The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye: Continuing Stieg Larsson's Millennium Series

by David Lagercrantz

  He looked out of the train window, badly wanting to be left in peace. Wishful thinking. The elderly lady sitting next to him, who had been asking incessant questions, now wanted to know where he was going. He tried to be evasive. She meant well, like most people who bothered him these days, but he was relieved when he had to cut their conversation short to get off at Örebro. He ran through the rain to catch his connecting bus. It was ridiculous to have to travel for forty minutes in an old Scania bus without air conditioning, given that the prison was situated so close to the railway line, but there was no nearby train station. It was 5.40 p.m. by the time he began to make out the dull-grey concrete wall of the prison. At seven metres high, ribbed and curved, it looked like a gigantic wave frozen in the middle of a terrifying assault on the open plain. The pine forest was a mere line on the distant horizon and there was not a human dwelling in sight. The prison entrance gate was so close to the railway-crossing barriers that there was only room for one car at a time to pass in front of it.

  Blomkvist stepped off the bus and was let through the steel gates. He made his way to the guard post and put his telephone and keys in a grey locker. As he went through the security check it felt as though they were deliberately giving him a hard time, as so often happened. A man in his thirties with a tattoo and a crew cut even grabbed his crotch. Then a drug sniffer dog was led in, a black Labrador. Did they really imagine he would try to smuggle drugs into the prison?

  He chose to ignore it all and set off down the endless corridors with a taller and slightly more pleasant prison officer. The sally port gates were opened automatically by staff in the monitoring centre, who were following their progress via C.C.T.V. cameras in the ceiling. It was a while before they arrived at the visitors’ section, and he was kept waiting for a long time.

  So it was hard to say exactly when he noticed something was amiss.

  It was probably when Olsen appeared. Olsen was sweating profusely and seemed uneasy. He uttered a few polite remarks as he ushered Blomkvist into the visitors’ room at the end of the corridor. Salander was wearing her worn and washed-out prison uniform, which was always ridiculously loose on her. Normally she would stand up when he came in. Now she just sat there, tense and apprehensive. With her head tilted slightly to one side, she was staring past him. She was uncharacteristically still, and answered his questions in monosyllables, never once meeting his eye. In the end he had to ask her if something had happened.

  “That depends on how you look at it,” she said, and he smiled. It was a start, at least.

  “Do you want to tell me more?”

  She did not – “not now, and not in here” – and there was silence. The rain was hammering down on the exercise yard and the wall beyond the barred window. Blomkvist gazed blankly around the room.

  “Do I need to worry?” he said.

  “You certainly do,” she said with a grin. It was hardly the joke he had been hoping for. But it did relieve the tension and he smiled a little too, and asked if there was anything he could help with. For a while neither spoke, and then she said “maybe”, which surprised him. Salander never asked for help unless she badly needed it.

  “Great. I’ll do whatever you want – within reason,” he said.

  “Within reason?”

  She was smirking again.

  “I prefer to avoid criminal activity,” he said. “It would be a shame for both of us to end up in here.”

  “You’d have to settle for a men’s prison, Mikael.”

  “Unless my devastating charm gives me special dispensation to come here. What’s going on?”

  “I have some old lists of names,” she said, “and something isn’t right about them. For example, there’s this guy called Leo Mannheimer.”

  “Leo Mannheimer.”

  “Right, he’s thirty-six. It’ll take you no time to find him on the net.”

  “That’s a start. What should I be looking for?”

  Salander glanced around the visitors’ room, as if Blomkvist might find there what he was meant to be looking for. Then she turned and with an absent look said:

  “I don’t honestly know.”

  “Am I supposed to believe that?”

  “Broadly, yes.”

  “Broadly?”

  He felt a stab of irritation.

  “O.K., so you don’t know. But you want him checked out. Has he done anything in particular? Or does he just seem shady?”

  “You probably know the securities firm he works for. But I’d prefer your investigation to be unbiased.”

