David Lagercrantz - The Girl in the Spider's Web

“What do you say, Andrei? How about we get a beer and a bite to eat and discuss the story?”

At first Zander did not seem to understand. Then he raised his head and suddenly no longer looked quite so energetic. He gave a little grimace as he massaged his shoulder.

“What... well... maybe,” he said hesitantly.

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Blomkvist said. “How about Folksoperan?”

Folksoperan was a bar and restaurant on Hornsgatan, not far away, which attracted journalists and the arty crowd.

“It’s just that...”

“Just that what?”

“I’ve got this portrait to do, of an art dealer working at Bukowski’s who got onto a train at Malmö Central and was never seen again. Erika thought it would fit into the mix,” Zander said.

“Jesus, the things she makes you do, that woman.”

“I honestly don’t mind. But I’m having trouble pulling it together. It feels so messy and contrived.”

“Do you want me to have a look at it?”

“I’d love that, but let me do some more work on it first. I would die of embarrassment if you saw it in its present state.”

“In that case deal with it later. But come on now, Andrei, let’s go and at least get something to eat. You can come back and work afterwards if you must,” Blomkvist said. He looked over at Zander.

That memory would stay with him for a long time. Zander was wearing a brown checked jacket and a white shirt buttoned up all the way. He looked like a film star, at any rate even more like a young Antonio Banderas than usual.

“I think I’d better stay and keep plugging away,” he said. “I have something in the fridge which I can microwave.”

Blomkvist wondered if he should pull rank, order him to come out and have a beer. Instead he said:

“O.K., we’ll see each other in the morning. How are they doing out there meanwhile? No drawing of the murderer yet?”

“Seems not.”

“We’ll have to find another solution tomorrow. Take care,” Blomkvist said, getting up and putting on his overcoat.

Salander remembered something she had read about savants a long time ago in Science magazine. It was an article by Enrico Bombieri, an expert in number theory, referring to an episode in Oliver Sacks’ The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat in which a pair of autistic and mentally disabled twins recite staggeringly high prime numbers to each other, as if they could see them before their eyes in some sort of inner mathematical landscape.

What these twins were able to do and what Salander now wanted to achieve were two different things. But there was still a similarity, she thought, and decided to try, however sceptical she might be. So she brought up the encrypted N.S.A. file and her program for elliptic-curve factorization. Then she turned to August. He responded by rocking back and forth.

“Prime numbers. You like prime numbers,” she said.

August did not look at her, or stop his rocking.

“I like them too. And there’s one thing I’m particularly interested in just now. It’s called factorization. Do you know what that is?”

August stared at the table as he continued rocking and did not look as if he understood anything at all.

“Prime-number factorization is when we rewrite a number as the product of prime numbers. By product in this context I mean the result of a multiplication. Do you follow me?”

August’s expression did not change, and Salander wondered if she should just shut up.

“According to the fundamental principles of arithmetic, every whole number has a unique prime-number factorization. It’s pretty cool. We can produce a number as simple as 24 in all sorts of ways, for example by multiplying 12 by 2 or 3 by 8, or 4 by 6. Yet there’s only one way to factorize it with prime-numbers and that’s 2 x 2 x 2 x 3. Are you with me? The problem is, even though it’s easy to multiply prime numbers to produce large numbers, it’s often impossible to go the other way, from the answer back to the prime numbers. A really bad person has used this to code a secret message. Do you understand? It’s a bit like mixing a drink: easy to do but harder to unmix again.”

August neither nodded nor said a word. But at least his body was no longer rocking.

“Shall we see if you’re any good at prime-number factorization, August? Shall we?”

August did not budge.

“I’ll take that as a yes. Shall we start with the number 456?”

August’s eyes were bright but distant, and Salander had the feeling that this idea of hers really was absurd.

It was cold and windy and there were few people out. But Blomkvist thought the cold was doing him good — he was perking up a bit. He thought of his daughter Pernilla and what she said about writing “for real”, and of Salander of course, and the boy. What were they doing right now?

On the way up towards Hornsgatspuckeln he stared for a while at a painting hanging in a gallery window which showed cheerful, carefree people at a cocktail party. At that moment it felt, perhaps wrongly, as if it had been ages since he had last stood like that, drink in hand and without a care in the world. Briefly he longed to be somewhere far away. Then he shivered, suddenly struck by the feeling that he was being followed. Perhaps it was a consequence of everything he had been through in the last few days. He turned round, but the only person near him was an enchantingly beautiful woman in a bright red coat with flowing dark blonde hair. She smiled at him a little uncertainly. He gave her a tentative smile back and was about to continue on his way. Yet his gaze lingered, as if he were expecting the woman to turn at any moment into something more run-of-the-mill.

Instead she became more dazzling with each passing second, almost like royalty, a star who had accidentally wandered in among ordinary people, a gorgeous spread in a fashion magazine. The fact was that right then, in that first moment of astonishment, Blomkvist would not have been able to describe her, or provide even one single detail about her appearance.

“Can I help you?” he said.

“No, no,” she said, apparently shy, and there was no getting away from it: her hesitancy was beguiling. She was not a woman you would have thought to be shy. She looked as if she might own the world.

“Well then, have a nice evening,” he said, and turned again, but he heard her nervously clear her throat.

“Aren’t you Mikael Blomkvist?” she said, even more uncertain now, looking down at the cobbles in the street.

“Yes, I am,” he said, and smiled politely, as he would have done for anybody.

“Well, I just want to say that I’ve always admired you,” she said, raising her head and gazing into his eyes with a long look.

“I’m flattered. But it’s been a long time since I wrote anything decent. Who are you?”

“My name is Rebecka Mattson,” she said. “I’ve been living in Switzerland.”

“And now you’re home for a visit?”

“Only for a short time, unfortunately. I miss Sweden. I even miss November in Stockholm. But I guess that’s how it is when you’re homesick, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

“That you miss even the bad bits.”

“True.”

“Do you know how I cure it all? I follow the Swedish press. I don’t think I’ve missed a single issue of Millennium in the last few years,” she said. He looked at her again, and noticed that every piece of clothing, from the black high-heeled shoes to the checked blue cashmere shawl, was expensive and elegant.