CHAPTER 27
Wednesday, April 6
It was a beautiful spring day as Blomkvist drove Berger’s car south towards
Nynäsvägen. Already there was a hint of green in the black fields, and there was
real warmth in the air. It was perfect weather to forget all his problems and drive
out for a few days to be at peace in his cabin in Sandhamn.
He had agreed with Björck that he would be there at 1:00, but he arrived early and
stopped in Dalarö to have coffee and read the papers. He did not prepare for the
meeting. Björck had something to tell him, and Blomkvist was determined that this
time he would come away from Smådalarö with concrete information about Zala.
Björck met him in the driveway. He looked more self-assured, more pleased with
himself than he had two days before. What sort of move are you planning?
Blomkvist did not shake hands with him.
“I can give you information about Zala,” Björck said, “but I have certain conditions.”
“Let’s hear them.”
“I won’t be named in Millennium’s exposé.”
“Agreed.”
Björck looked surprised. Blomkvist had accepted straight off, without argument, the
point about which Björck was expecting to have a long negotiation. That was his
only card. Information about the murders in exchange for anonymity. Blomkvist
had agreed, and given up the chance of a strong headline in the magazine.
“I’m serious,” Björck said. “And I want it in writing.”
“You can have it in writing, but a document like that wouldn’t be of any use to you.
You’ve committed a crime that I know about and which I’m bound to report to the
police. But you know things, and you’re using your position to buy my silence. I’ve
thought about the matter and I accept. I won’t mention your name in Millennium.
Either you take my word for it or you don’t.”
While Björck thought about it, Blomkvist said: “I have some conditions too. The
price of my silence is that you tell me everything you know. If I discover that
you’re hiding something, our agreement is void, and I’ll hang your name out to dry
on every single news headline in Sweden, just as I did with Wennerström.”
Björck shuddered at the memory.
“OK,” he said. “I don’t have a choice. I’ll tell you who Zala is. But I’m going to need
absolute confidentiality.”
He reached out his hand. Blomkvist grasped it. He had just promised to assist in
covering up a crime, but it didn’t trouble him for a moment. All he had promised
was that he himself and Millennium magazine would not write about Björck.
Svensson had already written the whole story in his book. And the book would be
published.
The call came through to the police in Strängnäs at 3:18 p.m. It came directly to the
switchboard and not through the emergency services. A man named Öberg, owner
of a summer cabin just east of Stallarholmen, reported that he had heard what
sounded like a shot and went to see what was going on. He had found two severely
wounded men. Well, one of the men may not have been so severely wounded, but
he was in a lot of pain. And the cabin they were lying in front of was owned by Nils
Bjurman, a lawyer. The late Nils Bjurman, that is—the man there was so much
about in the papers.
The Strängnäs police had already had an eventful day with an extensive traffic
check in the community. During the course of the morning the traffic assignment
had been interrupted when a call came in that a middle-aged woman had been
killed by her boyfriend at the house they shared in Finninge. At almost the same
time a fire had spread from an outhouse into a property in Storgärdet. One body
was found in the wreckage. And to top it all off, two cars had collided head-on on
the Enköping highway. Accordingly, the Strängnäs police force was busy, almost to
a man.
The duty officer, however, had been following the developments in Nykvarn that
morning, and she deduced that this new commotion must have something to do
with that Lisbeth Salander everyone was talking about. Not least since Nils Bjurman
was a part of the investigation. She took action on three fronts. She requisitioned
the only remaining police van and drove directly to Stallarholmen. She called her
colleagues in Södertälje and asked for assistance. The Södertälje force was also
spread thin since part of their manpower had been sent to dig up bodies around a
burned-out warehouse south of Nykvarn, but the possible connection between
Nykvarn and Stallarholmen prompted another duty officer in Södertälje to dispatch
two cruisers to Stallarholmen to assist. In the end the duty officer from Strängnäs
called Inspector Bublanski in Stockholm. She reached him on his mobile.
