“Interesting, what you said about his hearing.”
“Yes?” She sounded distracted.
“Seger, the psychologist who was shot on that hunt all those years ago, wrote his thesis on the impact of our hearing on our self-esteem,” Blomkvist said.
“Was that because of Leo, do you think?”
“No idea. But it doesn’t sound like your average research topic. How did Leo’s extreme sensitivity to sound manifest itself?”
“We might be in a meeting and I’d see him suddenly sit up and cock his head for no apparent reason. Soon afterwards someone would come into the room. He always picked that up before the rest of us. Once I asked him about it and he dismissed it. But later, at the end of my time at the firm, he told me that his hearing had been a burden all his life. He said he’d been useless at school.”
“I thought he was top of his class,” Blomkvist said.
“So did I. But during his first school years he couldn’t sit still. If he’d been from a more ordinary family he probably would have been moved into a class for special needs. But he was a Mannheimer and all sorts of resources were thrown at the problem. They discovered that his hearing was exceptional and that was why he couldn’t bear to be in a classroom, the slightest buzzing or rustling disturbed him. It was decided that he should be privately educated, and that would have helped him develop into the boy with the sky-high I.Q. you read about.”
“So he was never proud of his good hearing?”
“I don’t know … maybe he was ashamed of it on the one hand, but also used it to his advantage.”
“He must have been good at eavesdropping.”
“Did that psychologist write anything about exceptionally sensitive hearing?”
“I haven’t got hold of his thesis yet,” Blomkvist said. “But he did write somewhere that an evolutionary asset during one particular era can become a liability during another. In a forest in the age of hunting and gathering, someone with good hearing would be the most alert and therefore the most likely to find food. In a major city full of noise, that same person would risk confusion and overload. More recipient than participant.”
“Is that what he wrote: more recipient than participant?”
“As far as I remember.”
“How sad.”
“Why do you say that?”
“That’s Leo in a nutshell. He was always the onlooker.”
“Apart from that week in December.”
“Apart from that. But you think there’s something dodgy about that shooting in the forest, don’t you?”
He detected a new curiosity in her voice and took it as a good sign. Perhaps she would tell him more about what was so strange that time she saw Mannheimer late at night in his office.
“It’s beginning to interest me,” he said.
Leo Mannheimer never forgot Carl Seger. Even as an adult, he could still feel a sudden, sharp sense of loss at 4.00 on a Tuesday afternoon, the time he always went to Seger’s consulting rooms, and he sometimes had conversations with him in his head, as if he were talking to an imaginary friend.
Yet Mannheimer did get better at coping with the world and its sounds, just as Seger had predicted. Often his hearing and his perfect pitch were an asset – certainly when he played music. For a long time he did little else but play his piano and dream of becoming a jazz pianist. In his late teens he even had a recording offer from Metronome. He turned it down because he didn’t think the material he had was strong enough yet.
When he began his studies at the Stockholm School of Economics, he thought of them as no more than an interlude. As soon as he had put together some better pieces, he would make his record and become a new Keith Jarrett. But the interlude ended up being his life and he was never quite sure how. Was he afraid to fail and to disappoint his parents? Or was it the bouts of depression, which came as regularly as the seasons?
Mannheimer remained a bachelor, and that was no easier to understand. People were curious about him. Women were drawn to him. But he was not so easily drawn to them – in the company of others he yearned for the peace and quiet of home. However, he had genuinely loved Madeleine Bard.
And that was odd too, since they seemed not to have much in common. He did not think he had simply fallen for her looks, still less her wealth. She was different – that’s how he would always see it – with her bright-blue eyes which seemed to harbour a secret, and the streak of nostalgia which sometimes flashed across her beautiful face.
