The Girl in the Spider's Web (Millennium series Book 4)

by David Lagercrantz

  And yet tonight, even though his client had stressed that the job was urgent, he had considered calling it off. The bad weather was a factor. But the storm in itself would never have been enough to get him to consider cancelling. He was Russian and a soldier, and had fought in far worse conditions than these, and he hated people who moaned about trivial things.

  What bothered him was the police guard, which had appeared out of nowhere. He did not think much of the policemen on the property. From his hiding place he had seen them snooping around with the vague reluctance of small boys told to go outside in bad weather. They would rather have stayed sitting in their car talking rubbish, and they were easily frightened, especially the taller of the two, who seemed to dislike the dark and the storm and the black water. As he stood there staring in among the trees a little while ago, he had looked to be terrified, presumably because he had sensed Holtser’s presence, but that was not something that worried Holtser. He could have slit the man’s throat swiftly and soundlessly.

  Still, the fact of policemen was not good news.

  Their presence considerably raised the level of risk; above all it was an indication that some part of the plan had leaked out, that there was a heightened readiness. Maybe the professor had started to talk, in which case the operation would be meaningless, it might even make their situation worse. Holtser was determined not to expose his client to any unnecessary risks. He regarded that as one of his strengths. He always saw the bigger picture and, despite his profession, he was often the one who counselled caution.

  He had lost count of the number of criminal gangs in his home country which had gone under because they had resorted too often to violence. Violence can command respect. Violence can silence and intimidate, and ward off risks and threats. But violence can also cause chaos and a whole chain of unwanted consequences.

  All those thoughts had gone through his mind as he sat hidden behind the trees and the line of bins. For a few seconds he was resolved to abort the operation and go back to his hotel room. Yet that did not happen.

  A car arrived, occupying the policemen’s attention, and he spotted an opportunity, an opening. Without stopping to evaluate his motivations he fitted the elastic of the lamp over his head. He got out the diamond saw from his left-hand jacket pocket and drew his weapon, a 1911 R1 Carry with a custom-made silencer, and weighed them, one in each hand. Then, as ever, he said:

  “Thy will be done, amen.”

  Yet he could not shake off the uncertainty. Was this right? He would have to act with lightning speed. True, he knew the house inside out and Jurij had been here twice and hacked the alarm system. Plus the policemen were hopeless amateurs. Even if he were delayed in there – say the professor did not have his computer next to his bed, as everyone had said, and they had time to come to his aid – Holtser would be able to dispose of them too without any problem. He even looked forward to it. He therefore muttered a second time:

  “Thy will be done, amen.”

  Then he disengaged the safety on his weapon and moved rapidly to the large window overlooking the water. It may have been due to the uncertainty of the situation, but he felt an unusually strong reaction when he saw Balder standing there in the bedroom, engrossed in something, and he tried to persuade himself that everything was fine. The target was clearly visible. Yet he still felt apprehensive: Should he call the job off?

  He did not. Instead he tensed the muscles in his right arm and with all his strength drew the diamond cutter across the window and pushed. The window collapsed with a disturbing crash and he rushed in and raised his weapon at Balder, who was staring hard at him, waving his hand as though in a desperate greeting. The professor began to say something confused and ceremonious which sounded like a prayer, a litany. But instead of “God” or “Jesus” Holtser heard the word “disabled”. That was all he managed to catch, and in any case it did not matter. People had said all sorts of things to him.

  He showed no mercy.

  Quickly and almost soundlessly the figure moved through the hallway into the bedroom. In that time Balder registered with surprise that the alarm had not gone off and noticed a motif of a grey spider on the man’s jersey, also a narrow, oblong scar on his pale forehead below the cap and the lamp.

  Then he saw the weapon. The man was pointing a pistol at him. Balder raised his hand in a vain attempt to protect himself. But even though his life was on the line and fear had set its claws into him he thought only of August. Whatever else happened, even if he himself had to die, let his son be spared. He burst out:

  “Don’t kill my child! He’s disabled, he doesn’t understand anything.”

  Balder did not know how far he got. The whole world froze and the night and the storm seemed to bear down on him and then everything went black.

  Holtser fired and as he had expected there was nothing wrong with his aim. He hit Balder twice in the head and the professor collapsed to the floor like a flapping scarecrow. There was no doubt that he was dead. Yet something did not feel right. A blustery wind swept in off the sea and brushed across Holtser’s neck as if it were a cold, living being, and for a second or two he had no idea what was happening.

  Everything had gone according to plan and over there was Balder’s computer, just as he had been told. He should just take it and go. He needed to be efficient. Yet he stood there as if frozen to the spot and it was only after a strangely long delay that he realized why.

  In the large double bed, almost completely hidden by a duvet, lay a small boy with unruly, tousled hair watching him with a glassy look. Those eyes made him uncomfortable, and that was not just because they seemed to be looking straight through him. There was more to it than that. But then again it made no difference.

  He had to carry out his assignment. Nothing must be allowed to jeopardize the operation and expose them all to risk. Here was someone who was clearly a witness, especially now that he had exposed his face, and there must be no witnesses, so he pointed his weapon at the boy and looked into his glowing eyes and for the third time muttered:

  “Thy will be done, amen.”

