The Girl in the Spider's Web Read online

  “OK, we’ll check it out.”

  “He seemed…” Balder said.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know, quick.”

  —

  Dan Flinck and Peter Blom were sitting in the police car chatting about their young colleague, Anna Berzelius, and the size of her bum.

  Both had recently gotten divorced. Their divorces had been painful at first. They both had young children, wives who felt let down, and parents-in-law who to varying degrees called them irresponsible shits. But once the dust had settled and they had gotten shared custody of the children and new, if modest, homes, they had both been struck by the same realization: that they missed their bachelor days. Lately, during the weeks when they were not looking after the kids, they had lived it up as never before. Afterwards, just like when they were in their teens, they had discussed all the parties in detail, especially the women they had met, reviewing their physiques from top to bottom, and their prowess in bed. But on this occasion they had not had time to discuss Anna Berzelius in as much depth as they would have liked.

  Blom’s mobile rang and they both jumped, partly because he had changed his ringtone to an extreme version of “Satisfaction,” but mainly because the night and the storm and the emptiness out here had made them edgy. Besides, Blom had his telephone in his pocket, and since his trousers were tight—his waistline had expanded as a result of all the partying—it took a while before he could get it out. When he hung up he looked worried.

  “What’s that about?” Flinck said.

  “Balder saw a man, a quick bastard apparently.”

  “Where?”

  “Down by the trees next to the neighbour’s house. The guy’s probably on his way up towards us.”

  Blom and Flinck stepped out of the car. They had been outside many times over the course of this long night, but this was the first time they shivered right down to the bone. For an instant they just stood looking awkwardly to the right and the left, shocked by the cold. Then Blom—the taller of the two—took command and told Flinck to stay up by the road while he himself went down towards the water.

  It was a short slope which extended along a wooden fence and a small avenue of newly planted trees. A lot of snow had fallen, it was slippery and at the bottom lay the sea. Baggensfjärden, Blom thought, and in fact he was surprised that the water had not frozen over, but that may have been because of the waves. Blom cursed at the storm and at this night duty which wore him out and ruined his beauty sleep. He tried to do his job all the same, not with his whole heart perhaps, but still.

  He listened and looked around, and at first he could not pick out anything. It was dark. Only the light from a single lamppost shone into the property, immediately in front of the jetty, so he went down toward it, past a garden chair which had been flung about in the storm.

  In the next moment he could see Balder through the large windowpane. Balder was standing some way inside the house, bent over a large bed, his body in a tensed position. Perhaps he was straightening the covers, it was hard to tell. He seemed busy with some small detail in the bed. Blom should not be bothering about it—he was meant to be keeping watch over the property—yet there was something in Balder’s body language which fascinated him and for a second or two he lost his concentration before he was brought back to reality again.

  He had a chilling feeling that someone was watching him, and he spun around, his eyes searching wildly. He saw nothing, not at first, and had just begun to calm down when he became aware of two things—a sudden movement by the shiny steel bins next to the fence, and the sound of a car up by the road. The engine stopped and a car door was opened.

  Neither occurrence was noteworthy in itself. There could easily be an animal by the trash bins and cars could come or go here even late at night. Yet Blom’s body stiffened and for a moment he just stood there, not knowing how to react. Then Flinck’s voice could be heard.

  “Someone’s coming!”

  Blom did not move. He felt that he was being observed and almost unconsciously he fingered the service weapon at his hip and thought of his mother and his ex-wife and his children, as if something serious really was about to happen. Flinck shouted again, now with a desperate tone in his voice, “Police! Stop right there!” and Blom ran up towards the road, although it did not seem the obvious option even then. He could not rid himself of the apprehension that he was leaving something threatening and unpleasant down by the steel bins. But if his partner shouted like that, he did not have a choice, did he? and he felt secretly relieved. He had been more frightened than he cared to admit and so he hurried off and came stumbling onto the road.

  Up ahead, Flinck was chasing after an unsteady man with a broad back and clothes that were far too thin. Even though he hardly fit the description of a “quick bastard,” Blom ran after him. Soon afterwards they brought him down by the side of the ditch, right next to a couple of mailboxes and a small lantern which cast a pale light over the whole scene.

  “Who the hell are you?” Flinck bellowed with surprising aggression—he had also been scared—and the man looked at them in confusion and terror.

  He was not wearing a hat, he had hoarfrost in his hair and in the stubble on his chin, and you could tell that he was cold and in pretty bad shape. But above all there was something extraordinarily familiar about his face.

  For a few seconds Blom thought that they had arrested a known and wanted criminal and he swelled with pride.

  —

  Balder had gone back to the bedroom and tucked August in again, perhaps to hide him under the blanket if anything should happen. Then he had a crazy thought, prompted by the sense of foreboding he felt, accentuated by his conversation with Warburton. Probably his mind was just clouded by panic and fear.

