CHAPTER 13
Maundy Thursday, March 24
The responsibility of leading the preliminary investigation into the double homicide
in Enskede landed officially on Prosecutor Richard Ekström’s desk at 7:00 on the
morning of Maundy Thursday. The duty prosecutor of the night before, a relatively
young and inexperienced lawyer, had realized that the Enskede murders could turn
into a media sensation. He called and woke up the assistant county prosecutor,
who in turn woke up the assistant county chief of police. Together they decided to
pass the ball to a diligent and experienced prosecutor: Richard Ekström.
Ekström was a thin, vital man five feet six inches tall, forty-two years old, with
thinning blond hair and a goatee. He was always impeccably dressed and he wore
shoes with slightly raised heels. He had begun his career as the assistant prosecutor
in Uppsala, until he was recruited as an investigator by the Ministry of Justice,
where he worked on bringing Swedish law into accord with that of the EU, and he
acquitted himself so well that for a time he was appointed division chief. He
attracted attention with his report on organizational deficiencies within legal
security, where he made a case for increased efficiency rather than complying with
the requests for increased resources demanded by certain police authorities. After
four years at the Ministry of Justice, he moved to the prosecutor’s office in
Stockholm, where he handled a number of cases involving high-profile robberies
and violent crimes.
Within the administration he was taken for a Social Democrat, but in reality
Ekström was uninterested in party politics. Even as he started to attract attention
in the media, people in high places had begun to keep their eye on him. He was
definitely a candidate for higher office, and thanks to his presumed party affiliation
he had a broad network of contacts in political and police circles. Within the police
force opinion was divided as to Ekström’s ability. His investigations had not found
support among those who were advocating that the best way to promote law and
order was to recruit more police. On the other hand, he had excelled at not being
afraid of getting his hands dirty when he drove a case to trial.
Ekström got a briefing from the criminal duty officer about the events in Enskede,
and at once concluded that this was a case which would without a doubt create a
stir in the media. The two victims were a criminologist and a journalist—the latter a
calling Ekström either loved or hated, depending on the situation.
He had a rapid telephone conversation with the county chief of police. At 7:15 he
picked up the phone again and woke Criminal Inspector Jan Bublanski, known to
his colleagues as Officer Bubble. Bublanski was off duty over Easter week due to a
mountain of overtime he had accumulated during the past year, but he was asked
to interrupt his time off and come to police headquarters at once to run the
investigation of the Enskede killings.
Bublanski was fifty-two and had been on the force since he was twenty-three. He
had spent six years in patrol cars and served in both the weapons division and the
burglary division before he took additional courses and advanced to the violent
crimes division of the county criminal police. By all accounts, he had taken part in
thirty-three murder or manslaughter investigations in the last ten years. He had
been in charge of seventeen of these investigations, of which fourteen were solved
and two were considered closed, which meant that the police knew who the killer
was but there was insufficient evidence to bring the individual to trial. In the one
remaining case, now six years old, Bublanski and his colleagues had failed. The case
concerned a well-known alcoholic and troublemaker who was stabbed to death in
his home in Bergshamra. The crime scene was a nightmare of fingerprints and DNA
traces left over a period of years by several dozen people who had gotten drunk or
been beat up in the apartment. Bublanski and his colleagues were convinced that
the killer could be found among the man’s prodigious network of fellow alcoholics
and drug addicts, but despite their intensive work whoever it was had continued to
elude the police.
Bublanski’s statistics were good in terms of the number of cases he had solved, and
he was held in high esteem by his colleagues. But they also considered him a bit
odd, partly because he was Jewish. On certain high holy days he had been seen
wearing a yarmulke in the corridors of police headquarters. This had occasioned a
comment from a police commissioner, soon after retired, who was of the opinion
that it was inappropriate to wear a yarmulke in police headquarters, in the same
way he found it inappropriate for a policeman to wear a turban on duty. There was
no further discussion about the matter. A journalist heard the comment and started
asking questions, at which point the commissioner quickly repaired to his office.
Bublanski belonged to the Söder congregation and ate vegetarian food if kosher fare
was unavailable. But he was not so Orthodox that he refused to work on the
Sabbath. He immediately recognized that the killings in Enskede were not going to
be a routine investigation. Ekström had taken him aside as soon as he appeared,
just after 8:00.
“This seems to be a miserable story,” Ekström said. “The two who were shot were a
journalist and his partner, a criminologist. And that’s not all. They were found by
another journalist.”
