CHAPTER 21
Saturday, 4.vi – Monday,
6.vi
Salander picked up a number of ominous vibrations as she
browsed the emails of the news editor, Holm. He was fifty-eight and thus fell outside the group, but Salander had
included him anyway because he and Berger had been at
each other’s throats. He was a schemer who wrote
messages to various people telling them how someone had
done a rotten job.
It was obvious to Salander that Holm did not like Berger,
and he certainly wasted a lot of space talking about how
the bitch had said this or done that. He used the Net
exclusively for work-related sites. If he had other interests,
he must google them in his own time on some other
machine.
She kept him as a candidate for the title of Poison Pen, but
he was not a favourite. Salander spent some time thinking
he was not a favourite. Salander spent some time thinking
about why she did not believe he was the one, and arrived
at the conclusion that he was so damned arrogant he did
not have to go to the trouble of using anonymous email. If
he wanted to call Berger a whore, he would do it openly.
And he did not seem the type to go sneaking into Berger’s
home in the middle of the night.
At 10.00 in the evening she took a break and went into
[Idiotic_Table]. She saw that Blomkvist had not come back
yet. She felt slightly peeved and wondered what he was up
to, and whether he had made it in time to Teleborian’s
meeting.
Then she went back into S.M.P.’s server.
She moved to the next name on the list, assistant sports
editor Claes Lundin, twenty-nine. She had just opened his
email when she stopped and bit her lip. She closed it again
and went instead to Berger’s.
She scrolled back in time. There was relatively little in her
inbox, since her email account had been opened only on
May 2. The very first message was a midday memo from
Peter Fredriksson. In the course of Berger’s first day
several people had emailed her to welcome her to S.M.P.
Salander carefully read each message in Berger’s inbox.
She could see how even from day one there had been a
hostile undertone in her correspondence with Holm. They
seemed unable to agree on anything, and Salander saw
that Holm was already trying to exasperate Berger by
sending several emails about complete trivialities.
She skipped over ads, spam and news memos. She
focused on any kind of personal correspondence. She
read budget calculations, advertising and marketing
projections, an exchange with C.F.O. Sellberg that went on
for a week and was virtually a brawl over staff layoffs.
Berger had received irritated messages from the head of
the legal department about some temp. by the name of
Johannes Frisk. She had apparently detailed him to work
on some story and this had not been appreciated. Apart
from the first welcome emails, it seemed as if no-one at
management level could see anything positive in any of
Berger’s arguments or proposals.
After a while Salander scrolled back to the beginning and
did a statistical calculation in her head. Of all the upper-level managers at S.M.P., only four did not engage in
sniping. They were the chairman of the board Magnus
Borgsjö, assistant editor Fredriksson, front-page editor
Magnusson, and culture editor Sebastian Strandlund.
Had they never heard of women at S.M.P.? All the heads of
department were men.
Of these, the one that Berger had least to do with was
Strandlund. She had exchanged only two emails with the
culture editor. The friendliest and most engaging messages
came from front-page editor Gunnar Magnusson. Borgsjö’s
were terse and to the point.
Why the hell had this group of boys hired Berger at all, if
all they did was tear her limb from limb?
The colleague Berger seemed to have the most to do with
was Fredriksson. His role was to act as a kind of shadow, to
sit in on her meetings as an observer. He prepared memos,
briefed Berger on various articles and issues, and got the
jobs moving.
He emailed Berger a dozen times a day.
Salander sorted all of Fredriksson’s emails to Berger and
read them through. In a number of instances he had
objected to some decision Berger had made and
presented counter-proposals. Berger seemed to have
confidence in him since she would then often change her
decision or accept his argument. He was never hostile. But
there was not a hint of any personal relationship to her.
Salander closed Berger’s email and thought for a moment.
She opened Fredriksson’s account.
Plague had been fooling around with the home computers
of various employees of S.M.P. all evening without much
success. He had managed to get into Holm’s machine
because it had an open line to his desk at work; any time of
the day or night he could go in and access whatever he
was working on. Holm’s P.C. was one of the most boring
Plague had ever hacked. He had no luck with the other
eighteen names on Salander’s list. One reason was that
none of the people he tried to hack was online on a
Saturday night. He was beginning to tire of this impossible
task when Salander pinged him at 10.30.
