CHAPTER 3
Friday, 8.iv – Saturday, 9.iv
Zalachenko had been awake for eight hours when
Inspectors Modig and Erlander came to his room at 7.00 in
the evening. He had undergone a rather extensive
operation in which a significant section of his jaw was
realigned and fixed with titanium screws. His head was
wrapped in so many bandages that you could see only his
left eye and a narrow slit of mouth. A doctor had explained
that the axe blow had crushed his cheekbone and
damaged his forehead, peeling off a large part of the flesh
on the right side of his face and tugging at his eye socket.
His injuries were causing him immense pain. He had been
given large doses of painkillers, yet was relatively lucid and
able to talk. But the officers were warned not to tire him.
“Good evening, Herr Zalachenko,” Modig said. She
introduced herself and her colleague.
“My name is Karl Axel Bodin,” Zalachenko said laboriously
through clenched teeth. His voice was steady.
“I know exactly who you are. I’ve read your file from Säpo.”
This, of course, was not true.
“That was a long time ago,” Zalachenko said. “I’m Karl Axel
Bodin now.”
“How are you doing? Are you able to have a conversation?
”
“I want to report a serious crime. I have been the victim of
attempted murder by my daughter.”
“We know. That matter will be taken up at the appropriate
time,” Erlander said. “But we have more urgent issues to
talk about.”
“What could be more urgent than attempted murder?”
“Right now we need information from you about three
murders in Stockholm, at least three murders in Nykvarn,
and a kidnapping.”
“I don’t know anything about that. Who was murdered?”
“Herr Bodin, we have good reason to believe that your
associate, 35-year-old Ronald Niedermann, is guilty of
these crimes,” Erlander said. “Last night he also murdered
a police officer from Trollhättan.”
Modig was surprised that Erlander had acquiesced to
Zalachenko’s wish to be called Bodin. Zalachenko turned
his head a little so that he could see Erlander. His voice
softened slightly.
“That is … unfortunate to hear. I know nothing about
Niedermann’s affairs. I have not killed any policeman. I was
the victim of attempted murder myself last night.”
“There’s a manhunt under way for Ronald Niedermann
even as we speak. Do you have any idea where he might
hide?”
“I am not aware of the circles he moves in. I …” Zalachenko
hesitated a few seconds. His voice took on a confidential
tone. “I must admit … just between us … that sometimes I
worry about Niedermann.”
Erlander bent towards him.
“What do you mean?”
“I have discovered that he can be a violent person … I am
actually afraid of him.”
“You mean you felt threatened by Niedermann?” Erlander
said.
“Precisely. I’m old and handicapped. I cannot defend
myself.”
“Could you explain your relationship to Niedermann?”
“I’m disabled.” Zalachenko gestured towards his feet. “This
is the second time my daughter has tried to kill me. I hired
Niedermann as an assistant a number of years ago. I
thought he could protect me … but he has actually taken
over my life. He comes and goes as he pleases … I have
nothing more to say about it.”
“What does he help you with?” Modig broke in. “Doing
things that you can’t do yourself?”
Zalachenko gave Modig a long look with his only visible
eye.
“I understand that your daughter threw a Molotov cocktail
into your car in the early ’90s,” Modig said. “Can you
explain what prompted her to do that?”
“You would have to ask my daughter. She is mentally ill.”
His tone was again hostile.
“You mean that you can’t think of any reason why Lisbeth
Salander attacked you in 1991?”
“My daughter is mentally ill. There is substantial
documentation.”
Modig cocked her head to one side. Zalachenko’s answers
were much more aggressive and hostile when she asked
the questions. She saw that Erlander had noticed the same
thing. O.K…. Good cop, bad cop. Modig raised her voice.
“You don’t think that her actions could have anything to do
with the fact that you had beaten her mother so badly that
she suffered permanent brain damage?”
Zalachenko turned his head towards Modig.
“That is all bullshit. Her mother was a whore. It was
probably one of her punters who beat her up. I just
happened to be passing by.”
Modig raised her eyebrows. “So you’re completely
innocent?”
“Of course I am.”
