* * *
—
Forsell was back on Everest. In his mind he was staggering ahead in the lashing snowstorm, it was cold and unbearable, and he could hardly think any longer. He just tramped on and could hear his crampons creak, and the thunder in the skies and the wide-open spaces. He wondered how much longer he could take it.
Often he was conscious only of his rasping breath in the oxygen mask and the indistinct shape of Lindberg next to him, and sometimes not even of that.
At times he was surrounded by darkness, maybe because in those moments he was walking with his eyes shut, and if there had been a precipice he would have stepped right into it and fallen without even a scream or a care. Then even the jet streams seemed to quiet. He was heading into a black and soundless oblivion, and yet not long before he had recalled his father standing by the ski tracks, yelling encouragement: There’s more in you, my boy. There’s more in you. For a long time, when fear had him in its claws, he had clung to those words. If you dug deep enough, there was always a little extra. But no longer.
Now there was nothing left, and he looked down at the snow swirling around his boots and thought that this might be the moment he would finally collapse, and that was when he heard the shouts, the wailing carried along by the winds, which at first sounded inhuman, as if the mountain itself were crying out its distress.
* * *
—
Johannes said something now, quite clearly, but Rebecka did not know if it was in his sleep or he was speaking to her.
“Can you hear?”
She heard only what she had been hearing all day, the roar from the highway outside, the hum of the hospital equipment and the steps and voices in the corridor, and she did not answer. She just wiped a drop of sweat from his forehead and straightened his hair. That made him open his eyes and she felt a sudden surge of hope and longing. Talk to me, she thought. Tell me what happened.
He looked at her with such fear in his eyes that it frightened her.
“Were you dreaming?” she said.
“It was those cries again.”
“Cries?”
“On Everest.”
In the past they had often discussed the events on the mountain. But she had no recollection of any cries, and she considered letting it go. She could tell by the look in his eyes that his thoughts were not entirely lucid.
“I don’t really know what you mean,” she said.
“I thought it was the storm, don’t you remember? The winds which sounded almost human.”
“No, darling, I don’t. I was never with you up there. I was at Base Camp the whole time, you know that.”
“But I must have told you.”
She shook her head and wanted to change the subject, and not only because he seemed delirious. Her heart sank, as if she could tell there was something fateful about those cries.
“Shouldn’t you rest a little?” she said.
“Then I thought they were wild dogs.”
“What?”
“Wild dogs at twenty-six thousand feet. Imagine that.”
“We can talk about Everest later,” she said. “But first, Johannes, you must help me to understand. What made you run off like that?”
“When?”
“Just now, on Sandön. You swam out into the bay.”
She saw from his look that it was coming back to him, and it was obvious at once that this did not make things any better. He seemed more at home with his wild dogs on Everest.
“Who pulled me out? Was it Erik?”
“It wasn’t one of the bodyguards.”
“So who was it?”
She wondered how he would take it. “It was Mikael Blomkvist.”
“The writer?”
“The same.”
“That’s strange,” he said, and it was indeed incredibly strange, but his reaction did not reflect that. He sounded listless and sad, and he looked down at his hands with an indifference that frightened her. She waited for him to come back with a question. But when it did come, there was no curiosity in his voice.
“How come?”
“He called when I was at my most hysterical. He said he was working on an article.”
“About what?”
“You’re never going to believe me,” she said, although she suspected that he would believe her only too well.
* * *
—
Salander got off at Zinkensdamm station and walked along Ringvägen into Brännkyrkagatan, as the memories welled up once more. Maybe because she was back in the neighbourhood where she had lived as a child, or because her mind was alive again as she prepared a new operation.
She looked up at the sky. It had turned dark. It would probably start raining soon, just like in Moscow. The air felt heavy, as if a storm was brewing, and some way off she saw a young man on the pavement, doubled up as if he were being sick. She could see drunk people everywhere, maybe there was some kind of party going on. Perhaps it was pay day, or a public holiday.
She turned left up the steps and as she approached Blomkvist’s home from Tavastgatan, slowly her focus returned, absolute and complete, and she registered every detail and figure around her. Yet…it was not what she was expecting to find. Had she been mistaken? There was nothing suspicious, only more drunks. But no, wait, over there by the crossroads…
It was nothing more than a back, the broad back of a man wearing a corduroy jacket. He held a book in his hand, and criminals did not usually wear corduroy jackets or read books. He was tall and slightly overweight, and there was something about him that put her on edge, his posture or the way he looked up, and she passed him unnoticed, giving him only the briefest glance. Immediately she saw that she had been right. The jacket and book had been no more than a pathetic disguise, a clumsy attempt to masquerade as a hipster from Söder, and she realized that she not only knew what he was. She even knew who he was.
His name was Conny Andersson, and not that long ago he had been a hanger-on, a gofer. Unsurprisingly he was not a major figure in the club. He had been given a shitty assignment: to stand and wait for some man who was probably not going to show up. Yet Salander knew he was no innocent for all that. He was more than six feet tall and a debt-collection enforcer, and she walked on with her head down, as if she had not seen him.
She then turned and scanned the other side of the street. There were two young drunks of about twenty wandering a little way off, and ahead of them a lady in her sixties, ambling along much too slowly, and that was not good. But Salander did not have time to wait. The minute Conny Andersson spotted her, she would be in trouble, so she carried calmly on, straight ahead.