Plague sighed. This girl who had once been his student
now had a better handle on things than he did.
Blomkvist was back at Salander’s apartment on Mosebacke
just before midnight. He was tired. He took a shower and
put on some coffee, and then he booted up Salander’s
computer and pinged her I.C.Q.
Linder woke with a start when her earpiece beeped.
Someone had just tripped the motion detector she had
placed in the hall on the ground floor. She propped herself
up on her elbow. It was 5.23 on Sunday morning. She
slipped silently out of bed and pulled on her jeans, a T-shirt
and trainers. She stuffed the Mace in her back pocket and
picked up her spring-loaded baton.
She passed the door to Berger’s bedroom without a sound,
noticing that it was closed and therefore locked.
She stopped at the top of the stairs and listened. She
heard a faint clinking sound and movement from the
ground floor. Slowly she went down the stairs and paused
in the hall to listen again.
A chair scraped in the kitchen. She held the baton in a firm
grip and crept to the kitchen door. She saw a bald,
unshaven man sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of
orange juice, reading S.M.P. He sensed her presence and
looked up.
“And who the hell are you?”
Linder relaxed and leaned against the door jamb. “Greger
Beckman, I presume. Hello. I’m Susanne Linder.”
“I see. Are you going to hit me over the head or would you
like a glass of juice?”
“Yes, please,” Linder said, putting down her baton. “Juice,
that is.”
Beckman reached for a glass from the draining board and
poured some for her.
“I work for Milton Security,” Linder said. “I think it’s probably
best if your wife explains what I’m doing here.”
best if your wife explains what I’m doing here.”
Beckman stood up. “Has something happened to Erika?”
“Your wife is fine. But there’s been some trouble. We tried
to get hold of you in Paris.”
“Paris? Why Paris? I’ve been in Helsinki, for God’s sake.”
“Alright. I’m sorry, but your wife thought you were in Paris.”
“That’s next month,” said Beckman on his way out of the
door.
“The bedroom is locked. You need a code to open the
door,” Linder said.
“I beg your pardon … what code?”
She told him the three numbers he had to punch in to open
the bedroom door. He ran up the stairs.
At 10.00 on Sunday morning Jonasson came into
Salander’s room.
“Hello, Lisbeth.”
“Hello.”
“Just thought I’d warn you: the police are coming at
lunchtime.”
lunchtime.”
“Fine.”
“You don’t seem worried.”
“I’m not.”
“I have a present for you.”
“A present? What for?”
“You’ve been one of my most interesting patients in a long
time.”
“You don’t say,” Salander said sceptically.
“I heard that you’re fascinated by D.N.A. and genetics.”
“Who’s been gossiping? That psychologist lady, I bet.”
Jonasson nodded. “If you get bored in prison … this is the
latest thing on D.N.A. research.”
He handed her a brick of a book entitled Spirals –
Mysteries of DNA, by Professor Yoshito Takamura of Tokyo
University. Salander opened it and studied the table of
contents.
“Beautiful,” she said.
“Someday I’d be interested to hear how it is that you can
read academic texts that even I can’t understand.”
As soon as Jonasson had left the room, she took out her
Palm. Last chance. From S.M.P.’s personnel department
Salander had learned that Fredriksson had worked at the
paper for six years. During that time he had been off sick
for two extended periods: two months in 2003 and three
months in 2004. From the personnel files she concluded
that the reason in both instances was burnout. Berger’s
predecessor Morander had on one occasion questioned
whether Fredriksson should indeed stay on as assistant
editor.
Yak, yak, yak. Nothing concrete to go on.
At 11.45 Plague pinged her.
Salander logged off from I.C.Q. She glanced at the clock
and realized that it would soon be lunchtime. She rapidly
composed a message that she addressed to the Yahoo
group [Idiotic_Table]:
Mikael. Important. Call Berger right away and
tell her Fredriksson is Poison Pen.
The instant she sent the message she heard movement in
the corridor. She polished the screen of her Palm Tungsten
T3 and then switched it off and placed it in the recess
behind the bedside table.
“Hello, Lisbeth.” It was Giannini in the doorway.
“Hello.”
“The police are coming for you in a while. I’ve brought you
some clothes. I hope they’re the right size.”
Salander looked distrustfully at the selection of neat, dark-coloured linen trousers and pastel-coloured blouses.