“Zalachenko … let me repeat that to see if I’ve understood
you correctly. You say that you never beat your girlfriend,
Agneta Sofia Salander, Lisbeth’s mother, despite the fact
that the whole business is the subject of a long report,
that the whole business is the subject of a long report,
stamped top secret, written at the time by your handler at
Säpo, Gunnar Björck.”
“I was never convicted of anything. I have never been
charged. I cannot help it if some idiot in the Security Police
fantasizes in his reports. If I had been a suspect, they
would have at the very least questioned me.”
Modig made no answer. Zalachenko seemed to be grinning
beneath his bandages.
“So I wish to press charges against my daughter. For trying
to kill me.”
Modig sighed. “I’m beginning to understand why she felt an
uncontrollable urge to slam an axe into your head.”
Erlander cleared his throat. “Excuse me, Herr Bodin … We
should get back to any information you might have about
Ronald Niedermann’s activities.”
Modig made a call to Inspector Bublanski from the corridor
outside Zalachenko’s hospital room.
“Nothing,” she said.
“Nothing?” Bublanski said.
“He’s lodging a complaint with the police against Salander
– for G.B.H. and attempted murder. He says that he had
nothing to do with the murders in Stockholm.”
“And how does he explain the fact that Salander was
buried in a trench on his property in Gosseberga?”
“He says he had a cold and was asleep most of the day. If
Salander was shot in Gosseberga, it must have been
something that Niedermann decided to do.”
“O.K. So what do we have?”
“She was shot with a Browning, .22 calibre. Which is why
she’s still alive. We found the weapon. Zalachenko admits
that it’s his.”
“I see. In other words, he knows we’re going to find his
prints on the gun.”
“Exactly. But he says that the last time he saw the gun, it
was in his desk drawer.”
“Which means that the excellent Herr Niedermann took the
weapon while Zalachenko was asleep and shot Salander.
This is one cold bastard. Do we have any evidence to the
contrary?”
Modig thought for a few seconds before she replied. “He’s
well versed in Swedish law and police procedure. He
well versed in Swedish law and police procedure. He
doesn’t admit to a thing, and he has Niedermann as a
scapegoat. I don’t have any idea what we can prove. I
asked Erlander to send his clothes to forensics and have
them examined for traces of gunpowder, but he’s bound to
say that he was doing target practice two days ago.”
Salander was aware of the smell of almonds and ethanol. It
felt as if she had alcohol in her mouth and she tried to
swallow, but her tongue felt numb and paralysed. She tried
to open her eyes, but she could not. In the distance she
heard a voice that seemed to be talking to her, but she
could not understand the words. Then she heard the voice
quite clearly.
“I think she’s coming round.”
She felt someone touch her forehead and tried to brush
away the intrusive hand. At the same moment she felt
intense pain in her left shoulder. She forced herself to
relax.
“Can you hear me, Lisbeth?”
Go away.
“Can you open your eyes?”
Who was this bloody idiot harping on at her?
Finally she did open her eyes. At first she just saw strange
lights until a figure appeared in the centre of her field of
vision. She tried to focus her gaze, but the figure kept
slipping away. She felt as if she had a stupendous
hangover and the bed seemed to keep tilting backwards.
“Pnkllrs,” she said.
“Say that again?”
“’diot,” she said.
“That sounds good. Can you open your eyes again?”
She opened her eyes to narrow slits. She saw the face of a
complete stranger and memorized every detail. A blond
man with intense blue eyes and a tilted, angular face about
a foot from hers.
“Hello. My name is Anders Jonasson. I’m a doctor. You’re in
a hospital. You were injured and you’re waking up after an
operation. Can you tell me your name?”
“Pshalandr,” Salander said.
“O.K. Would you do me a favour and count to ten?”
“One two four … no … three four five six …”
Then she passed out.
Dr Jonasson was pleased with the response he had got.
She had said her name and started to count. That meant
that she still had her cognitive abilities somewhat intact and
was not going to wake up a vegetable. He wrote down her
wake-up time as 9.06 p.m., about sixteen hours after he
had finished the operation. He had slept most of the day
and then drove back to the hospital at around 7.00 in the
evening. He was actually off that day, but he had some
paperwork to catch up on.
