“It’s a funny thing, Mikael, not ten minutes ago I was thinking about you.”
Although he may in fact have been thinking about Lisbeth Salander, or perhaps that was just a feeling he had.
“How are you?”
“Good, all things considered,” Blomkvist said.
“I’m glad you qualified that. I’m starting to find uncomplicated cheerfulness hard to cope with. Have you had any holiday?”
“I’m doing my best right now.”
“If you’re calling me, you’re not trying very hard. It’s about your girl, I guess?”
“She’s never been my girl,” Blomkvist said.
“I know, I know. No-one’s less like someone’s girl than she is. She’s a bit like the fallen angel in paradise, isn’t she? She serves nobody, belongs to nobody.”
“It beats me that you’re a policeman, Jan.”
“My rabbi says I ought to retire. But, seriously, have you heard from her?”
“She tells me she’s keeping out of the way and not doing anything stupid. And for the moment I actually believe her.”
“I’m pleased to hear it. I don’t like the fact that Svavelsjö are nosing around after her,” Bublanski said.
“No-one likes it.”
“I suppose you know we’ve offered her protection.”
“I heard.”
“And did you also hear that she refused, and hasn’t been contactable since?”
“Well, yes…”
“Although…”
“Although nothing,” Blomkvist went on. “Except I do take comfort from the fact that nobody knows as much about keeping under the radar as she does.”
“You mean from electronic surveillance and stuff like that,” Bublanski said.
“It’s not as though she can be traced via any base station or IP address.”
“That’s something, at least. We’ll just have to wait and see, then.”
“We will. Can I ask you about something completely different?”
“Fire away.”
“Your man Faste’s been saddled with an investigation which he doesn’t seem in the least interested in.”
“Often it’s better that way. Sometimes when he can be bothered to make an effort…”
“Hmm, maybe so. It’s to do with a beggar who was found dead in the street. Fredrika Nyman, a medical examiner, thinks he may have been murdered.”
Blomkvist told him the story, and afterwards Bublanski left his office, got himself two plastic-wrapped cheese sandwiches and one chocolate wafer from the machine, and called his colleague, Inspector Sonja Modig.
* * *
—
Catrin put on a gardening glove that she found lying in the grass, and tugged away at the nettles that had grown under Blomkvist’s currant bushes. When she looked up, she saw a man with a ponytail and a broad, slightly menacing back hurrying away along the shoreline. But she put him out of her mind and went back to the confused thoughts that had occupied her in the cabin.
It was probably true that the beggar in Mariatorget was not really like the junkies on Freak Street. But she was convinced that he came from the same part of the world and had been treated by the same careless breed of doctor. She remembered his mutilated fingers and his distinctive way of walking, as if he were missing a centre of gravity beneath his feet. She recalled his powerful grip and the words:
“I know something very bad about Johannes Forsell.”
She was expecting more of the sort of abuse that she saw on the internet every day, along with the hate mail addressed to her, and she was afraid that he would become violent. But just as she was about to panic he let go of her arm, and continued in a more sorrowful tone:
“I took Forsell. And I left Mamsabiv…terrible, so terrible.”
Or perhaps he did not say “Mamsabiv,” but it was something similar, a long word with the stress on the first syllable. The word had rung in her ears as she ran away from him and bumped into Sofie Melker on Swedenborgsgatan. She had somehow forgotten it, and now, out at the cabin, the conversation with the medical examiner had brought it all back, and she wondered what it might mean. It needed looking into after all.
She took off the gardening glove and keyed in several versions of the word, but her search yielded nothing that made sense in any language. Google only asked if she meant Mats Sabin, and maybe she did, Matssabin pronounced in one breath. It couldn’t be ruled out, especially when she discovered that Mats Sabin had been an officer in Kustartilleriet, the coastal artillery, and later a military historian at Försvarshögskolan, the Swedish Defence University. He could very easily have had dealings with Forsell, a former intelligence officer and an authority on Russia.
Catrin put both names into her browser, on the off-chance, and got an immediate hit which revealed that not only had they met, they had been enemies, or at least had public disagreements. She considered going inside and telling Mikael. But no, it felt too far-fetched, so she stayed in the garden and got back to work on the weeds, occasionally looking up to contemplate the waterfront, her mind full of conflicting thoughts.
* * *
—
Salander was still at the Kings Court Hotel in Prague, sitting at the desk near the window and staring once again at images on her screen of Camilla’s large house in Rublyovka. But she was no longer doing so compulsively, or as part of her routine to imprint things on her memory. The house seemed increasingly like a fortress, a command centre. People came and went all the time, even big shots like Kuznetsov, and everybody was frisked. Every day there were more and more guards, and IT security was certainly being checked over and over again.
Thanks to the base station which Katya Flip had put in position and taken away after a few days, Lisbeth was able to follow Camilla step by step, relying on the tracking signals from her sister’s mobile. But she hadn’t yet been able to hack the IT system and so was reduced to guessing what was happening inside the house. She knew only that the level of activity had increased.
The house was pulsating with the sort of nervous energy which precedes a major operation, and yesterday Camilla had been driven to the Aquarium, as it was known, the headquarters of the GRU, the military intelligence service in Khodinka, outside Moscow. That was not a good sign. It looked as if she was calling in all the help she could muster.
It seemed that she had no idea where Lisbeth was, however, and to some extent this was reassuring. So long as her sister remained in the house in Rublyovka, Lisbeth and Paulina ought not to be in any danger. But there was no certainty of anything.