The Mammoth Book of Best British Crime 9

by Maxim Jakubowski

  I feel suddenly sick, heart pounding. Without that book Abbie’s life is forfeit. Should I speak to the policeman? Then I’m aware of a woman sobbing by my side, and when I look at her she says something in Swedish.

  “I’m sorry?” I say.

  “Oh, you’re English? I said, poor Mr Palmgren.” She wipes her eyes.

  “You knew him?”

  “I work here. It happened last evening, after I left. Mr Palmgren was alone in the shop. The bastards must have been after the cash box, but they didn’t have to kill him, did they?”

  “I am sorry. I came here yesterday and I saw a book I wanted to get. It was on the top shelf, a book of Leonardo’s drawings, but I can’t see it now. Maybe they took it.”

  “Oh, I remember the one. You’re out of luck. I sold it yesterday afternoon.”

  “Really?” I feel a tiny glimmer of hope. “I don’t suppose you remember who to?”

  “It was to one of our regulars. She buys a lot of our books. Her name is Vera, Vera Kulla.”

  “Oh. I did want that book very much. Maybe she would sell it to me.”

  “Well, I suppose you could try. I may have her address …”

  I hold my breath as she rummages through her bag and eventually produces a well-thumbed address book. “Yes, here we are – she has an apartment in Fiskargatan. That’s a street on Södermalm.”

  I take a note of the address and thank her and tell her again how sorry I am about Mr Palmgren. Then I hurry away to study my Millennium map of Stockholm for the address. The map pinpoints all the places mentioned in the Stieg Larsson trilogy, and I discover that many of them are located on Södermalm, a much larger island that lies just to the south of Gamla Stan. I head that way, crossing on the bridge that links the two islands and climbing up into the busy district of mixed commercial and residential buildings. Here my map takes me past Mikael Blomkvist’s fictional apartment, and then along Götgatan to the offices of his Millennium magazine, where I turn off into quieter residential streets towards Fiskargatan, which my map tells me was where Lisbeth Salander bought herself an apartment in the second book, The Girl Who Played with Fire.

  When I reach the block I press the entry phone button marked V. Kulla at the front door. After a moment a woman’s voice says, “Ja?” and I give her my name and say I’d like to talk to her about the book she bought from Mr Palmgren. There’s no reply, but the security door clicks open and I step inside.

  I climb the stairs to Vera Kulla’s front door. When it opens I’m astonished to see the girl on the bicycle who crashed into my assailants yesterday, the girl who looks so much like Lisbeth Salander in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo movie.

  I just stare at her, open-mouthed, and she steps back and waves me inside. I look around at the IKEA furniture, just like in Stieg Larsson’s description of Salander’s apartment.

  She folds her arms. “Well?”

  I say I want her to sell the book to me, and she raises a sceptical eyebrow. “Why should I?”

  “It’s a matter of life and death,” I say. “Please!”

  She stares at me for a moment, then tells me to sit down at the table. She brings two mugs of coffee and sits opposite me, lighting a cigarette and holding it up the way Lisbeth Salander would have done. She eyes me coolly. “Tell me.”

  I feel I’m going crazy and I blurt out, “Are you one of them? Are you working for Gräven too?” although as I say this I realize it doesn’t make much sense.

  I take a deep breath and try again. “Look, yesterday you rescued me by crashing your bike into two thugs who were trying to rob me. Did you follow me after that? Or were you in the bookshop when I ran in and hid the book on the shelves?”

  She takes a draw on the cigarette and says nothing.

  Getting angry now, I say, “So now I come here and meet you again, looking like Lisbeth Salander and living in her flat. Well, I’ll tell you this – I wish you were Lisbeth Salander, because I could really do with her help right now.”

  She leans forward and says, “Tell me about Gräven.”

  So I do, I tell her everything, including about the Leonardo drawing. It’s no doubt an impulsive and stupid thing to do, but I desperately need help and I feel I can trust her, although that is probably just the illusion of her fictional character.

  When I finish she gets up and brings the Leonardo book to the table and we examine the lining of the inside of the back cover. Sure enough, it does look as if it may have something hidden beneath.

