CHAPTER 15
Maundy Thursday, March 24
Malm felt drained and miserable when he finally got home after the unplanned day
at work. He smelled the aroma of something spicy from the kitchen and went in
and hugged his boyfriend.
“How are you feeling?” Arnold Magnusson asked.
“Like a sack of shit.”
“I’ve been hearing about it on the news all day long. They haven’t released the
names yet. But it sounds fucking awful.”
“It is fucking awful. Dag worked for us. He was a friend and I liked him a lot. I
didn’t know his girlfriend, but both Micke and Erika did.”
Malm looked around the kitchen. They had moved into the apartment on
Allhelgonagatan only three months ago. Suddenly it felt like another world.
The telephone rang. They looked at each other and decided to ignore it. Then the
answering machine switched on and they heard a familiar voice.
“Christer. Are you there? Pick up.”
It was Berger calling to tell him that the police were now looking for Blomkvist’s
former researcher, who was the prime suspect for the murders of Svensson and
Johansson.
Malm received the news with a sense of unreality.
Cortez had missed the commotion on Lundagatan for the simple reason that he had
been standing outside the police press office at Kungsholmen the whole time, from
which no news had been released since the press conference earlier that afternoon.
He was tired, hungry, and annoyed at being ignored by the people he was trying to
contact. Not until 6:00, when the raid at Salander’s apartment was over, did he pick
up a rumour that the police had a suspect in the investigation. The tip came from a
colleague at an evening paper. But Cortez soon managed to find out Prosecutor
Ekström’s mobile phone number. He introduced himself and asked his questions
about who, how, and why.
“What newspaper did you say you were from?” Ekström said.
“Millennium magazine. I knew one of the victims. I understand that the police are
looking for a specific person. Can you confirm this?”
“I can’t comment at present.”
“Can you say when you will be able to provide some concrete information?”
“We may well call another press conference later this evening.”
Ekström sounded evasive. Cortez tugged on the gold ring in his ear-lobe.
“Press conferences are for reporters who have immediate deadlines. I work for a
monthly magazine, and we have a very special personal interest in knowing what
progress is being made.”
“I can’t help you. You’ll have to be patient like everyone else.”
“According to my source it’s a woman who is wanted for questioning. Who is she?”
“I can’t comment just now.”
“Can you confirm that you’re searching for a woman?”
“I’m not going to confirm or deny anything at all. Goodbye.”
Holmberg stood in the doorway of the bedroom and contemplated the huge pool of
blood on the floor where Mia Johansson had been found. He turned and could see a
similar pool of blood where Svensson had lain. He pondered the extensive blood
loss. It was a lot more blood than he was used to finding at shootings; Supervisor
Mårtensson had been correct in his assessment that the killer had used hunting
ammo. The blood had coagulated in a black and rusty-brown mass that covered so
much of the floor that the ambulance personnel and technical team had to walk
through it, leaving footprints throughout the apartment. Holmberg was wearing
gym shoes with blue plastic booties over them.
The real crime scene investigation began, in his view, now. The bodies of the
victims had been removed. Holmberg was there by himself after the two remaining
techs had said goodnight and left. They had photographed the victims and
measured blood splatter on the walls and conferred about “splatter distribution
areas” and “droplet velocity.” Holmberg had not paid much attention to the
technical examination. The crime scene techs’ findings would be compiled in a
report which would reveal in detail where the killer had stood in relation to his
victims, and at what distance, in which order the shots had been fired, and which
fingerprints might be of interest. But for Holmberg it was of no interest at all. The
technical examination would not contain a syllable about who the killer was or
what motive he or she—a woman was now the prime suspect—might have had for
the murders. Those were the questions he now had to try to answer.
Holmberg went into the bedroom. He put a worn briefcase on a chair and took out
a Dictaphone, a digital camera, and a notebook.
