CHAPTER 23
Sunday, April 3–Monday, April 4
Blomkvist made two more espressos. He apologized when he lit a cigarette. Paolo
Roberto shrugged.
He had the public reputation of being a cocky type who would say exactly what he
thought. Blomkvist quickly saw that he was just as cocky in private, but that he
was an intelligent and modest human being. He reminded himself that Paolo
Roberto had also made a bid for a political career as a Social Democrat candidate
for parliament. He definitely had something between his ears. Blomkvist found he
was beginning to like him.
“Why are you coming to me with this story?”
“That girl’s really in the soup, right? I don’t know what to do, but she probably
could use a friend in her corner.”
“I agree.”
“Why do you think she’s innocent?”
“It’s hard to explain. Lisbeth is an uncompromising person, but I just don’t believe
the story that she could have shot Dag and Mia. Especially not Mia. For one thing,
she had no motive—”
“At least none that we know of.”
“Fair enough. Lisbeth would have no problem using violence against somebody who
deserved it. But I don’t know. I’ve decided to challenge Bublanski, the detective in
charge of the investigation. I think there’s a reason why Dag and Mia were
murdered. And I think the reason is somewhere in the story Dag was working on.”
“If you’re right, Salander will need more than a hand to hold when she’s arrested—
she’ll need a whole other kind of support.”
“I know.”
Paolo Roberto had a dangerous glint in his eye. “If she’s innocent she’s been
subjected to one of the worst fucking legal scandals in history. She’s been painted
as a murderer by the media and the police, and after all the shit that’s been written
…”
“I know.”
“What can we do? Can I help out somehow?”
“The best help we could offer would be to find an alternative suspect. That’s what
I’m working on. The next best thing would be to get to her before some police thug
shoots her dead. Lisbeth isn’t the type of person who would give herself up
voluntarily.”
“So how do we find her?”
“I don’t know. But there is one thing you could do. Something practical, if you have
the time and energy.”
“My girlfriend is away all week. So I do have the time and the energy.”
“Well, I was thinking that since you’re a boxer …”
“Yes?”
“Lisbeth has a girlfriend, Miriam Wu. You’ve probably read about her.”
“Better known as the S&M dyke … Yeah, I’ve read about her.”
“I have her mobile number and I’ve been trying to get hold of her. She hangs up as
soon as she hears it’s a reporter.”
“I don’t blame her.”
“I don’t really have time to chase after Fröken Wu. But I read somewhere that she
trains in kickboxing. I was thinking that if a famous boxer wanted to get in touch
with her …”
“I’m with you. And you’re hoping that she might provide a lead to Salander.”
“When the police interviewed her she said she had no idea where Lisbeth was
staying. But it’s worth a try.”
“Give me her number. I’ll talk to her.”
Blomkvist gave him the number and the address on Lundagatan.
Björck had spent the weekend analysing his situation. His prospects, he decided,
were hanging by a fraying thread, and he would have to make the most of the hand
he’d been dealt.
Blomkvist was a fucking swine. The only question was whether he could be
persuaded to keep his mouth shut about… about the fact that Björck had hired the
services of those bitches. It was a chargeable offence, and he would be fired if it
were made public. The press would rip him to shreds. A member of the Security
Police who exploited teenage prostitutes … If only those fucking cunts hadn’t been
so young.
Sitting here doing nothing would certainly seal his fate. Björck was smart enough
not to have said anything to Blomkvist. He had read his expression. The man was in
agony. He wanted information. But he was going to be forced to pay for it, and the
price was his silence.
Zala brought a whole new dimension to the murder investigation.
Svensson had been hunting Zala.
Bjurman had been hunting Zala.
And Superintendent Björck was the only one who knew that there was a link
between Zala and Bjurman, which meant that Zala was a clue to the murders at
Enskede and Odenplan.
This created another serious problem for Björck’s future well-being. He was the one
who had given Bjurman the information about Zalachenko—as a friendly gesture
and in spite of the fact that the file was still top secret. That was a detail, but it
meant that he had committed another chargeable offence.
Furthermore, since Blomkvist’s visit on Friday he had involved himself in yet one
more crime. As a police officer, if he had information in a murder investigation it
was his duty to inform his colleagues immediately. But if he gave the information
to Bublanski or Ekström, he would implicate himself. It would all eventually come
out. Not just the whores, but the whole Zalachenko affair.
