David Lagercrantz - The Girl in the Spider's Web

The bed was broad but not especially long, and both the headboard and the footboard were made of shiny steel latticework. The bedspread was black, which made him think of a bier, and he disliked the pictures on the walls — mostly framed photographs of men with weapons. There was a sterile, chilly feel to the whole place.

On the other hand he was probably just nervous and exaggerating everything, or looking for an excuse to get away. A man always wants to escape the thing he loves — hadn’t Oscar Wilde said something like that? He looked at Linda. Never before had he seen such an extraordinarily beautiful woman, and now she was coming towards him in her tight blue dress which accentuated her figure. As if she had been reading his mind she said, “Would you rather go home, Andrei?”

“I do have quite a lot on my plate.”

“I understand,” she said, kissing him. “Then you must of course go and get on with your work.”

“Maybe that would be best,” he muttered as she pressed herself against him, kissing him with such force that he had no defence.

He responded to her kiss and put his hands on her hips, and she gave him a shove. She pushed him so hard that he staggered and fell backwards onto the bed, and for a moment he was scared. But then he looked at her. She was smiling as tenderly now as before and he thought: this was nothing more than a bit of rough play. She really wanted him, didn’t she? She wanted to make love with him there and then, and he let her straddle his body, unbutton his shirt, and draw her fingernails over his stomach while her eyes shone with an intense glow and her large breasts heaved beneath her dress. Her mouth was open. A trickle of saliva ran down her chin and she whispered something he could not at first hear. “Now, Andrei,” she whispered again. “Now!”

“Now?” he repeated uncertainly, and felt her tearing off his trousers. She was more brazen than he had expected, more accomplished and wildly lascivious than anybody he had met.

“Close your eyes and lie absolutely still,” she said.

He obeyed and could hear her fiddling with something, he was not sure what. Then heard a click and felt metal around his wrists, and realized he had been handcuffed. He was about to protest, he did not really go in for that sort of thing, but it all happened so fast. With lightning speed, as if she had done it many times, she locked his hands to the headboard. Then she bound his feet with rope and pulled tight.

“Gently,” he said.

“Don’t worry,” but then she gave him a look he did not like and said something in a solemn voice. He must have misheard. “ What ?” he said.

“I’m going to cut you with a knife, Andrei,” she said, and fixed a broad piece of tape across his mouth.

Blomkvist was trying to tell himself not to worry. Why would anything have happened to Zander? No-one — apart from Berger and himself — knew that he was involved in protecting the whereabouts of Salander and the boy. They had been extremely careful with that piece of information, more careful than with any other part of the story. And yet... why had there been no word from him?

Zander was not someone who ignored his mobile. On the contrary, he normally picked up on the first ring whenever Blomkvist called. But now there was no way of getting hold of him, and that was strange, wasn’t it? Or maybe... again Blomkvist tried to convince himself that Zander was busy working and had lost track of time, or in the worst case had dropped his mobile. That was probably all it was. But still... after all these years Camilla had appeared out of nowhere. Something must be going on, and what was it Bublanski had said?

“ We live in a world in which paranoia is a requirement .”

Blomkvist reached for the telephone on the bedside table and called Zander again. He got no answer this time either, so decided to wake their new staff member, Emil Grandén, who lived near Zander in the Röda bergen area of Vasastan. Grandén sounded less than enthusiastic but promised to go over to Zander’s right away to see if he was there. Twenty minutes later he rang back. He had been banging on Zander’s door for a while, he said, and he definitely wasn’t at home.

Blomkvist got dressed and left his apartment, hurrying through a deserted and storm-lashed Södermalm district up to the magazine offices on Götgatan. With any luck, he thought, Zander would be lying asleep on the sofa. It would not be the first time he had nodded off at work and not heard the telephone. That would be the simple explanation. But Blomkvist felt more and more uneasy. When he opened the door and turned off the alarm he shivered, as if expecting to find a scene of devastation, but after a search of the premises he found no trace of anything untoward. All the information on his encrypted email program had been carefully deleted, just as they had agreed. It all looked as it should, but there was no Zander lying on the office sofa, which was looking as shabby and empty as ever. For a short while Blomkvist sat there, lost in thought. Then he rang Grandén again.

“Emil,” he said, “I’m sorry to harass you like this in the middle of the night. But this whole story has made me paranoid.”

“I can understand that.”

“I couldn’t help hearing that you sounded a bit stressed when I was talking about Andrei. Is there anything you haven’t told me?”

“Nothing you don’t already know,” Grandén said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that I’ve spoken to the Data Inspection Authority too.”

“What do you mean, you too?”

“You mean you haven’t—”

“No!” Blomkvist cut him short and heard Grandén’s breathing at the other end of the line become laboured. There had been a terrible mistake.

“Out with it, Emil, and fast,” he said.

“So...”

“Yes?”

“I had a call from a Lina Robertsson at the Data Inspection Authority. She said that you’d spoken and she agreed to raise the level of security on your computer, given the circumstances. Apparently the recommendations she’d given you were wrong and she was worried the protection would be insufficient. She said she wanted to get hold of the person who’d arranged the encryption for you asap.”

“And what did you say?”

“That I knew nothing about it, except that I’d seen Andrei doing something at your computer.”

“So you said she should get in touch with Andrei.”

“I happened to be out at the time and told her that Andrei was probably still in the office. She could ring him there, I said. That was all.”

“Jesus, Emil.”

“But she sounded really—”

“I don’t care how she sounded. I just hope you told Andrei about the call.”

“Maybe not right away. I’m pretty snowed under at the moment, like all of us.”

“But you told him later.”

“Well, he left the office before I got a chance to say anything.”

“So you called him instead.”

“Absolutely, several times. But...”

“Yes?”

“He didn’t answer.”

“O.K.,” Blomkvist said, his voice ice cold.

He hung up and dialled Bublanski’s number. He had to try twice before the chief inspector came to the telephone. Blomkvist had no choice but to tell him the whole story — without discussing Salander and August’s location.

Then he called Berger.

Salander had fallen asleep, but she was still ready for action. She was still in her clothes, with her leather jacket and her boots on. She kept waking up, either because of the howling storm or because August was moaning even in his sleep. But each time she dropped off again, or at least dozed, and had short, strangely realistic dreams.