At first Blomkvist thought it was a spasm, an instinctive movement as life and strength returned, and he felt a glimmer of hope. Then he wondered, was the hand trying to tell him something? It was gesticulating towards Palmgren’s back, and Blomkvist yanked off his nightshirt. He discovered two patches, which he tore off without hesitating. What was written on them? What the hell did it say? He tried to focus.
Active substance: fentanyl
What was that? He looked at Palmgren and wondered for a moment where to begin? He took out his mobile and Googled. It said,
Fentanyl is a powerful synthetic opioid analgesic that is similar to morphine but 50 to 100 times more potent…normal side-effects are respiratory depression, cramping in the muscles of the windpipe…naloxone is an antidote.
“Shit, shit!”
He rang emergency services again, gave his name and said he had called moments earlier. He almost shouted:
“You’ve got to bring naloxone, do you hear? He has to have naloxone injections. He’s in deep respiratory distress.”
He hung up and was about to go on with his artificial respiration when Palmgren tried to say something.
“Later,” Blomkvist hushed him. “Save your strength.”
Palmgren shook his head and gave a hoarse whisper. It was impossible to understand what he was saying. It was a low, almost soundless croaking, terrible to hear. Blomkvist bit his lip and was about to start breathing more air into the old man when he thought he could make out something he was saying, two words:
“Talk to…”
“Who? Who?” And then with his last reserves of strength Palmgren wheezed something which sounded like “Hilda from…”
“Hilda from what?”
“To Hilda von…”
It had to be something important, something crucial.
“Von who? Von Essen? Von Rosen?”
Palmgren gave him a desperate look. Then something happened to his eyes. The pupils widened. His jaw dropped open. He looked dramatically worse, and Blomkvist did everything in his power—artificial respiration, C.P.R., everything—and for a split second he thought it was working again. Palmgren raised his hand. There was something majestic about the movement, the crooked fingers clenched, a knotted fist held up as if in defiance a couple of inches above the bed. Then the hand fell back against the blanket. Palmgren’s eyelids opened wide. His body convulsed, and then it was all over.
Blomkvist could tell; he knew in his heart of hearts. But he did not let up. He pressed down harder on Palmgren’s chest and steadily blew air into his windpipe. He gently slapped his cheeks and yelled at him to live and breathe. Eventually he had to accept that it was to no avail. There was no pulse, no breathing, nothing. He banged his fist on the bedside table so hard that the pill box fell off and pills rolled all over the floor. He looked out towards Liljeholmen. It was 8:43 p.m. Outside in the square a couple of teenage girls were laughing. There was a faint smell of cooking in the air.
Blomkvist closed the old man’s eyes, smoothed the covers and looked at his face. There was nothing positive you could say about any one of his features. They were crooked and twisted and withered. Yet there was a profound dignity there. That’s how it seemed to him. It was as if the world had all of a sudden become a little poorer. Blomkvist felt his throat catch, and he thought about Salander and how Palmgren had gone all the way to visit her. He thought of everything and nothing.
And then the ambulance crew arrived, two men in their thirties. Blomkvist gave as factual an account of events as he could. He told them about the fentanyl. He said that Palmgren had probably had an overdose, that there could be suspicious circumstances and that the police should be called. He was met by a resigned indifference which made him want to scream. But he kept his mouth shut and only nodded stiffly when the men laid a sheet over Palmgren and left the body lying on the bed to wait for a doctor to come and issue a death certificate. Blomkvist stayed in the apartment. He picked the pills up off the floor, opened the windows and the balcony door, and sat down in the black armchair next to the bed and tried to think clearly. There was far too much buzzing around in his head. Then he remembered the documents which had been scattered in a mess on the hall floor when he rushed into the apartment.
He went to pick them up and read them while standing by the front door. At first he did not understand the context, but he did spot one name which he latched on to immediately. Peter Teleborian. Teleborian was the psychiatrist who had fabricated the report on Salander after she threw a firebomb at her father when she was twelve years old. It was he who had claimed to want to treat and cure Salander, to restore her to a normal life, but who had in fact systematically tormented her day in and day out, strapping her to her bed and subjecting her to extreme psychological torment. Why on earth were there papers about that man lying in Holger Palmgren’s hall?
A quick look through the documents was enough to tell Blomkvist that there was nothing new. They looked like photocopies of the same grimly dry case notes which later led to Teleborian being found guilty of gross dereliction of duty and stripped of his right to practise medicine. But it was also clear that the pages of the documents, which were not numbered, were not in a complete sequence. Some pages ended in the middle of a sentence and others began in a different context. Were the missing papers in the apartment? Had they been taken away?
Blomkvist considered searching through the drawers and cupboards. He decided not to interfere in the police investigation which would no doubt ensue, and instead he called Chief Inspector Jan Bublanski to tell him what had happened. Then he rang the maximum security unit at Flodberga Prison. A man answered, identifying himself as Fred. He spoke in an arrogant drawl and Blomkvist almost lost his temper, especially as he looked over at the bed and saw the contours of Palmgren’s body beneath the white sheet. But he mustered all his authority and explained that there had been a death in Salander’s family, and at last he was allowed to talk to her.