On Saturday he had gone to his office at the Security Police on Kungsholmen. He
had picked out all the old documents about Zalachenko and read through them. He
was the one who had written the reports, but it was many years ago. The oldest of
the documents were almost thirty years old. The most recent was ten years old.
Zalachenko.
A slippery fucker.
Zala.
Björck himself had called him that in his report, although he could not remember
ever having used the name.
But the connection was crystal clear. To Enskede. To Bjurman. And to Salander.
Björck still did not understand how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together, but he
thought he knew why Salander had been in Enskede. He could also easily imagine
her flying into a rage and killing Svensson and Johansson, either because they had
refused to cooperate or because they had provoked her. She had a motive, known
only to Björck and perhaps two or three other people in the whole country.
She is completely insane. I hope to God that some officer shoots her dead when
she’s apprehended. She knows. She could break the whole story wide open if she
talked.
No matter how Björck looked at his situation, Blomkvist was his only possible way
out. And that was the one thing that mattered to him. He felt a growing
desperation. Blomkvist had to be persuaded to treat him as a confidential source
and to keep quiet about his … foolish escapades with those fucking whores. Damn,
if only Salander would blow Blomkvist’s head off too.
He looked at Zalachenko’s phone number and weighed the pros and cons of
contacting him. He was incapable of making up his mind.
Blomkvist had made a point, at every stage, of summing up his thinking on the
investigation. When Paolo Roberto left, he spent an hour on the task. It had turned
into a journal in which he let his thoughts run free while at the same time he
meticulously wrote up every conversation and every meeting, as well as all the
research he was doing. He encrypted the document using PGP and emailed copies
to Berger and Eriksson, so that his colleagues were kept up to date.
Svensson had concentrated on Zala in the last weeks of his life. The name had
cropped up in his final telephone conversation with Blomkvist three hours before
he was killed. Björck claimed to know something about Zala.
Blomkvist ran through everything he had unearthed about Björck, which was not
very much.
Gunnar Björck was sixty-two years old, unmarried, born in Falun. Had been in the
police force since he was twenty-one. Began as a patrol officer, but studied law and
ended up in Säpo, the Security Police, when he was twenty-six or twenty-seven.
That was in 1969 or 1970, just at the end of Per Gunnar Vinge’s time as chief there.
Vinge was dismissed after making the claim in a conversation with Ragnar
Lassinanti, the governor of Norrbotten County, that Olof Palme was spying for the
Russians. Then came the Internal Bureau affair, and Holmér, and the Letter Carrier,
and the Palme assassination, and one scandal after another.
Björck’s career between 1970 and 1985 was largely undocumented, which was not so
odd, since anything that had to do with Säpo activities was confidential. He could
have been sharpening pencils in the stationery department or he could have been a
secret agent in China.
In October 1985 Björck moved to the Swedish Embassy in Washington for two years.
In 1988, back with Säpo in Stockholm. In 1996 he became a public figure: appointed
deputy bureau chief of the immigration division (whatever that entailed). After 1996
he made various statements to the media, in connection with the deportation of
suspect Arabs, and drew particular attention in 1998 when several Iraqi diplomats
were expelled.
What does any of this have to do with Salander and the murders of Svensson and
Johansson? Maybe nothing.
But Björck knows about Zala.
There has to be a connection.
Berger told no-one, not even her husband, from whom she rarely kept secrets, that
she was going to Svenska Morgon-Posten. She had about a month left at
Millennium. The anxiety was getting to her. The days would rush by and suddenly
she would be facing her last day there.
She was also growing uneasy about Blomkvist. She had read his latest email with a
sinking feeling. She recognized the signs. It was the same stubbornness that made
him stick it out in Hedestad two years ago, the same obsessive determination with
which he had gone after Wennerström. Since Maundy Thursday, nothing had
existed for him but to find out who had murdered his friends and somehow to
establish Salander’s innocence.
She fully sympathized with his objectives—Dag and Mia had been her friends too—
but there was a side to Blomkvist that made her uncomfortable. He could become
ruthless when he smelled blood.
From the moment he had called her the day before and told her how he had
challenged Bublanski and begun sizing him up like some fucking macho cowboy,
she knew that the hunt for Salander would keep Blomkvist busy for the foreseeable
future. She knew from experience that he would be impossible to deal with until he
solved the problem. He would vacillate between self-absorption and depression.
