The Girl Who Lived Twice (14 page)

August 26

It was late and Bublanski was still in his office at police headquarters, surfing the news sites. Defence Minister Forsell was in a coma in intensive care at the Karolinska hospital, having nearly drowned. His condition was described as critical. Even if he were to regain consciousness, there was a risk he had suffered brain damage. There was talk of that, and of cardiac arrest, osmotic pulmonary edema and hypothermia, as well as arrhythmia. Things were not looking good.

The serious media were suggesting that it could have been a suicide attempt, which must have been leaked by some insider. It was widely known that Forsell was an excellent swimmer, in which case the most reasonable explanation would be that he had overestimated his capabilities, gone too far out and got caught in the freezing currents. But it was impossible to know for sure. There were reports that he had been saved by a man with a motorboat, and then picked up by a boat from the Sea Rescue Society. He had been taken to hospital by helicopter.

Beneath these stories were articles praising Forsell as a “strong and enterprising minister who had stood up for fundamental human values.” They sounded like obituaries. He had, they said, “battled intolerance and destructive nationalism” and been an “incurable optimist who had always sought out the middle ground.” The articles mentioned that he had been the victim of a “deeply unjust hate campaign,” which could be traced back to troll factories in Russia.

“About time someone said that,” Bublanski muttered, and nodded in agreement while reading a column by Catrin Lindås in
Svenska Dagbladet,
in which she argued that this was a logical consequence of the “mood in a society that encourages witch-hunts and the demonization of people.”

Then he turned to Inspector Modig, who was sitting in the worn armchair next to him, her laptop on her knee.

“Well, Sonja,” he said. “Are we getting anywhere with our story?”

Modig looked up at him, somewhat at a loss.

“I can’t say we are, really. We haven’t found Heikki Järvinen yet, but I’ve been speaking to one of the doctors who took care of Nima Rita in the mental health clinic in Kathmandu, the one Blomkvist mentioned.”

“And what did he say?”

“
She
said that Nima Rita had developed severe psychosis and was hearing voices and cries for help. He was desperate because he couldn’t do anything about them. Her impression was that he was constantly reliving something.”

“What sort of thing, could she say?”

“Things he had experienced on the mountain, times when he’d felt inadequate. She said that they tried to medicate him and give him electroconvulsive therapy, but it was hard.”

“Did you ask if he’d talked about Forsell?”

“She recognized the name, but that’s all. He had mostly spoken about his wife and Stan Engelman, of whom he was frightened. I think that’s something we should follow up. Apparently this Engelman’s pretty unscrupulous. But I heard something else that’s interesting too.”

“What’s that?”

“After the drama on Everest in 2008, the journalists all wanted to speak to Nima Rita. But that interest soon petered out. It became known that he was sick and confused and he was more or less forgotten. But as the tenth anniversary approached he was contacted by someone called Lilian Henderson, a journalist with
The Atlantic,
who was writing a book about the drama. Lilian tried to interview Nima at the hospital, by telephone.”

“What did she find out?”

“Actually nothing, from what I understand. But she and Nima Rita agreed to meet up since she was coming to Nepal to do some research. Except that, by the time she got there, he was already gone, and at the end of the day no book ever materialized. The publishers were afraid of being sued.”

“By whom?”

“By Engelman.”

“What was he so scared of?”

“That’s what I think we ought to find out.”

“So are we absolutely certain that the beggar and this Nima Rita are one and the same person?” Bublanski said.

“I’d say so. Far too many things match up, and apparently there’s a genuine physical likeness.”

“How did Blomkvist find this out?”

“All I know is what he wrote to you. I’ve tried to reach him. But no-one seems to know where he is, not even Erika Berger. She says she’s worried. They’d just been talking about doing a profile on Forsell, and ever since the accident she’s been frantically trying to get hold of him.”

“Doesn’t he have a place out on Sandön as well?”

“Yes, at Sandhamn.”

“Could Must or Säpo have got their hands on him? The whole thing seems very hush-hush.”

