Salander downloads the images of the biker gang, including Lundin and his No. 2, the photogenic Nieminen (a man with multiple convictions), the man Lundin met at McDonald’s. Lundin was the man who met the blond giant at Blomberg’s Café. She can find no trace of Zala. The next day, after breakfast in the Jacuzzi, she has better luck searching for Svensson and Mia Johansson. Then she hacks Millennium’s intranet and downloads e-mails from Berger, Malm and Malin Eriksson. Finally she finds Svensson’s computer and a file marked
Some readers might find the obfuscation practised at this point frustrating rather than tantalising. Who is the unidentified man driving to Jarna? He has just picked up 203,000 kronor from Lundin for the meth he delivered in January. (This is one of the points in the trilogy when readers suffering from information overload may struggle to keep up with the barrage of data being fed to them.) The three gangs the man supplies bring him roughly 5 million kronor a month. Yet he is in a bad mood because although the demand is almost infinite, he has a problem getting the drugs from Estonia to Sweden. He has already had to punish an inquisitive street vendor, but knows that violence is risky and not good business. Smuggling prostitutes from the Baltics, his other business, gives only small change but he is unlikely to be brought down by the government because ‘everybody likes a whore’. Even dead whores don’t interest the authorities. But he thinks the business ‘sucks’. He doesn’t like the women – they’re unclean. This is, of course, Larsson shorthand indicating (in incontrovertible fashion) we are in the presence of another woman-hating male scumbag. He also doesn’t like the contract in place with Bjurman to kidnap Salander, a contract awarded to Nieminen.
Then Larsson takes us into what looks like Stephen King territory. Suddenly he sees a sinister shape in the darkness, slithering towards him. It looks like a vast stingray with a stinger like a scorpion. A creature not of this world. He runs back to his car and speeds off. The creature tries to strike the car as he passes, shaken. (This is linked with the terror of the blond man in Chapter 7.)
Salander looks at what she’s discovered from the Millennium files. One source for Svensson’s book is Gulbrandsen, a policeman. The
Salander sits and smokes for a couple of hours (she has her creator’s laissez-faire attitude to her own health), knowing she has to find Zala and settle their accounts once and for all.
Blomkvist is returning home from a publisher’s party just before 3 am when he passes Salander’s old apartment and – in yet another unlikely juxtaposition – sees her step out into the street, only to be accosted by a tall man in a ponytail (it is Lundin). She instinctively turns and slashes him across the face, using her keys like a knuckleduster. She runs away up some steps, followed by Lundin. She throws a sharp stone at him, wounding him still further. She resolves to punish Bjurman for sending a ‘diabolical alpha male’ to do her harm. All of this is handled with the assurance we expect from Larsson in such moments of action – the prose is economical, but apposite.
‘Absurd Equations’ is the title Larsson gives to Part Three – and the nomenclature (it has to be said) is appropriate for some of the startling plotting that follows.
Blomkvist is at the Millennium offices alone, working through Svensson’s manuscript; he has already delivered nine of the promised 12 chapters and Blomkvist is very pleased with his writing. Blomkvist knows the book will explicitly expose the corrupt system and is ‘a declaration of war’ (of the kind that Larsson, as a journalist, was all too familiar with).
The author is well aware that by this point in the narrative we’ll be hungry for another glimpse of his abrasive heroine, and obliges (her appearances are to some extent the allegros to Blomkvist’s largos). At nine that evening Svensson and Johansson are visited by Lisbeth Salander. To Svensson she appears to be in her late teens and he notes her cold, raven-black irises. She knows about the book and the thesis, much to the couple’s surprise and suspicion. She wants to know why they’re asking questions about ‘Alexander’ Zala. This is the first time Svensson has heard his first name – clearly Salander knows things he doesn’t.
Blomkvist tells his lawyer sister Annika about Salander’s dramatic reappearance in his life, and asks whether he should be consulting her for legal advice on Svensson’s book, as her professional speciality is violence on women. His sister confesses she was hurt when Blomkvist never consulted her over the Wennerström affair, but when he apologises, she says she’d be happy to read through the text.
