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

by David Lagercrantz

  Grane noticed that Kraft was writing everything down, just as she had done at their earlier meetings.

  “But what actually happened?” she said.

  “According to two students from the School of Economics who were standing on the opposite side of Sveavägen, it looked like a settling of scores between two criminal gangs who were both after the boy.”

  “Sounds far-fetched.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Olofsson said.

  “What makes you say that?” Kraft said.

  “There were professionals on both sides. The assailant seems to have been standing and watching the door from a low green wall on the other side of Sveavägen, in front of the park. There’s a lot to suggest that this is the man who shot Frans Balder. Not that anyone has seen his face clearly; it’s possible he was wearing some sort of mask. But he seems to have moved with the same exceptional efficiency and speed. And in the opposite camp there was this woman.”

  “What do we know about her?”

  “Not much. She was wearing a black leather jacket, we think, and dark jeans. She was young with black hair and piercings – a punk, according to one witness – also short, but fierce. She appeared out of nowhere, throwing herself over the boy and shielding him. The witnesses all agree that she was not some ordinary member of the public. She seemed to have training, or had at least found herself in similar situations before. Then there’s the car – we have conflicting reports. One witness says it just happened to be driving by, and the woman and the boy threw themselves in more or less while it was moving. Others – especially those guys from the School of Economics – think the car was part of the operation. Either way, we have a kidnapping on our hands.”

  “It doesn’t make sense. This woman saved the boy only to abscond with him?” Grane said.

  “That’s what it looks like. Otherwise we would have heard from her by now, wouldn’t we?”

  “How did she get to Sveavägen?”

  “We don’t know yet. But a witness, a former editor-in-chief of a trade-union paper, says the woman looked somehow familiar,” Olofsson said.

  He went on to say something else, but by then Grane had stopped listening. She was thinking, Zalachenko’s daughter – it has to be Zalachenko’s daughter, knowing full well how unfair it was to call her that. The daughter had nothing to do with the father. On the contrary, she had hated him.

  But Grane had known her by that name ever since, years earlier, she had read everything she could lay her hands on about the Zalachenko affair. While Olofsson went on speculating, she began to feel the pieces were falling into place. Already the day before she had identified some commonalities between Zalachenko’s old network and the group which called itself the Spiders, but had dismissed them. She had believed there was a limit to how far thuggish criminals could develop their skills; it seemed entirely unreasonable to suppose that they could go from seedy-looking biker types in their leather waistcoats to cutting-edge hackers. Yet the thought had occurred to her. Grane had even wondered if the girl who helped Linus Brandell trace the break-in on Balder’s computers might have been Zalachenko’s daughter. There was a Säpo file on the woman, with a note that said “Hacker? Computer savvy?”, and even though it seemed prompted by the surprisingly favourable reference she had received for her work at Milton Security, it was clear from the document that she had devoted a great deal of time to research into her father’s criminal organization.

  Most striking of all was that there was a known connection between the woman and Mikael Blomkvist. It was unclear what exactly that connection was; Grane did not for one moment believe the malicious rumours that it was a blackmail situation or something to do with sado-masochistic sex, but the connection was there. Both Blomkvist and the woman – who matched the description of Zalachenko’s daughter –appeared to have known something about the shooting on Sveavägen beforehand, and afterwards Erika Berger had rung to discuss something important. Wasn’t it all pointing in the same direction?

  “I was wondering …” Grane said, perhaps too loudly, interrupting Olofsson.

  “Yes?” he said testily.

  She was about to present her theory when she noticed something which made her hesitate.

  It was nothing so remarkable, not at all. It was just that Kraft was once again meticulously writing down what Olofsson had said. It was probably good to have a senior boss who was so committed, but there was something rather too zealous about that scratching pen, and it made Grane wonder if a senior boss, whose job it was to see the bigger picture, should be so preoccupied with every tiny detail. Without really knowing why, she began to feel very uneasy.

  It may have been because she herself was busy pointing a finger at someone on flimsy grounds, but also Kraft seemed to blush at that moment perhaps because she realized that she was being observed, and looked away in embarrassment. Grane decided not to finish the sentence she had begun.

  “Or rather …”

  “Yes, Gabriella?”

  “Oh, nothing,” she said, feeling a sudden need to get away, and even though she knew that it would not look good, she left the meeting room once more and went to the toilet.

  Later she would remember how she stared at herself in the mirror and tried to understand what she had seen. Had Kraft really blushed, and if so, what did that mean? Maybe nothing, she decided, absolutely nothing, and, even if it was indeed shame or guilt that Grane had read in her face, it could have been about almost anything. It occurred to her that she did not know her boss all that well. But she knew enough to be sure that she would not send a child to his death for financial or any other gain, no, that was out of the question.

  Grane had simply become paranoid, a typically suspicious spy who saw moles everywhere, even in her own reflection. “Idiot,” she muttered, and smiled at herself despondently, as if to dismiss the idea and come back down to earth. But that didn’t solve anything. In that instant she thought she saw a new kind of truth in her own eyes.

