The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye: Continuing Stieg Larsson's Millennium Series
Page 21
Still, he made a note of Steinberg’s telephone number and address in Lidingö, and carried on searching into his background. But his concentration was drifting. He was of two minds: Should he send an encrypted message to Salander and tell her what he had found? Should he confront Mannheimer, to see if he was on the right track? He had another espresso and suddenly missed Malin. In no time at all she had found her way back into his life, like a force of nature.
He went into the bathroom and stepped on the scale. He had gained weight, he needed to do something about that. And he should get his hair cut. It was sticking out in all directions and he tried to smooth it down. But then he said out loud “To hell with it” and went back to his desk to call, e-mail and text Salander. In the end he wrote into their shared file on his computer:
Something about his message did not feel quite right: the word “think”. Salander was not keen on half measures. He corrected it:
On the platform he took out his notes from the night before and went through them one more time. He looked at his question marks and speculations. Was he going mad? He looked at the digital display above him and saw that a train was about to arrive. At that moment his mobile rang. It was Lotta von Kanterborg and she was breathing hard:
“She called,” she said.
“Hilda?”
“She told me that what you said about Leo Mannheimer sounded crazy. That it couldn’t possibly be right.”
“I see.”
“But she wants to meet you,” she said. “She’d like to tell you what she does know. Right now she’s—”
“Don’t tell me over the phone.”
Blomkvist suggested that they meet right away at Kaffebar on St Paulsgatan, and hurried back up the station steps.
CHAPTER 14
21.vi
Bublanski was in an apartment in Aspudden, surrounded by old-fashioned furniture and talking to Maj-Britt Torell, the woman who, according to Salander, had visited Palmgren a few weeks before. The old lady probably had the best of intentions, Bublanski thought, but there was something odd about her. Not only was she fiddling nervously with the Danish pastries on the coffee table, she also seemed surprisingly forgetful and disorganized for someone who had spent so many years working as a medical secretary.
“I’m not quite sure what I gave him,” she said. “I’d just heard so much about the girl, and thought it was time he got the full story – about how appallingly she was treated.”
“So you gave Palmgren the original papers?”
“I suppose I did. The professor’s practice has been closed for ages and I have no idea what became of all the medical records. But I had some papers given to me unofficially by Professor Caldin.”
“Secretly, you mean?”
“You could put it like that.”
“Important documents, then?”
“I suppose so.”
“Wouldn’t you have kept copies, or scanned them into a computer?”
“You would think so, but I …”
Bublanski said nothing. It seemed like the right moment to keep quiet. But Torell did not finish her sentence and went on picking even more nervously at her pastries.
“You haven’t by any chance …” Bublanski said.
“What?”
“… had a visit from someone, or a telephone call about these papers? Is that maybe what’s making you a bit anxious right now?”
“Absolutely not,” Torell said a little too fast and a little too nervously.
Bublanski got to his feet. It was high time now. He looked at her with his most wistful smile, which he was well aware could make a deep impression on people who were wrestling with their conscience.
“In that case I’ll leave you in peace,” he said.
“Oh, really?”
“Just to be on the safe side, I’ll call a taxi and have you taken to a nice café in town. This is so important and serious that I believe you need a bit of time to think, don’t you agree, Fru Torell?”
Then he handed her his business card and went out to his car.
December, a year and a half earlier
On that particular day, Dan Brody was playing with the Klaus Ganz Quintet at the A-Trane Jazz Club in Berlin. Years had gone by. He was thirty-five years old, had cut off his long hair and no longer wore an earring. He had started to wear grey suits. He could be mistaken for an office worker, and he liked it that way. It was some sort of early mid-life crisis, he supposed.
He was fed up with touring, but he had no choice. He had not managed to put away any savings and he owned nothing of value, no apartment, no car, nothing. Any likelihood of a break-through – of becoming rich and famous – was long gone. He was never the star, even if he was invariably the most talented musician on stage. And he always had work, albeit for less and less money. It was ever harder to make a living as a jazz musician, and maybe he was no longer playing with the same passion as once he did.
He no longer worked at his music all that often. He managed fine without it. During the down-time when he was travelling, instead of practising for hours each day as he used to, he now read. He devoured books and did not tend to socialize. He could not stand idle chatter or the bawling and buzz in bars and clubs, and he felt far better when he drank less. All in all, he was cleaning himself up, and increasingly he yearned for a normal life: a wife and a home, a steady job, a measure of security.
Over the years he had tried just about every drug, and had had plenty of love affairs and casual relationships. But there always seemed to be something missing. Music had been his solace, though when this no longer revived his spirits, he began to wonder if he had taken the wrong path in life. Maybe he should have become a teacher. He had recently had an overwhelming experience at his old music college in Boston.