  Vera closes the book. “Your sister is very foolish.”

  I start to protest, but she goes on, “Martin Gräven is an extremely dangerous man. People are afraid of him. It is whispered that he was behind the murder of our Prime Minister, Olof Palme, back in 1986, because Palme tried to put a stop to his crooked business dealings. No one has dared challenge Gräven since then. There are other rumours too, of people who go to his island and do not return.”

  She picks up a pen and doodles his name, MARTIN GRÄVEN, on a notepad, and as I watch her another unnerving thought comes into my head. “Martin Vanger was the name of the serial killer in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, wasn’t it? It’s an anagram – Vanger, Gräven.”

  “Very good,” she says. “You think it’s a coincidence? Stieg Larsson was a crusading journalist, very like his fictional character Mikael Blomkvist. Sometimes fiction and reality are hard to disentangle.”

  I shake my head in confusion and reach for the book. “Look, Vera, you understand now why I must have this. It’s my sister’s passport to freedom. I’ll give you back whatever you paid for it, plus something for your trouble.”

  “But the problem is, how do you use that passport?” she says. “They will find you again, and when they do they will take the book and you will have no passport left. Better that you leave it here with me. Don’t worry, I won’t run off with it.”

  That does seem to make sense – I have no idea where else in Stockholm I can safely hide it, but can I really trust her?

  “I saved it once before,” she reminds me, and so I reluctantly agree to leave the book with her.

  I leave and wander through Södermalm, always looking over my shoulder to see if I’m being followed. I come to the Kvarnen Bar, which my map tells me is where Lisbeth Salander met the girls in the rock band Evil Fingers, and where Mikael Blomkvist and his colleagues at Millennium magazine came for a drink. They seem like real friends now, and I go inside. The pub used to be an old high-ceilinged beer hall, now done up as a trendy café-bar with a dance floor and resident DJ, and is busy. I order a cup of coffee and find a quiet corner to check my phone. There are no messages and I text both Abbie and Rich but get no reply, and have a sick feeling as I remember what Vera said about people disappearing when they went to Blood Island.

  When I return to my hotel I have barely stepped into my room when the phone beside the bed begins to ring. I pick it up and a man’s voice says, “Hello, is that Matt?”

  The voice sounds cultured, a Swede with a good command of English, a middle-aged man, I guess, quite relaxed and friendly.

  “Yes, who’s this?”

  “My name is Dirch. I am Mr Gräven’s personal assistant.”

  I stop breathing. “Oh?”

  “We have some business to discuss, I think.”

  “Is my sister all right?” I blurt out.

  “She is perfectly well, as is Rich.”

  “Let me speak to them.”

  “One moment …”

  There is silence on the line for a long while, and then, finally, I hear my sister Abbie’s voice. “Hello, Matt. How are you?”

  “I’m fine!” I cry with relief. “But what about you?”

  “We’re … all right.” She doesn’t sound all right to me, but she goes on, “I want you to do what Dirch asks. Then we can go home.”

  “You’re quite sure?”

  “Just do what he says, please, Matt.”

  Dirch comes on the line. “Now Matt, I will pick you up thi
s afternoon at five o’clock at the Museikajen quay beside the National Museum. It’s just ten minutes from where you are now.” “How will I recognize you?”

  “Don’t worry, I will know you. And of course, you will bring the Leonardo book with you, yes? Five o’clock. Don’t be late.”

  When we ring off I call Vera and tell her what’s happened. She tells me I shouldn’t go to the island, and definitely shouldn’t take the book, but I tell her I have no choice, and finally she agrees to meet me at her flat in an hour for me to pick up the book.

  At five o’clock I am standing outside the front steps of the National Museum. It is almost dusk, and the streetlights have come on above heavily wrapped pedestrians scurrying against gusts of a bitter east wind. The last tourist boats are returning to their berths in front of the Grand Hotel and a Baltic cruise liner is moving slowly out across the darkening water. I feel lonely and far from help.

