The Girl Who Lived Twice (Millennium #6) - David Lagercrantz Page 0,75
was a bit special. They weren’t on the same planet.”
“Did she treat him badly?”
“He was very superstitious, you see.”
“Did she tease him about it?”
“A bit, maybe, but I don’t think that bothered him. He just got on with his job. It was something totally different that destroyed their relationship.”
“And what was that…?”
“He had a wife.”
“Luna.”
“That’s it, her name was Luna. She meant everything to him, and I honestly think you could have said anything you liked to him. Treated him like dirt, as if he didn’t exist. He didn’t care. But one bad word about his wife and he became like thunder. One morning Luna came up to Base Camp with fresh bread and cheese, and mangoes and lychees and all sorts of other things in a decorated basket. She went around the tents, handing things out, and faces lit up and everyone thanked her. But as she was walking past Klara’s tent she tripped over a pair of crampons, I think, or a handbag or something else that Klara definitely didn’t need up there. Everything flew all over the gravel and Luna grazed her hands. There was actually no great drama, but Klara was sitting right there and instead of helping she just snapped, ‘Look where you’re going,’ and made a fuss. Basically she behaved like a stupid prima donna, and Nima was about to explode, I could see. I was afraid that he would lose his temper. But before anything could happen, Forsell appeared and helped Luna to her feet again and picked up the bread and fruit.”
“So Forsell was friendly with them?”
“He was friendly with everyone. Have you met him? Before everyone started to hate him, that is.”
“I interviewed him just when he’d been made Minister of Defence.”
“In that case you certainly won’t get what’s going on now. At that time, you see, everybody loved him. He was like a whirlwind. He stormed ahead, giving his thumbs-up sign, and he never stopped smiling. But you could be right, he may have had a particular relationship with Nima. He kept saying ‘Let me bow to the mountain legend,’ that sort of stuff, and would exclaim: ‘What a wife you have! What a beautiful woman,’ and of course that delighted Nima.”
“Did Nima then reciprocate in any way?”
“How do you mean?”
Mikael did not know how to put it, nor did he want to make any baseless accusations.
“Is it conceivable that Nima might have helped Forsell on the mountain, at the expense of Klara Engelman?”
Elin gave him a bewildered look.
“How on earth would that have worked?” she said. “Nima was with Viktor and Klara, wasn’t he, and Svante and Johannes went on ahead towards the summit on their own.”
“I know. But later? What happened then? It says everywhere that Klara was beyond rescue. But was she really?” he said, and then something unexpected happened.
Elin lost her temper.
“Too bloody right she was,” she said. “I get so fed up with this. A bunch of idiots who’ve never been anywhere near those altitudes, they think they know it all. But I can tell you…” She was almost lost for words. “Do you have the slightest idea what it’s like up there? You’re barely able to think, and it’s excruciatingly cold and tough, and if you’re really lucky you’ve just about got enough strength to look after yourself. To take one step at a time. No-one, not even a Nima Rita, can get a person down when they’re lying lifeless in the snow with their face frozen solid at twenty-seven thousand feet, and that’s how she was. We saw them ourselves on the way down, you know that, don’t you? She and Viktor with their arms around each other in the snow.”
“I do know.”
“And there was nothing to be done. Not a hope in hell of anybody being able to help her. She was dead.”
“I’m just double-checking the facts,” he said.
“Bullshit, I don’t believe that for one second. You were trying to imply something, weren’t you? You’re out to get Forsell, just like everyone else.”
I’m not, he wanted to shout, I’m not! But instead he took a deep breath.
“I apologize,” he said. “I just think…”
“What do you think?”
“That there’s something about this story that doesn’t add up.”
“Like what?”
“Like the fact that later Klara was no longer lying with Viktor. I know that wasn’t discovered until the following year, and that any number of things could have happened in between, avalanches and terrible storms. But still—”