Bublanski nodded to himself. It was unusual for him to be offered assistance by an official like that, because by now he had worked out exactly what sort of person Kowalski was, and his mind was on that and all sorts of other matters. He got up and was about to go see Sonja Modig and put her in the picture when the telephone rang. It was Erika Berger.
* * *
—
Catrin Lindås was sitting in a brown armchair in Kowalski’s sitting room, opposite Johannes Forsell and next to Rebecka. She was having trouble concentrating, she couldn’t stop thinking about Blomkvist. She had been able to borrow a tape recorder, having had to put away her mobile, and thought that would allow her to keep working. And little by little she became more absorbed, in spite of everything.
“So you couldn’t take another step?” she asked.
“No,” Forsell continued. “Darkness had fallen and it was icy cold. I was literally freezing, and hoping it would be over quickly. That I would lapse into that last state of lethargy when the body loses its heat and apparently you feel well again. But just then I heard the cries and looked up, and at first I didn’t see anything. Then Nima Rita appeared again out of the storm, but this time he had two heads and four arms, like a Hindu deity.”
“What are you saying?”
“That’s how he looked to me. But in fact he was dragging someone along. It was a while before I registered this, and even longer before I understood who it was. I was too tired to think. Too tired to even hope for rescue. Maybe even too tired to want to be rescued, and I must have lost consciousness. I came to when I felt a body lying right next to me, a woman with her arms stiffly stretched out as if she wanted to embrace me. She was mumbling about her daughter.”
“What was she saying?”
“I never understood. All I remember is that we looked at each other, completely desperate, of course, but astonished. I think we recognized each other. It was Klara, and I patted her on the head and shoulder, and remember thinking that she would never again be beautiful. Her face had been destroyed by the cold. I saw the cut my ice axe had left in her lip and perhaps I said a few words. Maybe she replied. I don’t know. As the storm crashed around us, Svante and Nima were having a row above our heads. They were snarling and shoving at each other. It was all very peculiar and the only thing I heard was something so absurd and unpleasant that I thought I must have got it wrong. I heard those ugly English words ‘slut’ and ‘whore.’ Why were those expressions being used when the crisis was at its worst? I simply could not understand it.”
CHAPTER 31
August 28
Blomkvist had never wanted to die, not in the way Forsell longed for death on Everest. He had never even been in a major crisis. But now as he lay on that stretcher, with severe burns to his legs and feet, he wanted to fade away and disappear. Nothing existed but his pain, and he was not even able to scream. His body was in shock and his jaw was clenched, and he could not conceive that things could get any worse. But they could.
The man in the white suit, who had introduced himself as Ivan, picked up a scalpel lying on the table beside him and cut into Blomkvist’s burns, and then he arched his back and screamed. He howled and screamed until he was drawn back into the conscious world. But it was a while before he realized what had happened, and he was only vaguely aware of more footsteps approaching, the click of heels this time. He twisted his head and saw a woman with strawberry-blond hair and a face of unearthly beauty. She smiled, and that should perhaps have given him hope of some sort of relief. Instead he felt only a greater terror.
“You…” he forced out.
“Me,” she said.
Camilla stroked his forehead and hair. Blomkvist flinched at her touch.
“Hello,” she said.
Blomkvist did not answer. His whole being was one screaming wound. And yet…his thoughts raced, as if he had something important to tell her.
“Lisbeth worries me,” she said. “You should be worried about her too, Mikael. The clock is ticking. Tick, tock. But you’ve probably lost track of time, haven’t you? I can tell you that it’s already gone eleven, and Lisbeth would have been in touch by now if she wanted to help you. But we haven’t heard a word.”
She smiled again.
“Maybe she’s not all that keen on you after all, Mikael. Perhaps she’s jealous of all your other women. Of your little Catrin.”
He shuddered. “What have you done to her?”
“Nothing, my dear, nothing. Nothing yet. But it looks as if Lisbeth would rather see you dead than cooperate with us. She’s sacrificing you—the same way she’s sacrificed so many others.”
Blomkvist closed his eyes and tried to trawl his mind for something he knew he wanted to say, but all that was there was his pain. “It’s you who are sacrificing me,” he said. “Not Lisbeth.”
“Us? No, no, Lisbeth was made an offer which she did not accept, and I have nothing against that. I’ll be happy for her to discover what it feels like to lose someone you’re close to. Weren’t you important to her once?”
Again she ran her hand over his hair, and in that second he saw something unexpected in Camilla’s face. He saw a similarity to Salander, not in appearance maybe, rather the speechless rage in her eyes, and he managed to stammer:
“The ones…”
He struggled to master the pain.
“What, Mikael?”
“…who mattered to her were her mother, and Holger, and she’s already lost them,” he said, and in that moment he realized what he had been searching for.
“What are you trying to say?”
“That Lisbeth knows perfectly well what it is to lose someone close, while you, Camilla—”
“While I…”
“…lost something worse.”
“And what would that be?”
He spat it out through gritted teeth:
“A piece of yourself.”
“What do you mean?” Fury flashed in her eyes.
“You lost both your mother and your father. A mother who did not want to see what was being done to you, and a father…you loved…but who took advantage of you, and I believe—”
“What the hell do you believe?”
He shut his eyes and tried grimly to focus. “That you became the biggest victim in the family. Everyone let you down.”
Camilla grabbed him by the throat:
“What has Lisbeth put into your head?”