It was a conversation he could have done without.
—
Salander hung up and was escorted by two guards down the long corridor back to her cell. She did not pick up on the deep hostility in the face of one of them, Fred Strömmer. She did not take in anything going on around her, and her face betrayed nothing of her emotions. She ignored the question “Has somebody died?” She didn’t even look up. She just walked and heard her own footsteps and breathing and nothing else, and she had no idea why the guards followed her into her cell. Except that they wanted to mess with her. Since Benito had been floored, they took every opportunity to poison her life. Now it seemed they wanted to search her cell again, not because they thought they would find anything, but because it was an excellent excuse to turn the place upside down and throw her mattress onto the floor. Perhaps they were hoping for an outburst from her, so that they could have a proper fight. They almost succeeded. But Salander gritted her teeth and did not even look up at them as they left.
Afterwards she picked up the mattress, sat on the corner of the bed and focused on what Blomkvist had said. She thought about the morphine patches he had ripped off Palmgren’s back and the papers that had been lying about on the hall floor. And the words “Hilda von…” She concentrated especially hard on them, but it didn’t make sense. She stood up and banged her fist on the desk, then kicked the clothes cupboard and the washbasin.
For one dizzying second she looked as if she could kill. But then she pulled herself together and tried to focus on one thing at a time. First you find out the truth. Then you take revenge.
CHAPTER 10
June 20
Chief Inspector Bublanski had a tendency to deliver lengthy philosophical discourses, but just now he said nothing.
It was 3:20 p.m. and his team, the murder squad of the Violent Crimes Division, had been working hard all day long. It was stuffy and hot in the meeting room on the fifth floor of police headquarters on Bergsgatan.
Given his age, Jan Bublanski was afraid of many things. Bu
t perhaps he feared the absence of doubt most of all. He was a man of faith who was uncomfortable in the face of convictions too strongly held or over-simplified explanations. He was forever producing counter-arguments and contrary hypotheses. Nothing was so certain that it could not be challenged one more time. While this behaviour slowed him down, it also prevented him from making too many mistakes. His goal right now was to persuade his colleagues to come to their senses. He did not know where to begin.
In many ways, Bublanski was a lucky man. He had a new woman in his life, Professor Farah Sharif, who—so he said—was more beautiful and intelligent than he deserved. The couple had just moved into a three-bedroom apartment near Nytorget and they had acquired a Labrador. They often ate out and went regularly to art exhibitions. But the world had gone mad, in his opinion. Lies and stupidity were more widespread than ever before. Demagogues and psychopaths dominated the political scene, and prejudice and intolerance were poisoning everything, sometimes even penetrating the discussions within his own, otherwise sensible team.
Sonja Modig, his closest colleague, was rumoured to be in love and radiated sunshine. But that simply annoyed Jerker Holmberg and Curt Svensson, who were constantly interrupting her and arguing with her. When Amanda Flod, the youngest member of the group, sided with Modig—and generally she had clever ideas to contribute—the situation was only exacerbated. Maybe Svensson and Holmberg felt that their positions as senior figures were under threat. Bublanski tried to give them an encouraging smile.
“Basically…” Holmberg began.
“Basically is a good start,” Bublanski said.
“Basically, I can’t see why anyone would go to that much trouble to kill a ninety-year-old man,” Holmberg said.
“An eighty-nine-year-old man,” Bublanski corrected him.
“Right. An eighty-nine-year-old man who hardly leaves his apartment and who seems to have been at death’s door anyway.”
“Yet that’s what it looks like, doesn’t it? Sonja, can you please sum up what we have so far?”
“There’s Lulu Magoro,” she said. She smiled and looked glowing, and even Bublanski wished that she would tone it down a little, if only to keep the peace.
“Haven’t we talked enough about her?” Svensson asked.
“Not yet,” Bublanski said rather sharply. “Right now we need to go over everything again, to get an overview.”
“It’s not just Lulu,” Modig said. “It’s the whole of Sofia Care, the company responsible for looking after Palmgren. Yesterday morning, the people there received a message that Palmgren had been admitted to the ER at Ersta hospital with acute hip pain. No-one thought to question it. The person who called claimed to be a senior doctor and orthopaedic specialist, and introduced herself as Mona Landin. It turns out to be a fake name but she seemed perfectly credible and was given information about Palmgren’s medications and general condition. After that, all home visits to Palmgren were cancelled. Lulu, who was especially close to him, wanted to visit him in hospital. She tried the switchboard there, to find out which ward he was in, but because he wasn’t actually there, she got no further. That same afternoon, however, she was contacted by this Mona Landin, who said Holger was in no danger but still under anaesthetic after some minor surgery and was not to be disturbed. Later that evening Lulu tried calling Palmgren’s mobile and the service had been suspended. Nobody at his service provider Telia could explain how that happened. That morning his telephone had quite simply been disconnected, but they did not know who in the system had authorized or carried out the operation. Somebody with the necessary computer skills and the right connections seems to have wanted to isolate Palmgren.”
