightened the living daylights out of her. She started to think of films about children who become possessed. She snatched the drawing from the boy and crumpled it up without fully understanding why. Then she shut her eyes and expected to hear that heart-rending toneless cry again.

But she heard no cry, just a muttering which sounded almost like words — impossible because the boy did not speak. Instead Hanna prepared herself for a violent outburst, with August thrashing back and forth over the living-room floor. But there was no attack either, only a calm and composed determination as August took hold of a new piece of paper and started to draw the same squares again. Hanna had no choice but to carry him to his room. Afterwards she would describe what happened as pure horror.

August kicked and screamed and lashed out, and Hanna only just managed to keep hold of him. For a long time she lay in the bed with her arms knotted around him, wishing that she could go to pieces herself. She briefly considered waking Lasse and asking him to give August one of those tranquillizing suppositories they now had, but then discarded that idea. Lasse would be bound to be in a foul mood and she hated to give a child tranquillizers, however much Valium she took herself. There had to be some other way.

She was falling apart, desperately considering one option after the other. She thought of her mother in Katrineholm, of her agent Mia, of the nice woman who rang last night, Gabriella Grane, and then of the psychologist again, Einar Fors-something, who had brought August to her. She had not particularly liked him. On the other hand he had offered to look after August for a while, and this was all his fault in the first place.

He was the one who said August should not draw, so he should be sorting out this mess. In the end she let go of her son and dug out the psychologist’s card to call him. August immediately made a break for the living room to start drawing his damn squares again.

Einar Forsberg did not have a great deal of experience. He was forty-eight years old and with his deep-set blue eyes, brand-new Dior glasses and brown corduroy jacket he could easily be taken for an intellectual. But anyone who had ever disagreed with him would know that there was something stiff and dogmatic about his way of thinking and he often concealed his lack of knowledge behind dogma and cocksure pronouncements.

It had only been two years since he qualified as a psychologist. Before that he was a gym teacher from Tyresö, and if you had asked his old pupils about him they would all have roared: “Silence, cattle! Be quiet, oh my beasts!” Forsberg had loved to shout those words, only half joking, when he wanted order in the classroom, and even though he had hardly been anyone’s favourite teacher he had kept his boys in line. It was this ability which persuaded him that he could put his skills to better use elsewhere.

He had been working at Oden’s Medical Centre for Children and Adolescents for one year. Oden’s was an emergency service which took in children and young people whose parents could not cope. Not even Forsberg — who had always been a staunch defender of whatever workplace he was at — believed that the centre functioned especially well. It was all crisis management and not enough long-term work. Children would come in after traumatic experiences at home and the psychologists were far too busy trying to manage breakdowns and aggressive behaviour to be able to devote themselves to resolving underlying causes. Even so, Forsberg thought he was doing some good, especially when he used his old classroom authority to quieten hysterical children, or when he handled crisis situations out in the field.

He liked to work with policemen and he loved the tension in the air after dramatic events. He had been excited and expectant as he drove out to the house in Saltsjöbaden in the course of his night duty. There was a touch of Hollywood about the situation, he thought. A Swedish scientist had been murdered, his eight-year-old son had been at the house, and he, Forsberg, had been sent to try to get the boy to open up. He straightened his hair and his glasses several times in the rear-view mirror.

He wanted to make a stylish impression, but once he arrived he was not much of a success. He could not make the boy out. Still, he felt acknowledged and important. The detectives asked him how they should go about questioning the child and — even though he did not have a clue — his answer was received with respect. That gave his ego a little boost and he did his best to be helpful. He found out that the boy suffered from infantile autism and had never spoken or been receptive to the world around him.

“There’s nothing we can do for the time being,” he said. “His mental faculties are too weak. As a psychologist I have to put his need for care first.” The policemen listened to him with serious expressions and let him drive the boy home to his mother — who was another little bonus in the whole story.

She was the actress Hanna Balder. He had had the hots for her ever since he saw her in “The Mutineers” and he remembered her hips and her long legs, and even though she was now a bit older she was still attractive. Besides, her current partner was clearly a bastard. Forsberg did his best to appear knowledgeable and charming in a low-key way; within moments he got an opportunity to be authoritative, and that made him proud.

With a wild expression on his face the son began to draw black and white blocks, or squares, and Forsberg pronounced that this was unhealthy. It was precisely the kind of destructive compulsive behaviour that autistic children slip into, and he insisted that August stop immediately. This was not received with as much gratitude as he had hoped for. Still, it had made him feel decisive and manly, and while he was at it he almost paid Hanna a compliment for her performance in “The Mutineers”. But then he decided that it was probably not the right time. Maybe that had been a mistake.

Now it was 1.00 in the afternoon, and he was back home at his terraced house in Vällingby. He was in the bathroom with his electric toothbrush, feeling exhausted, when his mobile rang. At first he was irritated — but then he smiled. It was none other than Hanna Balder.

“Forsberg,” he answered in an urbane voice.

“Hello,” she said. “August, August...”

She sounded desperate and angry.

“Tell me, what’s the problem?”

“All he wants to do is draw his chessboard squares. But you’re saying he isn’t allowed to.”

“No, no, it’s compulsive. But please, just stay calm.”

“How the hell am I supposed to stay calm?”

“The boy needs you to be composed.”

“But I can’t be. He’s yelling and lashing out at everything. You said you could help.”

“Well, yes,” he said, hesitant at first. Then he brightened, as if he had won some sort of victory. “Absolutely, of course. I’ll see to it that he gets a place with us at Oden’s.”

“Wouldn’t that be letting him down?”

“On the contrary, you’re just taking account of his needs. I’ll see to it personally that you can visit us as often as you like.”

“Maybe that’s the best solution.”

“I’m sure of it.”

“Will you come right away?”

“I’ll be with you as soon as I can,” he said. First he had to smarten himself up a bit.Then he added: “Did I tell you that I loved you in ‘The Mutineers’?”

It was no surprise to Levin that William Borg was already at the table at Sturehof, nor that he ordered the most expensive items on the menu, sole meunière and a glass of Pouilly-Fumé. Journalists generally made the most of it when he invited them to lunch. But it did surprise — and annoy — him that Borg had taken the initiative, as if he were the one with the money and the power. Why had he mentioned that raise? He should have kept Borg on tenterhooks, let him sit there and sweat instead.

“A little bird whispered in my ear that you’re having difficulties with Millennium,” Borg said, and Levin thought, I’d give my right arm to wipe that self-righteous smirk off his face.

“You’ve been misinformed,” he said stiffly.

“Really?”

“We have the situation under control.”

“How so, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“If the editorial team is disposed to accept change and is ready to recognize the problems it has, we’ll back them.”

“And if not...”

“We’ll pull out, and Millennium will be unlikely to stay afloat for more than a few months, which would of course be a great shame. But that’s what the market looks like at the moment. Better magazines than Millennium have gone under. It’s been only a modest investment for us and we can manage without it.”

“Skip the bullshit, Ove. I know that this is a matter of pride for you.”

“It’s just business.”

“I’d heard that you wanted to get Mikael Blomkvist off the editorial team.”

“We’ve been thinking of transferring him to London.”

“Isn’t that a bit harsh, considering what he’s done for the magazine?”

“We’ve made him a very generous offer,” Levin said, feeling that he was being unnecessarily defensive and predictable.

He had almost forgotten the purpose of the lunch.

“Personally I don’t blame you,” Borg said. “You can ship him off to China, for all I care. I’m just wondering if it isn’t going to be a bit tricky for you if Blomkvist makes a grand comeback with this Frans Balder story.”

“Why would that happen? He’s lost his sting. You of all people have pointed that out — and with considerable success, if I may say so,” Levin said with an attempt at sarcasm.

“Well, yes, but I did get a little help.”

“Not from me, you didn’t; of that you can be sure. I hated that column. Thought it was badly written and tendentious. The one who kicked off the campaign against him was Thorvald Serner, you know that.”

“But you can’t be altogether unhappy about the way things are going right now?”

“Listen to me, William. I have the greatest respect for Mikael Blomkvist.”

“You don’t have to put on your politician act with me, Ove.”

Levin felt like ramming something down Borg’s throat.

“I’m just being open and honest,” he said. “And I’ve always thought Blomkvist a fantastic reporter, of a different calibre to you and everyone else of his generation.”

“Is that so?” Borg said, suddenly looking meek, and that made Levin feel better right away.

“That’s how it is. We should be grateful to Blomkvist for the revelations he’s given us, and I wish him all the best, I really do. But unfortunately it’s not my job to get nostalgic and look back to the good old days. I have to concede that you have a point in suggesting that the man has got out of step with the times, and that he could get in the way of your plans to relaunch Millennium.”

“True, true.”

“So for that reason it would be good if there weren’t too many headlines about him right now.”

“Positive headlines, you mean?”

“Maybe so, yes,” Levin said. “That’s another reason I invited you to lunch.”

“Grateful for that, of course. And I do think I have something to offer. I had a call this morning from my old squash buddy,” Borg said, clearly trying to regain his earlier self-confidence.

“And who’s that?”

“Richard Ekström, the chief prosecutor. He’s in charge of the preliminary investigation into the Balder killing. And he’s not a member of the Blomkvist fan club.”

“After that Zalachenko business, right?”

“Exactly. Blomkvist scuppered his entire strategy on that case and now he’s worried that he’s sabotaging this investigation as well.”

“In what way?”

“Blomkvist isn’t saying everything he knows. He spoke to Balder just before the murder and came face to face with the killer. Even so, he had surprisingly little to say for himself during the interviews. Ekström suspects he’s saving the juiciest bits for his article.”

“Interesting.”

“Isn’t it? We’re talking about a man who was ridiculed in the media and is now so desperate for a scoop that he’s prepared to let someone get away with murder. An old star reporter willing to cast social responsibility to the winds when his magazine finds itself in a financial crisis. And who has just learned that Serner Media wants to kick him off the editorial team. Hardly surprising that he’s gone a step or two too far.”

“I see your point. Is it anything you’d like to write about?”

“I don’t think that would be productive, to be honest. Too many people know that Blomkvist and I have it in for each other. You’d be better off leaking to a news reporter and then supporting the story on your editorial pages. You’ll get some good quotes from Ekström.”

Levin was looking out onto Stureplan, where he spotted a beautiful woman in a bright red coat, with long strawberry-blonde hair. For the first time that day he gave a big smile.

“Maybe that isn’t such a bad idea,” he added, ordering some wine for himself too.

Blomkvist came walking down Hornsgatan towards Mariatorget. Further away, by Maria Magdalena kyrka, there was a white van with an ugly dent in its front wing, and next to it two men were waving their arms around and shouting at each other. But although the scene had attracted a crowd of onlookers, Blomkvist hardly noticed it.

He was thinking about how Balder’s son had sat on the floor of the large house in Saltsjöbaden, reaching out over the Persian rug. The boy’s hand had stains on the back of it and on the fingers, possibly ink from felt tips or pens, and that movement he was making had looked as if he were drawing something complicated in mid-air, didn’t it? Blomkvist was starting to see the whole scene in a new light.

Maybe it was not Frans Balder who had drawn the traffic light after all. Perhaps the boy had an unexpected gift. For some reason that did not surprise him as much as he might have expected. The first time he had met August Balder, sitting by his dead father, and seen him throwing himself against the headboard, he had already understood that there was something exceptional about him. Now, as he cut across Mariatorget, a strange thought occurred to him and would not let him go. Up by Götgatsbacken he came to a stop.

He must at the very least follow it up, so he got out his mobile and looked up Hanna Balder. The number was unlisted, and unlikely to be one which he would find in Millennium’s contacts. He thought of Freja Granliden, a society reporter at Expressen whose columns could not be said to enhance the prestige of the profession. She wrote about divorce, romance and royalty, but she had a quick brain and a good line in repartee, and whenever they met they had a good time together. He rang her number, but it was engaged of course.

These days, reporters on the evening papers were forever on the telephone, under such deadline pressure that they never left their desks to take a look at what real life was like. But he got her in the end and was not in the least surprised that she let out a little yelp of delight.

“Mikael,” she said, “what an honour! Are you finally going to give me a scoop? I’ve been waiting for so long.”

“Sorry. This time you have to help me. I need an address and a phone number.”

“What do I get in return? Maybe a wicked quote about what you got up to last night.”

“I could give you some career advice.”

“And what might that be?”

“Stop writing crap.”

“Right, and then who’s going to keep track of all the telephone numbers the classy reporters need? Who are you looking for?”

“Hanna Balder.”

“I can imagine why. Did you meet her drunken boyfriend out there?”

“Don’t you start fishing now. Do you know where she lives?”

“Torsgatan 40.”

“You know it just like that?”

“I have a brilliant memory for trivia. If you hang on, I’ll give you the phone number and the front-door code as well.”

“That’s really kind.”

“But you know...”

“Yes?”

“You’re not the only one looking for her. Our own bloodhounds are on the trail too, and from what I hear she hasn’t answered her telephone all day.”

“Wise woman.”

Afterwards Blomkvist stood in the street, unsure what to do. Chasing down unhappy mothers in competition with crime reporters from the evening papers was not quite what he had hoped his day would bring. But he hailed a taxi and was driven off in the direction of Vasastan.

Hanna Balder had accompanied August and Forsberg to Oden’s Medical Centre for Children and Adolescents, opposite Observatorielunden on Sveavägen. The medical centre consisted of two apartments which had been knocked together, but even though the furnishings and the courtyard had a private and sheltered feel to them, there was nonetheless something institutional about it all. Probably that had less to do with the long corridors and closed doors than the grim and watchful expressions on the faces of the staff. They seemed to have developed a certain distrust of the children for whom they were responsible.

The director, Torkel Lindén, was a vain little man who claimed to have a wide experience of children with autism. But Hanna did not like the way he looked at August. It was also troubling that there seemed to be no separation between teenagers and small children. But it felt too late to be having doubts now so on the way home she consoled herself with the thought that it would only be for a short time. Maybe she would pick up August as soon as this evening?

Then she thought about Lasse and his bouts of drunkenness and she told herself yet again that she needed to leave him and get a grip on her life. As she walked out of the lift at her apartment she gave a start. An attractive man was sitting there on the landing, writing in a notebook. As he got to his feet and greeted her she saw that it was Mikael Blomkvist. She was terrified, so guilt-ridden, that she supposed he was going to write some kind of exposé. That was absurd. He just gave an embarrassed smile and twice apologized for disturbing her. She could not help but feel a huge sense of relief. She had admired him for a long time.

“I have no comment to make,” she said, in a voice which actually suggested the opposite.

“I’m not after a quote either,” he said. She remembered hearing that he and Lasse had arrived together — or at least at the same time — at Frans’ house the previous night, although she could not imagine what the two of them might have in common.

“Are you looking for Lasse?” she said.

“I’d like to hear about August’s drawings,” he replied, and at that she felt a stab of panic.

Yet she allowed him in. It was probably careless of her. Lasse had gone off to cure his hangover in some local dive and could be back any time. He would go crazy if he found a journalist in their home. But Blomkvist had not only worried Hanna, he had also made her curious. How on earth did he know about the drawings? She invited him to sit on the grey sofa in the living room while she went to the kitchen to get some tea and biscuits. When she came back with a tray he said:

“I wouldn’t be bothering you if it wasn’t absolutely necessary.”

“You’re not bothering me,” she said.

“You see, I met August last night, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about him.”

“Oh?”

“I didn’t understand it then,” he said, “but I had the feeling he was trying to tell us something. Now I’m convinced he wanted to draw. He was making these determined movements with his hand over the floor.”

“He’s become obsessed with drawing.”

“So he went on doing that here at home?”

“And how! He started the minute we got here. He was manic, and what he drew was amazing, but his face became flushed and he was breathing heavily, so the psychologist said he had to stop. It was compulsive and destructive, was his opinion.”

“What did he draw?”

“Nothing special really. I’d guess it was inspired by his puzzles. But it was very cleverly done, with shadows and perspective and everything.”

“But what was it?”

“Squares.”

“What kind of squares?”

“Chessboard squares, I think you would call them,” she said. Maybe she was imagining things, but she detected a trace of excitement in Blomkvist’s eyes.

“Only chess squares?” he said. “Nothing more?”

“Mirrors too,” she said. “Chessboard squares reflected in mirrors.”

“Have you been to Frans’ place?” he said, a new sharpness in his voice.

“Why do you ask?”

“Because the design of the floor in the bedroom — where he was killed — looks just like chessboard squares, and they’re reflected in the mirrors of the wardrobe.”

“Oh my God!”

“What’s the matter?”

“Because...”

A wave of shame washed over her.

“Because the last thing I saw before I snatched the drawing away from him was a menacing shadow emerging out of those squares,” she said.

“Do you have the drawing here?”

“No, or rather yes.”

“Yes?”

“I’m afraid I threw it away. But it will still be in the bin.”

Blomkvist had coffee grounds and yoghurt all over his hands as he pulled a crumpled piece of paper out of the rubbish and smoothed it out on the draining board. He brushed it off with the back of his hand and looked at it in the glare of the kitchen lights. The drawing was not finished, not by any means, and it consisted mostly of chessboard squares, just as Hanna had said, seen from above or from the side. Unless you had been in Balder’s bedroom, it would not be obvious that the squares represented a floor, but Blomkvist immediately recognized the mirrors on the wardrobe to the right of the bed. He also recognized the darkness, that special darkness that had met him in the course of the night.

He felt transported back to the moment when he had walked in through the broken window — apart from one small important detail. The room he had entered had been almost dark, whereas the drawing showed a thin source of light falling diagonally from above, extending out over the squares. It gave contours to a shadow which was not distinct or meaningful, but which felt eerie, perhaps for that very reason.

The shadow was stretching out an arm and Blomkvist, who saw the drawing in a very different light to Hanna, had no trouble interpreting what that signified. The figure meant to kill. Above the chessboard squares and the shadow there was a face which had not yet materialized.

“Where is August now?” he said. “Is he sleeping?”

“No. He... I’ve left him with someone else for a while. I couldn’t handle him, to be honest.”

“Where is he?”

“At Oden’s Medical Centre for Children and Adolescents. On Sveavägen.”

“Who knows that he’s there?”

“No-one.”

“Just you and the staff?”

Hanna nodded.

“Then it has to stay that way. Will you excuse me for a moment?”

Blomkvist took out his mobile and called Bublanski. In his mind he had already drafted yet another question for LISBETH STUFF.

Bublanski felt frustrated: the investigation was going nowhere. Neither Balder’s Blackphone nor his laptop had been found, so they had not been able to map his contacts with the outside world, despite having had detailed discussions with the service provider.

For the time being they had little more than smokescreens and clichés to go on, Bublanski thought: a ninja warrior had materialized swiftly and effectively and then vanished into the darkness. In fact the attack had something far too perfect about it, as if it had been carried out by a person free of all the usual human failings and contradictions which as a rule feature in a murder. This was too clean, too clinical, and Bublanski could not help thinking that it had been just another day at the office for the killer. He was pondering this and more besides when Blomkvist rang.

“Oh, it’s you,” Bublanski said. “We were just talking about you. We’d like to have another word with you as soon as possible.”

“Of course, not a problem. But right now I’ve got something much more important to tell you. The witness, August Balder, is a savant,” Blomkvist said.

“A what?”

“A boy who may be severely mentally disabled but nonetheless has a special gift. He draws like a master, with a remarkable mathematical sharpness. Did someone show you the drawings of the traffic light which had been lying on the kitchen table in Saltsjöbaden?”

“Yes, briefly. Are you saying it wasn’t Balder who drew them?”

“It was the boy.”

“They looked like astonishingly mature pieces of work.”

“But they were drawn by August. This morning he sat down and drew the chessboard squares on the floor in his father’s bedroom, and he didn’t stop at that. He sketched a shaft of light and a shadow. My theory is that it’s the killer’s shadow and the light from his headlamp, but of course one couldn’t yet say for certain. The boy was interrupted in his work.”

“Are you pulling my leg?”

“This is hardly the moment.”

“How do you know all this?’

“I’m at the home of the boy’s mother, Hanna Balder, and I’m looking at the drawing. The boy is no longer here. He’s at...” The journalist hesitated. “I don’t want to say more than that over the telephone.”

“You say that the boy was interrupted in the middle of his drawing?”

“His mother stopped him on a psychologist’s advice.”

“How could one do something like that?”

“He probably didn’t realize what the drawings represented, he just saw them as something compulsive. I suggest you send some people over right away. You’ve got your witness.”

“We’ll be there as soon as we can be.”

Bublanski ended the call and went to share Blomkvist’s news with the team, though soon after he wondered whether this had been wise.

Chapter 15

Salander was at the Raucher Chess Club on Hälsingegatan. She did not really feel like playing. Her head was aching — she had been on the hunt all day long, but the hunt had taken her here. When she realized that Frans Balder had been betrayed by one of his own, he had made her promise that she would leave the traitor alone. She had not approved the strategy, but she had kept her word, and only now that Balder had been killed did she feel absolved of her promise.

Now she was going to proceed on her own terms. But it was not all that easy. Arvid Wrange had not been at home, and instead of calling him she wanted to come down on his life like a bolt of lightning and so had been out searching for him, her hoodie pulled over her head. Wrange lived the life of a drone. But as with so many other drones, he had a routine, and Salander had been able to find a number of signposts through the trail of pictures he posted on Instagram and Facebook: Riche on Birger Jarlsgatan and the Teatergrillen on Nybrogatan, the Raucher Chess Club and Café Ritorno on Odengatan and a number of others, including a shooting club on Fridhelmsgatan, plus the addresses of two girlfriends.

Wrange had changed since the last time she had him on her radar. Not only had he got rid of his nerdy look. His morals were also at an ebb. Salander was not big on psychological theory, but she could see for herself that his first major transgression had led to a succession of others. Wrange was no longer an ambitious student, eager to learn. Now he was addicted to porn and bought sex online, violent sex. Two of the women had afterwards threatened to report him.

The man had a fair amount of money. He also had a load of problems. As recently as that morning he had Googled “witness protection Sweden”, which was careless of him. Even though he was no longer in contact with Solifon, at least not from his computer, they were probably still keeping an eye on him. It would be unprofessional not to. Maybe he was beginning to crack up beneath the new urbane exterior, and that served Salander’s purpose. When she once again rang the chess club — chess being the only apparent connection with his former life — she was pleasantly surprised to hear that Wrange had just arrived there.

So now she walked down the small flight of steps on Hälsingegatan and along a corridor to some shabby premises where a motley crowd of mostly older men were sitting hunched over their chessboards. The atmosphere was somnolent, and nobody seemed even to notice her let alone question her presence. They were all busy with their games, and the only sound was the click of the chess clocks and the occasional swear word. There were framed photographs of Kasparov, Magnus Carlsen and Bobby Fischer on the walls and even one of a pimply, teenaged Arvid Wrange playing the chess star Judit Polgár.

A different, older version of him was sitting at a table further in and to the right, and he seemed to be trying out some new opening. Next to him were a couple of shopping bags. He was wearing a yellow lambswool sweater with a clean and ironed white shirt and a pair of shiny English shoes, a little too stylish for the surroundings. Salander approached him with careful, hesitant steps and asked if he would like a game. He responded by looking her up and down, then he said, “O.K.”

“Nice of you,” she replied like a well-mannered young girl, and sat down. She opened with E4, he answered with B5, the Polish gambit, and then she closed her eyes and let him play on.

Wrange tried to concentrate on the game, but he was not managing too well. Fortunately this punk girl was going to be easy pickings. She wasn’t bad, as it turned out — she probably played a lot — but what good was that? He toyed with her a little, and she was bound to be impressed. Who knows? Maybe he could even get her to come home with him afterwards. True, she looked stroppy, and Wrange did not go in for stroppy girls, but she had nice tits and he might be able to take out his frustrations on her. It had been a disaster of a morning. The news that Balder had been murdered had floored him.

It wasn’t grief that he felt: it was fear. Wrange really did try hard to convince himself that he had done the right thing. What did the goddamn professor expect when he treated him as if he didn’t exist? But of course it wouldn’t look good that Wrange had sold him down the river. He consoled himself with the thought that an idiot like Balder must have made thousands of enemies, but deep down he knew: the one event was linked to the other, and that scared him to death.

Ever since Balder had started working at Solifon, Wrange had been afraid that the drama would take a frightening new turn, and here he was now, wishing that it would all just go away. That must have been why he went into town this morning on a compulsive spree to buy a load of designer clothes, and had ended up here at the chess club. Chess still managed to distract him, and the fact was that he was feeling better already. He felt like he was in control and smart enough to keep on fooling them all. Look at how he was playing.

This girl was not half bad. In fact there was something unorthodox and creative in her play, and she would probably be able teach most people in here a thing or two. It was just that he, Arvid Wrange, was crushing her. His play was so brilliant and sophisticated that she had not even noticed he was on the brink of trapping her queen. Stealthily he moved his pieces forward and snapped hers up without sacrificing more than a knight. In a flirty, casual tone bound to impress her he said, “Sorry, baby. Your queen is down.”

But he got nothing in return, no smile, not a word, nothing. The girl upped the tempo, as if she wanted to put a quick end to her humiliation, and why not? He’d be happy to keep the process short and take her out for two or three drinks before he pulled her. Maybe he would not be very nice to her in bed. The chances were that she would still thank him afterwards. A miserable cunt like her would be unlikely to have had a fuck for a long time and would be totally unused to guys like him, cool guys who played at this level. He decided to show off a bit and explain some higher chess theory. But he never got the chance. Something on the board did not feel quite right. His game began to run into some sort of resistance he could not understand. For a while he persuaded himself that it was only his imagination, perhaps the result of a few careless moves. If only he concentrated he would be able to put things right, and so he mobilized his killer instinct.

But it only got worse.

He felt trapped — however hard he tried to regain the initiative she hit back — and in the end he had no choice but to acknowledge that the balance of power had shifted, and shifted irreversibly. How crazy was that? He had taken her queen, but instead of building on that advantage he had landed in a fatally weak position. Surely she had not deliberately sacrificed her queen so early in the game? That would be impossible — the sort of thing you read about in books, it didn’t happen in your local chess club in Vasastan, and it definitely wasn’t something that pierced punk chicks with attitude problems did, especially not to great players like him. Yet there was no escape.

In four or five moves he would be beaten and so he saw no alternative but to knock over his king with his index finger and mumble congratulations. Even though he would have liked to serve up some excuses, something told him that that would make matters worse. He had a sneaking feeling that his defeat was not just down to bad luck, and almost against his will he began to feel frightened again. Who the hell was she?