And somewhere in the equation he would also take risks that were probably utterly
unnecessary.
And Salander. Berger had met her only once, and she didn’t know enough about
that strange girl to share Blomkvist’s certainty that she was innocent. What if
Bublanski was right? What if she was guilty? What if Blomkvist did manage to track
her down and she turned out to be a lunatic armed with a gun?
Nor had Paolo Roberto’s astonishing conversation earlier that morning been
reassuring. It was good, of course, that Blomkvist was not the only one on
Salander’s side, but Paolo was a cowboy too.
And where was she going to find someone to replace her at Millennium? It was
now becoming urgent. She thought of discussing the matter with Malm, but she
couldn’t tell him and still keep the news from Blomkvist.
Blomkvist was a brilliant reporter, but he would be a disaster as editor in chief. She
and Malm were much more alike, but she was not at all sure that he would accept
the offer. Eriksson was too young, not confident enough yet. Nilsson was too self-absorbed. Cortez was a good reporter, but he was way too inexperienced. Lotta
Karim was too flaky. And Berger could not be sure that Malm or Blomkvist would
be happy with someone recruited from the outside.
It was a hell of a mess. Not at all the way she wanted to end her tenure at
Millennium.
On Sunday evening Salander opened Asphyxia 1.3 and went into the mirrored hard
drive of MikBlom/laptop. He was not online and she read through the material that
had been added in the past two days.
She read Blomkvist’s research journal and wondered whether he might be writing
it in such detail for her sake, and if so, what that could mean. He knew that she
was accessing his computer, so it was natural to conclude that he wanted her to
read what he wrote. The real question, however, was what he was not writing.
Since he knew she was accessing his machine, he could manipulate the flow of
information. She noted in passing that he apparently hadn’t gotten much further
with Bublanski than challenging him to some sort of a duel over her innocence.
This annoyed her. Blomkvist was basing his conclusions on emotion rather than on
facts. What a naive idiot.
But he had also zeroed in on Zala. Good thinking, Kalle Blomkvist.
Then she noticed with mild surprise that Paolo Roberto had popped up on the
scene. That was good news. She smiled. She liked that cocky fucker. He was macho
to his fingertips. He used to give her a pretty good drubbing when they met in the
ring. The few times he managed to connect, that is.
Then she sat up in her chair when she decrypted and read Blomkvist’s most recent
email to Berger.
Gunnar Björck. Säpo. Knows about Zala.
Björck knows Bjurman.
Salander’s eyes went blurry as she sketched a triangle in her mind. Zala. Bjurman.
Björck. Yes, that makes sense. She had never looked at the problem from that
perspective before. Maybe Blomkvist wasn’t so dumb after all. But of course he had
not worked out the connection. She had not even done that herself, even though
she had a lot more insight into what had happened. She thought for a while about
Bjurman and realized that the fact he knew Björck turned him into a bigger
roadblock than she had previously imagined.
She also realized that she would probably have to pay a visit to Små-dalarö.
Then she went into Blomkvist’s hard drive and created a new document in the
folder which she called [Ring corner]. He would see it the next time he switched on
his iBook.
Keep away from Teleborian. He’s evil.
Miriam Wu has absolutely nothing to do with this.
You’re right to focus on Zala. He’s the key. But you’re not going to find him in any
public records.
There’s a connection between Bjurman and Zala. I don’t know what it is, but I’m
working on it. Björck?
Important. There’s a damaging police report on me from March 1991. I don’t know
the file number and can’t find it. Why hasn’t Ekström given it to the media?
Answer: It’s not on his computer. Conclusion: He doesn’t know about it. How can
that be possible?
She thought for a moment and then added a P.S.:
P.S. Mikael, I’m not innocent. But I didn’t kill Dag and Mia—I have nothing to do
with their murders. I saw them that evening—before the murders occurred—but I
left them before it happened. Thanks for believing in me. Say hello to Paolo Roberto
and tell him he has a wimpy left hook.
P.P.S. How did you know about the Wennerström thing?
Blomkvist found Salander’s document some three hours later. He read the message
line by line at least five times. For the first time she had clearly stated that she did
not murder Svensson and Johansson. He believed her and felt enormous relief. And
finally she was talking to him, although as cryptically as ever.
