I have no idea if you’re interested in my life, in the way that I’m burning with desire to hear about yours. But I want to tell you all the same. Did you ever meet our father? He was a good-for-nothing and a drunk, but he was exceptionally musical. Our mother died giving birth to us, I never found out much about it …
Dan wrote twenty-two pages. But he never sent them. He didn’t have the nerve. Instead he rang Klaus Ganz and told him there had been a death in the family. Then he booked a flight to Stockholm for the following morning.
It was the first time in eighteen years that he had set foot in Sweden. A cold, piercing wind was blowing. It was snowing. As always at that time in December, the Nobel Prize celebrations were under way. In the streets, the Christmas lights had been switched on, and he looked around in wonder. Stockholm was the great city of his distant childhood memories. He was nervous and feverish, but he was also as eagerly expectant as a little boy. Yet it would still be five days before he mustered the courage to take action. Until then, he lived as Leo Mannheimer’s invisible shadow, his stalker.
CHAPTER 15
21.vi
Bashir Kazi’s beard was long and untidy. He wore khaki trousers and a multipocket waistcoat. His arms were thick and muscular. In purely physical terms, he was impressive, but he was slumped on the leather sofa watching television, and having appraised Salander with a condescending look, he ignored her. With any luck he would be high. She pretended to lurch sideways, steadied herself and took a slug from her hip flask. Bashir smirked and said to Khalil, “Who’s this whore you’ve dragged home?”
“I’ve never seen her before. She was just standing outside, she said something about a film we had to see. Get her out of here!”
Khalil was frightened of her, it was obvious, but he was more frightened of his brother. That should serve her purpose. She put her bag with the laptop on a chest of drawers by the door.
“And who are you, little girl?” Bashir said.
“No-one special,” she said. This did not provoke much of a reaction, but Bashir did at least get to his feet and yawn, presumably to show how bored he was of chicks being fresh with him.
“Why did you move back to this part of town?” he said to Khalil. “There’s nothing but hookers and crazies here.”
Salander looked around. It was a single-room apartment with a small kitchen, sparsely furnished. Apart from the sofa, there was a loft bed and a low table. Clothes were strewn everywhere. A hockey stick was propped against the wall next to the chest.
“That’s a pretty sweeping generalization,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“That’s a rather broad generalization, Bashir, wouldn’t you say?”
“How come you know my name?”
“I’m just out of prison. Your buddy Benito says hi.”
It was a shot in the dark. Or not. She was fairly sure they were in touch with each other, and she saw a spark of recognition in Bashir’s watery eyes.
“What’s she got to say?”
“It’s actually a video clip. Do you want to see?”
“Depends.”
“I think you’ll enjoy it.” She took out her mobile and fiddled about as if trying to switch it on, but in fact she keyed in some commands and connected to the infrastructure run by Hacker Republic. She took a step forward and looked Bashir in the eye.
“Benito likes to do her friends favours, as you know. But there are a few things that need to be discussed.”
“Such as?”
“It’s a prison, and that in itself presents a problem. Oh, by the way, it was pretty clever of you to get a knife into the secure unit. Congratulations.”
“Get to the point.”
“The point is Faria.”
“What about her?”
“How could you have treated her so badly? You behaved like pigs.”
Bashir looked stunned.
“What the hell are you saying?”
“Pigs. Creeps. Bastards. There are many different ways of putting it, all understatements in the circumstances. Don’t you think you should be punished?”
Salander had expected a reaction, but she had underestimated how violent it would be, the sudden burst of fury after the initial confusion. Without a second’s warning Bashir punched her hard, right on the chin. She only just managed to keep her balance, while the rest of her was focused on holding her mobile steady down by her right hip, the screen directed at his face.
“You seem upset,” she said.
“Damn fucking right I am!”
Bashir threw another punch and this time too she staggered, but made no effort to defend herself, she didn’t even raise her hand. Bashir was staring at her, a combination of rage and astonishment in his eyes. Salander tasted blood. She took a chance.