Bublanski nodded. That effectively guaranteed that the case would be closely
watched by the media.
“And to add a pinch more salt to the wound, the journalist who found the couple
was Mikael Blomkvist of Millennium magazine.”
“Whoops,” Bublanski said.
“Well known from the circus surrounding the Wennerström affair.”
“What do we know about the motive?”
“So far, not a thing. Neither of the victims is known to us. They seem to have been
a conscientious pair. The woman was going to get her doctorate in a few weeks.
This case gets top priority.”
For Bublanski, murder always had top priority.
“We’re putting together a team. You’ll have to work fast, and I’ll ensure that you
have all the resources you need. You’ve got Faste and Andersson. You’ll have
Holmberg. He’s on the Rinkeby murder case, but it seems that the perp has skipped
the country. You can also draw on the National Criminal Police as required.”
“I want Sonja Modig.”
“Isn’t she a little young?”
Bublanski raised his eyebrows in surprise.
“She’s thirty-nine, just about your age, and besides, she’s exceedingly sharp.”
“OK, you decide who you want on the team, but do it quickly. The brass are already
after us.”
Bublanski took that to be an exaggeration. At this hour, the brass would be at
breakfast.
The investigation formally began with a meeting just before 9:00, when Inspector
Bublanski assembled his troops in a conference room at county police headquarters.
He studied the group, not altogether happy with its composition.
Modig was the one he had the most confidence in. She had twelve years’
experience, four of them in the violent crimes division, where she had been
involved in several of the investigations led by Bublanski. She was exacting and
methodical, but Bublanski had observed in her the trait he regarded as the most
valuable in tricky investigations: she had imagination and the ability to make
associations. In at least two complex cases, Modig had discovered peculiar and
improbable connections that all the others had missed, and these had led to
breakthroughs. She also had a fresh, intellectual humour that Bublanski
appreciated.
He was pleased to have Jerker Holmberg on his team. Holmberg was fifty-five and
originally from Ångermanland. He was a stocky, plain individual, who had none of
Modig’s imagination, but he was, in Bublanski’s view, perhaps the best crime scene
investigator in the entire Swedish police force. They had worked on numerous
investigations together over the years, and Bublanski was convinced that if there
was something worth finding at a crime scene, Holmberg would find it. His
immediate task would be to take command of the work in the apartment in
Enskede.
Bublanski hardly knew Curt Andersson. He was a laconic and solidly built officer
with such a short stubble of blond hair that at a distance he looked completely
bald. Andersson was thirty-eight and had only recently come to the division from
Huddinge, where he had spent years dealing with gang crime. He had a reputation
for being hot-tempered and tough, which was perhaps a euphemism for the fact
that he employed methods that were not quite by the book. Ten years back he had
been accused of brutality, but an enquiry cleared him on all counts.
In October 1999 he had driven with a colleague to Alby to pick up a hooligan for
interrogation. This man was well known to the police, and for some years had
terrorized the neighbours in his apartment building. Now, as the result of a tip, he
was to be taken in for questioning in connection with the robbery of a video store
in Norsborg. When confronted by Andersson and his colleague, the hooligan pulled
a knife instead of coming along quietly. The other officer collected several wounds
to his hands, and then his left thumb was sliced off before the thug directed his
attention to Andersson, who for the first time in his career was obliged to use his
service weapon. He fired three shots. The first was a warning shot, the second was
deliberately aimed but missed the man—no easy matter since the distance was less
than ten feet—and the third shot hit him in the middle of his chest, severing the
aorta. The man bled to death in a matter of minutes. The inevitable enquiry had
ultimately cleared Andersson of any wrongdoing, but only solidified his reputation.
Bublanski had had doubts about Andersson at first, but after six months he had
encountered nothing to provoke his criticism or wrath. On the contrary, Bublanski
was beginning to have some respect for Andersson’s taciturn skill.
The last member of the team, Hans Faste, was forty-seven, a veteran of fifteen years
in violent crimes, and the chief reason for Bublanski’s not being totally satisfied.
Faste had a plus side and also a minus side. On the plus side, he had extensive
experience—and of complicated investigations too. On the minus side, he was
egocentric and had a loudmouth sense of humour that especially bothered
Bublanski. But when he was kept on a short leash he was a competent detective.
Besides, he had become something of a mentor for Andersson, who did not seem to
object to his personality.
Inspector Nyberg of the criminal division had been invited to the meeting to report
on her interview with the journalist Blomkvist during the night. Superintendent
Mårtensson was also present to report on what had happened at the crime scene.