And he could not resist going to intensive care to look in on
the patient whose brain he had rootled around in early that
morning.
“Let her sleep a while, but check her E.E.G. regularly. I’m
worried there might be swelling or bleeding in the brain.
She seemed to have sharp pain in her left shoulder when
she tried to move her arm. If she wakes up again you can
give her two mg. of morphine per hour.”
He felt oddly exhilarated as he left by the main entrance of
Sahlgrenska.
Anita Kaspersson, a dental nurse who lived in Alingsås,
was shaking all over as she stumbled through the woods.
She had severe hypothermia. She wore only a pair of wet
trousers and a thin sweater. Her bare feet were bleeding.
trousers and a thin sweater. Her bare feet were bleeding.
She had managed to free herself from the barn where the
man had tied her up, but she could not untie the rope that
bound her hands behind her back. Her fingers had no
feeling in them at all.
She felt as if she were the last person on earth,
abandoned by everyone.
She had no idea where she was. It was dark and she had
no sense of how long she had been aimlessly walking. She
was amazed to be still alive.
And then she saw a light through the trees and stopped.
For several minutes she did not dare to approach the light.
She pushed through some bushes and stood in the yard of
a one-storey house of grey brick. She looked about her in
astonishment.
She staggered to the door and turned to kick it with her
heel.
Salander opened her eyes and saw a light in the ceiling.
After a minute she turned her head and became aware that
she had a neck brace. She had a heavy, dull headache
and acute pain in her left shoulder. She closed her eyes.
Hospital, she thought. What am I doing here?
She felt exhausted, could hardly get her thoughts in order.
Then the memories came rushing back to her. For several
seconds she was seized by panic as the fragmented
images of how she had dug herself out of a trench came
flooding over her. Then she clenched her teeth and
concentrated on breathing.
She was alive, but she was not sure whether that was a
good thing or bad.
She could not piece together all that had happened, but
she summoned up a foggy mosaic of images from the
woodshed and how she had swung an axe in fury and
struck her father in the face. Zalachenko. Was he alive or
dead?
She could not clearly remember what had happened with
Niedermann. She had a memory of being surprised that he
had run away and she did not know why.
Suddenly she remembered having seen Kalle Bastard
Blomkvist. Perhaps she had dreamed the whole thing, but
she remembered a kitchen – it must have been the kitchen
in the Gosseberga farmhouse – and she thought she
remembered seeing him coming towards her. I must have
been hallucinating.
The events in Gosseberga seemed already like the distant
past, or possibly a ridiculous dream. She concentrated on
the present and opened her eyes again.
She was in a bad way. She did not need anyone to tell her
that. She raised her right hand and felt her head. There
were bandages. She had a brace on her neck. Then she
remembered it all. Niedermann. Zalachenko. The old
bastard had a pistol too. A .22 calibre Browning. Which,
compared to all other handguns, had to be considered a
toy. That was why she was still alive.
I was shot in the head. I could stick my finger in the entry
wound and touch my brain.
She was surprised to be alive. Yet she felt indifferent. If
death was the black emptiness from which she had just
woken up, then death was nothing to worry about. She
would hardly notice the difference. With which esoteric
thought she closed her eyes and fell asleep again.
She had been dozing only a few minutes when she was
aware of movement and opened her eyelids to a narrow
slit. She saw a nurse in a white uniform bending over her.
She closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep.
“I think you’re awake,” the nurse said.
“Mmm,” Salander said.
“Hello, my name is Marianne. Do you understand what I’m
saying?”
Salander tried to nod, but her head was immobilized by the
brace.
“No, don’t try to move. You don’t have to be afraid. You’ve
been hurt and had surgery.”
“Could I have some water?” Salander whispered.
The nurse gave her a beaker with a straw to drink water
through. As she swallowed the water she saw another
person appear on her left side.
“Hello, Lisbeth. Can you hear me?”
“Mmm.”
