“Are you mad?”
“Should I be?”
“I didn’t say goodbye.”
Armansky pursed his lips. He was shocked to see her, but at the same time relieved to discover that at least she wasn’t dead. He suddenly felt a strong sense of irritation and weariness.
“I don’t know what to say,” he said. “You don’t have any obligation to tell me what you’re working on. What do you want?”
His voice sounded cooler than he had intended.
“I’m not sure. I mostly just wanted to say hello.”
“Do you need a job? I’m not going to employ you again.”
She shook her head.
“Are you working somewhere else?”
She shook her head again. She seemed to be trying to formulate her words. Armansky waited.
“I’ve been travelling,” she said at last. “I’m only recently back.”
Armansky studied her. There was a new kind of … maturity in her choice of clothes and her bearing. And she had stuffed her bra with something.
“You’ve changed. Where have you been?”
“Here and there …” she said, but when she saw his annoyance she added, “I went to Italy and kept going, to the Middle East, to Hong Kong via Bangkok. I was in Australia for a while and New Zealand, and I island-hopped my way across the Pacific. I was in Tahiti for a month. Then I travelled through the U.S. and I spent the last few months in the Caribbean. I don’t know why I didn’t say goodbye.”
“I’ll tell you why: because you don’t give a shit about other people,” Armansky said matter-of-factly.
Salander bit her lower lip. “Usually it’s other people who don’t give a shit about me.”
“Bullshit,” Armansky said. “You’ve got an attitude problem and you treat people like dirt when they’re trying to be your friends. It’s that simple.”
Silence.
“Do you want me to leave?”
“You do as you like. You always have. But if you leave now I never want to see you again.”
Salander was suddenly afraid. Someone she respected was about to reject her. She did not know what to say.
“It’s been two years since Holger Palmgren had his stroke. You haven’t once visited him,” Armansky went on relentlessly.
Salander stared at Armansky, shocked. “Palmgren is alive?”
“You don’t even know if he’s alive or dead.”
“The doctors said that he—”
“The doctors said a lot about him,” Armansky interrupted. “He was in a very bad way and couldn’t communicate with anyone. But in the last year he’s recovered quite a bit. He doesn’t articulate too well—you have to listen carefully to understand what he’s saying. He needs help with a lot of things, but he can go to the toilet by himself. People who care about him call in to spend time with him.”
Salander sat dumbfounded. She was the one who had found Palmgren after he had his stroke two years earlier. She had called the ambulance and the doctors had shaken their heads and said that the prognosis was not encouraging. She had lived at the hospital for three days until a doctor told her that Palmgren was in a coma and it was extremely unlikely that he would come out of it. She had stood up and left the hospital without looking back. And obviously without checking to find out what had happened.
She frowned. She had had Nils Bjurman foisted on her at the same time, and he had absorbed a lot of her attention. But nobody, not even Armansky, had told her that Palmgren was still alive, or that he was getting better. She had never considered that possibility.
Her eyes filled with tears. Never in her life had she felt like such a selfish shit. And never had she been savaged in such a furious manner. She bowed her head.
They sat in silence until Armansky said, “How are you doing?”
Salander shrugged.
“How are you making a living? Do you have work?”
“No, I don’t, and I don’t know what kind of work I want. But I’ve got a certain amount of money, so I’m getting by.”
Armansky scrutinized her with searching eyes.
“I just came by to say hello … I’m not looking for a job. I don’t know … maybe I’d do a job for you if you need me sometime, but it would have to be something that interests me.”
“I don’t suppose you want to tell me what happened up in Hedestad last year.”
Salander did not answer.
“Well, something happened. Martin Vanger drove his car into a truck after you’d been back here to borrow surveillance gear, and somebody threatened you. And his sister came back from the dead. It was a sensation, to put it mildly.”
“I’ve given my word I wouldn’t talk about it.”
“And you don’t want to tell me what role you played in the Wennerström affair either.”
“I helped Kalle Blomkvist with research.” Her voice was suddenly much cooler. “That was all. I didn’t want to get involved.”
“Blomkvist has been looking for you high and low. He’s called here once a month to ask if I’ve heard anything from you.”
Salander remained silent, but Armansky saw that her lips were now pressed into a tight line.
“I can’t say that I like him,” Armansky said. “But he cares about you too. I met him once last autumn. He didn’t want to talk about Hedestad either.”
Salander did not want to discuss Blomkvist. “I just came to say hello and tell you that I’m back. I don’t know if I’ll be staying. This is my mobile number and my new email address if you need to get hold of me.”
She handed Armansky a piece of paper and stood up. She was already at the door when he called after her.
“Wait a second. What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to say hello to Holger Palmgren.”
“OK. But I mean … what kind of work will you be doing?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you have to make a living.”
“I told you, I have enough to get by.”
Armansky leaned back in his chair. He was never quite sure how to interpret her words.
“I’ve been so fucking angry that you vanished without a word that I almost decided never to trust you again.” He made a face. “You’re so unreliable. But you’re a damned good researcher. I might have a job coming up that would be a good fit for you.”
