CHAPTER 24
Monday, April 4–Tuesday, April 5
Per-Åke Sandström, a freelance journalist in his late forties, came home just after
midnight. He was a little drunk and felt a lump of panic lurking in his stomach. He
had spent the day doing nothing. He was, quite simply, terrified.
It was almost two weeks since Svensson had been killed. Sandström had watched
the TV news that night in shock. He had felt a wave of relief and hope—Svensson
was dead, so maybe the book about trafficking, in which Sandström would be
exposed, was history.
He hated Svensson. He had begged and pleaded, he had crawled for that fucking
pig.
It was not until the day after that that he began to consider his situation. The
police would find Svensson’s text and start digging into his little escapade. Jesus …
he could even be a murder suspect.
His panic had subsided when Salander’s face was slapped on every front page in the
country. Who the hell was this Salander? He had never heard her name before. But
the police clearly considered her a serious suspect, and according to the
prosecutor’s statement, the murders might soon be solved. It was possible that no-one would show any interest in him at all. But from his own experience he knew
that journalists always saved documentation and notes. Millennium. A piece-of-shit
magazine with an undeserved reputation. They were like all the rest. Poking around
and whining and damaging people.
He had no way of knowing how long the research had been going on. There was
nobody he could ask. He felt as if he was in a vacuum.
He vacillated between panic and intoxication. Apparently the police were not
looking for him. Maybe—if he was lucky—he would get away scot-free. But if he was
not lucky, his working life would be over.
He stuck the key in his front door and turned the lock. When he opened the door
he suddenly heard a rustling sound behind him and before he could turn he felt a
paralyzing pain in the small of his back.
Björck had not yet gone to bed when the telephone rang. He was in his pajamas
and dressing gown, but he was still sitting in the kitchen in the dark, gnawing on
his dilemma. In his whole long career he had never found himself even close to
being in such a fix.
He had not intended to pick up the phone. It was after midnight. But it kept
ringing. After the tenth ring he could resist no longer.
“It’s Mikael Blomkvist,” said a voice on the other end.
Shit.
“I was in bed.”
“I thought you might be interested in hearing what I have to say.”
“What do you want?”
“Tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. I’m giving a press conference on the murders of Dag
Svensson and Mia Johansson.”
Björck swallowed hard.
“I’m going to give an account of the details in the book about the sex trade that
Svensson had all but finished. The only john I’ll be naming is you.”
“You promised to give me some time…” He heard the fear in his voice and stopped.
“It’s been several days. You said you’d call me after the weekend. Tomorrow is
Tuesday. Either you tell me now or I’m holding that press conference in the
morning.”
“If you hold that press conference you’ll never find out a damn thing about Zala.”
“That’s possible. But then it won’t be my problem any more either. You’ll have to do
your talking to the police investigation instead. And to the rest of the media, of
course.”
There was no room for negotiation.
Björck agreed to meet Blomkvist, but he succeeded in putting the meeting off until
Wednesday. A short reprieve. But he was ready.
It was sink or swim.
• • •
He woke up on the floor of his living room. He did not know how long he had been
unconscious. His body hurt all over and he couldn’t move. It took him a while to
realize that his hands were tied behind his back with electrical tape and his feet
were bound. He had a piece of tape over his mouth. The lamps in the room were lit
and the blinds were closed. He couldn’t understand what had happened.
He was aware of sounds that seemed to be coming from his office. He lay still and
listened and heard a drawer being opened and closed. A robbery? He heard the
sound of paper and someone rummaging through the drawers.
It seemed like an eternity before he heard footsteps behind him. He tried turning
his head, but he couldn’t see anyone. He told himself to stay calm.
Suddenly a loop of thick cotton rope was slipped over his head. A noose was
tightened around his neck. The panic almost made him shit himself. He looked up
and saw the rope run up to a block that was fastened to a hook where the ceiling
lamp usually hung. Then the person who had assaulted him came into view. The
first thing he saw was a pair of black boots.