“Was it really such a good idea to murder Jamal?” she said.
Bashir hit her again and this time it was harder to stay upright. She felt groggy and shook her head, hoping it would clear her vision, and then she caught sight of Khalil’s terrified eyes. Would he attack her too? She could not be sure, it was hard to read him. But more likely he would stay out of it. There was something pathetic about his scrawny figure.
“Not a good idea after all?” she said, and looked at Bashir as provocatively as she could.
He lost control, just as she had hoped.
“You have no idea what a fucking brilliant idea it was, you slut.”
“Oh yeah?”
“He made a whore of Faria,” Bashir screamed. “A whore! They dishonoured all of us.”
Another blow to the head and Salander fumbled to keep hold of her mobile.
“So Faria has to die too, doesn’t she?” she stammered.
“Like a rat, a little pig. We won’t stop till she’s burning in hell.”
“O.K., now things are becoming clearer,” Salander said. “Do you want to see my film?”
“Why the fuck would I?”
“You don’t want Benito to be disappointed. That’s not a good idea. Surely you know that by now.”
Bashir was hesitating, she could tell from his eyes and his twitching arm. But that changed little. He was beside himself with fury, and Salander could not take many more punches. She swiftly measured the distance with her eyes, made a calculation, ran through a chain of consequences. Should she brain him? Knee him in the groin? Strike back? She decided to hold out a little longer, to appear broken, defeated. She did not have to try hard. The next punch came from the side and was heavier than the others. Her upper lip split open and her head boomed. She staggered, almost to her knees.
“Show me now,” he growled.
She licked her lips, coughed, spat blood and collapsed on the leather sofa.
“It’s on my mobile,” she said.
“Show me.” Bashir sat next to her. Khalil came closer too, a good thing, she thought. Deliberately, without being too slick, she keyed in the commands and soon the coding appeared on the screen. The brothers became visibly nervous.
“What the hell’s happening?” Bashir said. “Is it broken? Is this some sort of crap phone?”
“Oh no,” she said. “This is normal. The film’s being loaded into a botnet, and look now, now I’m naming the file and using Command and Control to distribute it.”
“What the hell do you mean?”
She could smell rancid sweat.
“Let me explain,” she said. “A botnet is a network of hacked computers which have been infected with a virus – a Trojan Horse. It’s a little bit illegal, but convenient. Before I say more, we should look at the film. I haven’t even seen it myself, it’s completely unedited. Hold on … here it is.”
Bashir’s face appeared on the screen. He looked confused, like a child who doesn’t understand a difficult question.
“What the hell’s that?”
“You. Unshaven, and a bit out of focus. It’s hard to film from the hip. But it gets better. More lively. Look, here you pack a real punch, and now, just listen: So
unds like you’re confessing to Jamal Chowdhury’s murder.”
“What the fuck? What the fuck?”
In the film Bashir was screaming about how Faria would die like a rat, how she would burn in hell. Then it got shaky, there were more words and punches which were hard to see. A confused sequence of walls and the ceiling.
“What the fuck have you done?” he yelled, banging his fist on the low table in front of them.
“Just calm down, take it easy,” Salander said. “There’s no need to panic.”
“What do you mean? Answer me, you bitch!” Bashir’s voice cracked.
“A significant majority of the world’s population hasn’t yet got the film,” Salander said. “I’d say barely more than a hundred million people have received it, and I’ll bet most of them will think it’s spam and delete it right away. But I did have time to name it, I called it ‘Bashir Kazi’. Your friends will probably want to have a look, and the police of course, and Säpo, and your friends’ friends, and so on. It might even go viral, you never know. The net’s such a crazy place. I’ve never really got my head around it.”
Bashir looked deranged. His head jerked this way and that.
