The Girl Who Lived Twice (Millennium #6) - David Lagercrantz Page 0,78

happened as a matter of priority. Instead he had been heavily medicated and at times even been strapped down. This was totally unjustified. There was information—which I am unfortunately not at liberty to disclose—suggesting that he was vulnerable to threats. Perhaps we did not fully appreciate how serious this was, and we are in no way denying our responsibility. But you have to understand that, for Henrik and myself, the patient’s best interests were of paramount importance. We wanted to show him a little human kindness and try to build some trust. The patient was disoriented. He never really knew where he was. At the same time, there was a rage inside him, a fury at the fact that no-one had wanted to listen to his story, and so we markedly reduced his medication and started therapy. I’m afraid this was not particularly successful either.

His delusions were too severe and, however keen he was to talk, he had developed a strong suspicion of our entire unit. But we were at least able to rectify some misunderstandings. We began to call him Nima, for example, and that was important to him. We addressed him as Sirdar Nima.

We could see that he had an obsessive fixation about his late wife, Luna. In the evenings he would walk through the hospital corridors, calling her name. He said he could hear her cries for help. He would also launch into wild, incomprehensible outbursts where he talked about a Madam—or a Mam Sahib. Both Henrik and I took this to be another way in which he referred to his wife, for there were strong similarities between the stories. But now that we read your reports, we suspect that we’re not dealing with one trauma, as we thought, but two.

You may think us incompetent for not having been able to come up with a clearer picture of his case. But we were working in difficult circumstances from the start. I think it is fair to say that we did make some progress. At the end of June he was given back his down jacket, which he had been asking for, and that seemed to make him feel secure. It’s true that he was always asking for alcohol—probably because he was getting fewer sedatives—but there were some nights when he no longer seemed to hear voices, and his night terrors also improved.

I recall that both Henrik and I left for our respective holidays feeling reasonably confident. We felt that we were on the right track, both with him and the clinic generally.>

I’m sure you did, Nyman thought. But it still led to the death of Nima Rita, and it was absolutely clear that the management at the clinic had underestimated his determination to get away. It was reasonable for him to be allowed on the terrace. But it must have been against all the rules that he should be there alone, with no staff present.

During the afternoon of July 27, he disappeared. The evidence was a small scrap of material torn from his trousers when he squeezed through the narrow gap between the roof and the terrace’s tall railings. After that we can only assume he climbed down the steep cliffs beyond and vanished from Årstaviken. He must then have found somewhere to live in the area around Mariatorget.

Yet the most shocking thing of all was that no-one reported it until Henrik Alm returned from his holiday on August 4, and even then no-one alerted the police because, as Dr. Mansoor also wrote, “It had been very clearly laid down that any new developments and incidents involving the patient were to be reported to the stipulated contact person.” What a load of gobbledygook, she thought, it positively reeked of classified information. In any event, it was patently obvious that something significant was being withheld. Once she had done a little more research on the South Wing clinic, and having had a long conversation with Chief Inspector Bublanski, she did precisely the same as before.

She rang Blomkvist.

* * *

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Blomkvist had not yet answered Catrin’s question. He was having a Guinness at the Tudor Arms on Grevgatan and trying to draw up a plan of action. He should get hold of Svante Lindberg. Blomkvist was increasingly convinced that he was a key person in the drama. But something told him that before he did so he needed more to go on. Forsell himself would be the best source, but Blomkvist had no idea what sort of condition