David Lagercrantz - The Girl in the Spider's Web

Now she was alone in her office, determined to move ahead on her own, trying to see the bigger picture. It might get her nowhere, but on the other hand it would do no harm. She heard steps outside in the corridor, the click-clack of determined high heels which Grane by now recognized only too well. It was Kraft, who came in wearing a grey Armani jacket, her hair pulled into a tight bun. Kraft gave her an affectionate look. There were times when Grane resented this favouritism.

“How’s it going?” Kraft said. “Are you surviving?”

“Just about.”

“I’m going to send you home after this conversation. You have to get some sleep. We need an analyst with a clear head.”

“Sounds sensible.”

“Do you know what Erich Maria Remarque said?”

“That it’s not much fun in the trenches, or something.”

“Ha, no, that it’s always the wrong people who have the guilty conscience. Those who are really responsible for suffering in the world couldn’t care less. It’s the ones fighting for good who are consumed by remorse. You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of, Gabriella. You did what you could.”

“I’m not so sure about that. But thanks anyway.”

“Have you heard about Balder’s son?”

“Just very quickly from Ragnar.”

“At 10.00 tomorrow morning Chief Inspector Bublanski, Detective Sergeant Modig and a Professor Edelman will be seeing the boy at Oden’s Medical Centre for Children and Adolescents, on Sveavägen. They’re going to try and get him to draw some more.”

“I’ll keep my fingers crossed. But I’m not too happy to know about it.”

“Relax, leave the paranoia to me. The only ones who know about this are people who can keep their traps shut.”

“I suppose you’re right.”

“I want to show you something. There are photographs of the man who hacked Balder’s burglar alarm.”

“I’ve seen them already. I’ve even studied them in detail.”

“Have you?” Kraft said, handing over an enlarged and blurred picture of a wrist.

“What about it?”

“Take another look. What do you see?”

Grane looked and saw two things: the luxury watch she had noted before and, beneath it, barely distinguishable between the glove and the jacket cuff, a couple of lines which looked like amateur tattoos.

“Contrasts,” she said. “Some cheap tattoos and a very expensive watch.”

“More than that,” Kraft said. “That’s a 1951 Patek Philippe, model 2499, first series, or just possibly second series.”

“Means nothing to me.”

“It’s one of the finest wristwatches in the world. A few years ago a watch like this sold at auction at Christie’s in Geneva for just over two million dollars.”

“Are you kidding?”

“No, and it wasn’t just anyone who bought it. It was Jan van der Waal, a lawyer at Dackstone & Partner. He bid for it on behalf of a client.”

“Dackstone & Partner? Don’t they represent Solifon?”

“Correct. We don’t know whether the watch in the surveillance image is the one that was sold in Geneva, and we haven’t been able to find out who that client was. But it’s a start, Gabriella. A scrawny type who looks like a junkie and who wears a watch of this calibre — that should narrow the field.”

“Does Bublanski know this?”

“It was his technical expert Jerker Holmberg who discovered it. Now I want you and your analytical brain to take it further. Go home, get some sleep and get started on it in the morning.”

The man who called himself Jan Holtser was sitting at home in his apartment on Högbergsgatan in Helsinki, not far from Esplanaden park, looking through an album of photographs of his daughter Olga, who was now twenty-two and studying medicine in Gdansk.

Olga was tall and dark and intense and, as he had a habit of saying, the best thing that ever happened to him. Not just because it sounded good — he believed it. But now Olga had come to suspect what he was actually doing.

“Are you protecting evil people?” she had asked him one day, before embarking on a manic pursuit of what she called her commitment to the “weak and vulnerable”.

It was pure pinko left-wing lunacy, in Holtser’s opinion, not at all in keeping with Olga’s character. He saw it as her attempt to stake out her independence. Behind all the talk about beggars and the sick he thought she was still quite like him. Once upon a time Olga had been a promising 100-metre runner. She was 186 centimetres tall, muscular and explosive, and in the old days she had loved watching action films and listening to him reminisce about the war in Chechnya. Everyone at school had known better than to pick a fight with her. She hit back, like a warrior. Olga was definitely not cut out to minister to the sick and degenerate.

Yet she claimed to want to work for Médecins Sans Frontières or go off to Calcutta like some Mother Teresa. Holtser could not bear the thought. The world belongs to the strong, he felt. But he loved his daughter, however daft some of her ideas, and tomorrow she was coming home for the first time in six months for a few days’ leave. He solemnly resolved that he would be a better listener this time, and not pontificate about Stalin and great leaders and everything that she hated.

He would instead try to bring them closer again. He was certain that she needed him. At least he was pretty sure that he needed her. It was 8.00 in the evening and he went into the kitchen and pressed three oranges and poured Smirnoff into a glass. It was his third Screwdriver of the day. Once he had finished a job he could put away six or seven of them, and maybe he would do that now. He was tired, weighed down by all the responsibility laid on his shoulders, and he needed to relax. For a few minutes he stood with his drink in his hand and dreamed about a different sort of life. But the man who called himself Jan Holtser had set his hopes too high.

The tranquillity came to an abrupt end as Bogdanov rang on his secure mobile. At first Holtser hoped that Bogdanov just wanted to chat, to release some of the excitement that came with every assignment. But his colleague was calling about a very specific matter and sounded less than happy.

“I’ve spoken to T.,” he said. Holtser felt a number of things all at once, jealousy perhaps most of all.

Why did Kira ring Bogdanov and not him? Even if it was Bogdanov who brought in the big money, and was rewarded accordingly, Holtser had always been convinced that he was the one closer to Kira. But Holtser was also worried. Had something gone wrong after all?

“Is there a problem?” he said.

“The job isn’t finished.”

“Where are you?”

“In town.”

“Come on up in that case and explain what the hell you mean.”

“I’ve booked a table at Postres.”

“I don’t feel like going to some posh restaurant. Get yourself over here.”

“I haven’t eaten.”

“I’ll fry something up.”

“Sounds good. We’ve got a long night ahead of us.”

Holtser did not want another long night. Still less did he feel like telling his daughter that he would not be at home the next day. But he had no choice. He knew as surely as he knew that he loved Olga: you could not say no to Kira.

She wielded some invisible power and however hard he tried he could never be as dignified in her presence as he wanted. She reduced him to a little boy and often he turned himself inside out just to see her smile.