  “Come on,” he said. “I need more than that. What are those lists you mentioned?”

  “Lists of names.”

  She was being so cryptic and vague that for a moment he imagined she was simply winding him up, and they would soon go back to chatting, as they had the previous Friday. Instead, Salander stood up and called for the guard and said that she wanted to be taken back to her unit.

  “You’ve got to be joking.”

  “I don’t joke,” she said.

  He wanted to curse and shout and tell her how many hours it had taken him to travel to Flodberga and back, and that he could easily find better things to do with himself on a Friday evening. But he knew it was pointless. So he stood and hugged her, and with a little fatherly authority told her to take care of herself. “Maybe,” she said, and with any luck she was being ironic. Already she seemed lost in other thoughts.

  He watched as she was led away by Olsen. He did not like the quiet determination in her step. Reluctantly he let himself be escorted in the other direction, back to the security gates where he opened his locker and retrieved his mobile and keys. He decided to treat himself to a taxi to Örebro Central Station, and on the train to Stockholm he read a novel by Peter May, a Scottish crime writer. As a sort of protest he put off checking up on Leo Mannheimer.

  Olsen was relieved that Blomkvist’s visit had been so short. He had worried that Salander was giving the journalist a story about Benito’s domination of the unit, but there hadn’t been time for that, which was the only good news. Olsen had worked damned hard to try to get Benito transferred. But nothing came of it, and it didn’t help that several of his colleagues had stood up for her and assured the prison management that no new measures were necessary. The outrage was allowed to continue.

  For the time being all Salander did was watch and wait. In fact, she had given him five days in which to straighten things out by himself and to protect Faria Kazi. Then Salander would step in – that at least is what she threatened. Five days had now passed without Olsen having managed to effect a single change. On the contrary, the atmosphere in the unit had become even tenser and more unpleasant. Something ugly was brewing.

  It seemed as if Benito were preparing for a fight. She was building fresh alliances and getting an unusual number of visitors. This generally meant that she was getting an unusual amount of information. Worst of all, she was stepping up the intimidation and violence against Faria Kazi. It was true that Salander was never far away, and that helped. But it annoyed Benito. She hissed and threatened Salander and once in the gym Olsen overheard what she said.

  “Kazi is my whore,” she spat. “Nobody but me forces that brown tart to arch her back!”

  Salander gritted her teeth and looked at the floor. Olsen had no idea if it was because of her deadline, or whether she felt powerless. He suspected the latter. However gutsy the girl might be, she did not have anything she could use against Benito. Benito was on a life sentence – she had nothing to lose – and her gorillas, Tine and Greta and Josefin, were behind her. Lately Olsen had been afraid that he would see the glint of steel in her hands.

  He was always on at the staff working the metal detectors, and he had her cell searched over and over again. Still he worried that this was not enough. He imagined he could see Benito and her sidekicks passing things between them, drugs or glinting objects. Or maybe it was just his mind playing tricks. His life was made no easier by the fact that the
re had been a threat against Salander from the outset. Every time the alarm went off or he took a call on his radio, he feared that something had happened to her. He had even tried to persuade her to agree to solitary confinement, but she had refused. He was not strong enough to insist. He was not strong enough for anything.

  He was cut through by guilt and by worry and kept looking over his shoulder. On top of which he was doing a crazy amount of overtime, and that upset Vilda and put a strain on his relations with his aunt and the neighbours. The ventilation system was defunct, so the unit was unbearably airless and hot. He was sweating like a pig. He felt mentally worn out and kept looking at his watch, waiting for a call from Fager to tell him that Benito was to be moved out. But no call came. Olsen had for the first time been entirely open with Fager about the situation so either the prison governor was an even bigger fool than he had believed, or else he too was corrupt. It was hard to know which.

  After the cell doors were locked on Friday evening Olsen went back to his office to gather his thoughts. But he was not left in peace for long. Salander called on the intercom. She wanted to use his computer again. She said very little and her look was dark. He did not get home until late that night either, and more than ever before he felt they were on a countdown to disaster.