The shock could not have been greater when he raised his eyes. He did not at first
recognize the psychopath whose passport photograph had been plastered outside
every Pressbyrå kiosk since Easter. She had short black hair and did not look that
much like the picture in the papers. She was dressed all in black—jeans, midlength
cotton jacket, T-shirt, gloves.
But what terrified him the most was her face. It was painted. She wore black
lipstick, eyeliner, and dramatically prominent greenish-black eye shadow. The rest
of her face was covered in white makeup. She had painted a red stripe from the left
side of her forehead across her nose and down to the right side of her chin.
It was a grotesque mask. She looked out of her fucking mind.
His brain resisted. It seemed unreal.
Salander grasped the end of the rope and pulled. He felt the rope cut into his neck
and for a few seconds he couldn’t breathe. Then he fought to get his feet under
himself. With a block and tackle she hardly had to exert herself to pull him to his
feet. When he was upright she stopped pulling and looped the rope a few times
around a radiator pipe. She tied it with a clove hitch.
Then she vanished from his field of vision. She was gone for more than fifteen
minutes. When she came back she pulled up a chair and sat in front of him. He
tried to avoid looking at her painted face, but he could not help it. She laid a pistol
on the living-room table. His pistol. She had found it in the shoebox in the
wardrobe. A Colt 1911 Government. An illegal weapon he had had for several years.
He had bought it from a friend but never even fired it. Right before his eyes she
took out the magazine and filled it with rounds. She shoved it back in and cocked
the weapon. Sandström was about to faint. He forced himself to meet her gaze.
“I don’t understand why men always have to document their perversions,” she said.
She had a soft but ice-cold voice. She held up a photograph. She must have printed
it from his hard drive, for God’s sake.
“I assume that this is Ines Hammujärvi, Estonian, seventeen years old, from Riepalu
near Narva. Did you have fun with her?”
The question was rhetorical. Sandström had no way of answering. His mouth was
taped shut and his brain was incapable of formulating a response. The photograph
showed… Good God, why did I save those pictures?
“You know who I am? Nod.”
Sandström nodded.
“You’re a sadistic pig, a pervert, and a rapist.”
He made no move.
“Nod.”
He nodded. Suddenly he had tears in his eyes.
“Let’s get the rules of engagement 100 percent clear,” Salander said. “As far as I’m
concerned, you should be put to death at once. Whether you survive the night or
not makes no difference to me at all. Understand?”
He nodded.
“It has probably not escaped your attention that I’m a madwoman who likes killing
people. Especially men.”
She pointed at the recent newspapers that he had collected on the living-room
table.
“I’m going to remove the tape from your mouth. If you scream or raise your voice I
will zap you with this.” She held up a Taser. “This horrific device puts out 50,000
volts. About 40,000 volts next time, since I’ve used it once and haven’t recharged it.
Understand?”
He looked doubtful.
“That means that your muscles will stop functioning. That was what you
experienced at the door when you came staggering home.” She smiled at him. “And
it means that your legs will not hold you up and you’ll end up hanging yourself.
After I’ve zapped you, all I have to do is get up and leave the apartment.”
He nodded. Good God, she’s a fucking crazy killer. He could not help it: the tears
flowed uncontrollably down his cheeks. He sniffled.
She got up and pulled off the tape. Her grotesque face was only an inch from his.
“Don’t say a word,” she said. “If you talk without permission, I’ll zap you.”
She waited until he stopped snuffling and met her eyes.
“You have one chance to survive the night,” she said. “One chance—not two. I’m
going to ask you a number of questions. If you answer them, I’ll let you live. Nod if
you understand.”
He nodded.
“If you refuse to answer a question I’ll have to zap you. Understand?”
He nodded.
“If you lie to me or give an evasive answer I’ll zap you.”
He nodded.
“I’m not going to bargain with you. There will be no second chance. You answer my
questions immediately or you die. If you answer satisfactorily, then you’ll survive.