He began by going through the chest of drawers behind the bedroom door. The top
two drawers contained women’s underwear, sweaters, and a jewellery box. He
arranged each object on the bed and scrutinized the jewellery box. He did not think
it contained any pieces of great value. In the bottom drawer he found two
photograph albums and two folders containing household accounts. He turned on
his tape recorder.
“Confiscation protocol for Björneborgsvägen 8B. Bedroom, chest of drawers, bottom
bureau drawer. Two bound photograph albums, size A4. One folder with black spine
marked HOUSEHOLD and one folder with blue spine marked FINANCIAL
DOCUMENTS containing information about a mortgage and loans for the
apartment. A small box containing handwritten letters, postcards, and personal
items.”
He carried the objects to the hall and placed them in a suitcase. He continued with
the drawers in the bedside tables on each side of the double bed, finding nothing of
interest. He opened the wardrobes and sorted through clothes, feeling in each
pocket and in the shoes to check for any forgotten or hidden objects, and then
turned his attention to the shelves at the top of the wardrobes. He opened boxes
and small storage containers. Every so often he found papers or items that he
would include for various reasons in the confiscation inventory.
There was a desk in one corner of the bedroom. It was a very small home office
with a desktop Compaq computer and an old monitor. Under the desk was a two-drawer filing cabinet and on the floor next to the desk stood a low shelf unit.
Holmberg knew that it would be in this home office that he would probably make
the most important finds—to the extent that there was anything to find—and so he
saved the desk for last. Instead he went into the living room and continued the
crime scene inspection. He opened the glass-fronted cabinet and examined each
bowl, each drawer, each shelf. Then he turned his attention to the large bookcase
along the outer wall and the wall of the bathroom. He took a chair and began at
the top, checking whether anything was hidden on top of the bookcase. Then he
went down it shelf by shelf, quickly picking out stacks of books and going through
them, also checking whether anything was concealed behind them on the shelves.
After forty-five minutes he put the last book back on the shelf. On the living-room
table was a neat stack of books. He turned on the tape recorder.
“From the bookcase in the living room. A book by Mikael Blomkvist, The Mafia’s
Banker. A book in German entitled Der Staat und die Autonomen, a book in Swedish
with the title Revolutionary Terrorism, and an English book Islamic Jihad.”
He included the book by Blomkvist because its author had turned up in the
preliminary investigation. The last three works were perhaps less obvious.
Holmberg had no idea whether the murders were related to any form of political
activity—or indeed whether Svensson or Johansson was politically involved—or
whether the books were merely indicative of a general interest in politics as part of
their academic or journalistic work. On the other hand, if two dead bodies were
found in an apartment where there were books about terrorism, he was going to
make note of the fact. He placed the books in the suitcase with the other items.
Then he looked through the drawers in an antique desk. On top of the desk was a
CD player, and the drawers contained a great number of CDs. Holmberg spent half
an hour opening every CD case and verifying that the contents matched the cover.
He found about ten CDs that had no label, and were probably burned at home or
possibly pirated copies; he inserted the ones without labels into the CD player to
check that they were not storing anything besides music. He examined the TV shelf
nearest the bedroom door, where there was a large collection of video-cassettes. He
test-played several of them. They seemed to be everything from action movies to a
hodgepodge of taped news programmes and reports from Cold Facts, Insider, and
Assignment Scrutiny. He added thirty-six videocassettes to the inventory. Then he
went to the kitchen, opened a thermos of coffee, and took a short break before he
went on with his search.
From a shelf in a kitchen cupboard he gathered a number of jars and medicine
bottles. They too were placed in a plastic bag and added to the confiscated material.
He picked out foodstuffs from the pantry and refrigerator and opened every jar,
coffee package, and recorked bottle. In a pot sitting on the windowsill he found
1,220 kronor plus some receipts. From the bathroom he took nothing, but he did
observe that the laundry basket was overflowing. He went through all the clothing.
He took coats out of a closet in the hall and searched in every pocket.
He found Svensson’s wallet in the inner pocket of a sports jacket and added it to
the inventory of confiscated items. Svensson had a membership card to the Friskis
& Svettis gym chain, a Handelsbanken ATM card, and just under 400 kronor in cash.