He also noted that she denied murdering Dag and Mia, but she said nothing about
Bjurman. Which Blomkvist assumed was because he had mentioned only the two of
them in his message. He thought for a while and then created [Ring corner 2].
Hi Sally.
Thanks for finally telling me you’re innocent. I believed in you, but even I have been
affected by the media noise and felt some doubt. Forgive me. It feels good to hear it
straight from your keyboard. All that’s left is to uncover the real killer. You and I
have done that before. It would help if you weren’t so cagey. I assume you’re
reading my research journal. Then you know about as much as I do and how I’m
thinking. I think Björck knows something and I’ll have another talk with him in the
next few days. Am I on the wrong track, checking off the girls’ clients?
This thing with the police report surprises me. I’ll get my colleague Malin Eriksson
to dig into it. You were how old then, twelve or thirteen? What was the report
about?
Your attitude towards Teleborian is duly noted.
M.
P.S. You made a mistake in the Wennerström coup. I knew what you’d done—in
Sandhamn over Christmas—but didn’t ask since you didn’t mention it. And I have no
intention of telling you what the mistake was unless you meet me for a coffee.
The reply, when it came, said:
You can forget about the johns. Zala’s the one who’s of interest. And a blond giant.
But the police report is interesting since somebody seems to want to hide it. That
can’t be an accident.
Prosecutor Ekström was in a foul mood when Bublanski’s team gathered for the
morning meeting on Monday. More than a week’s searching for a named suspect
with a distinctive appearance had produced no result. Ekström’s mood did not
improve when Andersson, who had been on duty over the weekend, told him of the
latest development.
“A break-in?” Ekström said with undisguised amazement.
“The neighbour called on Sunday evening to say that the police tape on Bjurman’s
door had been cut. I checked on it.”
“And?”
“The tape was cut in three places. Probably a razor blade or a Stanley knife. A slick
job. It was hard to see.”
“A burglary? There are hooligans who specialize in dead people’s apartments—”
“Not a burglary. I went through the apartment. All the valuables, DVD player and
such, were still there. But Bjurman’s car key was lying on the kitchen table.”
“Car key?”
“Jerker was in the apartment on Wednesday to check if we’d missed something. He
also checked the car. He swears there wasn’t a car key on the kitchen table when
he left the apartment and put the tape back up.”
“Could he have forgotten and left it out? Nobody’s perfect.”
“Jerker never used that key. He used the one on Bjurman’s key ring, which we had
already confiscated.”
Bublanski stroked his chin. “So, not a normal break-in then.”
“Someone got into Bjurman’s apartment and sniffed around. It must have happened
between Wednesday and Sunday evening, when the neighbour telephoned.”
“Somebody was looking for something. What? Jerker?”
“There’s nothing of any interest left in there, nothing that we didn’t already
confiscate.”
“Nothing that we know of, at least. The motive for the murder is still unclear. We
assume that Salander is a psychopath, but even psychopaths need motives.”
“What do you suggest?”
“I don’t know. Someone searched Bjurman’s apartment. First question: Who?
Second question: Why? What was it we missed?”
“Jerker?”
Holmberg gave a resigned sigh. “OK. I’ll go through the apartment. This time with
tweezers.”
• • •
Salander woke up at 11:00 on Monday morning. She lay dozing for about half an
hour before she got up, put on coffee, and took a shower. Then she made herself
some breakfast and sat down at her PowerBook for an update on what was
happening in Prosecutor Ekström’s computer and to read the online editions of the
papers. Interest in the Enskede murders had evidently declined. Then she opened
Svensson’s research folder and read through his notes from his meeting with the
journalist Per-Åke Sandström, the john who ran errands for the sex mafia and who
knew something about Zala. When she was finished, she poured herself more coffee
and sat in her window seat to think.
By 4:00 she had thought enough.
She needed cash. She had three credit cards. One of them was in her own name and
so for all practical purposes useless. One was issued to Irene Nesser, but she
wanted to avoid using it since identifying herself with Irene Nesser’s passport
would be risky. One was issued to Wasp Enterprises and was linked to an account
that held about three million kronor and could be replenished with transfers via
the Internet. Anyone could use the card, but they would have to identify
themselves.