“Why go to such lengths?” Holmberg said.
“Here’s one factor worth bearing in mind,” Bublanski said. “Remember that Palmgren visited Salander at Flodberga. Since we know there are threats against her, a reasonable hypothesis might be that Palmgren got drawn into her problems—maybe because he found out something, or because he wanted to help. Lulu Magoro told us that she dug out a stack of papers for him on Saturday, and Palmgren read them with great concentration. Apparently he had been given them a few weeks earlier by a woman who’d had some connection to Salander.”
“What woman?”
“We don’t know yet; Lulu didn’t catch her name. And Salander’s saying nothing, but we have a lead. As you know, Blomkvist found some papers lying in the hall, either because Palmgren or his attacker dropped them. They appear to be case notes from St. Stefan’s psychiatric clinic for children, where Salander was admitted as a girl. Peter Teleborian’s name comes up in them.”
“That snake.”
“That sly bastard, more like,” Modig said.
“Has Teleborian been questioned?”
“Amanda spoke to him today. He’s living with his wife and a German shepherd in high style on Amiralsgatan. He said he was sorry to hear about Palmgren but has no idea what might have happened. He doesn’t know anyone called Hilda von something, and he didn’t want to say anything more.”
“We’ll probably have to circle back to him,” Bublanski said. “In the meantime we’ll go through the rest of Palmgren’s papers and belongings. But go on with Lulu, Sonja.”
“She looked after Palmgren’s evening care four or five times a week,” Modig said. “Each time she would apply a pain-killing patch, Norspan they’re called, and the active ingredient is…What’s it called again, Jerker?”
Nice move, Bublanski thought. Involve them. Make them feel like they can contribute.
“Buprenorphine,” Holmberg said. “It’s an opioid made from poppies, used as a painkiller in geriatric care. It’s also present in a drug called Subutex, which is prescribed for heroin addicts.”
“Right. Palmgren ordinarily got a modest dose,” Modig said. “But what Blomkvist tore off his back yesterday was something entirely different: two prepared fentanyl Actavis patches. Together they add up to a lethal amount, isn’t that right, Jerker?”
“Would have killed a horse.”
“It’s amazing Palmgren survived for as long as he did, and he even managed to get out a few words.”
“Interesting words, too,” Bublanski said.
“They certainly are. Though anything said by a heavily drugged man in a situation like that needs to be viewed with a degree of caution. The words were: ‘Hilda von,’ or rather, ‘Talk to Hilda von.’ According to Blomkvist, Palmgren seemed to want to tell him something important. One can speculate as to whether that is the perpetrator’s name. As you know, we have a witness statement that yesterday evening a slim, black-haired woman of indeterminate age, wearing sunglasses, was seen hurrying down the stairs with a brown leather bag. Right now it’s impossible to judge how much value we should be attaching to it. Besides, I rather doubt that Palmgren would say ‘Talk to’ if he was referring to the person who had just hurt him. It sounds more likely that this ‘Hilda von’ is somebody with important information. Or else it could be someone completely unconnected, but whose name came into his head at the moment he died.”
“Could be, but still, what do we have on the actual name?”
“At first it looked promising,” Modig said. “The ‘von’ prefix is associated with aristocracy in Sweden, and that gives us a pretty limited circle. But Hilda is a common name in Germany too, and there the ‘von’ can also be a preposition simply meaning ‘from.’ Therefore, if we include Germanic names, we’re talking about a much larger group. Jan and I agree that we should get a little further in the investigation before we embark on questioning all the aristocratic Hildas from the grandest families in Sweden.”
“And what are you getting out of Salander?” Svensson said.
“Not a lot, unfortunately.”
“Bloody typical.”
“Well, yes, I suppose that’s fair,” Modig said. “But we haven’t yet spoken to her ourselves; we’ve relied on our colleagues in the Örebro force. She’s a witness for them in a different case, a serious assa
ult on Beatrice Andersson at Flodberga.”
“Who the hell was brave enough to attack Benito?” Holmberg burst out.
“The warden in the maximum security unit, Alvar Olsen. He says he had no choice. I’ll get to that.”
“I hope he’s got bodyguards,” Holmberg said.
“Security in the unit has been stepped up and Benito’s being transferred to another prison as soon as she’s fit to be moved. Right now, she’s in hospital in Örebro.”
“That won’t be enough, I can promise you that,” Holmberg said. “Do you have the slightest idea what sort of person Benito is? Have you ever seen the state of her victims? Trust me, she won’t give up until Olsen’s had his throat cut—slowly.”
“Both we and the prison management know the situation is serious,” Modig said, slightly irritated. “But we see no acute danger for the time being. May I continue? Our colleagues in Örebro didn’t get much out of Salander, as I said. We have to hope that you, Jan—she trusts you—will do better. All of us—that’s right, isn’t it?—have a feeling that Salander is a key person here. According to Blomkvist, Palmgren was worried about her and told Blomkvist on the phone a day or so ago that he’d done something rash or stupid because of it, and that’s interesting. What did he mean? And how rash can an infirm eighty-nine-year-old possibly be?”
The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye Page 14