“It’s not all that fantastic, I’m afraid. We believe there may have been several leaks, most of which did minimal damage except maybe for the last.”
“Then you’ll have to make sure you put a stop to it.”
“We’re doing everything we can, but we’re beginning to suspect…” And then he paused.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“OK, you don’t have to tell me.”
“We live in a sick world, Mikael.”
“We do?”
“A world in which paranoia is a requirement.”
“You could be right about that. Good night, Chief Inspector.”
“Good night, Mikael. Don’t do anything silly now.”
“I’ll do my best.”
—
Blomkvist crossed over Ringvägen and went down into the tunnelbana. He took the red line towards Norsborg and got off at Liljeholmen, where for about a year Holger Palmgren had been living in a small, modern apartment. Palmgren had sounded alarmed when he heard Blomkvist’s voice on the telephone. But as soon as he had been assured that Salander was in one piece—Blomkvist hoped he wasn’t wrong about this—he made him feel welcome.
Palmgren was a lawyer, long retired, who had been Salander’s guardian for many years, ever since the girl was thirteen and had been locked up in St. Stefan’s psychiatric clinic in Uppsala. He was elderly and not in the best of health, having suffered two strokes. For some time now he had been using a walker, and had trouble getting around even so. The left side of his face drooped and his left hand no longer functioned. But his mind was clear and his long-term memory was outstanding—especially on Salander.
No-one knew Lisbeth Salander as he did. Palmgren had succeeded where all the psychiatrists and psychologists had failed, or perhaps had not wanted to succeed. After a childhood from hell, when the girl had lost faith in all adults and in all authority, Palmgren had won her confidence and persuaded her to open up. Blomkvist saw it as a minor miracle. Salander was every therapist’s nightmare, but she had told Palmgren about the most painful parts of her past. That was why Blomkvist now keyed in the front-door code at Liljeholmstorget 96, took the lift to the fifth floor, and rang the doorbell.
“My dear old friend,” Holger said in the doorway. “It’s so wonderful to see you. But you’re looking pale.”
“I haven’t been sleeping well.”
“Not surprising, when people are shooting at you. I read about it in the paper. A dreadful story.”
“Appalling.”
“Have there been any developments?”
“I’ll tell you all about it,” Blomkvist said, sitting on a yellow sofa near the balcony, waiting for Palmgren to settle with difficulty into a wheelchair next to him.
Blomkvist ran through the story in broad outline. When he came to the point of his sudden inspiration, or suspicion, on the cobblestones in Bellmansgatan, he was interrupted:
“What are you saying?”
“I think it was Camilla.”
Palmgren looked stunned.
“That Camilla?”
“The very same.”
“Jesus,” Palmgren said. “What happened?”
“She vanished. But afterwards I felt as if my brain were on fire.”
“I can well understand. I was sure Camilla had disappeared off the face of the earth.”
“And I had almost forgotten that there were two of them.”
“There were two of them all right, very much so, twin sisters who loathed each other.”
“I remember that,” Blomkvist said. “But I need to be reminded of as much as you can tell me, to fill in the gaps. I’ve been asking myself why on earth Salander got involved in this story. Why would she, the superhacker, take an interest in a simple data breach?”
“Well, you know the background, don’t you? The mother, Agneta Salander, was a cashier at Konsum Zinken and lived with her two daughters on Lundagatan. They might have had quite a nice life together. There wasn’t much money and Agneta was very young and had had no opportunity to get an education. But she was loving and caring. She wanted to give her girls a good upbringing. It was just…”
“That the father came to visit.”
“Yes, the father, Alexander Zalachenko. He came from time to time and his visits nearly always ended in the same way. He assaulted and raped Agneta while the girls sat in the next room and heard everything. One day Lisbeth found her mother unconscious on the floor.”
“And that was the first time she took revenge?”
“The second time. The first was when she stabbed Zalachenko repeatedly in the shoulder.”