But it is time for Stieg Larsson to remind the reader about the dangerous world his characters move in. Brother and sister arrive at Svensson’s flat, but Blomkvist hears a commotion on the stairwell and senses something is wrong (Annika waits in the car). A group of neighbours are milling outside the open door. Blomkvist goes in to find the writer slumped in a pool of blood: he has been shot in the head. Blomkvist dials 112 for police and ambulance. He finds Mia Johansson in the bedroom, shot in the face with enough force to spatter blood all over the wall three metres away. They are both dead. He is numb with shock. He goes downstairs and sees a Colt .45 on the cellar steps.
Three officers arrive: Magnusson, Ohlsson and superintendent Mårtensson. Blomkvist explains what has happened and says that since only five minutes have passed since the neighbours say they heard shots, the killer may still be in the area. He shows them the cellar door – it is locked. They enter the flat. The couple are clearly beyond help. As Annika comforts her brother, a murder investigation begins.
Blomkvist wonders if the murders are linked to the book, now near publication – has someone Svensson confronted tried to prevent it? Should they publish? Should they tell police exactly what Svensson was working on? The answer is no – because then they’d have to reveal their sources, which they promised not to do. The verisimilitude of these sections is obviously down to the fact that Larsson is dealing (in fictional terms) with a situation he would be all too familiar with from his time at the magazine Expo – and would no doubt have come across (or at least heard about) regarding the British sister magazine he also wrote for, Searchlight, which has taken on some dangerous opponents.
Critics of Stieg Larsson have taken exception to his ‘filling-in’ strategies regarding minor characters, where pen portraits are provided for people who will barely figure in the narrative (possibly inspired by Fredrick Forsyth). Such a case might be made against the details given for prosecutor Richard Ekström, who finds he will be leading the murder investigation. He’s described as a thin, vital man of 42, with thinning blond hair and a goatee. He is always impeccably dressed, and has spent four years at the Ministry of Justice. The police force, we are told, are divided about his John Birt-style policies of downsizing to increase efficiency, rather than recruiting more police (Birt, one-time Director General of the BBC, used similarly unpopular cost-cutting tactics within his organisation). He rings Criminal Investigator Jan Bublanski (nicknamed ‘Officer Bubble’), who is off duty, and asks him to come in and investigate the killings. Bublanski is 52, and has been in charge of 17 murder or manslaughter cases, and has only failed to find the killer in one. Held in high esteem, he is considered a bit odd because of his Jewish background. He is a member of the (fictitious) Söder congregation, but still works on the Sabbath when required.
At 8 am, Bublanski meets with Ekström and they discuss the case. Because of the journalistic angle, they know it will receive huge media attention. Ekström hand-picks Faste, Andersson and Holm
berg for Bublanski’s team, while Bublanski himself wants Sonja Modig. Sonja is perhaps sculpted by Larsson from similar material to that utilised for Salander – though (unlike the latter) she is part of the establishment. Modig, 39, has had 12 years’ experience in the Violent Crimes Division; she is exacting and methodical, but also – very importantly – imaginative. She can make associations that are not necessarily logical, but which can lead to breakthroughs. And – as Larsson likes his idiot cops as antagonists – it’s time for another one. Hans Faste, 47, although a veteran in the investigation of violent crimes, has a huge ego and a loud-mouthed humour that winds people up, especially Bublanski; the latter finds it hard to tolerate him. However, Faste is something of a mentor to Andersson and they work well together.
Larsson has conditioned the reader to expect internet thoroughness from Salander, but he now reminds us that Blomkvist is no slouch in this territory. At the Millennium offices, the journalist has deleted 134 documents relating to protected sources. We are taken back to the police investigation – and literary proof is provided (if it were needed) that Larsson could handle the exigencies of a straightforward police procedural with quite as much authority as he deals with his two freelancers. Lennart Granlund of the National Forensics Laboratory rings Bublanski at 10 am – the Colt .45 was made in America in 1981. It is the murder weapon, and legally belongs to Nils Erik Bjurman. Fingerprints on the gun identify a second person – Lisbeth Salander, born 30 April 1978, arrested and fingerprinted for an assault in Gamla Stan in 1995.