“I can see this is tough for you,” Salander said. “Publicity’s never easy to handle. I can remember the first time I had my name all over the papers. I still haven’t got over it, to be honest. But the good news is, there’s a way out.”
“How …?”
“I’ll tell you. I just have to—”
Lightning quick and taking advantage of his bewilderment and desperation, she grabbed hold of his head and smashed it twice onto the table top in front of them. Then she stood up.
“You can run, Bashir,” she said. “You can run so fast that your disgrace won’t catch up with you.”
Bashir stared at her, rooted to the spot. His right arm shook. He put his hands to his forehead.
“It might work,” she went on. “Not for long, but for a little while. If you run and run, like your brother, maybe not as fast – you’re getting flabby, aren’t you? – I’m sure you’ll be able to stagger on, somehow or other.”
“I’m going to kill you,” Bashir said. He leapt up and made as if to throw himself at her, but then hesitated and looked nervously at the front door and windows.
“What are you waiting for,” Salander said. “You need to get going.”
“I will find you,” he hissed.
“I’ll be seeing you again, then,” she said in a cold monotone. She turned and took a step towards the chest of drawers, giving him every chance to attack her from behind. But he was as dumbfounded and helpless as she had anticipated.
At that moment his mobile rang.
“Maybe it’s someone who saw the film. But it’s all cool, right? Just don’t pick up, and keep your head down when you’re out,” she said.
Bashir cursed and came at her, but Salander grabbed the hockey stick from against the wall and hit him as hard as she could in the throat, face and stomach.
“This is from Faria,” she said.
Bashir doubled over and took another hit, but managed to straighten up. With unsteady steps he stumbled through the door, down the dark stairwell, out into the afternoon sun.
Salander stood holding the hockey stick. Khalil Kazi was behind her by the sofa, his eyes flitting back and forth, his mouth hanging open. A teenager still, with a wiry, slight body, he looked terrified. He was hardly a threat to anyone, but he might flee and begin to unravel. Giannini had mentioned a risk of suicide. Salander kept her eye on the door and glanced at her watch.
It was 4.20 in the afternoon. She checked her e-mails. Neither Bublanski nor Farah Sharif had answered. Giannini had written:
She looked at Khalil, who was breathing heavily. He seemed to want to say something.
“It’s you, isn’t it?” he said.
“Who?”
“The woman in the papers.”
She nodded. “You and I have another film to look at. This one’s less exciting, it’s mostly hand movements.”
She propped the hockey stick against the wall, took the bag with her laptop from the chest of drawers and motioned to Khalil to sit on the sofa. He was pale and looked as if his legs might give way. But he did as he was told.
She gave him a brief, factual account of movement recognition and deep neural networks. She told him she had filmed his run earlier, and about the C.C.T.V. in the Tunnelbana. He muttered something inaudible and she knew at once by the way his body stiffened that he had understood. She sat down next to him and opened the files on her laptop. As they watched she tried to explain, but he did not seem to be taking any of it in. For a long time he stared blankly at the screen, and then his mobile rang. He looked at her.
“Go ahead and answer it,” she said.
Khalil picked up and it was obvious from the formality in his voice that he was speaking to someone for whom he had the greatest respect. His imam was in the neighbourhood – that must have been Annika Giannini’s doing – and he was asking if he could join them. Salander nodded, that might be a good idea. Confessions were more the imam’s province anyway.
A short while later there was a knock at the door. A tall, elegant man stepped into the apartment. He was in his fifties and had a long beard and a red turban. He nodded to Salander and then turned to Khalil with a melancholy smile.
“Hello, my boy,” he said. “You and I can talk in peace now.”
His voice was heavy with sorrow and for a moment there was silence. Salander felt uncomfortable, all of a sudden unsure what she should do.
“I don’t think it’s safe here,” she said. “I suggest you leave, get yourselves to the mosque.”
She took her laptop and bag and left them without saying goodbye, disappearing into the dark stairwell.