Cautiously he looked her in the eye, and now she no longer seemed like a stroppy and somewhat insecure nobody. Now she seemed cold — like a predator eyeing its prey. He felt deeply ill at ease, as if the defeat on the chessboard were but a prelude to something much, much worse. He glanced towards the door.

“You’re not going anywhere,” she said.

“Who are you?” he said.

“Nobody special.”

“So we haven’t met before?”

“Not exactly.”

“But nearly, is that it?”

“We’ve met in your nightmares, Arvid.”

“Is this some kind of joke?”

“Not really.”

“What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean?”

“How should I know?”

He could not understand why he was so scared.

“Frans Balder was murdered last night,” she said in a monotone.

“Well... yes... I read that,” he stammered.

“Terrible, isn’t it?”

“Awful.”

“Especially for you, right?”

“Why especially for me?”

“Because you betrayed him, Arvid. Because you gave him the kiss of Judas.”

His body froze. “That’s bullshit,” he spat out.

“As a matter of fact it’s not. I hacked your computer, cracked your encryption and saw very clearly that you sold on his technology to Solifon. And you know what?”

He was finding it hard to breathe.

“I’m sure you woke up this morning and wondered if his death was your fault. I can help you there: it was your fault. If you hadn’t been so greedy and bitter and pathetic, Frans Balder would be alive now. I should warn you that’s making me pretty fucking angry, Arvid. I’m going to hurt you badly. First of all by making you suffer the same sort of treatment you inflict on the women you find online.”

“Are you insane?”

“Probably, yes,” she said. “Empathy-deficit disorder. Excessive violence. Something along those lines.”

She gripped his hand with a force which scared him out of his wits.

“Arvid, do you know what I’m doing right now? Do you know why I seem a bit distracted?”

“No.”

“I’m sitting here trying to decide what to do with you. I’m thinking in terms of suffering of biblical proportions. That’s why I’m a bit distracted.”

“What do you want?”

“I want revenge — haven’t I made that clear?”

“You’re talking crap.”

“Definitely not, and I think you know it too. But there is a way out.”

“What do I have to do?”

He could not understand why he said it. What do I have to do? It was an admission, a capitulation, and he considered taking it back, putting pressure on her instead, to see if she had any proof or if she was bluffing. But he could not bring himself to do it. Only later did he realize that it was not just the threats she tossed out or the uncanny strength of her hands.

It was the game of chess, the queen sacrifice. He was in shock, and something in his subconscious told him that a woman who plays like that must also know his secrets.

“What do I have to do?” he said again.

“You’re going to follow me out of here and you’re going to tell me everything, Arvid. You’re going to tell me exactly what happened when you sold out Frans Balder.”

“It’s a miracle,” Bublanski said as he stood in the kitchen in Hanna Balder’s home looking at the crumpled drawing which Blomkvist had plucked out of the rubbish.

“Let’s not exaggerate,” said Modig, who was standing right next to him. She was right. It was not much more than some chess squares on a piece of paper, after all, and as Mikael Blomkvist had pointed out over the telephone there was something strangely mathematical about the work, as if the boy were more interested in the geometry than in the threatening shadow above. But Bublanski was excited all the same. He had been told over and over how mentally impaired the Balder boy was, how little he would be able to help them. Now the boy had produced a drawing which gave Bublanski more hope than anything else in the investigation. It strengthened his long-held conviction that one must never underestimate anyone or cling to preconceived ideas.

They had no way of being sure that what August was illustrating here was the moment of the murder. The shadow could, at least in theory, be associated with some other occasion, and there was no guarantee that the boy had seen the killer’s face or that he would be able to draw it. And yet deep down that was what Bublanski believed. Not just because the drawing, even in its present state, was masterful. He had studied the other drawings too, in which you could see, beyond the street crossing and the traffic light, a shabby man with thin lips who had been caught red-handed jaywalking, if you looked at it purely from a law-enforcement point of view. He was crossing the street on a red, and Amanda Flod, another officer on the team, had recognized him straight away as the out-of-work actor Roger Winter, who had convictions for drink-driving and assault.

The photographic precision of August’s eye ought to be a dream for any murder investigator. But Bublanski did realize that it would be unprofessional to set his hopes too high. Maybe the murderer had been masked at the time of the killing or his face had already faded from the child’s memory. There were many possible scenarios and Bublanski cast a glum look in the direction of Modig.

“Maybe this is just wishful thinking on my part,” he said.

“For a man who’s beginning to doubt the existence of God, you seem to have no problem hoping for miracles.”

“Well, maybe.”

“But it’s worth getting to the bottom of. I agree with that,” Modig said.

“Good, in that case let’s see the boy.”

Bublanski went out of the kitchen and nodded at Hanna Balder, who was sunk in the living-room sofa, fumbling with some tablets.

Lisbeth Salander and Arvid Wrange came out into Vasaparken arm in arm, like a pair of old friends out for a stroll. Appearances can be deceptive: Wrange was terrified as Salander steered them towards a park bench. The wind was getting up again and the temperature creeping down — it was hardly a day for feeding the pigeons — and Wrange was cold. But Salander decided that the bench would do and forced him to sit down, holding his arm in a vice-like grip.

“Right,” she said. “Let’s make this quick.”

“Will you keep my name out of it?”

“I’m promising nothing, Arvid. But your chances of being able to go back to your miserable life will increase significantly if you tell me every detail of what happened.”

“O.K.,” he said. “Do you know Darknet?”

“I know it,” she said.

No-one knew Darknet like Lisbeth Salander. Darknet was the lawless undergrowth of the Internet. The only way to access it was with especially encrypted software, and the user’s anonymity was guaranteed. No-one could Google your details or trace your activity on the web. So Darknet was full of drug dealers, terrorists, con men, gangsters, illegal arms dealers, pimps and black hats. If there was an Internet hell, then this was it.

But Darknet was not in itself evil. Salander understood that better than anyone. These days, when spy agencies and the big software companies follow every step we take online, even honest people can need a hiding place. Darknet was also a hub for dissidents, whistle-blowers and informants. Opposition forces could protest on Darknet out of reach of their government, and Salander had used it for her own more discreet investigations and attacks. She knew its sites and search engines and its old-fashioned workings far away from the known, visible net.

“Did you put Balder’s technology up for sale on Darknet?” she said.

“No, I was just casting about. I was pissed off. You know, Frans hardly even said hello to me. He treated me like dirt, and he didn’t really care about that technology of his either. It had the potential to make all of us rich, but he only wanted to play and experiment with it like a little kid. One evening when I’d had a few drinks I just chucked out a question on a geek site: ‘Who can pay good money for some revolutionary A.I. technology?’

“And did you get an answer?”

“It took a while. I had time to forget that I’d even asked. But in the end someone calling himself Bogey wrote back with some pretty well-informed questions. At first my answers were ridiculously unguarded, but soon I realized what a mess I’d got myself into, and I became terrified that Bogey would steal the technology.”

“Without you getting anything for it.”

“It was a dangerous game. To be able to sell Frans’ technology I had to tell people about it. But if I said too much then I would already have lost it. Bogey flattered me rotten — in the end he knew exactly where we were and what sort of software we were working on.”

“He meant to hack you.”

“Presumably. He somehow managed to get hold of my name, and that floored me. I became totally paranoid and announced that I wanted to pull out. But by then it was too late. Not that Bogey threatened me, at least not directly. He just went on and on about how he and I were going to do great things together and earn masses of money. In the end I agreed to meet him in Stockholm at a Chinese boat restaurant on Söder Mälarstrand. It was a windy day, I remember, and I stood there freezing. I waited more than half an hour, and afterwards I wondered if he had been checking me out in some way.”

“But then he showed up?”

“Yes. At first I didn’t believe it was him. He looked like a junkie, or a beggar, and if I hadn’t seen that Patek Philippe watch on his wrist I probably would have tossed him twenty kronor. He had amateur tattoos and dodgy-looking scars on his arms, which he waved about as he walked. He was wearing this awful-looking trench coat and he seemed to have been more or less living on the streets. The strangest thing of all was that he was proud of it. It was only the watch and the hand-made shoes which showed that he had at some point managed to lift himself out of the gutter. Other than that, he seemed keen to stick to his roots. Later on, when I’d given him everything and we were celebrating our deal over a few bottles of wine, I asked about his background.”

“I hope for your sake that he gave you some details.”

“If you want to track him down, I have to warn you...”

“I don’t want advice, Arvid. I want facts.”

“Fine. He was careful,” he said. “But I still got a few things. He probably couldn’t help himself. He grew up in a big city in Russia, though he didn’t name it. He’d had everything stacked against him, he said. His mother was a whore and a heroin addict and his father could have been anybody. As a small boy he had ended up in the orphanage from hell. There was some lunatic there, he told me, who used to make him lie on a butcher’s slab in the kitchen and whipped him with a broken cane. When he was eleven he ran away and lived on the street. He stole, broke into cellars and stairwells to get a little warmth, got drunk on cheap vodka, sniffed glue and was abused and beaten. But he also discovered one thing.”

“What?”

“That he had talent. He was an expert at breaking and entering, which became his first source of pride, his first identity. He was capable of doing in just a few seconds what took others hours. Before that he had been a homeless brat, everyone had despised him and spat at him. Now he was the boy who could get himself in wherever he wanted. It became an obsession. All day long he dreamed of being some sort of Houdini in reverse — he didn’t want to break out, he wanted to break in. He practised for ten, twelve, fourteen hours a day, and in the end he was a legend on the streets — or so he said. He started to carry out bigger operations, using computers he stole and reconfigured to hack in everywhere. He made a heap of money which he blew on drugs, and often he was robbed or taken advantage of. He could be clear as a bell when he was on one of his jobs, but afterwards he would lie around in a narcotic haze and someone would walk all over him. He was a genius and a total idiot at the same time, he said. But one day everything changed. He was saved, raised up out of his hell.”

“How?”

“He had been asleep in some dump of a place that was due to be pulled down, and when he opened his eyes and looked around in the yellowish light there was an angel standing before him.”

“An angel?”

“That’s what he said, an angel, and maybe it was partly the contrast with everything else in there, the syringes, the left-over food, the cockroaches. He said she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He could scarcely look at her, and he got this idea that he was going to die. It was an ominous, solemn feeling. But the woman explained, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, that she would make him rich and happy. If I’ve understood it right, she kept her promise. She gave him new teeth, got him into rehab. She arranged for him to train as a computer engineer.”

“So ever since he’s been hacking computers and stealing for this woman and her network.”

“That’s right. He became a new person, or maybe not completely new — in many ways he’s still the same old thief and bum. But he no longer takes drugs, he says, and he spends all his free time keeping up to date with new technology. He finds a lot on Darknet and he claims to be stinking rich.”

“And the woman — did he say anything more about her?”

“No, he was extremely careful about that. He spoke in such evasive and respectful terms that I wondered for a while if she wasn’t a fantasy or hallucination. But I reckon she really does exist. I could sense sheer physical fear when he was talking about her — he said that he would rather die than let her down, and then he showed me a Russian patriarchal cross made of gold, which she had given him. One of those crosses, you know, which has a slanted beam down by the foot, one end pointing up and the other down. He told me this was a reference to the Gospel according to St Luke and the two thieves who were hanged next to Jesus on the cross. The one thief believes in Jesus and goes to heaven. The other mocks him and is thrust down into hell.”

“That’s what awaits you if you fail her.”

“That’s about it, yes.”

“So she sees herself as Jesus?”

“In this context the cross probably has almost nothing to do with Christianity. It’s the message she wants to pass on.”

“Loyalty or the torments of hell.”

“Something along those lines.”

“Yet you’re sitting here, Arvid, spilling the beans.”

“I didn’t see an alternative.”

“I hope you got paid a lot.”

“Well, yes...”

“And then Balder’s technology was sold to Solifon and Truegames.”

“Yes, but I don’t get it... not when I think of it now.”

“What don’t you get?”

“How could you know all this?”

“Because you were dumb enough to send an email to Eckerwald at Solifon, don’t you remember?”

“But I wrote nothing to suggest that I’d sold the technology. I was very careful about that.”

“What you said was enough for me,” she said. She got to her feet, and it was as if his entire being collapsed.

“Wait, what’s going to happen now? Will you keep me out of this?”

“You can always hope,” she said, and walked off towards Odenplan with purposeful steps.

Bublanski’s mobile rang as he was on his way down to the front entrance on Torsgatan. It was Professor Edelman. Bublanski had been trying to reach him ever since he realized that the boy was a savant. Bublanski had found out online that two Swedish authorities were regularly quoted on this subject: Lena Ek at Lund University and Charles Edelman at the Karolinska Institute. But he had not been able to get hold of either, so he had postponed the search and gone off to see Hanna Balder. Now Edelman was ringing back, and he sounded shaken. He was in Budapest, he said, at a conference on heightened memory capacity. He had just arrived there and seen the news about the murder a moment ago, on C.N.N.

“Otherwise I would have got in touch right away,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Professor Balder rang me yesterday evening.”

That made Bublanski jump. “What did he want?”

“He wanted to talk about his son and his son’s talent.”

“Did you know each other?”

“Not in the slightest. He contacted me because he was worried about his boy, and I was stunned to hear from him.”

“Why?”

“Because it was Frans Balder. He’s a household name to us neurologists. We tend to say he’s like us in wanting to understand the brain. The only difference is that he also wants to build one.”

“I’ve heard something about that.”

“I’d been told that he was an introverted and difficult man. A bit like a machine himself, people sometimes used to joke: nothing but logic circuits. But with me he was incredibly emotional, and it shocked me, to be honest. It was... I don’t know, as if you were to hear your toughest policeman cry. I remember thinking that something must have happened, something other than what we were talking about.”

“That sounds right. He had finally accepted that he was under a serious threat,” Bublanski said.

“But he also had reason to be excited. His son’s drawings were apparently exceptionally good, and that’s not common at all at that age, not even with savants, and especially not in combination with proficiency in mathematics.”

“Mathematics?”

“Yes indeed. From what Balder said his son had mathematical skills too. I could spend a long time talking about that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Because I was utterly amazed, and at the same time maybe not so amazed after all. We now know that there’s a hereditary factor in savants, and here we have a father who is a legend, thanks to his advanced algorithms. But still... artistic and numerical talents do not usually present themselves together in these children.”

“Surely the great thing about life is that every now and then it springs a surprise on us,” Bublanski said.

“True, Chief Inspector. So what can I do for you?”

Bublanski thought through everything that had happened in Saltsjöbaden and it struck him that it would do no harm to be cautious.

“All I can say is that we need your help and expert knowledge as a matter of urgency.”

“The boy was a witness to the murder, was he not?”

“Yes.”

“And you want me to try to get him to draw what he saw?”

“I’d prefer not to comment.”

Professor Edelman was standing in the lobby of the Hotel Boscolo in Budapest, a conference centre not far from the glittering Danube. The place looked like an opera house, with magnificent high ceilings, old-fashioned cupolas and pillars. He had been looking forward to the week here, the dinners and the presentations. Yet he was agitated and ran his fingers through his hair.

“Unfortunately I’m not in a position to help you. I have to give an important lecture tomorrow morning,” he had said to Bublanski, and that was true.

He had been preparing the talk for some weeks and he was going to take a controversial line with several eminent memory experts. He recommended an associate professor, Martin Wolgers, to Bublanski.

But as soon as he hung up and exchanged looks with Lena Ek — Lena had paused next to him, holding a sandwich — he began to have regrets. He even began to envy young Martin Wolgers, who was not yet thirty-five, always looked far too good in photographs, and on top of it all was beginning to make a name for himself.

It was true that Edelman did not fully understand what had happened. The police inspector had been cryptic and was probably worried that someone might be listening in on the call. Yet the professor still managed to grasp the bigger picture. The boy was good at drawing and was witness to a murder. That could mean only one thing, and the longer Edelman thought about it the more he fretted. He would be giving many more important lectures in his life, but he would never get another chance to play a part in a murder investigation at this level. However he looked at the assignment he had so casually passed on to Wolgers, it was bound to be much more interesting than anything he might be involved in here in Budapest. Who knows? It could even make him some sort of celebrity.

He visualised the headline: PROMINENT NEUROLOGIST HELPS POLICE SOLVE MURDER, or better still: EDELMAN’S RESEARCH LEADS TO BREAKTHROUGH IN MURDER HUNT. How could he have been so stupid as to turn it down? He took out his mobile and called Chief Inspector Bublanski.

Bublanski and Modig had managed to park not far from the Stockholm Public Library and had just crossed the street. Once again the weather was dreadful, and Bublanski’s hands were freezing.

“Did he change his mind?” Modig said.

“Yes. He’s going to shelve his lecture.”

“When can he be here?”

“He’s looking into it. Tomorrow morning at the latest.”

They were on their way to Oden’s Medical Centre on Sveavägen to meet the director, Torkel Lindén. The meeting was only meant to settle the practical arrangements for August Balder’s testimony — at least as far as Bublanski was concerned. But even though Lindén did not yet know the true purpose of their visit, he had been strangely discouraging over the telephone and said that right now the boy was not to be disturbed “in any way”. Bublanski had sensed an instinctive hostility and was not particularly pleasant in return. It had not been a promising start.

Lindén turned out not to be the hefty figure Bublanski had expected. He was hardly more than 150 centimetres tall and had short, possibly dyed black hair and pinched lips. He wore black jeans, a black polo-necked sweater and a small cross on a ribbon around his neck. There was something ecclesiastical about him, and his hostility was genuine.

He had a haughty look and Bublanski became aware of his own Jewishness — which tended to happen whenever he encountered this sort of malevolence and air of moral superiority. Lindén wanted to show that he was better, because he put the boy’s physical well-being first rather than offering him up for police purposes. Bublanski saw no choice but to be as amiable as possible.

“Pleased to meet you,” he said.

“Is that so?” Lindén said.

“Oh yes, and it’s kind of you to see us at such short notice. We really wouldn’t come barging in like this if we didn’t think this matter was of the utmost importance.”

“I imagine you want to interview the boy in some way.”

“Not exactly,” Bublanski said, not quite so amiably. “I have to emphasize first of all that what I’m saying now must remain strictly between us. It’s a question of security.”

“Confidentiality is a given for us. We have no loose lips here,” Lindén said, in such a way as to imply that it was the opposite with the police.

“My only concern is for the boy’s safety,” Bublanski said sharply.

“So that’s your priority?”

“As a matter of fact, yes,” the policeman said with even greater severity. “And that is why nothing of what I’m about to tell you must be passed on in any way — least of all by email or by telephone. Can we sit somewhere private?”

Sonja Modig did not think much of the place. But then she was probably affected by the crying. Somewhere nearby a little girl was sobbing relentlessly. They were sitting in a room which smelled of detergent and also of something else, maybe a lingering trace of incense. A cross hung on the wall and there was a worn teddy bear lying on the floor. There was not much else to make the place cosy or attractive, and since Bublanski, usually so good-natured, was about to lose his temper, she took matters into her own hands and gave a calm, factual account of what had taken place.

“We are given to understand,” she said, “that your colleague, Einar Forsberg, said that August should not be allowed to draw.”

“That was his professional judgement and I agree with it. It doesn’t do the boy any good,” Lindén said.

“Well, I don’t see how anything could do him much good under these circumstances. He probably saw his father being killed.”

“But we don’t want to make things any worse, do we?”

“True. But the drawing August was not allowed to finish could lead to a breakthrough in the investigation and therefore I’m afraid we must insist. You can of course ensure there are people present with the necessary expertise.”

“I still have to say no.”

Modig could hardly believe her ears.

“With all due respect for your work,” Lindén went on doggedly, “here at Oden’s we help vulnerable children. That’s our job and our calling. We’re not an extension of the police force. That’s how it is, and we’re proud of it. For as long as the children are here, they should feel confident that we put their interests first.”

Modig laid a restraining hand on Bublanski’s thigh.

“We can easily get a court order,” she said, “but we’d prefer not to go that route.”

“Wise of you.”

“Let me ask you something,” she said. “Are you and Forsberg so absolutely sure what’s best for August, or for the girl crying over there, for that matter? Couldn’t it be instead that we all need to express ourselves? You and I can talk or write, or even go out and get a lawyer. August doesn’t have those means of communication. But he can draw, and he seems to want to tell us something. Shouldn’t we let him give form to something which must be tormenting him?”

“In our judgement—”

“No,” she cut him off. “Don’t tell us about your judgement. We’re in contact with the person who knows more than anyone else in this country about this particular condition. His name is Charles Edelman, he’s a professor of neurology and he’s on his way here from Hungary to meet the boy.”

“We can of course listen to him,” Lindén said reluctantly.

“Not just listen. We let him decide.”

“I promise to engage in a constructive dialogue, between experts.”

“Fine. What’s August doing now?”

“He’s sleeping. He was exhausted when he came to us.”

Modig could tell that nothing good would come of it were she to suggest that the boy be woken up.

“In that case we’ll come back tomorrow morning with Professor Edelman, and I am sure we will all be able to work together on this matter.”

Chapter 16

Gabriella Grane buried her face in her hands. She had not been to bed for forty hours and she was racked by a deep sense of guilt, only made worse by the lack of sleep. Yet she had been working hard all day long. Since this morning she had been part of a team at Säpo — a sort of shadow unit — which was investigating in secret every detail of the Frans Balder murder, under cover of looking into broader domestic policy implications.

Superintendent Mårten Nielsen was formally leading the team and had recently returned from a year of study at the University of Maryland in the U.S. He was undoubtedly intelligent and well informed, but too right-wing for Grane’s tastes. It was rare to find a well-educated Swede who was also a wholehearted supporter of the American Republican Party — he even expressed some sympathy for the Tea Party movement. He was passionate about military history and lectured at the Military Academy. Although still young — thirty-nine — he was believed to have extensive international contacts.

He often had trouble, however, asserting himself in the group, and in practice the real leader was Ragnar Olofsson, who was older and cockier and could silence Nielsen with one peevish little sigh or a displeased wrinkle above his bushy eyebrows. Nor was Nielsen’s life made any easier by the fact that Detective Inspector Lars Åke Grankvist was also on the team.

Before joining the Security Service, Grankvist had been a semi-legendary investigator in the Swedish police’s National Murder Squad, at least in the sense that he was said to be able to drink anybody else under the table and to manage, with a sort of boisterous charm, to keep a lover in every town. It was not an easy team in which to hold one’s own, and Grane kept an ever lower profile as the afternoon wore on. But this was due less to the men and their macho rivalry than to a growing sense of uncertainty.

Sometimes she wondered if she knew even less now than before. She realized, for example, that there was little or no proof to support the theory of the suspected data breach. All they had was a statement from Stefan Molde at the N.D.R.E., and not even he had been sure of what he was saying. In her view his analysis was more or less rubbish. Balder seemed to have relied primarily on the female hacker he had turned to for help, the woman not even named in the investigation, but whom his assistant, Linus Brandell, had described in such vivid terms. It was likely that Balder had been withholding a lot from Grane before he left for America.

For example, was it a coincidence that he had found a job at Solifon?

The uncertainty gnawed at her and she was indignant that no help was coming from Fort Meade. She could not get hold of Alona Casales, and the N.S.A. was once again a closed door, and so she in turn was no longer passing on any news. Just like Nielsen and Grankvist, she found herself overshadowed by Olofsson. He kept getting information from his source at the Violent Crimes Division and immediately passing it on to Helena Kraft.

Grane did not like it, and in vain she had pointed out that this traffic not only increased the risk of a leak but also seemed to be costing them their independence. Instead of searching their own channels, they were all too slavishly relying on the information which flowed in from Bublanski’s team.

“We’re like people cheating in an exam, waiting for someone to whisper the answer instead of thinking for ourselves,” she had said to the whole team, and this had not made her popular.

Now she was alone in her office, determined to move ahead on her own, trying to see the bigger picture. It might get her nowhere, but on the other hand it would do no harm. She heard steps outside in the corridor, the click-clack of determined high heels which Grane by now recognized only too well. It was Kraft, who came in wearing a grey Armani jacket, her hair pulled into a tight bun. Kraft gave her an affectionate look. There were times when Grane resented this favouritism.

“How’s it going?” Kraft said. “Are you surviving?”

“Just about.”

“I’m going to send you home after this conversation. You have to get some sleep. We need an analyst with a clear head.”

“Sounds sensible.”

“Do you know what Erich Maria Remarque said?”

“That it’s not much fun in the trenches, or something.”

“Ha, no, that it’s always the wrong people who have the guilty conscience. Those who are really responsible for suffering in the world couldn’t care less. It’s the ones fighting for good who are consumed by remorse. You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of, Gabriella. You did what you could.”

“I’m not so sure about that. But thanks anyway.”

“Have you heard about Balder’s son?”

“Just very quickly from Ragnar.”

“At 10.00 tomorrow morning Chief Inspector Bublanski, Detective Sergeant Modig and a Professor Edelman will be seeing the boy at Oden’s Medical Centre for Children and Adolescents, on Sveavägen. They’re going to try and get him to draw some more.”

“I’ll keep my fingers crossed. But I’m not too happy to know about it.”

“Relax, leave the paranoia to me. The only ones who know about this are people who can keep their traps shut.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“I want to show you something. There are photographs of the man who hacked Balder’s burglar alarm.”

“I’ve seen them already. I’ve even studied them in detail.”

“Have you?” Kraft said, handing over an enlarged and blurred picture of a wrist.

“What about it?”

“Take another look. What do you see?”

Grane looked and saw two things: the luxury watch she had noted before and, beneath it, barely distinguishable between the glove and the jacket cuff, a couple of lines which looked like amateur tattoos.

“Contrasts,” she said. “Some cheap tattoos and a very expensive watch.”

“More than that,” Kraft said. “That’s a 1951 Patek Philippe, model 2499, first series, or just possibly second series.”

“Means nothing to me.”

“It’s one of the finest wristwatches in the world. A few years ago a watch like this sold at auction at Christie’s in Geneva for just over two million dollars.”

“Are you kidding?”

“No, and it wasn’t just anyone who bought it. It was Jan van der Waal, a lawyer at Dackstone & Partner. He bid for it on behalf of a client.”

“Dackstone & Partner? Don’t they represent Solifon?”

“Correct. We don’t know whether the watch in the surveillance image is the one that was sold in Geneva, and we haven’t been able to find out who that client was. But it’s a start, Gabriella. A scrawny type who looks like a junkie and who wears a watch of this calibre — that should narrow the field.”

“Does Bublanski know this?”

“It was his technical expert Jerker Holmberg who discovered it. Now I want you and your analytical brain to take it further. Go home, get some sleep and get started on it in the morning.”

