“Are you saying that what I really need right now is an attractive, intelligent woman.”
“Not exactly that, no. Professor Sharif just called and was under the impression that Balder had wanted to tell you something. She thinks she knows what it may have been all about, and she’s keen to talk to you. Maybe to carry out his wishes. I think it sounds like an ideal place to start.”
“Have you checked her out otherwise?”
“Sure, and we can’t altogether rule out the possibility that she has an agenda of her own. But she was close to Balder. They were at university together and have co-authored a couple of scientific papers. There are also a few society-page photos which show the two of them together. She’s a big name in her field.”
“O.K., I’ll go. Will you let her know I’m on my way?”
“I will,” Zander said, and gave Blomkvist the address. So Blomkvist left the office almost immediately, just as he had the previous day, and began to leaf through the research material as he was walking down towards Hornsgatan. Two or three times he bumped into people, but he was concentrating so hard that he scarcely apologized, and when at last he raised his head, his feet had not taken him as far as Farah Sharif’s place.
He had stopped off at Mellqvist’s coffee bar and so he drank two double espressos standing up. Not just to get rid of his tiredness. He thought a jolt of caffeine might help with his headache, but afterwards he wondered if it had been the right cure. As he left the coffee shop he felt worse than when he had arrived, but that was because of all the morons who had read about the night’s dramatic events and were making idiotic remarks. They say that young people want nothing more than to become celebrities. He ought to explain to them that it is not worth aspiring to. It just drives you nuts, especially if you haven’t slept and you’ve seen things that no human being should have to see.
Blomkvist went up Hornsgatan, past McDonald’s and the Co-op, cut across to Ringvägen, and as he glanced to the right he stiffened, as if he had seen something significant. But what? It was just a street crossing with a high traffic-accident rate and vast volumes of exhaust fumes, nothing more. Then it came to him.
It was the very traffic light Balder had drawn with his mathematical precision, and so once again Blomkvist puzzled over the choice of subject matter. It was not an in any way unusual crossing; it was run down and banal. Maybe that was the point.
The work of art is in the eye of the beholder, and even that tells us no more than that Balder had been here, and had maybe sat on a bench somewhere studying the traffic light. Blomkvist went on past Zinkensdamm sports centre and turned right onto Zinkens väg.
Detective Sergeant Sonja Modig had been running around all morning. Now she was in her office and looked briefly at a framed photograph on her desk. It showed her six-year-old son Axel on the football pitch after scoring a goal. Modig was a single parent and had a hell of a time organizing her life. She was expecting to have a hellish time at work in the next few days too. There was a knock on the door. It was Bublanski at last, and she was supposed to be handing over responsibility for the investigation. Not that Officer Bubble looked as if he wanted to take responsibility for anything at all.
He was looking unusually dashing in a jacket and tie and a freshly ironed blue shirt. He had combed his hair over his bald patch. There was a dreamy and absent look on his face, as if murder investigations were the last thing on his mind.
“What did the doctor say?” she asked.
“The doctor said that what matters is not that we believe in God; God is not small-minded. What matters is for us to understand that life is serious and rich. We should appreciate it and also try to make the world a better place. Whoever finds a balance between the two is close to God.”
“So you were actually with your rabbi?”
“Yes.”
“O.K., Jan, I’m not sure if I can help with the bit about appreciating life. Apart from by offering you a piece of Swiss orange chocolate which I happen to have in my desk drawer. But if we nail the guy who shot Professor Balder then we’ll definitely make the world a little better.”
“Swiss orange chocolate and a solution to this murder sounds like a decent start.”
Modig broke off a piece of chocolate and gave it to Bublanski, who chewed it with a certain reverence.
“Exquisite,” he said.
“Isn’t it?”
“Just think if life could be like that sometimes,” he said, pointing at the photograph of the jubilant Axel on her desk.
“What do you mean?”
“If joy could express itself with the same force as pain,” he said.
“Yes, just imagine.”
“How are things with Balder’s son?” he said.
“Hard to tell,” she said. “He’s with his mother now. A psychologist has assessed him.”
“And what have we got to go on?”
“Not much yet, unfortunately. We’ve found out what the murder weapon was. A Remington 1911 R1 Carry, bought recently. We’re going follow it up, but I feel sure we’re not going to be able to trace it. We have the images from the surveillance cameras, which we’re analysing. But whatever angle we look at we still can’t see the man’s face, and we can’t spot any distinguishing features either — no birthmarks, nothing, only a wristwatch which is just about visible in one sequence. It looks expensive. The guy’s clothes are black. His cap is grey without any branding. Jerker tells me he moves like an old junkie. In one picture he’s holding a small black box, presumably some kind of computer or G.S.M. station. He probably used it to hack the alarm system.”
“I’d heard that. How do you hack a burglar alarm?”
“Jerker has looked into that too and it isn’t easy, especially not an alarm of this specification, but it can be done. The system was connected to the net and to the mobile network and sent a feed of information to Milton Security over at Slussen. It’s not impossible that the guy recorded a frequency from the alarm with his box and managed to hack it that way. Or else he’d bumped into Balder when he was out walking and stole some information electronically from the professor’s N.F.C.”
“What’s an N.F.C.?”
“Near Field Communication, a function on Balder’s mobile which he used to activate the alarm.”
“It was simpler in the days when burglars had crowbars,” Bublanski said. “Any cars in the area?”
“A dark-coloured vehicle was parked a hundred metres away by the side of the road with the engine running on and off, but the only person to have seen it is an old lady by the name of Birgitta Roos; she has no idea what make it was. Maybe a Volvo, according to her. Or like the one her son has. Her son has a B.M.W.”
“Oh, wonderful.”
“Yes, so the investigation is looking a bit bleak,” Modig said. “The killers had the advantage of the night and the weather. They could move around the area undisturbed, and apart from what Mikael Blomkvist told us we’ve only got one sighting. It’s from a thirteen-year-old, Ivan Grede. A slightly odd, skinny figure who had leukaemia when he was small and who has decorated his room entirely in a Japanese style. He has a precocious way of expressing himself. Young Ivan went for a pee in the middle of the night and from the bathroom window he saw a tall man by the water’s edge. The man was looking out over the water and making the sign of the cross with his fists. It looked both aggressive and religious at the same time, Ivan said.”
“Not a good combination.”
“No, religion and violence combined don’t as a rule bode well. But Ivan wasn’t sure that it really was the sign of the cross. It looked like it, but there was something else too, he says. Maybe it was a military oath. For a while he was afraid that the man was going to walk into the water and drown himself. There was something ceremonial about the situation, he said, and something aggressive.”