The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye: Continuing Stieg Larsson's Millennium Series

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The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye: Continuing Stieg Larsson's Millennium Series Page 13

by David Lagercrantz


  “And that’s where he met Faria Kazi.”

  “Good, I see you’ve done your homework,” Giannini said. “Faria was sitting at the back of the room and she is – one can safely say – a very beautiful woman. Jamal couldn’t take his eyes off her and after the seminar he approached her. That was the start of not only a romance but also a tragedy, a modern ‘Romeo and Juliet’.”

  “In what sense?”

  “Faria and Jamal’s families are on opposite sides of the struggle. Jamal supported a free and open Bangladesh, while Faria’s father and brothers lined up with the country’s Islamists, especially once Faria had been promised against her will to Qamar Fatali.”

  “And who is that?”

  “A fat gentleman of forty-five or so who lives in a large house in Dhaka with a lot of servants. He not only owns a small textile business, but he also finances a number of qawmi in the country.”

  “Qawmi?”

  “Koranic schools which exist outside government control. There’s evidence to suggest that young jihadists receive their ideological training in some of them. Qamar Fatali already has a wife his own age but this spring he became enthralled by photographs of Faria and wished to have her as his second wife. As you can imagine, it wasn’t straightforward for him to get an entry visa to come and visit his prospective bride, and he became increasingly frustrated.”

  “Besides which, Jamal came onto the scene.”

  “Indeed, and Qamar and the Kazi brothers found themselves with at least two reasons to kill him.”

  “So Jamal didn’t take his own life, is that what you’re saying?”

  “I’m not saying anything yet, Mikael. I’m giving you some background – a brief account of what Lisbeth and I talked about. Jamal became the enemy, a Montague, if you like. Jamal was also a practising Muslim, but more liberal, and like his parents – both university professors – he believed human rights should be fundamental in any society. That was enough to make him an enemy of Qamar and the Kazi family. His love for Faria made him a private threat too, not only to the honour of her father and brothers but also to their financial prospects. There were clear motives to have him removed and Jamal realized early on that he was playing for high stakes. But he couldn’t avoid the risk. He writes about it in a diary found after the tragedy – which the police have had translated from Bengali and is referred to in the preliminary investigation into Jamal’s death. Can I read you a bit?”

  “Please do.”

  Blomkvist drank his Chianti while Giannini got the police report out of her briefcase and leafed through the bundle of papers.

  “Here,” she said. “Listen to this.”

  Ever since I had to watch my friends die and was forced to leave my homeland, it was as if the world became shrouded in ashes. I could no longer see any colour. There was no point in living.

  “That last sentence was later used to support the argument that he committed suicide in the Tunnelbana,” she said. “But there’s more.”

  I still tried to find things to do and, one day in June, I went to listen to a debate in Stockholm on religious oppression. I wasn’t expecting much. Everything meaningful from my past now seemed irrelevant, and I couldn’t understand why the imam on stage still believed there was so much to fight for. I had given up. I’d plunged into a grave. I felt like I too had been killed.

  “He’s a bit melodramatic,” Giannini said apologetically.

  “Not at all. Jamal was young, wasn’t he? We all write like that when we’re young. He reminds me of our poor colleague Andrei. Go on.”

  I thought I was dead and lost to the world. But then I saw a young woman in a black dress at the back of the hall. She had tears in her eyes and was so beautiful that it hurt to look at her. Life awakened in me again. It came back like an electric shock and I knew I had to speak to her. In some way I knew that we belonged together and that it was I and no-one else who could comfort her. I walked over and said something banal. I thought I had messed it up, but she smiled. We went out onto the square – as if we’d always known we would go out onto the square – and then we walked down a long pedestrian street past the parliament.