He found Johansson’s handbag and spent a few minutes going through its contents.
She also had a card to Friskis & Svettis, an ATM card, a Konsum co-op loyalty card,
and a membership card to something called Club Horizon, which had a globe as its
logo. He found about 2,500 kronor in cash, a relatively large but not unreasonable
sum, given that they were on their way out of Stockholm for the holiday weekend.
That there was money in their wallets did reduce the likelihood of their deaths
being robbery-related.
“From Johansson’s handbag found on the shelf above the coatrack in the hall. One
ProPlan pocket diary, a separate address book, and a leather-bound black
notebook.”
Holmberg took another break for coffee and noted that for a change he had so far
found nothing embarrassing or intimate in the Svensson-Johansson couple’s home—
no hidden sex aids, no scandalous underwear, no drawer full of pornographic
videos, no marijuana cigarettes or any sign at all of other illegal substances. They
seemed to be a normal couple, possibly (from a police standpoint) somewhat duller
than average.
Finally he returned to the bedroom and sat down at the desk. He opened the top
drawer. He soon found that the desk and shelf unit next to it contained extensive
source and reference materials for Johansson’s doctoral thesis “From Russia with
Love.” The material was neatly arranged, exactly like a police report, and he lost
himself for a while in certain sections of the text. Mia Johansson was good enough
to be on the force, he told himself. One section of the bookshelf was only half full
and seemed to contain material belonging to Svensson, mainly press clippings of his
own articles and others on subjects that had interested him.
Holmberg spent a while going through the computer and found that it held almost
five gigabytes, everything from software to letters and downloaded articles and PDF
files. Certainly he was not going to be able to read through it in one evening. He
added the computer and assorted CDs and a Zip drive with about thirty disks to the
confiscated items.
Then he sat brooding for a while. The computer contained Johansson’s work, as far
as he could see. Svensson was a journalist, and a computer ought to be his most
important tool, but he did not even get email on the desktop. So he must have had
a computer somewhere else. Holmberg got up and went through the apartment,
thinking. In the hall there was a black backpack with some notebooks that
belonged to Svensson and an empty compartment for a computer. He could not
find a laptop anywhere in the apartment. He took the keys and went down to the
courtyard and searched Johansson’s car and then the apartment’s basement storage
area. He found no computer there either.
The strange thing about the dog is that it did not bark, my dear Watson.
He made a note that at least one computer seemed to be missing.
Bublanski and Faste met Ekström in his office at 6:30 p.m., soon after they returned
from Lundagatan. Andersson, after calling in, had been sent to Stockholm University
to interview Johansson’s tutor about her doctoral thesis. Holmberg was still in
Enskede, and Modig was running the crime scene investigation at Odenplan. Ten
hours had passed since Bublanski was appointed leader of the investigative team,
and seven hours since the hunt for Salander had begun.
“And who is Miriam Wu?” Ekström said.
“We don’t know much about her yet. She has no criminal record. It’ll be Faste’s task
to start looking for her first thing tomorrow morning. But as far as we could see,
there’s no sign that Salander lives at Lundagatan. For one thing, all the clothes in
the wardrobe were the wrong size for her.”
“And they weren’t your typical clothes, either,” Faste said.
“Meaning what?” Ekström asked.
“Well, let’s just say they weren’t the type of clothes you’d buy for Mother’s Day.”
“We know nothing about the Wu woman at present,” Bublanski said.
“How much do you have to know, for God’s sake? She has a closet full of whore
outfits.”
“Whore outfits?” Ekström said.
“Black leather, patent leather, corsets, and fetishist whips and sex toys in a drawer.
They didn’t look like cheap stuff, either.”
“Are you saying that Miriam Wu is a prostitute?”
“We know nothing about Fröken Wu at this stage,” Bublanski said a little more
sharply.
“One of Salander’s social welfare reports indicated a few years ago that she was
involved in prostitution,” Ekström said.