  She suspected that she was quite like Helena Kraft in that she was capable and ambitious and wanted to get a pat on the back from her superiors. That was not necessarily always a good thing, though. With that tendency, if you operate in an unhealthy culture you risk becoming just as unhealthy yourself and – who knows – perhaps it is the will to please that leads people to crime just as often as evil or greed.

  People want to fit in and do well, and so they do indescribably stupid things. Is that what had happened here? If nothing else then Hans Faste – because surely he was Säpo’s source in Bublanski’s group – had been leaking to them because that was what he was expected to do and because he wanted to score points with Säpo. Olofsson had seen to it that Kraft was kept informed of every little detail; she was his boss and he wanted to be in her good books and then … well, maybe Kraft in turn had passed on some information because she wanted to be seen to be doing a good job. But, if so, by whom? The head of the national police, the government, foreign intelligence, in that case most likely American or English, who perhaps then …

  Grane did not take this train of thought any further. She asked herself again if she was letting her imagination run away with her but, even if she was, she still could not trust her team. She wanted to be good at her job, but not necessarily by doing her duty to Säpo. She just wanted the Balder boy to be safe. Instead of Kraft’s face she now saw Berger’s, so she went to her office and got out her Blackphone, the same one she had been using to call Frans Balder.

  Berger had left the office to have an undisturbed conversation and was now standing in front of Söderbokhandeln, the bookstore on Götgatan, wondering if she had done something stupid. Grane had argued her case so well that Berger could not defend herself. That is no doubt the disadvantage of having intelligent friends: they see straight through you.

  Not only had Grane worked out what Berger wanted to talk to her about, she had also persuaded her that she felt a moral responsibility and would never reveal the hiding place, however much th
at might appear to conflict with her professional duty. She said she had a debt to repay and insisted on helping. She was going to courier over the keys to her summer house on Ingarö and arrange for directions to be sent over the encrypted link which Andrei Zander had set up.

  Further up Götgatan a beggar collapsed, scattering two carrier bags full of plastic bottles across the pavement. Berger hurried over but the man, who was soon on his feet again, declined her help so she gave him a sad smile and went back up to the Millennium offices.

  Blomkvist was looking upset and exhausted. His hair was standing on end and his shirt hung outside his trousers. She had not seen him looking so worn out in a long time. Yet when his eyes shone like that, there was no stopping him. It meant he had entered into that absolute concentration from which he would not emerge until he had got to the heart of the story.

  “Have you found a hiding place?” he said.

  She nodded.

  “It might be best if you say nothing more. We have to keep this to as small a circle of people as possible.”

  “That sounds sensible. But let’s hope it’s a short-term solution. I don’t like the idea of Lisbeth Salander being responsible for the boy.”

  “Who knows? Maybe they’ll be good for each other.”

  “What did you tell the police?”

  “Almost nothing.”

  “Not a good time to be keeping things under wraps.”

  “Not really, no.”

  “Maybe Salander is prepared to make a statement, so you can get some peace and quiet.”

  “I don’t want to put any pressure on her. She’s in bad shape. Can you get Zander to ask her if we can send a doctor out there?”

  “I will. But you know …”

  “What?”

  “I’m actually coming round to the idea that she’s doing the right thing,” Berger said.

  “Why do you say that, all of a sudden?”

  “Because I too have my sources. Police headquarters isn’t a secure place right now,” she said, and walked over to Zander with a determined stride.

  CHAPTER 19

  22.xi, Evening

  Bublanski was standing alone in his office. In the end Hans Faste had admitted to keeping Säpo informed, and without even listening to his justification Bublanski removed him from the investigation. But even if that had provided further evidence that Faste was an unscrupulous opportunist, he could not bring himself to believe that the man had also been leaking to criminals. Inevitably there were corrupt and depraved people in the force. But to deliver a small, mentally disabled boy into the hands of a cold-blooded murderer was beyond the pale, and he refused to believe that anyone in the force would be capable of that. Perhaps the information had seeped out by some other route. Their telephones might be tapped or they had been hacked, although he could not think that notes about August’s abilities had been written in any computer. He had been trying to reach the Säpo head, Helena Kraft, to discuss the matter. He had stressed that it was important, but she had not returned his call.

  The Swedish Trade Council and the Ministry of Enterprise had been onto him, which was worrisome. Even if it was not said in so many words, their main concern was not for the boy or the shooting on Sveavägen, but rather for the research programme which Frans Balder had been working on, which appeared to have been stolen on the night of his murder.

  Several of the most skilled computer technicians in the force and three I.T. experts from Linköping University and the Royal Institute of Technology had been to the house in Saltsjöbaden, but they had found no trace of this research, either on his computers or among the papers which he had left behind.

