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

by David Lagercrantz

  She then told the man to drive her to Mosebacke torg. It was a risk, but she had no choice. The city was beginning to look more and more blurred.

  Blomkvist swore under his breath. He was standing on Sveavägen, not far from the body of Torkel Lindén and the cordon which the police who had been first on the scene were putting in place. Ever since Salander’s original call he had been engaged in a frenzy of activity. He had thrown himself into a taxi to get here and had done everything he could during the trip to stop the boy and the director from walking out onto the street.

  The only other member of staff he had managed to get hold of at Oden’s Medical Centre was Birgitta Lindgren, who had rushed into the hallway only to see her colleague fall against the door with a fatal bullet wound to his head. When Blomkvist arrived ten minutes later she was beside herself, but she and another woman by the name of Ulrika Franzén, who had been on her way to the offices of Albert Bonniers the publishers further up the street, had still been able to give Blomkvist a pretty coherent account of what had happened.

  Which was why Blomkvist knew, even before his mobile rang again, that Salander had saved August Balder’s life. She and the boy were now in some car with a driver who had no reason to be enthusiastic about helping them having been shot at. Blomkvist had seen the blood on the pavement and in the street and, even though the call reassured him somewhat, he was still extremely concerned. Salander had sounded in a bad way and yet – no surprise there – she had been as pig-headed as ever.

  She had a gunshot wound, but she was determined to hide the boy herself. That was understandable, given her history, but should he and the magazine get involved? However heroic her actions on Sveavägen, what she had done might from a legal point of view be seen as kidnapping. He could not help her with that. He was already in trouble with the media as well as the public prosecutor.

  But this was Salander after all, and he had given his word. He would damn well help her, even if Berger threw a fit. He took a deep breath and pulled out his mobile. But a familiar voice was calling out behind him. It was Jan Bublanski. Bublanski came running along the pavement looking as if he were close to physical collapse, and with him were Detective Sergeant Modig and a tall, athletic man in his fifties, presumably the professor Salander had mentioned.

  “Where’s the boy?” Bublanski panted.

  “He was whisked away in a big red Volvo, somebody rescued him.”

  “Who?”

  “I’ll tell you what I know,” Blomkvist said, not sure what he would or should say. “But first I have to make a call.”

  “Oh no, first you’re going to talk to us. We have to send out a nationwide alert.”

  “Talk to that lady over there. Her name is Ulrika Franzén. She knows more than I do. She saw it happen, she’s even got some sort of description of the assailant. I arrived after it happened.”

  “And the man who saved the boy?”

  “The woman who saved him. Fru Franzén has a description of her as well. But just give me a minute here …”

  “How did you know something was going to happen in the first place,” Modig spat, with unexpected anger. “They said on the radio that you had called the emergency services before any shots were fired.”

  “I had a tip-off.”

  “From whom?”

  Blomkvist took another deep breath and looked Modig straight in the eye, unmoveable as ever.

  “Whatever may have been written in today’s papers, I hope you realize that I want to cooperate with you in every way I can.”

  “I’ve always trusted you, Mikael. But I’m beginning to have my doubts,” Modig said.

  “O.K., I understand that. But you have to understand that I don’t trust you either. There’s been a serious leak – you’ve grasped that much, haven’t you? Otherwise this wouldn’t have happened,” he said, pointing at the prone body inside the cordon.

  “That’s true, and it’s absolutely terrible,” Bublanski said.

  “I’m going to make my call now,” Blomkvist said, and he walked up the street so he could talk undisturbed.

  But he never made any call. He realised that the time had come to get serious about security, so he walked back and informed Bublanski and Modig that he had to go to his office immediately, but he was at their disposal whenever they needed him. At that moment, to her own surprise, Modig took hold of his arm.

  “First you have to tell us how you knew that something was going to happen,” she said firmly.

  “I’m afraid I have to invoke my right to protect my sources,” Blomkvist answered with a pained smile.

  Then he waved down a taxi and took off for the office, deep in thought. Millennium usually used Tech Source, a consultancy firm with a team of young women who gave the magazine quick and efficient help whenever they had more complex I.T. issues. But he did not want to bring them in now. Nor did he feel like turning to Christer Malm, even though he knew more about I.T. than anyone on the editorial team. Instead he thought of Zander, who was already involved in the story and was also great with computers. Blomkvist decided to ask for his help, and promised himself that he would fight to get the boy a permanent job – just as soon as he and Berger had managed to sort out this mess.

  Berger’s morning had been a nightmare even before shots were fired on Sveavägen, and that was due to the sickening T.T. bulletin. To some extent it was a continuation of the old campaign against Blomkvist – all the jealous, twisted souls came crawling out of the woodwork again, spewing their bile on Twitter and online forums and in emails. This time the racist mob had joined in, because Millennium had been in the forefront of the battles against xenophobia and racism for many years.

