CHAPTER 10
Monday, March 14–Sunday, March 20
The journeys to and from Ersta were time-consuming and a hassle. In the middle of
March Salander decided to buy a car. She started by acquiring a parking place, a
much greater problem than buying the car itself.
She had a space in the garage beneath the building in Mosebacke, but she did not
want anyone to be able to connect the car to where she lived on Fiskargatan. On
the other hand, several years before she had put herself on a waiting list for a space
in the garage of her old housing association apartment on Lundagatan. She called
to find out where on the list she was now and was told that she was at the top.
And not only that—at the end of the month there would be a spot free. Sweet. She
called Mimmi and asked her to make a contract with the association right away.
The next day she started hunting for a car.
She had the money to buy whatever Rolls-Royce or Ferrari she wanted, but she was
not remotely interested in anything ostentatious. Instead she went to two dealers
in Nacka and came away with a four-year-old burgundy Honda automatic. She
spent an hour going over every detail, including the engine, to the salesman’s
exasperation. On principle she talked the price down a couple of thousand and paid
in cash.
Then she drove to Lundagatan, where she knocked on Mimmi’s door and gave her a
set of keys. Sure, Mimmi could use the car if she asked in advance. Since the garage
space would not be free until the end of the month, they parked on the street.
Mimmi was on her way to a date and a movie with a girlfriend Salander had never
heard of. Since she was made up outrageously and dressed in something awful with
what looked like a dog’s collar round her neck, Salander assumed it was one of
Mimmi’s flames, and when Mimmi asked if she wanted to come along she said no
thanks. She had no desire to end up in a threesome with one of Mimmi’s long-legged girlfriends who was no doubt unfathomably sexy but would make her feel
like an idiot. Anyway, Salander had something to do in town, so they took the
tunnelbana together to Hötorget, and there they parted.
Salander walked to OnOff on Sveavägen and made it with two minutes to spare
before closing time. She bought a toner cartridge for her laser printer and asked
them to take it out of the box so that it would fit in her backpack.
When she came out of the shop, she was thirsty and hungry. She walked to
Stureplan, where she decided on Café Hedon, a place she had never been to before
or even heard about. She instantly recognized Nils Bjurman from behind and turned
right around in the doorway. She stood by the picture window facing the pavement
and craned her neck so that she could observe her guardian from behind a serving
counter.
The sight of Bjurman aroused no dramatic feelings in Salander, not anger, nor
hatred, nor fear. As far as she was concerned, the world would assuredly be a better
place without him, but he was alive only because she had decided that he would be
more useful to her that way. She looked across at the man opposite Bjurman, and
her eyes widened when he stood up. Click.
He was an exceptionally big man, at least six foot six and well built. Exceptionally
well built, as a matter of fact. He had a weak face and short blond hair, but overall
he made a very powerful impression.
Salander saw the man lean forward and say something quietly to Bjurman, who
nodded. They shook hands and Salander noticed that Bjurman quickly drew his
hand back.
What sort of guy are you and what business do you have with Bjurman?
Salander walked briskly down the street and stood under the awning of a
tobacconist shop. She was looking at a newspaper headline when the blond man
came out of Café Hedon and without looking around turned left. He passed less
than a foot behind Salander. She gave him a good head start before she followed
him.
It was not a long walk. The man went straight down into the tunnelbana station at
Birger Jarlsgatan and bought a ticket at the gate. He waited on the southbound
platform—the direction Salander was going anyway—and got on the Norsborg train.
He got off at Slussen, changed to the green line towards Farsta, and got off again at
Skanstull. From there he walked to Blomberg’s Café on Götgatan.
Salander stopped outside. She studied the man the blond hulk had come to meet.
Click. Salander saw immediately that something sinister was going on. The man
was overweight and had a narrow, untrustworthy face. His hair was pulled back
into a ponytail and he had a mousy moustache. He wore a denim jacket, black
jeans, and high-heeled boots. On the back of his right hand he had a tattoo, but
Salander could not make out the design. He wore a gold chain around his wrist and
was smoking Lucky Strikes. His gaze was glassy-eyed, like someone who got high
too often. Salander also noticed that he had a leather vest on under his jacket. She
could tell he was a biker.
The giant did not order anything. He seemed to be giving instructions. The man in
the denim jacket paid close attention but did not contribute to the conversation.
Salander reminded herself that one day soon she should buy herself a shotgun
mike.
After only five minutes the giant left Blomberg’s Café. Salander retreated a few
paces, but he did not even look in her direction. He walked forty yards to the steps
to Allhelgonagatan, where he got into a white Volvo. Salander managed to read his
licence plate number before he turned at the next corner.
Salander hurried back to Blomberg’s, but the table was empty. She looked up and
down the street but could not see the man with the ponytail. Then she caught a
glimpse of him across the street as he pushed open the door to McDonald’s.