“It is. We’ve informed military high command, but they haven’t got back to us. And we don’t know either if Blomkvist’s told us everything. Maybe he really did find a connection between the Sherpa and Forsell.”

“Don’t you find this whole story distasteful?” Bublanski said.

“How do you mean?”

“Forsell criticizes Russia and accuses them of interfering with the Swedish electoral process and suddenly he’s hated by everybody and up to his neck in lies, and driven to the depths of despair. Then, hey presto, a dead Sherpa appears from nowhere and the finger points straight at Forsell. I have the feeling someone’s trying to set him up.”

“It doesn’t sound great when you put it like that.”

“No,” he said. “Do we still not know how the beggar got into the country?”

“The Migration Agency has reiterated that he’s not in any of their records.”

“Odd.”

“He should have cropped up in our databases.”

“Maybe the intelligence services have put a lid on that too,” he muttered.

“Wouldn’t surprise me.”

“Are we not allowed to talk to Forsell’s wife either?”

Modig shook her head.

“We’ll need to question her soon, I’m sure they understand that. They can’t stop us doing our job,” he said.

“I have a bad feeling that’s precisely what they think they can do.”

“Are they scared of something too?”

“Almost seems like it.”

“Well, we’ll just have to accept it, and make do with what we have. But what a mess,” Bublanski said, and he couldn’t stop himself from having another look at the news sites.

Johannes Forsell’s condition remained critical.

Thomas Müller was late home from work, back in his large loft apartment on Østerbrogade in Copenhagen. He took a beer from the refrigerator and saw that the sink was dirty and the breakfast dishes had not been put in the dishwasher. He walked through all the rooms. None of them had been cleaned.

The cleaners had simply not bothered. As if he didn’t have enough trouble already. Nothing but grief and moaning at work. His secretary was brain-dead. Today he had yelled at her so much that it had given him a headache, and then, of course, right in the middle of everything else, there was Paulina. He had had enough of it now. How could she! After all he had done. She had been a little nothing when they first met, a worthless journalist on a local paper. He had given her everything—everything apart from a signed prenuptial agreement, which had been a big mistake. Bloody dyke.

When she came back to him like a wet rag, he would pretend to be nice. Then he’d let her have it. No way would he ever forgive her, especially not after that message.

it had said.

That was all, and he had smashed his mobile to bits, and a crystal vase…No, he didn’t want to think about it.

He took off his jacket, settled onto the sofa with his beer and wondered whether to ring Fredrike, his mistress. But he was bored with her too. He turned on the TV and heard that the Swedish Minister of Defence was hovering between life and death. He could not have cared less. That buffoon was a PC idiot, everyone knew that, and a hypocrite and a cheat too. He switched over to Bloomberg and the financial news and let his thoughts wander, and he must have flipped channels at least a dozen times when the doorbell rang. Fuck. Who the hell turns up at ten at night? He was tempted to ignore it.

Then it struck him that it could be Paulina, so he hauled himself to his feet and yanked open the door. But it was not his wife. A stroppy-looking, black-haired girl in jeans and a hoodie was standing in the corridor, holding a bag and looking down at the hall floor.

“I don’t need anything,” he said.

“It’s about the cleaning,” she said.

“You can tell your boss from me that she can go to hell,” he said. “I have no time for people who don’t do their job properly.”

“It’s not the cleaning company’s fault,” the woman said.

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m the one who cancelled the service.”

“You did
what
?”

“I cancelled it, and I’ll take care of things myself.”

“Don’t you get it? I don’t want any more cleaning. Piss off,” he spat, slamming the door.

But the woman put her foot in the way and stepped over the threshold, and only then did he notice that there was something odd about her. She walked in a funny way, without moving her arms or upper body and with her head slightly tilted to one side, as if she were looking at a remote point over by the windows. Perhaps she was a criminal or had some mental problem. Her eyes were icy and expressionless, as if she were not entirely present, and he said with all the authority he could muster:

“If you don’t fuck off right away, I’ll call the police.”

