The Man Who Left Too Soon: The Life and Works of Stieg Larsson (21 page)

Larsson is now to address the superscription of this section, a reference to fellow thriller novelist Ian Fleming. Mia Johansson picks up Svensson from the Gamla Stan
tunnelbana
station. He is one month from deadline, but has only had nine of 22 planned confrontations. He can’t get hold of Björck at the Security Police, who spends time with the prostitutes. Mia’s thesis ‘From Russia with Love’ has been printed – she is to defend it and become a fully-fledged doctor next month. Svensson tells her that a girl she interviewed, Irina P, has been found drowned. Given the pseudonym ‘Tamara’, she was brought into the country by ‘Anton’ (real name probably Zala, a Pole or a Yugoslav). Svensson had recently confronted a ‘journalist’ called Sandström, who uses teen prostitutes to live out rape fantasies, and also runs errands for Sweden’s ‘sex mafia’. The one name he gave him was Zala, an uncommon name, and one all the girls are terrified of… we are, of course, back in Larsson’s domain of grim male sexual violence.

After showing us the possibilities of positive, organic growth between people (even someone as damaged as Salander), Larsson takes us back to the realm of the twisted psyche. Nils Bjurman arrives home from his summer cabin. The blond giant had told him his people were interested in his (Bjurman’s) proposal – a sinister one involving Salander – and it would cost him 100,000 kronor. He inspects his post and discovers a statement from Handelsbanken showing Salander’s withdrawal of 9,300 kronor – so he knows the woman who has humiliated him is back on the scene. He rings the blond giant and tells him.

Salander’s feelings about Blomkvist are confused. She hacks into his computer with downloads of all his e-mails, Svensson’s manuscript and Mia Johansson’s thesis. She sees Blomkvist is having an affair with Vanger. By 11.30 pm she has read everything – but the last e-mail makes her sit up in a cold sweat. Svensson had mentioned someone called Zala…

In the
Millennium
offices, Svensson is pondering the significance of Zala. Irina P had been found in Södertälje canal with a broken neck; Zala’s name had come up four times in Mia’s research, always as a shadowy figure. Svensson had pressurised Sandström for information, but he was frightened for his life. There is a rather similar cliff-hanger ending to the previous chapter – another example perhaps of a need for tighter editing, the boon denied to Larsson by his death.

In Chapter 10, Larsson adroitly choreographs a variety of incidents. Salander, in the Café Hedon, sees the man who brutally raped her, Nils Bjurman. She has no feelings for him; she is coldly keeping him alive so he can be useful to her. She seems to recognise the blond giant he is talking to (Larsson uses the word ‘click’ – her photographic memory taking a picture?), and follows him when he leaves. He takes the tube to Blomberg’s Café at Götgatan. The blond meets a fat biker with a ponytail – Lundin, who we encountered in Chapter 7. The blond gives him instructions, then leaves in a white Volvo; Salander notes the registration number. At her flat, she hacks into Bjurman’s hard drive but finds nothing odd, apart from the fact that he has not yet started her report this month. Why so late? First Blomkvist, then Zala, and now Bjurman meeting a thug with contacts to a gang of ex-con bikers. She is, unsurprisingly, worried…

Larsson repeatedly has his heroine breaking in to apartments, and that scenario now reappears: at 2.30 the following morning. Salander breaks into Bjurman’s flat, armed with only a Taser. She watches him sleep then goes to his office and rifles through his drawers. Although she thinks something is wrong – papers have been removed from her file – she can’t find anything concrete to back up her fears. By now, Larsson has readers in something of a dual conditioned response to his heroine. We admire her armoury of defensive – and offensive – weaponary, but still regard her from the outside – she is not a woman it is easy to identify with.

Salander downloads the images of the biker gang, including Lundin and his No. 2, the photogenic Nieminen (a man with multiple convictions), the man Lundin met at McDonald’s. Lundin was the man who met the blond giant at Blomberg’s Café. She can find no trace of Zala. The next day, after breakfast in the Jacuzzi, she has better luck searching for Svensson and Mia Johansson. Then she hacks
Millennium
’s intranet and downloads e-mails from Berger, Malm and Malin Eriksson. Finally she finds Svensson’s computer and a file marked . Larsson is skilfully ensuring that things are beginning to accelerate.

