love.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
She held out her mobile. “Go online and you’ll see.”
He waved vaguely, dismissively. “I bet they’ve been busy writing obituaries.”
“No, it’s good stuff—really.”
“Has anyone come from Must?” he said.
“Svante came, and Klas and Sten Siegler, and a few others, so the answer I guess is yes a thousand times over. Why do you ask?”
Why did he ask?
He knew the answer perfectly well, of course they had been to see him, and he saw the suspicion in Becka’s eyes. He remembered the feeling of that hand grabbing his hair deep in the water. And all of a sudden it hit him with unexpected force: He wanted to speak out, but he knew that would not be possible.
Their conversation was bound to be monitored and he thought it through, weighing the arguments for and against once more. He remembered his own desperate will to live as he was sinking through the currents.
“Do you have a pen and paper?” he said.
“What? Yes, I’m sure I have somewhere.”
She dug around in her handbag and took out a ballpoint pen and a small yellow block of Post-it notes and gave them to him.
We have to get out of here, he wrote.
* * *
—
Rebecka read what he had written and cast a fearful look at the guards through the glass in the door. Luckily they seemed bored and absorbed by their mobiles, and she answered in a nervous scribble:
Now?
He replied:
Now. Disconnect me from the machines and leave your mobile and handbag, we’ll pretend we’re going down to the hospital shop.
Pretend?
We’re leaving.
Are you crazy?
I want to tell you everything—and I can’t here.
Tell me what?
Everything.
They had been writing quickly, taking turns with the same pen. Now Johannes hesitated and looked at her with the same sad and bewildered look as before, but it also showed a streak of what she had been missing for so long, his fighting spirit, and that made her feel more than just fear.
She had no intention of running away with him, still less of leaving the hospital with all the guards and soldiers, and the paranoia surrounding him. But it would be wonderful if he really did want to talk, and it would do him good to get some exercise. His pulse was higher than normal but stable, and he was strong. They would surely be able to sneak off and find a corner, somewhere they could talk and not be overheard.
At the same time she knew they would gain nothing if she simply unplugged him from his drip and the hospital equipment and they fled, so instead she wrote:
I’ll call the staff and explain.
She rang the bell and he wrote:
We’ll find a place where no-one will disturb us.
Stop it, she thought. Just stop it.
What are you running from? she wrote.
The people at Must.
Is it Svante?
He nodded, or at least she thought he nodded. She wanted to shout: I knew it, and when she wrote again her hand was shaking. Her heart was pounding and her mouth was dry.
Has he done something?
He neither answered nor nodded. He just looked out of the window towards the motorway, and she took that as a yes. She wrote:
You have to report him.
He gave her a pitying look which said, You don’t understand.
Or go to the media. Mikael Blomkvist just called. He’s on your side.
“My side,” he muttered, and pulled a face. He reached for the pen and scribbled a couple of illegible lines on the pad. She stared at the words.
Can’t read, she wrote, even though she probably could, so he clarified:
Not sure that’s a good side to be on.
That triggered a new urge for self-preservation, as if Johannes were distancing himself from her with those words. As if they were no longer an obvious couple, a we, but two people who no longer necessarily belonged together. She wondered if she should not be running from him instead.
She glanced at the guards outside the room and tried to come up with a plan. But just then she heard steps in the corridor and the doctor, the one with the red beard, came in and asked what they wanted. She said—it was all she could think of—that Johannes was feeling a little better now, and was strong enough to take a walk.
“We’re going down to the shop to buy a newspaper and a book,” she said in a voice which did not sound like her own, but which carried a surprising note of authority.
* * *
—
It was half past