She did not answer. She did not even appear to have heard. She bent to get some rope and a roll of duct tape out of her bag, and for a moment he could not think of anything to say. Then he yelled “Out!” and grabbed her by the hand.

But somehow she managed to take hold of his wrist and drag him over to the dining table. He was both furious and frightened, and he tore himself loose, meaning to hit her or ram her against the wall, but she rushed at him so that he toppled onto his back on the table. In a matter of seconds she was on top of him with those same icy, blank eyes, and quick as a flash she had him tied down. In her monotone she said:

“Now I’m going to iron your shirt for you.”

Then she put tape over his mouth and eyed him the way a wild beast eyes its prey. Thomas Müller had never felt so terrified in all his life.

Blomkvist had suffered badly in the cold currents and had swallowed a lot of water. He and Forsell had been winched up and flown away in the same helicopter. For a while he had been more or less unconscious. But he had recovered fairly quickly and now, late in the evening, after the ward round and three interrogation sessions by military intelligence, he was given back his belongings, including his mobile which had been retrieved from his dinghy. A young family in a sailing boat had towed it in from the bay. He was given permission to go home, but the doctors recommended he stay in hospital overnight. He was also informed that a prosecutor by the name of Matson had placed a gag order on him. He needed to call his sister Annika, the lawyer.

He knew very well that the legal basis for silencing journalists was shaky, and in any case he resented the autocratic behaviour of the men from the intelligence service. But he let it lie. He was not going to write one word until he had got to the bottom of the story anyway, so he stayed sitting on the bed, gathering his thoughts. He was not left in peace for long.

There was another knock at the door and a tall woman with dark-blond hair and bloodshot eyes appeared in the room. For some reason—perhaps because he was just staring at all the missed calls on his mobile—it was a while before he realized it was Rebecka Forsell. Her hands were shaking, and she said she really wanted to thank him before he left.

“Is he better?” Blomkvist asked.

“The worst is over, thank God. But we don’t yet know if he’s suffered any brain damage. It’s too early to tell.”

He asked her to take a seat in the chair next to him.

“They say that you too had a close shave,” she said.

“That’s a bit of an exaggeration.”

“But still…do you realize what you’ve done—for us? Do you get that? It’s immense.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I’m touched.”

“Is there anything we can do for you?” she said.

Tell me everything you know about Nima Rita,
he thought.
Out with the truth.

“See to it that your husband gets better and finds himself a more restful job,” he said.

“It’s been a dreadful time.”

“I understand.”

“You know…”

She looked confused, and was nervously rubbing her hand against her left arm.

“Yes?”

“I’ve just been reading about Johannes online, and all of a sudden people are being nice again, not all of them, of course, but many. It’s almost unreal. It’s brought home to me the nightmare we’ve been living through.”

Blomkvist leaned forward and took her hand.

“I was the one who called
Dagens Nyheter
and told them it was a suicide attempt, even though I don’t know for certain what happened, exactly. Was that a bad thing to do?” she asked.

“You had your reasons, I suppose.”

“I wanted them to understand how far it had gone.”

“Fair enough.”

“The men from Must told me something very odd,” she said, looking distraught.

“What did they tell you?” he said, trying to sound calm.

“That you had found out about Nima Rita’s death here in Stockholm.”

“Yes, it’s really odd. Did the two of you know him?”

“I’m not sure I dare say anything. They keep badgering me all the time to keep quiet about it.”

“They’re on at me too,” he said, and added, “But do we have to be so obedient?”

She gave a sorrowful smile.

“Maybe not.”

“Well then, did you know him?”

“We did for a while at Base Camp. We liked him a lot, and I think he liked us. ‘Sahib, Sahib,’ he said all the time about Johannes, ‘very good person.’ He had a lovely wife.”

“Luna.”

“Luna,” she repeated. “She spoiled us all, she was constantly on the go. We helped them to build a house in Pangboche afterwards.”

“Good for you.”