  Blomkvist climbed out of the taxi in a pair of black boots and a white fur coat with a broad sheepskin collar, which he had dug out of the cupboard, as well as an old fur hat that had belonged to his father.

  It was then 2.40 in the morning. The Ekot news bulletin had reported a serious accident involving an articulated lorry which was now blocking the main Värmdö road. But Blomkvist and the taxi driver had seen nothing of that and had travelled together through the dark, storm-battered suburbs. Blomkvist was sick with exhaustion. All he had wanted was to stay at home and creep into bed with Erika again and go back to sleep.

  But he had not felt able to say no to Balder. He could not understand why. It might have been out of some sense of duty, a feeling that he could not allow himself any easy options now that the magazine was facing a crisis, or it might have been that Balder had sounded lonely and frightened, and that Blomkvist was both sympathetic and curious. Not that he thought he was going to hear anything sensational. He was coldly expecting to be disappointed. Maybe he would find himself acting as a therapist, a night watchman in the storm. On the other hand, one never knew, and once again he thought of Salander. Salander rarely did anything without good reason. Besides, Balder was a fascinating figure, and he had never before given an interview. It could well turn out to be interesting, Blomkvist thought, as he looked about him in the darkness.

  A lamp post cast a bluish light over the house, and a nice house it was too, architect-designed with large glass windows, and built to look a little like a train. Standing by the letterbox was a tall policeman in his forties, with a fading tan and somewhat strained, nervous features. Further down the road was a shorter colleague of his, arguing with a drunk who was waving his arms about. More was happening out here than Blomkvist had expected.

  “What’s going on?” he said to the taller policeman.

  He never got an answer. The policeman’s mo
bile rang and Blomkvist overheard that the alarm system did not seem to be working properly. There was a noise coming from the lower part of the property, a crackling, unnerving sound, which instinctively he associated with the telephone call. He took a couple of steps to the right and looked down a hill which stretched all the way to a jetty and the sea and another lamp post with the same bluish light. Just then a figure came charging out of nowhere and Blomkvist realized that something was badly wrong.

  Holtser squeezed the first pressure on the trigger and was just about to shoot the boy when the sound of a car could be heard up by the road, and he checked himself. But it was not really the car. It was because of the word “disabled” which cropped up again in his thoughts. He realized that the professor would have had every reason to lie in that last moment of his life, but as Holtser now stared at the child he wondered if it might not in fact be true.

  The boy’s body was too immobile, and his face radiated wonder rather than fear, as if he had no understanding of what was happening. His look was too blank and glassy to register anything properly.

  Holtser recalled something he had read during his research. Balder did have a severely retarded son. Both the press and the court papers had said that the professor did not have custody of the boy. But this must surely be the boy and Holtser neither could nor needed to shoot him. It would be pointless and a breach of his own professional ethics, and this recognition came to him as a huge relief, which should have made him suspicious had he been more aware of himself at that moment.

  Now he just lowered the pistol, picked up the computer and the mobile from the bedside table and stuffed them into his rucksack. Then he ran into the night along the escape route he had staked out for himself. But he did not get far. He heard a voice behind him and turned around. Up by the road stood a man who was neither of the policemen but a new figure in a fur coat and fur hat and with quite a different aura of authority. Perhaps this was why Holtser raised his pistol again. He sensed danger.

  The man who charged past was athletic and dressed in black, with a headlamp on his cap, and in some way Blomkvist could not quite explain he had the feeling that the figure was part of a coordinated operation. He half expected more figures to appear out of the darkness, and that made him very uncomfortable. He called out, “Hey, you, stop!”

  That was a mistake. Blomkvist understood it the instant the man’s body stiffened, like that of a soldier in combat, and that was doubtless why he reacted so quickly. By the time the man drew a weapon and fired a shot as if it were the most natural thing in the world, Blomkvist had already ducked down by the corner of the house. The shot could hardly be heard, but when something smacked into Balder’s letterbox there was no doubt what had happened. The taller of the policemen abruptly ended his call, but did not move a muscle. The only person who said anything was the drunk.

  “What the fuck’s going on here? What’s happening?” he roared in a voice which sounded oddly familiar, and only then did the policemen start talking to each other in nervous, low tones:

  “Is someone shooting?”

  “I think so.”

  “What should we do?”

  “Call for reinforcements.”

  “But he’s getting away.”

  “Then we’d better take a look,” the taller one said, and with slow, hesitant movements, they drew their weapons and went down to the water.

  A dog could be heard barking in the winter darkness, a small, bad-tempered dog, and the wind was blowing hard from the sea. The snow was whirling about and the ground was slippery. The shorter of the two policemen nearly fell over, and started flailing his arms like a clown. With a bit of luck they might avoid running into the man with the weapon. Blomkvist sensed that the figure would have no trouble at all in getting rid of those two. The quick and efficient way in which he had turned and raised his weapon suggested that he was trained for situations like this, and Blomkvist wondered what he himself should do.