Bublanski was at Milton Security in a meeting with its CEO, Armansky, and two of
his staff, Fräklund and Bohman. Hedström was conspicuous by his absence.
Bublanski immediately sent Andersson out to Bjurman’s summer cabin and told
him to take Faste if he could get hold of him. After thinking for a moment,
Bublanski also called Holmberg, who was near Nykvarn and therefore considerably
closer to Stallarholmen.
Holmberg had some news for him too. “We’ve identified the body in the pit.”
“That’s impossible. How so fast?”
“Everything’s simple when the corpse considerately has himself buried with his
wallet and laminated ID.”
“Who is it?”
“A bit of a celebrity. Kenneth Gustafsson, known as the Vagabond. Does it ring a
bell?”
“Are you kidding? Downtown hooligan, pusher, petty thief, and addict? He’s lying in
a hole in Nykvarn?”
“Yes, that’s the man. At least that’s the ID in the wallet. Identification will have to
be confirmed by forensics, and it’s going to be like putting a puzzle together. The
Vagabond was chopped into five or six pieces.”
“Interesting. Paolo Roberto said that the super heavyweight he was fighting
threatened Miriam Wu with a chain saw.”
“Could very well have been a chain saw, but I haven’t looked that closely. We’ve
just started digging up the second site. They’re busy setting up the tent.”
“That’s good. Jerker—it’s been a long day, I know, but can you stay on this evening?”
“Sure, OK. I’ll let them get on with it here and head on to Stallarholmen.”
Bublanski disconnected and rubbed his eyes.
The armed response team hastily assembled from Strängnäs arrived at Bjurman’s
summer cabin at 3:44 p.m. On the access road they literally collided with a man on
a Harley-Davidson, who was wobbling along until he steered right into the
oncoming van. It was not a serious collision. The police climbed out and identified
Sonny Nieminen, thirty-seven years old and a known killer from the mid-nineties.
Nieminen seemed to be in bad shape. When they put the cuffs on him, they were
surprised to find that the back of his vest was slashed. A piece of leather about
eight inches square was missing. It looked peculiar. Nieminen was unwilling to
discuss the matter.
They locked him in the van and drove on two hundred yards to the cabin. They
found a retired harbour worker by the name of Öberg putting a splint on the foot
of one Carl-Magnus Lundin, thirty-six years old and president of the gang that
called itself Svavelsjö MC.
The leader of the police team was Inspector Nils-Henrik Johansson. He climbed out,
straightened his shoulder belt, and looked at the sorry creature on the ground.
Öberg stopped bandaging Lundin’s foot and gave Johansson a wry look.
“I’m the one who called.”
“You reported shots being fired.”
“I reported that I heard a single shot and came over to investigate and found these
guys. This one has been shot in the foot and beaten up pretty badly. I think he
needs an ambulance.”
Öberg glanced towards the police van.
“I see you got the other guy. He was out cold when I arrived, but he didn’t seem to
be wounded. He came to after a while, but he didn’t stick around to help his
buddy.”
Holmberg arrived at the same time as the police from Södertälje, just as the
ambulance was driving away. He was given a brief rundown of the team’s
observations. Neither Lundin nor Nieminen had been willing to explain how he
came to be there. Lundin was hardly in any condition to talk at all.
“So—two bikers in leathers, one Harley-Davidson, one gunshot victim, and no
weapon. Have I got it right?” Holmberg said.
Johansson nodded.
“Should we discount that one of these macho heroes rode bitch?”
“I think that would be considered unmanly in their circles,” Johansson said.
“In that case, we’re missing one motorcycle. Since the weapon is missing too, we
may conclude that a third party has left the scene with one motorcycle and one
weapon.”
“Sounds reasonable.”
“And it creates a conundrum. If these two gentlemen from Svavelsjö came on
motorcycles, we’re also missing the vehicle in which the third party arrived. The
third party couldn’t have taken both his own vehicle and the bike. And it’s a pretty
long walk from the Strängnäs highway.”