“But now she firebombed his car.”
“Yes. Zalachenko burned like a torch. Lisbeth was committed to St. Stefan’s psychiatric clinic.”
“And her mother was admitted to Äppelviken Nursing Home.”
“For Lisbeth that was the most painful part. Her mother was just twenty-nine, and she was never herself again. She survived at the nursing home for fourteen years, with severe brain injuries and suffering a great deal of pain. Often she could not communicate at all. Lisbeth went to see her as frequently as she could, and I know she dreamed that her mother would one day recover so they could talk again and look after each other. But it never happened. That if anything is the darkest corner of Lisbeth’s life. She saw her mother wither away and eventually die.”
“It’s terrible. But I’ve never understood Camilla’s role in the story.”
“That’s more complicated, and in some ways I think one has to forgive the girl. After all, she too was only a child, and before she was even aware of it she became a pawn in the game.”
“In what way?”
“They chose opposite camps in the battle, you could say. It’s true that the girls are fraternal twins and not alike in appearance, but they also have completely different temperaments. Lisbeth was born first. Camilla came twenty minutes later and was apparently a joy to behold, even when she was tiny. While Lisbeth was an angry creature, Camilla had everyone exclaiming ‘Oh, what a sweet girl,’ and it can’t have been a coincidence that Zalachenko showed more forbearance towards her from the start. I say forbearance because it was never a question of anything kinder in those first years. Since Agneta was no more than a whore to him, it followed that her children were bastards with no claim on his affections, little wretches who just got in the way. And yet…”
“Yes?”
“And yet even Zalachenko noticed that one of the children was beautiful. Sometimes Lisbeth would say there was a genetic defect in her family and, though it’s doubtful that her claim would stand up to medical scrutiny, it cannot be denied that Zala fathered some exceptional children. You came across their half-brother, Ronald Niedermann, didn’t you? He was blond, enormous, and had congenital analgesia, the inability to feel pain, so was therefore an ideal hit man and murderer, while Camilla…well, in her case the genetic abnormality was quite simply that she was astoundingly, ridiculously lovely to look at, and that just got worse as she grew older. I say worse because I’m pretty sure it was a misfortune. The effect may have been exaggerated by the fact that her twin sister always looked sour. Grown-ups were liable to frown when they saw her. But then they would notice Camilla, and go soft in the head. Can you imagine how that must have impacted her?”
“It must have been hard to get passed over.”
“I wasn’t thinking of Lisbeth, and I don’t remember seeing any evidence that she resented the situation. If it was just a question of beauty, she probably would have felt her sister was welcome to it. No, I’m talking about Camilla. What must it do to a child who doesn’t have much in the way of empathy to be told all the time how divine she is?”
“It goes to her head.”
“It gives her a sense of power. When she smiles, we melt. When she doesn’t, we feel excluded, and do absolutely anything to see her beam again. Camilla learned early on to exploit that. She became a master manipulator. She had large, expressive d
oe eyes.”
“She still does.”
“Lisbeth told me how Camilla would sit for hours in front of the mirror, practising her look. Her eyes were a fantastic weapon. They could both bewitch you and freeze you out, make children and adults alike feel special one day and rejected the next. It was an evil gift and, as you could guess, she soon became very popular at school. Everyone wanted to be with her and she took advantage in every conceivable way. She made sure that her classmates gave her presents daily: marbles, sweets, small change, pearls, brooches. And those who didn’t, or generally didn’t behave as she wanted, she wouldn’t even look at the next day. Anyone who had ever found themselves basking in her radiance knew how painful that was. Her classmates did everything they could to be in her good graces. They fawned over her. With one exception, of course.”
“Her sister.”
“That’s right, and so Camilla turned them against Lisbeth. She got some fierce bullying going—they pushed Lisbeth’s head into the toilet and called her a freak and a weirdo and all sorts of names. This went on until one day they found out who they were picking on. But that’s another story, and you’re familiar with.”
