The Man Who Left Too Soon: The Life and Works of Stieg Larsson (5 page)

The book is in two parts: the first addresses the incendiary issues concerning the bitter battle between Gabrielsson and Larsson’s surviving relatives – she is keen, she says, to correct the way in which she has been portrayed, notably as ‘an impossible person with psychological problems’. The second part of the book is the one that she has laboured over longest; it is a study of loss – the loss of someone with whom you have spent a good proportion of your life. Gabrielsson wanted to discuss the strategy she has utilised to get through the ‘hell’ of this kind of experience – by, it seems, embracing the primal nature of such experiences, however lacerating they can be. Movingly, she talks about the agony of getting over Larsson’s death, and suggests that the perception of Swedish women as always capable does not tell the whole truth. A nurturing network of friends offered a lifeline – as well as supplying, she wryly notes, a great deal of food and drink. This support, she says, was invaluable, and carried her through a fraught period. Gabrielsson’s book is more even-handed than one might expect, making her points and arguing her corner (she is dignified in defending herself against criticism of her behaviour in the dispute over the estate) but although she is not attempting to demonise her late partner’s relatives, her anger is palpable.

The description that Eva Gabrielsson gives of her meeting with Erland, Larsson’s father, immediately after her partner’s death has a novelistic richness – although, of course, we are being given one side of the story (and by an articulate writer at that, rather than the less sophisticated, non-bookish Erland Larsson). Gabrielsson describes how she felt that Erland’s behaviour was ‘odd’, and appeared to her to be inappropriate; he was, she says, apparently formulating the words for the pending obituary and talking about how he had been ‘boasting to everyone that his son had a crime novel coming out, that he’d promised a local newspaper an interview with him…’. Gabrielsson’s sister had noticed Eva’s distressed reaction to this, and took Erland Larsson out for a walk.

On this day, in what may now be seen as a very significant action, Eva Gabrielsson gave her sister Stieg Larsson’s backpack, which contained his diary and his laptop – she was keen that they should be taken to the offices of
Expo
, so that some of his colleagues might work on his material. She was concerned, she points out, about the survival of the magazine – and she notes that a degree of chaos followed his death. The repercussions of this day’s events – principally because of the contents of the laptop in the backpack – have continued long after the author’s death.

Initially, it appears that Gabrielsson had no idea just how contentious the battle over the author’s estate would be. She alone attended the legal meeting at which it was affirmed that Stieg had left behind no testament (in order, as is now widely known, to protect his partner from possible attacks), and that Larsson’s father and brother would inherit the estate. As events moved towards their current impasse, Gabrielsson was not primarily concerned with financial matters. Erland Larsson had told her, Gabrielsson informed Rachel Cooke, that he, Erland, would not be inheriting anything. In her distress, Gabrielsson was, in fact, trying to find a therapist – in vain, as all available therapists were working with the Swedes who had suffered following the Asian tsunami.

Gabrielsson rehearses the bitter details of the succeeding dispute, and adds that she feels that the current custodians of her partner’s work are not doing it justice. She disputes several changes that have been made to the books, and also disagrees with the perception that Larsson had a workaholic nature – he was, apparently, ‘The most laid-back person, lying on his back, reading or thinking, watching spaghetti westerns.’

Intriguingly, Gabrielsson records another painful ambiguity relating to the success of her late partner’s novels, leaving aside the financial battles. She is pleased that readers are absorbing Larsson’s passionate response to corruption, barbarism and misogyny (not to mention the craven nature of most of the media – a key theme of the books), and that Larsson’s readers – by their enthusiastic devotion to his work – are ‘voting for Stieg’s ideal’. However, in a telling phrase she says sees the books as ‘whoring him out’ and regards their success in the marketplace as rather like having your children sold (a recurrent theme of Gabrielsson’s discussions of the books is her symbiotic involvement in their creation).