Two uniformed Göteborg policewomen came to get her.
Giannini was to go with them to the prison.
As they walked from her room down the corridor, Salander
noticed that several of the staff were watching her with
curiosity. She gave them a friendly nod, and some of them
waved back. As if by chance, Jonasson was standing by
the reception desk. They looked at each other and
nodded. Even before they had turned the corner Salander
noticed that he was heading for her room.
During the entire procedure of transporting her to the
prison, Salander did not say a word to the police.
Blomkvist had closed his iBook at 7.00 on Sunday morning.
He sat for a moment at Salander’s desk listless, staring into
space.
Then he went to her bedroom and looked at her gigantic,
king-size bed. After a while he went back to her office and
flipped open his mobile to call Figuerola.
“Hi. It’s Mikael.”
“Hello there. Are you already up?”
“I’ve just finished working and I’m on my way to bed. I just
wanted to call and say hello.”
“Men who just want to call and say hello generally have
ulterior motives.”
He laughed.
“Blomkvist … you could come here and sleep if you like.”
“I’d be wretched company.”
“I’ll get used to it.”
He took a taxi to Pontonjärgatan.
Berger spent Sunday in bed with her husband. They lay
there talking and dozing. In the afternoon they got dressed
there talking and dozing. In the afternoon they got dressed
and went for a walk down to the steamship dock.
“S.M.P. was a mistake,” Berger said when they got home.
“Don’t say that. Right now it’s tough, but you knew it would
be. Things will calm down after you’ve been there a while.”
“It’s not the job. I can handle that. It’s the atmosphere.”
“I see.”
“I don’t like it there, but on the other hand I can’t walk out
after a few weeks.”
She sat at the kitchen table and stared morosely into
space. Beckman had never seen his wife so stymied.
Inspector Faste met Salander for the first time at 11.30 on
Sunday morning when a woman police officer brought her
into Erlander’s office at Göteborg police headquarters.
“You were difficult enough to catch,” Faste said.
Salander gave him a long look, satisfied herself that he
was an idiot, and decided that she would not waste too
many seconds concerning herself with his existence.
“Inspector Gunilla Wäring will accompany you to
Stockholm,” Erlander said.
“Alright,” Faste said. “Then we’ll leave at once. There are
quite a few people who want to have a serious talk with
you, Salander.”
Erlander said goodbye to her. She ignored him.
They had decided for simplicity’s sake to do the prisoner
transfer to Stockholm by car. Wäring drove. At the start of
the journey Hans Faste sat in the front passenger seat with
his head turned towards the back as he tried to have some
exchange with Salander. By the time they reached Alingsås
his neck was aching and he gave up.
Salander looked at the countryside. In her mind Faste did
not exist.
Teleborian was right. She’s fucking retarded, Faste
thought. We’ll see about changing that attitude when we
get to Stockholm.
Every so often he glanced at Salander and tried to form an
opinion of the woman he had been desperate to track
down for such a long time. Even he had some doubts when
he saw the skinny girl. He wondered how much she could
weigh. He reminded himself that she was a lesbian and
consequently not a real woman.
But it was possible that the bit about Satanism was an
exaggeration. She did not look the type.
The irony was that he would have preferred to arrest her
for the three murders that she was originally suspected of,
but reality had caught up with his investigation. Even a
skinny girl can handle a weapon. Instead she had been
taken in for assaulting the top leadership of Svavelsjö
M.C., and she was guilty of that crime, no question. There
was forensic evidence related to the incident which she no
doubt intended to refute.
Figuerola woke Blomkvist at 1.00 in the afternoon. She had
been sitting on her balcony and had finished reading her
book about the idea of God in antiquity, listening all the
while to Blomkvist’s snores from the bedroom. It had been
peaceful. When she went in to look at him it came to her,
acutely, that she was more attracted to him than she had
been to any other man in years.
It was a pleasant yet unsettling feeling. There he was, but
he was not a stable element in her life.
They went down to Norr Mälarstrand for a coffee. Then she
took him home and to bed for the rest of the afternoon. He
left her at 7.00. She felt a vague sense of loss a moment
after he kissed her cheek and was gone.
At 8.00 on Sunday evening Linder knocked on Berger’s
door. She would not be sleeping there now that Beckman
door. She would not be sleeping there now that Beckman
was home, and this visit was not connected with her job.