“I’m Dr Helena Endrin. Do you know where you are?”
“Hospital.”
“You’re at the Sahlgrenska in Göteborg. You’ve had an
operation and you’re in the intensive care unit.”
“Umm-hmm.”
“There is no need to be afraid.”
“I was shot in the head.”
Endrin hesitated for a moment, then said, “That’s right. So
you remember what happened.”
“The old bastard had a pistol.”
“Ah … yes, well someone did.”
“A .22.”
“I see. I didn’t know that.”
“How badly hurt am I?”
“Your prognosis is good. You were in pretty bad shape, but
we think you have a good chance of making a full recovery.
”
Salander weighed this information. Then she tried to fix her
eyes on the doctor. Her vision was blurred.
“What happened to Zalachenko?”
“Who?”
“The old bastard. Is he alive?”
“You must mean Karl Axel Bodin.”
“No, I don’t. I mean Alexander Zalachenko. That’s his real
name.”
“I don’t know anything about that. But the elderly man who
came in at the same time as you is critical but out of
danger.”
Salander’s heart sank. She considered the doctor’s words.
“Where is he?”
“He’s down the hall. But don’t worry about him for the time
being. You have to concentrate on getting well.”
Salander closed her eyes. She wondered whether she
could manage to get out of bed, find something to use as a
weapon, and finish the job. But she could scarcely keep
her eyes open. She thought, He’s going to get away again.
She had missed her chance to kill Zalachenko.
“I’d like to examine you for a moment. Then you can go
back to sleep,” Dr Endrin said.
Blomkvist was suddenly awake and he did not know why.
He did not know where he was, and then he remembered
that he had booked himself a room in City Hotel. It was as
dark as coal. He fumbled to turn on the bedside lamp and
looked at the clock. 2.00. He had slept through fifteen
hours.
He got up and went to the bathroom. He would not be able
to get back to sleep. He shaved and took a long shower.
Then he put on some jeans and the maroon sweatshirt that
needed washing. He called the front desk to ask if he could
get coffee and a sandwich at this early hour. The night
porter said that was possible.
He put on his sports jacket and went downstairs. He
ordered a coffee and a cheese and liver pâté sandwich. He
bought the Göteborgs-Posten. The arrest of Lisbeth
Salander was front-page news. He took his breakfast back
to his room and read the paper. The reports at the time of
going to press were somewhat confused, but they were on
the right track. Ronald Niedermann, thirty-five, was being
sought for the killing of a policeman. The police wanted to
question him also in connection with the murders in
Stockholm. The police had released nothing about
Salander’s condition, and the name Zalachenko was not
mentioned. He was referred to only as a 66-year-old
landowner from Gosseberga, and apparently the media
had taken him for an innocent victim.
When Blomkvist had finished reading, he flipped open his
mobile and saw that he had twenty unread messages.
Three were messages to call Berger. Two were from his
sister Annika. Fourteen were from reporters at various
newspapers who wanted to talk to him. One was from
Malm, who had sent him the brisk advice: It would be best if
you took the first train home.
Blomkvist frowned. That was unusual, coming from Malm.
The text was sent at 7.06 in the evening. He stifled the
impulse to call and wake someone up at 3.00 in the
morning. Instead he booted up his iBook and plugged the
cable into the broadband jack. He found that the first train
to Stockholm left at 5.20, and there was nothing new in
Aftonbladet online.
He opened a new Word document, lit a cigarette, and sat
for three minutes staring at the blank screen. Then he
began to type.
Her name is Lisbeth Salander. Sweden has
got to know her through police reports and
press releases and the headlines in the
evening papers. She is twenty-seven years
old and one metre fifty centimetres tall. She
has been called a psychopath, a murderer,
and a lesbian Satanist. There has been
almost no limit to the fantasies that have been
circulated about her. In this issue, Millennium
will tell the story of how government officials
conspired against Salander in order to protect
a pathological murderer …
He wrote steadily for fifty minutes, primarily a recapitulation
of the night on which he had found Dag Svensson and Mia
Johansson and why the police had focused on Salander as
the suspected killer. He quoted the newspaper headlines
about lesbian Satanists and the media’s apparent hope
that the murders might have involved S. & M. sex.