She is, finally, grateful for the time she had with Larsson, but is convinced that, if they had married, and had their address revealed, he would have been murdered. She discusses the tearfulness that overtakes her at times, but is comforted by the fact that an idea will occur to her that she then simply has ‘to get on with’. Her view of the dispute with the Larsson family is fatalistic, and she is aware that her options are running out. But she has confidence in the fact that – as she puts it – ‘the truth will win out in the end’. And the real revelation of the interview is that what exists of the fabled fourth book on the closely guarded laptop is 200 pages long.

CHAPTER 3

DEATH AND DISPUTES

L
arsson knew the great crime novels of the American hard-boiled masters Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, and, consciously or otherwise, shared the American writers’ careless attitude to their own health. And when, after submitting his manuscripts to his editor Eva Gedin at the Swedish publisher Norstedts, he undertook a punishing walk up seven flights of stairs because of a broken lift, his lengthy abuse of his body’s own resources finally took its toll with the heart attack that was to claim his life.

Larsson’s British publisher, Christopher MacLehose, has long been the doyen of foreign crime fiction in translation. He has had another Swedish talent, Henning Mankell, under his belt, and was the discoverer of a key Scandinavian crime breakthrough, Peter Høeg’s
Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow
. In his understated manner, MacLehose is proud of Larsson’s success. A distinguished and quietly-spoken publisher of the old school, he spoke to me about Larsson with regret for the premature loss of such a remarkable author, and is frank about the fact that Larsson appeared to be oblivious to all warnings about his health. ‘He smoked over 60 cigarettes a day and was a classic workaholic,’ says MacLehose. ‘To say that he didn’t give his body a chance almost understates the case. And like many driven men, he tended not to listen to the counsel of those around him – he was warned again and again that he should look after himself, but all such advice fell on deaf ears.’

The suggestion that Stieg Larsson did not talk to his brother and father for many years is disputed, but it is certainly true that he never married his partner Eva Gabrielsson – and by the diktats of the Swedish legal system, she, accordingly, did not inherit his estate or literary legacy (which is principally, of course, the three novels of the
Millennium Trilogy
). The legatees were, in fact, his father Erland and his brother Joakim. The reason why Stieg and Eva did not marry is now (as previously discussed) common knowledge: he considered that his well-known battles with extremist groups put him in some considerable danger, and he felt that he would to some extent shield Eva from some of this danger by avoiding marriage. She has said that Stieg was under the impression that the Swedish special cohabitation act for unmarried couples would cover rights of inheritance – which, in fact, it does not. Had he realised the uproar that would ensue – a bitter dispute in which his legacy, both artistic and financial, would be fought over – it is entirely possible that he might have rethought this strategy to obviate the pain and acrimony that would follow his death; given his character, it is hardly likely that ‘
après moi, le deluge
’ would have been his philosophy. The situation that has arisen regarding his royalties, with claims and counterclaims, is further complicated by Swedish laws regarding intestate deaths, in which the state takes 50% of the deceased’s earnings before relatives can make a claim.

There was considerable press coverage, both in Sweden and the UK, in November 2009 when Stieg’s father and brother spoke to Swedish newspapers. They had decided that they would be offering Eva a compensatory sum which would have no corollary conditions for her. Controversially, Joakim told one newspaper that she would be obliged to ring them and say ‘Yes, please’, and Stieg Larsson readers (many of whom have closely followed this un-illuminating saga) might not have been surprised that – after such an approach – Eva’s response was not immediately forthcoming. She gave no public pronouncement on the family’s suggestion, but made it clear that she was unhappy with the concept of discussing such matters via the press.

Cynics pointed to the offer as being part of an attempt to reclaim one of the most precious jewels in the crown in the Stieg Larsson legacy – the laptop which remained in the possession of Eva Gabrielsson – and which apparently contains what Larsson had written of the fourth, unfinished, novel (which, as mentioned earlier, Gabrielsson has said consists of a few hundred pages). The laptop was, at this point, safely squirreled away in a safe by Eva – and if all this sounds rather like the plot strand in one of the Larsson novels, that is surely only appropriate.