  He realized it was not a new idea but something which had been developing in his subconscious during many sleepless nights in California. So he got out his laptop, his own little supercomputer connected to a series of other machines for sufficient capacity, opened the AI programme to which he had dedicated his life, and then…

  He deleted the file and all of the backup. He barely thought it through. He was like an evil God snuffing out a life, and perhaps that was exactly what he was doing. Nobody knew, not even he himself, and he sat there for a little while, wondering if he would be floored by remorse and regret. It was incomprehensible, wasn’t it? His life’s work was gone, with just a few taps of a key.

  But oddly enough it made him calmer, as if at least one aspect of his life was protected. He got to his feet and once more looked out into the night and the storm. Then the telephone rang. It was Flinck, the second policeman.

  “I just wanted to say that we apprehended the man you saw,” the policeman said. “In other words, you can relax. We have the situation under control.”

  “Who is it?” Balder said.

  “I couldn’t say. He’s very drunk and we have to get him to quiet down. I just wanted to let you know. We’ll get back to you.”

  Balder put the mobile down on the bedside table, next to his laptop, and tried to congratulate himself. Now the man was under arrest, and his research would not fall into the wrong hands. Yet he was not reassured. At first he did not understand why. Then it hit him: the man who had run along the trees had been anything but drunk.

  —

  It took a full minute or more before Blom realized that they had not in fact arrested a notorious criminal but rather the actor Lasse Westman, who did often enough play bandits and hit men on screen, but who was not actually wanted for any crime. The realization did not make Blom feel any calmer. Not just because he again suspected it had been a mistake to leave the area by the trees and the bins, but because this whole episode could lead to scandal and headlines in the press.

  He knew enough about Westman to be aware that whatever that man did all too often ended up in the evening papers, and you could not say that the actor was looking particularly happy. He puffed and swore as he scrambled to get to hi
s feet and Blom tried to work out what on earth the man was doing out here in the middle of the night.

  “Do you live in the area?” he said.

  “I don’t have to tell you a fucking thing,” Westman hissed, and Blom turned to Flinck in an attempt to understand how the whole drama had begun.

  But Flinck was already standing a little way off talking into his telephone, apparently with Balder. He probably wanted to show how efficient he was by passing on the news that they had seized the suspect, if indeed he was the suspect.

  “Have you been snooping around Professor Balder’s property?” Blom said.

  “Didn’t you hear what I said? I’m not telling you a fucking thing. What the hell, here I am strolling around perfectly peacefully and along comes that maniac waving his pistol. It’s outrageous. Don’t you know who I am?”

  “I know who you are, and if we have over-reacted then I apologize. I’m sure we’ll have a chance to talk about it again. But right now we’re in the middle of a tense situation and I demand that you tell me at once what brought you here to Professor Balder. Oh, no, don’t you try to run away now!”

  Westman was probably not trying to escape at all. He was just having trouble keeping his balance. Then he cleared his throat rather dramatically and spat right out into the air. The phlegm did not get far but flew back like a projectile and froze to ice on his cheek.

  “Do you know something?” he said, wiping his face.

  “No?”

  “I’m not the bad guy in this story.”

  Blom looked nervously down towards the water and the avenue of trees and wondered yet again what he had seen there. Still he remained standing where he was, paralyzed by the absurdity of the situation.

  “Well then, who is?”

  “Balder.”

  “How so?”

  “He’s taken my girlfriend’s son.”

  “Why would he have done that?”

  “You shouldn’t bloody well be asking me! Ask the computer genius in there! That bastard has absolutely no right to him,” Westman said, and fumbled in the inside pocket of his coat.

  “He doesn’t have a child in the house, if that’s what you think,” Blom said.

  “He sure as hell does.”

  “Really?”

  “Really!”

  “So you thought you’d come along here in the middle of the night, pissed as a newt, and fetch the child,” Blom said, and he was about to make another crushing comment when he was interrupted by a sound, a soft clinking sound coming up from the water’s edge.

  “What was that?” he said.

  “What was what?” answered Flinck, who was standing next to him and did not seem to have heard anything at all. It was true that the sound had not been all that loud, at least not up here.

  Yet it still made Blom shudder. He was just about to go down to investigate when he hesitated again. As he looked around anxiously he could hear another car approaching.

  It was a taxi which drove past and stopped at Balder’s front door, and that gave Blom an excuse to stay up on the road. While the driver and the passenger settled up he cast yet another worried look down to the water. He thought he heard another sound—that didn’t reassure him.

  He did not know for sure, and now the car door opened and a man climbed out whom Blom, after a moment’s confusion, identified as the journalist Mikael Blomkvist, though God only knew why the hell all these celebrities had to congregate right here in the middle of the night.

  CHAPTER 10

  NOVEMBER 21—EARLY MORNING

  Balder was standing in the bedroom next to his computer and his mobile, looking at August, who was whimpering restlessly in the bed. He wondered what the boy was dreaming. Was it about a world which he could even understand? Balder wanted to know. He wanted to start living, to no longer bury himself in quantum algorithms and source codes and paranoia. He wanted to be happy, not tormented by that constant weight in his body; he wanted instead to launch himself into something wild and magnificent, a romance even. For a few intense seconds he thought about the women who had fascinated him: Gabriella, Farah, and others too.

