The Girl Who Played with Fire (53 page)

Faste smiled contentedly at the closed door.

Blomkvist had just gotten home when his mobile rang.

“Hi. It’s Malin. Can you talk?”

“Sure.”

“Something struck me yesterday.”

“Tell me.”

“I was going through all the clippings we have here on the hunt for Salander, and I found that spread on her time at the psychiatric clinic. What I’m wondering is why there’s such a big gap in her biography.”

“What gap?”

“There’s plenty of stuff about the trouble she was mixed up in at school. Trouble with teachers and classmates and so on.”

“I remember that. There was even a teacher who said she was afraid of Lisbeth when she was eleven.”

“Birgitta Miåås.”

“That’s the one.”

“And there are details about Lisbeth at the psychiatric clinic. Plus a lot of stuff about her with foster families during her teens and about the assault in Gamla Stan.”

“So what are you thinking?”

“She was taken into the clinic just before her thirteenth birthday.”

“Yes?”

“And there isn’t a word about
why
she was committed. Obviously if a twelve-year-old is committed, something has to have happened. And in Lisbeth’s case it was most likely some huge outburst that should have shown up in her biography. But there’s nothing there.”

Blomkvist frowned. “Malin, I have it from a source I trust that there’s a police report on Lisbeth dated March 1991, when she was twelve. It’s not in the file. I was at the point of asking you to dig around for it.”

“If there’s a report then it would have to be a part of her file. It would be breaking the law not to have it there. Have you really checked?”

“No, but my source says that it’s not in the file.”

Eriksson paused for a second. “And how reliable is your source?”

“Very.”

Eriksson and Blomkvist had arrived at the same conclusion simultaneously.

“Säpo,” Eriksson said.

“Björck,” Blomkvist said.

Per-Åke Sandström, a freelance journalist in his late forties, came home just after midnight. He was a little drunk and felt a lump of panic lurking in his stomach. He had spent the day doing nothing. He was, quite simply, terrified.

It was almost two weeks since Svensson had been killed. Sandström had watched the TV news that night in shock. He had felt a wave of relief and hope—Svensson was dead, so maybe the book about trafficking, in which Sandström would be exposed, was history.

He hated Svensson. He had begged and pleaded, he had
crawled
for that fucking pig.

It was not until the day after that that he began to consider his situation. The police would find Svensson’s text and start digging into his little escapade. Jesus … he could even be a murder suspect.

His panic had subsided when Salander’s face was slapped on every front page in the country.
Who the hell was this Salander?
He had never heard her name before. But the police clearly considered her a serious suspect, and according to the prosecutor’s statement, the murders might soon be solved. It was possible that no-one would show any interest in him at all. But from his own experience he knew that journalists always saved documentation and notes.
Millennium. A piece-of-shit magazine with an undeserved reputation. They were like all the rest. Poking around and whining and damaging people
.

He had no way of knowing how long the research had been going on. There was nobody he could ask. He felt as if he was in a vacuum.

He vacillated between panic and intoxication. Apparently the police
were not looking for him. Maybe—if he was lucky—he would get away scot-free. But if he was not lucky, his working life would be over.

He stuck the key in his front door and turned the lock. When he opened the door he suddenly heard a rustling sound behind him and before he could turn he felt a paralyzing pain in the small of his back.

Björck had not yet gone to bed when the telephone rang. He was in his pajamas and dressing gown, but he was still sitting in the kitchen in the dark, gnawing on his dilemma. In his whole long career he had never found himself even close to being in such a fix.

He had not intended to pick up the phone. It was after midnight. But it kept ringing. After the tenth ring he could resist no longer.

“It’s Mikael Blomkvist,” said a voice on the other end.

Shit
.

“I was in bed.”

“I thought you might be interested in hearing what I have to say.”

“What do you want?”

“Tomorrow at 10:00 a.m. I’m giving a press conference on the murders of Dag Svensson and Mia Johansson.”

Björck swallowed hard.

“I’m going to give an account of the details in the book about the sex trade that Svensson had all but finished. The only john I’ll be naming is you.”

