David Lagercrantz - The Girl in the Spider's Web

“I’ve come to give you back your son,” she said without looking up.

“Oh my God,” Hanna said. “My God!”

That was all she managed to say, and for a few seconds she was completely at a loss as she stood there in the doorway. Then her shoulders began to shake. She sank to her knees and, forgetting the fact that August hated to be hugged, she threw her arms around him murmuring, “My boy, my boy...” until the tears came. The odd thing was: August not only let her do it, he also seemed on the verge of saying something — as if he had learned to talk on top of everything. But before he had the chance, Lasse was standing behind her.

“What the hell... Well, look who’s here!” he growled, as if he wanted to carry on with their fight.

But then he got a grip on himself. It was an impressive piece of acting, in a way. In the space of a second he began to radiate the presence which used to make women swoon.

“And we get the kid delivered to our front doorstep,” he said to the woman on the landing. “How convenient. Is he O.K.?”

“He’s O.K.,” the woman said in a strange monotone, and without asking walked into the apartment with the suitcase and her muddy boots.

“By all means, just come right on in,” Lasse said in an acid tone.

“I’m here to help you pack, Lasse.”

This was such a strange reply that Hanna was convinced she had misheard, and Lasse did not seem to understand either. He just stood there looking stupid, his mouth wide open.

“What did you say?”

“You’re moving out.”

“Is this some kind of joke?”

“Not at all. You’re leaving this house now, right now, and you’re not coming anywhere near August ever again. You’ve seen him for the last time.”

“You must be off your rocker!”

“Actually I’m being unusually generous. I was planning on throwing you down the stairs there. But I brought a suitcase with me. Thought I’d let you pack some shirts and pants.”

“What kind of a freak are you?” Lasse shouted, both bewildered and beside himself with rage, and he bore down on the woman with the full weight of his hostility, and Hanna wondered if he was going to take a swipe at her as well.

But something stopped him. Maybe it was the woman’s eyes, or possibly the mere fact that she did not react like anyone else would have done. Instead of backing off or looking frightened she only smiled at him, and took a few crumpled pieces of paper from an inside pocket and handed them to Lasse.

“If ever you and your friend Roger should find yourselves missing August, you can always look at this and remember,” she said.

Lasse turned over the papers, confused. Then he screwed up his face in horror and Hanna took a quick look herself. They were drawings and the top one was of... Lasse. Lasse swinging his fists and looking profoundly evil. Later she would hardly be able to explain it. It was not just that she understood what had been going on when August had been alone at home with Lasse and Roger. She also saw her own life more clearly and soberly than she had for years.

Lasse had looked at her with exactly that twisted, livid face hundreds of times, most recently a minute ago. She knew this was something no-one should have to endure, neither she nor August, and she shrank back. At least she thought she did, because the woman looked at her with a new focus. Hanna eyed her uneasily. They seemed on some level to understand each other.

“Am I right, Hanna, he’s got to go?” the woman said.

The question was potentially lethal, and Hanna looked down at August’s oversize shoes.

“What are those shoes he’s wearing?”

“Mine.”

“Why?”

“We left in a hurry this morning.”

“And what have you been doing?”

“Hiding.”

“I don’t understand...” she began, but got no further.

Lasse grabbed hold of her violently. “Why don’t you tell this psychopath that the only one who’s leaving is her?” he roared.

Hanna cowered, but then... It may have been something to do with the expression on Lasse’s face, or the sense of something implacable in the young woman’s bearing. But then... Hanna heard herself say, “You’re leaving, Lasse! And don’t ever come back!”

It was as if someone else were speaking in her place. And after that things moved quickly. Lasse raised his hand to strike her, but no blow came, not from him. The young woman reacted with lightning speed, and hit him in the face two, three times like a trained boxer, felling him with a kick to the leg.

“What the hell!” was all he was able to say.

He crashed to the floor, and the young woman stood over him. As Hanna took August into his bedroom she realized for how long and how desperately she had wished Lasse Westman out of her life.

Bublanski longed to see Rabbi Goldman.

He also longed for some of Modig’s orange chocolate, for his new Dux bed and for springtime. But right now it was his job to get some order into this investigation. It was true that, on one level, he was satisfied. August Balder was said to be unharmed and on his way home to his mother.

Thanks to the boy himself and to Lisbeth Salander his father’s killer had been arrested, even though it was not yet established that he would survive his injuries. He was in intensive care at Danderyd hospital. He was called Boris Latvinov but had for some time been using the name Jan Holtser. He was a major and former elite soldier from the Soviet army, and his name had cropped up in the past in several murder investigations, but he had never been convicted. He had his own business in the security industry, and was both a Finnish and Russian citizen, and a resident of Helsinki; no doubt someone had doctored his government records.

The other two people who had been found at the summer house on Ingarö had been identified by their fingerprints; Dennis Wilton, an old gangster from Svavelsjö M.C. who had done time for both aggravated robbery and grievous bodily harm; and Vladimir Orlov, a Russian with a criminal record in Germany for procuring, whose two wives had died in unexplained circumstances. None of the men had yet said a word about what happened, or about anything at all. Nor did Bublanski hold out much hope that this would change. Men like that tend to hold their peace in police interviews. But then those were the rules of the game.

What Bublanski was unhappy about, though, was the feeling that these three men were no more than foot soldiers and that there was a leadership above them linked to the upper echelons of society in both Russia and in the U.S.A. He had no problem with a journalist knowing more about his investigation than he did. In that respect he was not proud. He just wanted to move ahead, and was grateful for all information, whatever its source. But Blomkvist’s discerning approach to the case had pointed up their own shortcomings and reminded Bublanski of the leak in the investigation and the dangers to which the boy had been exposed because of them. On this score his anger would never subside, and perhaps that explains why he was so irritated at the head of Säpo’s eager efforts to get hold of him — and Kraft was not the only one. The I.T. people at the National Criminal Police were after him too, and so were Chief Prosecutor Richard Ekström and a Stanford professor by the name of Steven Warburton from the Machine Intelligence Research Institute who wanted to talk about “a significant risk”, as Amanda Flod put it.

That bothered Bublanski, along with a thousand other things. And there was someone knocking at his door. It was Modig, who looked tired and was wearing no make-up, revealing something different about her face.