“She got hold of his mobile,” Sandström said, “and sent a text to all of us in the club.”
“What did it say?”
“That we should listen to Conny.”
“I’m listening, Conny,” Camilla said.
“Salander said she’d come after all of us if we didn’t stop following Mikael Blomkvist.”
“Then she said something else,” Sandström added.
“And that was…?”
“That she’d come after us anyway and destroy our entire business.”
“Great,” she said, and somehow managed to stay calm.
“And then…” Sandström said. “Well, there was a lot of sensitive stuff on that mobile she nicked. We’re actually quite worried.”
“And so you should be,” she said. “But not about Lisbeth, right, Ivan?”
On the outside Camilla looked sarcastic and menacing. But inside she was falling apart. Eventually she told Galinov to take over the conversation and went into her room, and there she let the past wash over her like dirty, black water.
* * *
—
Rebecka Forsell could not believe what she had done. She had heard Johannes whisper, “He mustn’t see me,” and, on an impulse she would never fully understand, she tripped Lindberg. Then they raced through the swing doors to the taxis waiting in the rain.
Forsell chose one that looked like it didn’t belong to any taxi firm.
“Drive,” he said, and at that the driver, a dark-skinned young man with curly hair and sleepy eyes, turned to him. He showed no surprise at seeing a man still in his pyjamas.
“Where to?” he said.
Forsell did not say a word.
“Just cross Solnabron and head into town,” Rebecka said, thinking that they could take it from there. But she also noted—and it came as an unexpected relief—that the driver had not shown any sign of recognition. That may have been what Johannes had been hoping for when he picked this taxi—someone whose life was so remote from the Swedish establishment that he did not know what Sweden’s most hated man looked like. But this would get them only so far, and as they swung past Solna cemetery she tried to assess the potential impact of what they had done.
She persuaded herself that it need not be all that dramatic. Her husband was going through a crisis, and she was a doctor and could perfectly well have come to the conclusion that he needed some peace and quiet away from the busy hospital. She just had to let them know, before panic broke out.
“You’ve got to tell me what’s going on. I can’t handle this sort of madness,” she whispered.
“Do you remember that professor of international relations we met at the French Embassy?” he said.
“Janek Kowalski?”
He nodded and she looked at him, puzzled. Kowalski was not a part of their lives. She would not have remembered his name had she not recently read an article by him, on the limits to freedom of expression.
“That’s right,” he answered. “He lives in Dalagatan, up near Odenplan. We can spend the night there.”
“Why on earth…? We don’t even know him.”
“I do,” he said, and she was not happy about that either.
She remembered them greeting each other almost like strangers at the embassy reception, and making polite conversation. Were they only pretending, was it all an act?
“I’ll stay the night anywhere you say,” she said softly, “as long as you promise to tell me everything.”
He looked at her. “I will. After that it’s up to you to decide what you want to do,” he said.
“What do you mean, decide?”
“If you still want me.”
She did not answer. She looked ahead across Solnabron and said, “Dalagatan. We’d like to go to Dalagatan,” while she thought about limits, perhaps even about the limits to freedom of expression, but first and foremost about the limits to love.
What would it take for her to leave him?
What would he have to have done for her to stop loving him? Was there even such a thing?
* * *
—
Lindås set off along Götgatan, and was beginning to feel that life might, after all, be worth living. But my goodness, the rain. It was bucketing down and she hurried along with her suitcase. She had of course packed too much, as if she would be gone for weeks. Then again, she had no idea how long they would be staying at the hotel, only that Blomkvist could not go back to his place and had a lot of work to do, unfortunately. But then so did she.
It was half past nine in the evening and she realized how hungry she was. She had scarcely eaten since breakfast. She walked past the Victoria cinema and Göta Lejon theatre and, although she was definitely in a better mood, that uncomfortable feeling would not leave her. She looked out across Medborgarplatsen.
A long line of youngsters were waiting in the rain for tickets to some concert or other, and she was about to hurry down into the tunnelbana when she gave a sudden start and turned, looking right and left. She saw nothing out of the ordinary; no shadow from the past, nothing, and she hurried down the stairs with her case, past the ticket gates and onto the platform, trying to reassure herself that all was well.
Not until she got off the tunnelbana at Central Station and bustled along in the rain down Hamngatan, past Kungsträdgården and out onto Blasieholmen did she begin to worry again, and she quickened her pace. She was almost running and out of breath as she burst into the hotel lobby and went up the curved staircase to the reception. A young woman, hardly more than twenty years old, gave her a welcoming smile and she responded with “Good evening,” but then she heard footsteps behind her and that put her off completely. What was the name in which Mikael had booked the room? She knew it began with a B…Boman, Brodin, Brodén…Bromberg?
“We have a reservation in the name of…” and then she hesitated. She would have to check her mobile, and that was going to seem odd, she thought—and certainly sleazy. When she saw that it actually was Boman, she said the name so quietly that the receptionist did not hear and she had to repeat it, more loudly this time. At that point she remembered the footsteps behind her on the stairs and turned to look.
But there was no-one. A man with long hair in a denim jacket was, however, just leaving the hotel and she wondered about that as she checked in. Had the man been up there only briefly? That was strange, surely. Maybe the hotel looked too expensive. She put it out of her mind.