  “Well, I won’t go on. Jamal had never been able to bring himself to discuss with anyone what happened to his friends on Mukto-Mona. But with Faria the story came streaming out – he tells her everything, that’s clear from the diary. After they’ve walked for less than a kilometre, Faria says she has to rush off, takes his business card and promises to call soon. But she never does. Jamal waits and becomes desperate. He finds Faria’s mobile number on the internet and leaves a message. He leaves four, five, six messages. Still no reponse. Then, a man phones Jamal and snarls at him, tells him he should never get in touch again. ‘Faria despises you, you shit,’ the man says, and that breaks Jamal. But after a while he becomes suspicious and does some investigating. He doesn’t grasp the full picture: that her father and brothers have taken Faria’s mobile and computer and that they’re checking her e-mails and calls and keeping her a prisoner in the apartment. But soon he understands that something is very wrong and he goes to see Imam Ferdousi, who says that he too is worried. Together they contact the authorities, but they don’t get any help. Nothing happens, not one single thing. Ferdousi visits the family himself, but is shown the door. Jamal is ready to turn the world upside down. But then …”

  “Keep going.”

  “Then Faria herself calls, from another number, and wants to see him. At the time Jamal is secretly renting an apartment on Upplandsgatan, with the help of Norstedts publishing company. It’s not clear what happens next. All we know is that the youngest brother in the family, Khalil, helps Faria to escape, and she goes straight to Upplandsgatan. Jamal and Faria’s reunion is like something out of a movie or a dream. They make love and talk, day and night. Faria, who otherwise said nothing during the police interviews, confirmed that. They decide to contact the police and PEN, for help to go into hiding. But then … it’s so sad. Faria wants to say goodbye to her youngest brother – and she’s come to trust him. They agree to meet at a café on Norra Bantorget. It’s a chilly autumn day. Faria heads out wearing Jamal’s blue down jacket with a hood which she draws over her head. She never arrives.”

  “She was ambushed, right?”

  “It was definitely an ambush – there were witnesses. But neither Lisbeth nor I believe that Khalil lured her there. Our suspicion is that the older brothers followed him. They were waiting for Faria in a red Honda Civic on Barnhusgatan and, with lightning speed as soon as they see her approach, drag her into the car and take her back to the family home in Sickla. It seems that the brothers contemplate packing Faria off to Dhaka. But unsurprisingly they see it as too risky. How would they prevent her from causing a scene at Arlanda, or on the flight? Would they have to drug her?”

  “So they get her to write a letter to Jamal.”

  “Exactly. But the letter’s not worth the paper it’s written on, Mikael. The handwriting is Faria’s, that much is clear. But it’s obvious her brothers or her father dictated it – except for the clues Faria manages to slip into the text. ‘I said all along that I have never loved you.’ That was certainly a secret message. In his diary, Jamal describes how they told each other over and over again, every evening and every morning, how much they loved each other.”

  “Jamal must have raised the alarm when she didn’t come back from the meeting with Khalil.”

  “Of course he did. Two police assistants dutifully visited Sickla, and when the father stood at the front door and assured them that all was well, except that Faria had flu, they left. But Jamal would not be fobbed off. He called everybody he could think of and the family must have realized they were running out of time. On Monday, October 23, Jamal writes in his account of events that he wakes up with a feeling of death in his body. The police made a big deal of this after it was all over, but I don’t interpret that to mean he has given up. It’s how Jamal expresses himself. He’s been torn apart, and has started
to bleed to death. He can’t sleep, can’t think, can hardly function as a human. He ‘staggers on’, he writes. Cries out his ‘despair’. The police investigators read too much into those words. That’s my opinion. Between the lines he sounds much more like a man who wants to fight and to recover what he has lost. Above all he is worried. ‘What’s Faria doing now?’ ‘Are they hurting her?’ He makes no reference to Faria’s letter, even though it’s lying open on his kitchen table. He probably sees right through it. We know that he tries again to get in touch with Ferdousi, who’s at a conference in London. He rings Fredrik Lodalen, an associate professor of biology at Stockholm University with whom he’s become friendly. They meet at 7.00 in the evening on Hornsbruksgatan, where Lodalen lives with his wife and two children. Jamal stays for a long time. The children go to sleep. Lodalen’s wife goes to sleep. Lodalen has tremendous sympathy, but he also has to get up early the next morning and, like many people facing a crisis, Jamal is going over things again and again and, come midnight, Lodalen asks him to go home. He promises to contact the police and the women’s crisis centre in the morning. On the way to the Tunnelbana, Jamal telephones the author Klas Fröberg whom he’s got to know through PEN. There’s no answer, and Jamal goes down into Hornstull station. It’s 00.17 on Tuesday, October 24. A storm has just blown in. It’s raining.”