  “Matt? Hello, I am Dirch.” I turn to see a very tall man with a severe, bony face surmounted by a crop of pale blonde hair. He peels off a black leather glove and offers his hand, which I shake cautiously. His face splits in a wide smile. “You see, we are friends. And you have the book?” He nods at my backpack.

  “Yes.”

  “Good, follow me.”

  He leads the way to one of the piers jutting out into the water, and I see a powerful motor launch waiting there with a man in a skipper’s cap at the wheel. We climb aboard and roar away across the bay. Gradually the spaces between the islands become wider and the lights of the suburbs more distant, until, as night closes in, they become isolated points in the dark. The water becomes rougher, the wind sharper as we bounce out of sheltered waters into the Baltic. I bow my head against the freezing spray and cling to the rail of the boat and try not to think the worst.

  After half an hour the boat swings suddenly to port and throttles down, and I see the flash of a navigation buoy ahead. The captain speaks into a radio, and lights appear in the darkness, illuminating a jetty. The two men help me up onto the timber decking, and Dirch and I walk towards the land, a dark mass of foliage and rock.

  “Welcome to Blod Ö,” he says softly. I smell the brine of the sea mixed with the decay of autumn foliage.

  A black 4WD is waiting for us, and I recognize the driver as one of the two skinheads who attacked me in Gamla Stan. He gives me an ugly smile as we get in. It’s hard to make out much more than tree trunks and rocks in the headlights as we climb up a steep hillside. Then the view opens out to a large mansion with a portico of classical columns framing a front door at which we pull to a halt. Inside a uniformed manservant takes my coat and cap, but I hang on to my bag.

  Dirch leads me to a sitting room, where a log fire is blazing in a hearth. He offers me something to warm me up, coffee or something stronger, but I decline, saying I just want to see my sister. He nods gravely and says he will arrange it and leaves. I wait by the fire, trying to thaw the chill in my bones, and then the door opens and Abbie comes in and we rush to each other and hug with relief.

  I think how haggard and disoriented she looks, and I wonder if they have been giving her drugs. We sit in front of the fire and clutch each other’s hands and I ask her if they’ve hurt her.

  “I’m all right, Matt, really.”

  “You don’t look well, sis.”

  “It’s nothing, just lack of sleep. They won’t let me sleep, you see. It’s their way of making me come to terms. It’s amazing how obliging you become after a few days without sleep. But I’ll be all right now. You’ve brought the book?”

  “Yes, but how do we know they’ll let us go after we give it to them?”

  “They don’t want to keep us here. We have agreed a price, and once they have the drawing they will pay me and we can leave.”

  “How much?”

  “Fifty thousand.”

  “But it’s worth millions!”

  “It’s enough, Matt. I just want this to be over.”

  “What about Rich? Is he here?”

  “Yes, we spoke when he first arrived.” Abbie frowns. “He became angry and said I shouldn’t agree to their terms, and they took him away and I haven’t seen him since. But they’ve promised to let him leave with us.”

  I don’t like the sound of this, but there’s not much I can do, and as if he’s been listening to our conversation, which he no doubt has, Dirch opens the door and says, “Well now, we will conclude our business and let you go home to your nice warm beds.”

  “Will we meet Mr Gräven?” I ask.

  “Of course. He is most anxious to be present at the final transaction. Follow me.”

  I don’t much like the sound of final transaction, but we do as he says, me taking Abbie’s arm when she seems unsteady on her feet, bumping into the doorway.

  He leads us along a corridor and down a staircase into the basement, very different in character from the upper floor, with clinical white walls and fluorescent light fittings, like a laboratory or a morgue. Dirch opens a door for us into a large room lined with workbenches on which a variety of high-tech equipment is set out – computers, special lamps, and an elaborate microscope. A man in a white coat looks up from a keyboard and comes towards us.

  “What is this place?” I ask.

  “This is Mr Gräven’s art conservation laboratory,” Dirch says. “We shall be able to examine your drawing under perfect conditions here. Ah …”

  We turn to see Rich being pushed roughly into the room by the two skinheads. He looks terrible, his face swollen and bruised, one eye completely closed, his hands cuffed in front of him. He gives me a wry grin and a wink with his good eye.