Larsson maintains his dual narrative. Blomkvist sets to work on Svensson’s material, looking for a motive for his murder, while (at the same time) Bublanski and Modig go to Bjurman’s flat in Odenplan and his office at St Eriksplan, but he’s not in either place. They call on his office neighbour, a lawyer called Håkansson, who tells them Bjurman was seriously ill two years ago, in the spring of 2003, and only returns to his office once every couple of months. Håkansson thinks he had cancer, judging by his suddenly aged appearance. The police repair to a Burger King where Modig has a Whopper and Bublanski a Veggie Burger. It’s piquant to notice both Larsson’s customary inversion here of masculine/feminine stereotypes (as detailed in his ‘mission statement’ e-mails) – as well as his referencing of his own taste for junk food.
The crass Faste tells his colleagues what he’s discovered about Salander (and it’s amusing for the reader to compare this to what we already know of her): she is a psychiatric patient with violent tendencies first demonstrated in primary school, later a prostitute, and ‘a real psycho’. But in a reminder of the fact that there are male characters who can act honourably in Larsson’s otherwise misogynistic universe (i.e. after inappropriate sexual advances can reign themselves in and behave well), we encounter Armansky again. Bublanski questions him about Salander, but Armansky is poker-faced. He says she was their best ‘researcher’ (i.e. private investigator). Bublanski has trouble squaring this with the ‘psycho’ on their files – one of the author’s many examples of his heroine’s wrong-footing of those who do not ‘read’ her correctly.
Holmberg is at the initial crime scene, contemplating the enormous quantity of blood on the floor from the two shootings. He’s not interested in the details drawn up by the technicians – he wants to know who the killer is, and what the motivation is. He goes through their flat with a fine-tooth comb and hand-picks four books of interest: The Mafia’s Banker by Blomkvist (the kind of subject, of course, that Larsson the journalist might enthusiastically tackle), plus three political non-fiction titles and one about terrorism. He finds a great deal of money – so clearly robbery was not the motive.
Bublanski and Faste meet Ekström in his office. They don’t know who the ‘Miriam Wu’ woman is, but judging by the fetish gear she keeps, Faste thinks she is ‘a whore’. A social welfare report adjudged Salander guilty of prostitution too, but Bublanski is unconvinced. Ekström thinks that if Johansson’s thesis, ‘From Russia with Love’ was about trafficking and prostitution, she might have made contact with Wu and Salander, which could have provoked them to murder her. Bublanski and Ekström give a televised press conference, explaining they are looking for a 26-year-old woman for three murders: Bjurman is also dead, killed by his ruthless associates. Reluctantly, because he didn’t agree with the releasing of her name, Bublanski reads out a description of her. As so often with Larsson, the apparatus of the state is misdirected, targeting the innocent while protecting the guilty – the leitmotif of the author’s journalistic ethos.
Sonja Modig is still in Bjurman’s apartment at 9 pm when Bublanski arrives. She has unearthed nothing. Although Salander is the obvious culprit, Bublanski still can’t balance the ‘disabled near-psychopath’ of the police paperwork with the ‘skilled researcher’ so well-regarded by Armansky and Blomkvist. Gunnar Samuelsson from forensics has turned the body over to place on the stretcher, and found the tattoo Salander inscribed: ‘I am a sadistic pig, a pervert, and a rapist’. Modig asks if they have found their motive.
Larsson now take us back to Blomkvist at his flat, his mind whirling. He hasn’t slept for 36 hours, the horrific images of the double murder ingrained in his mind. He decides that he isn’t going to believe the police’s conclusion that Salander’s the murderer. After all, he owes his life to her – and readers recognise that the authentic characters in the Millennium Trilogy never take things at face value.
