The Girl Who Lived Twice (Millennium #6) - David Lagercrantz Page 0,53

to the man,” Modig said.

“I sold to him all right. But I thought he was scary, so I kept as far away as I could.”

“Scary in what way?”

“He had scary eyes, and he had stumps instead of fingers and bloody patches on his face. He was going on about the moon. ‘Luna, luna,’ he kept saying. That’s moon, right?”

“As far as I know.”

“At least he did once. He appeared from Krukmakargatan, limping, and was beating his chest and saying that Luna was alone and calling for him, she and someone whose name was Mam Sabib or whatever the fuck it was, and it frightened me. He was a complete psycho, and I gave him the stuff even though he didn’t have the right money. It didn’t surprise me at all that he turned violent later.”

“In what way violent?”

Shit shit shit, Nilsson thought. He had promised not to say anything. But it was too late now, he would have to go with it.

“Not with me.”

“With whom?”

“Heikki Järvinen.”

“And who’s that?”

“A customer, one of my customers who actually has a bit of style. Heikki met the bloke in Norra Bantorget in the middle of the night. At least it must have been him. Heikki described a little Chinaman with fingers missing wearing a huge fucking down jacket. He was going on about having been up in the clouds, and when Heikki wouldn’t believe him he got himself a punch which made his head swim. The Chinaman was as strong as an ox, he said.”

“Where can we find this Heikki Järvinen?”

“Järvinen comes and goes, so you never really know.”

The policewoman made notes and nodded, and asked a few more questions. Then she left him, along with the uniforms, and Nilsson gave a sigh of relief. He had been sure that there was something very odd about the Chinaman, and he took himself off to call Heikki Järvinen before the police got hold of him.

* * *

—

Blomkvist heard at once that Carson’s voice had changed, as if he had been up all night or had come down with a cold.

“It’s a civilized time of day at your end, isn’t it?” he said.

“Very much so.”

“Not here. My head feels as if it’s about to blow apart. You remember I told you I had a relative who was on the mountain in 2008? And you remember I said he was dead?”

“Absolutely.”

“Well, he was. Or at least presumed dead. But I should take it from the top. I called my uncle in Khumbu. He functions as a sort of local information exchange, and we went through the whole list you sent. The only relative we found there was this one person, and I was about to give up. If he was dead then he was dead and couldn’t very well show up in Stockholm and die all over again. But my uncle told me that no body had ever been found. I looked into it all more closely, and I saw that the age was right, and so was the height.

“What’s his name?”

“Nima Rita.”

“He was one of the leaders, wasn’t he?”

“He was the Sirdar, the head of the group of Sherpas, and the one who worked hardest on the mountain that day.”

“I know, I know, I read about him…He saved Mads Larsen, and Charlotte somebody.”

“That’s right, and if it hadn’t been for him, there would have been an even worse catastrophe. But he paid a high price. He raced up and down like a galley slave, and afterwards he had bad frost damage to his face and chest. He had to have some of his fingers and toes amputated.”

“So you really do think it’s him?”

“It has to be. He had a tattoo of a Buddhist wheel on his wrist.”

“My God,” Blomkvist said.

“Exactly, it’s all falling into place. Nima Rita is my third cousin, as they call it, so it’s perfectly reasonable to assume that he and I shared that special mutation in the Y chromosome that your researcher colleague pointed out.”

“Can you see any explanation for his having ended up in Sweden?”

“No, I can’t. But there’s a follow-up which is interesting.”

“Tell me. I haven’t had time to acquaint myself with all the details yet.”

“At first the assistant guides, Robin Hamill and Martin Norris, were praised for their rescue efforts, to the extent there was any praise going since Engelman and Grankin were dead,” Carson said. “But with the issuing of the more comprehensive reports, it was clear that the decisive role in the drama had been