She had to go inside to find him again. He was sitting with another man who was
wearing his vest outside his denim jacket. Salander read the words SVAVELSJö MC.
The logo was a stylized motorcycle wheel that looked like a Celtic cross with an
axe.
She stood on Götgatan for a minute before heading north. Her internal warning
system had suddenly gone on high alert.
Salander stopped at the 7-Eleven and bought a week’s worth of food: a jumbo pack
of Billy’s Pan Pizza, three frozen fish casseroles, three bacon pies, two pounds of
apples, two loaves of bread, a pound of cheese, milk, coffee, a carton of Marlboro
Lights, and the evening papers. She walked up Svartensgatan to Mosebacke and
looked all around before she punched in the door code of her building. She put one
of the bacon pies in the microwave and drank milk straight from the carton. She
switched on the coffee machine and then booted up her computer, clicking on
Asphyxia 1.3 and logging in to the mirrored copy of Bjurman’s hard drive. She spent
the next half hour going through the contents of his computer.
She found absolutely nothing of interest. He seemed to use his email rarely; she
discovered only a dozen brief personal messages to or from acquaintances. None of
the emails had any connection to her.
She found a newly created folder with porn photos that made clear that he was
still interested in the sadistic humiliation of women. Technically it wasn’t a
violation of her rule that he couldn’t have anything to do with women.
She opened the folder of documents dealing with Bjurman’s role as Salander’s
guardian and read through each of his monthly reports. They corresponded
precisely to the copies he had sent to one of her hotmail addresses.
Everything normal.
Maybe a small discrepancy… When she opened the file properties in Word for the
various monthly reports, she could see that he usually wrote them in the first few
days of each month, that he spent about four hours editing each report, and sent
them punctually to the Guardianship Agency on the twentieth of every month. It
was now the middle of March and he had not yet begun work on the current
month’s report. Lazy? Out too late? Busy with something else? Up to some tricks?
Salander frowned.
She shut down the computer and sat on her window seat and opened her cigarette
case. She lit a cigarette and looked out at the darkness. She had been sloppy about
keeping track of him. He’s as slippery as an eel.
She was genuinely worried. First Kalle Fucking Blomkvist, then the name Zala, and
now Nils Fucking Slimebag Bjurman together with an alpha male on steroids with
contacts in some gang of ex-con bikers. Within a few days, several ripples of
disquiet had materialized in the orderly life Salander was trying to create for
herself.
At 2:30 the following morning Salander put a key in the front door of the building
on Upplandsgatan near Odenplan, where Bjurman lived. She stopped outside his
door, carefully lifted up the mail slot cover, and shoved in an extremely sensitive
microphone she had bought at Counterspy in Mayfair in London. She had never
heard of Ebbe Carlsson, but that was the shop where he had bought the famous
eavesdropping equipment that caused Sweden’s minister of justice to resign
suddenly in the late 1980s. Salander inserted her earpiece and adjusted the volume.
She could hear the dull humming of the refrigerator and the sharp ticking of at
least two clocks, one of which was the wall clock in the living room to the left of
the front door. She turned up the volume and listened, holding her breath. She
heard all sorts of creaks and rumbles from the apartment, but no evidence of
human activity. It took her a minute to notice and decipher the faint sounds of
heavy, regular breathing.
Bjurman was asleep.
She withdrew the microphone and stuffed it in the pocket of her leather jacket. She
was wearing dark jeans and sneakers with crepe soles. She inserted the key in the
lock without a sound and pushed the door open a crack. Before she opened it all
the way she took the Taser out of her pocket. She had brought no other weapon.
She did not think she would need anything more powerful for dealing with
Bjurman.
She closed the door behind her and padded on soundless feet towards the corridor
outside his bedroom. She stopped when she saw the light from a lamp, but from
where she stood she could already hear his snoring. She slipped into his bedroom.
The lamp stood in the window. What’s wrong, Bjurman? A little scared of the dark?
She stood next to his bed and watched him for several minutes. He had aged and
seemed unkempt. The room smelled of a man who was not taking good care of his
hygiene.
She did not feel a grain of sympathy. For a second a hint of merciless hatred flashed
in her eyes. She noticed a glass on the nightstand and leaned over to sniff it.
Whiskey.
After a while she left the bedroom. She took a short tour through the kitchen,
found nothing unusual, continued through the living room, and stopped at the door
of Bjurman’s office. From her jacket pocket she took a handful of small bits of
crispbread, which she placed carefully on the parquet floor in the dark. If anyone
tried to follow her through the living room, the crunching noise would alert her.
She sat down at Bjurman’s desk and placed the Taser in front of her. Methodically
she searched the drawers and went through correspondence dealing with
Bjurman’s private accounts. She noticed that he had become sloppier and more
sporadic with balancing his accounts.
