Soon afterwards she took his hand and led him out into the night. He did not ask where they were going. He was prepared to follow her anywhere. She was the most wonderful creature he had ever met, and from time to time she gave him a smile that made every paving stone, every breath, sound out a promise that something wonderful and overwhelming was happening. You live an entire life for the sake of a walk like this, he thought, barely noticing the cold and the city around him.
He was intoxicated by her company and what might await him. But maybe — he wasn’t sure — there was a hint of suspicion too. At first he dismissed these thoughts, his usual scepticism at any form of happiness. And yet he could not help asking himself: Is this too good to be true?
He studied Linda with a new focus, and noticed that not everything about her was attractive. As they walked past Katarinahissen he even thought he noticed something hard in her eyes. He looked anxiously down at the choppy waters. “Where are we going?”
“I have a friend with a small apartment in Mårten Trotzigs gränd,” she said. “She lets me use it sometimes. We could have another drink there.” That made him smile as if it were the most wonderful idea he had ever heard.
Yet he felt more and more confused. Not long ago he had been looking after her, and now she had taken the initiative. When a quick glance at his mobile told him that Blomkvist had rung twice, he felt he had to call back immediately. Come what may, he could not let the magazine down.
“I’d like that,” he said. “But first I have to make a call. I’m in the middle of a story.”
“No, Andrei,” she said, in a surprisingly firm tone. “You’re not calling anyone. Tonight it’s just you and me.”
They got to Järntorget. In spite of the storm there were quite a few people around and Linda stared at the ground, as if she did not want to be noticed. He looked over to the right at Österlånggatan and the statue of Evert Taube. The troubadour was standing there immobile, holding a sheet of music in his right hand, looking up at the sky in dark glasses. Should he suggest that they meet the following day?
“Maybe...” he started.
He got no further, because she pulled him to her and kissed him with a force which emptied his mind. Then she stepped up the pace again. She held his hand and pulled him to the left into Västerlånggatan, then right into a dark alley. Was that someone behind them? No, no, the footsteps and voices he could hear came from further away. It was just him and Linda, wasn’t it? They passed a window with a red frame and black shutters and came to a grey door which Linda had some trouble opening. The key was shaking in her hand and he wondered at that. Was she still afraid of her ex-husband and his goon?
They climbed a dark stone stairway. Their footsteps echoed and there was a faint smell of something rotten. On one of the steps past the third floor he saw a playing card, the queen of spades, and he did not like that, but he could not understand why, it was probably some silly superstition. He tried to ignore it, and think about how great it was that they had met. Linda was breathing heavily. Her right hand was clenched. A man’s laughter could be heard in the alley. Not laughing at him, surely? He was just agitated. But it felt as if they were climbing and climbing and not getting anywhere. Could the house really be so tall? No, here they were. The friend lived in the attic apartment.
The name on the door was Orlov and again Linda took out her bunch of keys. This time her hand was not shaking.
Blomkvist was sitting in an apartment with old-fashioned furniture on Prostvägen in Solna, next to a large churchyard. Just as Palmgren had anticipated, Margareta Dahlgren agreed to see him at once, and even though she had sounded manic over the telephone she turned out to be an elegant lady in her sixties. She was wearing a fashionable fawn jumper and neatly pressed black trousers. Perhaps she had had time to dress up for him. She was in high-heeled shoes and had it not been for her restless eyes he would have thought her to be a woman at peace with herself, despite everything.
“You want to hear about Camilla,” she said.
“Especially about her life more recently — if you know anything about it,” he said.
“I remember when she came to us,” she said, as if she had not been listening. “My husband Kjell thought we could make a contribution to society at the same time as adding to our little family. We had only one child, you see, our poor Moa. She was fourteen then, and quite lonely. We thought it would do her good if we took in a foster daughter of roughly the same age.”
“Did you know what had happened in the Salander family?”
“We didn’t have all the details, but we knew that it had been awful and traumatic and the mother was sick and the father had suffered serious burns. We were deeply moved and were expecting to meet a girl who had fallen apart, someone who would need an incredible amount of care and affection. But do you know what arrived?”
“Tell me.”
“The most adorable girl we’d ever seen. It wasn’t just that she was pretty. My goodness, you should have heard her talk. She was so wise and mature, and she told such heart-rending stories about how her mentally ill sister had terrorized the family. Yes, of course I now know how far from the truth that was. But how could we have doubted her then? Her eyes were bright with conviction, and when we said, ‘How dreadful, poor you,’ she answered, ‘It wasn’t easy, but I still love my sister; she’s just sick and now she’s getting treatment.’ It sounded so grown-up and full of empathy, and for a while it almost felt like she was the one taking care of us. Our whole family lit up, as if something glamorous had come into our lives and made everything bigger and more beautiful, and we blossomed. And Moa blossomed most of all. She began to take care of her appearance, and quite soon she became more popular at school. There was nothing I wouldn’t have done for Camilla right then. And Kjell, my husband, what can I say? He was a new person. He was smiling and laughing all the time, and we began to make love again, if you’ll forgive my being so frank. Perhaps I should have started to worry even then. But it felt like everything had finally fallen into place for our family. For a while we were all happy, as everybody is who meets Camilla. They’re happy to start with. Then... after some time with her you don’t want to live any more.”
“Is it as bad as that?”
“It’s horrific.”
“So what happened?”
“A poison began to spread among us. Camilla slowly took control of our family. Looking back, it’s impossible to say when the party ended and the nightmare began. It had happened so gradually and imperceptibly that we woke up one day and realized everything was ruined: our trust, our sense of security, the very foundations of our life together. Moa’s self-confidence plummeted. She lay awake at night weeping, saying she was ugly and horrible and didn’t deserve to live. Only later did we find out that her savings account had been cleaned out. I still don’t know how that happened. But I’m convinced Camilla blackmailed her. Blackmail came as naturally to her as breathing. She collected compromising information on people. For a long time I thought she was keeping a diary, but actually it was a catalogue of all the dirt she’d collected about people close to her. And Kjell... the bastard... you know, I believed him when he said that he’d started having problems sleeping and needed to use the bed in the basement guest room. But that was an excuse to be with Camilla. Starting when she was sixteen, she would sneak in there at night and have perverted sex with him. I say perverted because I got wind of what was going on when I asked about the cuts on Kjell’s chest. He didn’t say anything then, of course. Just gave me some unconvincing explanation and somehow I managed to suppress my suspicions. But do you know what they did? In the end Kjell came clean: Camilla tied him up and cut him with a knife. He said she enjoyed it. Sometimes I even hoped it was true, strange though that may sound, but I hoped that she got something out of it and didn’t only want to torture him, to destroy his life.”