Both of them were worn out and eager to go home to bed, but Nyberg had already
managed to get photographs of the apartment, and these she passed around to the
team.
After half an hour they had the sequence of events clear. Bublanski said: “Bearing in
mind that the forensic examination of the crime scene is still in progress, this is
what we think happened … An unknown person entered the apartment in Enskede
without the neighbours or any other witness noticing and killed the couple, Dag
Svensson and Mia Johansson.”
“We don’t know yet,” Nyberg said, “whether the gun that was found is the murder
weapon, but it’s at the National Forensics Laboratory, and it’s top priority there.
We’ve found a fragment of a bullet—the one that went into Svensson—relatively
intact in the bedroom wall. But the bullet that struck Johansson is so fragmented
that I doubt it will help much.”
“Thanks for that information. A Colt Magnum is a damned cowboy pistol that
ought to be banned outright. Have we got a serial number?”
“Not yet,” Mårtensson said. “I sent the gun and bullet fragments to NFL by
messenger direct from the crime scene. Better for them to take care of it than for
me to start handling the weapon.”
“That’s good. I haven’t had time to go to the crime scene yet, but the two of you
have been there. What are your thoughts?”
Nyberg deferred to her older colleague to speak for them both.
“First of all, we think it was a lone gunman. Second, it was an execution, pure and
simple. I get a feeling that someone had very good reason to kill Svensson and
Johansson, and he did his job with precision.”
“What do you base that on?” Faste said.
“The apartment was neat and tidy. It bore none of the hallmarks of a robbery or
assault or anything like that. And only two shots were fired. Both hit their intended
targets in the head. So it’s someone who knows how to handle a gun.”
“Makes sense to me.”
“If we look at the sketch of the apartment… from what we could reconstruct, we
think that the man, Svensson, was shot at close range—possibly point-blank. There
are burn marks around the entry wound. We’re guessing that he was shot first. He
was thrown against the dining table. The gunman could have stood in the hall or
just inside the doorway to the living room.
“According to witnesses, people who live on the same staircase, the shots were
fired within a few seconds of each other. Mia Johansson was shot from a greater
distance. She was probably standing in the entrance to the bedroom and tried to
turn away. The bullet hit her below the left ear and exited just above the right eye.
The impact threw her into the bedroom, where she was found. She hit the foot of
the bed and slid to the floor.”
“A single shot fired by someone used to handling guns,” Faste said.
“More than that: there were no footprints to indicate that the killer went into the
bedroom to check that she was dead. He knew he had hit his mark and he left the
apartment. So, two shots, two bodies, and then out. We’ll have to wait for forensics,
but I’m guessing that the killer used hunting ammunition. Death would have been
instantaneous. There were ghastly wounds in both victims.”
The team considered this summary in silence. It was a debate that none of them
needed to be reminded of. There are two types of ammunition: hard, full-metal-jacketed bullets that go straight through the body and cause comparatively modest
damage, and soft ammunition that expands in the body on impact and does
enormous damage. There is a vast difference between hitting a person with a bullet
that’s nine millimetres in diameter and a bullet that expands to a couple of
centimetres or more in diameter. The latter type is called hunting ammunition, and
its objective is to cause massive bleeding. It is considered more humane when
hunting moose, since the aim is to put down the prey as quickly and painlessly as
possible. But hunting ammunition is forbidden for use in war by international law,
because a soldier hit by an expanding bullet almost always dies, no matter where
the point of entry.
In its wisdom, however, the Swedish police had introduced hollow-body hunting
ammunition to the police arsenal two years earlier. Exactly why was unclear, but it
was quite clear that if, for example, the demonstrator Hannes Westberg, who was
hit in the stomach during the World Trade Organization riots in Göteborg in 2001,
had been shot with hunting ammo, he would not have survived.
“So the purpose, unquestionably, was to kill,” Andersson said.
He was speaking of the murders in Enskede, but he was also voicing his opinion in
the silent debate going on around the table.
Nyberg and Mårtensson agreed.
“Then we have this improbable time frame,” Bublanski said.
“Exactly. Immediately after the fatal shots were fired, the killer leaves the
apartment, goes down the stairs, drops the weapon, and vanishes into the night.
Shortly thereafter—it can only have been a matter of seconds—Blomkvist and his
sister drive up and park outside. One possibility is that the killer left through the
basement. There’s a side entrance he could have used—into the back courtyard and
across a lawn to the street that runs parallel. But he would have had to have a key
to the basement door.”