  On Saturday morning at Bellmansgatan, Blomkvist was reading a paper copy of Dagens Nyheter as usual, and on his iPad the Guardian, the New York Times, the Washington Post and New Yorker. He was downing cappuccinos and espressos, eating yoghurt with muesli along with cheese and liver paté sandwiches, and he let time drift, as he always did when he and Erika had sent off the final proof of Millennium magazine.

  Eventually he sat down at his computer and began a search on Leo Mannheimer. The name seemed to crop up in the business pages, though not often. Leo had a Ph.D. from the Stockholm School of Economics and was currently a partner and head of research at Alfred Ögren Securities, a company which Blomkvist – as Salander had guessed – knew well. They were reputable fund managers to the wealthy, even though managing director Ivar Ögren’s loud-mouthed, flamboyant style did not sit happily with the firm’s desire to be discreet.

  Leo Mannheimer, in photos, appeared to be a slight man with alert, large blue eyes, curly hair and thick, slightly feminine lips. According to his latest tax return, he was worth eighty-three million kronor, not bad, but modest alongside the biggest beasts. The most noteworthy hit – at least so far – was an article in Dagens Nyheter from four years earlier that mentioned his remarkably high I.Q. He had been tested as a small boy and it had caused quite a stir at the time. Engagingly enough, he played it down.

  “I.Q. doesn’t mean a thing,” he said in the interview. “Göring had a high I.Q. You can still be an idiot.” He spoke about the importance of empathy and sensitivity and all the things intelligence tests don’t measure, and he pointed out that it was unworthy, almost dishonest, to put a number on somebody’s capacities.

  He did not come across as a crook. But then crooks are often very good at presenting themselves as the saintliest of saints, and Blomkvist was not going to let himself be impressed by the large amounts of money Mannheimer apparently gave to charity, or the fact that he seemed bright and modest.

  Blomkvist supposed that the reason Salander had given him Mannheimer’s name was not to have him held up as a shining example for all mankind. But he had no way of knowing. He was meant to search with an open mind, prejudices should not intrude. Why was she being so unhelpful? He stared out towards Riddarfjärden and retreated into his thoughts. For once it was not raining. The sky was clearing, and it looked as if it was going to turn into a beautiful morning. He considered going out for one more cappuccino down at Kaffebar to finish his detective novel and forget all about Mannheimer, at least for the weekend. The Saturdays after they sent the magazine to press were the best days of the month, the only time he allowed himself the whole day off. On the other hand … he had promised.

  Not only had Salander given him the scoop of the decade and helped restore Millennium to its previous pedestal in the public eye. She had saved the life of a child and unravelled an international criminal conspiracy. If anything was certain it was that prosecutor Richard Ekström and the district court who convicted her were a bunch of idiots. Blomkvist was deluged with praise and admiration from all quarters, while the real hero was locked up inside a prison cell. So he kept reading up on Mannheimer, just as Salander had asked him to.

  He did not turn up anything interesting, but he did soon discover that he and Mannheimer had something in common. Both had tried to get to the bottom of the hacker attack on Finance Security in Brussels. Admittedly half the journalists in Sweden and the entire financial market had been digging into it too, so the coincidence was not sensational, but still, perhaps this was a clue. Who knows, Mannheimer might have some insight of his own, some insider information about the attack.

  Blomkvist had discussed the extraordinary events with Salander. She had been looking after her assets in Gibraltar at the time. It was on April 9 that year, just before she was due to go to prison, and she seemed strangely unconcerned. Blomkvist thought maybe she wanted to enjoy her last moments of freedom and not bother with the news, even if hacking was involved. But she might have been expected to show some interest and just possibly – he did not rule this out – she knew something about it.