Blomkvist and Eriksson tape a list of suspects, based on Svensson’s book research, on the wall of his apartment. All men, punters or pimps. Of 37 names, 30 are readily identifiable. The trouble is that in order to publish, Millennium would have to get independent authentication to prove these individuals were who the authors claimed they were. If Svensson were alive, they could have published everything and allow him to refute objections himself. Again, the exigencies of magazine publication – something Larsson would know all too well from his Expo experience – are pressed into service for the narrative. A recurrent paradigm – the discipline of investigative journalism – is more central to this second book in the trilogy than to its companions, and perhaps accounts for the rigour in evidence here (a rigour which is sometimes subsumed in the more verisimilitude-stretching developments of the other books). Bublanski organises a meeting with Modig, Faste and Dr Peter Teleborian, head physician at St Stefan’s psychiatric clinic at Uppsala. There is hostility between Faste and Modig: bad cop and good cop. The boyish Teleborian is short with steel-rimmed glasses and a small goatee. He is one of the best-known psychiatrists in Sweden and is an authority on psychopaths and psychopathic behaviour (the lingua franca, in fact, of much of Larsson’s fiction). He believes Salander should have been held in an institution. Indeed, she was one of Teleborian’s patients in her teens and he had been partly responsible for placing her under guardianship when she turned 18 (a fact that will assume key significance later in the book).
Salander had been turned over to his care just before she was 13. She was, he says, ‘psychotic, obsessive and paranoid’. She had behaved violently towards schoolmates, teachers and acquaintances – but never strangers. Which is why Teleborian is convinced she must have known Dag and Mia, if indeed she had killed them. She attacked a stranger in the underground when she was 17, but only because the stranger, a sex offender, had attacked her first – one of the earliest of the many assaults on the spectacularly luckless Salander. When she feels threatened, she attacks with violence – the hallmark of the series. Because of her reluctance to engage with any therapy, doctors haven’t properly diagnosed her illness.
Various investigations are now taking place: Bublanski’s, who feels he’s almost solved it; Armansky’s, watching out for Salander’s interests; and Blomkvist/Millennium’s, actively seeking an alternative suspect to Salander. Modig believes the tattoo on Bjurman’s stomach, along with pornographic images on his computer, intimates that Salander was abused by him, and that could be a motive for his death. Faste’s theory is that Salander and Wu were involved in so
me kind of S&M escort service that went wrong, with Bjurman a client, and when Svensson was threatening to expose the sex trade, along with their S&M business, Salander killed him to prevent disclosure.
As often before, Larsson has consolidated a slew of material to set in train against his heroine, upping the ante in narrative terms; it’s a speciality that by this point in the second novel he has burnished to perfection.
Blomkvist gets home and checks his iBook, finding Salander has hacked into it, read his letter to her, and replied with a document containing just one word: ‘Zala’. He suspects she is close by, somewhere in Södermalm, and feels almost as if she is watching him. He creates another document, asking for more information: ‘Who is Zala?’ Immediately she replies: ‘You’re the journalist. Find out.’
Blomkvist receives a cryptic document from Salander about ‘Prosecutor E’ leaking information to the media, but not ‘the old police report’. He doesn’t know what she’s talking about and asks her to tell him exactly what she knows. She says she will think about it, and this is the first ‘rapprochement’ Larsson has forged between his protagonists since Lisbeth left Blomkvist – a canny delay, as the author will be well aware that his readers will now feel an impulse towards such a moment – more satisfying if delayed.
It’s interesting to speculate on how much Larsson himself may have personally used Expo as a weapon, given the tactics he now has his hero employ. When Blomkvist says Millennium will expose the sexual abuser, police officer Björck, the man pleads for compassion, but Blomkvist asks him where that quality was when he abused the underage girls. On his way out, Columbo-fashion, he asks him ‘one last question’ (the TV detective always reserved a final, crucial query): has he heard of a man named Zala? The result, after a moment of disorientation, is dramatic – Björck appears to be in shock: how could Blomkvist know about Zalachenko? (The first time we’ve heard the man’s full name.) The policeman asks him what it’s worth. If Björck could lead the journalist to him, will his name be left out of the report? Blomkvist agrees.
The Man Who Left Too Soon Page 16