The bottom drawer of the desk was locked. Salander frowned. When she had visited
a year before, all the drawers had been unlocked. Her eyes remained unfocused as
she visualized the drawer’s contents. It had contained a camera, a telephoto lens, a
small Olympus pocket tape recorder, a leather-bound photograph album, and a
little box with a necklace and a gold ring inscribed TILDA AND JACOB BJURMAN •
APRIL 23, 1951. Salander knew that these were the names of his parents and that
both of them were dead. Presumably it was a wedding ring, now a keepsake.
So, he locks up stuff he thinks is valuable.
She inspected the rolltop cabinet behind the desk and took out the two binders
containing his reports of her guardianship. For fifteen minutes she read each one.
Salander was a pleasant and conscientious young woman. Four months earlier he
had written that she seemed so rational and competent that there was good reason
to discuss at the next annual review whether or not she required further
guardianship. It was elegantly phrased and amounted to the first building block in
the revocation of her declaration of incompetence.
The binder also contained handwritten notes that showed Bjurman had been
contacted by one Ulrika von Liebenstaahl at the Guardianship Agency for a general
discussion of Salander’s condition. The words necessity for psychiatric assessment
had been underlined.
Salander pouted, replaced the binders, and looked around.
She could not find anything of note. Bjurman seemed to be behaving in accordance
with her instructions. She bit her lower lip. She still had a feeling that something
was not right.
She got up from the chair and was about to turn off the desk lamp when she
stopped. She took out the binders and looked through them again. She was
perplexed. The binders should have contained more. A year ago there had been a
summary of her development since childhood from the Guardianship Agency. That
was missing. Why would Bjurman remove papers from an active case? She frowned.
She could not think of any good reason. Unless he was filing additional
documentation somewhere else. Her eyes swept across the shelves of the rolltop
cabinet and the bottom desk drawer.
She did not have a picklock with her, so she padded back to Bjurman’s bedroom
and fished his key ring out of his suit jacket, which was hanging over a wooden
valet stand. The same objects were in the drawer as a year ago. But the collection
had been supplemented with a flat box whose printed illustration showed a Colt .45
Magnum.
She thought through the research that she had done about Bjurman two years ago.
He liked to shoot and was a member of a shooting club. According to the public
weapons registry he had a licence for a Colt .45 Magnum.
Reluctantly she came to the conclusion that it was no surprise he kept the drawer
locked.
She did not like the situation, but she could not think of any immediate pretext for
waking him and scaring the shit out of him.
Johansson woke at 6:30 a.m. She heard the morning TV on low volume from the
living room and smelled freshly brewed coffee. She also heard the clacking of keys
from Svensson’s iBook. She smiled.
She had never seen him work so hard on a story before. Millennium had been a
good move. He was often afflicted with writer’s block, and it seemed as though
hanging out with Blomkvist and Berger and the others was having a beneficial
effect on him. He would come home gloomy after Blomkvist had pointed out
shortcomings or shot down some of his reasoning, but then he’d work twice as
hard.
She wondered whether it was the right moment to interrupt his concentration. Her
period was three weeks late. She had not yet taken a pregnancy test. Perhaps it was
time.
She would soon turn thirty. In less than a month she had to defend her
dissertation. Dr. Johansson. She smiled again and decided not to say anything to
Svensson before she was sure. Maybe she would wait until he was finished with his
book and she was giving a party after she got her doctorate.
She dozed for ten more minutes before she got up and went into the living room
with a sheet wrapped around her. He looked up.
“It’s not 7:00 yet,” she said.
“Blomkvist is acting superior again.”
“Has he been mean to you? Serves you right. You like him, don’t you?”
Svensson leaned back in the living-room sofa and met her eyes. After a moment he
nodded.
“Millennium is a great place to work. I talked to Mikael at Kvarnen before you
picked me up last night. He was wondering what I was going to be doing after this
project was finished.”
“Aha. And what did you say?”
“That I didn’t know. I’ve hung around as a freelancer for so many years now. I’d be
glad of something more steady.”
“Millennium.”
He nodded.
“Mikael has tested the waters, and wanted to know if I’d be interested in a part-time job. Same contract as Henry Cortez and Lotta Karim are on. I’d get a desk and
a retainer from Millennium and could take in the rest on the side.”
“Do you want to do that?”
“If they come up with a concrete offer, I’ll say yes.”
“OK, but it’s not 7:00 yet and it’s Saturday.”
“I know. I just thought I’d polish it up a bit here and there.”
“I think you should come back to bed and polish something else.”
She smiled at him and turned up a corner of the sheet. He put the computer on
standby.
Salander spent a good deal of time over the next few days doing research on her
PowerBook. Her search extended in many different directions, and she was not
always sure what she was looking for.
Some of the fact collecting was simple. From the Media Archive she put together a
history of Svavelsjö MC. The club appeared in newspaper stories going by the name
Tälje Hog Riders. Police had raided the clubhouse, at that time located in an
abandoned schoolhouse outside Södertälje, when neighbours reported shots fired.