The man who called himself Jan Holtser was sitting at home in his apartment on Högbergsgatan in Helsinki, not far from Esplanaden park, looking through an album of photographs of his daughter Olga, who was now twenty-two and studying medicine in Gdansk.

Olga was tall and dark and intense and, as he had a habit of saying, the best thing that ever happened to him. Not just because it sounded good — he believed it. But now Olga had come to suspect what he was actually doing.

“Are you protecting evil people?” she had asked him one day, before embarking on a manic pursuit of what she called her commitment to the “weak and vulnerable”.

It was pure pinko left-wing lunacy, in Holtser’s opinion, not at all in keeping with Olga’s character. He saw it as her attempt to stake out her independence. Behind all the talk about beggars and the sick he thought she was still quite like him. Once upon a time Olga had been a promising 100-metre runner. She was 186 centimetres tall, muscular and explosive, and in the old days she had loved watching action films and listening to him reminisce about the war in Chechnya. Everyone at school had known better than to pick a fight with her. She hit back, like a warrior. Olga was definitely not cut out to minister to the sick and degenerate.

Yet she claimed to want to work for Médecins Sans Frontières or go off to Calcutta like some Mother Teresa. Holtser could not bear the thought. The world belongs to the strong, he felt. But he loved his daughter, however daft some of her ideas, and tomorrow she was coming home for the first time in six months for a few days’ leave. He solemnly resolved that he would be a better listener this time, and not pontificate about Stalin and great leaders and everything that she hated.

He would instead try to bring them closer again. He was certain that she needed him. At least he was pretty sure that he needed her. It was 8.00 in the evening and he went into the kitchen and pressed three oranges and poured Smirnoff into a glass. It was his third Screwdriver of the day. Once he had finished a job he could put away six or seven of them, and maybe he would do that now. He was tired, weighed down by all the responsibility laid on his shoulders, and he needed to relax. For a few minutes he stood with his drink in his hand and dreamed about a different sort of life. But the man who called himself Jan Holtser had set his hopes too high.

The tranquillity came to an abrupt end as Bogdanov rang on his secure mobile. At first Holtser hoped that Bogdanov just wanted to chat, to release some of the excitement that came with every assignment. But his colleague was calling about a very specific matter and sounded less than happy.

“I’ve spoken to T.,” he said. Holtser felt a number of things all at once, jealousy perhaps most of all.

Why did Kira ring Bogdanov and not him? Even if it was Bogdanov who brought in the big money, and was rewarded accordingly, Holtser had always been convinced that he was the one closer to Kira. But Holtser was also worried. Had something gone wrong after all?

“Is there a problem?” he said.

“The job isn’t finished.”

“Where are you?”

“In town.”

“Come on up in that case and explain what the hell you mean.”

“I’ve booked a table at Postres.”

“I don’t feel like going to some posh restaurant. Get yourself over here.”

“I haven’t eaten.”

“I’ll fry something up.”

“Sounds good. We’ve got a long night ahead of us.”

Holtser did not want another long night. Still less did he feel like telling his daughter that he would not be at home the next day. But he had no choice. He knew as surely as he knew that he loved Olga: you could not say no to Kira.

She wielded some invisible power and however hard he tried he could never be as dignified in her presence as he wanted. She reduced him to a little boy and often he turned himself inside out just to see her smile.

Kira was staggeringly beautiful and knew how to make the most of it like no other beauty before her. She was unmatched when it came to power games; she knew all the moves. She could be weak and needy when it suited, but also indomitable, hard and cold as ice, and sometimes plain evil. Nobody brought out the sadist in him like she did.

She may not have been intelligent in the conventional sense, and many pointed that out to try to take her down a peg or two. But the same people were still stupefied in her presence. Kira played them like a violin and could reduce even the toughest of men to blushing and giggling schoolchildren.

It was 9.00 and Bogdanov was sitting next to him shovelling in the lamb chop Holtser had prepared. Oddly enough his table manners were almost passable. That may have been Kira’s influence. In many ways Bogdanov had become quite civilized — and then again not. However he tried to put on airs, he could never entirely rid himself of the appearance of the petty thief and speed addict. He had been off drugs for ages and was a computer engineer with university qualifications, but still looked ravaged by street life.

“Where’s your bling watch?” Holtser said. “Are you in the doghouse?”

“We both are.”

“It’s that bad?”

“Maybe not.”

“The job isn’t finished, you said?”

“No, it’s that boy.”

“Which boy?” Holtser pretended not to understand.

“The one you so nobly spared.”

“What about him? He’s a retard, you know.”

“Maybe so, but he can draw.”

“What do you mean, draw?”

“He’s a savant.”

“A what?”

“You should try reading something other than your fucking gun magazines for once.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s someone who’s autistic or handicapped in some other way, but who has a special gift. This boy may not be able to talk or think like a normal person, but he has a photographic memory. The police think the little bastard is going to be able to draw your face, and then they’re going to run it through their facial-recognition software, and then you’re screwed, aren’t you? You must be there somewhere in Interpol’s records?”

“Yes, but Kira can’t expect us to—”

“That’s exactly what she expects. We have to fix the boy.”

A wave of emotion and confusion washed over Holtser and once again he saw before him that empty, glassy look from the double bed which had made him feel so uncomfortable.

“The hell I will,” he said, without really believing it.

“I know you’ve got problems with children. I don’t like it either. But we can’t avoid this one. Besides, you should be grateful. Kira could just as easily have sacrificed you.”

“I suppose so.”

“Then it’s settled. I’ve got the plane tickets in my pocket. We’ll take the first flight in the morning to Arlanda, at 6.30, and then we’re going to some place on Sveavägen called Oden’s Medical Centre for Children and Adolescents.”

“So the boy’s in a clinic.”

“Yes, and that’s why we need to do some planning. Let me just finish eating.”

The man who called himself Jan Holtser closed his eyes and tried to figure out what he was going to say to Olga.

Salander was up at 5.00 in the morning and hacked into the N.S.F. Major Research Institute supercomputer at the New Jersey Institute of Technology — she needed all the mathematical skills she could muster. Then she got out her own program for elliptic curve factorization and set about cracking the file she had downloaded from the N.S.A.

But however hard she tried, she could not manage it. She had not really been expecting to do so. It was a sophisticated encryption, named after the originators Rivest, Shamir and Adleman. R.S.A. has two keys — one public, one secret — and is based on Euler’s phi function and Fermat’s little theorem, but above all on the simple fact that it is easy to multiply two large prime numbers. A calculator will give you the answer in the blink of an eye. Yet it is all but impossible to work backwards and, on the basis of the answer, calculate the prime numbers you started out with. Computers are not yet efficient at prime-number factorization, something which had exasperated Lisbeth Salander and the world’s intelligence organizations many times in the past.

For about a year now Salander had been thinking that E.C.M., the Elliptic Curve Method, would be more promising than previous algorithms, and she had spent long nights writing her own factorization program. But now, in the early hours of the morning, she realized it would need more refinement to have even the slightest chance of success. After three hours of work, she took a break and went to the kitchen, drank some orange juice straight from the carton and ate two microwaved piroshki.

Back at her desk she hacked into Blomkvist’s computer to see if he had come up with anything new. He had posted two more questions for her and she realized at once: he wasn’t so hopeless after all.

he wrote. And that was a reasonable question.

But she did not answer. She could not care less about Arvid Wrange. And she had made progress and worked out who the hollow-eyed junkie was, the man Wrange had been in touch with, who had called himself Bogey. Trinity in Hacker Republic remembered somebody with that same handle from a number of sites some years previously. That did not necessarily mean anything — Bogey was not the most original alias. But Salander had traced the posts and thought she could be onto something — especially when he carelessly dropped that he was a computer engineer from Moscow University.

Salander was unable to find out when he graduated, or any other dates for that matter, but she got hold of a couple of nerdy details about how Bogey was hooked on fine watches and crazy for the Arsène Lupin films from the ’70s, about the gentleman thief of that name.

Then Salander posted questions on every conceivable website for former and current students at Moscow University, asking if anybody knew a scrawny, hollow-eyed ex-junkie who had been a street urchin and master thief and loved Arsène Lupin films. It was not long before she got a reply.

“That sounds like Jurij Bogdanov,” wrote someone who introduced herself as Galina.

According to this Galina, Bogdanov was a legend at the university. Not just because he had hacked into all the lecturers’ computers and had dirt on every one of them. He was always asking people: will you bet me one hundred roubles I can’t break into that house over there?

Many who did not know him thought this was easy money. But Jurij could pick any door lock, and if for some reason he failed he would shin up the facade or the walls instead. He was known for his daring, and for his evil. He was said once to have kicked a dog to death when it disturbed him in his work and he was always stealing things, just for the hell of it. Galina thought he might have been a kleptomaniac. But he was also a genius hacker and a talented analyst, and after he graduated the world was his oyster. He did not want a job, he wanted to go his own way, he said, and it did not take Salander long to work out what he got up to after university — at least according to the official version.

Jurij Bogdanov was now thirty-four years old. He had left Russia and lived in Berlin on Budapester Strasse, not far from the Michelin-starred restaurant Hugo’s. He ran a white-hat computer security business — Outcast Security — with seven employees and a turnover in the last financial year of twenty-two million euros. It was ironic — yet somehow entirely logical — that his front was a company which protected industrial groups from people like himself. He had not had any criminal convictions since he took his exams in 2009 and managed a wide network of contacts — one of the members of his board of directors was Ivan Gribanov, member of the Russian Duma and a major shareholder in the oil company Gazprom — but she could find nothing to get her further.

Blomkvist’s second question was:

He did not explain why he was interested in the place. But she knew that Blomkvist was not someone who threw questions out at random. Nor did he make a habit of being unclear.

If he was being cryptic, then he had a reason to be: the information must be sensitive. There was evidently something significant about this medical centre. Salander soon discovered that it had attracted a number of complaints — children had been forgotten or ignored and had been able to self-harm. Oden’s was managed privately by its director, Torkel Lindén, and his company Care Me and, if one was to believe past employees, Lindén’s word was law. The profit margin was always high because nothing was bought unless absolutely necessary.

Lindén himself was a former star gymnast, among other things a one-time Swedish high-bar champion. Nowadays he was a passionate hunter and member of a Christian congregation that took an uncompromising line on homosexuality. Salander went onto the websites of the Swedish Association for Hunting and Wildlife Management and the Friends of Christ to see what kinds of activities were going on there. Then she sent Lindén two fake but enticing emails which looked as if they had come from the organizations, attaching PDF files with sophisticated malware which would open automatically if Lindén clicked on the messages.

By 8.23 she had got onto the server and immediately confirmed her suspicions. August Balder had been admitted to the clinic the previous afternoon. In the medical file, underneath a description of the circumstances which had resulted in his admittance, it said:

And the following had been added underneath, clearly somewhat later:

Further down still it said:

Salander quickly checked who Edelman was, and when she saw that his specialism was savant skills she understood straight away what was going on. They seemed to be working towards some sort of witness statement in the form of a sketch. Why else would Bublanski and Sonja Modig be interested in the boy’s drawing, and why else would Blomkvist have been so cautious in framing his question?

None of this must be allowed to get out. No killer must be able to find out that the boy might be able to draw a picture of him. Salander decided to see for herself how careful Lindén had been in his correspondence. Luckily he had not written anything more about the boy’s drawing ability. He had on the other hand received an email from Edelman at 23.10 last night, copied to Modig and Bublanski. That email was clearly the reason why the meeting place had been changed. Edelman wrote:

The hell you have, Salander thought, and read on:

Bublanski and Modig had replied at 7.01 and 7.14 respectively. There was good reason, they wrote, to rely on Edelman’s expertise and follow his advice. Lindén had just now, at 7.57, confirmed that he and the boy would wait for Charles Edelman outside the entrance on Sveavägen. Salander sat for a while, lost in thought. Then she went to the kitchen and picked up a few old biscuits from the larder, and looked out towards Slussen and Riddarfjärden. So, she thought, the venue for the meeting has been changed.

Instead of doing his drawing at the medical centre, the boy would be driven home to his mother. The presence of the mother has a positive effect, Edelman wrote. There was something about that phrase Salander did not like. It felt old-fashioned, didn’t it? And the introduction itself was not much better: “The reason being that it is recognized in literature on the subject...”

It was stilted. Although it was true that many academics could not write to save their lives, and she knew nothing about the way in which this professor normally expressed himself, would one of the world’s leading neurologists really feel the need to lean on what is recognized in the literature? Wouldn’t he be more self-assured?

Salander went to her computer and skimmed through some of Edelman’s papers on the net; she may have found the odd little touch of vanity, even in the most factual passages, but there was nothing clumsy or psychologically naive in what he had written. On the contrary, the man was sharp. So she went back to the emails and checked to find out which SMTP server it had been transmitted through, and that made her jump right away. The server, Birdino, was not familiar, which it should have been, so she sent it a series of commands to see exactly what it was. In a matter of seconds she had the evidence in black and white: the server supported open mail relay, and the sender could therefore transmit messages from any address he or she wanted.

In other words, the email from Edelman was a fake, and the copies to Bublanski and Modig were no more than a smokescreen. She hardly even needed to check; she already knew what had happened: the police’s replies and the approval of the altered arrangements were also a bluff. It didn’t just mean that someone was pretending to be Edelman. There also had to be a leak, and above all, somebody wanted the boy outside on the street on Sveavägen.

Somebody wanted him defenceless in the street so that... what? They could kidnap or get rid of him? Salander looked at her watch; it was already 8.55. In just twenty minutes Torkel Lindén and August Balder would be outside waiting for someone who was not Professor Edelman, and who had anything but good intentions towards them.

What should she do? Call the police? That was never her first choice. She was especially reluctant when there was a risk of leaks. Instead, she went onto Oden’s website and got hold of Lindén’s office number. But she only made it as far as the switchboard. Lindén was in a meeting. So she found his mobile. After ending up in his voicemail, she swore out loud, and sent him both a text and an email telling him not to go out into the street with the boy, not under any circumstances. She signed herself “Wasp” for lack of any better idea.

Then she threw on her leather jacket and rushed out. But she turned, ran back into the apartment and packed her laptop with the encrypted file and her pistol, a Beretta 92, into a black sports bag before hurrying out again. She wondered if she should take her car, the B.M.W. M6 Convertible gathering dust in the garage. But she decided a taxi would be quicker. She soon regretted it. When a taxi finally appeared, it was clear that rush-hour had not subsided.

Traffic inched forward and Centralbron was almost at a standstill. Had there been an accident? Everything went slowly, everything but the time, which flew. Soon it was 9.05, then 9.10. She was in a tearing hurry and in the worst case it was already too late. Most likely Lindén and the boy went out onto the street ahead of time and the killer, or whoever it was, had already struck.

She dialled Lindén’s number again. This time the call went through, but there was no answer, so she swore again and thought of Mikael Blomkvist. She had not actually spoken to him in ages. But now she called him and he answered, sounding irritated. Only when he realized who it was did he brighten up:

“Lisbeth, is that you?”

“Shut up and listen,” she said.

Blomkvist was in the Millennium offices on Götgatan, in a foul mood. It was not just because he had had another bad night. It was T.T. Usually a serious and decent news agency, T.T. had put out a bulletin claiming that Mikael Blomkvist was sabotaging the murder enquiry by withholding crucial information, which he intended to publish first in Millennium.

Allegedly his aim was to save the magazine from financial disaster and rebuild his own “ruined reputation”. Blomkvist had known that the story was in the offing. He had had a long conversation with its author, Harald Wallin, the evening before. But he could not have imagined such a devastating result.

It was made up of idiotic insinuations and unsubstantiated accusations, but Wallin had nonetheless managed to produce something which sounded almost objective, almost credible. The man obviously had good sources both within the Serner Group and the police. Admittedly the headline was innocuous — PROSECUTOR CRITICAL OF MIKAEL BLOMKVIST — and there was plenty of room in the story for Blomkvist to defend himself. But whichever of his enemies was responsible he understood media logic: if a news bureau as serious as T.T. publishes a story like this one, not only does that make it legitimate for everybody else to jump on the bandwagon, it just about requires them to take a tougher line. It explained why Blomkvist woke up to the online papers saying

and

The print media were good enough to put quotation marks around the headlines. But the overall impression was nevertheless that a new truth was being served up with the breakfast coffee. A columnist by the name of Gustav Lund, who claimed to be fed up with all the hypocrisy, began his piece by writing: “Mikael Blomkvist, who has always thought of himself as a cut above the rest, has now been unmasked as the biggest cynic of us all”.

“Let’s hope they don’t start waving subpoenas at us,” said Malm, designer and part-owner of the magazine, as he stood next to Blomkvist, nervously chewing gum.

“Let’s hope they don’t call in the Marines,” Blomkvist said.

“What?”

“It was meant to be a joke.”

“Oh, O.K. But I don’t like the tone,” Malm said.

“Nobody likes it. But the best we can do is grit our teeth and get on with business as usual.”

“Your phone’s buzzing.”

“It’s always buzzing.”

“How about answering it, before they come up with anything worse?”

“Yes, yes,” Blomkvist muttered.

It was a girl. He thought he recognized the voice but, caught off guard, he could not at first place it.

“Who’s that?” he said.

“Salander,” she said, and at that he gave a big smile.

“Lisbeth, is that you?”

“Shut up and listen,” she said. And so he did.

The traffic had eased and Salander and the taxi driver, a young man called Ahmed who told her he had seen the Iraq war at close quarters and lost his mother and two brothers in terrorist attacks, had emerged onto Sveavägen and passed the Stockholm Concert Hall on their left. Salander, who was a terrible passenger, sent off yet another text message to Lindén and tried to call some other member of staff at Oden’s, anybody who could run out and warn him. No reply. She swore aloud, hoping that Blomkvist would do better.

“Is it panic stations?” Ahmed said from the driver’s seat.

When Salander replied, “Yes,” Ahmed shot the red light and got a fleeting smile out of her.

After that she focused on every metre they covered. Away to the left she caught a glimpse of the School of Economics and the Public Library — there was not far to go now. She scanned for the street numbers on the right-hand side, and at last saw the address. Thankfully there was no-one lying dead on the pavement. Salander pulled out some hundred-kronor notes for Ahmed. It was an ordinary, dreary November day, no more than that, and people were on their way to work. But wait... She looked over towards the low, green-speckled wall on the other side of the street.

A powerfully built man in a woollen hat and dark glasses was standing there, staring intently at the entrance on Sveavägen. There was something about his body language — his right hand was not visible but the arm was tensed and ready. Salander looked again at the door across the street, to the extent that she could see anything from her oblique angle, and she noticed it opening.

It opened slowly, as if the person about to come out was hesitant or found the door heavy, and all of a sudden Salander shouted to Ahmed to stop. She jumped out of the moving car, just as the man across the street raised his right hand and aimed a pistol with a telescopic sight at the door sliding slowly open.

Chapter 17

The man who called himself Jan Holtser was not happy with the situation. The place was wide open and it was the wrong time of day. The street was too busy, and although he had done his best to cover his face, he was uncomfortable in daylight, and so near the park. More than ever he felt that he hated killing children.

But that’s the way it was and he had to accept that the situation was of his own making.

He had underestimated the boy and now he had to correct his mistake. He must not let wishful thinking or his own demons get in the way. He would keep his mind on the job, be the professional he always was and above all not think about Olga, still less recall that glassy stare which had confronted him in Balder’s bedroom.

He had to concentrate now on the doorway across the street and on his Remington pistol which he was keeping under his windbreaker. But why wasn’t anything happening? His mouth felt dry. The wind was biting. There was snow lying in the street and on the pavement and people were hurrying back and forth to work. He tightened his grip on the pistol and glanced at his watch.

It was 9.16, and then 9.17. But still no-one emerged from the doorway across the road and he cursed: was something wrong? All he had to go on was Bogdanov’s word, but that was assurance enough. The man was a wizard with computers and last night he had sat engrossed in his work, sending off fake emails and getting the language right with the help of his contacts in Sweden. Holtser had taken care of the rest: studying pictures of the place, selecting the weapon and above all organizing the getaway car — a rental which Dennis Wilton of the Svavelsjö Motorcycle Club had fixed for them under a false name and which was now standing ready three blocks away, with Bogdanov at the wheel.

Holtser sensed a movement immediately behind him and jumped. But it was just two young men walking past a little too close to him. The street seemed to be getting busier and he did not like that. In the distance a dog was barking and there was a smell, maybe food frying at McDonald’s, then... at long last... a short man in a grey overcoat and a curly-haired boy in a red quilted jacket could be seen through the glass door on the other side of the street. Holtser crossed himself with his left hand as he always did and started to take up the pressure on the trigger of his weapon. But what was happening?

The door did not open. The man hesitated and looked down at his mobile. Get a move on, Holtser thought. At last, here we go... slowly, slowly the door was pushed open and they were on their way out, and Holtser raised his pistol, aiming at the boy’s face through the telescopic sight, and saw once more those glassy eyes. Suddenly he felt an unexpected, violent rush of excitement. Suddenly he did want to kill the boy. Suddenly he wanted to snuff out that frightening look, once and for all. But then something happened.

A young woman came running out of nowhere and threw herself over the boy as Holtser fired and hit the target. At least he hit something, and he shot again and again. But the boy and the woman had rolled behind a car, quick as lightning. Holtser caught his breath and looked right and left. Then he raced across the street, commando-style.

This time he was not going to fail.

Lindén had never been on satisfactory terms with his telephones. His wife, Saga, leaped with anticipation at every call, hoping that it would bring a new job or a new offer; he just felt uncomfortable whenever his mobile rang.

It was because of all the complaints. He and the medical centre were always taking abuse. In his view that was all part of their business — Oden’s was an emergency centre and so inevitably emotions tended to run high. But he also knew on some level that the complaints were justified. He may have driven his cost-cutting too far. Occasionally he just ran away, went out to the woods and let the others get on with it. On the other hand, he did from time to time get recognition, most recently from no less a person than Professor Edelman.

The professor had irritated him at first. He did not like it when outsiders meddled in the way the clinic managed their procedures. But he felt more conciliatory since he had been praised in that email this morning. Who knows? He might even get the professor to support the idea of the boy staying on at Oden’s for a while. That might add some spark to his life, although he could not quite understand why. As a rule he tended to keep himself apart from the children.

There was something enigmatic about this August Balder which intrigued him. From the very first he had been aggravated by the police and their demands. He wanted August to himself and hoped perhaps to be associated with some of the mystique surrounding the boy — or at least be able to understand what those endless rows of numbers meant, the ones he had written on that comic in the playroom. But it was far from easy. The boy seemed to shun any form of contact and now he was refusing to come out to the street. He was being hopelessly contrary, and Lindén was forced to drag him by his elbow.

“Come on, come on,” he muttered.

Then his mobile buzzed. Somebody was determined to get hold of him.

He did not answer. Probably it was some trivial nonsense, yet another complaint. But as he reached the door, he decided to check his messages. There were several texts from a withheld number, and they were saying something strange, presumably some kind of a joke: they told him not go outside. He was under no circumstances to go into the street.

Incomprehensible, and at that moment August seemed to want to run for it. Lindén took a firm grip on his arm, opened the door hesitantly and pulled the boy out. Everything was normal. People walked by as they did every day and he wondered again about the text messages but, before he had time to complete the thought, a figure came rushing in from the left and threw itself over August. In that instant he heard a shot.

Obviously he was in danger, and he looked across the street in terror, and there saw a tall, powerful man running towards him across Sveavägen. What the hell did he have in his hand? Was that a pistol?

Without a thought for August, Lindén turned to go back through the door and for a second or two he thought he was going to make it to safety. But he never did.

Salander’s reaction had been instinctive as she launched herself on top of the boy. She had hurt herself when she hit the pavement, or at least there was pain in her shoulder and chest. But she had no time to take stock. She took hold of the child and hid behind a car and they lay there breathing heavily while shots were fired. After that it became disturbingly quiet, and when Salander peered under the car she could see the sturdy legs of their attacker racing across the street. It crossed her mind to grab the Beretta from her sports bag and return fire, but she realized she would not have time. On the other hand... a large Volvo came crawling past, so she jumped to her feet and in one confused rush lifted the boy and ran towards the car. She wrenched open the back door and threw herself in with him.

“Drive!” she yelled, as she saw blood spreading onto the seat.

Jacob Charro was twenty-two and the proud owner of a Volvo XC60 which he had bought on credit with his father as guarantor. He was on his way to Uppsala to have lunch with his uncle and aunt and cousins, and he was looking forward to it. He was dying to tell them that he’d got a place on Syrian F.C.’s first team.

The radio was playing Avicii’s “Wake Me Up” and he was drumming his fingers on the steering wheel as he drove past the Concert Hall and the School of Economics. Something was going on further down the street. People were running in all directions. A man was shouting and the cars in front of him were driving erratically, so he slowed down. If there had been an accident, he might be able to help. Charro was always dreaming of being a hero.

But this time he got a fright. The man to the left of him ran through the traffic across the road, looking like a soldier on an offensive. There was something brutal in his movements and Charro was about to floor the accelerator when he heard his rear door being yanked open. Someone had thrown themselves in and he started shouting. He had no idea what. Maybe it was not even in Swedish. But the person — it was a girl with a child — yelled back:

“Drive!”

He hesitated for a second. Who were these people? Maybe they meant to rob him, or steal the car. He could not think straight, the whole situation was crazy. Then he had no choice but to act. His rear window was shattered because someone was shooting at them, so he accelerated wildly and with a pounding heart drove through a red at the intersection with Odengatan.

“What’s all this about?” he shouted. “What’s going on?”

“Shut it!” the girl snapped back. In the rear-view mirror he could see her examining the small boy who had large terrified eyes, checking him over with practised movements, like a hospital nurse. Then he noticed for the first time that there was not just broken glass all over the back seat. There was blood too.

“Has he been shot?”

“I don’t know. Just keep driving. Go left there... Now!”

“O.K., O.K.,” he said, terrified now, and he took a hard left up along Vanadisvägen and drove at high speed towards Vasastan, wondering if they were being followed and if anyone would shoot at them again.

He lowered his head towards the steering wheel and felt the draught through the broken rear window. What the hell had he been dragged into, and who was this girl? He looked at her again in the mirror. Black hair and piercings and a glowering look, and for a moment he felt that as far as she was concerned he simply did not exist. But then she muttered something which sounded almost cheerful.

“Good news?” he asked.