“Lisbeth doesn’t turn the other cheek.”
“No indeed. But the interesting thing in this story from a psychological point of view is that Camilla learned how to dominate her surroundings from an early age. She worked out how to control everybody, apart from two significant people in her life, Lisbeth and her father, and that annoyed her. She put a vast amount of energy into winning those fights as well, and she needed totally different strategies for each of them. She could never win Lisbeth over, and pretty soon I think she gave up. In her eyes, Lisbeth was simply strange, a surly, stroppy girl. Her father, on the other hand…”
“He was evil through and through.”
“He was evil, but he was also the family’s centre of gravity. He was the one around whom everything revolved, even if he was rarely there. He was the absent father. In a normal family such a figure can take on a quasi-mystical status for a child, but in this case it was much more than that.”
“In what way?”
“I suppose I mean that Camilla and Zalachenko were an unfortunate combination. Although Camilla hardly understood it herself, she was only interested in one thing, even then: power. And her father, well, you can say many things about him, but he was not short of power. Plenty of people can testify to that, not least that wretched lot at Säpo. No matter how firmly they tried to put their foot down, they still ended up huddled like a flock of frightened sheep when they came eyeball to eyeball with him. There was an ugly, imposing self-assurance about Zalachenko which was merely amplified by the fact that he was untouchable. It made no difference how many times he was reported to the social welfare agency—the Security Police always protected him. This is what persuaded Lisbeth to take matters into her own hands. But for Camilla, things were different.”
“She wanted to be like him.”
“Yes, I think so. Her father was her ideal—she wanted the same aura of immunity and strength. But most of all, perhaps, she wanted to be acknowledged by him. To be seen as a worthy daughter.”
“She must have known how terribly he mistreated her mother.”
“Of course she knew. Yet still she took her father’s side. One could say she chose to side with strength and power. Apparently even as a little girl she often said that she despised weak people.”
“She despised her mother, do you think?”
“Unfortunately I think you’re right. Lisbeth once told me something which I’ve never been able to forget.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ve never told anyone.”
“Isn’t it about time, then?”
“Well, maybe, but in that case I need a strong drink. How about a good brandy?”
“That wouldn’t be such a bad idea. But you stay right where you are, I’ll get some glasses and the bottle,” Blomkvist said, going to the mahogany drinks cabinet in the corner by the kitchen door.
He was digging around among the bottles when his iPhone rang. It was Zander, or at least his name was on the display. But when Blomkvist answered no-one was there, it must have been a pocket call, he thought. He poured out two glasses of Rémy Martin and sat down again next to Palmgren.
“So tell me,” he said.
“I don’t know where to begin. But one fine summer’s day, as I understood it, Camilla and Lisbeth were both sitting in their bedroom. The door was locked.”
CHAPTER 23
NOVEMBER 23—EVENING
August’s body stiffened again. He could no longer find the answers, the numbers were too big. Instead of picking up his pencil he clenched his fists so that the backs of his hands whitened. He banged his head against the tabletop.
Salander should have tried to comfort him, or at least prevent him from hurting himself. But she was not entirely conscious of what was happening. Her mind was on her encrypted file. She realized she was not going to get any further by this route either. It was hardly surprising—how could August succeed where supercomputers had failed? Her expectations had been absurdly high from the start. But still she felt disappointed.
She went out into the darkness to survey the barren, untamed landscape before her. Below the steep rock slope lay the beach and a snow-covered field with a deserted dance pavilion.
The place probably teemed with people on a lovely summer’s day. Now it was empty. The boats had been pulled up on land and not a soul could be seen, no lights were shining in the houses on the other side of the water. Salander liked it. At least she liked it as a hiding place at the end of November.