She went into the kitchen, opened a biscuit tin, and took out a wad of banknotes.
She had 950 kronor in cash, not a whole lot. Fortunately she also had 1,800
American dollars that had been lying around since she returned from her travels;
she could exchange them without ID at a Forex currency window. That improved
the situation.
She put on Irene Nesser’s wig, dressed up, and put a change of clothes and a box of
theatre makeup in a backpack. Then she set off on her second expedition from
Mosebacke. She walked to Folkungagatan and then down to Erstagatan, and got to
the Watski shop just before closing time. She bought electrical tape and a block and
tackle with eight yards of cotton rope.
She took the number 66 bus back. At Medborgarplatsen she saw a woman waiting
for the bus. She did not recognize her at first, but an alarm went off in the back of
her mind, and when she looked again she realized that the woman was Irene
Flemström, the salaries clerk at Milton Security. She had a new, trendier hairdo.
Salander slipped off the bus as Flemström got on. She looked around carefully,
searching as always for faces that might be familiar. She walked past the
semicircular Bofills Båge apartment building to Södra station and took the local
train north.
• • •
Inspector Modig shook hands with Berger, who immediately offered her some
coffee. She noticed that all the mugs in the kitchenette had logos and ads for
political parties and professional organizations.
“They’re mostly from election-night parties and interviews,” Berger explained,
handing her a Liberal Youth Party mug.
Modig worked at Svensson’s old desk. Eriksson offered to help, both in explaining
what Svensson’s book and article were about and in navigating the research
material. Modig was impressed by the scope of it. It had been an irritation for the
investigative team that Svensson’s computer was missing and that his work seemed
inaccessible. But in fact backups had been made of most of it and had been
available all along at the Millennium offices.
Blomkvist was not in the office, but Berger gave Modig a list of the material he had
taken from Svensson’s desk, which dealt exclusively with the identity of sources.
Modig called Bublanski and explained the situation. They decided that all the
material on Svensson’s desk, including Millennium’s computer, would have to be
confiscated and that Bublanski would return with a warrant if necessary to
requisition the material that Blomkvist had already removed. Modig then drew up a
confiscation inventory, and Cortez helped her carry the cardboard boxes down to
her car.
On Monday evening Blomkvist was feeling deeply frustrated. He had now checked
off ten of the names Svensson had intended to expose. In each instance he had
encountered worried, excitable, and shocked men. He estimated their average
income at around 400,000 kronor a year. They were a group of pathetic, frightened
individuals.
He had not felt, however, that any of them had anything to hide with respect to
the murders.
Blomkvist opened his iBook to check whether he had a new message from Salander.
He did not. In her previous note she had said that the johns were of no interest and
that he was wasting his time with them. He cursed her with a string of expletives.
He was hungry, but he did not feel like making himself supper. Besides, he hadn’t
been shopping for two weeks, except to buy milk from the corner store. He put on
his jacket and went down to the Greek taverna on Hornsgatan and ordered the
grilled lamb.
Salander first took a look at the stairwell and at dusk made two cautious circuits of
the adjacent buildings. They were low-frame buildings that she suspected were not
soundproof and hardly ideal for her purposes. The journalist Sandström lived in a
corner apartment on the fourth floor, the highest. Then the stairwell continued up
to an attic door. It would have to do.
The problem was that there was no light in any of the apartment’s windows.
She walked to a pizzeria a few streets away, where she ordered a Hawaiian and sat
in a corner to read the evening papers. Just before 9:00 she bought a caffè latte at
the Pressbyrå kiosk and returned to the building. The apartment was still in
darkness. She entered the stairwell and sat on the steps to the attic. From there she
had a view of Sandström’s door half a flight down. She drank her latte while she
waited.
Inspector Faste finally tracked down Cilla Norén, lead singer of the Satanist group
Evil Fingers, at the studio of Recent Trash Records in an industrial building in
Älvsjö. It was a cultural collision of about the same magnitude as the Spanish first
encountering the Carib Indians.
After several futile attempts at Norén’s parents’ house, Faste had succeeded at the
studio, where according to her sister she was “helping out” with the production of
a CD by the band Cold Wax from Borlänge. Faste had never heard of the band,
which seemed to consist of guys in their twenties. As soon as he entered the
corridor outside the studio he was met by a wall of sound that took his breath
away. He watched Cold Wax through a window and waited until there was a pause
in the cacophony.