  “So there aren’t many people around.”

  “There’s one woman on the platform, a librarian. The C.C.T.V. camera catches Jamal as he’s walking by her, and he looks absolutely wretched. Understandably so. He has hardly slept since Faria disappeared, and he feels abandoned by everybody. But still, Mikael … Jamal would never abandon Faria when she needed him most. One of the C.C.T.V. cameras on the platform was broken, and that may have been an unfortunate coincidence. But I cannot believe it’s a coincidence that a young man walks up to the librarian and talks to her in English just as the train rolls into the station and Jamal falls onto the track. The woman doesn’t see what happens. She has no idea whether Jamal jumped or was pushed and it hasn’t been possible to identify the young man who spoke to her.”

  “What does the train driver say?”

  “His name is Stefan Robertsson and it’s basically because of him that the death was ruled a suicide. Robertsson says he’s certain that Jamal jumped. But he was also traumatised by the incident and my guess is that he was asked some leading questions.”

  “In what way?”

  “The person conducting the interview didn’t seem to want to consider any other possibility. In his first account – before his brain pieced together a more comprehensive description – Robertsson says he saw some wild flailing, as if Jamal had had too many arms and legs. He doesn’t refer to it again, and curiously enough his memory seems to get better as time goes by.”

  “What about the guard at the ticket gate? He or she surely must have seen the perpetrator.”

  “The guard was watching a film on his iPad and said that a number of people passed him. But he didn’t take notice of anybody in particular. He thinks that most of them were passengers who had got off the train. He has no clear recollection.”

  “Aren’t there cameras up there?”

  “There are, and I’ve found something. Nothing significant, but most of the people who come up out of the station have been identified, apart from one man who looks young and lanky. He keeps his head down, so it’s impossible to see his face. But his attitude suggests that he’s nervous and doesn’t want to be recognized. It’s a disgrace that he hasn’t been followed up, especially since he has a very distinctive, jerky way of moving.”

  “I agree. I’ll give it a closer look,” Blomkvist said.

  “Then we’ve got Faria’s own offence, the one she’s been convicted of,” Giannini said. She was about to go on when the food arrived and their concentration lapsed. Not just because of the waiter and his fussing with the plates and the grated parmesan but also because a group of noisy youths came by on their way towards Yttersta Tvärgränd and Skinnarviksberget.

  Palmgren was thinking about the war in Syria and all sorts of other miseries – including the pain which felt like knives in his hips – and about the idiotic call he had made to Martin Steinberg. He was also terribly thirsty. He had drunk very little, and he hadn’t had anything to eat either. It would still be a while before Lulu arrived and took him through his evening ritual, if indeed Lulu was coming at all.

  It seemed as if nothing was working. His telephones certainly weren’t, neither of them, and no help had come, not even Marita. He had spent all day lying in bed, getting more and more upset. He really should trigger his alarm. He wore it on a cord around his neck and although he was reluctant to use it, now seemed the right time. He was so thirsty that he could hardly think straight. It was warm too. No-one had aired his room or opened a window all day. No-one had done anything. Almost in desperation he listened out for sounds in the stairwell. Was that the lift? You could hear the lift all the time. People came and went. But nobody stopped at his door. He swore and turned in his bed and felt terrible shooting pains. Instead of calling Professor Steinberg – who was probably a crook – he should have got in touch with the psychologist who was also mentioned in the confidential notes, the one named Hilda von Kanterborg, who was said to have breached her duty of confidence by talking to Lisbeth’s mother about the Registry. If anyone could have helped him, surely she was rather than the one who ran the whole project. What a prize donkey he had been, and how dreadfully thirsty he was! He considered shouting as loudly as he could in the direction of the stairwell. Perhaps one of the neighbours would hear him. But, wait … now he heard footsteps heading his way. A smile spread across his face. That must be Lulu, his wonderful Lulu.