When he checked the clock he quickly closed his iBook. He
packed his bag and went down to the front desk. He paid
with a credit card and took a taxi to Göteborg Central
Station.
Blomkvist went straight to the dining car and ordered more
coffee and sandwiches. He opened his iBook again and
read through his text. He was so absorbed that he did not
notice Inspector Modig until she cleared her throat and
asked if she could join him. He looked up, smiled
sheepishly, and closed his computer.
“On your way home?”
“You too, I see.”
She nodded. “My colleague is staying another day.”
“Do you know anything about how Salander is? I’ve been
sound asleep since I last saw you.”
“She had an operation soon after she was brought in and
was awake in the early evening. The doctors think she’ll
make a full recovery. She was incredibly lucky.”
Blomkvist nodded. It dawned on him that he had not been
worried about her. He had assumed that she would survive.
Any other outcome was unthinkable.
“Has anything else of interest happened?” he said.
Modig wondered how much she should say to a reporter,
even to one who knew more of the story than she did. On
the other hand, she had joined him at his table, and maybe
a hundred other reporters had by now been briefed at
police headquarters.
“I don’t want to be quoted,” she said.
“I’m simply asking out of personal interest.”
She told him that a nationwide manhunt was under way for
Ronald Niedermann, particularly in the Malmö area.
“And Zalachenko? Have you questioned him?”
“Yes, we questioned him.”
“And?”
“I can’t tell you anything about that.”
“Come on, Sonja. I’ll know exactly what you talked about
less than an hour after I get to my office in Stockholm. And I
won’t write a word of what you tell me.”
She hesitated for a while before she met his gaze.
“He made a formal complaint against Salander, that she
tried to kill him. She risks being charged with grievous
bodily harm or attempted murder.”
“And in all likelihood she’ll claim self-defence.”
“I hope she will,” Modig said.
“That doesn’t sound like an official line.”
“Bodin … Zalachenko is as slippery as an eel and he has
an answer to all our questions. I’m persuaded that things
are more or less as you told us yesterday, and that means
that Salander has been subjected to a lifetime of injustice –
since she was twelve.”
“That’s the story I’m going to publish,” Blomkvist said.
“It won’t be popular with some people.”
Modig hesitated again. Blomkvist waited.
“I talked with Bublanski half an hour ago. He didn’t go into
any detail, but the preliminary investigation against
Salander for the murder of your friends seems to have
been shelved. The focus has shifted to Niedermann.”
“Which means that …” He let the question hang in the air
between them.
Modig shrugged.
“Who’s going to take over the investigation of Salander?”
“I don’t know. What happened in Gosseberga is primarily
Göteborg’s problem. I would guess that somebody in
Stockholm will be assigned to compile all the material for a
prosecution.”
“I see. What do you think the odds are that the
investigation will be transferred to Säpo?”
Modig shook her head.
Just before they reached Alingsås, Blomkvist leaned
towards her. “Sonja … I think you understand how things
stand. If the Zalachenko story gets out, there’ll be a
massive scandal. Säpo people conspired with a psychiatrist
to lock Salander up in an asylum. The only thing they can
do now is to stonewall and go on claiming that Salander is
mentally ill, and that committing her in 1991 was justified.”
Modig nodded.
“I’m going to do everything I can to counter any such
claims. I believe that Salander is as sane as you or I. Odd,
certainly, but her intellectual gifts are undeniable.” He
paused to let what he had said sink in. “I’m going to need
somebody on the inside I can trust.”
She met his gaze. “I’m not competent to judge whether or
not Salander is mentally ill.”
“But you are competent to say whether or not she was the
victim of a miscarriage of justice.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“I’m only asking you to let me know if you discover that
Salander is being subjected to another miscarriage of
justice.”
Modig said nothing.
“I don’t want details of the investigation or anything like
that. I just need to know what’s happening with the charges
against her.”
“It sounds like a good way for me to get booted off the
force.”
“You would be a source. I would never, ever mention your
name.”