Norén had raven black hair with red and green braids and black eye makeup. She
was on the chubby side and wore a short skirt and top which revealed a pierced
belly button. She had a belt full of rivets around her hips and looked like something
out of a French horror movie.
Faste held up his police ID and said he needed to talk to her. She went on chewing
gum and gave him a sceptical look. She pointed to a door and led him into a sort of
canteen, where he tripped and almost fell over a bag of trash that had been
dumped right by the door. Norén ran water into an empty plastic bottle, drank
about half of it, and then sat down at a table and lit a cigarette. She fixed Faste
with her clear blue eyes.
“What is Recent Trash Records?”
She seemed bored out of her skull.
“It’s a record company that produces new bands.”
“What’s your role here?”
“I’m the sound engineer.”
Faste gave her a hard look. “Are you trained to do that?”
“Nope. I taught myself.”
“Can you make a living from it?”
“Why do you ask?”
“I’m just curious. I assume you’ve read about Lisbeth Salander in the papers lately.”
She nodded.
“We believe that you know her. Is that correct?”
“Could be.”
“Is it correct or not correct?”
“It depends what you’re looking for.”
“I’m looking for an insane woman who committed a triple murder. I want
information about Lisbeth Salander.”
“I haven’t heard from Lisbeth since last year.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“Sometime in the fall two years ago. At Kvarnen. She used to hang out there, but
then she stopped coming.”
“Have you tried to get in touch with her?”
“I’ve called her mobile a few times. The number’s been disconnected.”
“And you don’t know how to get hold of her otherwise?”
“No.”
“What is Evil Fingers?”
Norén looked amused. “Don’t you read the papers?”
“What does that mean?”
“They say we’re a Satanist band.”
“Are you?”
“Do I look like a Satanist?”
“What does a Satanist look like?”
“Well, I don’t know who’s dumber—the police or the newspapers.”
“Listen here, young lady, this is a very serious matter.”
“Whether we’re Satanists or not?”
“Stop screwing around and answer the question.”
“And what was the question?”
Faste closed his eyes for a second and thought about a visit he had paid to the
police in Greece when he was on vacation some years earlier. The Greek police,
despite all their problems, had one big advantage compared to the Swedish police.
If this young woman had taken the same attitude over there he would have been
able to bend her over and give her three whacks with a baton. He looked at her.
“Was Lisbeth Salander a member of Evil Fingers?”
“I wouldn’t think so.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Lisbeth is probably the most tone-deaf person I’ve ever met.”
“Tone-deaf?”
“She can tell the difference between trumpet and drums, but that’s about as far as
her musical talent stretches.”
“I mean, was she in the group Evil Fingers?”
“And I just answered your question. What the hell do you think Evil Fingers is?”
“You tell me.”
“You’re running a police investigation by reading idiotic newspaper articles.”
“Answer the question.”
“Evil Fingers was a rock band. We were a bunch of girls in the mid-nineties who
liked hard rock and played for fun. We promoted ourselves with a pentagram and a
little ‘Sympathy for the Devil.’ Then the band broke up, and I’m the only one who’s
still working in music.”
“And Lisbeth Salander was not, you say, a member of the band?”
“Like I said.”
“So why do our sources claim that Salander was in the band?”
“Because your sources are about as stupid as the newspapers.”
“Explain.”
“There were five of us girls in the band, and we still get together now and then. In
the old days we used to meet once a week at Kvarnen. Now it’s about once a
month. But we stay in touch.”
“And what do you do when you get together?”
“What do you think people do at Kvarnen?”
Faste sighed. “So you get together to drink.”
“We usually drink beer. And we gossip. What do you do when you get together
with your friends?”
“And how does Salander come into the picture?”
“I met her at KomVux several years ago. She used to show up from time to time at
Kvarnen and have a beer with us.”
“So Evil Fingers can’t be regarded as an organization?”
Norén looked at him as if he were from another planet.
“Are you dykes?”
“Would you like a punch in the mouth?”
“Answer the question.”
“It’s none of your business what we are.”
“Take it easy. You can’t provoke me.”
“Hello? The police are claiming that Lisbeth murdered three people and you come
here to ask me about my sexual preferences. You can go to hell.”