“Unless the third party was living in the cabin.”
“Hmm,” Holmberg said. “But the cabin is owned by the deceased Advokat Bjurman,
and he definitely no longer lives here.”
“Maybe there was a fourth party who left in a car.”
“Then why wouldn’t the two have gone in the car together? I’m assuming that this
story isn’t about the theft of a Harley, no matter how desirable they are.”
He thought for a moment and then asked the team to assign two uniforms to look
for an abandoned vehicle on the forest roads nearby and to knock on doors in the
area to ask if anyone had seen anything unusual.
“There aren’t that many cabins inhabited at this time of year,” the team leader said,
but he promised to do his best.
Holmberg opened the unlocked door to the cabin. He straightaway found the box
of files on the kitchen table with Bjurman’s reports about Salander. He sat down
and began paging through them, his astonishment growing.
Holmberg’s team was in luck. Just half an hour after they began knocking on doors
among the intermittently populated cabins, they found Anna Viktoria Hansson. She
had spent the spring morning clearing up a garden near the access road to the
summer-cabin area. Yes indeed, she might be seventy-two, but she had good
eyesight. Yes indeed, she had seen a short girl in a dark jacket walk past around
lunchtime. At three in the afternoon two men on motorcycles had driven by. They
made an appalling racket. And shortly after that, the girl had gone back the other
way on one of the motorcycles, or maybe on a different one altogether. Well, it
looked like the girl, but in the helmet she could not be 100 percent certain. And
then the police cars started arriving.
Just as Holmberg was getting this statement, Andersson arrived at the cabin.
“What’s happening here?” he said.
Holmberg looked glumly at his colleague. “I don’t quite know how to explain this
to you,” he said.
“Jerker, are you trying to tell me that Salander turned up at Bjurman’s cabin and all
by herself beat the shit out of the top echelon of the Svavelsjö MC?” Bublanski
sounded tense.
“Well, she was trained by Paolo Roberto.”
“Jerker, please. Give me a break.”
“OK, listen to this. Magnus Lundin has a bullet wound in his foot. Which is going to
do him permanent damage. The bullet went out the back of his heel, blew his boot
to kingdom come.”
“At least she didn’t shoot him in the head.”
“Apparently that wasn’t necessary. According to the local team, Lundin has serious
injuries to his face: a broken jaw and two teeth knocked out. The medics suspected
a concussion. Besides the gunshot wound to his foot, he also has a massive pain in
his abdomen.”
“How’s Nieminen doing?”
“He seems unhurt. But according to the old man who called in, he was unconscious
when he arrived. Nieminen came to after a while and was trying to leave just as
the Strängnäs team got there.”
Bublanski was speechless.
“There’s one mysterious detail,” Holmberg said.
“Another one?”
“Nieminen’s leather vest… He came here on his bike.”
“Yes?”
“It was ripped.”
“What do you mean, ripped?”
“There’s a chunk missing. About eight by eight inches cut out of the back of it. Just
where Svavelsjö MC has its insignia.”
Bublanski raised his eyebrows. “Why would Salander cut a square out of his vest?
For a trophy? For revenge? But revenge for what?”
“No idea. But I thought of one other thing,” Holmberg said. “Magnus Lundin is a
hefty guy with a ponytail. One of the guys who kidnapped Salander’s girlfriend had
a beer belly and a ponytail.”
Salander had not had such a rush since she visited Gröna Lund amusement park
several years before and rode on the Freefall. She went on it three times and could
have gone another three if she had had the money.
It was one thing to ride a 125cc lightweight Kawasaki, which was really no more
than a heavily souped-up moped, but it was something else entirely to maintain
control of a 1450cc Harley-Davidson. Her first three hundred yards on Bjurman’s
badly maintained forest track was a regular roller coaster, and she felt like a living
gyro. Twice she almost rode into the woods before at the last second she managed
to regain control of the hog.