He wrote an email address on a page torn from his
notebook.
“This is an untraceable hotmail address. You can use it if
you have anything to tell me. Don’t use your official
address, obviously, just set up your own temporary hotmail
account.”
She put the address into the inside pocket of her jacket.
She did not make him any promises.
Inspector Erlander woke at 7.00 on Saturday morning to
the ringing of his telephone. He heard voices from the T. V.
and smelled coffee from the kitchen where his wife was
already about her morning chores. He had returned to his
apartment in Mölndal at 1.00 in the morning having being
on duty for twenty-two hours, so he was far from wide
awake when he reached to answer it.
“Rikardsson, night shift. Are you awake?”
“No,” Erlander said. “Hardly. What’s happened?”
“News. Anita Kaspersson has been found.”
“Where?”
“Outside Seglora, south of Borås.”
Erlander visualized the map in his head.
“South,” he said. “He’s taking the back roads. He must
have driven up the 180 through Borås and swung south.
Have we alerted Malmö?”
“Yes, and Helsingborg, Landskrona, and Trelleborg. And
Karlskrona. I’m thinking of the ferry to the east.”
Erlander rubbed the back of his neck.
“He has almost a 24-hour head start now. He could be
clean out of the country. How was Kaspersson found?”
“She turned up at a house on the outskirts of Seglora.”
“She what?”
“She knocked—”
“You mean she’s alive?”
“I’m sorry, I’m not expressing myself clearly enough. The
Kaspersson woman kicked on the door of a house at 3.10
this morning, scaring the hell out of a couple and their kids,
who were all asleep. She was barefoot and suffering from
severe hypothermia. Her hands were tied behind her back.
She’s at the hospital in Borås, reunited with her husband.”
“Amazing. I think we all assumed she was dead.”
“Sometimes you can be surprised. But here’s the bad
news: Assistant County Police Chief Spångberg has been
here since 5.00 this morning. She’s made it plain that she
wants you up and over to Borås to interview the woman.”
It was Saturday morning and Blomkvist assumed that the
Millennium offices would be empty. He called Malm as the
train was coming into Stockholm and asked him what had
prompted the tone of his text message.
“Have you had breakfast?” Malm said.
“On the train.”
“O.K. Come over to my place and I’ll make you something
more substantial.”
“What’s this about?”
“I’ll tell you when you get here.”
Blomkvist took the tunnelbana to Medborgarplatsen and
walked to Allhelgonagatan. Malm’s boyfriend, Arnold
Magnusson, opened the door to him. No matter how hard
Blomkvist tried, he could never rid himself of the feeling
that he was looking at an advertisement for something.
Magnusson was often onstage at the Dramaten, and was
one of Sweden’s most popular actors. It was always a
shock to meet him in person. Blomkvist was not ordinarily
impressed by celebrity, but Magnusson had such a
distinctive appearance and was so familiar from his T. V.
and film roles, in particular for playing the irascible but
honest Inspector Frisk in a wildly popular T.V. series that
aired in ninety-minute episodes. Blomkvist always expected
him to behave just like Gunnar Frisk.
“Hello, Micke,” Magnusson said.
“Hello,” Blomkvist said.
“In the kitchen.”
Malm was serving up freshly made waffles with cloudberry
jam and coffee. Blomkvist’s appetite was revived even
before he sat down. Malm wanted to know what had
happened in Gosseberga. Blomkvist gave him a succinct
account. He was into his third waffle before he remembered
to ask what was going on.
“We had a little problem at Millennium while you were away
Blomkvisting in Göteborg.”
Blomkvist looked at Malm intently.
“What was that?”
“Oh, nothing serious. Erika has taken the job of editor-in-chief at Svenska Morgon-Posten. She finished at
Millennium yesterday.”
It was several seconds before he could absorb the whole
impact of the news. He sat there stunned, but did not doubt
the truth of it.
“Why didn’t she tell anyone before?” he said at last.
