“Bugger.”
“Precisely. Lisbeth’s address was no longer quite so secret, and Svavelsjö don’t usually show up with coffee and buns.”
“Not their style.”
“Fortunately the guys turned around and left when they saw the cameras, and of course we immediately contacted the police, who were able to identify the men—one of them was called Kovic, I remember. Peter Kovic. But that didn’t get rid of the problem, of course, so I rang Lisbeth and asked to meet her right away. She agreed, though rather reluctantly. She came to my office, looking the very image of a perfect daughter-in-law.”
“Sounds like a bit of an exaggeration.”
“I mean, by her standards. The studs had gone, her hair was cut short, and she looked respectable, and I thought, my God, I’ve missed this funny person. I couldn’t bring myself to tear into her—obviously I realized that she’d hacked our cameras—so I just warned her to be careful. They’re out to get you, I told her. ‘People have always been out to get me,’ was all she said, and that really made me mad. I told her that she needed to look for help, for protection: ‘Or they’re going to kill you.’ But then something happened that scared me.”
“What?”
“She looked at the floor and said: ‘Not if I keep one step ahead.’ ”
“What did she mean by that?”
“That’s what I asked myself, and then the story of her father came back to me.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning that she defended herself that time by going on the attack, and I had a feeling that she was planning something similar now: by getting her retaliation in first, and that made me very frightened, Mikael. I saw her eyes and then it no longer mattered how neat and tidy she looked. What I saw was lethal. Her eyes were jet black.”
“I think you’re exaggerating. Lisbeth takes no unnecessary risks. She’s normally quite rational.”
“She is rational—in her own crazy way.”
Blomkvist thought about what Salander had said to him at Kvarnen: that she would be the hunter and not the hunted.
“So what happened?”
“Nothing. She just pushed off, and I haven’t heard a word from her since. Every day I’ve been expecting to read somewhere that Svavelsjö’s clubhouse has been blown to smithereens or that her sister’s been found burned to a crisp in a car in Moscow.”
“Camilla is being protected by the Russian mafia. Lisbeth would never start a war with them.”
“Do you honestly believe that?”
“I don’t know. But I’m certain that she never…”
“What?”
“Nothing,” he said, and bit his lip. He felt naïve and stupid.
“It’s not over till it’s over, Mikael. That was the feeling I got. Neither Lisbeth nor Camilla will give up until one of them is lying dead.”
“I think you’re making too much of this,” Blomkvist said.
“You do?”
“I hope so,” he corrected himself. He poured them both some more wine and excused himself for a moment.
He picked up his mobile and texted Salander.
To his surprise, he got an answer right away.
<Chill out, Blomkvist> it read. <I’m on holiday. Keeping out of harm’s way. Not doing anything stupid>
* * *
—
Holiday was maybe putting it a bit strongly. But Salander’s idea of happiness had to do with relief from pain, and as she knocked back her beer at the bar of the Hôtel d’Angleterre, that is precisely what she felt: a form of release, as if she were only just beginning to register how tense she had been all summer long—how the hunt for her sister had driven her to the edge of madness. Not that she really unwound; her childhood memories still went round and round in her brain. But her field of vision seemed to broaden and she even began to feel a yearning, not necessarily for anything in particular, but simply to get away from everything. It was enough to give her a sense of freedom.
“Are you OK?”
She heard the question again above the noise of the bar, and she turned to find herself looking straight at a young woman standing next to her.
“Why do you ask?” she said.
The woman was perhaps thirty years old, dark and intense, with slanting eyes and long, curly black hair. She wore jeans with a dark-blue blouse and high-heeled boots. There was something both hard and probing about her. Her right arm was bandaged.
“I’m not sure,” the woman said. “It’s just the sort of thing one says.”
“I guess it is.”
“But if you don’t mind my saying, you looked pretty fucked up.”
Salander had heard this many times in her life. People had come up to her and said that she seemed surly, or angry, or precisely that—fucked up—and she always hated it. But for some reason she accepted it now.
“I suppose I have been.”
“But it’s better now?”
“Well, it’s different, in any case.”
“I’m Paulina, by the way, and I’m not in great shape myself.”
* * *
—
Paulina Müller waited for the young woman to introduce herself. But she said nothing, she didn’t even nod. But nor did she tell her to get lost. Paulina had noticed her because of the way she walked, as if she didn’t give a damn about the world and would never bother to ingratiate herself to anyone. There was something strangely appealing about that, and Paulina thought that maybe she had once walked like that too, before Thomas took those strides away from her.
Her life had been destroyed so slowly, so gradually, that she had hardly noticed it. Even though the move to Copenhagen had brought home to her the extent of the damage, the presence of this woman made her feel it even more keenly. The mere fact of standing next to her made Paulina aware of her own lack of freedom. She was drawn to the aura of total independence the woman projected.
“Are you local?” she asked tentatively.
“No,” the woman said.
“We’ve just moved here from Munich. My husband’s been made head of Scandinavia for Angler, the pharmaceutical company,” she continued, and saying it made her feel almost respectable.
“I see.”
“But this evening I ran away from him.”