He had been asked to lead a workshop on Django Reinhardt, and the prospect had scared him half to death. He was sure that speaking in public was beyond him, that his lack of stage presence was one of the reasons the record companies had not wanted to invest in him. But he agreed to do it anyway and set about preparing down to the last detail. He told himself he just needed to stick to his script, a lot of music and little talk. But when he stood up there in front of two hundred students, he went weak at the knees. He was shaking all over, incapable of uttering a single word, and only after what seemed like an eternity did he manage to say:
“And there I was, thinking I’d be the cool guy coming back to my alma mater – instead I’m standing here like a complete idiot!”
It was not even meant as a joke, more like the desperate truth. But the students laughed, so he told them about Django and Stéphane Grappelli and the Quintette du Hot Club de France. He talked about club life and their ups and downs, and about how there were so few written sources. He played “Minor Swing” and “Nuages” and variations on solos and riffs, and became bolder and bolder. All sorts of ideas came to him, some comical, some serious. He found himself saying that Django had been doomed to ruin. During the Hitler years he was at risk of being deported to a death camp for being Roma, but he was saved by a Nazi of all people, an officer in the Luftwaffe who loved his music. He ultimately died in France on May 16, 1953, after a brain haemorrhage while walking from the railway station in Avon to his house. “He was a great man,” Dan said. “He changed my life.”
Silence. He was in limbo.
But then, seconds later, there was thunderous applause. The students stood up and whooped, and Dan went home astonished and happy.
He had carried the memory with him and sometimes, even now on tour in Germany, he would make a few comments between numbers, or tell an anecdote which made the audience laugh, though it was not he who was centre stage. That often gave him more pleasure than his solos, perhaps because it was somet
hing new.
When he did not hear from the school again, he was disappointed. He had imagined how the teachers and professors would be talking about him, saying: “Now there’s someone who can really fire up our students.” But no further invitations came and he was too proud – and too timid – to get in touch to say how happy he would be to return. He failed to grasp that this was one of his problems: that he lacked the get-up-and-go in a country where it was the very engine and essence of society. The school’s silence was painful, and afterwards he became withdrawn and performed with little enthusiasm.
It was 9.20 p.m. on Friday, December 8, and the bar was full. The audience was better dressed and classier than usual, perhaps also less engaged. Probably finance people, he thought. He had met Wall Street types who had treated him like a servant. There seemed to be a lot of wealth in the room and that depressed him. Sure, there were times when he did pretty well for himself. After the first few lean years in America, he had never gone hungry. But even when he had money, it simply ran through his fingers.
He decided to ignore the audience and focus on the music, even though the first set felt routine. Then came “Stella by Starlight”, a tune he had played a thousand times and where he knew he could shine. He took the second-to-last solo, just before Klaus Ganz himself, and closed his eyes. The piece was in Bb, but instead of following the two-five-one progression he played almost entirely outside the key. By his own standards it was not the most dazzling solo. But it was not bad, and he heard someone applaud spontaneously as he began to play. When he looked up to show his appreciation, he met the eye of a young woman in an elegant red dress, wearing a sparkling green necklace. She was blonde and slender, and there was something fox-like about her beautiful features. She was probably one of the money people, he thought, but there was nothing blasé or disinterested about her. In fact she was rapt, and gazing intently at him. He could not recall any woman ever having looked at him like that before, not a stranger, and certainly not an upper-class beauty. But more extraordinary was the sense of intimacy. It was as if the woman were watching a dear friend. She appeared dazed and enchanted, and towards the end of his solo she mouthed something effusive, as if she knew him. Her face was wreathed in smiles and she shook her head. There were even tears in her eyes.
After the set she approached the stage, more reserved now. Perhaps he had hurt her feelings by not acknowledging her enthusiasm. Nervously she fingered her necklace as she looked at his hands and his guitar. She gave the impression of being puzzled, and he felt a sudden affection for her, a protective instinct. He climbed down from the stage and smiled at her. She laid a hand on his shoulder and said to him in Swedish:
“You were incredible. I knew you played the piano, but this … this was magical. It was insanely good, Leo.”
“My name isn’t Leo,” he said.
Salander knew that she and her sister had figured on a list kept by the Registry for the Study of Genetics and Social Environment. The organization’s existence was known only to a few, but it was part of the State Institute for Human Genetics in Uppsala, which until 1958 had been known as the State Institute for Racial Biology.
There were sixteen other people on the list, the majority older than Lisbeth and Camilla. They had the letters M.z.A. or D.z.A. next to their names. Salander understood that M.z. stood for “monozygotic”, in other words identical twins; D.z. stood for fraternal twins; and the letter A referred to “apart”, as in “raised apart”.
She soon worked out that they were twins who had grown up separately in accordance with a carefully devised plan. She and Camilla, unlike the others, were labelled “D.z. – failed A.” All the rest of the twins had been separated at an early age. The results of a series of intelligence and personality tests were recorded beneath their names.