The police turned up in astonishing force and broke up a beer-drenched party that
had degenerated into a shooting contest with an AK-4, which later turned out to
have been stolen from the disbanded I20 regiment in Västerbotten in the early
1980s.
According to one evening paper, Svavelsjö MC had six or seven members and a
dozen hangers-on. All the full members had been in jail. Two stood out. The club
leader was Carl-Magnus “Magge” Lundin, who was pictured in Aftonbladet when
the police raided the premises in 2001. He had been convicted on five charges of
theft, receiving stolen goods, and for drug offences in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
One of the sentences—for a crime which involved grievous bodily harm—put him
away for eighteen months. He was released in 1995 and soon afterwards became
president of Tälje Hog Riders, now Svavelsjö MC.
According to the police gang unit, the club’s number two was Sonny Nieminen,
now thirty-seven years old, who had run up no fewer than twenty-three
convictions. He had started his career at the age of sixteen when he was put on
probation and in institutional care for assault and battery and theft. Over the next
ten years he was convicted on five counts of theft, one of aggravated theft, two of
unlawful intimidation, two narcotics offences, extortion, assault on a civil servant,
two counts of possessing an illegal weapon, one criminal weapons charge, driving
under the influence, and six counts of assault. He had been sentenced according to
a scale that was incomprehensible to Salander: probation, fines, and repeated stints
of thirty to sixty days in jail, until 1989 when he was put away for ten months for
aggravated assault and robbery. He was out a few months later and kept his nose
clean until October 1990. Then he got into a fight in a bar in Södertälje and ended
up with a conviction for manslaughter and a six-year prison sentence. He was out
by 1995.
In 1996 he was arrested as an accessory to an armed robbery. He had provided
three of the robbers with weapons. He was sentenced to four years and released in
1999. According to a newspaper article from 2001 in which Nieminen was not
named—but where the details of the suspect were such that he was effectively
identified—he looked more than likely to have played his part in the murder of a
member of a rival gang.
Salander downloaded the mug shots of Nieminen and Lundin. Nieminen had a
photogenic face with dark curly hair and dangerous eyes. Lundin just looked like a
complete idiot, and was without doubt the man who had met the giant at
Blomberg’s Café. Nieminen was the man waiting in McDonald’s.
Via the national vehicle register she traced the white Volvo to the car rental firm
Auto-Expert in Eskilstuna. She dialled their number and spoke to a Refik Alba:
“My name is Gunilla Hansson. My dog was run over yesterday by someone who just
drove off. The bastard was driving a car from your firm—I could tell from the
licence plate. A white Volvo.” She gave the number.
“I’m so sorry.”
“That’s not enough, I’m afraid. I want the name of the driver so that I can sue him.”
“Have you reported the matter to the police?”
“No, I’d like to settle it directly.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t give out the names of our clients unless a police report has
been filed.”
Salander’s voice darkened. She asked whether it was good practice to oblige her to
report the company’s clients to the police force instead of resolving matters with
much less trouble. Refik Alba apologized once more and repeated that he was
powerless to circumvent company rules.
• • •
The name Zala was another dead end. With two breaks for Billy’s Pan Pizza,
Salander spent most of the day at her computer with only a big bottle of Coca-Cola
for company.
She found hundreds of Zalas—from an Italian athlete to a composer in Argentina.
But she did not find the one she was looking for.
She tried Zalachenko, but that was a dead end too.
Frustrated, she stumbled into bed and slept for twelve hours straight. When she
woke it was 11:00 a.m. She put on some coffee and ran a bath in the Jacuzzi. She
poured in bubble bath and brought coffee and sandwiches for breakfast. She wished
that she had Mimmi to keep her company, but she still had not even told her
where she lived.
At noon she got out of the bath, towelled herself dry, and put on a bathrobe. She
turned on the computer again.
The names Dag Svensson and Mia Johansson yielded better results. Via Google’s
search engine she was able to quickly put together a brief summary of what they
had been up to in recent years. She downloaded copies of some of Svensson’s
articles and found a photographic byline of him. No great surprise that he was the
man she had seen with Blomkvist at Kvarnen. The name had been given a face, and
vice versa.
She found several texts about or by Mia Johansson. She had first come to the
media’s attention with a report on the different treatment received by men and
women at the hands of the law. There had been a number of editorials and articles
in women’s organizations’ newsletters. Johansson herself had written several more
articles. Salander read attentively. Some feminists found Johansson’s conclusions
significant, others criticized her for “spreading bourgeois illusions.”