  “So now, on top of everything else, we have an Artificial Intelligence on the loose,” Bublanski muttered to himself. He was reminded of an old riddle his mischievous cousin Samuel liked to put to his friends in synagogue. It was a paradox: if God is indeed omnipotent, is he then capable of creating something more intelligent than himself? The riddle was considered disrespectful, he recalled, even blasphemous. It had that evasive quality which meant that, however you answered, you were wrong. There was a knock at the door, and Bublanski was brought back to the questions at hand. It was Modig, ceremoniously handing over another piece of Swiss orange chocolate.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Have you got anything new?”

  “We think we know how the killers got Lindén and the boy out of the building. They sent fake emails from our and Professor Edelman’s addresses and arranged a pick-up on the street.”

  “Is that possible?”

  “Yes, and it’s not even very difficult.”

  “Terrifying.”

  “True, but that still doesn’t explain how they knew to access the Oden’s Medical Centre computer, or how they found out that Edelman was involved.”

  “I suppose we’d better have our own computers checked out,” Bublanski said gloomily.

  “Already in hand.”

  “Is this how it was meant to be, that we won’t dare to write or say anything for fear of being overheard?”

  “I don’t know. I hope not. Meanwhile we have a Jacob Charro out there waiting to be interviewed.”

  “Who’s he?”

  “A footballer, plays for Syrian F.C. And he’s the man who drove the woman and August Balder away from Sveavägen.”

  A muscular young man with short dark hair and high cheekbones was sitting in the interview room. He was wearing a mustard-coloured V-neck pullover without a shirt and seemed at once agitated and a little proud.

  Modig opened with: “18.35 on November 22. Interview with witness Jacob Charro, twenty-two years old, resident in Norborg. Tell us what happened this morning.”

  “Well …” Charro said. “I was driving along Sveavägen and noticed some commotion in the street ahead of me. I thought there’d been an accident, so I slowed down. But then I saw a man come from the left and run across the road. He ran out without even looking at the traffic and I remember thinking he must be a terrorist.”

  “Why is that?”

  “He seemed to be bursting with this sacred fury.”

  “Were you able to see what he looked like?”

  “Not really, but since then it’s struck me that there was something unnatural about his face.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like it wasn’t his real face. He was wearing sunglasses which must have been secured around his ears, but his cheeks, it looked as if he had something in his mouth, I don’t know. Then there was his moustache and eyebrows, and the colour of his skin.”

  “Do you think he was wearing a mask?”

  “Something like that. But I didn’t have time to think too much about it. Before I knew it the rear door of the car was yanked open and then … what can I say? It was one of those moments when everything happens all at once – the whole world comes down onto your head. Suddenly there were strangers in my car and the rear windscreen shattered. I was in shock.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I accelerated like crazy. The girl who jumped in was shouting at me to drive, and I was so scared I hardly knew what I was doing. I just followed orders.”

  “Orders?”

  “That’s how it seemed. I reckoned we were being chased, and I didn’t see any other way out. I kept swerving and that, just like the girl told me to, and besides …”

  “Go on.”

  “There was something about her voice. It was so cold and intense, I found myself hanging on to it, as if it were the only thing that was in control in all the mayhem.”

  “You said you thought you recognized the woman?”

  “Yes, but not at the time, definitely not. I was scared to death and was busy concentrating on all the weird things that were happening. There was blood all over the place back there.”

  “Coming from the boy or the woman?”

  “I wasn’t sure at first, and neither of them seemed to know either. But then I heard her say something like ‘Yes!’, like something good had h
appened.”

  “What was that about?”

  “The girl realized she was the one bleeding and not the boy, and that really struck me. It was like, ‘Hurray, I’ve been shot,’ and I tell you, it wasn’t some little graze. However she tried to bandage it, she couldn’t staunch the blood. It just kept oozing out, and the girl kept getting paler and paler. She must have felt like shit.”

  “And still she was happy that it wasn’t the boy who’d been hit.”

  “Exactly. Like a mother.”

  “But she wasn’t the child’s mother.”

  “No. They didn’t even know each other, she said, and that became more and more obvious. She didn’t have a clue about children.”

  “On the whole,” Modig said, “how did you think she treated the boy?”

  “Not sure how to answer that, to be honest. I wouldn’t say she had the world’s best social skills. She treated me like a damn servant, but even so …”

  “Yes?”

  “I reckon she was a good person. I wouldn’t have wanted her to be my babysitter, if you see what I mean. But she was O.K.”

  “So you reckon the child is safe with her?”

  “She’s obviously fucking crazy. But the little boy … he’s called August, right?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “She’ll guard August with her life, if it comes to it. That was my impression.”

  “How did you part company?”

  “She asked me to drive them to Mosebacke torg.”

  “Is that where she lives, on the square?”

  “I have no idea. She gave me no explanation whatsoever, but I got the feeling she had some other kind of transport from there. She didn’t say more than was necessary. She just asked me to write down my details. She was going to pay for the damage to the car, she said, plus a little extra.”

  “Did she look as though she had money?”

  “Going by her appearance alone, I’d say she lived in a dump. But the way she behaved … I don’t know. It wouldn’t surprise me if she was loaded. You could tell that she was used to getting her own way.”