Stieg Larsson, My Friend - Kurdo Baksi [2]
Maybe that was the moment when it finally came home to me that he had left us for good. I would never see him again. That night I made up my mind to travel to Skelleftehamn, the town in northern Sweden where he had been born, and to Umeå, where he had grown up. I bought plane tickets and prepared for the journey, but when the departure day dawned I realized that there was no chance of my travelling. Perhaps I’d be able to cope later on, but not yet. In fact I turned down several assignments in places close to his home territory: I still wasn’t up to it.
Stieg’s success as a writer did more than continue; if anything, the second volume in the Millennium trilogy, Flickan som lekte med elden (The Girl Who Played with Fire), was even more of a triumph. People in the trade began to talk about the most successful Swedish books of all time – and the third volume, Luftslottet som sprängdes (The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest), hadn’t even been published yet. Stieg’s name appeared in the newspapers almost every day; people on buses and in the underground had their heads buried in his books. He was still a constant presence in my life.
It struck me how little I actually knew about Stieg’s existence before we met. He hardly ever mentioned the first twenty years of his life during all the time we were good friends. I began to wonder if something had happened in his youth that made it difficult for him to be in the spotlight. He always refused to think of himself as important in any respect. On the other hand, he thought a lot of other people were important.
Who was Stieg?
I wrote that question down on a piece of paper and stared at the words. It suddenly occurred to me that the reason he worked himself to death might be hidden away in his past. The fact is that even if we try to persuade ourselves otherwise, no human being is capable of working like Stieg did. Did he do it in an attempt to achieve ambitious goals he had set himself, or was it some kind of escapism? It may sound odd, but I really do believe that Stieg often thought he could change the world single-handedly if he only worked hard enough at it. I sometimes used to feel guilty because I myself was in favour of gradual change, while he could only feel at ease when he was working flat out. I have never met anybody with such a compulsive drive to work, such strength and energy.
*
Once I had asked myself that question – who was Stieg? – I noticed how the journalist in me was slowly but surely aroused once more. I started researching his early life and scanning the local newspapers Västerbottens Folkblad and Västerbottens Kuriren. Every day I learned something new about him – his homes in Hagmarksvägen and Ersmarksgatan in the Sandbacka district of Umeå, his years at the Hagaskolan primary school, then the Dragonskolan grammar school. I searched for his name in driving-school records, even though I knew he didn’t have a licence. Perhaps it was a decision he had made early on without realizing the implications: the first piece of advice the police give to an individual living under threat is not to own a car, because the easiest way to track someone down in Sweden is through the driver and vehicle licensing authority.
When I discovered that Stieg had worked as a dishwasher at Sävargården in Umeå, I telephoned the well-known restaurant; none of the current staff had been working there at the same time. I was astonished to learn that he had completed his two years of national service with the I20 infantry regiment in Umeå. It is almost impossible to imagine Stieg as an infantryman. More credible was a spell as a manager at the pulp mill in Hörnefors.
Slowly but surely I worked my way back in time; it was like fitting together the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. Almost before I knew where I was, I found myself in Östra Valliden and Varuträsk, just outside