It’s that simple.”
He nodded. He believed her. He had no choice.
“Please,” he said. “I don’t want to die …”
“It’s up to you whether you live or die. But you just broke my first rule: you do not
talk without my permission.”
He pressed his lips together. God, she’s completely insane.
Blomkvist was too frustrated and restless to know what to do. Finally he put on his
jacket and scarf and walked aimlessly to Södra station, past Bofills Båge, before he
ended up at the Millennium offices on Götgatan. It was perfectly quiet. He did not
turn on any lights, but he did put on the coffeemaker and then stood at the
window looking down at Götgatan. He tried to put his thoughts in order. The
murder investigation was like a broken mosaic in which he could make out some
pieces while others were simply missing. Somewhere there was a pattern. He could
sense it, but he could not figure it out. Too many pieces were missing.
He was assailed by doubt. She is not a deranged killer, he reminded himself. She
had written to tell him that she had not shot his friends. He believed her. But in
some unfathomable way she was still intimately involved in the murders.
Slowly he began to reevaluate the theory he had clung to since he walked into the
apartment in Enskede. He had immediately assumed that Svensson’s investigative
reporting about sex trafficking was the only plausible motive for the murders. Now
he was coming to accept Bublanski’s assertion that this couldn’t explain Bjurman’s
murder.
Salander had told him in her message that he should forget about the johns and
focus on Zala instead. Why? The damn pest. Why couldn’t she tell him anything
that made sense?
Blomkvist poured coffee into a Young Left mug. He sat on one of the sofas in the
middle of the office, put his feet up on the coffee table, and lit a forbidden
cigarette.
Björck was on the list of johns. Bjurman had been Salander’s guardian. It could not
be an accident that Bjurman and Björck had both worked at Säpo. A police report
about Salander had disappeared.
Could there be more than one motive?
Could Lisbeth Salander be the motive?
Blomkvist sat there with an idea that he couldn’t put into words. There was
something still unexplored, but he couldn’t explain exactly what he meant by the
idea that Salander herself could be a motive for murder. He experienced a fleeting
sense of discovery.
Then he realized that he was too tired and poured out his coffee, rinsed the
machine, and went home to bed. Lying in the dark, he took up the thread again and
for two hours tried to understand what it was he wanted to articulate.
Salander smoked a cigarette, comfortably leaning back in the chair in front of him.
She crossed her right leg over her left and fixed him with her gaze. Sandström had
never seen such an intense look before. When she spoke her voice was still soft.
“In January 2003 you visited Ines Hammujärvi for the first time at her apartment in
Norsborg. She had just turned sixteen. Why did you visit her?”
Sandström did not know how to answer. He could hardly make sense of it himself,
how it had begun or why he … She raised the Taser.
“I… I don’t know. I wanted her. She was so beautiful.”
“Beautiful?”
“Yes. She was beautiful.”
“And you thought that you had the right to tie her to the bed and fuck her.”
“She went along with it. I swear. She went along with it.”
“You paid her?”
Sandström bit his tongue. “No.”
“Why not? She was a whore. Whores get paid.”
“She was a … she was a present.”
“A present?” Her voice had taken on a dangerous tone.
“It was in return for a favour I did someone.”
“Per-Åke,” Salander said in a reasonable tone, “you wouldn’t be trying to avoid
answering my question, would you?”
“I swear. I’ll answer anything you ask. I won’t lie.”
“Good. What favour and who was it for?”
“I’d smuggled in some anabolic steroids. I was on a business trip to Estonia and I
brought the pills back in my car. The guy I went with was called Harry Ranta.
Although he didn’t come with me in the car.”
“How did you meet Harry Ranta?”
“I’ve known him for years. Since the eighties, in fact. He’s a friend. We used to go to
bars together.”
“And it was Harry Ranta who offered you Ines Hammujärvi as … a present?”
“Yes … no, I’m sorry, that was later, here in Stockholm. It was his brother, Atho
Ranta.”