She shook her head, but she came back to his desk.
“I don’t want a job from you. I mean, I don’t need one. I’m serious. I’m financially independent.”
Armansky frowned.
“OK, you’re financially independent, whatever that means. I’ll take your word for it. But when you need a job …”
“Dragan, you’re the second person I’ve visited since I got home. I don’t need your work. But for several years now you’ve been one of the few people that I respect.”
“Everybody has to make a living.”
“Sorry, but I’m no longer interested in doing personal investigations. Let me know if you run into a really interesting problem.”
“What sort of problem?”
“The kind you can’t make heads or tails of. If you get stuck and don’t know what to do. If I’m going to do a job for you, you’ll have to come up with something special. Maybe on the operations side.”
“Operations side? You? But you disappear without a trace whenever you feel like it.”
“I’ve never skipped out on a job that I agreed to do.”
Armansky looked at her helplessly. The term operations was jargon, but it meant field work. It could be anything from bodyguard duty to surveillance assignments for art exhibitions. His operations personnel were confident, stable veterans, many of them with a police background, and 90 percent of them were men. Salander was the polar opposite of all the criteria he had set out for personnel in the operations unit of Milton Security.
“Well …” he said dubiously, but she had vanished out the door. Armansky shook his head. She’s weird. She’s really weird.
The next second Salander was back in the doorway.
“Oh, by the way … You’ve had two guys spending a month protecting that actress Christine Rutherford from the nutcase who writes her threatening letters. You think it’s an inside job because the letter writer knows so many details about her.”
Armansky stared at Salander. An electric shock went through him. She’s done it again. She’s flung out a line about a case she absolutely cannot know a thing about.
“So …?”
“It’s a fake. She and her boyfriend have been writing the letters as a publicity stunt. She’s going to get another letter in the next few days, and they’ll leak it to the media next week. They’ll probably accuse Milton of leaking it. Cross her off your client list now.”
Before Armansky could say anything she was gone. He stared at the empty doorway. She could not possibly have known a single detail of the case. She must have an insider at Milton who kept her updated. But only four or five people apart from himself knew about it—the operations chief and the few people who reported on the threats—and they were all stable pros. Armansky rubbed his chin.
He looked down at his desk. The Rutherford file was locked inside it. The office had a burglar alarm. He glanced at the clock again and realized that Harry Fransson, chief of the technical department, would have finished for the day. He started up his email and sent a message asking Fransson to come to his office the following morning to install a surveillance camera.
Salander walked straight home to Mosebacke. She hurried because she had a feeling it was urgent.
She called the hospital in Söder and after some stalling from the switchboard managed to find out Palmgren’s whereabouts. For the past fourteen months he had been in a rehabilitation home in Ersta. All of a sudden she had a vision of Äppelviken. When she called she was told that he was asleep, but that she was welcome to visit him the next day.
Salander spent the evening pacing back and forth in her apartment. She was in a foul mood. She went to bed early and fell asleep almost at once. She woke at 7:00 a.m., showered, and had breakfast at the 7-Eleven. At 8:00 she walked to the car rental agency on Ringvägen. I’ve got to get my own car. She rented the same Nissan Micra she had driven to Äppelviken a few weeks earlier.
She was unaccountably nervous when she parked near the rehabilitation centre, but she gathered up her courage and went inside.
The woman at the front desk consulted her papers and explained that Holger Palmgren was in the gym for therapy just then and would not be available until after 11:00. Salander was welcome to take a seat in the waiting room or come back later. She went and sat in the car and smoked three cigarettes while she waited. At 11:00 she went back to the front desk. She was told to go to the dining hall, down the corridor to the right and then to the left.
She stopped in the doorway and recognized Palmgren in the half-empty dining room. He sat facing her, but was focusing all his attention on his plate. He held his fork in an awkward grip and steered the food to his mouth with great concentration. Every third time or so he missed and the food fell off the fork.
He looked shrunken; he might be a hundred years old. His face seemed strangely immobile. He was sitting in a wheelchair. Only then did Salander take it in that he was alive, that Armansky had not just been punishing her.
Palmgren swore silently as he tried for the third time to spear a bite of macaroni and cheese onto his fork. He was resigned to being unable to walk properly, and he accepted that there was a great deal he would be unable to do. But he hated not being able to eat properly and the fact that sometimes he drooled like a baby.
He knew exactly what it was he should do: lower the fork at the right angle, push it forward, lift it, and guide it to his mouth. The problem was with the coordination. His hand had a life of its own. When he instructed it to lift, it would slide slowly to the side of the plate. If he did manage to steer it towards his mouth, it would often change direction at the last moment and land on his cheek or his chin.
But the rehabilitation was producing results. Six months earlier his hand would shake so much that he could not get a single spoonful into his mouth. His meals might still be taking a long time, but at least he was eating by himself, and he was going to go on working at it until he once again had full control over his limbs.