  He had been in the editorial offices on Götgatan that day when his colleague Sofie Melker told him that the banks were having problems with their websites. Blomkvist didn’t give it a second thought. The stock exchange was not responding to the news either. But then people began to notice that the domestic trading volume was low. Soon after that it dried up altogether, and thousands of customers discovered they could no longer access their holdings online. There were simply no assets in the securities accounts. A whole series of press releases went out:

  We are experiencing technical difficulties and we are working to correct them. The situation is under control and will be resolved soon.

  And yet the concerns grew. The krona exchange rate dropped, and suddenly there came a tsunami of rumours that the damage was so extensive it would not be possible to reconstruct the securities accounts in full: significant blocks of assets had simply gone up in smoke. No matter that the various authorities dismissed this as nonsense, the financial markets crashed. All trading stopped and there was much high-pitched shouting into telephones and crashing of mail servers. A bomb threat was made against the Swedish National Bank. Windows were smashed. Among other incidents, the financier Carl af Trolle kicked a bronze sculpture so hard that he broke eight bones in his right foot.

  And just as the situation seemed about to get out of control, it was over. The assets reappeared in everyone’s accounts and the head of the central bank, Lena Duncker herself, announced that there had never been anything to worry about. That may have been correct. But the most interesting aspect of the scare was not I.T. security itself, it was the illusion and the panic.

  What had triggered it?

  It became clear that the central register of Swedish securities, called Värdepapperscentralen before it was sold to the Belgian company Finance Security (a sign of the times), had been the target of a “denial of service” attack, which revealed how vulnerable the financial system was. But that was not the whole picture. There was also the merry-go-round of imputations, warnings and plain lies which flooded social media, and which caused Blomkvist to exclaim that day:

  “Is some bastard trying to make the market crash?”

  He did get support for his theory during the days and weeks that followed. But like everyone else, he was unable to get to the root of the events. No suspects were ever identified, so after a while he let it go. The whole country let it go. The stock market went up once more. The economy blossomed. The markets became bullish again and Blomkvist turned to more pressing topics – the refugee catastrophe, the terrorist attacks, the rise of right-wing populism and fascism across Europe and the U.S. B
ut now …

  He remembered the dark look on Salander’s face in the visitors’ room and thought about the threats against her, about her sister Camilla and her circle of hackers and bandits. So he started searching again and came across an essay Leo Mannheimer had written for Fokus magazine. Blomkvist was not impressed. Mannheimer had no new information. But parts of the article gave a good description of the psychological aspects of the incident. Blomkvist noted that Mannheimer would soon be giving a series of talks on the subject, under the heading “The Market’s Hidden Worry”. He was due to deliver a speech on the topic the following day, Sunday, at an event organized by the Swedish Shareholders’ Association, on Stadsgårdskajen.

  For a minute or two Blomkvist studied the photos of Mannheimer online and tried to get beyond his first impression. He saw a handsome man with clean-cut features, but he thought he could also detect a melancholy streak in his eyes, which not even the stylized portrait on the company’s home page could conceal. Mannheimer never made any categorical statements. There was no sell, buy, act now! There was always doubt, a question. He was said to be analytical, and musical, interested in jazz, above all in older, so-called hot jazz.

  He was thirty-six years old, the only child in a well-off family from Nockeby, west of Stockholm. His father Herman, who was fifty-four when Leo was born, had been C.E.O. of the Rosvik industrial group, and later in life sat on a number of boards. Herman owned 40 per cent of the share capital of no less a company than Alfred Ögren Securities.

  His mother Viveka, née Hamilton, had been a housewife and active in the Red Cross. She seemed to have devoted much of her life to her son and to his talent. The few interviews she had granted betrayed a streak of elitism. In the Dagens Nyheter article about his high I.Q., Leo even hinted that she had been coaching him behind the scenes.

  “I was probably a little unfairly well prepared for those tests,” he said and described himself as an unruly pupil during his early years in school, which, according to the author of the article, was typical for highly gifted and under-stimulated children.