“Is there any sign at all that the killer left that way?”
“No.”
“So, no description to go on,” Modig said. “But why did he ditch the weapon? If he
had taken it with him—or if he had flung it away some distance from the building—
we wouldn’t have found it for a while.”
It was a question that no-one could answer.
“What should we think about Blomkvist?” Faste said.
“No question he was in shock,” Mårtensson said. “But he acted sensibly. He seemed
clearheaded, and I thought he was trustworthy. His sister, a lawyer, confirmed the
phone call and the drive there by car. I don’t think he was involved.”
“He’s a celebrity journalist,” Modig said.
“So this is going to turn into a media circus,” Bublanski said. “All the more reason
to wrap it up as fast as we can. OK… Jerker, you’ll deal with the crime scene, of
course, and the neighbours. Faste, you and Curt investigate the victims. Who were
they, what were they working on, who was in their circle of friends, who might
have had a motive to kill them? Sonja, you and I will go over the witness
statements from that night. Then you’ll make a schedule of what Svensson and
Johansson were doing all day yesterday before they were killed. We’ll meet here at
2:00 this afternoon.”
Blomkvist began his working day at Svensson’s desk. He sat quite still for a long
while, as if he did not feel up to taking on the task.
Svensson had his own laptop and had initially worked mostly from home. He had
usually spent two days a week in the office; more in the last weeks. At Millennium
he had access to an older PowerMac G3, a computer that lived on his desk and
could be used by any of the staff. Blomkvist turned on the G3 and found much of
the material Svensson had been working on. He had primarily used the G3 to search
the Net, but there were various folders that he had copied over from his laptop. He
also had a complete backup on two disks that he kept locked in the desk drawer.
Usually he had backed up new and updated material every day, but since he had
not been in the office for a few days, the latest copy was from Sunday night. Three
days were missing.
Blomkvist made a copy of the Zip disk and locked it in the safe in his office. Then
he spent forty-five minutes going through the contents of the original disk. It
contained around thirty folders and countless sub-folders. Four years of Svensson’s
research on trafficking. He read the document names and looked for ones that
might contain the most sensitive material—the names of sources that Svensson was
protecting. He had clearly been very careful with his sources—all such material was
in a folder labelled . The folder contained 134 documents, most of them quite small.
Blomkvist highlighted all the documents and deleted them. He dragged them to an
icon for the Burn programme, which did not simply delete the documents but
eradicated them byte by byte.
Then he tackled Svensson’s email. He had been given his own email address at
Millennium, which he used both at the office and on his laptop. He had his own
password, but that did not present a problem, since Blomkvist had administrator
rights and was able to access the entire mail server. He downloaded a copy of
Svensson’s email and burned it to a CD.
Finally he turned his attention to the mountain of paper made up of reference
material, notes, press clippings, court judgments, and all the correspondence that
Svensson had accumulated. He played it safe and made copies of everything that
looked important. That came to two thousand pages and took him three hours.
He set to one side all the material that might in any way be connected to a
confidential source. It was a stack of about forty pages, mainly notes from two A4
pads that Svensson had locked in his desk. Blomkvist put this material in an
envelope and took it into his office. Then he carried all the other material that was
part of Svensson’s project to his desk.
When he was finished he took a deep breath and went down to the 7-Eleven, where
he had a coffee and a slice of pizza. He mistakenly assumed that the police would
arrive at any moment to go through Svensson’s desk.
Bublanski had an unexpected breakthrough in the investigation just after 10:00 a.m.,
when he was called by Lennart Granlund of the National Forensics Laboratory in
Linköping:
“It’s about the killings in Enskede.”
“So soon?”
“We received the weapon early this morning, and I’m not quite done with the
analysis, but I have some information that might interest you.”
“Good. Tell me what you’ve come up with,” Bublanski said.
“The weapon is a Colt .45 Magnum, made in the USA in 1981. We have fingerprints
and possible DNA—but that analysis will take a little time. We’ve also looked at the
bullets that the couple were shot with. Not surprisingly, they appear to have been
fired from that weapon. That’s usually the case when we find a gun in the stairwell
at a crime scene. The bullets are badly fragmented, but we have a piece to use for
comparison. It’s most likely that this is the murder weapon.”
“An illegal weapon, I suppose. Do you have a serial number?”
“The weapon is quite legal. It belongs to a lawyer, Nils Erik Bjurman, and was
bought in 1983. He’s a member of the police shooting club. He lives on
Upplandsgatan near Odenplan.”
“What on earth are you saying?”
