“Really?” Blomkvist said, his mind racing.
“Yes, I suppose it was childish, but that didn’t make it innocent. There was such hostility between the sisters even then that those names took on a nasty significance.”
“Do you think that’s still relevant?”
“The names, you mean?”
“I suppose so.”
Blomkvist was not sure what he meant, but he had a vague feeling that he had lit upon something important.
“I don’t know,” Palmgren said. “They’re grown women now, but we mustn’t forget that those were decisive times in their lives, when everything changed. Looking back, it’s perfectly possible that small details could turn out to be of fateful significance. It wasn’t just that Lisbeth lost a mother and was then locked up. Camilla’s existence too was smashed to pieces. She lost her home, and the father she admired suffered severe burns. As you know, after the petrol bomb Zalachenko was never himself again. Camilla was put in a foster home miles from the world whose undisputed leading light she had been. It must have been bitterly hurtful for her too. I don’t for one second doubt that she’s hated Lisbeth with a murderous fury ever since.”
“It certainly looks like it,” Blomkvist said.
Palmgren took another sip of brandy. “The sisters were already effectively in a state of out-and-out war, and somehow I think they both knew that everything was about to blow up to change their lives for ever. I think they were even preparing for it.”
“But in different ways.”
“Oh yes. Lisbeth had a brilliant mind, and infernal plans and strategies were constantly ticking away in her head. But she was alone. Camilla was not so bright, not in the conventional sense — she never had a head for studies, and was incapable of understanding abstract reasoning — but she knew how to manipulate people to do her bidding, so, unlike Lisbeth, she was never alone. If Camilla ever discovered that Lisbeth was good at something which could be a threat to her, she never tried to acquire the same skill, for the simple reason she knew she couldn’t compete with her sister.”
“So what did she do instead?”
“Instead she would track down somebody — or better still more than one person — who could do whatever it was, and strike back with their help. She always had minions. But forgive me, I’m getting ahead of myself.”
“Yes, tell me what happened with Zalachenko’s computer?”
“Lisbeth was short of stimulation, as I said. And she would lie awake at night, worrying about her mother. Agneta bled badly after the rapes, but wouldn’t go to a doctor. She probably felt ashamed. Periodically she sank into deep depressions and no longer had the strength to go to work or look after the girls. Camilla despised her even more. ‘Mamma is weak,’ she’d say. As I told you, in her world, to be weak was worse than anything else. Lisbeth, on the other hand, saw a person she loved — the only person she had ever loved — fall victim to a dreadful injustice. She was a child in so many ways, but she was also becoming convinced that she was the only person in the world who could save her mother from being beaten to death. So she got up in the middle of one night — carefully, of course, so as not to wake Camilla — and saw the computer on the desk by the window overlooking Lundagatan.
“At that time she didn’t even know how to switch on a computer. But she worked it out. The computer seemed to be whispering to her: ‘Unlock my secrets.’ She didn’t get far, not at first. A password was needed. Since her father was known as Zala, she tried that, and Zala666 and similar combinations, and everything else she could think of. But nothing worked. I believe this went on for two or three nights, and if she slept at all then it was at school or at home in the afternoon.
“Then one night she remembered something her father had written in German on a piece of paper in the kitchen — Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker. What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger. At the time it meant nothing to her. But she realized that the phrase was important to her father, so she tried it. But that didn’t work either. There were too many letters. So she tried Nietzsche, the author of the quote, and there she was, suddenly she was in. A whole world opened up to her. Later she would describe it as a moment which changed her for ever. She thrived once she overcame that barrier. She explored what was intended to stay hidden.”
“And Zalachenko never knew of this?”
“It seems not, and she understood nothing at first. It was all in Russian. There were various lists, and some numbers — accounts of the revenues from his trafficking operations. To this day I have no idea how much she worked out then and how much she found out later. She came to understand that her mother was not the only one made to suffer by her father. He was destroying other women’s lives too, and that made her wild with rage. That is what turned her into the Lisbeth we know today, the one who hates men who...”
“... hate women.”
“Precisely. But it also made her stronger. She saw that there was no turning back — she had to stop her father. She went on with her searches on other computers, including at school, where she would sneak into the staffroom, and sometimes she pretended to be sleeping over with the friends she didn’t have while in fact she stayed overnight at school and sat at the computers until morning. She started to learn everything about hacking and programming, and I imagine that it was the same as when other child prodigies discover their niche — she was in thrall. She felt that she was born for this. Many of her contacts in the digital world began to take an interest in her even then, the way the older generation has always engaged with younger talents, whether to encourage or crush them. Many people out there were irritated by her unorthodox ways, her completely new approach. But others were impressed, and she made friends, including Plague — you know about him. She got her first real friends by way of the computer and above all, for the first time in her life, she felt free. She could fly through cyberspace, just like the Wasp. There was nothing to tie her down.”
“Did Camilla realize how accomplished she’d become?”
“She certainly had her suspicions. I don’t know, I really don’t want to speculate, but sometimes I think of Camilla as Lisbeth’s dark side, her shadow figure.”
“The evil twin.”
“A bit, though I don’t like to call people evil, especially not young women. If you want to dig into it yourself I suggest you get in touch with Margareta Dahlgren, Camilla’s foster mother after the havoc at Lundagatan. Margareta lives in Stockholm now, in Solna, I think. She’s a widow and has had a desperately sad life.”
“In what way?”
“Well, that may also be of interest. Her husband Kjell, a computer programmer at Ericsson, hanged himself a short time before Camilla left them. A year later their nineteen-year-old daughter also committed suicide by jumping from a Finland ferry — at least that’s what the inquest concluded. The girl had emotional problems — she struggled with her self-esteem — but Margareta never believed that version, and she even hired a private detective. Margareta is obsessed by Camilla, and to be honest I’ve always had a bit of a problem with her, I’m embarrassed to say. Margareta got in touch with me straight after you published your Zalachenko story. As you know that’s when I had just been discharged from the rehabilitation clinic. I was mentally and physically at the end of my tether and Margareta talked endlessly. She was fixated. The sight of her number on my telephone display would exhaust me, and I went to some efforts to avoid her. But now when I think about it I understand her more. I think she would be happy to talk to you, Mikael.”
“Can you let me have her details?”