She did not answer. Instead she pulled off her leather jacket, took hold of her white T-shirt and then... Jesus! She ripped it apart with a sudden jerk and was sitting there naked from the waist up, not wearing a bra or anything, and he glanced in bewilderment at her breasts which stood straight out, and above all at the blood that ran over them like a rivulet, down towards her stomach and the waistband of her jeans.

The girl had been hit somewhere below the shoulder, not far above her heart, and was bleeding heavily. Using the T-shirt for a bandage, she wound it tightly to staunch the flow of blood and put her leather jacket back on. She looked ridiculously pleased with herself, especially since some of the blood had splashed onto her cheek and forehead, like war paint.

“So the good news is that you got shot and not the boy?” he said.

“Something like that,” she said.

“Should I take you to the Karolinska hospital?”

“No.”

Salander had found both the entry and exit holes. The bullet must have gone straight through the front of her shoulder, which was bleeding profusely — she could feel her heart pounding all the way up to her temples. But she did not think any artery had been severed, or at least so she hoped. She looked back. The attacker must have had a getaway car somewhere close by, but nobody seemed to be following them. With any luck they had managed to escape fast enough.

She quickly looked down at the boy — August — who was sitting with his hands crossed over his chest, rocking backwards and forwards. It struck Salander that she ought to do something, so she brushed the glass fragments from the boy’s hair and legs, and that made him sit still for a moment. Salander was not sure that was a good sign. The look in his eyes was rigid and blank. She nodded at him and tried to look as if she had the situation under control. She was feeling sick and dizzy and the T-shirt she had wound around her shoulder was by now soaked in blood. She was afraid that she might be losing consciousness and tried to come up with some sort of plan. One thing was crystal clear: the police were not an option. They had led the boy right into the path of the assailant and were plainly not on top of the situation. So what should she do?

She could not stay in this car. It had been seen at the shooting and the shattered rear window was bound to attract attention. She should get the man to drive her home to Fiskargatan. Then she could take her B.M.W., registered to Irene Nesser, if only she had the strength to drive it.

“Head towards Västerbron!” she ordered.

“O.K., O.K.,” said the man driving.

“Do you have anything to drink?”

“A bottle of whisky — I was going to give it to my uncle.”

“Pass it back here,” she said, and was handed a bottle of Grant’s, which she opened with difficulty.

She tore off her makeshift bandage and poured whisky onto the bullet wound. She took one, two, three big mouthfuls, and was just offering some to August when it dawned on her that that perhaps was not such a good idea. Children don’t drink whisky. Not even children in shock. Her thoughts were getting confused. Was that what was happening?

“You’ll have to give me your shirt,” she said to the man up front.

“What?”

“I need something else to bandage my shoulder with.”

“O.K., but—”

“No buts.”

“If you want me to help you, you could at least tell me why you were being shot at. Are you criminals?”

“I’m trying to protect the boy, it’s that simple. Those bastards were after him.”

“Why?”

“None of your business.”

“So he’s not your son.”

“I don’t even know him.”

“So why are you helping him?”

Salander hesitated.

“We have the same enemies,” she said. At that the young man pulled off his V-necked pullover — with a certain amount of reluctance and difficulty — as he steered the car with his other hand. Then he unbuttoned his shirt, took it off and handed it back to Salander, who wound it gingerly around her shoulder. August, who was worryingly immobile now, looked down at his skinny legs with a frozen expression, and once again Salander asked herself what she ought to be doing.

They could hide out at her place on Fiskargatan. Blomkvist was the only person who knew the address, and the apartment could not be traced through her name on any public register. But it was still a risk. There had been a time when she was known up and down the country as a complete lunatic, and this enemy was certainly skilled at digging up information.

Someone on Sveavägen might have recognized her; the police might already be turning everything upside down to find her. She needed a new hiding place, not linked to any of her identities, and so she needed help. But from whom? Holger?

Her former guardian, Holger Palmgren, had almost recovered from his stroke and was living in a two-room apartment on Liljeholmstorget. Holger was the only person who really knew her. He was loyal to a fault and would do everything in his power to help. But he was elderly and anxious and she did not want to drag him into this if she could help it.

There was Blomkvist of course, and in fact there was nothing wrong with him. Still, she was reluctant to contact him again — perhaps precisely because there was nothing wrong with him. He was such a damn good person. But what the hell... you could hardly hold that against him, or at least not too much. She called his mobile. He picked up after just one ring, sounding alarmed.

“It’s such a relief to hear your voice! What the hell has happened?”

“I can’t tell you now.”

“It looks like one of you’s been shot. There’s blood here.”

“The boy’s O.K.”

“And you?”

“I’m O.K.”

“You’ve been shot.”

“You’ll have to wait, Blomkvist.”

She looked out at the town and saw that they were close to Västerbron already. She turned to the driver:

“Pull up there, by the bus stop.”

“Are you getting out?”

“You’re getting out. You’re going to give me your mobile and wait outside while I talk. Is that clear?”

He glanced at her, terrified, then passed back his mobile, stopped the car and got out. Salander continued her conversation.

“What’s going on?” Blomkvist said.

“Don’t you worry about that,” she said. “From now on I want you to carry an Android phone with you, a Samsung or something. You must have one at the office?”

“Yes, I think there are a couple.”

“Good. So go straight into Google Play and install the Redphone app and also the Threema app for text messaging. We need a secure line of communication.”

“Right.”

“If you’re as much of an idiot as I think you are, whoever helps you do it has to remain anonymous. I don’t want any weak links.”

“Of course.”

“And then...”

“Yes?”

“Only use it in an emergency. All other communication should be through a special link on your computer. You or the person who isn’t an idiot needs to go into www.pgpi.org and download an encryption program for your emails. I want you to do that right now, then I want you to find a safe hiding place for the boy and me — somewhere not connected to you or Millennium — and let me have the address in an encrypted email.”

“It’s not your job to keep the boy safe, Lisbeth.”

“I don’t trust the police.”

“Then we’ll have to find someone else you do trust. The boy is autistic, he has special needs. I don’t think you should be responsible for him, especially not if you’re wounded...”

“Are you going to keep talking crap or do you want to help me?”

“Help you of course.”

“Good. Check LISBETH STUFF in five minutes. I’ll give you more information there. Then delete it.”

“Lisbeth, listen to me, you need to get to a hospital. You need to be fixed up. I can tell by your voice...”

She hung up, waved the young man back in from the bus stop, got out her laptop and through her mobile hacked into Blomkvist’s computer. She wrote out instructions on how to download and install the encryption program.

She then told the man to drive her to Mosebacke torg. It was a risk, but she had no choice. The city was beginning to look more and more blurred.

Blomkvist swore under his breath. He was standing on Sveavägen, not far from the body of Torkel Lindén and the cordon which the police who had been first on the scene were putting in place. Ever since Salander’s original call he had been engaged in a frenzy of activity. He had thrown himself into a taxi to get here and had done everything he could during the trip to stop the boy and the director from walking out onto the street.

The only other member of staff he had managed to get hold of at Oden’s Medical Centre was Birgitta Lindgren, who had rushed into the hallway only to see her colleague fall against the door with a fatal bullet wound to his head. When Blomkvist arrived ten minutes later she was beside herself, but she and another woman by the name of Ulrika Franzén, who had been on her way to the offices of Albert Bonniers the publishers further up the street, had still been able to give Blomkvist a pretty coherent account of what had happened.

Which was why Blomkvist knew, even before his mobile rang again, that Salander had saved August Balder’s life. She and the boy were now in some car with a driver who had no reason to be enthusiastic about helping them having been shot at. Blomkvist had seen the blood on the pavement and in the street and, even though the call reassured him somewhat, he was still extremely concerned. Salander had sounded in a bad way and yet — no surprise there — she had been as pig-headed as ever.

She had a gunshot wound, but she was determined to hide the boy herself. That was understandable, given her history, but should he and the magazine get involved? However heroic her actions on Sveavägen, what she had done might from a legal point of view be seen as kidnapping. He could not help her with that. He was already in trouble with the media as well as the public prosecutor.

But this was Salander after all, and he had given his word. He would damn well help her, even if Berger threw a fit. He took a deep breath and pulled out his mobile. But a familiar voice was calling out behind him. It was Jan Bublanski. Bublanski came running along the pavement looking as if he were close to physical collapse, and with him were Detective Sergeant Modig and a tall, athletic man in his fifties, presumably the professor Salander had mentioned.

“Where’s the boy?” Bublanski panted.

“He was whisked away in a big red Volvo, somebody rescued him.”

“Who?”

“I’ll tell you what I know,” Blomkvist said, not sure what he would or should say. “But first I have to make a call.”

“Oh no, first you’re going to talk to us. We have to send out a nationwide alert.”

“Talk to that lady over there. Her name is Ulrika Franzén. She knows more than I do. She saw it happen, she’s even got some sort of description of the assailant. I arrived after it happened.”

“And the man who saved the boy?”

“The woman who saved him. Fru Franzén has a description of her as well. But just give me a minute here...”

“How did you know something was going to happen in the first place,” Modig spat, with unexpected anger. “They said on the radio that you had called the emergency services before any shots were fired.”

“I had a tip-off.”

“From whom?”

Blomkvist took another deep breath and looked Modig straight in the eye, unmoveable as ever.

“Whatever may have been written in today’s papers, I hope you realize that I want to cooperate with you in every way I can.”

“I’ve always trusted you, Mikael. But I’m beginning to have my doubts,” Modig said.

“O.K., I understand that. But you have to understand that I don’t trust you either. There’s been a serious leak — you’ve grasped that much, haven’t you? Otherwise this wouldn’t have happened,” he said, pointing at the prone body inside the cordon.

“That’s true, and it’s absolutely terrible,” Bublanski said.

“I’m going to make my call now,” Blomkvist said, and he walked up the street so he could talk undisturbed.

But he never made any call. He realised that the time had come to get serious about security, so he walked back and informed Bublanski and Modig that he had to go to his office immediately, but he was at their disposal whenever they needed him. At that moment, to her own surprise, Modig took hold of his arm.

“First you have to tell us how you knew that something was going to happen,” she said firmly.

“I’m afraid I have to invoke my right to protect my sources,” Blomkvist answered with a pained smile.

Then he waved down a taxi and took off for the office, deep in thought. Millennium usually used Tech Source, a consultancy firm with a team of young women who gave the magazine quick and efficient help whenever they had more complex I.T. issues. But he did not want to bring them in now. Nor did he feel like turning to Christer Malm, even though he knew more about I.T. than anyone on the editorial team. Instead he thought of Zander, who was already involved in the story and was also great with computers. Blomkvist decided to ask for his help, and promised himself that he would fight to get the boy a permanent job — just as soon as he and Berger had managed to sort out this mess.

Berger’s morning had been a nightmare even before shots were fired on Sveavägen, and that was due to the sickening T.T. bulletin. To some extent it was a continuation of the old campaign against Blomkvist — all the jealous, twisted souls came crawling out of the woodwork again, spewing their bile on Twitter and online forums and in emails. This time the racist mob had joined in, because Millennium had been in the forefront of the battles against xenophobia and racism for many years.

The worst part was surely that this hate campaign made it so much more difficult for everyone to do their jobs. All of a sudden people were less inclined to share information with the magazine. On top of that there was a rumour that Chief Prosecutor Ekström was planning to issue a search warrant for the magazine’s offices. Berger did not really believe it. That kind of warrant was a serious matter, given the right to source protection.

But she did agree with Malm that the present toxic atmosphere would give even lawyers ludicrous ideas about how they should act. She was standing there thinking about how to retaliate when Blomkvist stepped into the offices. To her surprise, he did not want to talk to her. Instead he went straight to Zander and ushered him into her room.

After a while she followed. She found the young man looking tense. She heard Blomkvist mention “P.G.P.” She had been on an I.T. security course so she knew what that meant, and she saw Zander making notes before, without so much as a glance in her direction, he made a beeline for Blomkvist’s laptop in the open-plan office.

“What was all that about?” she said.

Blomkvist told her in a whisper. She could barely take it in, and he had to repeat himself.

“So you want me to find a hiding place for them?”

“Sorry to drag you into this, Erika,” he said. “But I don’t know anyone who has as many friends with summer houses as you do.”

“I don’t know, Mikael. I really don’t know.”

“We can’t let them down. Salander has been shot. The situation is desperate.”

“If she’s been shot, she should go to a hospital.”

“She won’t. She wants to protect the boy at all costs.”

“To give him the calm he needs to draw the murderer.”

“Yes.”

“It’s too great a responsibility, Mikael, too great a risk. If something happens, the fallout would destroy the magazine. Witness protection is not our job. This is something for the police — just think of all the questions that will be thrown up by those drawings, both for the investigation and on a psychological level. There has to be another solution.”

“Maybe — if we were dealing with someone other than Lisbeth Salander.”

“You know what? I get really pissed off with the way you always defend her.”

“I’m only trying to be realistic. The authorities have let the Balder boy down and put his life in danger — I know that infuriates Salander.”

“So we just have to go along with it, is that it?”

“We don’t have a choice. She’s out there somewhere, hopping mad, and has nowhere to go.”

“Take them to Sandhamn then.”

“There’s too much of a connection between Lisbeth and me. If it comes out that it’s her, they would search my addresses straight away.”

“O.K. then.”

“O.K. then, what?”

“O.K., I’ll find something.”

She could hardly believe she was saying it. That was how it was with Blomkvist — she was incapable of saying no — but there was no limit to what he would do for her either.

“Great, Ricky. Where?”

She tried to think, but her mind was a blank. She could not come up with a single name.

“I’m racking my brains,” she said.

“Well, do it quickly, then give the address and directions to Andrei. He knows what to do.”

Berger needed some air and so she went down into Götgatan and walked in the direction of Medborgarplatsen, running through one name after another in her mind. But not one of them felt right. There was too much at stake, and everyone she thought of was in some way not right or had some drawback or even if not she was reluctant to expose them to the risk or put them to the trouble by asking, perhaps because she herself was so upset by the situation. On the other hand... here was a small boy and people were trying to kill him and she had promised. She had to come up with something.

A police siren wailed in the distance and she looked over towards the park and the Tunnelbana station and at the mosque on the hill. A young man went by, surreptitiously shuffling some papers, and then suddenly — Gabriella Grane. At first the name surprised her. Grane was not a close friend and she worked at a place where it was unwise to flout any laws. Grane would risk losing her job if she so much as thought about this, and yet... Berger could not get it out of her head.

It was not just that Grane was an exceptionally good and responsible person. A memory also kept intruding. It was from last summer, in the early hours of the morning or maybe even at daybreak after a crayfish party out at Grane’s summer house on Ingarö island, when the two had been sitting in a garden swing on the terrace looking down at the water through a gap in the trees.

“This is where I’d run to if the hyenas were after me,” Berger had said, without really knowing what she meant. She had been feeling tired and vulnerable at work, and there was something about that house which she thought would make it an ideal place of refuge.

It stood on a rock promontory with steep, smooth sides, and the surrounding trees and elevation shielded it from onlookers. She remembered Grane saying, “If the hyenas come after you, you’re welcome to be here, Erika.”

Maybe it was asking too much, but she decided to give it a try. She went back to the office to call from the encrypted Redphone app which Zander had by then installed for her too.

Chapter 18

Gabriella Grane was on her way to a meeting at Säpo when her personal mobile buzzed. The meeting had been called at very short notice to discuss the incident at Sveavägen. She answered tersely:

“Yes?”

“It’s Erika.”

“Hi there. Can’t talk now. We’ll speak later.”

“I have a...” Berger said.

But Grane had already hung up — this was no time for personal calls. She walked into the meeting room wearing an expression that suggested she meant to start a minor war. Crucial information had been leaked and now a second person was dead and one more apparently seriously wounded. She had never felt more like telling the whole lot of them to go to hell. They had been so eager to get hold of new information that they had lost their heads. For half a minute she did not hear one word her colleagues were saying. She just sat there, seething. But then she pricked up her ears.

Someone was saying that Blomkvist, the journalist, had called the emergency services before shots were fired on Sveavägen. That was strange, and now Erika Berger had called, and she was not the type to make casual calls, and certainly not during working hours. She might have had something important or even critical to say. Grane got up and made an excuse.

“Gabriella, you need to listen to this,” Kraft said in an unusually sharp tone.

“I have to make a call,” she replied, and suddenly she was not in the least interested in what the head of the Security Police thought of her.

“What sort of call?”

“A call,” she said, and left them to go into her office.

Berger at once asked Grane to call her instead on the Samsung. The minute she had her friend on the line again, she could tell that something was going on. There was none of the usual friendly enthusiasm in her voice. On the contrary, Grane sounded worried and tense, as if she knew from the start that the conversation was important.

“Hi,” she said simply. “I’m still really pushed. But is this about August Balder?”

Berger felt acutely uncomfortable. “How did you know?”

“I’m on the investigation and I’ve just heard that Mikael Blomkvist was tipped off about what was going to happen on Sveavägen.”

“You’ve already heard that?”

“Yes, and now of course we’re eager to know how that came about.”

“Sorry. I can’t tell you that.”

“O.K. Understood. But why did you call?”

Berger closed her eyes. How could she have been such an idiot?

“I’m so sorry. I’ll have to ask somebody else,” she said. “You have a conflict of interest.”

“I’m happy to take on almost any conflict of interest, Erika. But I can’t stand the thought of your withholding information. This investigation means more to me than you can imagine.”

“Really?”

“Yes, it does. I knew that Balder was under serious threat, but still I couldn’t prevent the murder, and I’m going to have to live with that for the rest of my life. So, please, don’t hide anything from me.”

“I’m going to have to, Gabriella. I’m sorry. I don’t want you to get into trouble because of us.”

“I saw Mikael in Saltsjöbaden the night before last, the night of the murder.”

“He didn’t mention that.”

“It wouldn’t have made sense for me to identify myself.”

“I see.”

“We could help each other out in this mess.”

“That sounds like a good idea. I can ask Mikael to call you later. But now I have to get on with this.”

“I know just as well as you do that there’s a leak in the police team. At this stage we could benefit from unlikely alliances.”

“Absolutely. I’m sorry, but I have to press on.”

“O.K.,” Grane said, obviously disappointed. “I’ll pretend this call never happened. Good luck now.”

“Thanks,” Berger said, and went back to searching through her contacts.

Grane went back to the meeting room, her mind whirling. What was it that Erika had wanted? She did not fully understand and yet she had a vague idea. As she came back into the room the conversation died and everyone looked at her.

“What was that about?” Kraft said.

“Something private.”

“That you had to deal with now?”

“That I had to deal with. How far had you got?”

“We were talking about what happened on Sveavägen,” said Ragnar Olofsson, the head of division, “but as I was saying, we don’t yet have enough information. The situation is chaotic, and it looks as if we’re losing our source in Bublanski’s group. The detective inspector seems to have become paranoid.”

“You can’t blame him,” Grane said.

“Well... perhaps not. We’ve talked about that too. We’ll leave no stone unturned until we know how the attacker worked out that the boy was at the medical centre and that he was going to go out by the front door when he did. No effort will be spared, I need hardly say. But I must emphasize that a leak did not necessarily come from within the police. The information was quite widely known — at the medical centre of course, by the mother and her unreliable partner Lasse Westman, and in the offices of Millennium. And we can’t rule out hacker attacks. I’ll come back to that. If I might continue with my report?”

“Please.”

“We’ve been discussing how Mikael Blomkvist comes into this, and this is where we’re worried. How could he know about a shooting before it happens? In my opinion, he’s got some source close to the criminals themselves, and I see no reason for us to tiptoe around his efforts to protect those sources. We have to find out where he got his information from.”

“The more so since he seems desperate and will do anything for a scoop,” Superintendent Mårten Nielsen said.

“It would appear that Mårten has some excellent sources too. He reads the evening papers,” Grane said acidly.

“Not the evening papers, sweetie. T.T. — a source which even we at Säpo regard as fairly reliable.”

“That was absurd and defamatory, and you know it as well as I do,” Grane said.

“I had no idea you were so besotted with Blomkvist.”

“Idiot!”

“Stop this at once!” Kraft said. “This is ridiculous behaviour! Carry on, Ragnar. What do we know about what happened?”

“The first people on the scene were two regular police officers, Erik Sandström and Tord Landgren,” Olofsson said. “My information comes from them. They were there on the dot of 9.24, and by then it was all over. Torkel Lindén was dead, shot in the back of the head, and the boy, well, we don’t know. According to witnesses, he was hit too. We have blood in the street. But nothing is confirmed. The boy was driven away in a red Volvo — we do at least have parts of the registration number plus the model of the vehicle. We’ll get the name of its owner very shortly.”

Grane noticed that Kraft was writing everything down, just as she had done at their earlier meetings.

“But what actually happened?” she said.

“According to two students from the School of Economics who were standing on the opposite side of Sveavägen, it looked like a settling of scores between two criminal gangs who were both after the boy.”

“Sounds far-fetched.”

“I’m not so sure,” Olofsson said.

“What makes you say that?” Kraft said.

“There were professionals on both sides. The assailant seems to have been standing and watching the door from a low green wall on the other side of Sveavägen, in front of the park. There’s a lot to suggest that this is the man who shot Frans Balder. Not that anyone has seen his face clearly; it’s possible he was wearing some sort of mask. But he seems to have moved with the same exceptional efficiency and speed. And in the opposite camp there was this woman.”

“What do we know about her?”

“Not much. She was wearing a black leather jacket, we think, and dark jeans. She was young with black hair and piercings — a punk, according to one witness — also short, but fierce. She appeared out of nowhere, throwing herself over the boy and shielding him. The witnesses all agree that she was not some ordinary member of the public. She seemed to have training, or had at least found herself in similar situations before. Then there’s the car — we have conflicting reports. One witness says it just happened to be driving by, and the woman and the boy threw themselves in more or less while it was moving. Others — especially those guys from the School of Economics — think the car was part of the operation. Either way, we have a kidnapping on our hands.”

“It doesn’t make sense. This woman saved the boy only to abscond with him?” Grane said.

“That’s what it looks like. Otherwise we would have heard from her by now, wouldn’t we?”

“How did she get to Sveavägen?”

“We don’t know yet. But a witness, a former editor-in-chief of a trade-union paper, says the woman looked somehow familiar,” Olofsson said.

He went on to say something else, but by then Grane had stopped listening. She was thinking, Zalachenko’s daughter — it has to be Zalachenko’s daughter, knowing full well how unfair it was to call her that. The daughter had nothing to do with the father. On the contrary, she had hated him.

But Grane had known her by that name ever since, years earlier, she had read everything she could lay her hands on about the Zalachenko affair. While Olofsson went on speculating, she began to feel the pieces were falling into place. Already the day before she had identified some commonalities between Zalachenko’s old network and the group which called itself the Spiders, but had dismissed them. She had believed there was a limit to how far thuggish criminals could develop their skills; it seemed entirely unreasonable to suppose that they could go from seedy-looking biker types in their leather waistcoats to cutting-edge hackers. Yet the thought had occurred to her. Grane had even wondered if the girl who helped Linus Brandell trace the break-in on Balder’s computers might have been Zalachenko’s daughter. There was a Säpo file on the woman, with a note that said “Hacker? Computer savvy?”, and even though it seemed prompted by the surprisingly favourable reference she had received for her work at Milton Security, it was clear from the document that she had devoted a great deal of time to research into her father’s criminal organization.

Most striking of all was that there was a known connection between the woman and Mikael Blomkvist. It was unclear what exactly that connection was; Grane did not for one moment believe the malicious rumours that it was a blackmail situation or something to do with sado-masochistic sex, but the connection was there. Both Blomkvist and the woman — who matched the description of Zalachenko’s daughter — appeared to have known something about the shooting on Sveavägen beforehand, and afterwards Erika Berger had rung to discuss something important. Wasn’t it all pointing in the same direction?

“I was wondering...” Grane said, perhaps too loudly, interrupting Olofsson.

“Yes?” he said testily.

She was about to present her theory when she noticed something which made her hesitate.

It was nothing so remarkable, not at all. It was just that Kraft was once again meticulously writing down what Olofsson had said. It was probably good to have a senior boss who was so committed, but there was something rather too zealous about that scratching pen, and it made Grane wonder if a senior boss, whose job it was to see the bigger picture, should be so preoccupied with every tiny detail. Without really knowing why, she began to feel very uneasy.

It may have been because she herself was busy pointing a finger at someone on flimsy grounds, but also Kraft seemed to blush at that moment perhaps because she realized that she was being observed, and looked away in embarrassment. Grane decided not to finish the sentence she had begun.

“Or rather...”

“Yes, Gabriella?”

“Oh, nothing,” she said, feeling a sudden need to get away, and even though she knew that it would not look good, she left the meeting room once more and went to the toilet.

Later she would remember how she stared at herself in the mirror and tried to understand what she had seen. Had Kraft really blushed, and if so, what did that mean? Maybe nothing, she decided, absolutely nothing, and, even if it was indeed shame or guilt that Grane had read in her face, it could have been about almost anything. It occurred to her that she did not know her boss all that well. But she knew enough to be sure that she would not send a child to his death for financial or any other gain, no, that was out of the question.

Grane had simply become paranoid, a typically suspicious spy who saw moles everywhere, even in her own reflection. “Idiot,” she muttered, and smiled at herself despondently, as if to dismiss the idea and come back down to earth. But that didn’t solve anything. In that instant she thought she saw a new kind of truth in her own eyes.

She suspected that she was quite like Helena Kraft in that she was capable and ambitious and wanted to get a pat on the back from her superiors. That was not necessarily always a good thing, though. With that tendency, if you operate in an unhealthy culture you risk becoming just as unhealthy yourself and — who knows — perhaps it is the will to please that leads people to crime just as often as evil or greed.

People want to fit in and do well, and so they do indescribably stupid things. Is that what had happened here? If nothing else then Hans Faste — because surely he was Säpo’s source in Bublanski’s group — had been leaking to them because that was what he was expected to do and because he wanted to score points with Säpo. Olofsson had seen to it that Kraft was kept informed of every little detail; she was his boss and he wanted to be in her good books and then... well, maybe Kraft in turn had passed on some information because she wanted to be seen to be doing a good job. But, if so, by whom? The head of the national police, the government, foreign intelligence, in that case most likely American or English, who perhaps then...

Grane did not take this train of thought any further. She asked herself again if she was letting her imagination run away with her but, even if she was, she still could not trust her team. She wanted to be good at her job, but not necessarily by doing her duty to Säpo. She just wanted the Balder boy to be safe. Instead of Kraft’s face she now saw Berger’s, so she went to her office and got out her Blackphone, the same one she had been using to call Frans Balder.