“We also found, as I mentioned, a number of prints on the weapon. Prints from at
least two different people. We may expect that one set belongs to Bjurman, insofar
as the weapon was not reported stolen or sold—but I have no information on that.”
“Aha. In other words, we have a lead.”
“We have a hit in the register for the second set. Prints from the right thumb and
forefinger.”
“Who is it?”
“A woman born on April 30, 1978. Arrested for an assault in Gamla Stan in 1995,
when the prints were taken.”
“Does she have a name?”
“Yes. Her name is Lisbeth Salander.”
Bublanski wrote down the name and a social security number that Granlund gave
him.
When Blomkvist returned to work after his late lunch, he went straight to his office
and closed the door, making it clear that he did not want to be disturbed. He had
not had time to deal with all the peripheral information in Svensson’s email and
notes. He would have to settle down and read through the book and the articles
with completely new eyes, keeping in mind now that the author was dead and
unable to answer any difficult questions that might need to be asked.
He had to decide whether the book could still be published. And he had to make up
his mind whether there was anything in the material that might hint at a motive
for murder. He switched on his computer and set to work.
Bublanski made a brief call to Ekström, to tell him what had developed at NFL. It
was decided that Bublanski and Modig would pay a call on Advokat Bjurman. It
could be for a talk, an interrogation, or even an arrest. Faste and Andersson would
track down this Lisbeth Salander and ask her to explain how her fingerprints came
to be on a murder weapon. The search for Bjurman at first presented no difficulty.
His address was listed in the tax records, the weapons registry, and the vehicle
licencing database; it was even in the telephone book. Bublanski and Modig drove
to Odenplan and managed to get into the building on Upplandsgatan when a young
man came out just as they arrived.
After that it was trickier. When they rang Bjurman’s doorbell, no-one answered.
They drove to his office at St. Eriksplan, but got the same result there.
“Maybe he’s in court,” Modig said.
“Maybe he got on a plane to Brazil after shooting two people in Enskede,” Bublanski
said.
Modig glanced at her colleague. She enjoyed his company. She would not have had
anything against flirting with him but for the fact that she was a mother of two
and she and Bublanski were both happily married. From the brass nameplates on
Bjurman’s floor they noted that his nearest neighbours were a dentist, Dr. Norman,
a company called N-Consulting, and Rune Håkansson, a lawyer.
They started with Håkansson.
“Hello, my name is Modig and this is Inspector Bublanski. We’re from the police
and have business with Nils Erik Bjurman, your colleague from next door. Do you
know where we might find him?”
Håkansson shook his head. “I haven’t seen much of him lately. He was seriously ill
two years ago, and has more or less shut down his practice. I only see him about
once every two months.”
“Seriously ill?” Bublanski said.
“I’m not sure what with. He was always working flat out, and then he was taken ill.
Cancer, I assumed. I hardly know him.”
“Do you think or do you know that he got cancer?” Modig said.
“Well… No, I’m not sure. He had a secretary, Britt Karlsson, or Nilsson, something
like that. An older woman. He let her go, and she was the one who told me that he
was ill. That was in the spring of 2003. I didn’t see him again until December of that
year. He looked ten years older, gaunt and grey-haired. I drew my own
conclusions.”
They went back to the apartment. Still no answer. Bublanski took out his mobile
and dialled Bjurman’s mobile number. He got an automated message: The
subscriber you are calling cannot be reached at present. Please try again later.
He tried the number at the apartment. On the landing they could hear a faint
ringing from the other side of the door before an answering machine clicked on
and asked the caller to leave a message.
It was 1:00 p.m.
“Coffee?”
“I need a burger.”
At Burger King on Odenplan Modig had a Whopper and Bublanski a veggie burger.
Then they returned to police headquarters.
• • •
Prosecutor Ekström called the meeting to order at the conference table in his office
at 2:00. Bublanski and Modig took seats next to each other by the wall near the
window. Andersson arrived two minutes later and sat down opposite them.
Holmberg came in with a tray of coffee in paper cups. He had paid a brief visit to
Enskede and intended to return later in the afternoon when the techs were
finished.
“Where’s Faste?” Ekström asked.
“He’s with the social welfare agency. He called five minutes ago and said he’d be a
little late,” Svensson said.
“We’ll get started anyway. What have we got?” Ekström began without ceremony.
He pointed first to Bublanski.
“We’ve been looking for Nils Bjurman, the registered owner of what is probably the
murder weapon. He isn’t at home or at his office. According to another lawyer in
the same building, he fell ill two years ago and has more or less shut down his
practice.”