  The worst part was surely that this hate campaign made it so much more difficult for everyone to do their jobs. All of a sudden people were less inclined to share information with the magazine. On top of that there was a rumour that Chief Prosecutor Ekström was planning to issue a search warrant for the magazine’s offices. Berger did not really believe it. That kind of warrant was a serious matter, given the right to source protection.

  But she did agree with Malm that the present toxic atmosphere would give even lawyers ludicrous ideas about how they should act. She was standing there thinking about how to retaliate when Blomkvist stepped into the offices. To her surprise, he did not want to talk to her. Instead he went straight to Zander and ushered him into her room.

  After a while she followed. She found the young man looking tense. She heard Blomkvist mention “P.G.P.” She had been on an I.T. security course so she knew what that meant, and she saw Zander making notes before, without so much as a glance in her direction, he made a beeline for Blomkvist’s laptop in the open-plan office.

  “What was all that about?” she said.

  Blomkvist told her in a whisper. She could barely take it in, and he had to repeat himself.

  “So you want me to find a hiding place for them?”

  “Sorry to drag you into this, Erika,” he said. “But I don’t know anyone who has as many friends with summer houses as you do.”

  “I don’t know, Mikael. I really don’t know.”

  “We can’t let them down. Salander has been shot. The situation is desperate.”

  “If she’s been shot, she should go to a hospital.”

  “She won’t. She wants to protect the boy at all costs.”

  “To give him the calm he needs to draw the murderer.”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s too great a responsibility, Mikael, too great a risk. If something happens, the fallout would destroy the magazine. Witness protection is not our job. This is something for the police – just think of all the questions that will be thrown up by those drawings, both for the investigation and on a psychological level. There has to be another solution.”

  “Maybe – if we were dealing with someone other than Lisbeth Salander.”

  “You know what? I get really pissed off with the way you always defend her.”

  �
�I’m only trying to be realistic. The authorities have let the Balder boy down and put his life in danger – I know that infuriates Salander.”

  “So we just have to go along with it, is that it?”

  “We don’t have a choice. She’s out there somewhere, hopping mad, and has nowhere to go.”

  “Take them to Sandhamn then.”

  “There’s too much of a connection between Lisbeth and me. If it comes out that it’s her, they would search my addresses straight away.”

  “O.K. then.”

  “O.K. then, what?”

  “O.K., I’ll find something.”

  She could hardly believe she was saying it. That was how it was with Blomkvist – she was incapable of saying no – but there was no limit to what he would do for her either.

  “Great, Ricky. Where?”

  She tried to think, but her mind was a blank. She could not come up with a single name.

  “I’m racking my brains,” she said.

  “Well, do it quickly, then give the address and directions to Andrei. He knows what to do.”

  Berger needed some air and so she went down into Götgatan and walked in the direction of Medborgarplatsen, running through one name after another in her mind. But not one of them felt right. There was too much at stake, and everyone she thought of was in some way not right or had some drawback or even if not she was reluctant to expose them to the risk or put them to the trouble by asking, perhaps because she herself was so upset by the situation. On the other hand … here was a small boy and people were trying to kill him and she had promised. She had to come up with something.

  A police siren wailed in the distance and she looked over towards the park and the Tunnelbana station and at the mosque on the hill. A young man went by, surreptitiously shuffling some papers, and then suddenly – Gabriella Grane. At first the name surprised her. Grane was not a close friend and she worked at a place where it was unwise to flout any laws. Grane would risk losing her job if she so much as thought about this, and yet … Berger could not get it out of her head.

  It was not just that Grane was an exceptionally good and responsible person. A memory also kept intruding. It was from last summer, in the early hours of the morning or maybe even at daybreak after a crayfish party out at Grane’s summer house on Ingarö island, when the two had been sitting in a garden swing on the terrace looking down at the water through a gap in the trees.

  “This is where I’d run to if the hyenas were after me,” Berger had said, without really knowing what she meant. She had been feeling tired and vulnerable at work, and there was something about that house which she thought would make it an ideal place of refuge.

  It stood on a rock promontory with steep, smooth sides, and the surrounding trees and elevation shielded it from onlookers. She remembered Grane saying, “If the hyenas come after you, you’re welcome to be here, Erika.”

  Maybe it was asking too much, but she decided to give it a try. She went back to the office to call from the encrypted Redphone app which Zander had by then installed for her too.

  CHAPTER 18

  22.xi

  Gabriella Grane was on her way to a meeting at Säpo when her personal mobile buzzed. The meeting had been called at very short notice to discuss the incident at Sveavägen. She answered tersely:

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Erika.”

  “Hi there. Can’t talk now. We’ll speak later.”

  “I have a …” Berger said.

  But Grane had already hung up – this was no time for personal calls. She walked into the meeting room wearing an expression that suggested she meant to start a minor war. Crucial information had been leaked and now a second person was dead and one more apparently seriously wounded. She had never felt more like telling the whole lot of them to go to hell. They had been so eager to get hold of new information that they had lost their heads. For half a minute she did not hear one word her colleagues were saying. She just sat there, seething. But then she pricked up her ears.