At 2:00 in the afternoon she went into Asphyxia 1.3, but instead of MikBlom/laptop
she selected MikBlom/office, Blomkvist’s desktop computer at Millennium. She
knew from experience that his office computer contained hardly anything of
interest. Apart from the fact that he sometimes used it to surf the Net, he worked
almost exclusively on his iBook. But he did have administrator rights for the whole
Millennium office. She quickly found what she was looking for: the password for
Millennium’s internal network.
To get into other computers at Millennium, the mirrored hard drive on the server
in Holland was not sufficient. The original of MikBlom/office also had to be on and
connected to the internal computer network. She was in luck. Blomkvist was
apparently at work and had his desktop on. She waited ten minutes but could not
see any sign of activity, which she took to indicate that he had turned on the
computer when he came into the office and had possibly used it to surf the Net,
then left it on while he did something else or used his laptop.
This had to be done carefully During the next hour Salander hacked cautiously from
one computer to another and downloaded email from Berger, Malm, and an
employee whose name she did not recognize, Malin Eriksson. Finally she located
Svensson’s desktop. According to the system information it was an older Macintosh
PowerPC with a hard disk of only 750 MB, so it must be a leftover that was
probably only used for word processing by occasional freelancers. It was linked to
the computer network, which meant that Svensson was in Millennium’s editorial
offices right now. She downloaded his email and searched his hard drive. She found
a folder with the short but sweet name .
The blond giant had just picked up 203,000 kronor in cash, which was an
unexpectedly large sum for the three kilos of methamphetamine he had delivered
to Lundin in late January. It was a tidy profit for a few hours of practical work—
collecting the meth from the courier, storing it for a while, making delivery to
Lundin, and then taking 50 percent of the profit. Svavelsjö MC could turn over that
amount every month, and Lundin’s gang was only one of three such operations—the
other two were around Göteborg and Malmö. Together the gangs brought him
roughly half a million kronor in profit every month.
And yet he was in such a bad mood that he pulled over to the side of the road and
turned off the engine. He had not slept for thirty hours and was feeling fuzzy. He
got out to stretch his legs and take a piss. The night was cool and the stars were
bright. He was not far from Järna.
The conflict he was having was almost ideological in nature. The potential supply of
methamphetamine was limitless within a radius of 250 miles from Stockholm. The
demand was indisputably huge. The rest was logistics—how to transport the
product from point A to point B, or to be more precise, from a cellar workshop in
Tallinn to the Free Port in Stockholm.
This was a recurring problem—how to guarantee regular transport from Estonia to
Sweden? In fact it was the main problem and the weak link, since after several
years he was still improvising every time. And fuckups had been all too frequent
lately. He was proud of his ability to organize. He had built up a well-oiled network
cultivated with equal portions of carrot and stick. He was the one who had done
the legwork, cemented partnerships, negotiated deals, and made sure that the
deliveries got to the right place.
The carrot was the incentive offered to subcontractors like Lundin—a solid and
relatively risk-free profit. The system was a good one. Lundin did not have to lift a
finger to get the goods—no stressful buying trips or dealings with people who could
be anyone from the drug squad to the Russian mafia. Lundin knew that the giant
would deliver and then collect his 50 percent.
The stick was for when complications arose. A gabby street dealer who had found
out far too much about the supply chain had almost implicated Svavelsjö MC. He
had been forced to get involved and punish the guy.
He was good at dealing out punishment.
But the operation was becoming too burdensome to oversee.
He lit a cigarette and stretched his legs against a gate into a field.
Methamphetamine was a discreet and easy-to-manage source of income—big
profits, small risks. Weapons were risky, and considering the risks they were simply
not good business.
Occasionally industrial espionage or smuggling electronic components to Eastern
Europe—even though the market had dropped off in recent years—was justifiable.
Whores from the Baltics, on the other hand, were an entirely unsatisfactory
investment. The business was small change, and liable at any time to set off
hypocritical screeds in the media and debates in that strange political entity called
the Swedish parliament. The one advantage was that everybody likes a whore—
prosecutors, judges, policemen, even an occasional member of parliament. Nobody
was going to dig too deep to bring that business down.
Even a dead whore would not necessarily cause a political uproar. If the police
could catch a suspect within a few hours who still had bloodstains on his clothes,
then a conviction would follow and the murderer would spend several years in
prison or some other obscure institution. But if no suspect was found within forty-eight hours, the police would soon enough find more important things to
investigate, as he knew from experience.
He did not like the trade in whores, though. He did not like them at all, their
makeup-plastered faces and shrill, drunken laughter. They were unclean. And there
was always the risk that one of them would get the idea she could seek asylum or
start blabbing to the police or to reporters. Then he would have to take matters
into his own hands and mete out punishment. And if the revelation was blatant
enough, prosecutors and police would be forced to act—otherwise parliament really
would wake up and pay attention. The whore business sucked.