Modig said: “Bjurman is fifty-five, not listed in the criminal register. He is mainly a
business lawyer. I haven’t had time to research his background beyond that.”
“But he does own the gun that was used in Enskede.”
“That’s correct. He has a licence for it and he’s a member of the police shooting
club,” Bublanski said. “I talked to Gunnarsson in weapons—he’s the chairman of the
club and knows Bjurman well. He joined in 1978 and was treasurer from 1984 to
1992. Gunnarsson describes Bjurman as an excellent shot with a pistol, calm and
collected, and no funny stuff.”
“A gun freak?”
“Gunnarsson thinks Bjurman was more interested in club life than in the shooting
itself. He liked to compete, but he didn’t stand out, at least not as a gun fanatic. In
1983 he participated in the Swedish championships and came in thirteenth. For the
past ten years he’s cut back on shooting practice and just shows up for annual
meetings and such.”
“Does he own any other weapons?”
“He has had licences for four handguns since he joined the shooting club. In
addition to the Colt, he’s had a Beretta, a Smith & Wesson, and a competition pistol
made by Rapid. The other three were sold within the club ten years ago, and the
licences were transferred to other members.”
“And we have no idea where he is.”
“That’s correct. But we’ve only been looking for him since 10:00 this morning. He
may be out walking in Djurgården or in hospital or whatever.”
At that moment Faste burst in. He seemed out of breath.
“Sorry I’m late. May I jump right in?”
Ekström motioned “be my guest.”
“Lisbeth Salander is a very interesting character. I’ve spent the morning at the
social welfare agency and the Guardianship Agency.” He took off his leather jacket
and hung it over the back of his chair before he sat down and opened a notebook.
“The Guardianship Agency?” Ekström said with a frown.
“This is one very disturbed lady,” Faste said. “She was declared incompetent and put
under guardianship. Guess who’s her guardian.” He paused for effect. “Nils Bjurman,
the owner of the weapon that was used in Enskede.”
This announcement certainly had the effect Faste had anticipated. It took him
fifteen more minutes to brief the group on all he had learned about Salander.
“To sum up,” Ekström said when Faste was finished, “we have fingerprints on the
probable murder weapon from a woman who during her teens was in and out of
psychiatric units, who is understood to make her living as a prostitute, who was
declared incompetent by the district court, and who has been documented as
having violent tendencies. We should be asking what the hell she’s doing out on the
streets at all.”
“She’s had violent tendencies since she was in elementary school,” said Faste. “She
seems to be a real psycho.”
“But so far we have nothing to link her to the couple in Enskede.” Ekström
drummed his fingertips on the tabletop. “This double murder may not be so hard to
solve after all. Have we got an address for Salander?”
“On Lundagatan in Södermalm. Tax records show that she declared periodic income
from Milton Security.”
“And what in God’s name was she doing for them?”
“I don’t know. It’s a pretty modest annual income for several years. Maybe she’s a
cleaning woman or something.”
“Hmm,” Ekström said. “We’ll have that checked out. Right now we have to find
her.”
“We’ll have to work out the details gradually,” Bublanski said. “But now we have a
suspect. Hans, you and Curt go down to Lundagatan and pick up Salander. Be
careful—we don’t know if she has other weapons, and we don’t really know how
dangerous she may be.”
“OK.”
“Bubble,” Ekström said, “the head of Milton Security is Dragan Armansky. I met him
on a case a few years ago. He’s reliable. Go to his office and have a private talk with
him about Salander. You’d better get there before he leaves for the day.”
Bublanski was visibly annoyed, partly because Ekström had used his nickname,
partly because he had formulated his request as an order.
“Modig,” Bublanski said, “keep looking for Bjurman. Knock on all the neighbours’
doors. I think it’s just as important to find him.”
“OK.”
“We have to find the connection between Salander and the couple in Enskede. And
we have to place Salander down in Enskede at the time of the murders. Jerker, get
some pictures of her and check with everyone who lives in the apartment building.
Knock on doors this evening. Get some uniforms to help you out.”
Bublanski paused and scratched the back of his neck.
“Damn, with a little luck we could tie up this mess tonight—and I thought this was
going to be a long, drawn-out affair.”
“One more thing,” Ekström said. “The media are obviously pressuring us. I’ve
promised them a press conference at 3:00 p.m. I can handle it provided I get
somebody from the press office to help out. I’m guessing that a number of
journalists will call you directly as well. We’ll say nothing at all about Salander and
Bjurman for as long as need be.”
