So Yttergren had sent out “two great guys from the regular police”, Peter Blom and Dan Flinck, and Grane had to make do with that, even if their names reminded her of Kling and Klang in Pippi Longstocking. For a moment she had serious misgivings. Then she got angry with herself.
It was so typical of her snobbish background to judge people by their names. She might have had more cause for concern if they had a posh name like Gyllentofs or something. Then they could have been irresponsible layabouts. I’m sure this’ll be fine, she thought.
Then she got back to work. It was going to be a long night.
Chapter 9
Salander woke up lying straight across the kingsize double bed and realized that she had been dreaming about her father. A feeling of menace swept over her like a cloak. But then she remembered the evening before and concluded that it could as easily be a chemical reaction in her body. She had a terrible hangover. She got up on wobbly legs and went into the large bathroom — with the jacuzzi and the marble and all the idiotic luxuries — to be sick. But nothing happened and she just sank to the floor, breathing heavily.
Then she stood up and looked at herself in the mirror, which was not especially reassuring either. Her eyes were red. On the other hand it was not long after midnight. She must have slept for a few hours only. She took a glass from the bathroom cupboard and filled it with water. But at the same moment the details of her dream came flooding back and she crushed the glass in her hand. Blood dripped to the floor, and she swore and realized that she was unlikely to be going back to sleep.
Should she try to crack the encrypted N.S.A. file she had downloaded? No, that would be pointless, at least for now. Instead she wound a towel around her hand and took from her bookshelves a new study by Princeton physicist Julie Tammet, which described how a big star collapses into a black hole. She lay down on the sofa by the windows overlooking Slussen and Riddarfjärden.
As she began to read she felt a little better. Blood from the towel did seep onto the pages and her head would not stop hurting, but she became more and more engrossed in the book, every now and then making a note in the margin. None of it was new to her. She knew better than most that a star stays alive as a result of two opposing actions, the fusion reactions at its core forcing it outwards and the gravitational pull keeping it together. She saw it as a balancing act, a tug of war from which a victor eventually emerges, once the fuel for the reactions runs out and the explosions weaken.
Once gravity gains the upper hand, the celestial body shrinks like a punctured balloon and becomes smaller and smaller. In this way, a star can vanish into nothing. Salander liked black holes. She felt an affinity with them.
Yet, like Julie Tammet, she was not interested in black holes per se, but rather in the process which creates them. Salander was convinced that if only she could describe that process she would be able to draw together the two irreconcilable languages of the universe, quantum physics and the theory of relativity. But it was no doubt beyond her capabilities, just like the bloody encryption, and involuntarily she began again to think about her father.
When she was a child, that revolting specimen had raped her mother over and over again, right up until the time her mother received injuries from which she would never recover. Salander herself, then twelve, hit back with a horrific force. At the time she could have no idea that her father was an important spy who had defected from the G.R.U., the Soviet military intelligence service, nor could she know that a special department within the Swedish Security Police, referred to as the Section, was protecting him at any cost. Yet even then she understood that there was some mystery surrounding the man, a darkness no-one was allowed to approach in any way. That even applied to so simple a thing as his name.
Zala, or Alexander Zalachenko to be more precise. Other fathers could be reported to the social services and the police. But Zala had forces behind him which were above all that.
It was this and one other thing which for her were true black holes.
The alarm went off at 1.18 and Balder woke with a start. Was there someone in the house? He felt an inexplicable fear and reached across the bed. August was lying beside him. The boy must have crept in as usual, and now he whimpered with worry, as if the wailing of the siren had made its way into his dreams. My little boy, Balder thought. Then he stiffened. Were those footsteps?
No, he must be imagining things. All you could hear was the alarm. He cast a worried look towards the storm beyond the windows. It seemed to have grown worse. The sea was beating against the jetty and the shore. The windowpanes shook and bowed. Could the alarm have been set off by a gust of wind? Perhaps it was as simple as that.
He still had to check to see if that protection Gabriella Grane was organizing had arrived at last. Two men from the regular police were supposed to have been there hours ago. It was a farce. They had been delayed by the storm and by a series of conflicting orders. It was either one thing or another, and he agreed with Grane, it seemed hopelessly incompetent.
He would have to deal with that in due course. Now he had to make a call. But August was beginning to wake up, and a hysterical child banging his body against the headboard was the last thing Balder needed right now. The earplugs, it occurred to him, those old green earplugs he had bought at Frankfurt airport.
He took them from the bedside table and gently pushed them into his son’s ears. Then he tucked him in and kissed him on the cheek and stroked his curly, tousled hair, straightened the collar on the boy’s pyjamas and made sure that his head was resting comfortably on the pillow. Balder was frightened and should have been in a hurry, or had every reason to be. Yet he took his time and fussed over his son. Perhaps it was a sentimental moment in the midst of a crisis. Or he wanted to put off confronting whatever awaited him out there. For a moment he wished he did have a weapon. Not that he would have known how to use it.
He was a programmer, for heaven’s sake, who had developed some paternal instinct in his old age, that was all. He should never have got into this mess. To hell with Solifon and the N.S.A. and all criminal gangs! But now he had to get a grip. With stealthy, uncertain steps he went into the hallway, and before doing anything else, before even looking out at the road, he turned off the alarm. The racket had set his nerves on edge and in the sudden silence which followed he stood stock still. Then his mobile rang and even though it startled him he was grateful for the distraction.
“Yes,” he said.
“Hello, this is Jonas Anderberg, I’m on duty tonight at Milton Security. Is everything alright?”
“What, well... I think so. My alarm went off.”
“I know that and, according to our instructions, when this happens you’re supposed to go down to a special room in the cellar and lock the door. Are you down there?”
“Yes,” he lied.
“Good, very good. Do you know what’s happened?”
“No idea. The alarm woke me up. I have no clue what set it off. Could it have been the storm?”
“Unlikely... One moment please!”
Anderberg’s voice sounded a bit unfocused.
“What is it?” Balder said nervously.
“It seems...”
“For God’s sake, tell me what’s going on.”
“Sorry, just take it easy, take it easy... I’m going through the picture sequence from your cameras, and it does look as if...”