“And social welfare usually knows what they’re talking about,” Faste said.
“The social welfare report was not supported by any police reports,” Bublanski said.
“There was an incident in Tantolunden when she was sixteen or seventeen; she was
in the company of a considerably older man. Later the same year she was arrested
for being drunk in public. Again with a considerably older man.”
“You mean that we shouldn’t draw conclusions too hastily,” Ekström said. “OK. But
it strikes me that Johansson’s thesis having been on trafficking and prostitution,
there’s a possibility that in her work she made contact with Salander and this Wu
and in some way provoked them, and that this might somehow constitute a motive
for murder.”
“Johansson might have got in touch with Salander’s guardian and started the whole
merry-go-round,” Faste said.
“That’s possible,” Bublanski said. “But the investigation will have to document that.
The important thing for now is to find Salander. She’s obviously no longer living on
Lundagatan. That means we also have to find Wu and discover how she came to
live in that apartment and what her relationship with Salander is.”
“And how do we find Salander?”
“She’s out there somewhere. The problem is that the only address she ever had was
on Lundagatan. No change of address was filed.”
“You’re forgetting that she was also admitted to St. Stefan’s and lived with various
different foster families.”
“I’m not forgetting.” Bublanski checked his papers. “She had three separate foster
families when she was fifteen. It didn’t go well. From just before she turned sixteen
until she was eighteen, she lived with a couple in Hägersten. Fredrik and Monika
Gullberg. Andersson is going out to see them this evening when he’s finished at the
university.”
“How are we doing on the press conference?” Faste said.
The mood in Berger’s office at 7:00 that evening was grim. Blomkvist had been
sitting silent and almost immobile ever since Inspector Bublanski had left. Eriksson
had cycled over to Lundagatan to watch what was going on there. She reported
that no-one seemed to have been arrested and that traffic was flowing once again.
Cortez had called in to tell them that the police were now looking for a second
unnamed woman. Berger told him the name.
Berger and Eriksson had talked through what needed to be done, but the
immediate situation was complicated by the fact that Blomkvist and Berger knew
what role Salander had played in the denouement of the Wennerström affair—in
her capacity as elite-level hacker she had been Blomkvist’s secret source. Eriksson
had no knowledge of this and had never even heard Salander’s name mentioned. So
the conversation occasionally lapsed into cryptic silences.
“I’m going home,” Blomkvist said, getting up abruptly. “I’m so tired I can’t think
straight. I’ve got to get some sleep. Tomorrow being Good Friday, I plan to sleep
and go through papers. Malin, can you work over Easter?”
“Do I have any choice?”
“No. We’ll start at noon on Saturday. Could we work at my place rather than in the
office?”
“That would be fine.”
“I’m thinking of revamping the approach that we decided on this morning. Now it’s
no longer just a matter of trying to find out if Dag’s exposé had something to do
with the murders. It’s about working out, from the material, who murdered Dag
and Mia.”
Eriksson wondered how they were going to go about doing any such thing, but she
said nothing. Blomkvist waved goodbye to the two of them and left without
another word.
At 7:15 Inspector Bublanski reluctantly followed Prosecutor Ekström onto the
podium in the police press centre. Bublanski had absolutely no interest in being in
the spotlight in front of a dozen TV cameras. He was almost panic-stricken to be
the focus of such attention. He would never get used to or begin to enjoy seeing
himself on television.
Ekström, on the other hand, moved with ease, adjusted his glasses, and adopted a
suitably serious expression. He let the photographers take their pictures before he
raised his hands and asked for quiet.
“I’d like to welcome you all to this somewhat hastily arranged press conference
regarding the murders in Enskede late last night. We have some more information
to share with you. My name is Prosecutor Richard Ekström, and this is Criminal
Inspector Jan Bublanski of the County Criminal Police Violent Crimes Division, who
is leading the investigation. I have a statement to read, and then there will be an
opportunity for you to ask questions.”
