The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye: Continuing Stieg Larsson's Millennium Series (35 page)

“No,” she said.

Clearly she did not want to talk about it and he had no wish to press her. He was tired and was getting up to go home when Salander pulled him onto the sofa again and placed a hand on his chest.

“I had it done because it helped me,” she said.

“Helped you? How?”

“I thought about the dragon when I was strapped down to the bed at St Stefan’s.”

“What were you thinking?”

“That it looked helpless with the spear stuck in its body, but that one day it would rise up, breathe fire and destroy its enemies. That’s what kept me going.” Her eyes were dark and apprehensive.

She and Blomkvist looked at each other, they might have been about to kiss. But Salander seemed miles away and she turned to gaze out over the city and at a train which was rolling into Central Station. She said that she had tracked down Rakel Greitz via an online store in Sollentuna which sold disinfectants. Blomkvist murmured his appreciation, although it worried him. Soon afterwards, the heat having gone out of the moment, his head started to droop and he asked if he could lie down for a while on her bed. Salander had no objection. She went to bed herself a little while later and soon fell asleep.

Now, in the morning, Blomkvist heard sounds from the kitchen. He dragged himself out of bed and turned on the coffee machine. He watched Salander retrieve a Hawaiian pizza from the microwave and sit at the kitchen table. He rummaged around in her refrigerator, and swore because there was nothing else to eat. Then he remembered that she had just got out of prison, and there had been more than enough for her to do on her first day of freedom. He contented himself with coffee and tuned in to P1 on the kitchen radio. He caught the end of the daily news bulletin and listened to the forecast of record temperatures for the Stockholm area. He said good morning to Salander, who muttered something in return. She was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt, no make-up, and her swollen lip and the bruises on her face looked excruciatingly painful. Shortly afterwards they went down to the street together, talking briefly about their plans. They went their separate ways at Slussen. He told her to take it easy and she nodded.

He was on his way to Alfred Ögren Securities.

She was going to track down Rakel Greitz.

While Khalil Kazi was being questioned in the interview room, his defence lawyer, Harald Nilsson, sat poking nervously at the table with his pen. There were moments when Bublanski could hardly bear to listen. Khalil should have had a bright future; instead he had ruined everything.

It had been at the beginning of October, almost two years before.

After Faria had run away from the apartment in Sickla, she managed secretly to keep in touch with Khalil and told him that she intended to sever all links with the family. They arranged to meet at a café on Norra Bantorget so that she could say goodbye to her youngest brother. Khalil swore that he had not said a word to anybody, but the brothers must have tailed him. They dragged their sister into a car and took her back to Sickla. Faria spent the first few days tied up. They put duct tape over her mouth and a piece of cardboard across her chest saying “WHORE”. Bashir and Ahmed beat her. They spat on her and let other men who came to the apartment do the same.

Khalil realized that Faria was no longer regarded as a sister, even a human being. Her body was no longer hers, and he was afraid he could guess what was in store for her. She would be taken to some remote place, beyond the reach of the police, where her blood would be shed to cleanse the family’s honour. Occasionally, they talked about how she might be saved through marriage to Qamar, but Khalil did not believe that. She had already been defiled. And how would they get her out of the country while keeping her under control?

Khalil was sure that Faria was facing certain death. He too had had his telephone taken away and was effectively a prisoner, so there was no way he could raise the alarm. In his despair he could only hope for a miracle. A small miracle did occur, or at least a measure of relief: They untied Faria’s hands and got rid of the sign, and she was allowed to shower, eat in the kitchen and move around in the apartment without a veil. Presents were handed out, and it seemed as if Faria were to be given compensation for her suffering instead of harsher punishment.

The brothers gave her a radio and for Khalil they found a second-hand StairMaster, driven over by an acquaintance in Huddinge. That built up his strength. He had been missing his running – his freedom of movement, the power of his stride – and now he trained for hours on end. He began to see light at the end of the tunnel, even though he still expected the worst. Some days later Bashir and Ahmed came into his room and sat on the bed. Bashir was holding a pistol, but even so, the brothers did not appear angry. Both were wearing freshly ironed shirts in the same shade of blue. They smiled at him.