Armansky had considered going home early. It was Maundy Thursday and he and
his wife had planned to go to their summer cabin on Blidö over the Easter
weekend. He had just closed his briefcase and put on his coat when the
receptionist buzzed him and said that Criminal Inspector Jan Bublanski was looking
for him. Armansky did not know Bublanski, but the fact that a senior police officer
had come to the office was enough to make him hang his coat back on the
coatrack. He did not feel like seeing anyone at all, but Milton Security could not
afford to ignore the police. He met Bublanski by the elevator in the corridor.
“Thanks for taking the time to see me,” Bublanski said. “My boss sends his greetings
—Prosecutor Ekström.”
They shook hands.
“Ekström—I’ve had dealings with him a few times. It’s been several years. Would
you like some coffee?”
Armansky stopped at the coffee machine and pressed the buttons for two cups
before he invited Bublanski into his office and offered him the comfortable chair by
the window.
“Armansky … Russian?” Bublanski said. “My name ends in-ski too.”
“My family comes from Armenia. And yours?”
“Poland.”
“How can I help you?”
Bublanski took out his notebook.
“I’m investigating the killings in Enskede. I assume you heard the news today.”
Armansky gave a brisk nod.
“Ekström said that you’re discreet.”
“In my position it pays to cooperate with the police. I can keep a secret, if that’s
what you’re wondering.”
“Good. We’re looking for an individual who worked for your company at one time.
Lisbeth Salander. Do you know her?”
Armansky felt a lump of cement form in his stomach. His expression did not
change.
“And why are you looking for Fröken Salander?”
“Let’s say that we have reason to consider her a person of interest in the
investigation.”
The lump of cement in Armansky’s stomach expanded. It almost caused him
physical pain. Since the day he had first met Salander he had had a strong
presentiment that her life was on a trajectory towards catastrophe. But he had
always imagined her as a victim, not an offender. He still showed no emotion.
“So you suspect Lisbeth Salander of the killings in Enskede. Do I understand you
correctly?”
Bublanski hesitated a moment, and then he nodded.
“What can you tell me about her?”
“What do you want to know?”
“First of all, how can we find her?”
“She lives on Lundagatan. I’ll have to look up the exact address. I have a mobile
telephone number for her.”
“We have the address. The mobile number would be helpful.”
Armansky went to his desk and read out the number, which Bublanski wrote down.
“She works for you?”
“She has her own business. I gave her freelance assignments now and then from
1998 until about a year and a half ago.”
“What sort of jobs did she do?”
“Research.”
Bublanski looked up from his notebook.
“Research?” he said.
“Personal investigations, to be more precise.”
“Just a moment… are we talking about the same girl? The Lisbeth Salander we’re
looking for didn’t finish school and was officially declared incompetent to manage
her affairs.”
“They don’t say ‘incompetent’ nowadays,” Armansky said calmly.
“I don’t give a damn what they say nowadays. The girl we’re looking for has a
record which says she is a deeply disturbed and violence-prone individual. It says in
her social welfare agency file that she was a prostitute in the late nineties. There is
nothing anywhere in her records to indicate that she could hold down a white-collar job.”
“Files are one thing. People are something else.”
“You mean that she is qualified to do personal investigations for Milton Security?”
“Not only that. She is by far the best researcher I’ve ever had.”
Bublanski put down his pen and frowned.
“It sounds as though you have … respect for her.”
Armansky looked at his hands. The question marked a fork in the road. He had
always feared that Salander would end up in hot water sooner or later, but he
could not conceive of her being mixed up in a double murder in Enskede—as the
killer or in any other way. But what did he know about her private life? Armansky
thought of her recent visit to his office in which she had cryptically explained that
she had enough money to get by and did not need a job.
The wisest thing to do at that moment would be to distance himself, and above all
Milton Security, from all contact with Salander. But then Salander was probably the
loneliest person he knew.
“I have respect for her skills. You won’t find that in her school results or personal
record.”
“So you know about her background.”
“The fact that she’s under guardianship and that she had a pretty confused
upbringing, yes.”
“And yet you trusted her.”
“That is precisely why I trusted her.”
“Please explain.”
“Her previous guardian, Holger Palmgren, was old J. F. Milton’s lawyer. He took on
her case when she was a teenager, and he persuaded me to give her a job. I
employed her initially to sort the mail and look after the photocopier, things like
that. But she turned out to have unbelievable talents. And you can forget any report
that says she may have been a prostitute. That’s nonsense. Lisbeth had a difficult
period in her teens and was undoubtedly a bit wild—but that’s not the same as
breaking the law. Prostitution is probably the last thing in the world she would
turn to.”