As he lowered his fork to collect another mouthful, a hand appeared from behind him and gently took it from him. He watched as the fork shovelled up some of the macaroni and cheese and raised it. He thought he knew the thin, doll-like hand and turned his head to meet Salander’s eyes. Her gaze was expectant. She seemed anxious.
For a long moment Palmgren stared at her face. His heart was suddenly pounding in a most unreasonable way. Then he opened his mouth and accepted the food.
She fed him one bite at a time. Normally Palmgren hated being spoon-fed, but he understood Salander’s need. It was not because he was a helpless piece of baggage. She was feeding him as a gesture of humility—in her case an extraordinarily rare occurrence. She put the right-size portions on the fork and waited until he was finished chewing. When he pointed at the glass of milk with the straw, she held it up so he could drink.
When he had swallowed the last mouthful, she put the fork down and gave him a questioning look. He shook his head. They had not said a word to each other during the entire meal.
Palmgren leaned back in his wheelchair and took a deep breath. Salander picked up the napkin and wiped around his mouth. He felt like a Mafia boss in an American movie where a capo di tutti capi was showing respect. He imagined how she would kiss his hand and smiled at the absurdity of this fantasy.
“Do you think it would be possible to get a cup of coffee in this place?” she said.
He slurred his words. His lips and tongue could not shape the sounds.
“Srvg tab rond corn.” The serving table is around the corner, she worked it out.
“You want a cup? Milk, no sugar, as always?”
He signalled yes with a hand. She carried his tray away and came back a minute later with two cups of coffee. He noticed that she drank hers black, which was unusual. He smiled when he saw that she had saved the straw from his milk for the coffee cup. Palmgren had a thousand things to say but he could not formulate a single syllable. But their eyes kept meeting, time after time. Salander looked terribly guilty. Finally she broke the silence.
“I thought you’d died,” she said. “If I’d known you were alive I would never have … I would have come to see you a long time ago. Forgive me.”
He bowed his head. He smiled, a twist of the lips.
“You were in a coma when I left you and the doctors told me you were going to die. They said you would be dead within a few days and I just walked away. I’m so sorry.”
He lifted his hand and laid it on her little fist. She took his hand in a firm grip.
“Ju dsperd.” You disappeared.
“Dragan Armansky told you?”
He nodded.
“I was off travelling. I needed to get away. I didn’t say goodbye to anybody, just left. Were you worried?”
He shook his head from side to side, slowly.
“You don’t ever have to worry about me.”
“I nv word bow ju. Ju alws get ba. Bt Armshy’s word.” I never worried about you. You always get by. But Armansky was worried.
She smiled her usual crooked smile at him and Palmgren relaxed. He studied her, comparing his memory of her with the woman he saw before him. She had changed. She was whole and clean and rather well dressed. She had taken out the ring that was in her lip and … hmm … the wasp tattoo on her neck was gone too. She looked grown up. He laughed for the first time in many weeks. It sounded like a coughing fit.
Salander’s smile grew bigger and she suddenly felt a warmth that she had not felt in a long time filling her heart.
“Ju dd gd.” You did good. He aimed a hand at her clothes. She nodded.
“I’m doing fine.”
“
Howz z noo gardn?” How is the new guardian?
Palmgren noticed Salander’s face darken. Her mouth tightened. She looked at him frankly.
“He’s OK … I can handle him.”
Palmgren’s eyebrows questioned her. Salander looked around the dining room and changed the subject.
“How long have you been here?”
Palmgren may have had a stroke and he still had difficulty speaking and coordinating his movements, but his mind was intact and his radar instantly picked up a false tone in Salander’s voice. In all the years he had known her, he had come to realize that she never lied to him directly, but neither was she totally candid. Her way of not telling him the truth was to distract his attention. There was obviously some problem with her new guardian. Which did not surprise Palmgren.
He felt a deep sense of remorse. How many times had he thought about calling his colleague Nils Bjurman—a fellow lawyer after all, if not a friend—to ask how Salander was doing, but then neglected to do so? And why had he not contested her declaration of incompetence while he still had the power? He knew why—he had wanted, selfishly, to keep his contact with her alive. He loved this damned difficult child like the daughter he never had, and he wanted to have an excuse to maintain the relationship. Besides, it was physically too difficult. He had enough trouble just opening his fly when he tottered to the toilet. He felt as if he were the one who had let Lisbeth Salander down. But she’ll always survive … She’s the most competent person I’ve ever met.
“Dscrt.”
“I didn’t understand.”
“Dstrc crt.”
“The district court? What do you mean?”
“Gtta cancl yr d … dc … dclrash incmp …”
Palmgren’s face turned red and he grimaced when he could not pronounce the words. Salander put a hand on his arm and pressed gently.
“Holger … don’t worry about me. I have plans to take on my declaration of incompetence soon. It’s not your worry any longer, but I may need your help eventually. Is that OK? Will you be my lawyer if I need you?”
He shook his head.
“Tu old.” He rapped his knuckle on the arm of his wheelchair. “Dum ld man.”
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Trilogy Bundle Page 66