“So you’re saying that Atho Ranta knocked on your door and asked if you wanted
to drive to Norsborg and fuck Ines?”
“No … I was at… we had a party in … damn, I can’t remember where we were …”
He was suddenly shaking uncontrollably and felt his knees begin to give way. He
needed to brace his legs against something to stand upright.
“Answer calmly,” Salander said. “I’m not going to hang you because you need time
to collect your thoughts. But the minute I get the idea you’re trying to dodge a
question, then … pow!”
She raised her eyebrows and to his astonishment looked angelic. As angelic as
anyone could look behind such a hideous mask.
Sandström swallowed. His mouth was dry as a bone, and he could feel the rope
tightening around his neck.
“Where you went drinking isn’t important. How come Atho Ranta offered you
Ines?”
“We were talking about… we … I told him that I wanted …” He realized he was
crying.
“You said that you wanted to have one of his whores.”
He nodded. “I was drunk. He said that she needed … needed …”
“What was it she needed?”
“Atho said that she needed punishment. She was difficult. She didn’t do what he
wanted.”
“And what did he want her to do?”
“Whore for him. He offered me … I was drunk and didn’t know what I was doing. I
didn’t mean … Forgive me.”
He snuffled.
“It’s not me you need to ask for forgiveness. So you offered to help Atho punish
Ines and the two of you drove over to her place.”
“That’s not how it was.”
“Tell me how it was. Why did you go with Atho to her place?”
She balanced the Taser on her knee. He was shaking again.
“I went because I wanted to have her. She was there and she was available. Ines
lived with a girlfriend of Harry Ranta’s. I don’t think I ever knew her name. Atho
tied Ines to the bed and I… I had sex with her. Atho watched.”
“No … you didn’t have sex with her. You raped her.”
He said nothing.
“Or what?”
He nodded.
“What did Ines say?”
“She didn’t say anything.”
“Did she protest?”
He shook his head.
“So she thought it was cool that a middle-aged dickwad tied her up and fucked
her.”
“She was drunk. She didn’t care.”
Salander sighed in resignation.
“OK. And then you kept on going to visit Ines.”
“She was so … She wanted me.”
“Bullshit.”
He looked at Salander in despair. Then he nodded.
“I… I raped her. Harry and Atho had given permission. They wanted her to be … to
be trained.”
“Did you pay them?”
He nodded.
“How much?”
“It was a friendly deal. I helped out with the smuggling.”
“How much?”
“A few grand altogether.”
“In one of your pictures Ines is here in the apartment.”
“Harry brought her here.”
He snuffled again.
“So for a few thousand you got a girl you could do with as you pleased. How many
times did you rape her?”
“I don’t know … several times.”
“OK. Who runs this gang?”
“They’re going to kill me if I rat on them.”
“I don’t give a shit. Right now I’m a much bigger problem for you than the Ranta
brothers.” She held up the Taser.
“Atho. He’s the older one. Harry is the fixer.”
“How many more are there in the gang?”
“I only know Harry and Atho. Atho’s girl is in it too. And a guy called … I don’t
know. Pelle something. He’s Swedish. I don’t know who he is. He’s a junkie who
runs errands for them.”
“Atho’s girl?”
“Silvia. She’s a whore.”
Salander sat for a moment, thinking. Then she raised her eyes.
“Who is Zala?”
Sandström turned pale. The same question that Svensson had hounded him about.
He said nothing for so long that he noticed the girl was getting pissed off.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know who he is.”
Salander’s expression darkened.
“You’ve been doing fine up to now. Don’t throw away your only chance,” she said.
“I swear to God, honest. I don’t know who he is. The journalist you shot…”
He stopped. It might not be a good idea to bring up her massacre in Enskede.
“Yes?”
“He asked me the same thing. I don’t know. If I knew I’d tell you. I swear. He’s
somebody Atho knows.”
“You’ve talked to him?”