Ekström looked at the assembled journalists. The murders in Enskede were big
news, and getting bigger. He was pleased to note that Aktuellt, Rapport, and TV4
were all there, and he recognized reporters from the TT wire service and the
evening and morning papers. There were also quite a few reporters he did not
recognize.
“As you know, two people were murdered in Enskede last night. A weapon was
found at the crime scene, a Colt .45 Magnum. Today the National Forensics
Laboratory established that this gun was the murder weapon. The owner of the
weapon was identified, and we went looking for him today.”
Ekström paused for effect.
“At 4:15 this afternoon the owner of the weapon was found dead in his apartment
in the vicinity of Odenplan. He had been shot. He is believed to have been dead at
the time of the killings in Enskede. The police”—Ekström here gestured towards
Bublanski—“have reason to believe that the same person was responsible for all
three murders.”
A murmur broke out among the reporters. Several of them began talking in low
voices on their mobile telephones. “Have you got a suspect?” a reporter from
Swedish Radio called out.
Ekström raised his voice. “If you would refrain from interrupting my statement,
we’ll get to that. This evening a person has been named whom the police want to
question in connection with these three murders.”
“Will you give us his name, please?”
“It’s not a he, but a she. The police are looking for a twenty-six-year-old woman
who has a connection to the owner of the weapon, and whom we know to have
been at the scene of the murders in Enskede.”
Bublanski frowned and then looked sullen. They had reached the point in the
agenda over which he and Ekström had disagreed, namely the question of whether
they should name their suspect.
Ekström had maintained that according to all available documentation, Salander
was a mentally ill, potentially violent woman and that something had apparently
triggered a murderous rage. There was no guarantee that the violence was at an
end, and therefore it was in the public interest that she be named and apprehended
as soon as possible.
Bublanski held that there was reason to wait at least for results of the technical
examination of Bjurman’s apartment before the investigative team committed itself
unequivocally to one approach. But Ekström had prevailed.
Ekström held up a hand to interrupt the buzzing of the assembled reporters. The
revelation that a woman was being sought for three murders would go off like a
bomb. He passed the microphone to Bublanski, who cleared his throat twice,
adjusted his glasses, and stared hard at the paper with the wording they had agreed
on.
“The police are searching for a twenty-six-year-old woman by the name of Lisbeth
Salander. A photograph from the passport office will be distributed. We do not
know where she is at present, but we believe that she is in the greater Stockholm
area. The police would like the public’s assistance in finding this woman as soon as
possible. Lisbeth Salander is four feet eleven inches tall, with a slim build.”
He took a deep, nervous breath. He could feel the dampness under his arms.
“Lisbeth Salander has previously been in the care of a psychiatric clinic and is
regarded as dangerous to herself and to the public. We would emphasize that we
cannot say unequivocally that she is the killer, but circumstances dictate that we
question her immediately to ascertain what knowledge she may have about the
murders in Enskede and at Odenplan.”
“You can’t have it both ways,” shouted a reporter from an evening paper. “Either
she’s a murder suspect or she isn’t.”
Bublanski gave Ekström a helpless look.
“The police are investigating on a broad front, and of course we’re looking at
various scenarios. But there is reason to suspect the woman we have named, and
the police consider it extremely urgent that she is taken into custody. She is a
suspect due to forensic evidence which emerged during the investigation of the
crime scene.”
“What sort of evidence?” someone in the crowded room immediately asked.
“We are not going to go into it.”
Several reporters started talking at once. Ekström held up his hand and pointed to a
reporter from Dagens Eko. He had dealt with him before and regarded him as
objective.
“Inspector Bublanski said that Fröken Salander had been in a psychiatric clinic. Why
was that?”
“This woman had a … a troubled upbringing and encountered over the years a
number of problems. She is under guardianship, and the person who owned the
weapon was her guardian.”
“Who is he?”
“The individual who was shot in his apartment at Odenplan. At present we are
withholding his name until his next of kin are notified.”
