David Lagercrantz - The Girl in the Spider's Web

“And did she?”

“Oh yes. In her own dirty world she fought for the rights of women — at least for her own rights — and I know that it meant a lot to many of the girls in the club, most of all to Kajsa Falk.”

“Who was she?”

“A sassy, lovely looking girl, her boyfriend was one of the leaders. She spent a lot of time at our home during that last year, and I remember liking her. She had big blue eyes with a slight squint, and a compassionate, vulnerable side behind her tough exterior. After reading your story I looked her up again. She didn’t say a word about Camilla, though she was by no means unpleasant. I noticed that her style had changed: the biker girl had become a businesswoman. But she didn’t talk about it. I thought I’d hit another dead end.”

“But it wasn’t?”

“No. About a year ago Kajsa looked me up of her own accord, and by then she had changed again. There was nothing reserved or cool about her. This time she was hounded and nervous. Not long after that she was found dead, shot at Stora Mossens sports centre in Bromma. When we met she told me there had been a dispute over the inheritance after Zalachenko’s death. Camilla’s twin sister, Lisbeth, came away more or less empty-handed — apparently she didn’t even want the little that she got — while the majority of the assets fell to Zalachenko’s two surviving sons in Berlin, and some to Camilla. She inherited part of the trafficking business you wrote about in your report, and that made my heart bleed. I doubt Camilla cared about those women, or felt any sort of compassion for them. But still, she didn’t want to have anything to do with those activities. She said to Kajsa that only losers bother with that sort of filth. She had a completely different, modern vision of what the organization should be doing, and after hard negotiation she got one of her half-brothers to buy her out. Then she disappeared to Moscow with her capital and some of the employees who wanted to follow her, Kajsa Falk among them.”

“Do you know what sort of business she was setting up?”

“Kajsa never got enough of an insight to understand it, but we had our suspicions. I think it was to do with those trade secrets at Ericsson. By now I’m almost certain Camilla really did get Kjell to steal and sell on something valuable, presumably by blackmailing him. I’ve also found out that in her first years with us she asked some computer geeks at school to hack into my computer. According to Kajsa, she was more or less obsessed with hacking. Not that she learned anything about it herself, not at all, but she was forever talking about the money one could make by accessing bank accounts and hacking servers and stealing information. She must have developed a business along those lines.”

“That sounds very possible.”

“It was probably at a very high level. Camilla would never settle for anything less. According to Kajsa, she soon found her way into influential circles in Moscow, and among other things became the mistress of some rich, powerful member of the Duma, and with him she began to forge connections with a strange crew of top engineers and criminals. She wound them round her little finger, and she knew exactly where the weak point in the domestic economy was.”

“And what was that?”

“The fact that Russia is little more than a petrol station with a flag on top. They export oil and natural gas, but manufacture nothing worth mentioning. Russia needs advanced technology.”

“She wanted to give them that?”

“That, at least, is what she pretended. But obviously she had her own agenda. I know that Kajsa was impressed by the way she built alliances with people and got herself political protection. She probably would have been loyal to Camilla for ever if she hadn’t become scared.”

“What was she scared of?”

“Kajsa got to know a former elite soldier — a major, I believe — and just lost her bearings. According to confidential information that Camilla had access to via her lover, the man had carried out a few shady operations for the Russian government. Among other things he had killed a well-known journalist, I presume you’ve heard of her, Irina Azarova. She’d taken a line against the government in various reports and books.”

“Oh yes, truly a heroine. A horrible story.”

“Absolutely. Something went wrong in the planning. Azarova was supposed to meet a critic of the regime in an apartment on a backstreet in a suburb south-east of Moscow, and according to the plan the major was supposed to shoot her as she came out. But no-one knew that the journalist’s sister had developed pneumonia, and Irina had to look after two nieces aged eight and ten. As she and the girls walked out of the front entrance the major shot all three of them in the face. After that he fell into disgrace — not that anybody was particularly bothered about the children, but public opinion was getting out of hand and there was a risk that the whole operation would be uncovered and turned against the government. I think the major was afraid he’d be made a scapegoat. He was also dealing with a load of personal problems at the same time. His wife took off, he was left alone with a teenage daughter and I believe there was even a possibility of his being evicted from his apartment. From Camilla’s perspective that was a perfect set-up: a ruthless person whom she could use, and who found himself in a vulnerable situation.”

“So she got him on board.”

“Yes, they met. Kajsa was there too, and the strange thing was that she immediately took a liking to this man. He wasn’t at all what she’d been expecting, nothing like the people she knew at Svavelsjö M.C., who were also killers. The man was very fit, very strong, and had a brutal look about him, but he was also cultivated and polite, she said, somehow vulnerable and sensitive. Kajsa could tell that he felt really terrible about shooting those children. He was a murderer, a man whose speciality had been torture during the war in Chechnya, but he still had his moral boundaries, she said, and that’s why she was so upset when Camilla got her claws into him — almost literally. She dragged her nails across his chest and hissed like a cat, ‘I want you to kill for me.’ Her words were charged with sexual tension, and with the skill of the devil she awakened the man’s sadism. The more gruesome his descriptions of his murders, the more excited she became. I’m not sure I understood it all, but it scared Kajsa to death. Not the murderer himself, but Camilla. Her beauty and allure managed to bring out the predator in him.”

“You never reported this to the police?”

“I asked Kajsa over and over. I told her she needed protection. She said she already had it and she forbade me to talk to the police. I was stupid enough to listen to her. After her death I told the investigators what I’d heard, but I doubt they believed me — presumably not. It was nothing but hearsay about a man without a name in another country. Camilla was nowhere to be found in any records, and I never discovered anything about her new identity. And certainly poor Kajsa’s murder is still unsolved.”

“I do understand how painful this must still be,” Blomkvist said.

“You do?”

“I think so,” he said, and was about to rest a sympathetic hand on her arm.

He was brought up short by his mobile buzzing in his pocket. He hoped it was Zander. But it was Stefan Molde. It took Blomkvist a few seconds to identify him as the person at the N.D.R.E. who had been in touch with Linus Brandell.

“What’s this about?” he said.