David Lagercrantz [David Lagercrantz] - The Girl Who Lived Twice

CONTENTS

First published in Great Britain in 2019 by

MacLehose Press

An imprint of Quercus Publishing Ltd

Carmelite House

50 Victoria Embankment

London EC4Y 0DZ

An Hachette UK company

Hon som mste d David Lagercrantz & Moggliden AB,

first published by Norstedts, Sweden, in 2019

Published by agreement with Norstedts Agency

English translation copyright 2019 by George Goulding

Map Emily Faccini

The moral right of David Lagercrantz to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

George Goulding asserts his moral right to be identified as the translator of the work

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN (HB) 978 0 85705 636 8

ISBN (TPB) 978 0 85705 637 5

ISBN (E-BOOK) 978 0 85705 638 2

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the authors imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental

CHARACTERS AND ORGANISATIONS IN THE MILLENNIUM SERIES

A beggar nobody had seen before appeared in the neighbourhood that summer. No-one knew him by name, nor seemed to care much about him, but to a young couple who passed him every morning he was the crazy dwarf. He was in fact around one metre fifty tall, but he was certainly erratic, and he would occasionally spring up and grab people by the arm, babbling incoherently.

Most of the day he sat on a piece of cardboard right by the fountain and the statue of Thor in Mariatorget, and there he commanded a measure of respect. With his head held high and his back always straight he looked like a chieftain who had fallen on hard times. That was all the social capital he had left, and it was why some people still tossed him coins or banknotes, as though they could sense a lost greatness. And they were not mistaken. There had indeed been a time when people bowed before him. But all repute, all status, had long since been stripped from him. He was missing several fingers and the dark patches on his cheeks did not improve his appearance. They looked to be a shadow of death itself.

The only thing which stood out was his quilted down jacket, a blue Marmot parka which must have been expensive. It looked so out of place, not just because of all the dirt and stains on it, but also because it was much too wintry a garment to be worn at the height of summer in Stockholm. An oppressive heat lay over the city, and as the sweat trickled down the mans cheeks, passers-by studied the jacket with a pained expression, as if the very sight of it made them feel uncomfortably hot themselves. But the beggar was never without it.

He looked lost to the world and seemed unlikely ever to be a threat to anybody, but it was later said that at the beginning of August a more determined expression came over him. On the afternoon of the 11th he was seen painstakingly writing out a screed on lined A4 paper and, later that same evening, he stuck it up like a wall newspaper on the bus stop at Sdra station.