not able to get hold of him that evening.
According to Forsell’s account, it would by then have been past eight in the evening. Darkness was not far off and the cold, ferocious conditions were soon to deteriorate further. But Nima walked straight back into it, in a desperate attempt to bring down Klara Engelman. He was himself already in a bad way. The figure Forsell saw emerging from the fog and the snow was stumbling along with his head bent against the storm, as ever without an oxygen mask; all he had was a headlamp whose light darted about in the snow. His cheeks were frostbitten. He did not see Forsell and Lindberg until he was almost upon them. To them he was a godsend, once it dawned on them that it really was him in the flesh. Forsell could hardly stand upright. He was about to become the third victim on the mountain that evening. But Nima Rita paid no attention to that. “Must get Mamsahib” is all he said. “Must get Mamsahib.” Lindberg shouted to him that it was pointless, that she was dead. But Nima would not listen, not even when Lindberg bellowed:
“Then you’ll be killing us. You’re saving a dead person instead of us—we’re alive!”
Nima just walked on, up the face. He vanished into the storm with his down jacket flapping, and that was what did it. Forsell collapsed and was unable to get up, either by himself or with Lindberg’s help. He had no idea what happened next or how long it took, only that darkness fell and he was freezing, and Lindberg was yelling:
“For Christ’s sake, Johannes, I don’t want to leave you. But I have to, I’m sorry, otherwise we’ll both die.”
Lindberg laid a hand on his head, and stood up. Forsell realized that he was going to be abandoned. He would freeze to death. But then he heard the shouts, those inhuman howls. As he told her this, Rebecka thought, It’s not so bad after all. It was not pretty, but it was a human response and the usual rules did not apply up there. There were different standards on the mountain and Forsell had done nothing wrong, not then.
He had been too exhausted even to grasp what was going on, and that was why, regardless of what happened later, she wanted him to talk to a reporter like Blomkvist, someone who was capable of burrowing deep into the story, following all of its meandering paths and plumbing its psychological depths. But maybe that was a mistake. Maybe there were things which she was not aware of yet, things which were even worse.
She could not rule it out, especially with Johannes whispering so agitatedly in the kitchen and Kowalski shaking his head and throwing his arms out. Christ, what an idiot she had been. Perhaps they should try to bury the whole affair, keep their mouths shut—for the sake of the boys. For her sake. Oh, God help them, and she cursed her husband.
How could he have got them into this predicament?
How could he?
* * *
—
Blomkvist listened to Catrin muttering in her sleep. It was late and he was dead tired, but it was impossible to drift off. His head was filled with thoughts and his heart was pounding. What the hell’s the matter, he thought. I’m not exactly new to this game. And yet he was as excited as a cub reporter working on his very first scoop. As he tossed and turned he thought back to what Catrin had said to him:
“Don’t you think Grankin was a soldier too?”
“Why do you say so?”
“He looked like one,” she said, and, thinking back, that really did seem right.
There was something about the way he held himself that suggested a senior officer, and normally Blomkvist would not have given it a second thought. People can give an impression of being one thing and then turn out to be something quite different. But now he had received that message from the mysterious “Charles,” and it pointed in the same direction. Grankin would also seem to be one of the reasons for Forsell’s expulsion from Russia. He would need to follow up on that.
It was what Blomkvist had believed all along, and he had been planning to follow it up in the morning, before his meeting with the Forsells. But since he couldn’t sleep anyway, why not just get up? So long as he did not wake Catrin. He was already feeling guilty