David Lagercrantz - The Girl in the Spider's Web

“She won’t. She wants to protect the boy at all costs.”

“To give him the calm he needs to draw the murderer.”

“Yes.”

“It’s too great a responsibility, Mikael, too great a risk. If something happens, the fallout would destroy the magazine. Witness protection is not our job. This is something for the police — just think of all the questions that will be thrown up by those drawings, both for the investigation and on a psychological level. There has to be another solution.”

“Maybe — if we were dealing with someone other than Lisbeth Salander.”

“You know what? I get really pissed off with the way you always defend her.”

“I’m only trying to be realistic. The authorities have let the Balder boy down and put his life in danger — I know that infuriates Salander.”

“So we just have to go along with it, is that it?”

“We don’t have a choice. She’s out there somewhere, hopping mad, and has nowhere to go.”

“Take them to Sandhamn then.”

“There’s too much of a connection between Lisbeth and me. If it comes out that it’s her, they would search my addresses straight away.”

“O.K. then.”

“O.K. then, what?”

“O.K., I’ll find something.”

She could hardly believe she was saying it. That was how it was with Blomkvist — she was incapable of saying no — but there was no limit to what he would do for her either.

“Great, Ricky. Where?”

She tried to think, but her mind was a blank. She could not come up with a single name.

“I’m racking my brains,” she said.

“Well, do it quickly, then give the address and directions to Andrei. He knows what to do.”

Berger needed some air and so she went down into Götgatan and walked in the direction of Medborgarplatsen, running through one name after another in her mind. But not one of them felt right. There was too much at stake, and everyone she thought of was in some way not right or had some drawback or even if not she was reluctant to expose them to the risk or put them to the trouble by asking, perhaps because she herself was so upset by the situation. On the other hand... here was a small boy and people were trying to kill him and she had promised. She had to come up with something.

A police siren wailed in the distance and she looked over towards the park and the Tunnelbana station and at the mosque on the hill. A young man went by, surreptitiously shuffling some papers, and then suddenly — Gabriella Grane. At first the name surprised her. Grane was not a close friend and she worked at a place where it was unwise to flout any laws. Grane would risk losing her job if she so much as thought about this, and yet... Berger could not get it out of her head.

It was not just that Grane was an exceptionally good and responsible person. A memory also kept intruding. It was from last summer, in the early hours of the morning or maybe even at daybreak after a crayfish party out at Grane’s summer house on Ingarö island, when the two had been sitting in a garden swing on the terrace looking down at the water through a gap in the trees.

“This is where I’d run to if the hyenas were after me,” Berger had said, without really knowing what she meant. She had been feeling tired and vulnerable at work, and there was something about that house which she thought would make it an ideal place of refuge.

It stood on a rock promontory with steep, smooth sides, and the surrounding trees and elevation shielded it from onlookers. She remembered Grane saying, “If the hyenas come after you, you’re welcome to be here, Erika.”

Maybe it was asking too much, but she decided to give it a try. She went back to the office to call from the encrypted Redphone app which Zander had by then installed for her too.

Gabriella Grane was on her way to a meeting at Säpo when her personal mobile buzzed. The meeting had been called at very short notice to discuss the incident at Sveavägen. She answered tersely:

“Yes?”

“It’s Erika.”

“Hi there. Can’t talk now. We’ll speak later.”

“I have a...” Berger said.

But Grane had already hung up — this was no time for personal calls. She walked into the meeting room wearing an expression that suggested she meant to start a minor war. Crucial information had been leaked and now a second person was dead and one more apparently seriously wounded. She had never felt more like telling the whole lot of them to go to hell. They had been so eager to get hold of new information that they had lost their heads. For half a minute she did not hear one word her colleagues were saying. She just sat there, seething. But then she pricked up her ears.

Someone was saying that Blomkvist, the journalist, had called the emergency services before shots were fired on Sveavägen. That was strange, and now Erika Berger had called, and she was not the type to make casual calls, and certainly not during working hours. She might have had something important or even critical to say. Grane got up and made an excuse.

“Gabriella, you need to listen to this,” Kraft said in an unusually sharp tone.

“I have to make a call,” she replied, and suddenly she was not in the least interested in what the head of the Security Police thought of her.

“What sort of call?”

“A call,” she said, and left them to go into her office.

Berger at once asked Grane to call her instead on the Samsung. The minute she had her friend on the line again, she could tell that something was going on. There was none of the usual friendly enthusiasm in her voice. On the contrary, Grane sounded worried and tense, as if she knew from the start that the conversation was important.

“Hi,” she said simply. “I’m still really pushed. But is this about August Balder?”

Berger felt acutely uncomfortable. “How did you know?”

“I’m on the investigation and I’ve just heard that Mikael Blomkvist was tipped off about what was going to happen on Sveavägen.”

“You’ve already heard that?”

“Yes, and now of course we’re eager to know how that came about.”

“Sorry. I can’t tell you that.”

“O.K. Understood. But why did you call?”

Berger closed her eyes. How could she have been such an idiot?

“I’m so sorry. I’ll have to ask somebody else,” she said. “You have a conflict of interest.”

“I’m happy to take on almost any conflict of interest, Erika. But I can’t stand the thought of your withholding information. This investigation means more to me than you can imagine.”

“Really?”

“Yes, it does. I knew that Balder was under serious threat, but still I couldn’t prevent the murder, and I’m going to have to live with that for the rest of my life. So, please, don’t hide anything from me.”

“I’m going to have to, Gabriella. I’m sorry. I don’t want you to get into trouble because of us.”

“I saw Mikael in Saltsjöbaden the night before last, the night of the murder.”

“He didn’t mention that.”

“It wouldn’t have made sense for me to identify myself.”

“I see.”

“We could help each other out in this mess.”

“That sounds like a good idea. I can ask Mikael to call you later. But now I have to get on with this.”