Two names stood out: Leo Mannheimer and Daniel Brolin. They were described as mirror-image twins and quite exceptional. Their test results were consistent, and on a number of counts they were outstanding. They were said to have been born into the traveller community. One note, initialled M.S., said:
Highly intelligent and extremely musical. To some extent child prodigies. But lacking initiative. Inclined to doubt and depression, possibly also psychoses. Both have suffered from paracusis, auditory hallucinations. Loners, but with an ambivalent attitude to their isolation. Perhaps drawn to it. Both speak of a strong sense of “missing something” and “an intense loneliness”. Both show empathy, neither shows signs of aggression – apart from the occasional fit of anger triggered by loud noises. Remarkable scores, even for creativity. Excellent verbal skills, yet low self-esteem, somewhat better in L., for obvious reasons, but not by as much as one would expect. Perhaps due to difficult relationship with mother, who has not bonded as we had hoped.
That last sentence made Salander feel sick. She was not impressed by their other character assessments either, especially not the rubbish written about her and Camilla. Camilla was “very beautiful, if somewhat cold and narcissistic”. Somewhat? She remembered how Camilla had gazed at the psychologists with her doe-like eyes. It obviously turned their heads.
Nonetheless … there were a few details in the material which could be useful and might provide her with a lead. Among other things, there was a line about “unfortunate circumstances” having required the authorities to “inform Leo’s parents in the strictest confidence”. No indication was given as to what information they had passed on. But it might have been about the project itself. That would be interesting.
Salander had got hold of the documents by hacking into the computer system of the State Institute for Human Genetics and creating a bridge between the network and the intranet of the Registry for the Study of Genetics and Social Environment. It was an advanced exercise, which had taken hours of work. She knew full well that there were not many others who could have managed to pull off that sort of hack, especially with so little preparation time.
She had hoped to strike gold. But the parties involved must have been extremely cautious. She did not find a single name for those responsible, only initials, including H.K. and M.S. She decided that the files about Daniel and Leo were her best hope. They were incomplete – most of the material was missing or had been archived in a different way – but she was keen to study what remained.
Someone had put a question mark next to Mannheimer’s name and then done a not very good job of erasing it.
Daniel Brolin appeared to have emigrated, with the ambition of becoming a guitarist. He had taken a one-year course at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, financed by a scholarship, since which all contact with him was lost. He had probably changed his name.
Mannheimer had studied at the Stockholm School of Economics. There was a later note on him: “Very bitter after breaking up with a woman of his own social class. First dreams of violence. A risk? Renewed attack of paracusis?”
Then there was a decision – again initialled M.S. – which looked recent, announcing that the Registry was to be officially closed. “Project 9 to be terminated. Mannheimer a cause for concern,” it said.
Since Salander had been in prison, unable to research Mannheimer or those around him, she had asked Blomkvist to take a closer look. He’d been hopeless lately, fussing about her like some sort of father figure. Sometimes all she’d wanted to do was to tear his clothes off and pull him onto her prison mattress, just to shut him up. But as a journalist he was indefatigable and sometimes – she reluctantly admitted – he did spot things she herself had missed. Which is why she had deliberately not told him everything; Blomkvist would see more clearly if she let him investigate without his mind already being made up. She would ring him shortly and get to grips with the whole situation.
She was sitting on a bench on Flöjtvägen in Vallholmen, her laptop connected to her mobile, and looked up at the grey-green tower blocks whose colour was changing in the sunlight. She was wearing a leather jacket and black jeans, not the right clothes for a muggy day.
V
allholmen was often described as a ghetto. Cars burned at night. Gangs of youths roamed about and mugged people. A rapist was said to be at large, and there was often chatter in the press about a community in which nobody dared to talk to the police. But right now the place seemed idyllic. A small group of women in veils were sitting with a picnic basket on the lawn in front of the tower blocks. A couple of small boys played football. Two men stood by the front entrance to the left, spraying water with a hose and laughing like children.
Salander wiped a drop of sweat from her forehead and kept on working with her deep neural network. It was tough, just as she had anticipated. The video sequence from the ticket gate at Hornstull Tunnelbana station was too short and too blurred, and the body was masked by other passengers coming up from the platform. And the face was at no point visible. He – it was evidently a young man – had been wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses. His head was bent forward. Salander could not even measure how broad his shoulders were.
All she had was the distinctive splayed movement of his fingers and a jerky, dysmetric gesture of his right hand. She had no way of knowing how characteristic they were. It might have been a nervous reaction, an anomaly in his usual pattern of movement. But there was a striking spasmodic irregularity which was now being analysed in the nodes in her network and compared to a sequence she had uploaded of a young man jogging past her on a training circuit forty minutes earlier.
There were correlations between the patterns of movement, and that was encouraging. But it was not enough. She needed to capture the runner in a situation more comparable to the one in the Tunnelbana station. Every so often, therefore, she looked up at the lawn and the paved path along which the young man had disappeared. There was no sign of him for the time being, so she scrolled through her e-mails and messages.