  Someone was saying that Blomkvist, the journalist, had called the emergency services before shots were fired on Sveavägen. That was strange, and now Erika Berger had called, and she was not the type to make casual calls, and certainly not during working hours. She might have had something important or even critical to say. Grane got up and made an excuse.

  “Gabriella, you need to listen to this,” Kraft said in an unusually sharp tone.

  “I have to make a call,” she replied, and suddenly she was not in the least interested in what the head of the Security Police thought of her.

  “What sort of call?”

  “A call,” she said, and left them to go into her office.

  Berger at once asked Grane to call her instead on the Samsung. The minute she had her friend on the line again, she could tell that something was going on. There was none of the usual friendly enthusiasm in her voice. On the contrary, Grane sounded worried and tense, as if she knew from the start that the conversation was important.

  “Hi,” she said simply. “I’m still really pushed. But is this about August Balder?”

  Berger felt acutely uncomfortable. “How did you know?”

  “I’m on the investigation and I’ve just heard that Mikael Blomkvist was tipped off about what was going to happen on Sveavägen.”

  “You’ve already heard that?”

  “Yes, and now of course we’re eager to know how that came about.”

  “Sorry. I can’t tell you that.”

  “O.K. Understood. But why did you call?”

  Berger closed her eyes. How could she have been such an idiot?

  “I’m so sorry. I’ll have to ask somebody else,” she said. “You have a conflict of interest.”

  “I’m happy to take on almost any conflict of interest, Erika. But I can’t stand the thought of your withholding information. This investigation means more to me than you can imagine.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, it does. I knew that Balder was under serious threat, but still I couldn’t prevent the murder, and I’m going to have to live with that for the rest of my life. So, please, don’t hide anything from me.”

  “I’m going to have to, Gabriella. I’m sorry. I don’t want you to get into trouble because of us.”

  “I saw Mikael in Saltsjöbaden the night before last, the night of the murder.”

  “He didn’t mention that.”

  “It wouldn’t have made sense for me to identify myself.”

  “I see.”

  “We could help each other out in this mess.”

  “That sounds like a good idea. I can ask Mikael to call you later. But now I have to get on with this.”

  “I know just as well as you do that there’s a leak in the police team. At this stage we could benefit from unlikely alliances.”

  “Absolutely. I’m sorry, but I have to press on.”

  “O.K.,” Grane said, obviously disappointed. “I’ll pretend this call never happened. Good luck now.”

  “Thanks,” Berger said, and went back to searching through her contacts.

  Grane went back to the meeting room, her mind whirling. What was it that Erika had wanted? She did not fully understand and yet she had a vague idea. As she came back into the room the conversation died and everyone looked at her.

  “What was that about?” Kraft said.

  “Something private.”

  “That you had to deal with now?”

  “That I had to deal with. How far had you got?”

  “We were talking about what happened on Sveavägen,” said Ragnar Olofsson, the head of division, “but as I was saying, we don’t yet have enough information. The situation is chaotic, and it looks as if we’re losing our source in Bublanski’s group. The detective inspector seems to have become paranoid.”

  “You can’t blame him,” Grane said.

  “Well … perhaps not. We’ve talked about that too. We’ll leave no stone unturned until we know how the attacker worked o
ut that the boy was at the medical centre and that he was going to go out by the front door when he did. No effort will be spared, I need hardly say. But I must emphasize that a leak did not necessarily come from within the police. The information was quite widely known – at the medical centre of course, by the mother and her unreliable partner Lasse Westman, and in the offices of Millennium. And we can’t rule out hacker attacks. I’ll come back to that. If I might continue with my report?”

  “Please.”

  “We’ve been discussing how Mikael Blomkvist comes into this, and this is where we’re worried. How could he know about a shooting before it happens? In my opinion, he’s got some source close to the criminals themselves, and I see no reason for us to tiptoe around his efforts to protect those sources. We have to find out where he got his information from.”

  “The more so since he seems desperate and will do anything for a scoop,” Superintendent Mårten Nielsen said.

  “It would appear that Mårten has some excellent sources too. He reads the evening papers,” Grane said acidly.

  “Not the evening papers, sweetie. T.T. – a source which even we at Säpo regard as fairly reliable.”

  “That was absurd and defamatory, and you know it as well as I do,” Grane said.

  “I had no idea you were so besotted with Blomkvist.”

  “Idiot!”

  “Stop this at once!” Kraft said. “This is ridiculous behaviour! Carry on, Ragnar. What do we know about what happened?”

  “The first people on the scene were two regular police officers, Erik Sandström and Tord Landgren,” Olofsson said. “My information comes from them. They were there on the dot of 9.24, and by then it was all over. Torkel Lindén was dead, shot in the back of the head, and the boy, well, we don’t know. According to witnesses, he was hit too. We have blood in the street. But nothing is confirmed. The boy was driven away in a red Volvo – we do at least have parts of the registration number plus the model of the vehicle. We’ll get the name of its owner very shortly.”