Berger had left the office to have an undisturbed conversation and was now standing in front of Söderbokhandeln, the bookstore on Götgatan, wondering if she had done something stupid. Grane had argued her case so well that Berger could not defend herself. That is no doubt the disadvantage of having intelligent friends: they see straight through you.

Not only had Grane worked out what Berger wanted to talk to her about, she had also persuaded her that she felt a moral responsibility and would never reveal the hiding place, however much that might appear to conflict with her professional duty. She said she had a debt to repay and insisted on helping. She was going to courier over the keys to her summer house on Ingarö and arrange for directions to be sent over the encrypted link which Andrei Zander had set up.

Further up Götgatan a beggar collapsed, scattering two carrier bags full of plastic bottles across the pavement. Berger hurried over but the man, who was soon on his feet again, declined her help so she gave him a sad smile and went back up to the Millennium offices.

Blomkvist was looking upset and exhausted. His hair was standing on end and his shirt hung outside his trousers. She had not seen him looking so worn out in a long time. Yet when his eyes shone like that, there was no stopping him. It meant he had entered into that absolute concentration from which he would not emerge until he had got to the heart of the story.

“Have you found a hiding place?” he said.

She nodded.

“It might be best if you say nothing more. We have to keep this to as small a circle of people as possible.”

“That sounds sensible. But let’s hope it’s a short-term solution. I don’t like the idea of Lisbeth Salander being responsible for the boy.”

“Who knows? Maybe they’ll be good for each other.”

“What did you tell the police?”

“Almost nothing.”

“Not a good time to be keeping things under wraps.”

“Not really, no.”

“Maybe Salander is prepared to make a statement, so you can get some peace and quiet.”

“I don’t want to put any pressure on her. She’s in bad shape. Can you get Zander to ask her if we can send a doctor out there?”

“I will. But you know...”

“What?”

“I’m actually coming round to the idea that she’s doing the right thing,” Berger said.

“Why do you say that, all of a sudden?”

“Because I too have my sources. Police headquarters isn’t a secure place right now,” she said, and walked over to Zander with a determined stride.

Chapter 19

Bublanski was standing alone in his office. In the end Hans Faste had admitted to keeping Säpo informed, and without even listening to his justification Bublanski removed him from the investigation. But even if that had provided further evidence that Faste was an unscrupulous opportunist, he could not bring himself to believe that the man had also been leaking to criminals. Inevitably there were corrupt and depraved people in the force. But to deliver a small, mentally disabled boy into the hands of a cold-blooded murderer was beyond the pale, and he refused to believe that anyone in the force would be capable of that. Perhaps the information had seeped out by some other route. Their telephones might be tapped or they had been hacked, although he could not think that notes about August’s abilities had been written in any computer. He had been trying to reach the Säpo head, Helena Kraft, to discuss the matter. He had stressed that it was important, but she had not returned his call.

The Swedish Trade Council and the Ministry of Enterprise had been onto him, which was worrisome. Even if it was not said in so many words, their main concern was not for the boy or the shooting on Sveavägen, but rather for the research programme which Frans Balder had been working on, which appeared to have been stolen on the night of his murder.

Several of the most skilled computer technicians in the force and three I.T. experts from Linköping University and the Royal Institute of Technology had been to the house in Saltsjöbaden, but they had found no trace of this research, either on his computers or among the papers which he had left behind.

“So now, on top of everything else, we have an Artificial Intelligence on the loose,” Bublanski muttered to himself. He was reminded of an old riddle his mischievous cousin Samuel liked to put to his friends in synagogue. It was a paradox: if God is indeed omnipotent, is he then capable of creating something more intelligent than himself? The riddle was considered disrespectful, he recalled, even blasphemous. It had that evasive quality which meant that, however you answered, you were wrong. There was a knock at the door, and Bublanski was brought back to the questions at hand. It was Modig, ceremoniously handing over another piece of Swiss orange chocolate.

“Thank you,” he said. “Have you got anything new?”

“We think we know how the killers got Lindén and the boy out of the building. They sent fake emails from our and Professor Edelman’s addresses and arranged a pick-up on the street.”

“Is that possible?”

“Yes, and it’s not even very difficult.”

“Terrifying.”

“True, but that still doesn’t explain how they knew to access the Oden’s Medical Centre computer, or how they found out that Edelman was involved.”

“I suppose we’d better have our own computers checked out,” Bublanski said gloomily.

“Already in hand.”

“Is this how it was meant to be, that we won’t dare to write or say anything for fear of being overheard?”

“I don’t know. I hope not. Meanwhile we have a Jacob Charro out there waiting to be interviewed.”

“Who’s he?”

“A footballer, plays for Syrian F.C. And he’s the man who drove the woman and August Balder away from Sveavägen.”

A muscular young man with short dark hair and high cheekbones was sitting in the interview room. He was wearing a mustard-coloured V-neck pullover without a shirt and seemed at once agitated and a little proud.

Modig opened with: “18.35 on November 22. Interview with witness Jacob Charro, twenty-two years old, resident in Norborg. Tell us what happened this morning.”

“Well...” Charro said. “I was driving along Sveavägen and noticed some commotion in the street ahead of me. I thought there’d been an accident, so I slowed down. But then I saw a man come from the left and run across the road. He ran out without even looking at the traffic and I remember thinking he must be a terrorist.”

“Why is that?”

“He seemed to be bursting with this sacred fury.”

“Were you able to see what he looked like?”

“Not really, but since then it’s struck me that there was something unnatural about his face.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like it wasn’t his real face. He was wearing sunglasses which must have been secured around his ears, but his cheeks, it looked as if he had something in his mouth, I don’t know. Then there was his moustache and eyebrows, and the colour of his skin.”

“Do you think he was wearing a mask?”

“Something like that. But I didn’t have time to think too much about it. Before I knew it the rear door of the car was yanked open and then... what can I say? It was one of those moments when everything happens all at once — the whole world comes down onto your head. Suddenly there were strangers in my car and the rear windscreen shattered. I was in shock.”

“What did you do?”

“I accelerated like crazy. The girl who jumped in was shouting at me to drive, and I was so scared I hardly knew what I was doing. I just followed orders.”

“Orders?”

“That’s how it seemed. I reckoned we were being chased, and I didn’t see any other way out. I kept swerving and that, just like the girl told me to, and besides...”

“Go on.”

“There was something about her voice. It was so cold and intense, I found myself hanging on to it, as if it were the only thing that was in control in all the mayhem.”

“You said you thought you recognized the woman?”

“Yes, but not at the time, definitely not. I was scared to death and was busy concentrating on all the weird things that were happening. There was blood all over the place back there.”

“Coming from the boy or the woman?”

“I wasn’t sure at first, and neither of them seemed to know either. But then I heard her say something like ‘Yes!’, like something good had happened.”

“What was that about?”

“The girl realized she was the one bleeding and not the boy, and that really struck me. It was like, ‘Hurray, I’ve been shot,’ and I tell you, it wasn’t some little graze. However she tried to bandage it, she couldn’t staunch the blood. It just kept oozing out, and the girl kept getting paler and paler. She must have felt like shit.”

“And still she was happy that it wasn’t the boy who’d been hit.”

“Exactly. Like a mother.”

“But she wasn’t the child’s mother.”

“No. They didn’t even know each other, she said, and that became more and more obvious. She didn’t have a clue about children.”

“On the whole,” Modig said, “how did you think she treated the boy?”

“Not sure how to answer that, to be honest. I wouldn’t say she had the world’s best social skills. She treated me like a damn servant, but even so...”

“Yes?”

“I reckon she was a good person. I wouldn’t have wanted her to be my babysitter, if you see what I mean. But she was O.K.”

“So you reckon the child is safe with her?”

“She’s obviously fucking crazy. But the little boy... he’s called August, right?”

“That’s correct.”

“She’ll guard August with her life, if it comes to it. That was my impression.”

“How did you part company?”

“She asked me to drive them to Mosebacke torg.”

“Is that where she lives, on the square?”

“I have no idea. She gave me no explanation whatsoever, but I got the feeling she had some other kind of transport from there. She didn’t say more than was necessary. She just asked me to write down my details. She was going to pay for the damage to the car, she said, plus a little extra.”

“Did she look as though she had money?”

“Going by her appearance alone, I’d say she lived in a dump. But the way she behaved... I don’t know. It wouldn’t surprise me if she was loaded. You could tell that she was used to getting her own way.”

“What happened then?”

“She told the boy to get out of the car.”

“And did he?”

“He just rocked backwards and forwards and didn’t move. But then her tone hardened. She said it was a matter of life and death or something like that, and he tottered out of the car with his arms stiff, as if he was sleepwalking.”

“Did you see where they went?”

“Only that it was to the left — towards Slussen. But the girl...”

“Yes?”

“Well, she was obviously feeling like shit. She was weaving about and seemed on the point of collapse.”

“Doesn’t sound good. And the boy?”

“Probably wasn’t in great shape either. He was looking really odd. The whole time in the car I worried he was going to have some sort of fit. But when he got out he seemed to have come to terms with the situation. In any case he kept asking, ‘Where?’ over and over. ‘Where?’”

Modig and Bublanski looked at each other.

“Are you sure about that?” Modig said.

“Why shouldn’t I be?”

“Well, you might have thought you heard him saying that because he had a questioning look on his face.”

“Why would I have thought that?”

“Because the boy’s mother says he doesn’t speak at all, has never said a single word,” Modig said.

“Are you joking?”

“No, and it would be odd for him to suddenly start speaking under these very circumstances.”

“I heard what I heard.”

“O.K., and what did the woman answer?”

“‘Away’, I think. ‘Away from here.’ Something like that. Then she almost collapsed, like I said. And she told me to drive off.”

“And you did?”

“Like a bat out of hell.”

“And then you realized who you’d had in your car?”

“I’d already worked out that the boy was the son of that genius who’d been murdered. But the girl... she vaguely reminded me of someone. I was shaking like a leaf and in the end I couldn’t drive any more. I stopped on Ringvägen, by Skanstull, got myself a beer at Clarion Hotel and tried to calm down. And that’s when it hit me. It was the girl who was wanted for murder a few years ago, but then the charges were dropped, and it came out that she’d been through some terrible things in a mental hospital when she was a child. I remember it well — the father of a friend of mine had been tortured in Syria, and he was having more or less the same stuff done to him at the time, electroshock therapy and that sort of shit, because he couldn’t deal with his memories. It was like he was being tortured all over again.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“That he was tortured?”

“No, that it was her, Lisbeth Salander.”

“I looked at all the pictures online and there’s no doubt about it. There were other things that fit too, you know...”

Charro hesitated, as if embarrassed.

“She took off her T-shirt because she needed to use it as a bandage, and when she turned to wrap it around her shoulder I saw that she had a large tattoo of a dragon all the way up her back. That same tattoo was mentioned in one of the old newspaper articles.”

Berger arrived at Grane’s summer house with several shopping bags filled with food, crayons and paper, a couple of difficult puzzles and a few other things. But there was no sign of August or Salander. Salander had not responded, either on her Redphone app or on the encrypted link. Berger was sick with anxiety.

Whichever way she looked at it, this did not bode well. Admittedly Salander was not known for needless communication or reassurance, but it was she who had asked for a safe house. Also she had responsibility for a child, and if she was not answering their calls under those circumstances, she must be in a bad way.

Berger cursed aloud and walked out onto the terrace where she and Grane had been sitting and talking about escaping from the world. That was only a few months ago, but it felt like an age. There was no table now, no chairs, no bottles, no hubbub behind them, only snow, branches and debris flung there by the storm. It was as if life itself had abandoned the place. Somehow the memory of that crayfish party increased the sense of desolation, as if the festivities were draped like a ghost over its walls.

Berger went back into the kitchen and put some microwaveable food into the refrigerator: meatballs, packets of spaghetti with meat sauce, sausage stroganoff, fish pie, potato cakes and a whole lot of even worse junk food Blomkvist had advised her to buy: Billy’s Pan Pizza, piroshki, chips, Coca-Cola, a bottle of Tullamore Dew, a carton of cigarettes, three bags of crisps, three bars of chocolate and some sticks of fresh liquorice. She set out drawing paper, crayons, pencils, an eraser and a ruler and compass on the large round table. On the top sheet of paper she drew a sun and a flower and wrote the word WELCOME in four warm colours.

The house was close to Ingarö beach, but you could not see it from there. It lay high up on the rock promontory, concealed behind pine trees. It consisted of four rooms. The kitchen with glass doors onto the terrace was the largest and also the heart of the house. In addition to the round table there was an old rocking chair and two worn, sagging sofas which nonetheless managed to look inviting thanks to a pair of red tartan rugs. It was a cosy home.

It was also a good safe house. Berger left the door open, put the keys in the top drawer of the hall closet, as agreed, and made her way back down the flight of wooden steps flanking the steep, smooth rock slope — the only way to the house for anyone arriving by car.

The sky was dark and turbulent, the wind blowing hard again. Her spirits were low and did not improve during the drive home. Her thoughts turned to Hanna Balder. Berger had not exactly been a member of the fan club — Hanna often played the parts of women who were both sexy and dim-witted, whom all men thought they could seduce, and Berger was disgusted by the film industry’s devotion to that type of character. But none of that was true any longer and Berger regretted that she had been so ungracious at the time. She had been too hard on the woman; it was much too easy to criticize when a pretty girl gets a big break early in her career.

Nowadays, on the rare occasions Hanna Balder appeared in a major production, her eyes tended to reflect a restrained sorrow, which gave depth to the parts she played, and — what did Berger know? — that may have been genuine. She had been through some difficult times, not least the past twenty-four hours. Since morning, Berger had been insisting that Hanna be taken to August. This was surely a situation in which a child needed his mother more than ever.

But Salander, who was still communicating with them at the time, had been against the idea. No-one yet knew where the leak had come from, she had written, and they could not rule out the mother’s immediate circle. Lasse Westman for one, whom nobody trusted, seemed to be staying in the house all day to avoid the journalists camped outside. They were in a bind, and Berger did not like it. She hoped Millennium would still be able to tell the story with dignity and depth, without the magazine or anyone else coming to harm. She had no doubt that Blomkvist would be up to it, given the way he looked right now. Besides, he had Zander to help him.

Berger had a soft spot for Zander. Not long ago, over dinner at her and Greger’s home in Saltsjöbaden, he had told them his life story, which had only increased her sympathy.

When Zander was eleven he lost both his parents in a bomb blast in Sarajevo. After that he came to live in Tensta outside Stockholm with an aunt who altogether failed to notice either his intellectual disposition or the psychological wounds he bore. He had not been there when his parents were killed, but his body reacted still as if he were suffering from post-traumatic stress. To this day he detested loud noises and sudden movements. He hated seeing unattended bags in public places, and loathed violence with a passion Berger had never encountered in anyone else.

As a child he sought refuge in his own worlds. He immersed himself in fantasy literature, read poetry and biographies, adored Sylvia Plath, Borges and Tolkien and learned everything there was to know about computers. He dreamed of writing heart-rending novels about love and human tragedy, and was an incurable romantic who hoped that great passion would heal his wounds. He was not in the least bit interested in the outside world. One evening in his late teens, however, he attended a public lecture given by Mikael Blomkvist at the Institute for Media Studies at Stockholm University. It changed his life.

Blomkvist’s fervour inspired him to bear witness to a world which was bleeding with injustice, intolerance and petty corruption. He started to imagine himself writing articles critical of society instead of tear-jerking romances. Not long after that he knocked on Millennium’s door and asked if there was anything they would let him do — make coffee, proofread, run errands. Berger, who had seen the fire in his eyes right from the start, assigned him some minor editorial tasks: public notices, research and brief portraits. But most of all she told him to study, and he did so with the same energy he put into everything else. He read political science, mass-media communications, finance and international conflict resolution, and at the same time he helped out on temporary assignments at Millennium.

He wanted to become a heavyweight investigative journalist, like Blomkvist. But unlike so many other investigative journalists he was no tough guy. He remained a romantic. Blomkvist and Berger had both spent time trying to sort out his relationship problems. He was too open and transparent. Too good, as Blomkvist would often say.

But Berger believed that Zander was in the process of shedding that youthful vulnerability. She had been seeing the change in his journalism. That ferocious ambition to reach out and touch people, which had made his writing heavy-handed at first, had been replaced by a more effective, matter-of-fact style. She knew he would pull out all the stops now that he had been given the chance to help Blomkvist with the Balder story. The plan was for Blomkvist to write the big, central narrative, and for Zander to help with the research as well as writing some explanatory sidebars. Berger thought they made a great team.

After parking on Hökens gata she walked into the offices and found Blomkvist and Zander sitting there, deep in concentration, just as she expected. Every now and then, however, Blomkvist muttered to himself and she saw that magnificent sense of purpose in his eyes, but there was also suffering. He had hardly slept all night. The media campaign against him had not let up and in his police interviews he had had to do the very thing the press accused him of — withhold information. Blomkvist did not like it one atom.

He was in many ways a model, law-abiding citizen. But if there was anyone who could get him to cross the line, it was Lisbeth Salander. Blomkvist would rather dishonour himself than betray her, which is why he kept repeating to the police: “I assert my right to protect my sources.” No wonder he was unhappy and worried about the consequences. But, like Berger, he had far greater fears for Salander and the boy than for their own situation.

“How’s it going?” she asked, after watching him for a while.

“What?... Well... O.K. How was it out there?”

“I made up the beds and put food in the fridge.”

“Good. And the neighbours didn’t see you?”

“There wasn’t a soul there.”

“Why are they taking so long?” he said.

“I just don’t know, but I’m worried sick.”

“Let’s hope they’re resting at Lisbeth’s.”

“Let’s hope so. What else did you find out?”

“Quite a bit. But...” Blomkvist trailed off.

“Yes?’

“It’s just that... it feels as if I’m being thrown back in time, going back to places I’ve been to before.”

“You’ll have to explain better,” she said.

“I will...” Blomkvist glanced at his computer screen. “But first I have to keep on digging. Let’s speak later,” he said, and so she left him and got her things to drive home, although she would be ready to stay with him at a second’s notice.

Chapter 20

The night turned out to be calm, alarmingly calm, and at 8.00 in the morning a brooding Bublanski stood facing his team in the meeting room. Having kicked out Faste, he felt reasonably sure that he could talk freely again. At least he felt safer in here with his colleagues than at his computer, or on his mobile.

“You all appreciate how serious the situation is,” he said. “Confidential information has been leaked. One person is dead as a result. A small boy’s life is in danger. In spite of immense efforts we still don’t know how this happened. The leak could have been at our end, or at Säpo, or at Oden’s Medical Centre, or in the group around Professor Edelman, or from the boy’s mother and her partner, Lasse Westman. We know nothing for certain, and therefore we have to be extremely circumspect, paranoid even.”

“We may also have been hacked or phonetapped,” Modig said. “We seem to be dealing with criminals whose command of new technologies is far beyond anything we’ve seen before.”

“Very true,” Bublanski said. “We need to take precautions at every level, not say anything significant relating to this investigation — or to any other — over the telephone, no matter how highly our superiors rate our new mobile-phone system.”

“They think it’s great because it cost so much to install,” Holmberg said.

“Maybe we should also be reflecting a little on our own role,” Bublanski said, ignoring him. “I was just talking to a gifted young analyst at Säpo, Gabriella Grane — you may have heard of her. She pointed out that the concept of loyalty is not as straightforward as one might think for us policemen. We have many different loyalties, don’t we? There’s the obvious one, to the law. There’s a loyalty to the public, and to one’s colleagues, but also to our bosses, and to ourselves and our careers. Sometimes, as all of you know, these interests end up competing with each other. We might choose to protect a colleague at work and thereby fail in our duty to the public, or we might be given orders from higher up, as Hans Faste was, and then that conflicts with the loyalty he should have had to us. But from now on — and I’m deadly serious — there’s only one loyalty I want to hear of, and that is to the investigation itself. We’re going to catch the murderers and we’re going to make sure that no-one else falls victim to them. Agreed? Even if the prime minister himself or the head of the C.I.A. calls and goes on about patriotism and major career opportunities, you still won’t utter a peep, will you?”

“No,” they said, as one.

“Excellent. As we all know, the person who intervened on Sveavägen was none other than Lisbeth Salander, and we’re doing everything in our power to find out where she is.”

“Which is why we’ve got to release her name to the media!” Svensson called out, somewhat heatedly. “We need help from the public.”

“We don’t all agree on this, so I’d like to raise the question again. Let’s remember that in the past Lisbeth Salander has had some very shabby treatment, from us and from the media...”

“At this point that doesn’t matter,” Svensson said.

“And it’s conceivable that people recognized her on Sveavägen and her name will come out at any moment anyway, in which case this would no longer be an issue. But before that happens, bear in mind that she saved the boy’s life.”

“No doubt about that,” Svensson said. “But then she more or less kidnapped him.”

“Our information suggests that she was determined to protect the boy at all costs,” Modig said. “Salander’s experience of public institutions has been anything but positive — her entire childhood was marred by the injustices inflicted on her by Swedish officialdom. If she suspects, as we do, that there’s a leak inside the police force, then there’s no chance she’s going to contact us. Fact.”

“That’s irrelevant,” Svensson insisted.

“Maybe,” Modig said. “Jan and I share your view that the most important thing here is whether it’s in the interests of the investigation to release her name. And as to the investigation, our priority is the boy’s safety, and that’s where we have a big element of uncertainty.”

“I follow your reasoning,” Holmberg said in a low, thoughtful tone which immediately commanded everyone’s attention. “If people know of Salander’s involvement then the boy will be at risk. But that still leaves a number of questions — first: what’s the ethical thing to do? And I have to say, even if there’s been a leak here we cannot accept that Salander should keep the boy hidden away. He’s a crucial part of the investigation and, leak or no leak, we’re better at protecting a child than an emotionally disturbed young woman could ever be.”

“Absolutely. Of course,” Bublanski muttered.

“And even if this isn’t a kidnapping in the ordinary sense — yes, even if it’s been carried out with the best of intentions — the potential harm to the child could be just as great. Psychologically it must be hugely damaging for him to be, as it were, on the run after everything he’s been through.”

“True,” Bublanski said. “But the question still remains: how do we deal with the information we have?”

“There I agree with Curt. We have to release her name and photograph right away. It could produce invaluable leads.”

“Probably,” Bublanski said. “But it could at the same time help the killers. We have to assume that they haven’t given up looking for the boy. Quite the opposite in fact. And since we have no idea what the connection is between the boy and Salander, we don’t know what sort of clues her name would provide them with. I’m not persuaded that we would be protecting the boy by giving the media these details.”

“But neither do we know if we’re protecting him by holding them back,” Holmberg said. “There are too many pieces of the puzzle missing for us to draw any conclusions. Is Salander doing this for someone else, for example? Or does she have her own agenda for the child, apart from to protect him?”

“And how could she have known that Torkel Lindén and the boy would come out onto Sveavägen at that exact moment?” Svensson said.

“Maybe she just happened to be there.”

“Doesn’t seem likely.”

“The truth is often unlikely,” Bublanski said. “That’s the nature of truth. But I agree, it doesn’t feel like a coincidence in this case, not under the circumstances.”

“What about the fact that Mikael Blomkvist also knew something was going to happen?” Amanda Flod said.

“There’s some sort of connection between Blomkvist and Salander,” Holmberg said.

“True.”

“Blomkvist knew that the boy was at Oden’s Medical Centre, didn’t he?”

“The mother told him,” Bublanski said. “As you might imagine, she’s feeling quite desperate now. I’ve just had a long conversation with her. But there was no reason on earth why Blomkvist should have known that Lindén and the boy would be tricked into going out onto the street.”

“Could he have had access to a computer at Oden’s?” Flod said pensively.

“I can’t imagine Mikael Blomkvist getting involved in hacking,” Modig said.

“But what about Salander?” Holmberg said. “What do we actually know about her? We have a massive file on the girl. Yet the last time we had anything to do with her, she surprised us on every count. Maybe appearances are just as deceptive this time around.”

“I agree,” Svensson said. “We have far too many question marks.”

“Question marks are about all we have. And that’s exactly why we ought to stick to the rules,” Holmberg said.

“I didn’t realize the rule book covered quite so much,” Bublanski said, with a sarcasm he regretted.

“I only mean that we should take this for what it is — the kidnapping of a child. They disappeared almost twenty-four hours ago. We haven’t heard a word from them. We should put out Salander’s name and picture and then look carefully at all the tip-offs that come in,” Holmberg said with authority. He seemed to have the backing of the whole group, and at that Bublanski closed his eyes and reflected that he loved them all. He felt a greater affinity with his team than he did for his own brothers and sisters, or even his parents. But right now he felt compelled to disagree with them.

“We’ll do everything we can to try to find them. But for the time being we will not release the name and picture. That would only make the situation more fraught, and I don’t want to risk giving the killers any leads at all.”

“And you feel guilty,” Holmberg said, without warmth.

“I feel very guilty,” Bublanski said, thinking of his rabbi.

Blomkvist was so worried about the boy and Salander that he hardly slept. Time and again he had tried to reach Salander via the Redphone app, but she had not answered. He had not heard a word from her since yesterday afternoon. Now he was sitting in the office, trying to immerse himself in his work and figure out what it was that had escaped him. For some time already he had had a sense — impossible to put his finger on — that there was a key piece missing, something which could shed light on the whole story. Perhaps he was fooling himself. Maybe it was just wishful thinking, a need to see a grand design. The last message from Salander on the encrypted link was:

There were some images of Bogdanov on the net. They showed him wearing pinstriped suits which fit perfectly but still managed to look wrong on him, as if he had stolen them on the way to the photographer’s. Bogdanov had long, lank hair, a pockmarked face and large rings under his eyes and you could just about make out some amateurish tattoos beneath his shirt cuffs. His look was dark, intense and piercing. He was tall, but he cannot have weighed more than sixty kilos.

He looked like an old jailbird, but, most striking, there was something about his body language which Blomkvist recognized from the images on the surveillance cameras at Balder’s place. The man gave the same tattered, rough-edged impression.

There were also interviews he had given as a businessman in Berlin in which he vouchsafed that he had been born more or less on the streets. “I was doomed to end up dead in an alleyway with a needle stuck in my arm. But I managed to pull myself out of the muck. I’m intelligent and I’m one hell of a fighter,” he said. There was nothing in the details of his life to contradict these claims, save for the suspicion that he may not have been raised exclusively through his own efforts. There were clues to suggest he had been given a helping hand by powerful people who had spotted his talent. In a German technology magazine, a security chief at the Horst credit institution was quoted as saying, “Bogdanov has magic in his eyes. He can detect vulnerabilities in security systems like no-one else. He’s a genius.”