The brothers Atho and Harry Ranta were typical: two useless parasites who had
found out way too much about the business. Most of all he would like to tie them
up with chains and dump them in the harbour. Instead he had driven them to the
Estonia ferry and patiently waited until it sailed. Their little vacation was the result
of some fucking reporter sticking his nose into their business, and it was decided
that they had better make themselves scarce.
He sighed.
Above all he did not appreciate diversions like that Salander girl. She was utterly
without interest as far as he was concerned. She represented no profit whatsoever.
He did not like Bjurman, and he could not imagine why they had decided to do
what he wanted. But now the ball was rolling. Instructions had been issued, the
contract had been awarded to a freelancer from Svavelsjö MC, and he did not like
the situation one bit.
He looked out across the dark field, tossing his cigarette butt into the gravel by the
gate. He thought he saw movement out of the corner of his eye and froze. He
focused his gaze. There was no light except from a faint crescent moon and the
stars, but he could still make out the contours of a black figure creeping towards
him about a hundred feet away. The figure advanced, making short pauses.
The man felt a cold sweat on his brow. He hated the creature in the field. For a
minute he stared spellbound at its steady approach. When it was close enough that
he could see its eyes glimmer in the darkness he spun round and ran to the car. He
tore open the door. He felt his panic growing until he got the engine started and
turned on the headlights. The creature had come out to the road and at last he
could make out features in the beam. It looked like an enormous sting ray
slithering along. It had a stinger like a scorpion.
The creature was not of this world. It was a monster from the underworld.
He put the car in gear and screeched off. As he passed the creature he saw it strike,
but it did not touch the car. He did not stop shaking until several miles later.
Salander spent the night going over the research that Svensson and Millennium had
compiled about trafficking. Gradually she was getting a good overview, even though
it was based on cryptic fragments that she had to piece together from their various
documents.
Berger sent an email to Blomkvist asking how the confrontations were going; he
replied briefly that they could not run the man from the Cheka to earth. Salander
took this to mean that one of the people who was going to be hung out to dry
worked at Säpo, the Security Police. Eriksson sent a summary of a supplementary
research assignment to Svensson with copies to Blomkvist and Berger. Svensson and
Blomkvist replied with comments and suggestions. Blomkvist and Svensson
exchanged emails a few times each day. Svensson described a confrontation he had
had with a journalist, Per-Åke Sandström.
From Svensson’s emails she also saw that he was communicating with a person by
the name of Gulbrandsen at a Yahoo address. It took her a while to realize that
Gulbrandsen was a policeman and that their exchange was off the record, using a
private email address instead of Gulbrandsen’s police address. So Gulbrandsen was a
source.
The folder named was disappointingly brief, only three Word documents. The
longest of them, just 128 KB, was called [Irina P] and gave a sketch of a prostitute’s
life, followed by Svensson’s summary of the autopsy report, his curt outline of her
appalling wounds.
She recognized a phrase in the text that was a word-for-word quotation from
Johansson’s dissertation. There the woman had been called Tamara, but Irina P. and
Tamara had to be one and the same, so she read the interview section of the thesis
with great interest.
The second document, [Sandström], contained the summary that Svensson had
emailed to Blomkvist, showing that the journalist was one of several johns who had
abused a girl from the Baltics, and also that he ran errands for the sex mafia in
exchange for drugs and sex. Sandström, besides producing company newsletters,
had written freelance articles for a daily newspaper indignantly condemning the
sex trade. One of his revelations was that an unnamed Swedish businessman had
visited a brothel in Tallinn.
Zala was not mentioned in either document, but Salander assumed that since both
were in a folder named there must be a connection. The last document was,
however, named [Zala]. It was short and only in note form.
According to Svensson, the name Zala had turned up in nine cases related to drugs,
weapons, or prostitution since the mid-nineties. Nobody knew who Zala was, but
sources had variously indicated that he was a Serb, a Pole, or perhaps a Czech. All
the information was secondhand.
Svensson had discussed Zala exhaustively with source G. (Gulbrandsen?) and
suggested that Zala may have been responsible for the murder of Irina P. There was
no saying what G. thought about this theory, but there was a note to the effect
that Zala had been on the agenda a year earlier at a meeting with “the special
investigative group on organized crime.” The name had cropped up so many times
that the police had started asking questions, trying to establish whether Zala was a
real person, and whether he was still alive.
As far as Svensson could discover, the name Zala had first appeared in connection
with the holdup of a security van in Örkelljunga in 1996. The robbers had gotten
away with more than 3.3 million kronor, but they had so dramatically botched their
getaway that after only twenty-four hours the police were able to identify and
arrest the gang members. The following day another arrest was made. It was
Nieminen, a member of Svavelsjö MC, whose role had been to supply the weapons
used in the holdup.
A week after the robbery in 1996, three more people were arrested. The ring thus
included eight people, of whom seven had refused to talk to the police. The eighth,
a boy of nineteen named Birger Nordman, had broken down and confessed
everything he knew during questioning. The trial turned into a runaway victory for
the prosecution. One consequence was (Svensson’s police source suspected) that
Nordman was found two years later buried in a sandpit in Värmland after running
away during temporary leave from prison.