  He also thought about the woman who it turned out was called Salander. He had been spellbound by her, and as he now remembered her he saw something new in her, something both familiar and strange: she reminded him of August. That was absurd of course. August was a small autistic boy. Salander was not that old either, and there may have been something boyish about her, but otherwise she was his polar opposite. Dressed in black, a bit of a punk, totally uncompromising. Still it occurred to him now that her eyes had that same strange shine as August’s, when he had been staring at the traffic light on Hornsgatan.

  Balder had encountered Salander at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, while he was giving a lecture on technical singularity, the hypothetical state when computers become more intelligent than the human being. He had just begun by explaining the concept of singularity in terms of mathematics and physics when the door opened and a skinny girl in black strode into the lecture hall. His first thought was that it was a shame there was no other place for junkies to go. Then he wondered if the girl really was an addict. She did not seem strung out, but on the other hand she did look tired and surly, and did not appear to be paying any attention to his lecture. She just sat there slouched over a desk. Eventually, in the middle of a discussion of the moment of singularity in complex mathematical calculation, the point where the solution hits infinity, he asked her straight out what she thought of it all. It was mean of him to pick on her. But what had happened?

  The girl looked up and said that, instead of bandying fuzzy concepts about, he should become sceptical when the basis for his calculations fell apart. It was not some sort of real world physical collapse, more a sign that his own mathematics were not up to scratch, and therefore it was sheer populism on his part to mystify singularities in black holes when it was so obvious that the main problem was the absence of a quantum mechanical method for calculating gravity.

  With icy clarity—which set off a buzz in the hall—she then presented a sweeping critique of the singularity theorists he had quoted, and he was incapable of coming up with any answer other than a dismayed: “Who the hell are you?”

  That was their first contact. The girl was to surprise him a few times more after that. With lightning speed or just one bright glance she immediately grasped what he was working on. When he realized that his technology had been stolen, he had asked for her help, and that had created a bond between them—they shared a secret.

  Now he was standing there in the bedroom thinking of her. But his thoughts were interrupted. He was overcome by a new chilling sense of unease and he looked through the doorway towards the large window overlooking the water.

  In front of it stood a tall figure in dark clothes and a tight black cap with a small lamp on his forehead. He was doing something to the window. He pulled across it with a swift and powerful movement, like an artist starting work on a fresh canvas, and before Balder even had time to cry out, the whole window fell in and the figure moved towards him.

  —

  Jan Holtser usually told people that he worked on industrial security issues. In actual fact he was a former Soviet special forces soldier who spent his time breaking into security systems. He had a small skilled staff and for operations like this one, as a rule the preparations were so painstaking that the risks were not as great as one might imagine.

  It’s true that he was no longer a young man, but for fifty-one he kept himself in good shape with hard training and was known for his efficiency and ability to improvise. If fresh circumstances cropped up, he thought about them and took them into consideration in his planning.

  His experience tended to make up for his lack of youthful vigour, and occasionally, in the limited circle within which he could talk openly, he would speak of a sort of sixth sense, an acquired instinct. He had learned over the years when to wait and when to strike and although he had been throu
gh a bad patch a couple of years earlier and betrayed signs of weakness—humanity, his daughter would say—he now felt more accomplished than ever before.

  He was once more able to take pleasure in his work, that old sense of excitement. Yes, he did still dose himself with ten milligrammes of Stesolid before a mission, but that was only because it enhanced his accuracy with weapons. He remained crystal clear and alert at critical moments, and most important: he always carried out the tasks he was assigned. Holtser was not someone who let people down or bailed out. That was how he thought of himself.

  And yet tonight, even though his client had stressed that the job was urgent he had considered calling it off. The bad weather was a factor. But the storm in itself would never have been enough to get him to consider cancelling. He was Russian and a soldier who had fought in far worse conditions than these—he hated people who moaned about trivial things.

  What bothered him was the police guard, which had appeared out of nowhere. He did not think much of the policemen on the property. From his hiding place he had seen them snooping around with the vague reluctance of small boys told to go outside in bad weather. They would rather have stayed sitting in their car talking rubbish, and they were easily frightened, especially the taller of the two who seemed to dislike the dark and the storm and the black water. As he stood there staring from among the trees a little while ago, he had appeared terrified, presumably because he had sensed Holtser’s presence, but that was not something that worried Holtser. He could have slit the man’s throat swiftly and soundlessly.

  Still, the policemen were not good news.

  Their presence considerably raised the level of risk; above all it was an indication that some part of the plan had leaked out, there was a heightened readiness. Maybe the professor had started to talk, in which case the operation would be meaningless, it might even make their situation worse. Holtser was determined not to expose his client to any unnecessary risks. He regarded that as one of his strengths. He always saw the bigger picture and, despite his profession, he was often the one who counselled caution.