David Lagercrantz - The Girl in the Spider's Web

“In some way, maybe, in her own little world. At the time she didn’t know that Zalachenko had been a Soviet spy, and that his secrets had given him a unique position in Swedish society. She can have had no idea either that there was a special section within Säpo which protected him. But like Camilla she sensed that her father had some sort of immunity. One day a man in a grey overcoat appeared at the apartment and hinted that their father must come to no harm. Lisbeth realized early on that there was no point in reporting Zalachenko to the police or the social services. That would only result in yet another man in a grey overcoat turning up on their doorstep.

“Powerlessness, Mikael, can be a devastating force, and before Lisbeth was old enough to do something about it she needed a place of strength, a refuge. She found that in the world of superheroes. I know better than most how important literature can be, whether it’s comic books or fine old novels, and I know that Lisbeth grew particularly attached to a young heroine called Janet van Dyne.”

“Van Dyne?”

“That’s right, a girl whose father was a rich scientist. The father is murdered — by aliens, if I remember right — and in order to take her revenge Janet van Dyne gets in touch with one of her father’s old colleagues, and in his laboratory acquires superpowers. She becomes the Wasp, someone you can’t push around, either literally or figuratively.”

“I didn’t know that. So that’s where she gets her handle from?”

“Not just the handle. I knew nothing about all that sort of stuff, obviously — I was an old dinosaur who got the Phantom mixed up with Mandrake the Magician — but the first time I saw a picture of the Wasp, it gave me a start. There was so much of Lisbeth in her. There still is, in a way. I think she picked up a lot of her style from that character. I don’t want to make too much of it, but I do know she thought a great deal about the transformation Janet van Dyne underwent when she became the Wasp. Somehow she understood that she herself had to undergo the same drastic metamorphosis: from child and victim to someone who could fight back against a highly trained and ruthless intelligence agent.

“Thoughts like these occupied her day and night and so the Wasp became an important figure for her during her period of transition, a source of inspiration. And Camilla found out about it. That girl had an uncanny ability to nose out other people’s weaknesses — she used her tentacles to feel for their sensitive points and would then strike exactly there. So she came to make fun of the Wasp in whichever way she could. She even found out who her Marvel enemies were and began to call herself by their names, Thanos and all the others.”

“Did you say Thanos?” Blomkvist said, suddenly alert.

“I think that’s what he was called, a destroyer who once fell in love with Death itself. Death had appeared to him in the shape of a woman, and after that he wanted to prove himself worthy of her, or something like that. Camilla became a fan of his so as to provoke Lisbeth. She even called her gang of friends the Spider Society — in one of the comics that group are the sworn enemies of the Sisterhood of the Wasp.”

“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.”