But during the time she had spent at Berger’s house they
had both grown to enjoy the long conversations they had in
the kitchen. She had discovered a great liking for Berger.
She recognized in her a desperate woman who succeeded
in concealing her true nature. She went to work apparently
calm, but in reality she was a bundle of nerves.
Linder suspected that her anxiety was due not solely to
Poison Pen. But Berger’s life and problems were none of
her business. It was a friendly visit. She had come out here
just to see Berger and to be sure that everything was
alright. The couple were in the kitchen in a solemn mood. It
seemed as though they had spent their Sunday working
their way through one or two serious issues.
Beckman put on some coffee. Linder had been there only
a few minutes when Berger’s mobile rang.
Berger had answered every call that day with a feeling of
impending doom.
“Berger,” she said.
“Hello, Ricky.”
Blomkvist. Shit. I haven’t told him the Borgsjö file has
disappeared.
“Hi, Micke.”
“Salander was moved to the prison in Göteborg this
evening, to wait for transport to Stockholm tomorrow.”
“O.K.”
“She sent you a … well, a message.”
“Oh?”
“It’s pretty cryptic.”
“What did she say?”
“She says: ‘Poison Pen is Peter Fredriksson.’”
Erika sat for ten seconds in silence while thoughts rushed
through her head. Impossible. Peter isn’t like that.
Salander has to be wrong.
“Was that all?”
“That’s the whole message. Do you know what it’s about?”
“Yes.”
“Ricky … what are you and that girl up to? She rang you to
tip me off about Teleborian and—”
“Thanks, Micke. We’ll talk later.”
She turned off her mobile and looked at Linder with an
expression of absolute astonishment.
“Tell me,” Linder said.
Linder was in two minds. Berger had been told that her
assistant editor was the one sending the vicious emails.
She talked non-stop. Then Linder had asked her how she
knew Fredriksson was her stalker. Then Berger was silent.
Linder noticed her eyes and saw that something had
changed in her attitude. She was all of a sudden totally
confused.
“I can’t tell you …”
“What do you mean you can’t tell me?”
“Susanne, I just know that Fredriksson is responsible. But I
can’t tell you how I got that information. What can I do?”
“If I’m going to help you, you have to tell me.”
“I … I can’t. You don’t understand.”
Berger got up and stood at the kitchen window with her
back to Linder. Finally she turned.
“I’m going to his house.”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort. You’re not going anywhere,
least of all to the home of somebody who obviously hates
you.”
Berger looked torn.
“Sit down. Tell me what happened. It was Blomkvist calling
you, right?”
Berger nodded.
“I … today I asked a hacker to go through the home
computers of the staff.”
“Aha. So you’ve probably by extension committed a serious
computer crime. And you don’t want to tell me who your
hacker is?”
“I promised I would never tell anyone … Other people are
involved. Something that Mikael is working on.”
“Does Blomkvist know about the emails and the break-in
here?”
“No, he was just passing on a message.”
Linder cocked her head to one side, and all of a sudden a
chain of associations formed in her mind.
chain of associations formed in her mind.
Erika Berger. Mikael Blomkvist. Millennium. Rogue
policemen who broke in and bugged Blomkvist’s apartment.
Linder watching the watchers. Blomkvist working like a
madman on a story about Lisbeth Salander.
The fact that Salander was a wizard at computers was
widely known at Milton Security. No-one knew how she had
come by her skills, and Linder had never heard any
rumours that Salander might be a hacker. But Armansky
had once said something about Salander delivering quite
incredible reports when she was doing personal
investigations. A hacker …
But Salander is under guard on a ward in Göteborg.
It was absurd.
“Is it Salander we’re talking about?” Linder said.
Berger looked as though she had touched a live wire.
“I can’t discuss where the information came from. Not one
word.”
Linder laughed aloud.
It was Salander. Berger’s confirmation of it could not have
been clearer. She was completely off balance.
been clearer. She was completely off balance.
Yet it’s impossible.
Under guard as she was, Salander had nevertheless taken
on the job of finding out who Poison Pen was. Sheer
madness.
Linder thought hard.
