The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye: Continuing Stieg Larsson's Millennium Series by David Lagercrantz Page A

the week she worked, Lulu always arrived punctually at 9.00 p.m. He longed to see her. She would help him into bed, put on the morphine plaster and make him comfortable, and then retrieve the papers from the bottom drawer in the chest in the living room where she had put them the last time, after Maj-Britt Torell’s visit.
    Palmgren vowed to devote his utmost attention to them. This might give him the pleasure of helping Salander one last time. He groaned and felt a sharp pain in his hips. This was the worst time of day and he said a small prayer: “Dear, wonderful Lulu. I need you. Come now.” And indeed he lay there for five, perhaps ten minutes, drumming his good hand against the bed cover, when steps he thought he recognized echoed in the hallway.
    The door opened. Was she twenty minutes early? How wonderful! But there was no cheerful greeting from the front door, no “Good evening, my old friend”, only footsteps stealing into the apartment and coming towards his bedroom. This scared him, and he was not easily scared. One of the advantages of age was that he no longer had much to lose. But now he was anxious, perhaps because of those papers. He wanted to read them properly, to use them to help Salander. All of a sudden he had something to live for.
    “Hello,” he called out. “Hel
lo
?”
    “Oh – are you awake? I thought you would be asleep.”
    “But I’m never asleep when you arrive,” he said, perceptibly relieved.
    “I don’t think you realize how exhausted and run down you’ve been these last days. I thought that visit to the prison might be the end of you,” Lulu said as she came through the doorway.
    She was wearing eye make-up and lipstick and a brightly coloured African dress.
    “Has it been that bad?”
    “You have been almost impossible to talk to.”
    “I’m sorry. I’ll try and do better.”
    “You’re my number one, you know that. Your only flaw is that you keep saying sorry.”
    “Sorry.”
    “You see?”
    “What’s with you today, Lulu? You’re looking particularly lovely.”
    “I’m going out with a Swedish guy from Västerhaninge. Can you imagine? He’s an engineer and owns a house and a new Volvo.”
    “He’s smitten with you, of course?”
    “I hope so,” she said. She straightened out his legs and hips, making sure he was lying properly on the pillow and raised the backrest into a sitting position. As the bed moved with a soft buzzing sound she chattered on about the man from Västerhaninge who was called Robert, or possibly Rolf. Palmgren was not listening, and Lulu laid a hand on his forehead.
    “You’re in a cold sweat, silly. I should shower you.”
    No-one could call him silly with as much tenderness as Lulu. Usually he enjoyed this banter, but today he was impatient. He looked down at his lifeless left hand, which seemed more pitiful than ever.
    “I’m sorry, Lulu. Could you do something for me first?”
    “Always your service.”
    “Always
at
your service,” he corrected her. “You know those papers you put away in the chest last time? Can you fetch them? I need to read them again.”
    “But you said it was awful to read them.”
    “It was. But I have to take another look.”
    She hurried off and reappeared a minute or two later with a larger sheaf than he remembered having looked through in the first place. Maybe she had grabbed more than one file. He began to fret. Either there would be nothing of significance in the papers, or else there would be, in which case who could predict what Lisbeth would get up to.
    “You seem chirpier today. But you’re not a hundred per cent, are you? Is it that Salander woman you’re thinking about?” Lulu said, setting down the bundle of papers on the bedside table next to his pill boxes and books.
    “I’m afraid so. It was awful to see her in that prison. Can you fetch my toothbrush and put on my morphine plasters? Move my legs a little bit over to the left please. It feels as if the whole lower part of my