So Bogdanov was a star hacker, although the official version had him acting only as a “white hat”, someone who served the good, legal side, who helped companies identify flaws in their I.T. security in exchange for decent compensation. There was nothing in the least suspicious about his company, Outcast Security. The board members were all respectable, well-educated people. But Blomkvist did not leave it at that. He and Zander scrutinized every individual who had had any contact with the company, even partners of partners, and they noticed that somebody called Orlov had been a deputy board member for a short time. This seemed strange, because Vladimir Orlov was no I.T. man, but a minor player in the construction sector. He had once been a promising heavyweight boxer in the Crimea and, judging by the few pictures Blomkvist found online, he looked ravaged and brutal.

There were rumours that he had been convicted of grievous bodily harm and procuring. He had been married twice — both wives were dead, and Blomkvist had not been able to find a cause of death in either case. But the most interesting discovery he made was that the man had served as a substitute board member of a company — minor and long-since defunct — by the name of Bodin Construction & Export, which had dealt in “sales of construction materials”.

The owner of the company had been Karl Axel Bodin, the alias of Alexander Zalachenko, a name that revived memories of the evil conspiracy which became the subject of Millennium’s greatest scoop. Zalachenko who was Salander’s father, and her dark shadow, the black heart behind her throbbing determination to exact revenge.

Was it a coincidence that his name had cropped up? Blomkvist knew better than anyone that if you dig deep enough into a story, you will always find links. Life is constantly treating us to illusory connections. It was just that, when it came to Lisbeth Salander, he stopped believing in coincidence.

If she broke a surgeon’s fingers or delved into the theft of some advanced A.I. technology, you could be sure that she had not only thought it through to the last particle, she would also have a reason. Salander was not one to forget an injustice. She retaliated and she righted wrongs. Could her involvement in this story be connected to her own background? It was by no means inconceivable.

Blomkvist looked up from his computer and glanced at Zander. Zander nodded back at him. The faint smell of something cooking was coming from the kitchen. Thudding rock music could be heard from Götgatan. Outside the storm was howling, and the sky was still dark and wild. Blomkvist went into the encrypted link out of habit, not expecting to find anything. But then his face lit up. He even let out a small whoop of joy.

It said:

He wrote:

Then he could not resist adding:

She answered at once:

“O.K.” was an exaggeration. Salander was better, but still in bad shape. For half of yesterday, in her apartment, she had been barely conscious and only managed with the greatest difficulty to drag herself out of bed to see that August had something to eat and drink and make sure he had pencils, crayons and paper. But as she approached him now she could see even from a distance that he had drawn nothing.

There was paper scattered all over the coffee table in front of him, but no drawings. Instead she saw rows of scribbles. More absent-mindedly than out of curiosity she tried to make out what they were — he had written numbers, endless series of numbers, and even if at first they made no sense to her, she was intrigued. Suddenly she gave a whistle.

“Oh my God,” she muttered.

They were staggeringly large numbers which formed a familiar pattern alongside the numbers next to them. As she looked through the papers and came across the simple sequence 641, 647, 653 and 659, there was no longer any doubt: they were sexy prime quadruplets, sexy in the sense that they differed from each other by six.

There were also twin primes, and every other imaginable combination of prime numbers. She could not help but smile. “Awesome.”

But August neither responded nor looked up at her. He just kept kneeling by the coffee table, as if he wanted nothing more than to go on writing his numbers. It occurred to her that she had read something about savants and prime numbers, but she put it out of her mind. She was far too unwell for any kind of advanced thinking. Instead she went into the bathroom and took two more Vibramycin antibiotics which had been lying around in her apartment for years.

She packed her pistol and her computer, a few changes of clothes and to be on the safe side she put on a wig and a pair of dark glasses. When she was ready she asked the boy to get up. He did not respond, just held his pencil in a tight grip. For a moment she stood in front of him, stumped. Then she said sternly, “Get up!” and he did.

They put on their outer layers, took the lift down to the garage and set off for the safe house on Ingarö. Her left shoulder was tightly strapped and it ached, so she steered with her right hand. The top of her chest was hurting, she had a fever and had to stop a couple of times at the side of the road to rest. When finally they got to the beach and the jetty by Stora Barnvik on Ingarö, and followed the directions to climb the wooden steps up the slope to the house, she collapsed exhausted on the first bed she saw. She was shivering and freezing cold.

Soon after, breathing laboriously, she got up and sat at the kitchen table with her laptop, and tried once more to crack the file she had downloaded from the N.S.A. But she did not even come close. August sat next to her, looking stiffly at the pile of paper and crayons Berger had left for him, no longer interested in prime numbers, still less in drawing pictures. Perhaps he was in shock.

The man who called himself Jan Holtser was sitting in a room at the Clarion Hotel Arlanda, talking on the telephone with his daughter. As he had expected, she did not believe him.

“Are you scared of me?” she said. “Are you afraid I’m going to cross-examine you?”

“No, Olga, absolutely not,” he said. “It’s just that...”

He could not find the words. He knew Olga could tell he was hiding something, and ended the conversation sooner than he wanted to. Bogdanov was sitting next to him on the hotel bed, swearing. He had been through Balder’s computer at least a hundred times and found “fuck all”, as he put it. “Not a single fucking thing!”

“I stole a computer with nothing on it,” Holtser said.

“Right.”

“So what was the professor using it for?”

“For something very important, clearly. I can see that a large file, presumably connected to other computers, was deleted recently. But I can’t recover it. He knew his stuff, that guy.”

“Useless,” Holtser said.

“Completely fucking useless.”

“And the Blackphone?”

“There are a couple of calls I haven’t been able to trace, presumably from the Swedish security services or the N.D.R.E. But there’s something bothering me much more.”

“What’s that?”

“A long conversation the professor had just before you stormed in — he was talking to someone at the M.I.R.I., Machine Intelligence Research Institute.”

“What’s the problem with that?”

“The timing — I get the feeling he was having some sort of crisis. Also this institute works to ensure that intelligent computers don’t become a threat to mankind — it doesn’t look good. Balder could have given the M.I.R.I. his research or...”

“Or what?”

“Or he could have spilled the beans on us, at least what he knew.”

“That would be bad.”

Bogdanov nodded and Holtser swore quietly. Nothing had gone as planned and neither of them was used to failing. But here were two major mistakes in a row, and all because of a child, a retarded child.

That was bad enough. But the worst of it was that Kira was on her way, and it sounded like she had lost it. Neither of them was used to that either. On the contrary, they had grown accustomed to her cool elegance, the air of invincibility it gave their operations. Now she was furious, completely off the wall, screaming at them that they were useless, incompetent cretins. It was not so much that those shots might have missed Balder’s son. It was because of the woman who had appeared out of nowhere and rescued the boy. That woman sent Kira around the bend.

When Holtser had begun to describe her — the little he had seen — Kira bombarded him with questions. Whatever answer he gave seemed to be wrong, or at least sent her berserk, yelling that they should have killed her and that this was typical of them, brainless, useless. Neither of them could make sense of her violent reaction — they had never heard her yell like that before.

In fact there was a lot they did not know about her. Holtser would never forget his evening with her in a suite at Hotel d’Angleterre in Copenhagen — they had had sex for the third or fourth time, and later they had been lying in bed drinking champagne and chatting about his wars and his murders, as they so often did. While stroking her arm he had discovered three scars side by side on her wrist.

“How did you get those, gorgeous?” he had said, and got a look of pure loathing in return.

He had never been allowed to sleep with her again. He took it to be a punishment for having asked. Kira looked after the group and gave them a lot of money. But neither he nor Bogdanov, nor anyone else in the group, was allowed to ask about her past. That was one of the unspoken rules and none of them would ever dream of trying. For better or for worse she was their benefactor, mostly for better, they thought, and they went along with her whims, living in constant uncertainty as to whether she would be affectionate or cold, or even give them a brutal, stinging slap.

Bogdanov closed the computer and took a swallow of his drink. They were trying to limit their drinking, so that Kira would not use that against them. But it was nearly impossible. The frustration and adrenalin drove them to it. Holtser fingered his mobile nervously.

“Didn’t Olga believe you?” Bogdanov said.

“Not a word. Soon she’ll see a child’s drawing of me on every billboard.”

“I don’t buy that drawing thing. Probably just wishful thinking on the part of the police.”

“So we’re supposed to kill a child for no reason?”

“It wouldn’t surprise me. Shouldn’t Kira be here by now?”

“Any time now.”

“Who do you think it was?”

“Who?”

“The girl who appeared from nowhere.”

“No idea,” Holtser said. “Not sure Kira knows either. But she’s worried about something.”

“We’ll probably end up having to kill them both.”

“That might be the least of it.”

August was not feeling well. That was obvious. Red patches flared on his throat and he was clenching his fists. Salander, sitting next to him at the round table, working on her R.S.A. encryption, was afraid he was on the verge of some sort of fit. But August only picked up a crayon, a black one.

At the same moment a gust of wind shook the large windowpanes in front of them. August hesitated and moved his hand back and forth across the table. But then he started to draw, a line here and a line there, followed by some small circles, buttons, Salander thought, then a hand, details of a chin, an unbuttoned shirt front. It began to go more quickly and the tension in the boy’s back and shoulders subsided — as if a wound had burst open and begun to heal.

There was a searing, tortured look in his eyes, and every now and then he shivered. But there was no doubt that something within him had eased. He picked up some new crayons and started to draw an oak-coloured floor, on which appeared pieces of a puzzle that seemed to represent a glittering town at night-time. It was clear even from the unfinished drawing that it would be anything but a pleasant one.

The hand and the unbuttoned shirt front became part of a large man with a protruding belly. He was standing, bent like a jackknife, beating a small person on the floor, a person who was not in the drawing for the simple reason that he was observing the scene, and on the receiving end of the blows.

It was an ugly scene, no doubt about that. But even though the picture revealed an assailant, it did not seem to have anything to do with the murder. Right in the middle, at the epicentre of the drawing, a furious, sweaty face appeared, every foul and bitter furrow captured with precision. Salander recognized it. She rarely watched T.V. or went to the cinema, but she knew it was the face of the actor Lasse Westman, the partner of August’s mother. She leaned forward to the boy and said, with a holy, quivering rage:

“We’ll never let him do that to you again. Never.”

Chapter 21

Alona Casales knew at once that something was wrong when she saw Commander Ingram’s lanky figure approach Needham’s desk. You could tell from his hesitant manner that the news was not good.

Ingram usually had a malicious grin on his face when he stuck a knife in someone’s back, but with Needham it was different. Even the most senior bosses were scared of Needham — he would raise all hell if anyone tried to mess with him. Ingram did not like scenes, still less humiliation, and that was what awaited him if he picked a fight with Needham.

While Needham was brash and explosive, Ingram was a refined upper-class boy with spindly legs and an affected manner. Ingram was a serious power player and had influence where it mattered, be it in Washington or in the world of business. As a member of the N.S.A. management, he ranked just below Admiral Charles O’Connor. He might be quick to smile and adept at handing out compliments, but his smile never reached his eyes.

He had leverage over people and was in charge, among other things, of “monitoring strategic technologies” — more cynically known as industrial espionage, that part of the N.S.A. which gives the American tech industry a helping hand in global competition. He was feared as few others were.

But now as he stood in front of Needham in his fancy suit, his body seemed to shrink. Even from thirty metres away, Casales knew exactly what was about to happen: Needham was on the brink of exploding. His pale, exhausted face was going red. Without waiting he got to his feet, his back crooked and bent, his belly sticking out, and he roared in a furious voice, “You sleazy bastard!”

No-one but Needham could call Jonny Ingram a “sleazy bastard”, and Casales loved him for it.

August started on a new drawing.

He sketched a few lines. He was pressing so hard on the paper that the black crayon broke and, just like the last time, he drew rapidly, one detail here and another one there, disparate bits which ultimately came together and formed a whole. It was the same room, but there was a different puzzle on the floor, easier to make out: it represented a red sports car racing by a sea of shouting spectators in a stand. Above the puzzle not one but two men could be seen standing.

One of them was Westman again. This time he was wearing a T-shirt and shorts and he had bloodshot, squinting eyes. He looked unsteady and drunk, but no less furious. He was drooling. Yet he was not the more frightening figure in the drawing. That was the other man, whose watery eyes shone with pure sadism. He too was unshaven and drunk, and he had thin, almost non-existent lips. He seemed to be kicking August, although again the boy could not be seen in the picture, his very absence making him extremely present.

“Who’s the other one?” Salander said.

August said nothing. But his shoulders shook, and his legs twisted into a knot under the table.

“Who’s the other one?” Salander said again, in a more forceful tone, and August wrote on the drawing in a shaky, childish hand:

Roger — the name meant nothing to Salander.

A couple of hours later in Fort Meade, once his hacker boys had cleaned up after themselves and shuffled off, Needham walked over to Casales. The odd thing was, he no longer looked at all angry or upset. He was radiant with defiance and carrying a notebook. One of his braces had slipped off his shoulder.

“Hey, bud,” she said. “Tell me, what’s going on?”

“I got some vacation time,” he said. “I’m off to Stockholm.”

“Of all places. Isn’t it cold this time of year?”

“Freezing, by all accounts.”

“So you’re not really going there on vacation.”

“Strictly between us?”

“Go on.”

“Ingram ordered us to halt our investigation. The hacker goes free, and we’re supposed to be satisfied with stopping up a few leaks. Then the whole thing gets swept under the carpet.”

“How the hell can he lay down something like that?”

“They don’t want to awaken any sleeping dogs, he says, and run the risk of anyone finding out about the attack. It would be devastating if it ever got out. Just think of all the malicious glee, and all the people whose heads would roll, starting with yours truly.”

“He threatened you?”

“Did he ever! Went on about how I would be humiliated publicly, even sued.”

“You don’t seem worried.”

“I’m going to break him.”

“How? Our glamour boy has powerful connections everywhere, you know that.”

“I have a few of my own. Besides, Ingram isn’t the only one with dirt on people. That damn hacker was gracious enough to link and match our computer files and show us some of our own dirty laundry.”

“That’s a bit ironic, isn’t it?”

“It takes a crook to know one. At first the data didn’t look all that spectacular, not compared to the other stuff we’re doing. But when we started to get into it...”

“Yes?”

“It turned out to be dynamite.”

“In what way?”

“Ingram’s closest colleagues not only collect trade secrets to help our own major companies. Sometimes they also sell the information for a lot of money. And that money, Alona, doesn’t always find its way into the coffers of the organization...”

“But into their own pockets.”

“Exactly. I already have enough evidence on that to put two of our top industrial-espionage executives behind bars.”

“Jesus.”

“Unfortunately it’s less straightforward with Ingram. I’m convinced he’s the brains behind the whole thing. Otherwise all of this doesn’t add up. But I don’t have a smoking gun, not yet, which makes the whole operation risky. There’s always a chance — though I wouldn’t bet on it — that the file the hacker downloaded has something specific on him. But it’s impossible to crack — a goddamn R.S.A. encryption.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“Tighten the net. Show the world that our very own co-workers are in cahoots with criminal organizations.”

“Like the Spiders.”

“Like the Spiders. And plenty of other bad guys. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were involved in the killing of your professor in Stockholm. They had a clear interest in seeing him dead.”

“You’ve got to be joking.”

“I’m completely serious. Your professor knew things that could have blown up in their faces.”

“Holy shit. And you’re off to Stockholm like some private detective to investigate it all?”

“Not like a private detective, Alona. I’m going to be official, and while I’m there I’m going to give our hacker such a pummelling she won’t be able to stand.”

“Wait, Ed. Did I hear you say she?”

“You’d better believe it. Our hacker’s a she!”

August’s drawings took Salander back in time. She thought of that fist beating rhythmically and relentlessly on the mattress.

She remembered the thuds and the grunting and the crying from the bedroom next door. She remembered the times at Lundagatan when her comics and fantasies of revenge were her only refuge. But she shook off the memories. She changed the dressing on her shoulder. Then she checked her pistol, made sure that it was loaded. She went onto the P.G.P. link. Andrei Zander was asking how they were, and she gave a short reply.

Outside, the storm was shaking the trees and bushes. She helped herself to some whisky and a piece of chocolate, then went out onto the terrace and from there to the rock slope where she carefully reconnoitred the terrain, noticing a small cleft part way down. She counted her steps and memorized the lie of the land.

By the time she got back, August had made another drawing of Westman and the Roger person. She supposed he needed to get it out of his system. But still he had not drawn anything from the night of the murder. Perhaps the experience was blocked in his mind.

Salander was overcome by a feeling of time running away from them and she cast a worried look at August. For a minute or so she focused on the mind-boggling numbers he had put down on paper next to the new drawing. She studied their structure until suddenly she spotted a sequence which did not fit in with the others.

It was relatively short: 2305843008139952128. She got it immediately. It was not a prime number, it was — and here her spirits lifted — a number which, according to a perfect harmony, is made up of the sum of all its positive divisors. It was, in other words, a perfect number, just as 6 is because it can be divided by 3, 2 and 1 and 3 + 2 + 1 happen to add up to 6. She smiled. And then she had an exhilarating thought.

“Now you’re going to have to explain yourself,” Casales said.

“I will,” Needham said. “But first, even though I trust you, I need you to give me a solemn promise that you won’t say any of this to anybody.”

“I promise, you jerk.”

“Good. Here’s the story: after I yelled at Ingram, mostly for the sake of appearances, I told him he was right. I even pretended to be grateful to him for putting a stop to our investigation. We wouldn’t have gotten any further anyway, I said, and it was partly true. From a purely technical point of view we were out of options. We’d done everything and then some, but it was pointless. The hacker put red herrings all over the place and kept leading us into new mazes and labyrinths. One of my guys said that even if we got to the end, against all odds, we wouldn’t believe we’d made it. We’d just kid ourselves that it was a new trap. We were prepared for just about anything from this hacker, anything but flaws and weaknesses. So if we kept going the usual way we’d had it.”

“You don’t tend to go the usual way.”

“No, I prefer the roundabout way. The truth is, we hadn’t given up at all. We’d been talking to our hacker contacts out there and our friends in the software companies. We did advanced searches, surveillance and our own computer breaches. You see, when an attack is as complex as this one, you can always be sure there’s been some research up front. Certain specific questions have been asked. Certain specific sites have been visited and inevitably some of that becomes known to us. But there was one factor above all that played into our hands, Alona: the hacker’s skill. It was so incredible that it limited the number of suspects. Like a criminal suddenly running a hundred metres in 9.7 seconds at a crime scene — you’d be pretty sure the guy is a certain Mr Bolt or one of his close rivals, right?”

“So it’s at that level?”

“Well, there are parts of this attack that just made my jaw drop, and I’ve seen a fair amount in my day. That’s why we spent a hell of a lot of time talking to hackers and insiders in this industry and asking them who is capable of something really, really big? Who are the seriously big players these days? We had to be pretty smart about how we framed our questions, so that nobody would guess what actually happened. For a long time we got nowhere. It was like shooting in the dark — like calling out into the dead of night. Nobody knew anything, or they claimed they didn’t. A few names were mentioned, but none of them felt right. For a while we chased down some Russian, a Jurij Bogdanov — an ex-druggie and thief who apparently can hack into anything he damn well likes. The security companies were already trying to recruit him when he was living on the street in St Petersburg, hot-wiring cars, weighing in at forty kilos of skin and bone. Even the people from the police and intelligence services wanted him on their side. They lost that battle, needless to say. These days Bogdanov looks clean and successful and has ballooned to sixty kilos of skin and bone, but we’re pretty sure he’s one of the crooks in your organization, Alona. That was another reason he interested us. There had to be a connection to the Spiders, because of the searches that got carried out, but then...”

“You couldn’t understand why one of their own would be giving us new leads and associations?”

“Exactly, and so we looked further. After a while another outfit cropped up in the conversations.”

“Which one?”

“They call themselves Hacker Republic. They have a big reputation out there. A bunch of talents at the top of their game and rigorous about their encryptions. And for good reason. We’re constantly trying to infiltrate these groups, and we’re not the only ones. We don’t just want to find out what they’re up to, we also want to recruit their people. These days there’s big competition for the sharpest hackers.”

“Now that we’ve all become criminals.”

“Ha, yes, maybe. Whatever, Hacker Republic has major talent. Lots of the guys we talked to backed that up. And it wasn’t just that. There were also rumours that they had something big going on, and then a hacker with the handle Bob the Dog, who we think is linked to the gang, was running searches and asking questions about one of our guys, Richard Fuller. Do you know him?”

“No.”

“A manic-depressive self-righteous prick who’s been bugging me for a while. The archetypal security risk, who gets arrogant and sloppy when he’s in a manic phase. He’s just the kind of person a bunch of hackers should be targeting, and you’d need classified information to know that. His mental-health issues aren’t exactly common knowledge — his own mother hardly knows. But I’m pretty confident that in the end they didn’t get in via Fuller. We’ve examined every file he’s received recently and there’s nothing there. We’ve scrutinized him from top to bottom. But I bet Fuller was part of Hacker Republic’s original plan and then they changed strategy. I can’t claim to have any hard evidence against them, not at all, but my gut feeling is still that these guys are behind the break-in.”

“You said the hacker was a girl.”

“Right. Once we’d homed in on this group we found out as much as possible about them. It wasn’t easy to separate rumour from myth from fact. But one thing came up so often that in the end I saw no reason to question it.”

“And what’s that?”

“Hacker Republic’s big star is someone who uses the alias Wasp.”

“Wasp?”

“I won’t bore you with technical details, but Wasp is something of a legend in certain circles, one of the reasons being her ability to turn accepted methods on their heads. Someone said you can sense Wasp’s involvement in a hacker attack the same way you can recognize Mozart in a melodic loop. Wasp has her own unmistakable style and that was the first thing one of my guys said after he’d studied the breach: this is different from anything we’ve come across; it’s got a completely new threshold of originality.”

“A genius, in short.”

“Without a doubt. So we started to search everything we could find about this Wasp, to try to crack the handle. No-one was particularly surprised when that didn’t work. This person wouldn’t leave openings. But you know what I did then?” Needham said proudly.

“Tell me.”

“I looked up what the word stood for.”

“Beyond its literal meaning, you mean?”

“Right, but not because I or anyone else thought it would get us anywhere. Like I said, if you can’t get there on the main road, you take the side roads; you never know what you might find. It turns out Wasp could mean all sorts of things. Wasp is a British fighter plane from World War Two, a comedy by Aristophanes, a famous short film from 1915, a satirical magazine from nineteenth-century San Francisco and there’s also of course White Anglo-Saxon Protestant, plus a whole lot more. But those references are all a little too sophisticated for a hacker genius; they don’t go with the culture. But you know what did fit? The superhero in Marvel Comics: Wasp is one of the founding members of the Avengers.”

“Like the movie?”

“Exactly, with Thor, Iron Man, Captain America. In the original comics she was even their leader for a while. I have to say, Wasp is a pretty badass superhero, kind of rock and roll, a rebel who wears black and yellow with insect’s wings and short black hair. She’s got attitude, the underdog who hits back and can grow or shrink. All the sources we’ve been talking to think that’s the Wasp we’re looking for. It doesn’t necessarily mean the person behind the handle is some Marvel Comics geek. That handle has been around for a while, so maybe it’s a childhood thing that stuck, or an attempt at irony. Like the fact that I named my cat Peter Pan even though I never liked that self-righteous asshole who doesn’t want to grow up. Anyway...”

“Anyway?”

“I couldn’t help noticing that this criminal network our Wasp was looking into also uses names from Marvel Comics. They sometimes call themselves the Spider Society, right?”

“Yes, but I think that’s just a game, as I see it, thumbing their noses at those of us who monitor them.”

“Sure, I get that, but even jokes can give you leads, or cover up something serious. Do you know what the Spider Society in the Marvel Comics does?”

“No.”

“They wage war against the ‘Sisterhood of the Wasp’.”

“O.K., fine, it’s an interesting detail, but I don’t understand how that could be your lead.”

“Just wait. Will you come downstairs with me to my car? I have to head to the airport quite soon.”

It was not late, but Blomkvist knew that he could not keep going much longer. He had to go home and get a few hours’ sleep and then start working again tonight or tomorrow morning. It might help too if he had a few beers on the way. The lack of sleep was pounding in his forehead and he needed to chase away a few memories and fears. Perhaps he could get Zander to join him. He looked over at his colleague.

Zander had youth and energy to spare. He was banging away at his keyboard as if he had just started work for the day, and every now and then he flicked excitedly through his notes. Yet he had been in the office since 5.00 in the morning. It was now 5.45 in the evening and he had hardly taken a break.

“What do you say, Andrei? How about we get a beer and a bite to eat and discuss the story?”

At first Zander did not seem to understand. Then he raised his head and suddenly no longer looked quite so energetic. He gave a little grimace as he massaged his shoulder.

“What... well... maybe,” he said hesitantly.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Blomkvist said. “How about Folksoperan?”

Folksoperan was a bar and restaurant on Hornsgatan, not far away, which attracted journalists and the arty crowd.

“It’s just that...”

“Just that what?”

“I’ve got this portrait to do, of an art dealer working at Bukowski’s who got onto a train at Malmö Central and was never seen again. Erika thought it would fit into the mix,” Zander said.

“Jesus, the things she makes you do, that woman.”

“I honestly don’t mind. But I’m having trouble pulling it together. It feels so messy and contrived.”

“Do you want me to have a look at it?”

“I’d love that, but let me do some more work on it first. I would die of embarrassment if you saw it in its present state.”

“In that case deal with it later. But come on now, Andrei, let’s go and at least get something to eat. You can come back and work afterwards if you must,” Blomkvist said. He looked over at Zander.

That memory would stay with him for a long time. Zander was wearing a brown checked jacket and a white shirt buttoned up all the way. He looked like a film star, at any rate even more like a young Antonio Banderas than usual.

“I think I’d better stay and keep plugging away,” he said. “I have something in the fridge which I can microwave.”

Blomkvist wondered if he should pull rank, order him to come out and have a beer. Instead he said:

“O.K., we’ll see each other in the morning. How are they doing out there meanwhile? No drawing of the murderer yet?”

“Seems not.”

“We’ll have to find another solution tomorrow. Take care,” Blomkvist said, getting up and putting on his overcoat.

Salander remembered something she had read about savants a long time ago in Science magazine. It was an article by Enrico Bombieri, an expert in number theory, referring to an episode in Oliver Sacks’ The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat in which a pair of autistic and mentally disabled twins recite staggeringly high prime numbers to each other, as if they could see them before their eyes in some sort of inner mathematical landscape.