According to G., the police believed that Nieminen had been the catalyst behind the
whole gang. They also believed that Nordman had been killed on contract by
Nieminen, who was regarded as dangerous and ruthless, but there was no evidence.
While in prison he had apparently had dealings with the Aryan Brotherhood, a Nazi
prison organization that in turn was linked to the Wolfpack Brotherhood and to ex-con Hell’s Angels clubs around the world, as well as to other cretinous violent Nazi
organizations such as the Swedish Resistance Movement.
What interested Salander, however, was something else entirely. Nordman had
admitted to police that the weapons used in the robbery had come from Nieminen,
and that he in turn had got them from a Serb not known to Nordman whom he
named as “Sala.”
Svensson had taken him for an anonymous figure in the criminal scene and
reckoned that “Zala” was a nickname. But he warned that they might be dealing
with a particularly cunning criminal who operated under an alias.
The last section contained Sandström’s information on Zala, such as it was.
Sandström had once talked on the telephone to someone using that name. The
notes did not say what the conversation had been about.
At around 4:00 in the morning Salander shut down her Power-Book and sat on her
window seat looking out at Saltsjön. She sat quietly for two hours, smoking one
cigarette after another, thinking. She had a number of strategic decisions to make—
and she had to do a risk assessment.
She had to find Zala and settle their accounts once and for all.
On Saturday evening the week before Easter, Blomkvist visited an old girlfriend on
Slipgatan in the Hornstull neighbourhood. He had, for once, accepted an invitation
to a party. She was married now and not remotely interested in Blomkvist as
anything more than a friend, but she worked in the media and had just finished a
book that had been in gestation for ten years, which dealt with the image of
women in the mass media. Blomkvist had contributed to the book, which was why
he was invited.
His role had been to do research on one question. He had chosen to examine the
equal opportunity policies which the TT wire service, Dagens Nyheter, the TV show
Rapport, and a number of other media ostentatiously promoted. Then he checked
off how many men and women were in each company’s management above the
level of editorial assistant. The results were embarrassing: CEO—man; chairman of
the board—man; editor in chief—man; foreign editor—man; managing editor—man …
et cetera, until eventually the first woman turned up.
The party was at the author’s house and the people there were mostly those who
had helped her with the book. It was a high-spirited evening with good food and
relaxed conversation. Blomkvist had meant to go home reasonably early, but many
of the guests were old acquaintances he seldom saw. Besides, no-one jabbered on
too much about the Wennerström affair. The party went on until around 2:00 on
Sunday morning.
Blomkvist saw the night bus drive past before he could make it to the bus stop, but
the air was mild and he decided to walk home instead of waiting for the next one.
He followed Högalidsgatan to the church and turned up Lundagatan, which
instantly awakened old memories.
Blomkvist had kept the promise he’d made in December to stop visiting Lundagatan
in the vain hope that Salander might appear. Tonight he stopped on the other side
of the street from her building. He longed to ring the doorbell, but he knew how
unlikely it was that she would want to see him, let alone at this time of night with
no warning.
He shrugged and kept walking towards Zinkensdamm. He had gone about sixty
yards when he heard a door open and turned, and then his heart skipped a beat. It
was impossible to mistake that skinny body. Salander had just walked out to the
street and away from him. She stopped at a parked car.
Blomkvist opened his mouth to call to her when his voice caught in his throat. He
saw a man get out of another of the cars parked along the curb. He moved rapidly
up behind Salander. Blomkvist could see that he was tall and had a pony tail.
Salander heard a sound and saw a movement out of the corner of her eye just as
she was putting the key in the door of the Honda. He was approaching at an angle
behind her, and she spun around two seconds before he reached her. She identified
him instantly as Carl-Magnus Lundin of Svavelsjö MC, who several days ago had
met the blond hulk at Blomberg’s Café.
She gauged him as aggressive and weighing over 265 pounds. She used her keys as
brass knuckles and didn’t hesitate a millisecond before, with a movement as swift
as a lizard, she slashed a deep wound in his cheek, from the bottom of his nose to
his ear. He was flailing at the air as Salander then seemed to sink through the
ground.
Blomkvist saw Salander lash out with her fist. At the instant she struck her attacker
she dropped to the ground and rolled beneath the car.
Seconds later Salander was up on the other side of the car, ready for fight or flight.
She met the enemy’s gaze across the hood and decided on the latter option. Blood
was pouring from his cheek. Before he even managed to focus on her she was away
across Lundagatan, running towards Högalid Church.
Blomkvist stood paralyzed, his mouth agape, when the attacker suddenly dashed
after Salander. He looked like a tank chasing a toy car.