“We’ve got good news!” Bashir said.

Faria would be allowed to live, or rather she would be allowed to live as long as someone paid the price. Anything else would bring down the wrath of Allah, their honour would not be avenged and the stain would spread and poison them all. Khalil was given a choice: he could either die, together with his sister – or he must murder Jamal and thereby save the two of them. Khalil did not understand at first. He did not want to understand, he said. He just kept up his stepping on his StairMaster. So they put the choice to him again.

“But why me?” Khalil said. “I could never hurt anybody.” He was utterly distraught.

Bashir explained that, of all the brothers, only Khalil was not known to the police. He had a good reputation. Above all by doing this Khalil could atone for having failed the family. At some point he must have answered yes, he would kill Jamal. He was desperate, caught in an impossible situation.

He loved his sister, and his life was threatened.

But there was one detail Bublanski did not understand: Why had Khalil not called the police when he was let out of the apartment to carry out the murder? Khalil claimed he had planned to do exactly that. He was going to reveal everything and seek protection. But then he was bewildered and paralysed, he said, by the precision with which the operation had been prepared. Others were also involved, Islamists who never let him out of their sight, and who missed no opportunity to tell him what a despicable person Jamal was. Jamal had a fatwa against him. He had been condemned to death by devout people in Bangladesh. He was worse than swine, and Jews and rats that spread the plague. He had besmirched the family’s honour and that of his sister. Slowly but surely, Khalil was drawn into the darkness and driven to do the unthinkable. He pushed Jamal in front of the train. He was certainly not alone, but it was he who had run onto the platform and pushed him.

“I killed him,” he said.

Faria Kazi was in the visitors’ room in H Block of Flodberga. Inspector Sonja Modig and Annika Giannini were sitting facing her. The proceedings were tense and halting as Giannini replayed the poor-quality video in which Bashir appeared to confess to having been involved in Jamal Chowdhury’s murder. Giannini explained hand movement analyses, and told her that Khalil had made a detailed statement confessing that he pushed Jamal under the train.

“He thought it was the only way to save you, Faria – and to save himself. He says he loves you.”

Faria did not respond. She knew all of this already and she wanted to scream “
Loves
me? I
hate him
.” She really did hate him. Khalil was the reason she had kept her mouth shut for so long. However much Khalil may have hurt her, she still felt protective towards him. Mostly for their mother’s sake, she thought. Once upon a time Faria had promised her that she would look after Khalil. But now there wasn’t any family left to protect, was there? She steeled herself, then looked at the women and said:

“Is that Lisbeth Salander’s voice in the film?”

“It is, yes.”

“Is she O.K.?”

“She’s O.K. She’s been fighting your corner.”

Faria swallowed. She drew herself up and began to talk. The atmosphere in the room was one of solemn anticipation, as always when after a long silence a witness or suspect decides to speak. Giannini and Modig were concentrating so hard that they did not hear the intercoms ringing in the corridor and the rising agitation in the voices of the guards.

It was unbearably hot in the visitors’ room. Modig mopped the sweat from her forehead and repeated what Faria had said, twice now, in two versions which were similar and yet not quite the same. Something still seemed to be missing.

“So you had the sense that your situation was improving. You thought your brothers were relenting, that you might be given some sort of freedom after all.”

“I’m not sure what I thought,” Faria said. “I was a wreck. But they did apologize. Bashir and Ahmed had never treated me like that before. They said they had gone too far. That they were ashamed. That all they wanted was for me to live a respectable life and that I had been punished enough. They gave me a radio.”

“Did it occur to you at any stage that it might be a trap?”

“I thought that constantly. I’d read about other girls who’d let themselves be lulled into a sense of security and then …”

“And then killed?”