December, a year and a half earlier
Dan Brody sat on a bench in Norrmalmstorg. It was his first day back in Stockholm. The sky was clear, the air cold, and he was wearing a scruffy black coat with a white fake-fur collar, sunglasses and a grey woollen hat pulled down over his forehead. On his lap was a book on the Lehman Brothers collapse. He wanted to learn about his brother’s world.
He had checked in to the af Chapman youth hostel on Skeppsholmen, an old converted ship where the cabins cost 690 kronor per night. This was just within his means. A few people in the neighbourhood had seemed to recognize him, and that hurt – as if he were no longer himself but a poorer copy of somebody else. Having only recently been the urbane musician, now once again he was the farm boy from Hälsingland province who had always thought he wasn’t good enough for Stockholmers. On Birger Jarlsgatan he had slipped into a clothes shop where he bought the sunglasses and woollen hat and tried to hide behind them.
He never stopped thinking about contacting his brother. Should he e-mail after all, send a video link or simply call? He did not have the courage. First he wanted to observe Leo from a distance, and that is why he was sitting outside Alfred Ögren Securities on Norrmalmstorg, waiting.
Ivar Ögren emerged with a determined, impatient stride, and was picked up by a black B.M.W. with tinted windows and driven off like a statesman.
But no sign of Leo. He was up there in the red-brick building. Dan had called and asked for him in English, and had been told he was in a meeting. He would be free soon, they said. Every time the entrance door opened Dan sat up, but he was still waiting. Darkness had long since fallen over Stockholm. An icy wind was blowing up from the water’s edge and it was getting too cold to sit and read.
He stood up and walked back and forth across the square, rubbing his fingertips through his leather gloves. Still no sign. The rush-hour traffic was easing, and he looked over at the restaurant in the square with its large glass windows. The guests inside were smiling and talking, and he felt excluded. Life always seemed to be happening elsewhere, a party to which he had not been invited. It occurred to him that he was a perpetual outsider.
> And then Leo appeared. Dan would never forget it. Time seemed to stand still and his field of vision narrowed, all sound died away. But the experience was not purely joyful, not there in the cold and the glow of light from the restaurant. The sight of his twin only intensified his pain. Leo was heartbreakingly like him. He had the same walk, the same smile, the same hand movements and the same lines on his cheeks and around his eyes. Everything was the same, and yet: It was as if Dan were seeing himself in a gilded mirror. The man over there was him, but was not him.
Leo Mannheimer was the man Dan could have been, and the more he looked, the more dissimilarities he noticed. Not just the coat and the expensive suit and shoes. It was the spring in his step and the bright look in his eyes. Leo seemed to radiate the kind of self-confidence Dan had never possessed, and when he thought of this he found it hard to breathe.
His heart pounded as he looked at the woman walking beside Leo with her arm around his waist. She had an intelligent, sophisticated air about her and seemed very attached to Leo. They were both laughing, and Dan realized that she must be Malin Frode, the woman Julia had spoken about with a certain note of jealousy. He dared not approach them. Instead he watched as they strolled up towards Biblioteksgatan. He followed without really knowing why, walking slowly and keeping his distance.
Not that they were likely to notice him. They were absorbed in each other. They disappeared in the direction of Humlegården, their laughter floating in the air. He felt heavy, as if their carefree ease were dragging his body to the ground. He tore himself away and walked back to his youth hostel, alone, not considering for a moment that appearances can be deceptive, that others might regard Dan as the one who had had all the luck.
Life often looks its best from a distance. He was yet to understand that.
Blomkvist was on his way to Nyköping. He carried a shoulder bag with a notebook and tape recorder, as well as three bottles of rosé. Lotta von Kanterborg had suggested them. Her sister Hilda was staying at Hotel Forsen near the river under the name Fredrika Nord. She was prepared to talk, apparently, as long as certain conditions were met. One of these was the bottles of rosé.
The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye: Continuing Stieg Larsson's Millennium Series Page 23