  As the door opened and closed and shoes were wiped on the doormat, he called out with his last reserves of strength, “Hello, hello, now tell me all about Haninge. What was his name again?” He got no answer, and now he could hear that the steps were lighter than Lulu’s, more rhythmic and somehow harder. He looked around for something to defend himself with. Then he breathed out. A tall, slender woman in a black polo neck appeared in the doorway and smiled at him. The woman was sixty, maybe seventy years old, and she had sharp features. There was a cautious warmth in her eyes. She was carrying a brown doctor’s bag which seemed to belong to another era, and she held herself upright. There was a natural dignity about her. The smile was refined.

  “Good afternoon, Herr Palmgren,” she said. “Lulu is very sorry, but she can’t come today.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with her, I hope.”

  “No, no, it’s just a personal matter, nothing serious,” the woman said, and Palmgren felt a sting of disappointment.

  He could sense something else, too, but he could not quite put his finger on it. He was far too dazed and thirsty.

  “Could you please bring me a glass of water?”

  “Oh my goodness, of course,” the woman said, and she sounded just like his old mother all those years ago.

  She put on a pair of latex gloves and went off, returning with two glasses. They restored him to some sort of stability. He drank with a shaky hand and felt that the world was getting its colour back. Then he looked up at the woman. Her eyes seemed warm and affectionate, but he did not like the latex gloves or the hair, which was thick and did not suit her at all. Was she wearing a wig?

  “Now that’s better, isn’t it?” she said.

  “Much better. Are you temping for the care company?”

  “I sometimes help out in an emergency. I’m seventy, so sadly they don’t like to call on me too often,” the woman answered and unbuttoned his nightshirt, which was damp with sweat after the long day in bed.

  She took a morphine plaster from the brown leather bag, raised his medical bed and swabbed a patch high up on his back with some cotton wool. Her movements were precise, her touch careful. She knew what she was doing, no question about it. He was in good hands. There was none of the clumsiness of some of the other
helpers. But it also made Palmgren feel vulnerable – the woman’s professionalism was almost too much.

  “Not so fast,” he said.

  “I’ll be careful. I read about your pain in the notes. It sounds very unpleasant.”

  “It’s bearable.”

  “Bearable?” she repeated. “That’s not good enough. Life should be better than that. I’ll give you a slightly stronger dose today. I think they’ve been a bit stingy with you.”

  “Lulu—” he began.

  “Lulu’s wonderful. But she isn’t the one who decides about the morphine. That’s beyond her authority,” the woman interrupted, and with her practised hands – her easy mastery – she applied the plaster.

  It felt as if the morphine was taking effect immediately.

  “You’re a doctor, aren’t you?”

  “No, no, I never got that far. For many years I was an ophthalmic nurse at Sophiahemmet.”

  “Is that so?” he said, and he seemed to detect something tense about the woman, a twitch around her mouth. But perhaps it was nothing.

  Or so he tried to tell himself. Still, he could not help examining her face more closely now. She had a certain class, didn’t she? But there was nothing classy about her hair. Or her eyebrows for that matter – they were the wrong colour and style, and they looked as if they’d been stuck on in a hurry. Palmgren thought how strange his day had been and recalled the conversation of the day before. He looked at the woman’s polo neck. What was it that bothered him about it? He could not think straight, the air was too close and hot. Without really being conscious of it, his hand moved towards his personal alarm.

 

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