If someone arrived by car she was unlikely to pick up the sound of the engine. The only conceivable place to park was down by the beach, and to get to the house you had to climb up the wooden stairs along the steep rock slope. Under the cover of darkness, someone might be able to sneak up on them. But she would sleep tonight. She needed it. Her wound was still giving her pain—maybe that was why she had gotten her hopes up about August, against the odds. But when she went back into the house, she realized that there was something else besides.
—
“Normally Lisbeth isn’t someone who bothers about the weather or what’s going on beyond her immediate focus,” Palmgren said. “She blocks out everything she considers unimportant. But on this occasion she did mention that the sun was shining on Lundagatan and in Skinnarviksparken. She could hear children laughing. On the other side of the windowpane, people were happy. Perhaps that is what she was trying to say—she wanted to point out the contrast. Ordinary people were having ice cream and playing with kites and balls. Camilla and Lisbeth sat locked in their bedroom and could hear their father assaulting their mother.
“I believe this was just before Lisbeth took her revenge on Zalachenko, but I’m not sure about the sequence of events. There were many rapes, and they followed the same pattern. Zala would appear in the afternoon or evening, very drunk. Sometimes he would ruffle Camilla’s hair and say things like: ‘How can such a pretty girl have such a loathsome sister?’ Then he would lock his daughters in their room and settle down in the kitchen to have more to drink. He drank his vodka neat, and often he would sit quietly at first, smacking his lips like a hungry animal. Then he would mumble something like: ‘And how’s my little whore today?,’ sounding almost affectionate. But Agneta would do something wrong, or rather, Zalachenko would decide that she had done something wrong, and then the first blow came, usually a slap followed by: ‘I thought my little whore was going to behave herself today.’ Then he would shove her into the bedroom and beat her. After a while slaps would turn to punches. Lisbeth could tell from the sounds. She could tell exactly what sort of blows they were, and where they landed. She felt it as clearly as if she herself were the victim of this savagery. After the punches came the kicks. Zala kicked and shoved her mother against the wall and shouted ‘bitch’ and ‘tramp’ and ‘whore,’ and that aroused him. He w
as turned on by her suffering. Only once Agneta was black-and-blue and bleeding did he rape her, and when he climaxed he would yell even fouler insults. Then it would be quiet for a while. All that could be heard was Agneta’s choked sobbing and Zala’s own heavy breathing. Then he would get up and have another drink and mutter and swear and spit on the floor. Sometimes he unlocked the door to the children’s room, with something like ‘Mummy’s behaving herself again now.’ And he would leave, slamming the door behind him. That was the usual pattern. But on this particular day something new happened.”
“What?”
“The girls’ bedroom was quite small. However hard they tried to get away from each other, the beds were still close and, while the abuse went on, each one sat on her own mattress, facing the other. They hardly ever said anything, and usually avoided eye contact. On this day Lisbeth was staring through the window at Lundagatan, that’s probably why she talked about the sunlight and the children out there. But then she looked at her sister, and that’s when she saw it.”
“She saw what?”
“Camilla’s right hand, beating against her mattress. It could have been a sign of nervous or compulsive behaviour. That’s what Lisbeth thought at first. But then she noticed that the hand was beating in time with the blows from the bedroom, and at that she looked up at Camilla’s face. Her sister’s eyes were glowing with excitement, and the eeriest thing was: Camilla looked just like Zala himself and she was smiling. She was suppressing a smirk, and in that instant Lisbeth realized that Camilla was not only trying to ingratiate herself with her father. She was also right behind his violence. She was cheering him on.”
“That’s sick.”
“But that’s how it was. Do you know what Lisbeth did? She remained perfectly calm. She sat down next to Camilla and took her hand almost tenderly. Perhaps Camilla thought her sister was looking for some comfort or closeness. Stranger things have happened. Lisbeth rolled up her sister’s shirt sleeve and dug her fingernails into Camilla’s wrist—down to the bone—ripping open a terrible wound. Blood streamed onto the bed. Lisbeth dragged Camilla to the floor and swore she would kill both her and her father if the beatings and the rapes did not stop.”
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