The helmet kept slipping down and masking her vision, even though she had put in
some extra stuffing using a piece of leather she’d cut out of Nieminen’s padded
vest.
She did not dare stop to adjust the helmet for fear she would not be able to
manage the bike’s weight. She was too short to reach the ground with both feet
and was afraid the Harley would tip over. If that happened, she would never be
able to get it upright again.
Things went more smoothly once she got on the wider gravel road leading to the
summer-cabin area. When she turned onto the Strängnäs highway a few minutes
later, she risked taking one hand off the handlebars to set the helmet right. Then
she gave the bike some gas. She covered the distance to Södertälje in record time,
smiling in delight the whole way. Just before she reached Södertälje, two blue-and-yellow police Volvos with their sirens on flew by in the other direction.
The sensible course would be to dump the Harley in Södertälje and let Irene Nesser
take the shuttle train into Stockholm, but Salander couldn’t resist the temptation.
She turned onto the E4 and accelerated. She did not go over the speed limit—well,
not much anyway—but it still felt as though she were in freefall. Not until she
reached Älvsjö did she turn off and find her way to the fairground, where she
managed to park the beast without tipping it over. She was very sad to leave the
bike behind, along with the helmet and the piece of leather from Nieminen’s vest.
She walked to the shuttle train. She was seriously chilled. She rode the one stop to
Södra station, then walked home to Mosebacke and ran herself a hot bath.
• • •
“His name is Alexander Zalachenko,” Björck said. “But officially he doesn’t exist. You
won’t find him on the national register.”
Zala. Alexander Zalachenko. Finally a name.
“Who is he and how can I find him?”
“He’s not someone you’d want to find.”
“Tell me anyway.”
“What I’m going to tell you is top secret information. If it came out that I told you
this, I’d be sent to prison. It’s one of the most deeply buried secrets we have within
the Swedish defence system. You have to understand why it’s so important that you
guarantee my anonymity.”
“I’ve already done that,” Blomkvist said impatiently.
“Alexander Zalachenko was born in 1940 in Stalingrad. When he was a year old, the
German offensive on the eastern front began. Both of Zalachenko’s parents died in
the war. At least that’s what Zalachenko thinks. He doesn’t really know what
happened during the war. His earliest memories are of an orphanage in the Ural
Mountains.”
Blomkvist made swift notes.
“The orphanage was in a garrison town and was, as it were, sponsored by the Red
Army. You might say that Zalachenko got a military education very early. Since the
end of the Soviet Union, documents have emerged which show there were
experiments to create a cadre of particularly athletic, elite soldiers among the
orphans who were being raised by the state. Zalachenko was one of them. To make
a long story short, when he was five he was put in an army school. It turned out
that he was talented. When he was fifteen, in 1955, he was sent to a military school
in Novosibirsk, where together with two thousand other pupils he underwent
training similar to Spetsnaz, the Russian elite troops.”
“OK, let’s get to the adult stuff.”
“In 1958, when he was eighteen, he was moved to Minsk, to specialist training with
the GRU—Glavnoye razvedyvatelnoye upravlenie, the military intelligence service
that is directly subordinate to the army high command, not to be confused with
the KGB, the civil secret police. The GRU usually took care of espionage and foreign
operations. When he was twenty, Zalachenko was sent to Cuba. It was a training
period and he was still only the equivalent of a second lieutenant. But he was there
for two years, during the Cuban missile crisis and the invasion at the Bay of Pigs. In
1963 he went back to Minsk for further training. Thereafter he was stationed first in
Bulgaria and then in Hungary. In 1965 he was promoted to lieutenant and got his
first posting to Western Europe, in Rome, where he served for a year. That was his
first undercover assignment. He was a civilian with a fake passport, obviously, and
with no contact with the embassy.”
Blomkvist nodded as he wrote. Against his will he was starting to get interested.