“Just for a minute once on the phone. I talked to someone who said his name was
Zala. Or rather, he talked to me.”
“Why?”
Sandström blinked. Drops of sweat were running into his eyes and he could feel
snot running down his chin.
“I… they wanted me to do them another favour.”
“The story is getting annoyingly slow,” Salander said.
“They wanted me to take another trip to Tallinn and bring back a car that was
prepared already. Amphetamines. I didn’t want to do it.”
“Why not?”
“It was too much. They were such gangsters. I wanted out. I had a job to get on
with.”
“So you think you were just a gangster in your free time.”
“I’m not really like that.”
“Oh, right.” Her voice contained such contempt that Sandström closed his eyes.
“Keep going. How did Zala come into the picture?”
“It was a nightmare.”
The tears were running again. He bit his lip so hard that it began to bleed.
“Boring,” Salander said.
“Atho kept after me about it. Harry warned me and said that Atho was getting
angry and that he didn’t know how it would pan out. Finally I agreed to meet Atho.
That was in August of last year. I drove to Norsborg with Harry …”
His mouth kept moving but the words disappeared. Salander’s eyes narrowed. He
found his voice again.
“Atho was a nutcase. He’s very brutal. You have no idea how brutal he can be. He
said that it was too late for me to pull out and that if I didn’t do as he said I
wouldn’t be allowed to live. He was going to give me a demonstration.”
“Oh yeah?”
“They forced me to go with them. We drove towards Södertälje. Atho told me to
put on a hood. It was a bag that he tied over my eyes. I was scared to death.”
“So you were in a car with a bag over your head. Then what happened?”
“The car stopped. I didn’t know where I was.”
“Where did they put the bag on you?”
“Just before Södertälje.”
“And how long did it take you to get there?”
“Maybe … half an hour. They got me out of the car. It was some sort of warehouse.”
“What happened?”
“Harry and Atho led me inside. There were lights on. The first thing I saw was some
poor guy lying on a cement floor. He was tied up. He’d been beaten really badly.”
“Who was it?”
“His name was Kenneth Gustafsson. But I didn’t find that out until later.”
“What happened?”
“There was a man there. He was the biggest man I’ve ever seen. Enormous. Nothing
but muscle.”
“What did he look like?”
“He looked like the Devil himself. Blond.”
“Name?”
“He never said his name.”
“OK. A big blond guy. Who else?”
“There was another man. He looked stressed. Hair in a ponytail.”
Magge Lundin.
“More?”
“Plus me and Harry and Atho.”
“Keep going.”
“The huge guy … he set out a chair for me. He didn’t say a word. It was Atho who
did the talking. He said that the guy on the floor was a snitch. He wanted me to
know what happened to people who made trouble.” Sandström was blubbering
unrestrainedly.
“The big guy lifted the other guy off the floor and put him on another chair facing
me. We were sitting a yard or so apart. I looked him in the eyes. Then the giant
stood behind him and put his hands around his neck … He … he …”
“Strangled him?”
“Yeah … no … he squeezed him to death. I think he broke his neck with his bare
hands. I heard the guy’s neck snap and he died right in front of me.”
Sandström was swaying on the rope. Tears were streaming down his face. He had
never told anyone this before. Salander gave him a minute to collect himself.
“And then?”
“The other man—the one with the ponytail—started up a chain saw and sawed off
the guy’s head and then his hands. After that the giant came up to me. He put his
hands around my neck. I tried to pull his hands away. I pulled as hard as I could,
but I couldn’t budge him an inch. But he didn’t squeeze—he just held his hands
there for a long time.
Meanwhile Atho took out his mobile and made a call in Russian. Then he said that
Zala wanted to talk to me and held the phone to my ear.”
“What did Zala say?”
“He just asked whether I still wanted to pull out. I promised to go to Tallinn and
get the car with the amphetamines. What else could I do?”
Salander sat without speaking for a long time. She contemplated the snuffling
journalist on the rope and seemed to be thinking about something.
