The Girl Who Lived Twice (Millennium #6) - David Lagercrantz Page 0,14

and e-mails. By this time she was so tired that she failed to notice she had misspelled Kuznetsov’s name, and had also failed to stick to Blomkvist’s usual writing style. But she made sure to log out and lay back on the bed without taking off either her suit or her shoes.

When she fell asleep, she dreamed that her father was standing in a sea of fire, telling her that she had become weak and would not stand a chance against Camilla.

CHAPTER 5

August 16

Blomkvist woke at six on Sunday morning. It must be the heat, he thought. The air was close, as before a storm, and his sheets and pillows were soaked with sweat. His head was pounding and briefly he wondered if he was falling sick, until the events of the evening before came back to him. He remembered sitting up late and having a few drinks, and he cursed as the morning light now seeped under the curtains. Pulling the covers over his head, he tried to go back to sleep.

But then he made the mistake of checking his mobile to see if Salander had answered his text message. Of course she had not. He began to brood over her again, which was no way to relax, and in the end he sat up in bed.

There was a jumble of books on the bedside table which he had started but never finished, and for a while he contemplated staying in bed and reading, or perhaps working on his article. Instead he went into the kitchen and made himself a cappuccino, then fetched the morning papers and buried himself in the news. Half an hour later he had answered a number of e-mails and had puttered around in his apartment, tidying a little as he went.

At half past nine he got a text message from Sofie Melker, his young colleague who had just moved into the neighbourhood with her husband and two sons. Sofie wanted to discuss an idea for a story, and he didn’t feel like it at all. But he was fond of Sofie so he suggested meeting at Kaffebar on St. Paulsgatan in half an hour. He got a thumbs-up in reply. He did not like emojis; language seemed to him perfectly adequate. But he did not want to seem old-fashioned and decided to send some cheerful little image in response.

With his clumsy fingers he sent a red heart instead of a smiley. That could perhaps be misconstrued. But what the hell…there had been inflation there too, he thought. These days an emoji heart didn’t mean anything, did it? He went to shower and shave, and put on jeans and a summer shirt.

There was a clear blue sky and brilliant sunshine, and he took the stone steps down to Hornsgatan, swung out into Mariatorget and looked around. He was surprised to see so few signs of the previous evening’s festivities. Not even a cigarette butt on the gravel paths. The trash cans had been emptied and over to the left, outside the Rival Hotel, a young girl in an orange vest was picking litter off the grass with some elongated tongs. He passed her and then the statue in the middle of the square.

It was a statue he walked past more often than any other in town. Yet he could not have said what it represented, as with so many things in front of our noses. If anyone had asked him, he would probably have guessed at St. George and the Dragon. But it was Thor slaying the sea serpent Jörmungandr. During all these years he had never even read the inscription, and this time too he looked past the statue at a young father pushing his son on a swing in the playground, and at the benches and the grass on which people were sitting with their faces turned to the sun. It looked like any Sunday morning. And yet he sensed that there was something missing. It must be his memory playing tricks, he thought, and he had already set off again, turning into St. Paulsgatan, when it dawned on him.

What was missing was a figure he had not seen for a while now, but who used to sit on a piece of cardboard by the statue, motionless, like a meditating monk. A man with some fingers no more than stumps, with a weather-beaten, ancient face and a bulky, blue down jacket. For a while he had been a part of