She could not understand the whole Salander story. She
had met her maybe five times during the years she had
worked at Milton Security and had never had so much as a
single conversation with her. She regarded Salander as a
sullen and asocial individual with a skin like a rhino. She
had heard that Armansky himself had taken Salander on
and since she respected Armansky she assumed that he
had good reason for his endless patience towards the
sullen girl.
Poison Pen is Peter Fredriksson.
Could she be right? What was the proof?
Linder then spent a long time questioning Erika on
everything she knew about Fredriksson, what his role was
at S.M.P., and how their relationship had been. The
answers did not help her at all.
Berger had displayed a frustrating indecision. She had
wavered between a determination to drive out to
Fredriksson’s place and confront him, and an unwillingness
to believe that it could really be true. Finally Linder
convinced her that she could not storm into Fredriksson’s
apartment and launch into an accusation – if he was
innocent, she would make an utter fool of herself.
So Linder had promised to look into the matter. It was a
promise she regretted as soon as she made it, because
she did not have the faintest idea how she was going to
proceed.
She parked her Fiat Strada as close to Fredriksson’s
apartment building in Fisksätra as she could. She locked
the car and looked about her. She was not sure what she
was going to do, but she supposed she would have to
knock on his door and somehow get him to answer a
number of questions. She was acutely aware that this was
a job that lay well outside her remit at Milton, and she knew
Armansky would be furious if he found out what she was
doing.
It was not a good plan, and in any case it fell apart before
she had managed to put it into practice. She had reached
the courtyard and was approaching Fredriksson’s
apartment when the door opened. Linder recognized him at
once from the photograph in his personnel file which she
had studied on Berger’s computer. She kept walking and
had studied on Berger’s computer. She kept walking and
they passed each other. He disappeared in the direction of
the garage. It was just before 11.00 and Fredriksson was
on his way somewhere. Linder turned and ran back to her
car.
Blomkvist sat for a long time looking at his mobile after
Berger hung up. He wondered what was going on. In
frustration he looked at Salander’s computer. By now she
had been moved to the prison in Göteborg, and he had no
chance of asking her anything.
He opened his Ericsson T10 and called Idris Ghidi in
Angered.
“Hello. Mikael Blomkvist.”
“Hello,” Ghidi said.
“Just to tell you that you can stop that job you were doing
for me.”
Ghidi had already worked out that Blomkvist would call
since Salander had been taken from the hospital.
“I understand,” he said.
“You can keep the mobile as we agreed. I’ll send you the
final payment this week.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m the one who should thank you for your help.”
Blomkvist opened his iBook. The events of the past twenty-four hours meant that a significant part of the manuscript
had to be revised and that in all probability a whole new
section would have to be added.
He sighed and got to work.
At 11.15 Fredriksson parked three streets away from
Berger’s house. Linder had already guessed where he was
going and had stopped trying to keep him in sight. She
drove past his car fully two minutes after he parked. The
car was empty. She went on a short distance past Berger’s
house and stopped well out of sight. Her palms were
sweating.
She opened her tin of Catch Dry snuff and tucked a
teenage-sized portion inside her upper lip.
Then she opened her car door and looked around. As
soon as she could tell that Fredriksson was on his way to
Saltsjöbaden, she knew that Salander’s information must
be correct. And obviously he had not come all this way for
fun. Trouble was brewing. Which was fine by her, so long
as she could catch him red-handed.
She took her telescopic baton from the side pocket of her
car door and weighed it in her hand for a moment. She
pressed the lock in the handle and out shot a heavy,
spring-loaded steel cable. She clenched her teeth.
That was why she had left the Södermalm force.
She had had one mad outbreak of rage when for the third
time in as many days the squad car had driven to an
address in Hägersten after the same woman had called the
police and screamed for help because her husband had
abused her. And just as on the first two occasions, the
situation had resolved itself before they arrived.
They had detained the husband on the staircase while the
woman was questioned. No, she did not want to file a
police report. No, it was all a mistake. No, he was fine … it
was actually all her fault. She had provoked him…
And the whole time the bastard had stood there grinning,
looking Linder straight in the eye.
She could not explain why she did it. But suddenly
something had snapped in her, and she took out her baton
and slammed it across his face. The first blow had lacked
power. She had only given him a fat lip and forced him on
to his knees. In the next ten seconds – until her colleagues
grabbed her and half dragged, half carried her out of the
halfway – she had let the blows rain down on his back,
kidneys, hips and shoulders.
