The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye: Continuing Stieg Larsson's Millennium Series (20 page)

“I don’t know yet. You didn’t say who you were, did you, Sofie?”

“I took advantage of my right to remain anonymous, as Erika suggested, and fortunately I’m not a celebrity like you.”

“Great. Take care now, and thanks!”

He ended the call and looked gloomily over Kungsholms torg. It was a glorious day, which only made things worse. He carried on down to the address he had been given – Norr Mälarstrand 32 – where Carl Seger’s former fiancée Ellenor Hjort lived with her fifteen-year-old daughter. These days she was a manager at Bukowskis’ auction rooms, fifty-two years old, divorced for three years and active in a number of non-profit organizations. She also coached her daughter’s basketball team. Clearly an active woman.

Blomkvist looked down towards Lake Mälaren, which was lying wind-still, and across to his own apartment on the other side of the water. It was oppressively hot and he felt sticky and heavy as he keyed in the code and took the lift to the top floor. He rang the doorbell and did not have to wait long.

Ellenor Hjort looked surprisingly young. She had short hair, beautiful dark-brown eyes and a small scar just below the hairline. She was dressed in a black jacket and grey trousers, and her home was filled with books and paintings. As she served Blomkvist tea and biscuits she seemed nervous. The cups and saucers rattled as she set them down on a table between a light-blue sofa and matching armchairs. Blomkvist made himself comfortable in one of them, beneath a rather garish oil painting of Venice.

“I must say, I’m surprised you should bring up this story again after all these years,” she said.

“I do understand, and I’m sorry if I’m opening old wounds. But I would like to know a little bit more about Carl.”

“Why is he of interest all of a sudden?”

Blomkvist hesitated and decided to be honest:

“I wish I could say. Perhaps there’s more to his death than meets the eye. Something feels not quite right.”

“What do you mean, more specifically?”

“It’s still mostly a gut instinct. I went to Uppsala and read all the witness statements, and there’s actually nothing inconsistent or odd about them except, well, precisely that there
is
nothing odd about them. If I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s that the truth is generally a little unexpected, or even illogical, since we humans aren’t entirely rational. Whereas lies, as a rule, tend to be consistent and comprehensive and often sound like a cliché – especially if the liars aren’t very good.”

“So the investigation into Carl’s death is a cliché,” she said. “Is that it?”

“The whole thing hangs together a little too well,” Blomkvist said. “There aren’t enough inconsistencies, and too few details that really stand out.”

“Do you have anything to tell me that I don’t already know?”

Ellenor Hjort sounded almost sarcastic.

“I could add that the man who was supposed to have fired the shot, Per Fält—”

Hjort interrupted and assured him that she had every respect for his profession and his powers of observation. But when it came to this investigation, there was nothing he could teach her.

“I’ve read through it a hundred times,” she said. “All the things you’re talking about I’ve felt like stabs in the back. Don’t you think I’ve shouted and screamed at Herman and Alfred Ögren – ‘What are you bastards hiding!?’ Of course I did!”

“And what answer did you get?”

“Indulgent smiles and kind words. ‘We understand it can’t be easy. We’re so very sorry …’ But after a while, when I wouldn’t give up, they threatened me. They told me to watch my step. They were powerful men and my insinuations were lies and slander, and they knew good lawyers and all that. I was too weak and too grief-stricken to keep arguing. Carl had been my life. I was devastated and I couldn’t study, or work, or cope with the most day-to-day routines.”

“I understand.”

“But the strange thing was – and it’s also the reason that I’m sitting here with you today, in spite of it all – who do you think comforted me more than anyone else, more than my father and mother and my sisters and friends?”

“Leo?”

“Exactly, lovely little Leo. He was as inconsolable as I was. We sat in the house Carl and I shared on Grönviksvägen and wept and ranted against the world and those bloody bastards in the forest, and when I screamed and sobbed ‘There’s only half of me now’, he said the same thing. He was only a child. But we were united in our grief.”

“Why did Carl matter so much to him?”

“They saw each other every week in Carl’s consulting rooms. But there was more to it than that, of course. Leo looked upon Carl not just as a therapist, but also as a friend, maybe the only person in the whole world who understood him, and for his part Carl wanted to …” She trailed off.