“Describe his voice.”
“It… sounded normal.”
“Deep voice, high voice?”
“Deep. Ordinary. Gruff.”
“What language did he speak?”
“Swedish.”
“Accent?”
“Yeah, maybe a little. But good Swedish. He and Atho spoke Russian.”
“Do you understand Russian?”
“A little. Not fluent. Just a little.”
“What did Atho say to him?”
“He just said that the demonstration was over.”
“Have you told anyone else about this?”
“No.”
“Svensson?”
“No … no.”
“Svensson visited you.”
Sandström nodded.
“I can’t hear you.”
“Yes.”
“How come?”
“He knew that I had … the whores.”
“What did he ask?”
“He wanted to know … about Zala. He asked about Zala. That was the second visit.”
“The second visit?”
“He got in touch two weeks before he died. That was the first visit. Then he came
back two days before you … he …”
“Before I shot him?”
“Yes.”
“And he asked about Zala then?”
“Yeah.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Nothing. I couldn’t tell him anything. I admitted that I’d spoken to him on the
phone. That was all. I didn’t say anything about the blond monster or what they did
to Gustafsson.”
“OK. Tell me exactly what Svensson asked.”
“I… he just wanted to know what I knew about Zala. That was all.”
“And you didn’t tell him anything?”
“Nothing of any use. I don’t know anything.”
She bit her lower lip pensively. There was something he wasn’t saying.
“Who did you tell about Svensson’s visit?”
Sandström seemed to shiver.
Salander waved the Taser.
“I called Harry.”
“When?”
He swallowed. “The night Svensson visited me the first time.”
She kept on for another half hour, but he was just repeating himself, adding details
here and there. She stood up and put a hand on the rope.
“You must be one of the sorriest perverts I’ve ever met,” Salander said. “What you
did to Ines deserves the death penalty. But I told you that you would live if you
answered my questions. I keep my promises.”
She loosened the knot. Sandström collapsed in a slobbering heap on the floor. He
saw her put a stool on his coffee table and climb up and unhook the block and
tackle. She coiled the rope and stuffed it in a backpack. She went into the
bathroom. He heard the water running. When she came back she had washed off
the makeup.
Her face looked scrubbed and naked.
“You can cut yourself free.”
She dropped a kitchen knife beside him.
He heard her out in the hall for a long time. It sounded as though she was
changing clothes. Then he heard the front door open and close. It took him half an
hour to cut off the tape. He first sank down on the sofa, then staggered to his feet
and searched the apartment. She had taken his Colt 1911 Government.
Salander arrived home at 4:55 a.m. She took off the Irene Nesser wig and went
straight to bed without turning on her computer to see whether Blomkvist had
solved the mystery of the missing police report.
She was awake at 9:00 and spent all of Tuesday digging up information about the
Ranta brothers.
Atho Ranta had an extensive record in the police criminal files. He was a Finnish
citizen from an Estonian family. He came to Sweden in 1971. From 1972 to 1978 he
worked as a carpenter for Skånska Concrete Pouring. He was dismissed after being
caught stealing from a building site and sentenced to seven months in prison.
Between 1980 and 1982 he worked for a smaller builder. He was kicked out after
turning up drunk at work several times. For the remainder of the eighties he made
a living as a bouncer, a technician at a company that serviced oil-fired boilers, a
dishwasher, and a janitor at a school. He was fired from all these jobs for
drunkenness or for getting into fights. His janitorial job lasted only a few months: a
teacher reported him for sexual harassment and threatening behaviour.
In 1987 he was fined and sentenced to a month in prison for car theft, driving
without insurance, and receiving stolen property. The following year he was fined
for possession of an illegal weapon. In 1990 he was convicted of a sexual offence
that wasn’t specified in his criminal record. In 1991 he was charged with
intimidation but acquitted. The same year he was fined and put on probation for
smuggling alcohol. He served three months in 1992 for beating up his girlfriend and
making threats against her sister. He managed to stay out of trouble until 1997,
when he was convicted of handling stolen goods and aggravated assault. This time
he got ten months in prison.