Charges were never filed. She had resigned the same
evening and went home and cried for a week. Then she
pulled herself together and went to see Dragan Armansky.
She explained what she had done and why she had left the
force. She was looking for a job. Armansky had been
sceptical and said he would need some time to think it over.
She had given up hope by the time he called six weeks
later and told her he was ready to take her on trial.
Linder frowned and stuck the baton into her belt at the
small of her back. She checked that she had the Mace
canister in her right-hand pocket and that the laces of her
trainers were securely tied. She walked back to Berger’s
house and slipped into the garden.
She knew that the outside motion detector had not yet
been installed, and she moved soundlessly across the
lawn, along the hedge at the border of the property. She
could not see him. She went around the house and stood
still. Then she spotted him as a shadow in the darkness
near Beckman’s studio.
He can’t know how stupid it is for him to come back here.
He was squatting down, trying to see through a gap in a
curtain in the room next to the living room. Then he moved
curtain in the room next to the living room. Then he moved
up on to the veranda and looked through the cracks in the
drawn blinds at the big picture window.
Linder suddenly smiled.
She crossed the lawn to the corner of the house while he
still had his back to her. She crouched behind some
currant bushes by the gable end and waited. She could
see him through the branches. From his position
Fredriksson would be able to look down the hall and into
part of the kitchen. Apparently he had found something
interesting to look at, and it was ten minutes before he
moved again. This time he came closer to Linder.
As he rounded the corner and passed her, she stood up
and spoke in a low voice:
“Hello there, Fredriksson.”
He stopped short and spun towards her.
She saw his eyes glistening in the dark. She could not see
his expression, but she could hear that he was holding his
breath and she could sense his shock.
“We can do this the easy way or we can do it the hard
way,” she said. “We’re going to walk to your car and—”
He turned and made to run away.
Linder raised her baton and directed a devastatingly
painful blow to his left kneecap.
He fell with a moan.
She raised the baton a second time, but then caught
herself. She thought she could feel Armansky’s eyes on the
back of her neck.
She bent down, flipped him over on to his stomach and put
her knee in the small of his back. She took hold of his right
hand and twisted it round on to his back and handcuffed
him. He was frail and he put up no resistance.
*
Berger turned off the lamp in the living room and limped
upstairs. She no longer needed the crutches, but the sole
of her foot still hurt when she put any weight on it.
Beckman turned off the light in the kitchen and followed his
wife upstairs. He had never before seen her so unhappy.
Nothing he said could soothe her or alleviate the anxiety
she was feeling.
She got undressed, crept into bed and turned her back to
him.
“It’s not your fault, Greger,” she said when she heard him
get in beside her.
“You’re not well,” he said. “I want you to stay at home for a
few days.”
He put an arm around her shoulders. She did not to push
him away, but she was completely passive. He bent over,
kissed her cautiously on the neck, and held her.
“There’s nothing you can say or do to make the situation
any better. I know I need to take a break. I feel as though
I’ve climbed on to an express train and discovered that I’m
on the wrong track.”
“We could go sailing for a few days. Get away from it all.”
“No. I can’t get away from it all.”
She turned to him. “The worst thing I could do now would
be to run away. I have to sort things out first. Then we can
go.”
“O.K,” Beckman said. “I’m not being much help.”
She smiled wanly. “No, you’re not. But thanks for being
here. I love you insanely – you know that.”
He mumbled something inaudible.
“I simply can’t believe it’s Fredriksson,” Berger said. “I’ve
never felt the least bit of hostility from him.”
Linder was just wondering whether she should ring
Berger’s doorbell when she saw the lights go off on the
ground floor. She looked down at Fredriksson. He had not
said a word. He was quite still. She thought for a long time
before she made up her mind.
She bent down and grabbed the handcuffs, pulled him to
his feet, and leaned him against the wall.
“Can you stand by yourself?” she said.
He did not answer.
“Right, we’ll make this easy. You struggle in any way and
you’ll get the same treatment on your right leg. You
struggle even more and I’ll break your arms. Do you
understand?”
She could hear him breathing heavily. Fear?
She pushed him along in front of her out on to the street all
the way to his car. He was limping badly so she held him
up. Just as they reached the car they met a man out
walking his dog. The man stopped and looked at
Fredriksson in his handcuffs.