They got engaged, and for a while lived together in his apartment on Floragatan. At the time, he had just inherited his father’s shares in Alfred Ögren Securities and Madeleine’s parents – who set store by such things – saw him as an excellent catch. The relationship was not without its complications. Madeleine wanted to give dinner parties, one after the other. Leo resisted as far as he could and they would fight for hours about it. Sometimes she even locked herself in the bedroom and cried. Nevertheless, it could have been a good marriage. He was convinced of that. He and Madeleine loved each other with fire and passion.
Yet disaster struck, and that probably only went to show that he had been deluding himself all along. It happened in August at a crayfish party at the Mörners’ place out in the archipelago, on Värmdö. The atmosphere had been strained right from the start. He was feeling gloomy and found the guests loud and boring. He withdrew into himself, which sent Madeleine into social overdrive. She bounced around among the guests, gushing about how everything was “fantastic, really wonderful, it’s amazing how beautifully you’ve decorated the place, and what a fabulous piece of property. I’m soooo impressed. We’d move out here in a second …” But it was nothing out of the ordinary that evening, just a part of the charade that is life.
At midnight he gave up and took himself off to a quiet room with a book, Mezz Mezzrow’s Really the Blues. He was a little surprised to find it on the shelves, and it meant the party ended up being fun for him after all. He dreamed his way into the jazz clubs of New Orleans and Chicago in the 1930s, and scarcely paid any attention to the shrieking and snaps-drinking songs coming from next door.
Shortly after 1.00 a.m. Ivar Ögren stepped into the room, drunk as he always was at parties, dressed in a ridiculous black hat and a brown suit which strained across his midriff. Leo put his hands over his ears in case Ivar should shout or make some other foul racket, as he often did.
“I’m taking your fiancée out in a rowing boat,” Ivar said.
Mannheimer protested: “You’ve got to be joking. You’re drunk.” It did no good, but Ivar did at least put a life vest on Madeleine, as a concession. Mannheimer went onto the veranda and stared at the red jacket as it vanished over the water.
The sea was calm. It was a clear summer’s night and there were stars in the sky. Ivar and Madeleine talked softly in the boat. Not that it made any difference, Mannheimer could hear every word anyway. It was just silly chatter. A new, more vulgar Madeleine was emerging, and that hurt. Then the boat disappeared further out and not even he could hear what they were saying. They were away for a few hours.
By the time they returned, all the other guests had gone. It was beginning to get light and Mannheimer was standing on the shore with a lump in his throat. He could hear the boat being pulled up onto the shore and Madeleine coming unsteadily towards him. On the way home in a taxi, a wall seemed to rise between them and Mannheimer knew exactly what Ivar had said out there on the water. Nine days later, Madeleine packed her bags and left him. On November 21 that year, as snow fell over Stockholm and darkness settled over the country, she announced her engagement to Ivar Ögren.
Mannheimer came down with something that his doctor described as a partial paralysis.
Once he had recovered, he went back to the office and congratulated Ivar with a brotherly hug. He was at the engagement party and the wedding, and said a friendly hello to Madeleine whenever he bumped into her. He put on a cheerful face every damn day and gave the impression there was a lifelo
ng bond of friendship between him and Ivar which could withstand any trials. But deep inside his thoughts were quite different. He was planning his revenge.
Ivar, for his part, knew that he had won only a partial victory. Mannheimer was still a threat and a rival for the top job at Alfred Ögren. He made plans to crush Mannheimer once and for all.
Up on Hornsgatspuckeln Malin stopped for no apparent reason. It was far too hot to linger in the sunlight, but there they stood, uncertain, while people passed them and a car hooted in the distance. Malin said no more about her meeting with Mannheimer. She looked down towards Mariatorget.
“Listen,” she said. “I need to go.”
She gave him a distracted kiss, dashed down the stone steps to Hornsgatan and across to Mariatorget. Blomkvist stood in the same spot, hesitating. Then he took out his mobile and rang Erika Berger, his close friend and Millennium’s editor-in-chief.
He told her that he would not be coming to the office for a few days. They had just put the July issue to bed. It would soon be Midsummer, and for the first time in years they had been able to afford two summer temps, which would help reduce their workload.