Harry, his younger brother, followed him to Sweden in 1982 and worked in a
warehouse for a long time. His criminal record showed three convictions: in 1990
for insurance fraud, in 1992 with a sentence of two years—for aggravated assault,
receiving stolen property, theft, and rape. He was deported to Finland but in 1996
returned to Sweden, when he was once more sentenced to ten months in prison
for aggravated assault and rape. The verdict was appealed and the appeals court
acquitted him on the rape charge. But the conviction for assault was upheld, and he
served six months. In 2000 he was charged again, this time for intimidation and
rape. The charges were later dropped and the case dismissed.
Salander traced their last-known addresses: Atho’s was in Norsborg, Harry’s in Alby.
Paolo Roberto got Miriam Wu’s answering machine for the fifteenth time. He’d
been to the address on Lundagatan several times already that day. No-one
answered when he rang her doorbell.
It was past 8:00 on Tuesday evening. She had to come home sometime, damn it. He
understood that Wu would want to stay out of sight, but the worst of the media
blitz had subsided. He might as well sit outside the door of her building in case she
turned up, even if it was only for a change of clothing. He filled a thermos with
coffee and made himself some sandwiches. Before he left his apartment he made
the sign of the cross in front of the crucifix and the Madonna.
He parked about a hundred feet from the entrance on Lundagatan and pushed back
the seat to make more room for his legs. He played the radio at a low volume. He
taped up a photograph of Wu that he’d cut out of a newspaper. She looked great,
he thought. He patiently watched the few people walking past. Miriam Wu was not
one of them.
Every ten minutes he dialled her number. He gave up trying to call at around 9:00
when his mobile told him that the battery was almost dead.
Sandström spent Tuesday in a state approaching apathy. He had slept the night on
the sofa in the living room, incapable of going to bed and unable to stop the
sobbing fits that regularly overcame him. On Tuesday morning he went down to
Systembolaget in Solna and bought a bottle of Skåne Aquavit. Then he went back to
his sofa and drank half of it.
Not until later did he come to a clear understanding of his situation and begin to
consider what he could do about it. He wished that he had never heard of the
Ranta brothers and their whores. He could not believe that he had been so stupid
as to let himself be enticed to the apartment in Norsborg where Atho had tied the
heavily drugged Ines Hammujärvi to a bed with her legs spread, then challenged
him about who had the bigger rod. They had taken turns, and he had won the
contest for the greater number of sexual feats performed that night.
The girl woke up once and tried to resist. Atho spent half an hour alternating
between slapping her and filling her with drink, after which she was pacified and
he invited Sandström to continue the sport.
Fucking whore.
How could he have been so stupid?
He could hardly expect any mercy from Millennium. They made their living with
that type of scandal.
He was scared to death of the madwoman Salander.
Not to mention that blond monster.
Obviously he couldn’t go to the police.
He wasn’t going to be able to manage on his own, and the problem wasn’t going to
go away by itself.
There was only one slim possibility open to him, one place where he could expect
an ounce of sympathy and maybe a solution of sorts. He was clutching at straws,
but it was his only option.
That afternoon he gathered his courage and called Harry Ranta’s mobile. There was
no answer. He kept trying until 10:00 that night. After thinking about the matter
for a long time (and fortifying himself with the rest of the aquavit) he called Atho
Ranta. It was Atho’s girlfriend Silvia who answered. She told him that the Ranta
brothers were on vacation in Tallinn. No, she did not know how to reach them. No,
she had no idea when they would be back. They would be in Estonia for quite a
while. She sounded glad of that.
Sandström wasn’t sure if he was depressed or relieved. It meant that he didn’t have
to explain things to Atho. But the underlying message, that the Ranta brothers had
decided to take a breather in Tallinn for the foreseeable future, did not do much to
calm Sandström’s nerves.
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