“You know, I could take you in.”
“For what? By the way, I forgot to tell you that I’ve been studying law for three
years and my father is Ulf Norén of Norén & Knape, the law firm. See you in court.”
“I thought you worked in the music business.”
“I do this because it’s fun. You think I make a living doing this?”
“I have no idea how you make a living.”
“I don’t make a living as a lesbian Satanist, if that’s what you think. And if that’s the
basis of the police search for Lisbeth, then I can see why you haven’t found her.”
“Do you know where she is?”
Norén began rocking her upper body back and forth and let her hands glide up in
front of her.
“I can feel that she’s close … Wait a minute, I’ll check my telepathic powers.”
“Cut it out.”
“I’ve already told you I haven’t heard from her for almost two years. I have no idea
where she is. So now, if there isn’t anything else …”
Modig hooked up Svensson’s computer and spent the evening cataloguing the
contents of his hard drive and the disks. She sat there until 11:00 reading his book.
She came to two realizations. First, that Svensson was a brilliant writer who
described the business of the sex trade with compelling objectivity. She wished he
could have lectured at the police academy—his knowledge would have been a
valuable addition to the curriculum. Faste, for example, could have benefited from
Svensson’s insights.
The second realization was that Blomkvist’s theory about Svensson’s research
providing a motive for murder was completely valid. Svensson’s planned exposure
of prostitutes’ clients would have done more than merely hurt a number of men. It
was a brutal revelation. Some of the prominent players, several of whom had
handed down verdicts in sex-crime trials or participated in the public debate, would
be annihilated.
The problem was that even if a john who risked being exposed had decided to
murder Svensson, there was, as yet, no prospect of such a link to Nils Bjurman. He
did not feature in Svensson’s material, and that fact not only diminished the
strength of Blomkvist’s argument but also reinforced the likelihood of Salander’s
being the only possible suspect.
Even if a motive for the murders of Svensson and Johansson was still unclear,
Salander had been at the crime scene and her fingerprints were on the murder
weapon.
The weapon was also directly linked to the murder of Bjurman. There was a
personal connection and a possible motive—the decoration on Bjurman’s abdomen
raised the possibility of some form of sexual assault or a sadomasochistic
relationship between the two. It was impossible to imagine Bjurman having
voluntarily submitted to such a bizarre and painful tattoo. Either he had found
pleasure in the humiliation or Salander—if she was the one who had done the
tattooing—had first made him powerless. How it had actually happened was not
something Modig wanted to speculate about.
On the other hand, Teleborian had confirmed that Salander’s violence was directed
at people whom she regarded as a threat or who had offended her.
He had seemed genuinely protective, as if he did not want his former patient to
come to any harm. All the same, the investigation had been based largely on his
analysis of her—as a sociopath on the border of psychosis.
But Blomkvist’s theory was attractive.
She chewed her lower lip as she tried to visualize some alternative scenario to
Salander the killer, working alone. Finally she wrote a line in her notebook.
Two completely separate motives? Two murderers? One murder weapon?
She had a fleeting thought that she could not quite pin down, but it was something
she intended to ask Bublanski at the morning meeting. She could not explain why
she suddenly felt so uncomfortable with the theory of Salander as a killer working
alone.
Then she called it a night, resolutely shut down her computer, and locked the disks
in her desk drawer. She put on her jacket, turned off the desk lamp, and was just
about to lock the door to her office when she heard a sound further down the
corridor. She frowned. She had thought she was alone in the department. She
walked down the corridor to Faste’s office. His door was ajar and she heard him
talking on the phone.
“It undeniably links things together,” she heard him say.
She stood undecided for a moment before she took a deep breath and knocked on
the doorjamb. Faste looked up in surprise. She waved.
“Modig is still in the building,” Faste said into the phone. He listened and nodded
without releasing her from his gaze. “OK, I’ll tell her.” He hung up. “Bubble,” he said
in explanation. “What do you want?”
“What is it that links things together?” she asked.
He gave her a searching look. “Were you eavesdropping?”
“No, but your door was open and I heard you say that just as I knocked.”
Faste shrugged. “I called Bubble to tell him that the NFL have finally come up with
something useful.”
“What’s that?”
“Svensson had a mobile with a Comviq cash card. They’ve produced a list of calls
which confirms the conversation with Mikael Blomkvist at 7:30 p.m. That’s when
Blomkvist was at dinner at his sister’s house.”