“In 1967 he was moved to London. There he organized the execution of a defected
KGB agent. Over the next ten years he became one of the GRU’s top agents. He
belonged to the real elite of devoted political soldiers. He speaks six languages
fluently. He’s worked as a journalist, a photographer, in advertising, as a sailor—you
name it. He’s a survival artist, an expert in disguise and deception. He commanded
his own agents and organized or carried out his own operations. Several of these
operations were contracts for hits, and a large number of them took place in the
third world, but he was also involved in extortion, intimidation, and all kinds of
other assignments that his superiors needed him to perform. In 1969 he was
promoted to captain, in 1972 to major, and in 1975 to lieutenant colonel.”
“Why did he come to Sweden?”
“I’m getting to that. Over the years he became corrupt, and he squirrelled away a
little money here and there. He drank too much and did too much womanizing. All
this was noted by his superiors, but he was still a favourite and they could overlook
the small stuff. In 1976 he was sent to Spain on a mission. We don’t need to go into
the details, but he made a fool of himself. The mission failed and all of a sudden he
was in disgrace and called back to Russia. He chose to ignore the order and thereby
ended up in an even worse situation. The GRU ordered a military attaché at the
embassy in Madrid to find him and talk some sense into him. Something went
wrong, and Zalachenko killed the man. Now he had no choice. He had burned his
bridges and rashly decided to defect. He laid a trail that seemed to lead from Spain
to Portugal and possibly to a boating accident. He also left clues indicating he
intended to flee to the United States. He chose in fact to defect to the most
improbable country in Europe. He came to Sweden, where he contacted the
Security Police, Säpo, and sought asylum. This was well thought out, because the
probability that a death squad from the KGB or the GRU would look for him here
was almost zero.”
Björck fell silent.
“And?”
“What’s the government supposed to do if one of the Soviet Union’s top spies
defects and seeks asylum in Sweden? A conservative government was coming into
power. As a matter of fact, it was one of the very first matters we had to take to
the newly appointed foreign minister. Those political cowards tried to get rid of
him like a hot potato, of course, but they couldn’t just send him back to the Soviets
—that would have been a scandal of unmatched proportions if it ever came out.
Instead they tried to send him to the States or to England. Zalachenko refused. He
didn’t like America and he knew that England was one of those countries where
the Soviets had agents at the highest levels within military intelligence. He didn’t
want to go to Israel, because he didn’t like Jews. So he decided to make his home in
Sweden.”
The whole thing sounded so improbable that it occurred to Blomkvist that Björck
might be pulling his leg.
“So he stayed in Sweden?”
“Exactly. For many years it was one of the country’s best-kept military secrets. The
thing was, we got plenty of good information out of Zalachenko. For a time during
the late seventies and early eighties, he was the jewel in the crown among
defectors, the most senior from one of the GRU’s elite commands.”
“So he could sell information?”
“Precisely. He played his cards well and doled out information when it suited him
best. We were able to identify an agent at NATO headquarters in Brussels. An agent
in Rome. A contact for a whole ring of spies in Berlin. The identity of hit men he’d
used in Ankara and Athens. He didn’t know that much about Sweden, but the
information he did have we could pass on in return for favours. He was a gold
mine.”
“So you started cooperating with him.”
“We gave him a new identity, a passport, a little money, and he took care of
himself. That was what he was trained to do.”
Blomkvist sat for a while in silence, digesting this information. Then he looked up
at Björck.
“You lied to me the last time I was here.”
“I did?”
“You said that you met Bjurman at your police shooting club in the eighties. But
you met him long before that.”
“It was an automatic reaction. It’s confidential, and I had no reason to go into how
Bjurman and I met. It wasn’t until you asked about Zala that I made the
connection.”
“Tell me what happened.”