There had, in fact, already been a variety of attempts to support Eva in the campaign to gain access to the monies which she felt to be her due, having been an integral part of Larsson’s creative process when he was writing the three novels of the
Millennium Trilogy
, and various campaigns were mounted by such people as the Norwegian publisher Jan Moberg. So incendiary is the situation involving the dispute that there have even been movements to bring about change in Sweden’s inheritance laws.

At the time of this latest twist in the dispute, the estate had been valued at more than £20 million, and more was accruing all the time – particularly as a successful series of movies have been completed in Sweden, with the possibility of American remakes now confirmed – and the further fact that the paperback of the third book in the trilogy had not (at the time that the offer was made) appeared in the UK. And the inevitability of that paperback matching the phenomenal sale of its predecessors could hardly be gainsaid.

Ironically, the only will that Stieg Larsson had made was one written under the spell of a youthful enthusiasm: he had left all that he might have to the Communist party (despite his father’s claim ‘Stieg was never a communist’). This will, however, was never officially witnessed, ensuring that the estate became the joint property of his family and the Swedish state. Despite Eva’s claim that, as the late author’s common-law wife she was the natural legatee, under existing Swedish laws her position has no legal justification. She has pointed out that Stieg’s father and brother had negotiated with her for the laptop containing what was written of the fourth novel, but the lawyer had advised her that this was not a proposition that she should entertain. The latest offer of 20 million kronor (nearly £2 million) from Larsson’s father and brother was an attempt at a reconciliation, with Erland and Joakim telling the press that this was evidence of their desire to move on the stalled negotiations.

Eva, at the time of these developments, was writing her own memoir describing her times with Stieg, and the fact that Eva had said Stieg had effectively cut himself off from his family, suggested that the book would pull no punches. And whatever text had been written of Eva’s memoir, it was very obviously in a state of flux – changing, perhaps, as these bitter divisions continued.

The Stieg saga has some time to run, however. In January 2010 there were two heated debates in Sweden, one focusing on whether or not Stieg Larsson had actually written his three
Millennium
novels. The controversy began when a former colleague from the Swedish news agency TT (Tidningarnas Telegrambyrå) seemed to claim that Larsson was an exemplary researcher but a maladroit writer who could never have produced a readable novel, suggesting that Stieg’s partner Eva Gabrielsson was the actual writer. This claim was immediately rejected by others who knew him. The accusation – like a more acerbic version of the questions of authorship concerning the novels of the late Dick Francis, whose wife Mary was widely believed to be an essential creative part of the franchise – was detonated in the newspaper
Dagens Nyheter
by the reporter Anders Hellberg, who claimed that Larsson ‘could not write’. Hellberg, however, does not exactly offer up a concrete alternative.

Anders Hellberg had worked with Larsson at TT in the late Seventies and early Eighties. Reporting on these events was Sofia Curman of the Swedish news daily
dn.se
(with Oliver Grassmann). Hellberg’s incendiary comments included the following: ‘The language was weak, the word order was often incorrect, sentence constructions were simple and the syntax was sometimes completely mad’ – in other words, Larsson was not the kind of writer who could have produced the
Millennium Trilogy
.

Hellberg indirectly supported the view that the novels may have been partly the product of Larsson’s long-term partner Eva Gabrielsson, noting that she was ‘a very good writer’, but Gabrielsson herself was quick to scotch the idea in a statement given to the Swedish daily
Expressen
.

Similarly, and unsurprisingly, Larsson’s Swedish publisher, Eva Gedin of Norstedts, also gave short shrift to the assertion. (She was one of the first people I spoke to in my Larsson odyssey, interviewing her for
The Times
.) ‘To claim that Stieg did not write the
Millennium Trilogy
is just nonsense.’ Gedin said. ‘I can only comment on Stieg as a crime novelist. When he came to our publishing house he was a very mature writer and his scripts were thoroughly worked through.’