“Her current guardian is a lawyer by the name of Nils Bjurman.”
“I’ve never met him. Palmgren had a cerebral haemorrhage a couple of years ago.
Lisbeth cut back on the work she did for me quite soon after that happened. The
last job she did was in October a year and a half ago.”
“Why did you stop employing her?”
“It wasn’t my choice. She was the one who broke off contact and disappeared
abroad. Without a word of explanation.”
“Disappeared abroad?”
“She was gone for about a year.”
“That can’t be right. Bjurman sent in monthly reports on her for all of last year. We
have copies up at Kungsholmen.”
Armansky shrugged and smiled.
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“In early February. She popped up out of nowhere and paid me a social visit. She
spent all of last year out of the country, travelling in Asia and the Caribbean.”
“Forgive me, but I’m getting a little muddled here. I had the impression that this
Lisbeth Salander was a mentally ill girl who hadn’t even finished school and who
was under guardianship. Now you tell me that you trusted her as an exceptional
researcher, that she has her own business, and that she earned enough money to
take a year off and travel around the world, all without her guardian sounding the
alarm. Something doesn’t add up here.”
“There’s quite a bit that doesn’t add up regarding Fröken Salander.”
“May I ask … what is your overall opinion of her?”
Armansky thought for a while. Finally he said: “She’s one of the most irritating,
inflexible people I’ve met in my whole life.”
“Inflexible?”
“She won’t do anything she doesn’t want to do. She doesn’t give a damn what other
people think of her. She is tremendously skilled. And she is unlike anyone I’ve ever
met.”
“Is she unbalanced?”
“How do you define unbalanced?”
“Is she capable of murdering two people in cold blood?”
Armansky was quiet for a long time. “I’m sorry. I can’t answer that question. I’m a
cynic. I believe that everyone has it in them to kill another person. In desperation
or hatred, or at least to defend themselves.”
“You don’t discount the possibility, at any rate.”
“Lisbeth Salander will not do anything unless she has a good reason for it. If she
murdered someone, then she must have felt that she had a very good reason to do
so. On what grounds do you suspect her of being involved in these murders?”
Bublanski met Armansky’s gaze.
“Can we keep this confidential?”
“Absolutely”
“The murder weapon belonged to her guardian. And her fingerprints were on it.”
Armansky clenched his teeth. That was serious circumstantial evidence.
“I’ve only heard about the murders on the radio. What was it about? Drugs?”
“Is she mixed up with drugs?”
“Not that I know of. But, as I said, she went through a bad time in her teens, and
she was arrested a few times for being drunk. Her record will tell you whether
drugs were involved.”
“We don’t have a motive for the murders. They were a conscientious couple. She
was a criminologist and was just about to get her doctorate. He was a journalist.
Dag Svensson and Mia Johansson. Do those names ring any bells?”
Armansky shook his head.
“We’re trying to find a connection between them and Lisbeth Salander.”
“I’ve never heard of them.”
Bublanski stood up. “Thanks for your time. It’s been a fascinating conversation. I
don’t know how much the wiser I am for it, but I hope we can keep all of this
between ourselves.”
“Of course.”
“I’ll get back to you if necessary. And of course, if Salander should get in touch …”
“Certainly,” Armansky said.
They shook hands. Bublanski was on his way out the door when he stopped.
“You don’t happen to know anyone that Salander associates with, do you? Friends,
acquaintances …”
Armansky shook his head.
“I don’t know a single thing about her private life. Except that her old guardian
meant something to her. Holger Palmgren. He’s in a nursing home in Ersta. She
might have made contact with him since she came back.”
“She never had visitors when she was working here? Would there be a record of
that?”
“No. She worked from home mainly and came in only to present her reports. With
a few exceptions, she never even met the clients. Possibly …” Armansky was struck
by a thought.
“What?”
“There is just possibly one other person she may have got in touch with, a
journalist she knew a couple of years ago. He was looking for her when she was
out of the country.”
“A journalist?”
“His name is Mikael Blomkvist. Do you remember the Wennerström affair?”
Bublanski came slowly back into Armansky’s office.
“It was Blomkvist who discovered the couple in Enskede. You’ve just established a
link between Salander and the murder victims.”
Armansky again felt the solid pain of the lump in his stomach.
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