What these twins were able to do and what Salander now wanted to achieve were two different things. But there was still a similarity, she thought, and decided to try, however sceptical she might be. So she brought up the encrypted N.S.A. file and her program for elliptic-curve factorization. Then she turned to August. He responded by rocking back and forth.

“Prime numbers. You like prime numbers,” she said.

August did not look at her, or stop his rocking.

“I like them too. And there’s one thing I’m particularly interested in just now. It’s called factorization. Do you know what that is?”

August stared at the table as he continued rocking and did not look as if he understood anything at all.

“Prime-number factorization is when we rewrite a number as the product of prime numbers. By product in this context I mean the result of a multiplication. Do you follow me?”

August’s expression did not change, and Salander wondered if she should just shut up.

“According to the fundamental principles of arithmetic, every whole number has a unique prime-number factorization. It’s pretty cool. We can produce a number as simple as 24 in all sorts of ways, for example by multiplying 12 by 2 or 3 by 8, or 4 by 6. Yet there’s only one way to factorize it with prime-numbers and that’s 2 x 2 x 2 x 3. Are you with me? The problem is, even though it’s easy to multiply prime numbers to produce large numbers, it’s often impossible to go the other way, from the answer back to the prime numbers. A really bad person has used this to code a secret message. Do you understand? It’s a bit like mixing a drink: easy to do but harder to unmix again.”

August neither nodded nor said a word. But at least his body was no longer rocking.

“Shall we see if you’re any good at prime-number factorization, August? Shall we?”

August did not budge.

“I’ll take that as a yes. Shall we start with the number 456?”

August’s eyes were bright but distant, and Salander had the feeling that this idea of hers really was absurd.

It was cold and windy and there were few people out. But Blomkvist thought the cold was doing him good — he was perking up a bit. He thought of his daughter Pernilla and what she said about writing “for real”, and of Salander of course, and the boy. What were they doing right now?

On the way up towards Hornsgatspuckeln he stared for a while at a painting hanging in a gallery window which showed cheerful, carefree people at a cocktail party. At that moment it felt, perhaps wrongly, as if it had been ages since he had last stood like that, drink in hand and without a care in the world. Briefly he longed to be somewhere far away. Then he shivered, suddenly struck by the feeling that he was being followed. Perhaps it was a consequence of everything he had been through in the last few days. He turned round, but the only person near him was an enchantingly beautiful woman in a bright red coat with flowing dark blonde hair. She smiled at him a little uncertainly. He gave her a tentative smile back and was about to continue on his way. Yet his gaze lingered, as if he were expecting the woman to turn at any moment into something more run-of-the-mill.

Instead she became more dazzling with each passing second, almost like royalty, a star who had accidentally wandered in among ordinary people, a gorgeous spread in a fashion magazine. The fact was that right then, in that first moment of astonishment, Blomkvist would not have been able to describe her, or provide even one single detail about her appearance.

“Can I help you?” he said.

“No, no,” she said, apparently shy, and there was no getting away from it: her hesitancy was beguiling. She was not a woman you would have thought to be shy. She looked as if she might own the world.

“Well then, have a nice evening,” he said, and turned again, but he heard her nervously clear her throat.

“Aren’t you Mikael Blomkvist?” she said, even more uncertain now, looking down at the cobbles in the street.

“Yes, I am,” he said, and smiled politely, as he would have done for anybody.

“Well, I just want to say that I’ve always admired you,” she said, raising her head and gazing into his eyes with a long look.

“I’m flattered. But it’s been a long time since I wrote anything decent. Who are you?”

“My name is Rebecka Mattson,” she said. “I’ve been living in Switzerland.”

“And now you’re home for a visit?”

“Only for a short time, unfortunately. I miss Sweden. I even miss November in Stockholm. But I guess that’s how it is when you’re homesick, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

“That you miss even the bad bits.”

“True.”

“Do you know how I cure it all? I follow the Swedish press. I don’t think I’ve missed a single issue of Millennium in the last few years,” she said. He looked at her again, and noticed that every piece of clothing, from the black high-heeled shoes to the checked blue cashmere shawl, was expensive and elegant.

Rebecka Mattson did not look like your typical Millennium reader. But there was no reason to be prejudiced, even against rich expatriate Swedes.

“Do you work there?” he said.

“I’m a widow.”

“I see.”

“Sometimes I get so bored. Were you going somewhere?”

“I was thinking of having a drink and a bite to eat,” he said, at once regretting his reply. It was too inviting, too predictable. But it was at least true.

“May I keep you company?” she asked.

“That would be nice,” he said, sounding unsure. Then she touched his hand — unintentionally, at least that is what he wanted to believe. She still seemed bashful. They walked slowly up Hornsgatspuckeln, past a row of galleries.

“How nice to be strolling here with you,” she said.

“It’s a bit unexpected.”

“So true. It’s not what I was thinking when I woke up this morning.”

“What were you thinking?”

“That the day would be as dreary as ever.”

“I don’t know if I’ll be such good company,” he said. “I’m pretty much immersed in a story.”

“Are you working too hard?”

“Maybe so.”

“Then you need a little break,” she said, giving him a bewitching smile, filled with longing or some sort of promise. At that moment he thought she seemed familiar, as if he had seen that smile before, but in another form, distorted somehow.

“Have we met before?” he said.

“I don’t think so. Except that I’ve seen you a thousand times in pictures, and on T.V.”

“So you’ve never lived in Stockholm?”

“When I was a little girl.”

“Where did you live then?”

She pointed vaguely up Hornsgatan.

“Those were good times,” she said. “Our father took care of us. I often think about him. I miss him.”

“Is he no longer alive?”

“He died much too young.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Thank you. Where are we headed?”

“Well,” he said, “there’s a pub just up Bellmansgatan, the Bishops Arms. I know the owner. It’s quite a nice place.”

“I’m sure...”

Once again she had that diffident, shy look on her face, and once again her hand happened to brush against his fingers — this time he wasn’t so sure it was accidental.

“Perhaps it isn’t fancy enough?”

“Oh, I’m sure it’s fine,” she said apologetically. “It’s just that people tend to stare at me. I’ve come across so many bastards in pubs.”

“I can believe that.”

“Wouldn’t you...?”

“What?”

She looked down at the ground again and blushed. At first he thought he was seeing things. Surely adults don’t blush like that? But Rebecka Mattson from Switzerland, who looked like seven million dollars, went red like a little schoolgirl.

“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.

Chapter 22

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.”

“It’s terrible. But I’ve never understood Camilla’s part in the story.”

“That’s more complicated, and in some ways I think one has to forgive the girl. After all, she too was only a child, and before she was even aware of it she became a pawn in the game.”

“In what way?”

“They chose opposite camps in the battle, you could say. It’s true that the girls are fraternal twins and not alike in appearance, but they also have completely different temperaments. Lisbeth was born first, Camilla twenty minutes later. She was apparently a joy to behold, even when she was tiny. While Lisbeth was an angry creature, Camilla had everyone exclaiming, ‘Oh, what a sweet girl!’ and it can’t have been a coincidence that Zalachenko showed more forbearance towards her from the start. I say forbearance because obviously it was never a question of anything kinder in those first years. Since Agneta was no more than a whore to him, it followed that her children were bastards with no claim on his affections, little wretches who just got in the way. And yet...”

“Yes?”

“And yet even Zalachenko noticed that one of the children was beautiful. Sometimes Lisbeth would say there was a genetic defect in her family and, even though it’s doubtful that her claim would stand up to medical scrutiny, it cannot be denied that Zala fathered some exceptional children. You came across their half-brother, Ronald Niedermann, didn’t you? He was blonde, enormous and had congenital analgesia, the inability to feel pain, so was therefore an ideal hit man and murderer, while Camilla... well, in her case the genetic abnormality was quite simply that she was astoundingly, ridiculously lovely to look at, and that just got worse as she grew older. I say worse because I’m pretty sure that it was a misfortune. The effect may have been exaggerated by the fact that her twin sister always looked sour. Grown-ups were liable to frown when they saw her. But then they would notice Camilla, and light up and go soft in the head. Can you imagine what an affect that must have had on her?”

“It must have been tough to get passed over.”

“I wasn’t thinking of Lisbeth, and I don’t remember seeing any evidence that she resented the situation. If it had just been a question of beauty, she probably would have felt her sister was welcome to it. No, I’m talking about Camilla. Can you imagine what it must do to a child who doesn’t have much in the way of empathy to be told all the time how divine she is?”

“It goes to her head.”

“It gives her a sense of power. When she smiles, we melt. When she doesn’t, we feel excluded, and do absolutely anything to see her beam again. Camilla learned early on to exploit that. She became expert at it, a mistress of manipulation. She had large, expressive doe eyes.”

“She still does.”

“Lisbeth told me how Camilla would sit for hours in front of the mirror, practising her look. Her eyes were a fantastic weapon. They could both bewitch you and freeze you out, make children and adults alike feel special one day and rejected the next. It was an evil gift and, as you might guess, she soon became very popular at school. Everyone wanted to be with her and she took advantage of it in every conceivable way. She made sure that her classmates gave her small presents daily: marbles, sweets, small change, pearls, brooches. And those who didn’t, or generally didn’t behave as she wanted, she wouldn’t even look at the next day. Anyone who had ever found themselves basking in her radiance knew how painful that was. Her classmates did everything they could to be in her good graces. They fawned over her. With one exception, of course.”

“Her sister.”

“That’s right, and so Camilla turned them against Lisbeth. She got some fierce bullying going — they pushed Lisbeth’s head into the toilet and called her a freak and a weirdo and all sorts of names. This went on until one day they found out who they were picking on. But that’s another story, and one you’re familiar with.”

“Lisbeth doesn’t turn the other cheek.”

“No indeed. But the interesting thing in this story from a psychological point of view is that Camilla learned how to dominate and manipulate her surroundings from an early age. She worked out how to control everybody, apart from two significant people in her life, Lisbeth and her father, and that exasperated her. She put a vast amount of energy into winning those fights as well, and she needed totally different strategies for each of them. She could never win Lisbeth over, and pretty soon I think she gave up. In her eyes, Lisbeth was simply strange, just a surly, stroppy girl. Her father, on the other hand...”

“He was evil through and through.”

“He was evil, but he was also the family’s centre of gravity. He was the one around whom everything revolved, even if he was rarely there. He was the absent father. In a normal family such a figure can take on a quasi-mystical status for a child, but in this case it was much more than that.”

“In what way?”

“I suppose I mean that Camilla and Zalachenko were an unfortunate combination. Although Camilla hardly understood it herself, she was only interested in one thing, even then: power. And her father, well, you can say many things about him, but he was not short of power. Plenty of people can testify to that, not least that wretched lot at Säpo. No matter how firmly they tried to put their foot down, they still ended up huddled like a flock of frightened sheep when they came eyeball to eyeball with him. There was an ugly, imposing self-assurance about Zalachenko which was merely amplified by the fact that he was untouchable. It made no difference how many times he was reported to the social welfare agency — the Security Police always protected him. This is what persuaded Lisbeth to take matters into her own hands. But for Camilla, things were completely different.”

“She wanted to be like him.”

“Yes, I think so. Her father was her ideal — she wanted the same aura of immunity and strength. But most of all, perhaps, she wanted to be acknowledged by him. To be seen as a worthy daughter.”

“She must have known how terribly he mistreated her mother.”

“Of course she knew. Yet still she took her father’s side. One could say she chose to side with strength and power. Apparently even as a little girl she often said that she despised weak people.”

“She despised her mother too, do you think?”

“Unfortunately I think you’re right. Lisbeth once told me something which I’ve never been able to forget.”

“What’s that?”

“I’ve never told anyone.”

“Isn’t it about time then?”

“Well, maybe, but in that case I need a strong drink. How about a good brandy?”

“That wouldn’t be such a bad idea. But you stay right where you are, I’ll get some glasses and the bottle,” Blomkvist said, going to the mahogany drinks cabinet in the corner by the kitchen door.

He was digging around among the bottles when his iPhone rang. It was Zander, or at least his name was on the display. But when Blomkvist answered no-one was there; it must have been a pocket call, he thought. He poured out two glasses of Rémy Martin and sat down again next to Palmgren.

“So tell me,” he said.

“I don’t really know where to begin. But one fine summer’s day, as I understood it, Camilla and Lisbeth were both sitting in their bedroom. The door was locked.”

Chapter 23

August’s body stiffened again. He could no longer find the answers. The numbers were too big and instead of picking up his pencil he clenched his fists so that the backs of his hands whitened. He banged his head against the tabletop.

Salander should have tried to comfort him, or at least prevent him from hurting himself. But she was not entirely conscious of what was happening. Her mind was on her encrypted file. She realized she was not going to get any further by this route either. It was hardly surprising — how could August succeed where supercomputers had failed? Her expectations had been absurdly high from the start and what he had achieved was impressive enough. But still she felt disappointed.

She went out into the darkness to survey the barren, untamed landscape around her. Below the steep rock slope lay the beach and a snow-covered field with a deserted dance pavilion.

On a lovely summer’s day the place was probably teeming with people. Now it was empty. The boats had been pulled up on land and there was not a sign of life; no lights were shining in the houses on the other side of the water. Salander liked it. At least she liked it as a hiding place at the end of November.

If someone arrived by car she was unlikely to pick up the sound of the engine. The only possible place to park was down by the beach, and to get to the house you had to climb up the wooden steps over the steep rock slope. Under the cover of darkness, someone might be able to sneak up on them. But she would sleep tonight. She needed it. Her wound was still giving her pain — maybe that was why she had got her hopes up about August, against the odds. But when she went back into the house, she realized that there was something else besides.

“Normally Lisbeth isn’t someone who bothers about the weather or what’s going on beyond her immediate focus,” Palmgren said. “She blocks out everything she considers unimportant. But on this occasion she did mention that the sun was shining on Lundagatan and in Skinnarviksparken. She could hear children laughing. On the other side of the windowpane people were happy — perhaps that was what she was trying to say. She wanted to point out the contrast. Ordinary people were having ice cream and playing with kites and balls. Camilla and Lisbeth sat locked in their bedroom and could hear their father assaulting their mother. I believe this was just before Lisbeth took her revenge on Zalachenko, but I’m not sure about the sequence of events. There were many rapes, and they followed the same pattern. Zala would appear in the afternoon or evening, very drunk. Sometimes he would ruffle Camilla’s hair and say things like, ‘How can such a pretty girl have such a loathsome sister?’ Then he would lock his daughters into their room and settle down in the kitchen to have more to drink. He drank his vodka neat, and often he would sit quietly at first, smacking his lips like a hungry animal. Then he would mumble something like, ‘And how’s my little whore today?’ — sounding almost affectionate. But Agneta would do something wrong, or rather Zalachenko would decide that she had done something wrong, and then the first blow came, usually a slap followed by, ‘I thought my little whore was going to behave herself today.’ Then he would shove her into the bedroom and beat her. After a while slaps would turn to punches. Lisbeth could tell from the sounds. She could tell exactly what sort of blows they were, and even where they landed. She felt it as clearly as if she herself were the victim of this savagery. After the punches came the kicks. Zala kicked and shoved her mother against the wall and shouted ‘bitch’ and ‘tramp’ and ‘whore’, and that aroused him. He was turned on by her suffering. Only when Agneta was black and blue and bleeding did he rape her, and when he climaxed he would yell even fouler insults. Then it would be quiet for a while. All that could be heard was Agneta’s choked sobbing and Zala’s own heavy breathing. Then he would get up and have another drink and mutter and swear and spit on the floor. Sometimes he unlocked the door to the children’s room, and say something like, ‘Mummy’s behaving herself again now.’ And he would leave, slamming the door behind him. That was the usual pattern. But on this particular day something new happened.”

“What?’

“The girls’ bedroom was quite small. However hard they tried to get away from each other, the beds were still close and, while the abuse went on, each one usually sat on her own mattress, facing the other. They hardly ever said anything, and usually avoided eye contact. On this day Lisbeth was staring through the window at Lundagatan — that’s probably why she talked about the sunlight and the children out there. But then she looked at her sister, and that’s when she saw it.”

“She saw what?”

“Camilla’s right hand, beating against her mattress. It could have been a sign of nervous or compulsive behaviour. That’s what Lisbeth thought at first. But then she noticed that the hand was beating in time to the blows from the bedroom, and at that she looked up at Camilla’s face. Her sister’s eyes were glowing with excitement, and the eeriest thing was: Camilla looked just like Zala himself and she was smiling. She was suppressing a smirk, and in that instant Lisbeth realized that Camilla was not only trying to ingratiate herself with her father. She was also right behind his violence. She was cheering him on.”

“That’s sick.”

“But that’s how it was. Do you know what Lisbeth did? She remained perfectly calm. She sat down next to Camilla and took her hand almost tenderly. Perhaps Camilla thought her sister was looking for some comfort or closeness. Stranger things have happened. Then Lisbeth rolled up her sister’s shirt sleeve and dug her fingernails into Camilla’s wrist — down to the bone — gouging open a terrible wound. Blood streamed onto the bed. Lisbeth dragged Camilla to the floor and swore she would kill both her and her father if the beatings and the rapes did not stop.”

“Jesus!”

“You can imagine the hatred between the sisters. Both Agneta and the social services were so worried that something even more serious would happen that they were kept apart. For a while they arranged a home elsewhere for Camilla. But sooner or later they would have clashed again. In the end, as you know, things did not turn out like that. I believe the sisters only saw each other once after Lisbeth was locked up — several years later, when a disaster was narrowly averted — but I know none of the details. I haven’t heard anything of Camilla for a long time now. The last people to have had contact with her are the foster family with whom she lived in Uppsala, people called Dahlgren. I can get you the number. But ever since Camilla was eighteen or nineteen and she packed a bag and left the country she hasn’t been heard from. That’s why I was astonished when you said that you had met her. Not even Lisbeth, with her famous ability to track people down, has been able to find her.”

“So she has tried?”

“Oh yes. As far as I know, the last time was when her father’s estate was to be apportioned.”

“I had no idea.”

“Lisbeth mentioned it in passing. She didn’t want a single penny from that will — to her it was blood money — but she could tell that there was something strange about it. There were assets of four million kronor: the farm in Gosseberga, some securities and also a run-down industrial site in Norrtälje, a cottage somewhere, and various other bits and pieces. Not insignificant by any means, and yet...”

“He should have been worth much more.”

“Yes, Lisbeth was aware that he ran a vast criminal empire. Four million would have been small change in that context.”

“So you’re saying that she may have wondered if Camilla inherited the lion’s share.”

“I think that’s what she’s been trying to find out. The mere thought that her father’s fortune was going on to do harm after his death was torture to her. But she got nowhere.”

“Camilla had obviously concealed her new identity well.”

“I assume so.”

“Do you have any reason to think Camilla might have taken over her father’s trafficking business?”

“Maybe, maybe not. She may have struck out into something altogether different.”

“Such as?”

Palmgren closed his eyes and took a long sip of his brandy.

“I can’t be sure of this, Mikael. But when you told me about Professor Balder, I had a thought. Do you have any idea why Lisbeth is so good with computers? Do you know how it all started?”

“I have no idea.”

“Then I’ll tell you. I wonder if the key to your story doesn’t lie there.”

When Salander came in from the terrace and saw August huddled in a stiff and unnatural position by the round table, she realized that the boy reminded her of herself as a child.

That is exactly how she had felt at Lundagatan, until one day it became clear to her that she had to grow up far too soon, to take revenge on her father. It was a burden no child should have to bear. But it had at least been the beginning of a real life, a more dignified life. No bastard should be allowed to do what Zalachenko had done with impunity. She went to August and said solemnly, as if giving an important order, “You’re going to go to bed now. When you wake up I want you to do the drawing that will nail your father’s killer. Do you get that?” The boy nodded and shuffled into his bedroom while Salander opened her laptop and started to look for information about Lasse Westman and his circle of friends.

“I don’t think Zalachenko himself was much use with computers,” Palmgren said. “He wasn’t of that generation. But perhaps his dirty business grew to such a scale that he had to use a computer program to keep his accounts, and to keep them away from his accomplices. One day he came to Lundagatan with an I.B.M. machine which he installed on the desk next to the window. Nobody in the family had seen a computer before. Zalachenko promised that if anyone so much as touched the machine he would flay them alive. For all I know that was telling, from a purely psychological point of view. It increased the temptation.”

“Forbidden fruit.”

“Lisbeth was around eleven at the time. It was before she tore into Camilla’s right arm, and before she went for her father with knives and petrol bombs. You could say it was just before she became the Lisbeth we know today. She lacked stimulation. She had no friends to speak of, partly because Camilla had made sure that nobody came anywhere near her at school, but partly because she really was different. I don’t know if she realized it herself yet. Her teachers and those around her didn’t. But she was an extremely gifted child. Her talent alone set her apart. School was deadly boring for her. Everything was obvious and easy. She needed only to take a quick look at things to understand them, and during lessons she sat there daydreaming. I do believe, however, that by then she had managed to find some things in her free time which interested her — advanced maths books, that sort of thing. But basically she was bored stiff. She spent a lot of time reading her Marvel comics, which were way below her intellectual level but possibly fulfilled another, therapeutic function.”

“In what sense?”

“To be honest I’m reluctant to try to play the shrink with Lisbeth. She would hate it if she could hear me. But those comics are full of superheroes fighting against supervillains, taking matters into their own hands to exact revenge and see to it that justice is done. For all I know, that may have been the perfect sort of reading material. Perhaps those stories, with their black-and-white view of the world, helped her to gain some clarity.”

“You mean that she understood she had to grow up and become a superhero herself.”

“In some way, maybe, in her own little world. At the time she didn’t know that Zalachenko had been a Soviet spy, and that his secrets had given him a unique position in Swedish society. She can have had no idea either that there was a special section within Säpo which protected him. But like Camilla she sensed that her father had some sort of immunity. One day a man in a grey overcoat appeared at the apartment and hinted that their father must come to no harm. Lisbeth realized early on that there was no point in reporting Zalachenko to the police or the social services. That would only result in yet another man in a grey overcoat turning up on their doorstep.

“Powerlessness, Mikael, can be a devastating force, and before Lisbeth was old enough to do something about it she needed a place of strength, a refuge. She found that in the world of superheroes. I know better than most how important literature can be, whether it’s comic books or fine old novels, and I know that Lisbeth grew particularly attached to a young heroine called Janet van Dyne.”

“Van Dyne?”

“That’s right, a girl whose father was a rich scientist. The father is murdered — by aliens, if I remember right — and in order to take her revenge Janet van Dyne gets in touch with one of her father’s old colleagues, and in his laboratory acquires superpowers. She becomes the Wasp, someone you can’t push around, either literally or figuratively.”

“I didn’t know that. So that’s where she gets her handle from?”

“Not just the handle. I knew nothing about all that sort of stuff, obviously — I was an old dinosaur who got the Phantom mixed up with Mandrake the Magician — but the first time I saw a picture of the Wasp, it gave me a start. There was so much of Lisbeth in her. There still is, in a way. I think she picked up a lot of her style from that character. I don’t want to make too much of it, but I do know she thought a great deal about the transformation Janet van Dyne underwent when she became the Wasp. Somehow she understood that she herself had to undergo the same drastic metamorphosis: from child and victim to someone who could fight back against a highly trained and ruthless intelligence agent.

“Thoughts like these occupied her day and night and so the Wasp became an important figure for her during her period of transition, a source of inspiration. And Camilla found out about it. That girl had an uncanny ability to nose out other people’s weaknesses — she used her tentacles to feel for their sensitive points and would then strike exactly there. So she came to make fun of the Wasp in whichever way she could. She even found out who her Marvel enemies were and began to call herself by their names, Thanos and all the others.”

“Did you say Thanos?” Blomkvist said, suddenly alert.

“I think that’s what he was called, a destroyer who once fell in love with Death itself. Death had appeared to him in the shape of a woman, and after that he wanted to prove himself worthy of her, or something like that. Camilla became a fan of his so as to provoke Lisbeth. She even called her gang of friends the Spider Society — in one of the comics that group are the sworn enemies of the Sisterhood of the Wasp.”

“Really?” Blomkvist said, his mind racing.

“Yes, I suppose it was childish, but that didn’t make it innocent. There was such hostility between the sisters even then that those names took on a nasty significance.”

“Do you think that’s still relevant?”

“The names, you mean?”

“I suppose so.”

Blomkvist was not sure what he meant, but he had a vague feeling that he had lit upon something important.

“I don’t know,” Palmgren said. “They’re grown women now, but we mustn’t forget that those were decisive times in their lives, when everything changed. Looking back, it’s perfectly possible that small details could turn out to be of fateful significance. It wasn’t just that Lisbeth lost a mother and was then locked up. Camilla’s existence too was smashed to pieces. She lost her home, and the father she admired suffered severe burns. As you know, after the petrol bomb Zalachenko was never himself again. Camilla was put in a foster home miles from the world whose undisputed leading light she had been. It must have been bitterly hurtful for her too. I don’t for one second doubt that she’s hated Lisbeth with a murderous fury ever since.”

“It certainly looks like it,” Blomkvist said.

Palmgren took another sip of brandy. “The sisters were already effectively in a state of out-and-out war, and somehow I think they both knew that everything was about to blow up to change their lives for ever. I think they were even preparing for it.”

“But in different ways.”

“Oh yes. Lisbeth had a brilliant mind, and infernal plans and strategies were constantly ticking away in her head. But she was alone. Camilla was not so bright, not in the conventional sense — she never had a head for studies, and was incapable of understanding abstract reasoning — but she knew how to manipulate people to do her bidding, so, unlike Lisbeth, she was never alone. If Camilla ever discovered that Lisbeth was good at something which could be a threat to her, she never tried to acquire the same skill, for the simple reason she knew she couldn’t compete with her sister.”

“So what did she do instead?”

“Instead she would track down somebody — or better still more than one person — who could do whatever it was, and strike back with their help. She always had minions. But forgive me, I’m getting ahead of myself.”

“Yes, tell me what happened with Zalachenko’s computer?”

“Lisbeth was short of stimulation, as I said. And she would lie awake at night, worrying about her mother. Agneta bled badly after the rapes, but wouldn’t go to a doctor. She probably felt ashamed. Periodically she sank into deep depressions and no longer had the strength to go to work or look after the girls. Camilla despised her even more. ‘Mamma is weak,’ she’d say. As I told you, in her world, to be weak was worse than anything else. Lisbeth, on the other hand, saw a person she loved — the only person she had ever loved — fall victim to a dreadful injustice. She was a child in so many ways, but she was also becoming convinced that she was the only person in the world who could save her mother from being beaten to death. So she got up in the middle of one night — carefully, of course, so as not to wake Camilla — and saw the computer on the desk by the window overlooking Lundagatan.