Some readers might find the obfuscation practised at this point frustrating rather than tantalising. Who is the unidentified man driving to Jarna? He has just picked up 203,000 kronor from Lundin for the meth he delivered in January. (This is one of the points in the trilogy when readers suffering from information overload may struggle to keep up with the barrage of data being fed to them.) The three gangs the man supplies bring him roughly 5 million kronor a month. Yet he is in a bad mood because although the demand is almost infinite, he has a problem getting the drugs from Estonia to Sweden. He has already had to punish an inquisitive street vendor, but knows that violence is risky and not good business. Smuggling prostitutes from the Baltics, his other business, gives only small change but he is unlikely to be brought down by the government because ‘everybody likes a whore’. Even dead whores don’t interest the authorities. But he thinks the business ‘sucks’. He doesn’t like the women – they’re unclean. This is, of course, Larsson shorthand indicating (in incontrovertible fashion) we are in the presence of another woman-hating male scumbag. He also doesn’t like the contract in place with Bjurman to kidnap Salander, a contract awarded to Nieminen.

Then Larsson takes us into what looks like Stephen King territory. Suddenly he sees a sinister shape in the darkness, slithering towards him. It looks like a vast stingray with a stinger like a scorpion. A creature not of this world. He runs back to his car and speeds off. The creature tries to strike the car as he passes, shaken. (This is linked with the terror of the blond man in Chapter 7.)

Salander looks at what she’s discovered from the
Millennium
files. One source for Svensson’s book is Gulbrandsen, a policeman. The file is disappointingly slight, only three documents: one about Irina P, one about Sandström, and one about Zala himself. Since the mid 1990s the name had cropped up in nine drug, weapons or prostitution cases. Zala was responsible for Irina P’s death. Zala’s name first appeared in connection with a botched security van hold-up in 1996. Nieminen, who had supplied the weapons, has links with Nazi organizations, such as the Aryan Brotherhood (we’re back to echoes of Larsson’s real-life battles with extremist organisations).

Salander sits and smokes for a couple of hours (she has her creator’s
laissez-faire
attitude to her own health), knowing she has to find Zala and settle their accounts once and for all.

Blomkvist is returning home from a publisher’s party just before 3 am when he passes Salander’s old apartment and – in yet another unlikely juxtaposition – sees her step out into the street, only to be accosted by a tall man in a ponytail (it is Lundin). She instinctively turns and slashes him across the face, using her keys like a knuckleduster. She runs away up some steps, followed by Lundin. She throws a sharp stone at him, wounding him still further. She resolves to punish Bjurman for sending a ‘diabolical alpha male’ to do her harm. All of this is handled with the assurance we expect from Larsson in such moments of action – the prose is economical, but apposite.

‘Absurd Equations’ is the title Larsson gives to Part Three – and the nomenclature (it has to be said) is appropriate for some of the startling plotting that follows.

Blomkvist is at the
Millennium
offices alone, working through Svensson’s manuscript; he has already delivered nine of the promised 12 chapters and Blomkvist is very pleased with his writing. Blomkvist knows the book will explicitly expose the corrupt system and is ‘a declaration of war’ (of the kind that Larsson, as a journalist, was all too familiar with).

The author is well aware that by this point in the narrative we’ll be hungry for another glimpse of his abrasive heroine, and obliges (her appearances are to some extent the allegros to Blomkvist’s largos). At nine that evening Svensson and Johansson are visited by Lisbeth Salander. To Svensson she appears to be in her late teens and he notes her cold, raven-black irises. She knows about the book and the thesis, much to the couple’s surprise and suspicion. She wants to know why they’re asking questions about ‘Alexander’ Zala. This is the first time Svensson has heard his first name – clearly Salander knows things he doesn’t.

Blomkvist tells his lawyer sister Annika about Salander’s dramatic reappearance in his life, and asks whether he should be consulting her for legal advice on Svensson’s book, as her professional speciality is violence on women. His sister confesses she was hurt when Blomkvist never consulted her over the Wennerström affair, but when he apologises, she says she’d be happy to read through the text.