“This is a police matter,” Linder said in a firm voice. “You go
home.” The man turned and walked away in the direction
he had come.
She put Fredriksson in the back seat and drove him home
to Fisksätra. It was 12.30 and they saw no-one as they
walked into his building. Linder fished out his keys and
followed him up the stairs to his apartment on the fourth
floor.
“You can’t go into my apartment,” said Fredriksson.
It was the first thing he had said since she cuffed him. She
opened the apartment door and shoved him inside.
“You have no right. You have to have a search warrant—”
“I’m not a police officer,” she said in a low voice.
He stared at her suspiciously.
She took hold of his shirt and dragged him into the living
room, pushing him down on to a sofa. He had a neatly kept
two-bedroom apartment. Bedroom to the left of the living
room, kitchen across the hall, a small office off the living
room.
She looked in the office and heaved a sigh of relief. The
smoking gun. Straightaway she saw photographs from
Berger’s album spread out on a desk next to a computer.
Berger’s album spread out on a desk next to a computer.
He had pinned up thirty or so pictures on the wall behind
the computer. She regarded the exhibition with raised
eyebrows. Berger was a fine-looking woman. And her sex
life was more active than Linder’s own.
She heard Fredriksson moving and went back to the living
room, rapped him once across his lower back and then
dragged him into the office and sat him down on the floor.
“You stay there,” she said.
She went into the kitchen and found a paper carrier bag
from Konsum. She took down one picture after another and
then found the stripped album and Berger’s diaries.
“Where’s the video?” she said.
Fredriksson did not answer. Linder went into the living
room and turned on the T.V. There was a tape in the
V.C.R., but it took a while before she found the video
channel on the remote so she could check it. She popped
out the video and looked around to ensure he had not
made any copies.
She found Berger’s teenage love letters and the Borgsjö
folder. Then she turned her attentions to Fredriksson’s
computer. She saw that he had a Microtek scanner hooked
up to his P.C., and when she lifted the lid she found a
photograph of Berger at a Club Xtreme party, New Year’s
photograph of Berger at a Club Xtreme party, New Year’s
Eve 1986 according to a banner on the wall.
She booted up the computer and discovered that it was
password-protected.
“What’s your password,” she asked.
Fredriksson sat obstinately silent and refused to answer.
Linder suddenly felt utterly calm. She knew that technically
she had committed one crime after another this evening,
including unlawful restraint and even aggravated
kidnapping. She did not care. On the contrary, she felt
almost exhilarated.
After a while she shrugged and dug in her pocket for her
Swiss Army knife. She unplugged all the cables from the
computer, turned it round and used the screwdriver to
open the back. It took her fifteen minutes to take it apart
and remove the hard drive.
She had taken everything, but for safety’s sake she did a
thorough search of the desk drawers, the stacks of paper
and the shelves. Suddenly her gaze fell on an old school
yearbook lying on the windowsill. She saw that it was from
Djurholm Gymnasium 1978. Did Berger not come from
Djurholm’s upper class? She opened the yearbook and
began to look through that year’s school leavers.
She found Erika Berger, eighteen years old, with student
cap and a sunny smile with dimples. She wore a thin, white
cotton dress and held a bouquet of flowers in her hand.
She looked the epitome of an innocent teenager with top
grades.
Linder almost missed the connection, but there it was on
the next page. She would never have recognized him but
for the caption. Peter Fredriksson. He was in a different
class from Berger. Linder studied the photograph of a thin
boy in a student cap who looked into the camera with a
serious expression.
Her eyes met Fredriksson’s.
“Even then she was a whore.”
“Fascinating,” Linder said.
“She fucked every guy in the school.”
“I doubt that.”
“She was a fucking—”
“Don’t say it. So what happened? Couldn’t you get into her
knickers?”
“She treated me as though I didn’t exist. She laughed at
me. And when she started at S.M.P. she didn’t even
recognize me.”
“Right,” said Linder wearily. “I’m sure you had a terrible
childhood. How about we have a serious talk?”
“What do you want?”
“I’m not a police officer,” Linder said. “I’m someone who
takes care of people like you.”
She paused and let his imagination do the work.
“I want to know if you put photographs of her anywhere on
the Internet.”
He shook his head.
“Are you quite sure about that?”
He nodded.