“I was thirty-three and had been working at Säpo for three years. Bjurman was a
good deal younger and had just finished his degree. He was handling certain legal
matters at Säpo. It was a kind of trainee job. Bjurman was from Karlskrona, and his
father worked in military intelligence.”
“And?”
“Neither Bjurman nor I was remotely qualified to handle someone like Zalachenko,
but he made contact on election day in 1976. There was hardly a soul in police
headquarters—everyone was either off that day or working on stakeouts and the
like. Zalachenko chose that moment to walk into Norrmalm police station and
declare that he was seeking political asylum and wanted to talk to somebody in the
Security Police. He didn’t give his name. I was on duty and thought it was a
straightforward refugee case, so I took Bjurman with me as legal advisor.”
Björck rubbed his eyes.
“There he sat and told us calmly and matter-of-factly who he was, and what he had
worked on. Bjurman took notes. After a while I realized what I was dealing with. I
stopped the conversation and got Zalachenko and Bjurman the hell out of that
police station. I didn’t know what to do, so I booked a room at the Hotel
Continental right across from Central Station and stowed him there. I told Bjurman
to babysit him while I went downstairs and called my superior.” He laughed. “I’ve
often thought that we behaved like total amateurs. But that’s how it happened.”
“Who was your boss?”
“That’s not relevant. I’m not going to name anyone else.”
Blomkvist shrugged and let the matter drop.
“He made it very clear that this was a matter that required the greatest possible
discretion and that we should get as few people involved as possible. Bjurman
should never have had anything to do with it—it was way above his level—but since
he already knew what was going on it was better to keep him on rather than bring
in somebody new. I assume that the same reasoning applied to a junior officer like
myself. There came to be a total of seven people associated with the Security Police
who knew of Zalachenko’s existence.”
“How many others know this story?”
“From 1976 up to the beginning of 1990 … all in all about twenty people in the
government, military high command, and within Säpo.”
“And after the beginning of 1990?”
Björck shrugged. “The moment the Soviet Union collapsed he became
uninteresting.”
“But what happened after Zalachenko came to Sweden?”
Björck said nothing for so long that Blomkvist began to get restless.
“To be honest… Zalachenko was a big success, and those of us who were involved
built our careers on it. Don’t misunderstand me, it was also a full-time job. I was
assigned to be Zalachenko’s mentor in Sweden, and over the first ten years we met
at least a couple of times a week. This was all during the important years when he
was full of fresh information. But it was just as much about keeping him under
control.”
“In what sense?”
“Zalachenko was a sly devil. He could be incredibly charming, but he could also be
paranoid and crazy. He would go on drinking binges and then turn violent. More
than once I had to go out at night and sort out some mess he’d gotten himself
into.”
“For instance …”
“For instance, the time he went to a bar and got into an argument and beat the
living daylights out of two bouncers who tried to calm him down. He was quite a
small man, but exceptionally skilled at close combat, which regrettably he chose to
demonstrate on various occasions. Once I had to pick him up at a police station.”
“He risked attracting serious attention to himself. That doesn’t sound very
professional.”
“That was the way he was. He hadn’t committed any crime in Sweden and was
never arrested. We had provided him with a Swedish name, a Swedish passport and
ID. And he had a house that the Security Police paid for. He received a salary from
Säpo just to keep him available. But we couldn’t prevent him from going to bars or
from womanizing. All we could do was clean up after him. That was my job until
1985 when I got a new post and my successor took over as Zalachenko’s handler.”
“And Bjurman’s role?”
“To be honest, Bjurman was deadweight. He wasn’t particularly clever. In fact he
was the wrong man in the wrong job. It was pure chance that he was part of the
whole Zalachenko business at all, and he was only involved in the very early days
and on the occasions when we needed him to deal with legal formalities. My
superior solved the problem with Bjurman.”
“How?”
“The easiest possible way. He was given a job outside the police force at a law firm
that had, as you might say, close ties to us.”
“Klang and Reine.”
Björck gave Mikael a sharp look.