“At that time she didn’t even know how to switch on a computer. But she worked it out. The computer seemed to be whispering to her: ‘Unlock my secrets.’ She didn’t get far, not at first. A password was needed. Since her father was known as Zala, she tried that, and Zala666 and similar combinations, and everything else she could think of. But nothing worked. I believe this went on for two or three nights, and if she slept at all then it was at school or at home in the afternoon.

“Then one night she remembered something her father had written in German on a piece of paper in the kitchen — Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker. What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. At the time it meant nothing to her. But she realized that the phrase was important to her father, so she tried it. But that didn’t work either. There were too many letters. So she tried Nietzsche, the author of the quote, and there she was, suddenly she was in. A whole world opened up to her. Later she would describe it as a moment which changed her for ever. She thrived once she overcame that barrier. She explored what was intended to stay hidden.”

“And Zalachenko never knew of this?”

“It seems not, and she understood nothing at first. It was all in Russian. There were various lists, and some numbers — accounts of the revenues from his trafficking operations. To this day I have no idea how much she worked out then and how much she found out later. She came to understand that her mother was not the only one made to suffer by her father. He was destroying other women’s lives too, and that made her wild with rage. That is what turned her into the Lisbeth we know today, the one who hates men who...”

“... hate women.”

“Precisely. But it also made her stronger. She saw that there was no turning back — she had to stop her father. She went on with her searches on other computers, including at school, where she would sneak into the staffroom, and sometimes she pretended to be sleeping over with the friends she didn’t have while in fact she stayed overnight at school and sat at the computers until morning. She started to learn everything about hacking and programming, and I imagine that it was the same as when other child prodigies discover their niche — she was in thrall. She felt that she was born for this. Many of her contacts in the digital world began to take an interest in her even then, the way the older generation has always engaged with younger talents, whether to encourage or crush them. Many people out there were irritated by her unorthodox ways, her completely new approach. But others were impressed, and she made friends, including Plague — you know about him. She got her first real friends by way of the computer and above all, for the first time in her life, she felt free. She could fly through cyberspace, just like the Wasp. There was nothing to tie her down.”

“Did Camilla realize how accomplished she’d become?”

“She certainly had her suspicions. I don’t know, I really don’t want to speculate, but sometimes I think of Camilla as Lisbeth’s dark side, her shadow figure.”

“The evil twin.”

“A bit, though I don’t like to call people evil, especially not young women. If you want to dig into it yourself I suggest you get in touch with Margareta Dahlgren, Camilla’s foster mother after the havoc at Lundagatan. Margareta lives in Stockholm now, in Solna, I think. She’s a widow and has had a desperately sad life.”

“In what way?”

“Well, that may also be of interest. Her husband Kjell, a computer programmer at Ericsson, hanged himself a short time before Camilla left them. A year later their nineteen-year-old daughter also committed suicide by jumping from a Finland ferry — at least that’s what the inquest concluded. The girl had emotional problems — she struggled with her self-esteem — but Margareta never believed that version, and she even hired a private detective. Margareta is obsessed by Camilla, and to be honest I’ve always had a bit of a problem with her, I’m embarrassed to say. Margareta got in touch with me straight after you published your Zalachenko story. As you know that’s when I had just been discharged from the rehabilitation clinic. I was mentally and physically at the end of my tether and Margareta talked endlessly. She was fixated. The sight of her number on my telephone display would exhaust me, and I went to some efforts to avoid her. But now when I think about it I understand her more. I think she would be happy to talk to you, Mikael.”

“Can you let me have her details?”

“I’ll get them for you. Just wait a moment.” When Palmgren came back moments later he said, “So you’re sure that Lisbeth and the boy are safely tucked away somewhere?”

“I’m sure,” Blomkvist said. At least I hope I am, he thought. He stood up and embraced Palmgren.

Out on Liljeholmstorget the storm tore into him again. He pulled his coat close around him and thought of Salander and her sister, and for some reason also of Andrei Zander.

He decided to call him to find out how he was getting on with his story on the art dealer. But Zander never picked up.

Chapter 24

Zander had called Blomkvist because he had changed his mind. Of course he wanted to go out for a beer. How could he not have taken him up on the offer? Blomkvist was his idol and the very reason he had gone in for journalism. But once he dialled the number he felt embarrassed and hung up. Maybe Blomkvist had found something better to do. Zander did not like disturbing people unnecessarily, and least of all Blomkvist.

Instead he worked on. But however hard he tried, he got nowhere. The words just would not come out right and after about an hour he decided to take a walk, and so he tidied his desk and checked once again that he had deleted every word on the encrypted link. Then he said goodbye to Emil Grandén, the only other person left in the office.

Grandén was thirty-six and had worked at both T.V.4’s “Cold Facts” and Svenska Morgon-Posten. Last year he had been awarded the Stora Journalist prize for Investigative Reporter of the Year. But Zander thought — even though he tried not to — that Grandén was conceited and overbearing, at least towards a young temp like him.

“Going out for a bit,” Zander said.

Grandén looked at him as if there was something he had forgotten to say. Then he uttered in a bored tone, “O.K.”

Zander felt miserable. It may only have been Grandén’s arrogant attitude, but it was more likely because of the article about the art dealer. Why was he finding it so difficult? Presumably because all he wanted to do was help Blomkvist with the Balder story. Everything else felt secondary. But he was also spineless, wasn’t he? Why had he not let Blomkvist take a look at what he had written?

No-one could raise the level of a story like Blomkvist could, with just a few light pen strokes or deletions. Never mind. Tomorrow he would see the story with fresh eyes and then Blomkvist could read it, however bad it might be. Zander closed the door to the office and walked out towards the lift. Further down the stairs a drama was unfolding. At first he could not make out what was going on, but there was a scrawny, hollow-eyed figure molesting a beautiful young woman. Zander froze — he had always loathed violence, ever since his parents had been killed in Sarajevo. He hated fights. But his self-respect was at stake. It was one thing to run away for your own sake, but quite another to leave a fellow human being in danger, and so he rushed down the stairs yelling, “Stop, let her go!”

At first that seemed like a fatal mistake — the hollow-eyed man pulled out a knife and muttered some threat in English. Zander’s legs nearly gave way, yet he managed to muster the last remnants of his courage and spat back, like something from a B-movie, “Hey, get lost! If you don’t, you’ll regret it.” After a few seconds of posturing, the man took off with his tail between his legs. Zander and the woman were left alone in the stairwell, and that too was like a scene from a film.

At first the woman was shaken and shy. She spoke so softly that Zander had to lean in close to hear what she was saying, and it took a while before he understood what had happened. The woman had been living in a marriage from hell, she said, and even though she was now divorced and living with a protected identity her ex-husband had managed to track her down and send some stooge to harass her.

“That’s the second time that foul man has thrown himself at me today,” she said.

“Why were you up here?”

“I tried to get away and ran in, but it didn’t help. I can’t thank you enough.”

“It was nothing.”

“I’m so fed up with nasty men,” she said.

“I’m a nice man,” he said, perhaps a little too quickly, and that made him feel pathetic. He was not in the least bit surprised that the woman did not answer but looked down at the stairs in embarrassment.

He felt ashamed of such a cheap reply. But then, just as he thought he had been rejected, she raised her head and gave him a careful smile.

“I think you really might be. My name’s Linda.”

“I’m Andrei.”

“Nice to meet you, Andrei, and thank you again.”

“Thank you too.”

“What for?”

“For...”

He didn’t finish his sentence. He could feel his heart beating, his mouth was dry. He looked down the staircase.

“Yes, Andrei?” she said.

“Would you like me to walk you home?”

He regretted saying that too.

He was afraid it would be misinterpreted. But instead she gave him another of her enchanting, hesitant smiles, and said that she would feel safe with him by her side, so they went out into the street and down towards Slussen. She told him how she had been living more or less locked up in a big house in Djursholm. He said that he understood — he had written a series of articles on violence against women.

“Are you a journalist?” she said.

“I work at Millennium.”

“Wow,” she said. “Is that for real? I’m a huge fan of that magazine.”

“It’s done a lot of good things,” he said shyly.

“It really has,” she said. “A while ago I read a wonderful article about an Iraqi who had been wounded in the war and got sacked from his job as a cleaner at some restaurant in the city. He was left completely destitute. Today he’s the owner of a whole chain of restaurants. I cried when I read it; it was so beautifully written and inspiring.”

“I wrote that piece,” he said.

“Are you joking?” she said. “It was fantastic.”

Zander was not exactly spoiled when it came to praise for his journalistic efforts, especially from unknown women. Whenever Millennium was mentioned, people wanted to talk about Mikael Blomkvist, and Zander did not object to that. But secretly he dreamed of recognition for himself too, and now this beautiful Linda had praised him without even meaning to.

It made him so happy and proud that he plucked up the courage to suggest a drink at Papagallo, since they were just passing. To his delight she said, “What a good idea!” so they went into the restaurant, Zander’s heart pounding. He tried to avoid looking into her eyes.

Those eyes had knocked him off his feet and he could not believe this was really happening. They sat down at a table not far from the bar and Linda tentatively put out her hand. As he took it he smiled and mumbled something, hardly aware of what he was saying.

He looked down at his mobile — Grandén was calling. To his own surprise he ignored it and turned off his ringer. For once the magazine would have to wait. He just wanted to gaze into Linda’s face, to drown in it. She was so beautiful that it felt like a punch to the stomach, yet she seemed so fragile, like a wounded bird.

“I can’t imagine why anyone would want to hurt you,” he said.

“It happens all the time.”

Perhaps he could understand it after all. A woman like her probably attracted psychopaths. No-one else would dare ask her out. Most men would just shrivel up and feel inferior.

“It’s so nice to be sitting here with you,” he said.

“It’s so nice to be sitting here with you,” she retorted, gently stroking his hand. They each ordered a glass of red wine and started to talk, they had so much to say, and he didn’t notice his mobile vibrating in his pocket, not once but twice, which is how he came to ignore a call from Blomkvist for the first time in his life.

Soon afterwards she took his hand and led him out into the night. He did not ask where they were going. He was prepared to follow her anywhere. She was the most wonderful creature he had ever met, and from time to time she gave him a smile that made every paving stone, every breath, sound out a promise that something wonderful and overwhelming was happening. You live an entire life for the sake of a walk like this, he thought, barely noticing the cold and the city around him.

He was intoxicated by her company and what might await him. But maybe — he wasn’t sure — there was a hint of suspicion too. At first he dismissed these thoughts, his usual scepticism at any form of happiness. And yet he could not help asking himself: Is this too good to be true?

He studied Linda with a new focus, and noticed that not everything about her was attractive. As they walked past Katarinahissen he even thought he noticed something hard in her eyes. He looked anxiously down at the choppy waters. “Where are we going?”

“I have a friend with a small apartment in Mårten Trotzigs gränd,” she said. “She lets me use it sometimes. We could have another drink there.” That made him smile as if it were the most wonderful idea he had ever heard.

Yet he felt more and more confused. Not long ago he had been looking after her, and now she had taken the initiative. When a quick glance at his mobile told him that Blomkvist had rung twice, he felt he had to call back immediately. Come what may, he could not let the magazine down.

“I’d like that,” he said. “But first I have to make a call. I’m in the middle of a story.”

“No, Andrei,” she said, in a surprisingly firm tone. “You’re not calling anyone. Tonight it’s just you and me.”

They got to Järntorget. In spite of the storm there were quite a few people around and Linda stared at the ground, as if she did not want to be noticed. He looked over to the right at Österlånggatan and the statue of Evert Taube. The troubadour was standing there immobile, holding a sheet of music in his right hand, looking up at the sky in dark glasses. Should he suggest that they meet the following day?

“Maybe...” he started.

He got no further, because she pulled him to her and kissed him with a force which emptied his mind. Then she stepped up the pace again. She held his hand and pulled him to the left into Västerlånggatan, then right into a dark alley. Was that someone behind them? No, no, the footsteps and voices he could hear came from further away. It was just him and Linda, wasn’t it? They passed a window with a red frame and black shutters and came to a grey door which Linda had some trouble opening. The key was shaking in her hand and he wondered at that. Was she still afraid of her ex-husband and his goon?

They climbed a dark stone stairway. Their footsteps echoed and there was a faint smell of something rotten. On one of the steps past the third floor he saw a playing card, the queen of spades, and he did not like that, but he could not understand why, it was probably some silly superstition. He tried to ignore it, and think about how great it was that they had met. Linda was breathing heavily. Her right hand was clenched. A man’s laughter could be heard in the alley. Not laughing at him, surely? He was just agitated. But it felt as if they were climbing and climbing and not getting anywhere. Could the house really be so tall? No, here they were. The friend lived in the attic apartment.

The name on the door was Orlov and again Linda took out her bunch of keys. This time her hand was not shaking.

Blomkvist was sitting in an apartment with old-fashioned furniture on Prostvägen in Solna, next to a large churchyard. Just as Palmgren had anticipated, Margareta Dahlgren agreed to see him at once, and even though she had sounded manic over the telephone she turned out to be an elegant lady in her sixties. She was wearing a fashionable fawn jumper and neatly pressed black trousers. Perhaps she had had time to dress up for him. She was in high-heeled shoes and had it not been for her restless eyes he would have thought her to be a woman at peace with herself, despite everything.

“You want to hear about Camilla,” she said.

“Especially about her life more recently — if you know anything about it,” he said.

“I remember when she came to us,” she said, as if she had not been listening. “My husband Kjell thought we could make a contribution to society at the same time as adding to our little family. We had only one child, you see, our poor Moa. She was fourteen then, and quite lonely. We thought it would do her good if we took in a foster daughter of roughly the same age.”

“Did you know what had happened in the Salander family?”

“We didn’t have all the details, but we knew that it had been awful and traumatic and the mother was sick and the father had suffered serious burns. We were deeply moved and were expecting to meet a girl who had fallen apart, someone who would need an incredible amount of care and affection. But do you know what arrived?”

“Tell me.”

“The most adorable girl we’d ever seen. It wasn’t just that she was pretty. My goodness, you should have heard her talk. She was so wise and mature, and she told such heart-rending stories about how her mentally ill sister had terrorized the family. Yes, of course I now know how far from the truth that was. But how could we have doubted her then? Her eyes were bright with conviction, and when we said, ‘How dreadful, poor you,’ she answered, ‘It wasn’t easy, but I still love my sister; she’s just sick and now she’s getting treatment.’ It sounded so grown-up and full of empathy, and for a while it almost felt like she was the one taking care of us. Our whole family lit up, as if something glamorous had come into our lives and made everything bigger and more beautiful, and we blossomed. And Moa blossomed most of all. She began to take care of her appearance, and quite soon she became more popular at school. There was nothing I wouldn’t have done for Camilla right then. And Kjell, my husband, what can I say? He was a new person. He was smiling and laughing all the time, and we began to make love again, if you’ll forgive my being so frank. Perhaps I should have started to worry even then. But it felt like everything had finally fallen into place for our family. For a while we were all happy, as everybody is who meets Camilla. They’re happy to start with. Then... after some time with her you don’t want to live any more.”

“Is it as bad as that?”

“It’s horrific.”

“So what happened?”

“A poison began to spread among us. Camilla slowly took control of our family. Looking back, it’s impossible to say when the party ended and the nightmare began. It had happened so gradually and imperceptibly that we woke up one day and realized everything was ruined: our trust, our sense of security, the very foundations of our life together. Moa’s self-confidence plummeted. She lay awake at night weeping, saying she was ugly and horrible and didn’t deserve to live. Only later did we find out that her savings account had been cleaned out. I still don’t know how that happened. But I’m convinced Camilla blackmailed her. Blackmail came as naturally to her as breathing. She collected compromising information on people. For a long time I thought she was keeping a diary, but actually it was a catalogue of all the dirt she’d collected about people close to her. And Kjell... the bastard... you know, I believed him when he said that he’d started having problems sleeping and needed to use the bed in the basement guest room. But that was an excuse to be with Camilla. Starting when she was sixteen, she would sneak in there at night and have perverted sex with him. I say perverted because I got wind of what was going on when I asked about the cuts on Kjell’s chest. He didn’t say anything then, of course. Just gave me some unconvincing explanation and somehow I managed to suppress my suspicions. But do you know what they did? In the end Kjell came clean: Camilla tied him up and cut him with a knife. He said she enjoyed it. Sometimes I even hoped it was true, strange though that may sound, but I hoped that she got something out of it and didn’t only want to torture him, to destroy his life.”

“Did she blackmail him too?”

“Oh yes, but I don’t have the full story. He was so humiliated by Camilla that he wasn’t willing to tell me the truth, even when all was lost. Kjell had been the rock in our family. If we lost our way while out driving, if there was a flood, if any of us fell ill, he was the calm, sensible one. ‘It’ll all be alright,’ he would say in his wonderful voice — I still fantasize about it. But after a few years with Camilla in the house he was a wreck. Hardly dared to cross the road, looked a hundred times to make sure it was safe. And he lost all motivation at work, he just sat with his head hanging. One of his closest colleagues, Mats Hedlund, rang and told me in confidence that an inquiry had been set up to investigate whether Kjell had been selling company secrets. It sounded crazy. Kjell was the most honest man I’ve ever known. Plus if he’d sold anything, where was the money? We had less than ever. His bank account was stripped bare, same with our joint account.”

“Forgive my asking, but how did he die?”

“He hanged himself — without a word of explanation. I came home from work one day and found him swinging from the ceiling in the guest room, yes, the same room in which Camilla had had her fun with him. I was a well-paid C.F.O. at the time, and chances are I would have had a great career to look forward to. But after that, Moa’s and my world collapsed. I won’t go into it any further. You want to know what happened to Camilla. But there was no end to the misery. Moa started cutting herself and practically stopped eating. One day she asked me if I thought she was scum. ‘My God, darling,’ I replied, ‘how can you say something like that?’ Then she told me it was Camilla. That Camilla had claimed every single person who had ever met Moa thought she was repulsive. I sought all the help I could: psychologists, doctors, wise friends, Prozac. But to no avail. One gloriously beautiful spring day, when the rest of Sweden was celebrating some ridiculous triumph in the Eurovision Song Contest, Moa jumped from a ferry, and my life ended with hers — that’s how it felt. I no longer had the will to live and spent a long time in hospital being treated for depression. But then... I don’t know... somehow the paralysis and grief turned to rage, and I felt that I needed to understand. What had actually happened to our family? What sort of evil had seeped in? I started to make enquiries about Camilla, not because I wanted to see her again, not under any circumstances. But I wanted to understand her, the same way a parent of a murder victim wants to understand the murderer.”

“What did you discover?”

“Nothing to begin with. She had covered her tracks — it was like chasing a shadow, a phantom. I don’t know how many tens of thousands of kronor I spent on private detectives and other unreliable people who promised to help me. I was getting nowhere, and it was driving me crazy. I became fixated. I hardly slept, and none of my friends could bear to be with me any more. It was a terrible time. People thought I was being obsessive and stubborn, maybe they still do — I don’t know what Holger Palmgren told you. But then...”

“Go on.”

“Your story on Zalachenko was published. Naturally the name meant nothing to me, but I started to put two and two together. I read about his Swedish identity, Karl Axel Bodin, and about his connection with Svavelsjö Motorcycle Club, and then I remembered all the dreadful evenings towards the end, after Camilla had turned her back on us. At the time I was often woken up by the noise of motorbikes, and I could see those leather waistcoats with that awful emblem from my bedroom window. It didn’t surprise me that she mixed with those sorts of people. I no longer had any illusions about her. But I had no idea that this was the world she came from — and that she was expecting to take over her father’s business interests.”

“And did she?”

“Oh yes. In her own dirty world she fought for the rights of women — at least for her own rights — and I know that it meant a lot to many of the girls in the club, most of all to Kajsa Falk.”

“Who was she?”

“A sassy, lovely looking girl, her boyfriend was one of the leaders. She spent a lot of time at our home during that last year, and I remember liking her. She had big blue eyes with a slight squint, and a compassionate, vulnerable side behind her tough exterior. After reading your story I looked her up again. She didn’t say a word about Camilla, though she was by no means unpleasant. I noticed that her style had changed: the biker girl had become a businesswoman. But she didn’t talk about it. I thought I’d hit another dead end.”

“But it wasn’t?”

“No. About a year ago Kajsa looked me up of her own accord, and by then she had changed again. There was nothing reserved or cool about her. This time she was hounded and nervous. Not long after that she was found dead, shot at Stora Mossens sports centre in Bromma. When we met she told me there had been a dispute over the inheritance after Zalachenko’s death. Camilla’s twin sister, Lisbeth, came away more or less empty-handed — apparently she didn’t even want the little that she got — while the majority of the assets fell to Zalachenko’s two surviving sons in Berlin, and some to Camilla. She inherited part of the trafficking business you wrote about in your report, and that made my heart bleed. I doubt Camilla cared about those women, or felt any sort of compassion for them. But still, she didn’t want to have anything to do with those activities. She said to Kajsa that only losers bother with that sort of filth. She had a completely different, modern vision of what the organization should be doing, and after hard negotiation she got one of her half-brothers to buy her out. Then she disappeared to Moscow with her capital and some of the employees who wanted to follow her, Kajsa Falk among them.”

“Do you know what sort of business she was setting up?”

“Kajsa never got enough of an insight to understand it, but we had our suspicions. I think it was to do with those trade secrets at Ericsson. By now I’m almost certain Camilla really did get Kjell to steal and sell on something valuable, presumably by blackmailing him. I’ve also found out that in her first years with us she asked some computer geeks at school to hack into my computer. According to Kajsa, she was more or less obsessed with hacking. Not that she learned anything about it herself, not at all, but she was forever talking about the money one could make by accessing bank accounts and hacking servers and stealing information. She must have developed a business along those lines.”

“That sounds very possible.”

“It was probably at a very high level. Camilla would never settle for anything less. According to Kajsa, she soon found her way into influential circles in Moscow, and among other things became the mistress of some rich, powerful member of the Duma, and with him she began to forge connections with a strange crew of top engineers and criminals. She wound them round her little finger, and she knew exactly where the weak point in the domestic economy was.”

“And what was that?”

“The fact that Russia is little more than a petrol station with a flag on top. They export oil and natural gas, but manufacture nothing worth mentioning. Russia needs advanced technology.”

“She wanted to give them that?”

“That, at least, is what she pretended. But obviously she had her own agenda. I know that Kajsa was impressed by the way she built alliances with people and got herself political protection. She probably would have been loyal to Camilla for ever if she hadn’t become scared.”

“What was she scared of?”

“Kajsa got to know a former elite soldier — a major, I believe — and just lost her bearings. According to confidential information that Camilla had access to via her lover, the man had carried out a few shady operations for the Russian government. Among other things he had killed a well-known journalist, I presume you’ve heard of her, Irina Azarova. She’d taken a line against the government in various reports and books.”

“Oh yes, truly a heroine. A horrible story.”

“Absolutely. Something went wrong in the planning. Azarova was supposed to meet a critic of the regime in an apartment on a backstreet in a suburb south-east of Moscow, and according to the plan the major was supposed to shoot her as she came out. But no-one knew that the journalist’s sister had developed pneumonia, and Irina had to look after two nieces aged eight and ten. As she and the girls walked out of the front entrance the major shot all three of them in the face. After that he fell into disgrace — not that anybody was particularly bothered about the children, but public opinion was getting out of hand and there was a risk that the whole operation would be uncovered and turned against the government. I think the major was afraid he’d be made a scapegoat. He was also dealing with a load of personal problems at the same time. His wife took off, he was left alone with a teenage daughter and I believe there was even a possibility of his being evicted from his apartment. From Camilla’s perspective that was a perfect set-up: a ruthless person whom she could use, and who found himself in a vulnerable situation.”

“So she got him on board.”

“Yes, they met. Kajsa was there too, and the strange thing was that she immediately took a liking to this man. He wasn’t at all what she’d been expecting, nothing like the people she knew at Svavelsjö M.C., who were also killers. The man was very fit, very strong, and had a brutal look about him, but he was also cultivated and polite, she said, somehow vulnerable and sensitive. Kajsa could tell that he felt really terrible about shooting those children. He was a murderer, a man whose speciality had been torture during the war in Chechnya, but he still had his moral boundaries, she said, and that’s why she was so upset when Camilla got her claws into him — almost literally. She dragged her nails across his chest and hissed like a cat, ‘I want you to kill for me.’ Her words were charged with sexual tension, and with the skill of the devil she awakened the man’s sadism. The more gruesome his descriptions of his murders, the more excited she became. I’m not sure I understood it all, but it scared Kajsa to death. Not the murderer himself, but Camilla. Her beauty and allure managed to bring out the predator in him.”

“You never reported this to the police?”

“I asked Kajsa over and over. I told her she needed protection. She said she already had it and she forbade me to talk to the police. I was stupid enough to listen to her. After her death I told the investigators what I’d heard, but I doubt they believed me — presumably not. It was nothing but hearsay about a man without a name in another country. Camilla was nowhere to be found in any records, and I never discovered anything about her new identity. And certainly poor Kajsa’s murder is still unsolved.”

“I do understand how painful this must still be,” Blomkvist said.

“You do?”

“I think so,” he said, and was about to rest a sympathetic hand on her arm.

He was brought up short by his mobile buzzing in his pocket. He hoped it was Zander. But it was Stefan Molde. It took Blomkvist a few seconds to identify him as the person at the N.D.R.E. who had been in touch with Linus Brandell.

“What’s this about?” he said.

“A meeting with a senior civil servant who’s on his way to Sweden. He wants to see you as early as possible tomorrow morning at the Grand Hôtel.”

Blomkvist made an apologetic gesture in Fru Dahlgren’s direction.

“I have a tight schedule,” he said, “So if I’m to meet anybody, at the very least I want a name and an explanation.”

“The man’s name is Edwin Needham, and it’s about someone using the handle Wasp, who is suspected of serious crimes.”

Blomkvist felt a wave of panic. “O.K.,” he said. “What time?”

“Five o’clock tomorrow morning would work.”

“You’ve got to be joking!”

“Regrettably there’s nothing to joke about in all this. I suggest that you’re punctual. Mr Needham will see you in his room. You’ll have to leave your mobile at reception, and you’ll be searched.”

Blomkvist got to his feet and took his leave of Margareta Dahlgren.