“I will. Just as well no-one knows who I am.”
“What?”
She didn’t get that joke either, and then he really did hug her.
He left the hotel and tried to melt into the life of the city. Not all that successfully. He had got only as far as Tegnérgatan when a young man asked for a selfie, and he continued to Sveavägen. He should have kept his head down, but he sat on a bench not far from the Stockholm Public Library and once more looked up Nima Rita. He ended up reading a long article in Outside magazine from August 2008.
It was the most detailed account ever given by Nima Rita. But the quotes were nothing to get excited about, at least not at first sight. Blomkvist had read it all before, dutiful or sorrowful answers to questions about Klara Engelman. But then he saw something which made him sit up, and at first it was not clear to him why. It was contained in the simple, heartbroken message:
“I really tried to take care of her. I tried. But Mamsahib just fell, and then the storm came, and the mountain was angry and we couldn’t save her. I am very, very sorry for Mamsahib.”
Mamsahib.
Of course. Mamsahib could also be “memsahib,” the feminine of “sahib,” a form of address for whites in colonial India. Why had that not occurred to him? In the course of his investigations he had read that Sherpas often referred to Western climbers in that way.
I took Forsell. And I left Mamsahib.
That is what he must have said, and he was therefore presumably talking about Klara Engelman. But what did that mean? Had Nima Rita rescued Johannes Forsell instead of her? That was inconsistent with what he had read of the sequence of events.
Klara Engelman and Johannes Forsell had been in two different places on the mountain, and Engelman was probably already dead by the time Forsell got into difficulties. And yet…had something different happened which needed to be hushed up? It could be, and it could also be nonsense. But he definitely got a boost from the feeling that he could forget about his holiday; now he was more determined than ever to get to the bottom of the story. He immediately sent a text to Lisbeth:
<Why do you always have to be so bloody clever??>
CHAPTER 21
August 27
Paulina Müller was sitting in pyjamas on her bed in the room where she had spent her teenage years, in Bogenhausen in Munich. She was talking on the telephone and drinking hot chocolate. Her mother had been running around looking after her as if she were ten again and, all things considered, life could be worse.
That is what she wanted, to be a child again, and to have no responsibilities. She wanted to be able to cry her eyes out. What is more, she had been wrong. Her parents had known all too well what Thomas Müller was about. There had been not the slightest disbelief in their eyes when she told them what he had done to her. But now she had locked her bedroom door, saying that she did not want to be disturbed for the moment.
“So you have no idea who this woman could be,” Chief Inspector Jensen said on the phone, sounding as if she did not believe one word of what Paulina was telling her.
Not only had it been instantly obvious to Paulina who the woman with the iron was. She even saw some kind of dark logic in it, and was terrified that somehow she had sanctioned what had happened. Countless times during the trip home she had said: “I can’t see him again, I just can’t. I’d rather die.”
“No,” she said. “It doesn’t sound like anyone I know.”
“Your husband told me that you’d met a woman and fallen in love,” Jensen said.
“I only wrote that to annoy him.”
“Yet he got the impression that there was some kind of emotional connection between the perpetrator and you. It even seemed as if the message was all about you. Your husband had to swear never to bother you again.”
“That’s odd.”
“Is it really so strange? The neighbours have said you were wearing a bandage on your arm the last few days before you left. That you told them you’d burned yourself with the iron.”
“That’s correct.”
“Not everybody believed you, Paulina. They heard screams from your apartment. Screams and the sound of people fighting.”
She hesitated before answering.
“Is that really so?” she said.
“So maybe it was Thomas who burned you?”
“Maybe.”
“You’ll understand, then, that we suspect this may be an act of revenge—by someone who’s close to you.”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know…”
That is how it went on, back and forth, until Jensen’s tone suddenly changed and she said:
“By the way…”
“Yes?”
“I don’t think you need to worry about him.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your husband seems terrified of this woman. I think he’ll be staying away from you.”
Paulina hesitated, then said: “Is that all?”
“For the time being, yes.”
“Well, I suppose I should be saying thank you, then.”
“To whom?”
“I don’t know,” she said, adding—because it seemed like the right thing to say—that she hoped Thomas would be better soon.
She certainly did not mean a word of it, and as she was sitting there on her bed after hanging up, trying to absorb the information, her mobile rang again. It was a divorce lawyer called Stephanie Erdmann. Paulina had read about her in the newspapers. Erdmann wanted to represent her, and she said Paulina did not have to worry about paying her fees. That had already been taken care of.
* * *
—
Inspector Modig met Bublanski in the corridor of police headquarters and was shaking her head. He guessed that meant they had found no trace of Nima Rita in the county council registers either. But they had at least been given permission to search, and that alone had been a minor victory, given that there had been no shortage of obstructions. Their contact with military intelligence had so far consisted of one-way communication only, and he was growing increasingly irritated. He gave Modig a meaningful look and said:
“We may have a suspect.”
“We may?”
“But no name, hardly even a description.”
“And you call that a suspect?”
“Well, let’s call it a lead.”