But it is time for Stieg Larsson to remind the reader about the dangerous world his characters move in. Brother and sister arrive at Svensson’s flat, but Blomkvist hears a commotion on the stairwell and senses something is wrong (Annika waits in the car). A group of neighbours are milling outside the open door. Blomkvist goes in to find the writer slumped in a pool of blood: he has been shot in the head. Blomkvist dials 112 for police and ambulance. He finds Mia Johansson in the bedroom, shot in the face with enough force to spatter blood all over the wall three metres away. They are both dead. He is numb with shock. He goes downstairs and sees a Colt .45 on the cellar steps.

Three officers arrive: Magnusson, Ohlsson and superintendent Mårtensson. Blomkvist explains what has happened and says that since only five minutes have passed since the neighbours say they heard shots, the killer may still be in the area. He shows them the cellar door – it is locked. They enter the flat. The couple are clearly beyond help. As Annika comforts her brother, a murder investigation begins.

Blomkvist wonders if the murders are linked to the book, now near publication – has someone Svensson confronted tried to prevent it? Should they publish? Should they tell police exactly what Svensson was working on? The answer is no – because then they’d have to reveal their sources, which they promised not to do. The verisimilitude of these sections is obviously down to the fact that Larsson is dealing (in fictional terms) with a situation he would be all too familiar with from his time at the magazine
Expo
– and would no doubt have come across (or at least heard about) regarding the British sister magazine he also wrote for,
Searchlight
, which has taken on some dangerous opponents.

Critics of Stieg Larsson have taken exception to his ‘filling-in’ strategies regarding minor characters, where pen portraits are provided for people who will barely figure in the narrative (possibly inspired by Fredrick Forsyth). Such a case might be made against the details given for prosecutor Richard Ekström, who finds he will be leading the murder investigation. He’s described as a thin, vital man of 42, with thinning blond hair and a goatee. He is always impeccably dressed, and has spent four years at the Ministry of Justice. The police force, we are told, are divided about his John Birt-style policies of downsizing to increase efficiency, rather than recruiting more police (Birt, one-time Director General of the BBC, used similarly unpopular cost-cutting tactics within his organisation). He rings Criminal Investigator Jan Bublanski (nicknamed ‘Officer Bubble’), who is off duty, and asks him to come in and investigate the killings. Bublanski is 52, and has been in charge of 17 murder or manslaughter cases, and has only failed to find the killer in one. Held in high esteem, he is considered a bit odd because of his Jewish background. He is a member of the (fictitious) Söder congregation, but still works on the Sabbath when required.

At 8 am, Bublanski meets with Ekström and they discuss the case. Because of the journalistic angle, they know it will receive huge media attention. Ekström hand-picks Faste, Andersson and Holmberg for Bublanski’s team, while Bublanski himself wants Sonja Modig. Sonja is perhaps sculpted by Larsson from similar material to that utilised for Salander – though (unlike the latter) she is part of the establishment. Modig, 39, has had 12 years’ experience in the Violent Crimes Division; she is exacting and methodical, but also – very importantly – imaginative. She can make associations that are not necessarily logical, but which can lead to breakthroughs. And – as Larsson likes his idiot cops as antagonists – it’s time for another one. Hans Faste, 47, although a veteran in the investigation of violent crimes, has a huge ego and a loud-mouthed humour that winds people up, especially Bublanski; the latter finds it hard to tolerate him. However, Faste is something of a mentor to Andersson and they work well together.

Larsson has conditioned the reader to expect internet thoroughness from Salander, but he now reminds us that Blomkvist is no slouch in this territory. At the
Millennium
offices, the journalist has deleted 134 documents relating to protected sources. We are taken back to the police investigation – and literary proof is provided (if it were needed) that Larsson could handle the exigencies of a straightforward police procedural with quite as much authority as he deals with his two freelancers. Lennart Granlund of the National Forensics Laboratory rings Bublanski at 10 am – the Colt .45 was made in America in 1981. It
is
the murder weapon, and legally belongs to Nils Erik Bjurman. Fingerprints on the gun identify a second person – Lisbeth Salander, born 30 April 1978, arrested and fingerprinted for an assault in Gamla Stan in 1995.