  He had nothing with which to defend himself. Yet he got to his feet, brushed the snow from his coat and looked down the slope again. The policemen were working their way along the water’s edge towards the neighbour’s house. There was no sign of the black-clad man with the gun. Blomkvist made his way down too, and as he came around to the front of the house he saw that a window had been smashed in.

  There was a large gaping hole in the house and he wondered if he should summon the policemen. He never got that far. He heard something, a strange, low whimpering sound, and so he stepped through the shattered window into a corridor with a fine oak floor whose pale glow could be seen in the darkness. He walked slowly towards a doorway where the sound was coming from.

  “Balder,” he called out, “it’s me, Mikael Blomkvist. Is everything alright?”

  There was no answer. But the whimpering grew louder. He took a deep breath, walked into the room – and froze, paralysed with shock. Afterwards he could not say what he had noticed first, or even what had frightened him most. It was not necessarily the body on the floor, despite the blood and the empty, rigid expression on its face.

  It could have been the scene on the large double bed next to Balder, though it was difficult to make sense of it. There was a small child, perhaps seven, eight years old, a boy with fine features and dishevelled, dark-blonde hair, wearing blue-checked pyjamas, who was banging his body against the headboard and the wall, methodically and with force. The boy’s wailing did not sound like that of a crying child, more like someone trying to hurt himself as much as he could. Before Blomkvist had time to think straight he hurried over to him, but the boy was kicking wildly.

  “There,” Blomkvist said. “There, there,” and wrapped his arms around him.

  The boy twisted and turned with astonishing strength and managed – possibly because Blomkvist did not want to hold him too tightly – to tear himself from his embrace and rush through the door out into the corridor, barefoot over the glass shards towards the shattered window, with Blomkvist racing after him shouting “No, no.”

  That was when he ran into the two policemen. They were standing out in the snow with expressions of total bewilderment.

  CHAPTER 11

  21.xi

  Afterwards it was said that the police had a problem with their procedures, and that nothing had been done to cordon off the area until it was too late. The man who shot Professor Balder must have had all the time in the world to make good his escape, and the first policemen on the scene, Detectives Blom and Flinck, known rather scornfully at the station as “the Casanovas”, had taken their time before raising the alarm, or at least had not done so with the necessary urgency or authority.

  The forensic technicians and investigators from the Violent Crimes Division arrived only at 3.40, at the same time as a young woman who introduced herself as Gabriella Grane and who was assumed to be a relative because she was so upset. Later they came to understand that she was an analyst from Säpo, sent by the chief of that agency herself. That did not help Grane; thanks to the collective misogyny within the force, or possibly to underline the fact that she was regarded as an outsider, she was given the task of taking care of the child.

  “You look as if you know how to handle this sort of thing,” Erik Zetterlund said. He was the leader of the duty investigating team that night. He had watched Grane bending to examine the cuts in the boy’s feet, and even though she snapped at him and declared that she had other priorities, she gave in when she looked into the boy’s eyes.

  August – as he was called – was paralysed by fear and for a long time he sat on the floor at the top of the house, wrapped in a duvet, mechanically moving his hand across a red Persian carpet. Blom, who in other respects had not proved to be very enterprising, managed to find a pair of socks and put sticking plasters on the boy’s feet. They noticed too that he had bruises all over his body and a split lip. According to the journalist Mikael Blomkvist – whose presence created a palpable nervousness in the house – the boy had been throwing himself agains
t the bed and the wall downstairs and had run in bare feet across the broken glass on the ground floor.

  Grane, who for some reason was reluctant to introduce herself to Blomkvist, realized at once that August was a witness, but she was not able to establish any sort of rapport with him, nor was she able to give him comfort. Hugs and tenderness of the usual kind were clearly not the right approach. August was at his calmest when Grane simply sat beside him, a little way away, doing her own thing, and only once did he appear to be paying attention. This was when she was speaking on her mobile to Kraft and referred to the house number, 79. She did not give it much thought at the time, and soon after that she reached an agitated Hanna Balder.

  Hanna wanted to have her son back at once and told Grane, to her surprise, that she should get out some jigsaw puzzles, particularly the one of the warship Vasa, which she said the boy’s father would have had lying around somewhere. She did not describe her ex-husband as having taken the boy unlawfully, but she had no answer when asked why Westman had been out at the house demanding to have the boy back. It certainly did not seem to be concern for the child that had brought him here.

  The fact of the boy’s presence did, however, shed light on some of Grane’s earlier questions. She now understood why Balder had been evasive about certain things, and why he had not wanted to have a guard dog. In the early morning Grane arranged for a psychologist and a doctor to take August to his mother in Vasastan, unless it turned out that he needed more urgent medical attention. Then she was struck by a different thought.

  It occurred to her that the motive for murder might not have been to silence Balder. The killer could as easily have been wanting to rob him – not of something as obvious as money, but of his research. Grane had no idea what Balder had been working on during the last year of his life. Perhaps no-one knew. But it was not difficult to imagine what it might have been: most probably a development of his A.I. program, which was already regarded as revolutionary when it was stolen the first time.