“What?”

“To help Leo, and to get him to understand that he was an immensely gifted boy with extraordinary potential, and then of course … I’m not going to pretend this wasn’t a factor too: Leo became important for Carl’s research, for his doctoral thesis.”

“Leo had hyperacusis.”

Hjort looked at Blomkvist in surprise and said:

“Yes, that was part of it. Carl wanted to discover whether that contributed to the boy’s isolation, and whether Leo saw the world differently from the rest of us. But don’t think that Carl was being cynical. There was a bond between them which not even I understood.”

Blomkvist decided to take a chance.

“Leo was adopted, wasn’t he?” he said.

Ellenor Hjort emptied her cup of tea and glanced out at the balcony to her left.

“Maybe,” she said.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because sometimes I got the impression that there was something sensitive about his background.”

Blomkvist decided to take another gamble:

“Did Leo have traveller heritage?”

Hjort looked up, her eyes fixed in concentration.

“Funny you should say that,” she said.

“Why?”

“Because I remember … Carl invited Leo and me to lunch in Drottningholm.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing much, but I remember it all the same. Carl and I were deeply in love. But sometimes it felt as if he were keeping secrets from me – not just professional ones from his therapy work – and that was probably one of the reasons I was so jealous. That lunch was one of those occasions.”

“One of which occasions?”

“Leo was upset that someone had called him a ‘gyppo’, and instead of just coming right out and saying ‘What kind of idiot is calling you that?’, Carl held forth like a schoolteacher and explained that ‘gyppo’ was a racist term and a relic from dark times. Leo nodded as if he’d heard it all before. Even though he was a child, he already knew about the traveller community and their kinship with the Romani people, and about their oppression – forced sterilizations, lobotomizations and even ethnic cleansing in some parishes. It felt … somehow … surprising for a boy like him.”

“And so what happened?”

“Nothing happened, not a single damn thing,” she said. “Carl dismissed it when I asked afterwards. It might have been confidential because of a client–therapist relationship, but given the broader context I got the feeling he was hiding things from me. That episode still sometimes pricks me like a thorn.”

“Was it one of Alfred Ögren’s boys who called Leo a ‘gyppo’?”

“It was Ivar, the youngest, the afterthought. The only one who followed in his father’s footsteps. Do you know him?”

“A little,” he said. “He was nasty, wasn’t he?”

“Seriously nasty.”

“How come?”

“I suppose one always wonders. There certainly was rivalry from the early days onwards, not only between the boys but also between their fathers. As a means to outdo each other, Herman and Alfred pitted their sons against each other to see whose was the cleverer, or the more enterprising. Ivar always came first whenever brawn counted. Leo was best at everything that involved the intellect, and that must have caused a lot of envy. Ivar knew about Leo’s hyperacusis. But instead of being considerate about it, he would wake him during their summers in Falsterbo by turning up the stereo to insane levels. Once he bought a bag of balloons which he inflated and then burst one by one behind Leo’s back when he was least expecting it. When Carl heard about it, he took Ivar aside and slapped him. Alfred Ögren went ballistic.”

“So there was some aggression against Carl in the wider circle around the family?”

“For sure. But I will say that Leo’s parents always stood up for Carl. They knew how important he was to their boy. That’s why ultimately I came to terms with – or tried to come to terms with – the idea that the shooting was an accident. Herman Mannheimer would never have killed his son’s best friend.”

“How did Carl first come into contact with the family?”

“Through his university. The timing was perfect. Previously, schools had done nothing whatsoever for exceptionally gifted children. Singling them out was seen as being at odds with the Swedish ideal of equality. Schools also lacked the ability to identify and understand them. Many intelligent pupils were so under-stimulated that they became disruptive and were put in classes which catered for special educational needs. It seems that there was a disproportionately large number of gifted children in psychiatric care. Carl hated that, and he fought for those boys and girls. Just a few years earlier he’d been called an elitist. Then he started getting recruited onto government committees. He got to know Herman Mannheimer through his supervisor, Hilda von Kanterborg.”