“I realized that there was a real risk, not least because of Bashir’s body language, and that scared me. I hardly slept. I had a knot in my stomach. But I was also guilty of wishful thinking. You have to understand, it was the only way for me to bear it. I missed Jamal so much I was going crazy. More than anything I hoped, I believed Jamal was out there somewhere, fighting for me. I bided my time and told myself that things were improving. Khalil meanwhile kept working out on his StairMaster like an insane person. I heard that step machine thumping away all night long. Swoosh, swoosh. It was driving me mad, I have no idea how he could do it. He just wouldn’t stop, and occasionally he’d come out of his room and hug me and say ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry’ a hundred times over. I said I would look after him, and make sure that Jamal and his friends protected us both, and maybe, I don’t know … It’s hard to say now, looking back.”

“Try to be clear. It’s important,” Modig said, more sharply than usual.

Giannini looked at her watch and patted down her hair, and said angrily:

“Enough of that! If Faria’s being unclear, it’s because the situation itself was unclear. Under the circumstances I think she’s being admirably clear.”

“I’m simply trying to understand,” Modig said. “Faria, you must have realized that something was about to happen. You say that Khalil was in a state of high tension. That he was exercising so hard there was nothing left of him.”

“He was in a really bad way. He was a prisoner too. But I had the impression that he was beginning to feel better, it was only afterwards that I remembered the look in his eye.”

“And how
did
he look?”

“Desperate. Like a hunted animal. But at the time I didn’t see it.”

“You didn’t hear your other brothers leave the apartment on the evening of October 23?”

“I was asleep, or at least trying to sleep. But I do remember that they came back in the middle of the night and were whispering in the kitchen. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. The next day they gave me odd looks, and I took that as a good sign. It seemed to me that Jamal was somewhere nearby. I felt his presence. But as the hours passed this weird, tense atmosphere was building up. Evening came and then I saw Ahmed, just as I told you.”

“You said he was by the window.”

“There was something angry, something menacing about the way he stood there, and he was breathing heavily. I felt a weight on my chest. Ahmed said, ‘He’s dead.’ I didn’t understand who he was talking about. ‘Jamal’s dead,’ he said again. I think I sank to my knees. I blacked out for a moment. I hadn’t really taken it in.”

“You were in shock,” Giannini said.

“And yet an instant later, you found this incredible strength,” Modig said.

“I’ve already explained that.”

“She has, you know,” Giannini said.

“I’d like to hear it again.”

“Khalil was there all of a sudden,” Faria said. “Or maybe he’d been there all along. He cried out that he was the one who had killed Jamal, and that made even less sense. But he went on saying he’d done it for my sake, that they would have murdered
me
otherwise, he’d had to choose between me and Jamal. And that’s when the strength came to me, that fury. I just lost it, and I went for Ahmed.”

“Why not Khalil?”

“Because I …”

“Because you?”

“Because I must have understood, in spite of it all.”

“What? That they’d used Khalil’s love for you as a means of pressuring him into this terrible act?”

“That they’d driven him to it, that they’d destroyed his life along with mine and Jamal’s, and that’s why I flew into a blind rage. I went crazy. Can’t you get that?”

“I can,” Modig said. “Honestly I can. But there are other things I find more difficult to understand – for example, the fact that you refused to answer any questions during your police interviews. You said you wanted revenge. But you could have struck back also against Bashir, the biggest criminal of them all. With our help you could have had him put away for conspiracy to murder.”

“But don’t you understand?” Faria’s voice broke.

“Don’t we understand what?”

“My life ended with Jamal’s. What would I gain by having Bashir or Khalil locked up as well? Khalil was the only one in the family who …”

“Go on.”

“He was the only one I loved.”

“But he killed the love of your life.”

“I hated him. I loved him. I hated him. Is that so hard to understand?”

Giannini was just about to interrupt to say that Faria needed a break from the interview when there was a knock at the door. Rikard Fager wanted to have a word with Modig.

It was immediately clear that something serious had happened, that whatever it was had shaken the governor’s confidence. Modig was irritated that he was being so long-winded. He would not get to the point, as if he intended rather to find excuses than to explain. He said there had been security guards and surveillance and even metal detectors. He said not to forget that Benito had been in a serious condition, with sustained injuries to her skull, a concussion, and a smashed jaw.