  A pair of double doors on the far side of the conservation room open and the manservant comes in pushing a wheelchair in which sits the hunched figure of an old man with a tartan rug spread across his knees. The pair come to a stop and the seated man peers up at me intently. It is an unsettling experience, as if he is trying to look inside my head. The two sides of his face don’t quite match, and I guess he has had a stroke.

  Dirch goes to the seated man and bows to hear him murmur something in a hoarse whisper. Dirch nods and turns to us. “Mr Gräven is impatient to view your merchandise. Shall we proceed?”

  The man in the laboratory coat draws on a pair of white gloves and comes towards us. I open my backpack and give the book to Abbie, who lays it on the bench in front of us and opens it at the back cover.

  “The drawing is inside a protective envelope beneath the lining of the cover.”

  She indicates to the technician, who runs his fingers across the surface, feeling for the extra thickness beneath. He nods and fetches a scalpel and tweezers, and begins delicately peeling back the lining. We are all focused on his work, holding our breath as the white envelope is revealed. When it is free he picks it up carefully and carries it reverently across to Martin Gräven, whose divided face has taken on a greedy, predatory look, and pulls a trolley out from beneath a bench and positions it in front of Gräven, then places the envelope on the surface, opens its flap with the tweezers, and slowly slides out the contents. For a moment no one speaks, then everyone starts talking at once. With a shock I recognize the thing lying there on the trolley, and it isn’t a Leonardo self-portrait. It is the cover of a paperback book, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

  As the cries of consternation and anger die away, everyone turns to stare at me. I’m speechless.

  Then Gräven spits a stream of Swedish at Dirch. Gräven has gone pale, trembling with anger. He gives us one last furious glare and the manservant wheels him around and propels him out of the room. Dirch is speaking to someone behind us, and we turn to see the two skinhead thugs standing there. They grab hold of Rich and me and drag us out into the corridor, followed by Dirch and Abbie. Abbie is calling to me, a desperate cry, “Matt, what have you done?” We are bundled into another room, where Rich and Abbie are pushed on to steel chairs against the wall. A third chair is dragged out into the middle of the room and I am sho
ved down hard on to it. One of the skinheads stands with Rich and Abbie while Dirch and the other confront me.

  “Now,” Dirch says, “you will kindly explain.”

  I watch the thug at his side pull a set of brass knuckle-dusters out of his pocket and fit them to his large right fist, and I quickly begin talking.

  “After I got away from these two at the changing of the guard, I ran into an antiquarian bookshop and hid the book on a shelf there.”

  “Yes,” Dirch nods, “we worked that out.”

  “You killed the owner, didn’t you?”

  He waves his hand impatiently. “Get on with it.”

  “The next day I returned to retrieve the book and found the police there. I spoke to one of the shop assistants, who told me she had sold the book to a regular customer, and gave me her address. I went to see her, and told her the whole story, about the Leonardo drawing and everything.”

  “What?” Abbie cries in disbelief.

  “I thought she seemed trustworthy, and I had no one else I could turn to for help,” I continue desperately. “She warned me that Martin Gräven was a very dangerous man, and I agreed to leave the book with her until I knew what was happening. She must have opened the lining and taken the drawing.”

  I hear Rich give a groan, and Abbie sobs, “Matt, how could you be so stupid!”

  “Be silent!” Dirch snaps.

  I can see from the dark scowl on his face that Dirch is having difficulty believing my story.

  “It’s true, I swear.”

  “So, who is this woman, what does she look like?”

  “She looks … exactly like the face on the front of that book cover – Lisbeth Salander. Her name is Vera Kulla, and she lives in an apartment on Fiskargatan, on Södermalm.”

  Dirch draws back, his face stony, and when he speaks his voice is ominously quiet. “You must think we are very stupid. In the second book of the Millennium Trilogy, The Girl Who Played with Fire, Lisbeth Salander bought an apartment in Fiskargatan …”