“What motive did she have for the murders?”
Bublanski took the microphone and said, “We will not speculate as to possible
motives.”
“Does she have a police record?”
“Yes.”
Then came a question from a reporter with a deep, distinctive voice that could be
heard over the crowd.
“Is she dangerous to the public?”
Ekström hesitated for a moment. Then he said: “We have reports which indicate
that she could be considered prone to violence in stressful situations. We are
issuing this statement because we want to get in touch with her as soon as
possible.”
Bublanski bit his lower lip.
Criminal Inspector Sonja Modig was still in Advokat Bjurman’s apartment at 9:00
that evening. She had called home to explain the situation to her husband. After
eleven years of marriage he had accepted that her job was never going to be nine
to five. She was sitting at Bjurman’s desk and reading through the papers that she
had found in the drawers when she heard a knock on the door and turned to see
Officer Bubble balancing two cups of coffee on his notebook, with a blue bag of
cinnamon rolls from the local kiosk in his other hand. Wearily she waved him in.
“What don’t you want me to touch?” Bublanski said.
“The techs have finished in here. They’re working on the kitchen and the bedroom.
The body’s still in there.”
Bublanski pulled up a chair and sat down. Modig opened the bag and took out a
roll.
“Thanks. I was having such caffeine withdrawal I thought I’d die.”
They munched quietly.
Modig licked her fingers and said, “I heard things didn’t go so well at Lundagatan.”
“There was nobody there. There were unopened letters for Salander, but someone
called Miriam Wu lives there. We haven’t found her yet either.”
“Who is she?”
“Don’t really know. Faste is working on her background. She was added to the
contract about a month ago, but she just seems to be someone who lives in the
apartment. I think Salander moved without filing a change of address.”
“Maybe she planned all this.”
“What? A triple murder?” Bublanski shook his head dejectedly. “What a mess this is
turning into. Ekström insisted on holding a press conference, and now we’re going
to get it in the neck from the media. Have you found anything?”
“Apart from Bjurman’s body in the bedroom, you mean? We found the empty box
for the Magnum. It’s being checked for prints. Bjurman has a file with copies of his
monthly reports about Salander that he sent to the Guardianship Agency. If they
are to be believed, Salander is a regular little angel, big time.”
“Not him too,” Bublanski said.
“Not him too what?”
“Another admirer of Fröken Salander.”
Bublanski summed up what he had learned from Armansky and Blomkvist. Modig
listened without interrupting. When he finished, she ran her fingers through her
hair and rubbed her eyes.
“That sounds completely absurd,” she said.
Bublanski tugged on his lower lip. Modig glanced at him and had to suppress a
smile. He had a rough-chiselled face that looked almost brutal. But when he was
confused or unsure of something, his expression turned sullen. It was in those
moments that she thought of him as Officer Bubble. She had never used the
nickname to his face and did not know who had coined it. But it suited him
perfectly.
“How sure are we?”
“The prosecutor seems sure. An APB went out nationally for Salander this evening,”
Bublanski said. “She spent the past year abroad, and it’s possible she could try to
leave again.”
“But how sure are we?”
He shrugged. “We’ve taken people in for a lot less.”
“Her prints were on the murder weapon in Enskede. Her guardian was murdered.
Without trying to get ahead of things, I’m guessing it’s the same weapon that was
used here. We’ll know tomorrow—the techs found a fairly intact bullet fragment in
the bed frame.”
“Good.”
“There are some rounds for the revolver in the bottom desk drawer. Bullets with
uranium cores and gold tips.”
“Very useful.”
“We have lots of paperwork that says Salander is unstable. Bjurman was her
guardian and he owned the gun.”
“Mmm …,” Bublanski said glumly.
“We have a link between Salander and the couple in Enskede—Mikael Blomkvist.”
“Mmm …,” he said again.
“You don’t sound convinced.”