“Good. But I don’t think Blomkvist has anything to do with the murders.”
“Me neither. But Svensson made another call that night. At 9:34. The call lasted
three minutes.”
“And?”
“He called Nils Bjurman’s home phone. In other words, there’s a link between the
two murders.”
Modig sank down into Faste’s visitor’s chair.
“Sure. Have a seat, be my guest.”
She ignored him.
“OK. What does the time frame look like? At 7:30 Svensson calls Blomkvist and sets
up a meeting for later that evening. At 9:30 Svensson calls Bjurman. Just before
closing time at 10:00 Salander buys cigarettes at the corner shop in Enskede. Soon
after 11:00 Blomkvist and his sister arrive in Enskede and at 11:11 he calls the police.”
“That seems to be correct, Miss Marple.”
“But it isn’t correct at all. According to the pathologist, Bjurman was shot between
10:00 and 11:00 that night. By which time Salander was in Enskede. We’ve been
working on the assumption that Salander shot Bjurman first and then the couple in
Enskede.”
“That doesn’t mean a thing. I talked with the pathologist again. We didn’t find
Bjurman until the night after, almost twenty-four hours later. The pathologist says
that the time of death could be plus or minus an hour.”
“But Bjurman must have been the first victim, since we found the murder weapon
in Enskede. That would mean that she shot Bjurman sometime after 9:34 and then
drove to Enskede, where she bought her cigarettes. Was there enough time to get
from Odenplan to Enskede?”
“Yes, there was. She didn’t take public transportation as we assumed earlier. She
had a car. Sonny Bohman and I test-drove the route and we had plenty of time.”
“But then she waits for an hour before she shoots Svensson and Johansson? What
was she doing all that time?”
“She had coffee with them. We have her prints on the cup.”
He gave her a triumphant look. Modig sighed and sat silently for a minute.
“Hans, you’re looking at this like it’s some sort of prestige thing. You can be a
fucking shithead and you drive people crazy sometimes, but I actually knocked on
your door to ask you to forgive me for slapping you. I was out of line.”
He looked at her for a long moment. “Modig, you might think I’m a shithead. But I
think you’re unprofessional and don’t have any business being a police officer. At
least not at this level.”
Modig weighed various replies, but in the end she just shrugged and stood up.
“Well, now we know where we stand.”
“We know where we stand. And believe me, you’re not going to last long here.”
Modig closed the door behind her harder than she meant to. Don’t let that fucking
asshole get to you. She went down to the garage.
Faste smiled contentedly at the closed door.
Blomkvist had just gotten home when his mobile rang.
“Hi. It’s Malin. Can you talk?”
“Sure.”
“Something struck me yesterday.”
“Tell me.”
“I was going through all the clippings we have here on the hunt for Salander, and I
found that spread on her time at the psychiatric clinic. What I’m wondering is why
there’s such a big gap in her biography.”
“What gap?”
“There’s plenty of stuff about the trouble she was mixed up in at school. Trouble
with teachers and classmates and so on.”
“I remember that. There was even a teacher who said she was afraid of Lisbeth
when she was eleven.”
“Birgitta Miåås.”
“That’s the one.”
“And there are details about Lisbeth at the psychiatric clinic. Plus a lot of stuff
about her with foster families during her teens and about the assault in Gamla
Stan.”
“So what are you thinking?”
“She was taken into the clinic just before her thirteenth birthday.”
“Yes?”
“And there isn’t a word about why she was committed. Obviously if a twelve-year-old is committed, something has to have happened. And in Lisbeth’s case it was
most likely some huge outburst that should have shown up in her biography. But
there’s nothing there.”
Blomkvist frowned. “Malin, I have it from a source I trust that there’s a police
report on Lisbeth dated March 1991, when she was twelve. It’s not in the file. I was
at the point of asking you to dig around for it.”
“If there’s a report then it would have to be a part of her file. It would be breaking
the law not to have it there. Have you really checked?”
“No, but my source says that it’s not in the file.”
Eriksson paused for a second. “And how reliable is your source?”
“Very.”
Eriksson and Blomkvist had arrived at the same conclusion simultaneously.
“Säpo,” Eriksson said.
“Björck,” Blomkvist said
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