“Because she wanted to tell you first, and you’ve been
running around being unreachable for several weeks now,
and because she probably thought you had your hands full
with the Salander story. She obviously wanted to tell you
first, so she couldn’t tell the rest of us, and time kept
slipping by … And then she found herself with an
unbearably guilty conscience and was feeling terrible. And
not one of us had noticed a thing.”
Blomkvist shut his eyes. “Goddamnit,” he said.
“I know. Now it turns out that you’re the last one in the
office to find out. I wanted to have the chance to tell you
myself so that you’d understand what happened and not
think anyone was doing anything behind your back.”
“No, I don’t think that. But, Jesus … it’s wonderful that she
got the job, if she wants to work at S.M.P…. but what the
got the job, if she wants to work at S.M.P…. but what the
hell are we going to do?”
“Malin’s going to be acting editor-in-chief starting with the
next issue.”
“Eriksson?”
“Unless you want to be editor-in-chief …”
“Good God, no.”
“That’s what I thought. So Malin’s going to be editor-in-chief.”
“Have you appointed an assistant editor?”
“Henry. It’s four years he’s been with us. Hardly an
apprentice any longer.”
“Do I have a say in this?”
“No,” Malm said.
Blomkvist gave a dry laugh. “Right. We’ll let it stand the
way you’ve decided. Malin is tough, but she’s unsure of
herself. Henry shoots from the hip a little too often. We’ll
have to keep an eye on both of them.”
“Yes, we will.”
“Yes, we will.”
Blomkvist sat in silence, cradling his coffee. It would be
damned empty without Berger, and he wasn’t sure how
things would turn out at the magazine.
“I have to call Erika and—”
“No, better not.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s sleeping at the office. Go and wake her up or
something.”
Blomkvist found Berger sound asleep on the sofa-bed in
her office. She had been up until all hours emptying her
desk and bookshelves of all personal belongings and
sorting papers that she wanted to keep. She had filled five
packing crates. He looked at her for a while from the
doorway before he went in and sat down on the edge of
the sofa and woke her.
“Why in heaven’s name don’t you go over to my place and
sleep if you have to sleep on the job,” he said.
“Hi, Mikael,” she said.
“Christer told me.”
She started to say something, but he bent down and kissed
her on the cheek.
“Are you livid?”
“Insanely,” he said.
“I’m sorry. I couldn’t turn it down. But it feels wrong, to leave
all of you in the lurch in such a bad situation.”
“I’m hardly the person to criticize you for abandoning ship. I
left you in the lurch in a situation that was much worse than
this.”
“The two have nothing to do with each other. You took a
break. I’m leaving for good and I didn’t tell anybody. I’m so
sorry.”
Blomkvist gave her a wan smile.
“When it’s time, it’s time.” Then he added in English, “A
woman’s gotta do what a woman’s gotta do and all that
crap.”
Berger smiled. Those were the words she had said to him
when he moved to Hedeby. He reached out his hand and
mussed her hair affectionately.
“I can understand why you’d want to quit this madhouse …
but to be the head of Sweden’s most turgid old-boy
but to be the head of Sweden’s most turgid old-boy
newspaper … that’s going to take some time to sink in.”
“There are quite a few girls working there nowadays.”
“Rubbish. Check the masthead. It’s status quo all the way.
You must be a raving masochist. Shall we go and have
some coffee?”
Berger sat up. “I have to know what happened in Göteborg.
”
“I’m writing the story now,” Blomkvist said. “And there’s
going to be war when we publish it. We’ll put it out in at the
same time as the trial. I hope you’re not thinking of taking
the story with you to S.M.P. The fact is I need you to write
something on the Zalachenko story before you leave here.”
“Micke … I …”
“Your very last editorial. Write it whenever you like. It
almost certainly won’t be published before the trial,
whenever that might be.”
“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea. What do you think it
should be about?”
“Morality,” Blomkvist said. “And the story of why one of our
colleagues was murdered because the government didn’t
do its job fifteen years ago.”
do its job fifteen years ago.”
Berger knew exactly what kind of editorial he wanted. She
had been at the helm when Svensson was murdered, after
all. She suddenly felt in a much better mood.
“O.K.,” she said. “My last editorial.”
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