“Yes. Over the years he always had assignments, minor investigations, from Säpo. So
in a way he too built his career on Zalachenko.”
“Where is Zalachenko today?”
“I really don’t know. My contact with him dried up after 1985, and I haven’t seen
him in over twelve years. The last I heard, he left Sweden in 1992.”
“Apparently he’s back. He’s cropped up in connection with weapons, drugs, and sex
trafficking.”
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Björck said. “But we can’t know for sure if it’s the Zala
you’re looking for or somebody else.”
“The likelihood of two separate Zalachenkos appearing in this story must be
microscopic. What was his Swedish name?”
“I’m not going to reveal that.”
“Now you’re being evasive.”
“You wanted to know who Zala was. I’ve told you. But I won’t give you the last
piece of the puzzle before I know you’ve kept your side of the bargain.”
“Zala has probably committed three murders and the police are looking for the
wrong person. If you think I’ll be satisfied without his name, you’re mistaken.”
“What makes you think Lisbeth Salander isn’t the murderer?”
“I know.”
Björck smiled at Blomkvist. He suddenly felt much safer.
“I think Zala is the killer,” Blomkvist said.
“Wrong. Zala hasn’t shot anyone.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because Zala is sixty-plus years old now and severely disabled. He’s had a foot
amputated and doesn’t do much walking. So he hasn’t been running around
Odenplan and Enskede shooting people. If he was going to murder somebody, he’d
have to call the disabled transport service.”
Eriksson smiled politely at Modig. “You’ll have to ask Mikael about that.”
“OK, I will.”
“I can’t discuss his research with you.”
“And if this Zala is a potential suspect…”
“You’ll have to discuss that with Mikael,” Eriksson said. “I can help you with what
Dag was working on, but I can’t tell you about our own research.”
Modig sighed. “What can you tell me about the people on this list?”
“Only what Dag wrote, nothing about the sources. But I can say that Mikael has
crossed about a dozen people off this list so far. That might help.”
No, that won’t help. The police will have to do their own formal interviews. A
judge. Two lawyers. Several politicians and journalists… and police colleagues. A real
merry-go-round. Modig knew that they should have started doing this the day after
the murders.
Her eyes lighted on one name on the list. Gunnar Björck.
“There’s no address for this man.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“He works for the Security Police. His address is unlisted. Actually he’s on sick
leave. Dag was never able to track him down.”
“And have you?” Modig said with a smile.
“Ask Mikael.”
Modig stared at the wall above Svensson’s desk. She was thinking. “May I ask a
personal question?”
“Go right ahead.”
“Who do you think murdered your friends and the lawyer?”
Eriksson wished Blomkvist were here to handle these questions. It was
uncomfortable to be quizzed by a police officer. It was even more unpleasant not to
be able to explain exactly what conclusions Millennium had reached. Then she
heard Berger’s voice behind her back.
“Our theory is that the murders were committed to prevent some part of Dag’s
exposé from reaching the light of day. But we don’t know who the killer was.
Mikael is focusing on someone who goes by the name of Zala.”
Modig turned to look at Millennium’s editor in chief. Berger held out two mugs of
coffee. They were decorated with the logos of the civil service union HTF and the
Christian Democratic Party, respectively. Berger smiled sweetly and went back to
her office.
She came out again three minutes later.
“Inspector Modig, your boss has just called. Your mobile is off. He wants you to call
him.”
An APB was sent out to say that Lisbeth Salander had at last surfaced. The bulletin
indicated that she was probably riding a Harley-Davidson and contained the
warning that she was armed and had shot someone at a summer cabin in the
vicinity of Stallarholmen.
The police set up roadblocks on routes into Strängnäs, Mariefred, and Södertälje.
Every commuter train between Södertälje and Stockholm was searched that
evening. But no-one answering to Salander’s description was found.