Salander took the steps to upper Lundagatan two at a time. At the top of the stairs
she glanced over her shoulder and saw her pursuer reaching the first step. He was
fast. She noticed the piles of boards and sand where the local authority had dug up
the street.
Lundin was almost up the steps when Salander came into view again. He had time
to register that she was throwing something, but he did not have time to react
before the sharp-edged cobblestone hit him on the temple. The stone was thrown
with considerable force, and it ripped another wound on his face. He could feel
himself losing his footing and then the world spun as he fell backwards down the
stairs. He managed to break his fall by grabbing the railing, but he had lost several
seconds.
Blomkvist’s paralysis dissolved when the man disappeared up the stairs. He started
yelling for him to fuck off.
Salander was halfway across the churchyard when she heard Blomkvist’s voice.
What the hell? She switched directions and looked over the railing of the terrace.
She saw Blomkvist ten feet below her. She hesitated a tenth of a second before she
took off again.
At the same time as Blomkvist began to run towards the steps he noticed that a
Dodge van was starting up outside Salander’s front door, behind the car she had
tried to get into. The vehicle swung out from the curb and passed Blomkvist, going
in the direction of Zinkensdamm. He caught a glimpse of a face as it passed. It was
too dark to read the licence plate.
Blomkvist caught up with Salander’s pursuer at the top of the steps. The man had
stopped and stood motionless, looking around.
Just as Blomkvist got to him he turned and gave him a powerful backhand across
the face. Blomkvist was completely unprepared. He tumbled headlong down the
steps.
Salander heard Blomkvist’s stifled cry and almost stopped. What the hell is going
on? But when she turned she saw Lundin only a hundred feet from her. He’s faster.
Shit, he’s going to catch me.
She turned left and ran up several steps to the terrace between two buildings. She
reached a courtyard that did not present the least cover and ran as fast as she
could to the next corner. She turned right and realized just in time that she would
be heading into a blind alley. As she reached the end of the next building she saw
Lundin arrive at the top of the steps to the courtyard. She kept running—out of his
sight—for another few yards and dived headfirst into a rhododendron bush
alongside the building.
She heard Lundin’s heavy footsteps, but she could not see him. She held her breath,
pressing herself into the soil beneath the bush.
Lundin passed her hiding place and stopped. He hesitated for ten seconds before
jogging around the courtyard. A minute later he came back. He stopped at the same
place as before. This time he stood still for thirty seconds. Salander tensed her
muscles, poised for instant flight if she were discovered. Then he moved again,
passing less than six feet from her. She listened to his steps fade away across the
courtyard.
Blomkvist felt pain in his neck and jaw as he got laboriously to his feet, feeling
dizzy. He tasted blood from a split lip.
He made his way unsteadily to the top of the steps and looked around. He saw the
man with the ponytail running a hundred yards further down the street. The man
stopped and peered between the buildings, and then ran across Lundagatan and
climbed into the Dodge van. The vehicle sped off towards Zinkensdamm.
Blomkvist walked slowly along the upper part of Lundagatan, looking for Salander.
He could not see her anywhere. There was not a living soul. He was astonished
how desolate a street in Stockholm can be at 3:00 a.m. on a Sunday morning in
March. After a while he went back to the front door of Salander’s apartment
building on lower Lundagatan. As he passed the car where the attack had taken
place he stepped on a key ring. He bent to pick it up and saw a shoulder bag under
the car.
Blomkvist stood there a long time, waiting, unsure what to do. At last he tried the
keys in her door. They did not fit.
Salander stayed under the bush for fifteen minutes, moving only to look at her
watch. Just after 3:00 she heard a door open and close and footsteps making for the
bicycle shed in the courtyard.
When the sound died away she raised herself slowly to her knees and peered out of
the bush. She looked steadily at every nook and cranny in the courtyard, but she
saw no sign of Lundin. She walked back to the street, prepared to turn tail at any
moment. She stopped at the top of the wall and looked out over Lundagatan, where
she saw Blomkvist outside her apartment building. He was holding her bag in his
hand.
She stood perfectly still, hidden behind a lamppost when Blomkvist’s gaze swept
over the stairs and the wall. He did not see her.
Blomkvist stood outside her door for almost half an hour. She watched him
patiently, without moving, until finally he gave up and headed down the hill
towards Zinkensdamm. When he was gone she began to think about what had
happened.
Kalle Blomkvist.
She could not for the life of her imagine how he had sprung up out of nowhere.
Apart from that, the attack was not difficult to account for.
Carl Fucking Magnus Lundin.
Lundin had met the hulk she had seen talking to Bjurman.
Nils Fucking Slimebag Bjurman.
That piece of shit has hired some diabolical alpha male to get me out of the way.
And I made it crystal clear to him what the consequences would be.
Salander was seething inside. She was so enraged that she tasted blood in her
mouth. Now she was going to have to punish him.
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