“You sound miserable. Has anything happened?” Berger said.
“There’s been a serious assault in Lisbeth’s unit at Flodberga.”
“That’s too bad. Who was the victim?”
“A gangster. It’s a pretty ugly business, and Lisbeth witnessed it.”
“She usually knows what to do.”
“Let’s hope so. But … could you help me with something else? Can you ask someone at the office, ideally Sofie, to go to the Stockholm City Archives tomorrow and get hold of the personal files of three people? If anyone asks, she can say we’re entitled to them on the basis of rights of public access to official records.”
He gave Berger the names and national identity numbers, which he had made a note of on his telephone.
“Old Mannheimer,” Berger muttered. “Isn’t he dead and buried?”
“Six years ago.”
“I met him a couple of times when I was little. My father knew him vaguely. Has this got anything to do with Lisbeth?”
“Possibly.”
“In what way?”
“I honestly don’t know. What was the old man like?”
“Hard to say, given my age at the time, but he did have the reputation of being a bit of an old devil. Still, I remember him being quite nice. He asked me what kind of music I liked. He was good at whistling. Why are you interested in him?”
“I’ll have to get back to you on that too,” Blomkvist said.
“O.K., suit yourself,” Berger said and started to tell him something about the next issue and advertising sales.
He was not really listening. He ended the call abruptly and continued up Bellmansgatan. He passed the Bishops Arms and walked down the steep cobbled street to his front door and up to his attic apartment. There he sat down at his computer and resumed his search online while downing a couple of Pilsner Urquell.
His main focus was the accidental shooting in Östhammar, but he did not learn much more. He knew from experience that it was always difficult to find fresh information on old criminal cases. There were no digital archives that he could access – they were protected for public policy reasons – and, according to the record retention policy of the Swedish National Archives, files on preliminary court investigations were deleted after five years. He decided to go up to Uppsala district court the following day and have a hunt in their records. Afterwards, he could perhaps drop by the main police building there, or find some retired detective inspector who might remember the case. He would have to play it by ear.
He also called Ellenor Hjort, the woman who had been engaged to Carl Seger. He realized at once that this topic was closed as far as she was concerned. She did not want to talk about Seger. She remained polite and accommodating, but said she could not bring herself to look into it any further: “I hope you understand.” Then she changed her mind and agreed to meet Blomkvist the following afternoon, not because of his old reporter’s charm or even her curiosity as to what he was looking for, but rather because of his bold gamble in dropping Leo Mannheimer’s name.
“Leo,” she burst out. “My God! It’s been far too long. How is he?”
Blomkvist said that he did not know.
“Were you close to him?”
“Oh yes, Carl and I were very fond of that boy.”
After ending the call he tidied up the kitchen and wondered if he should call Malin, to try to tease out what she was puzzling over. Instead, he showered and got changed. Just before six he left his apartment and walked down to Zinkensdamm, to meet his sister at Pane Vino.
CHAPTER 9
19.vi
She would deal with it. Martin did not need to worry, she said. It was their fourth telephone conversation that day and she did not betray her impatience this time either. But as she hung up she muttered “wimp” and went through the kit that Benjamin, her loyal friend and assistant, had put together for her.
Rakel Greitz was a psychoanalyst and an associate professor of psychiatry, known for a number of things but primarily for her sense of order. She was massively efficient and that had not changed since she had been diagnosed with stomach cancer. Now she had to start taking clinical cleanliness very seriously indeed, and she was positively manic about it. Every speck of dust vanished as if by magic and no tables or sinks were as clean as the ones she had come into contact with. She was seventy years old, and ill, yet she was permanently on the go.
Today the hours had flown by in a flurry of feverish activity. It was now 6.30 p.m. and much too late, she should have taken action right away. But it was always the same. Martin Steinberg was far too timid and she was glad she had ignored his advice. Already that morning she had got to work on her contacts with the telephone companies and the home care providers. Still, a great deal could have happened since then. That old fool could have had a visitor and disclosed whatever it was he knew or suspected. Although the operation was a risk, it was the only option. There was too much to lose. Too many things had gone wrong in the agency she had been running.