“Berger will have to decide for herself whether she wants to
make a formal complaint against you for harassment,
threats, and breaking and entering, or whether she wants
to settle things amicably.”
He said nothing.
“If she decides to ignore you – and I think that’s about what
you’re worth – then I’ll be keeping an eye on you.”
She held up her baton.
“If you ever go near her house again, or send her email or
otherwise molest her, I’ll be back. I’ll beat you so hard so
that even your own mother won’t recognize you. Do I make
myself clear?”
Still he said nothing.
“So you have the opportunity to influence how this story
ends. Are you interested?”
He nodded slowly.
“In that case, I’m going to recommend to Fru Berger that
she lets you off, but don’t think about coming into work
again. As of right now you’re fired.”
He nodded.
“You will disappear from her life and move out of
Stockholm. I don’t give a shit what you do with your life or
where you end up. Find a job in Göteborg or Malmö. Go on
sick leave again. Do whatever you like. But leave Berger in
peace. Are we agreed?”
Fredriksson began to sob.
“I didn’t mean any harm,” he said. “I just wanted—”
“You just wanted to make her life a living hell and you
certainly succeeded. Do I or do I not have your word?”
He nodded.
She bent over, turned him on to his stomach and unlocked
the handcuffs. She took the Konsum bag containing
Berger’s life and left him there on the floor.
It was 2.30 a.m. on Monday when Linder left Fredriksson’s
building. She considered letting the matter rest until the
next day, but then it occurred to her that if she had been
the one involved, she would have wanted to know
straightaway. Besides, her car was still parked out in
Saltsjöbaden. She called a taxi.
Beckman opened the door even before she managed to
ring the bell. He was wearing jeans and did not look as if he
had just got out of bed.
“Is Erika awake?” Linder asked.
He nodded.
“Has something else happened?” he said.
She smiled at him.
“Come in. We’re just talking in the kitchen.”
They went in.
“Hello, Erika,” Linder said. “You need to learn to get some
sleep once in a while.”
“What’s happened?”
Linder held out the Konsum bag.
“Fredriksson promises to leave you alone from now on.
God knows if we can trust him, but if he keeps his word it’ll
be less painful than hassling with a police report and a trial.
It’s up to you.”
“So it was him?”
Linder nodded. Beckman poured a coffee, but she did not
want one. She had drunk much too much coffee over the
past few days. She sat down and told them what had
happened outside their house that night.
Berger sat in silence for a moment. Then she went
upstairs, and came back with her copy of the school
yearbook. She looked at Fredriksson’s face for a long time.
“I do remember him,” she said at last. “But I had no idea it
was the same Peter Fredriksson. I wouldn’t even have
remembered his name if it weren’t written here.”
“What happened?” Linder asked.
“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. He was a quiet and totally
uninteresting boy in another class. I think we might have
had some subjects together. French, if I remember
correctly.”
“He said that you treated him as though he didn’t exist.”
“I probably did. He wasn’t somebody I knew and he wasn’t
in our group.”
“I know how cliques work. Did you bully him or anything like
that?”
“No … no, for God’s sake. I hated bullying. We had
campaigns against bullying in the school, and I was
president of the student council. I don’t remember that he
ever spoke to me.”
“O.K,” Linder said. “But he obviously had a grudge against
you. He was off sick for two long periods, suffering from
stress and overwork. Maybe there were other reasons for
his being off sick that we don’t know about.”
She got up and put on her leather jacket.
“I’ve got his hard drive. Technically it’s stolen goods so I
shouldn’t leave it with you. You don’t have to worry – I’ll
destroy it as soon as I get home.”
“Wait, Susanne. How can I ever thank you?”
“Well, you can back me up when Armansky’s wrath hits me
like a bolt of lightning.”
Berger gave her a concerned look.
“Will you get into trouble for this?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t know.”
“Can we pay you for—”
“No. But Armansky may bill you for tonight. I hope he does,
because that would mean he approves of what I did and
probably won’t decide to fire me.”
“I’ll make sure he sends us a bill.”
Berger stood up and gave Linder a long hug.
“Thanks, Susanne. If you ever need a friend, you’ve got
one in me. If there’s anything I can do for you …”
“Thanks. Don’t leave those pictures lying around. And while
we’re on the subject, Milton could install a much better safe
for you.”
Berger smiled as Beckman walked Linder back to her car.
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