“I can’t get a clear line on Salander. The paperwork says one thing, but Armansky
and Blomkvist say something else. According to the paperwork she is a
developmentally disabled near-psychopath. According to the two men who have
worked with her, she’s a skilled researcher. That’s a huge discrepancy. We have no
motive for Bjurman and nothing to say that she knew the couple in Enskede.”
“How much of a motive does a psychotic nutcase need?”
“I haven’t been in the bedroom yet. How does it look?”
“I found the body prostrate against the bed. He was kneeling on the floor as if he
were saying his prayers. He’s naked. Shot in the back of the neck.”
“One shot, just like in Enskede?”
“As far as I could see. It seems that Salander, if she’s the one who did it, forced him
onto his knees by the bed before she fired. The bullet went up through the back of
his head and exited through his face.”
“Like an execution, then.”
“Precisely.”
“I was thinking … somebody must have heard the shot.”
“His bedroom overlooks the rear courtyard, and the neighbours above and below
had left for the holiday. The window was closed. Besides, she used a pillow to
muffle the sound.”
“Smart thinking.”
At that moment Gunnar Samuelsson from forensics stuck his head in the door.
“Hi, Bubble,” he said, and then turned to his colleague. “Modig, we were thinking of
removing the body, so we turned him over. There’s something you ought to take a
look at.”
They all went into the bedroom. Bjurman’s body had been placed on its back on a
wheeled stretcher, the first stop on the way to the pathologist. There was no doubt
about the cause of death. His forehead bore a wound four inches across, and a large
part of his skull was hanging by a flap of skin. The blood splattered across the bed
and the wall told the tale.
Bublanski pouted.
“What are we supposed to be looking at?” Modig asked.
Samuelsson lifted the plastic sheet which covered Bjurman’s lower body. Bublanski
put on his glasses when he and Modig stepped closer to read the text tattooed on
Bjurman’s abdomen. The letters were irregular and clumsy—obviously whoever
wrote them was a novice tattoo artist—but the message could not have been
clearer: I AM A SADISTIC PIG, APERVERT, AND A RAPIST.
Modig and Bublanski looked at each other in astonishment.
“Are we possibly looking at a motive?” Modig said at last.
Blomkvist bought a pasta meal from the 7-Eleven on his way home and put the
paper carton in the microwave as he undressed and stood under the shower for
three minutes. He got a fork and ate standing up, right out of the carton. He was
hungry, but he had no appetite for food; he just wanted to take it on board as fast
as he could. When it was finished he opened a Vestfyn Pilsner beer and drank it
straight from the bottle.
Without turning on a lamp he stood by the window overlooking Gamla Stan for
more than twenty minutes, while he tried to stop thinking.
Twenty-four hours ago he had been at his sister’s house when Svensson had called
him on his mobile. He and Johansson had still been alive.
Blomkvist had not slept for thirty-six hours, and the days when he could skip a
night’s sleep with impunity were long gone. And he knew that he would not be
able to sleep without thinking about what he had seen. The images from Enskede
felt ingrained in his memory for all time.
Finally he turned off his mobile and crept under the covers. At 11:00 he was still
awake. He got up and brewed some coffee. He put on the CD player and listened to
Debbie Harry singing “Maria.” He wrapped himself in a blanket and sat on the
living-room sofa and drank coffee while he worried about Salander.
What did he actually know about her? Hardly anything.
She had a photographic memory and she was a hell of a hacker. He knew that she
was a peculiar, introverted woman who didn’t like to talk about herself, and that
she had absolutely no trust in authority of any kind.
She could be viciously violent. He owed his life to that.
But he had had no idea that she had been declared incompetent or was under
guardianship, or that she had spent any part of her teenage years in a psychiatric
clinic.
He had to choose whose side he was on.
Sometime after midnight he decided that he couldn’t accept the police’s
assumption that she had murdered Svensson and Johansson. At the very least, he
owed her a chance to explain herself before he passed judgment.
He had no idea when he nodded off, but at 4:30 a.m. he woke up on the sofa. He
staggered into the bedroom and fell instantly back to sleep.
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