She squirted her hands with Alcogel and went into the bathroom. She smiled into the mirror, if only to prove that she could still look happy. As Greitz saw it, what had happened had a silver lining. She had lived for so long in a tunnel of sickness and pain that what she now had to do gave her life an enhanced reality, a renewed sense of ceremony. Greitz had always enjoyed the feeling of vocation, of a higher purpose.
She lived alone in a 108-square-metre apartment on Karlbergsvägen, in the Vasastan district of Stockholm. She had just finished a cycle of chemotherapy and, all things considered, was not feeling too bad. Her hair was sparser and thinner, but most of it was still there. The cold cap she had worn had worked. She was still good-looking, tall, slim and upright, with clean features and a natural authority which had been hers since she had graduated in medicine at the Karolinska Institute.
She did have those flames on her throat, but although the birthmark had caused her all sorts of difficulties when she was young, she had come to appreciate it. She bore it with pride and even if nowadays she always wore a polo neck, it was not because she felt shy or ashamed. It so happened that this style perfectly suited her reserved personality – dignified, never over-dressed. Greitz could still wear coats, skirts and trouser suits she had had made when she was young, they had never needed altering. There was something cool and severe about her, and it was perhaps because of this that everybody made an extra effort in her presence. She was capable, and quick, and she knew the value of loyalty to both ideas and people. She had never disclosed any professional secrets, not even to Erik, her late husband.
She went onto the balcony and looked towards Odenplan. Her right hand resting on the railing was steady. She turned back into the apartment and tidied up a little more. She took out a brown-leather doctor’s bag from a cupboard in the hall and packed it with the item
s from Benjamin. Then she went back into the bathroom, this time to put on some make-up, and selected a cheap-looking black wig. She smiled again. Or perhaps it was a twitch. In spite of her experience, she suddenly felt nervous.
Blomkvist and his sister were at one of the outside tables at Pane Vino on Brännkyrkagatan. They had ordered truffle pasta and red wine, talked about the summer and the heat, and had shared their holiday plans. Giannini succinctly gave her brother some more information on the situation at Flodberga. And then at last she got onto the real reason for wanting to see him.
“Sometimes, Mikael, the police are such idiots,” she said. “How familiar are you with the situation in Bangladesh?”
“I wouldn’t say ‘familiar’, but I do know a bit about it.”
“Well, you’ll be aware at least that the predominant religion is Islam. According to the constitution, however, it’s a secular state which guarantees freedom of the press and freedom of speech. In theory that sounds perfectly feasible.”
“But it isn’t really working, that I know.”
“The government is under pressure from Islamists and has enacted legislation which prohibits any statement liable to offend religious sensibilities. You can stretch ‘liable’ to cover pretty much anything if you try hard enough. The laws have also been interpreted strictly and a string of writers have been sentenced to long prison terms. But that’s not the worst.”
“The worst is surely that the law has legitimized the attacks on those writers.”
“The law has put wind in the Islamists’ sails. Jihadists and terrorists have begun systematically to threaten, harass and murder dissidents, and very few of the perpetrators are prosecuted. The website Mukto-Mona has been particularly hard hit. Their objective is to promote freedom of expression, enlightenment and an open secular society. Quite a number of bloggers have been murdered, around thirty I think, and others have been threatened and named on death lists. Jamal Chowdhury was one of them. He was a young biologist who on occasion wrote about the theory of evolution for Mukto-Mona. Chowdhury was officially condemned to death by the country’s Islamist movement and fled to Sweden with the help of Swedish PEN. For a long time it seemed as if he could breathe easy again. He was depressed, but slowly he got better, and then one day he went to a seminar about the religious oppression of women at Kulturhuset.”
The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye: Continuing Stieg Larsson's Millennium Series Page 12