Blomkvist started.

“Who is Hilda von Kanterborg?”

“She was an associate professor on the Faculty of Psychology and academic supervisor to two or three doctoral students,” Hjort said. “She was young, not much older than Carl, and was expected to have a great future ahead of her. That’s why it’s so tragic that she …”

“Is she dead?”

“Not that I know. But she ended up with a bad reputation. I heard that she became an alcoholic.”

“Why the bad reputation?”

For a moment, Hjort seemed unfocused. Then she looked straight into Blomkvist’s eyes.

“It was after Carl died, so I have no inside knowledge. But my feeling is that it was pretty unfair.”

“In what way?”

“I’m sure Hilda was no worse than any male academic with a bit of swagger. I met her a few times with Carl, and she was incredibly charismatic, you just got drawn in by her eyes. Apparently she kept having all sorts of affairs, including with two or three of her students. That wasn’t good, but they were all grown-ups and she was popular and clever and nobody much minded, not at first. Hilda was just ravenous. Ravenous for life, for new friendships – and for men. She was neither calculating nor evil, she was simply all over the place.”

“So what happened?”

“I’m not altogether sure. All I know is that the university administration produced a couple of students who claimed – or rather hinted, somewhat vaguely – that Hilda had sold herself to them. It felt so cheap – as if they could think of nothing better than to make a whore of her. What are you doing?”

Without realizing it, Blomkvist had got to his feet and was searching on his mobile.

“I have a Hilda von Kanterborg living on Rutger Fuchsgatan, do you think that’s her?”

“There can’t be many with that name. Why are you so interested in her, all of a sudden?”

“Because …” Blomkvist said. He trailed off. “It’s complicated. But you’ve been very helpful.”

“Does that mean you’re off now?”

“Yes, all of a sudden I’m in a hurry. I have a feeling that …”

He did not finish that sentence either. Then Malin called, sounding at least as agitated as he was. He said he would call her back. He shook Ellenor Hjort’s hand, thanked her and ran down the stairs. Out on the street he called Hilda von Kanterborg.

December, a year and a half earlier

What can be forgiven, and what can not? Leo Mannheimer and Carl Seger had often discussed this. These were questions important to both of them, but in different ways. For the most part their position was generous: most things could be forgiven, even Ivar’s bullying. For the time being Leo was reconciled with him. Ivar didn’t know any better, he was malicious in the same way that others are shy or unmusical. He had as little understanding of other people’s feelings as someone with a tin ear has of tones and melodies. Leo indulged him, and occasionally he would be rewarded by a friendly pat on the shoulder, a look of complicity. Ivar often asked him for advice, maybe out of self-interest, but still … Sometimes he paid him a back-handed compliment: “You’re not so stupid after all, Leo!”

Ivar’s marriage to Madeleine Bard destroyed all that. It pitched Leo into a hatred which no amount of therapy could cure or check. Nor did he resist it. He welcomed it as a fever, a storm. It was worst at night or in the small hours. That was when a thirst for revenge pounded in his temples and his heart. He fantasized about shootings and other accidents, social humiliation, sicknesses, hideous skin rashes. He even pricked holes in photographs and used the power of thinking to try to get Ivar to fall from balconies and terraces. He teetered on the edge of madness. But nothing came of it, except that Ivar became vigilant and anxious and possibly started planning something himself. Time passed and the situation sometimes got better, sometimes worse.

It was snowing and exceptionally cold. His mother was on her deathbed. He sat with her three or four times a week and tried to be a good, comforting son. But it was not easy. Her illness had not made her any milder. The morphine had peeled off yet another layer of restraint, and on two separate occasions she called him weak:

“You have always been a disappointment, Leo,” she said.

He did not answer her when his mother was like this, but he did dream of leaving the country for good. He was not seeing many people other than Malin Frode, who was getting a divorce and was about to leave the firm. Leo never believed that she loved him, but it was nice just to be with her. They helped each other through a difficult time and they laughed together, even if the anger and the fantasies did not disappear even then. At times Leo became genuinely frightened of Ivar. He imagined that he was being followed, spied on. He no longer had any illusions. Ivar was capable of just about anything.