At around 7:00 p.m. a police patrol found the Harley-Davidson outside the
fairground in Älvsjö, and that shifted the focus of the search from Södertälje to
Stockholm. The report from Älvsjö said that part of a leather jacket with the
insignia of Svavelsjö MC had also been found. News of the find made Inspector
Bublanski push his glasses up on his head and peer glumly at the darkness outside
his office on Kungsholmen.
The day’s developments had led to nothing but bafflement. The kidnapping of
Salander’s girlfriend, the inexplicable involvement of the boxer Paolo Roberto, the
arson near Södertälje, and bodies buried in the woods there. And finally this bizarre
business in Stallarholmen.
Bublanski went out to the main office and looked at the map of Stockholm and its
environs. He found Stallarholmen, Nykvarn, Svavelsjö, and finally Älvsjö, the four
places that for apparently different reasons were of current interest. He moved his
gaze to Enskede and sighed. He had the unpleasant feeling that the police
investigation was many miles behind the unfolding events. Whatever the Enskede
murders had been about, it was much more complicated than they had supposed.
Blomkvist was unaware of the drama at Stallarholmen. He left Små-dalarö around
3:00 in the afternoon. He stopped at a gas station and had some coffee as he tried
to make sense of what he had discovered.
He was surprised that Björck had given him so many details, but the man had
absolutely refused to give him the last piece of the puzzle: Zalachenko’s Swedish
identity.
“We had a deal,” Blomkvist said.
“And I’ve fulfilled my part of it. I’ve told you who Zalachenko is. If you want more
than that we’ll have to make a new agreement. I’ll need guarantees that my name
will be taken out of all your research material. And I’ll need guarantees that you
won’t write about me at all in connection with the Zalachenko story.”
Blomkvist was willing to go so far as to treat Björck as an anonymous source in
connection with the background story, but he could not guarantee that Björck
would not be identified by anyone else—the police, for example.
“I’m not worried about the police,” Björck said.
They agreed in the end to think about everything for a day or so before resuming
their conversation.
As Blomkvist sat drinking his coffee, he felt that there was something right in front
of his nose that he wasn’t seeing. He was so close that he could sense shapes, but
he couldn’t bring the picture into focus. Then it came to him that there was
another person who might be able to shed some light on the story. He was quite
close to the rehabilitation home in Ersta. He checked his watch. He would go to see
Holger Palmgren.
After the meeting Björck was exhausted. His back hurt worse than ever. He took
three painkillers and had to stretch out on the sofa in the living room. Thoughts
were churning around in his head. After about an hour he got up and boiled some
water and took out a Lipton’s tea bag. He sat at the kitchen table and brooded.
Could he trust Blomkvist? He was now at the man’s mercy. But he had held back
the crucial information: Zala’s identity and his role in the whole drama.
How the hell had he landed in this mess? All he did was pay some whores. He was
a bachelor. That sixteen-year-old bitch hadn’t even pretended that she liked him. He
had felt her disgust.
Fucking cunt. If she hadn’t been so young. If she’d been at least twenty it wouldn’t
have looked so bad. Blomkvist detested him too, and made no effort to hide it.
Zalachenko.
A pimp. What irony. He had fucked Zalachenko’s whores. But Zalachenko had been
smart enough to stay in the background.
Bjurman and Salander.
And Blomkvist.
A way out.
After an hour of worrying he went to his study and found the piece of paper with
the telephone number he had retrieved from his office earlier in the week. It wasn’t
the only thing he’d kept from Blomkvist. He knew exactly where Zalachenko was,
though he hadn’t spoken to him in more than twelve years. Nor had he any desire
to do so ever again.
But Zalachenko was a sly devil. He would understand the problem. He would be
able to vanish from the face of the earth. Go abroad and retire. The real catastrophe
would be if he were actually caught. Then everything would come crashing down.
He hesitated a long time before he dialled the number.
“Hello. It’s Sven Jansson,” he said. A name that he had not used in a very long time.
Zalachenko remembered instantly who he was.
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