“You promised to give me some time…” He heard the fear in his voice and stopped.

“It’s been several days. You said you’d call me after the weekend. Tomorrow is Tuesday. Either you tell me now or I’m holding that press conference in the morning.”

“If you hold that press conference you’ll never find out a damn thing about Zala.”

“That’s possible. But then it won’t be my problem any more either. You’ll have to do your talking to the police investigation instead. And to the rest of the media, of course.”

There was no room for negotiation.

Björck agreed to meet Blomkvist, but he succeeded in putting the meeting off until Wednesday. A short reprieve. But he was ready.

It was sink or swim.

•  •  •

He woke up on the floor of his living room. He did not know how long he had been unconscious. His body hurt all over and he couldn’t move. It took him a while to realize that his hands were tied behind his back with electrical tape and his feet were bound. He had a piece of tape over his mouth. The lamps in the room were lit and the blinds were closed. He couldn’t understand what had happened.

He was aware of sounds that seemed to be coming from his office. He lay still and listened and heard a drawer being opened and closed.
A robbery?
He heard the sound of paper and someone rummaging through the drawers.

It seemed like an eternity before he heard footsteps behind him. He tried turning his head, but he couldn’t see anyone. He told himself to stay calm.

Suddenly a loop of thick cotton rope was slipped over his head. A noose was tightened around his neck. The panic almost made him shit himself. He looked up and saw the rope run up to a block that was fastened to a hook where the ceiling lamp usually hung. Then the person who had assaulted him came into view. The first thing he saw was a pair of black boots.

The shock could not have been greater when he raised his eyes. He did not at first recognize the psychopath whose passport photograph had been plastered outside every Pressbyrå kiosk since Easter. She had short black hair and did not look that much like the picture in the papers. She was dressed all in black—jeans, midlength cotton jacket, T-shirt, gloves.

But what terrified him the most was her face. It was painted. She wore black lipstick, eyeliner, and dramatically prominent greenish-black eye shadow. The rest of her face was covered in white makeup. She had painted a red stripe from the left side of her forehead across her nose and down to the right side of her chin.

It was a grotesque mask. She looked out of her fucking mind.

His brain resisted. It seemed unreal.

Salander grasped the end of the rope and pulled. He felt the rope cut into his neck and for a few seconds he couldn’t breathe. Then he fought to get his feet under himself. With a block and tackle she hardly had to exert herself to pull him to his feet. When he was upright she stopped pulling and looped the rope a few times around a radiator pipe. She tied it with a clove hitch.

Then she vanished from his field of vision. She was gone for more than fifteen minutes. When she came back she pulled up a chair and sat in front of him. He tried to avoid looking at her painted face, but he
could not help it. She laid a pistol on the living-room table.
His pistol. She had found it in the shoebox in the wardrobe
. A Colt 1911 Government. An illegal weapon he had had for several years. He had bought it from a friend but never even fired it. Right before his eyes she took out the magazine and filled it with rounds. She shoved it back in and cocked the weapon. Sandström was about to faint. He forced himself to meet her gaze.

“I don’t understand why men always have to document their perversions,” she said.

She had a soft but ice-cold voice. She held up a photograph. She must have printed it from his hard drive, for God’s sake.

“I assume that this is Ines Hammujärvi, Estonian, seventeen years old, from Riepalu near Narva. Did you have fun with her?”

The question was rhetorical. Sandström had no way of answering. His mouth was taped shut and his brain was incapable of formulating a response. The photograph showed
… Good God, why did I save those pictures?

“You know who I am? Nod.”

Sandström nodded.

“You’re a sadistic pig, a pervert, and a rapist.”

He made no move.

“Nod.”

He nodded. Suddenly he had tears in his eyes.

“Let’s get the rules of engagement 100 percent clear,” Salander said. “As far as I’m concerned, you should be put to death at once. Whether you survive the night or not makes no difference to me at all. Understand?”

He nodded.

“It has probably not escaped your attention that I’m a madwoman who likes killing people. Especially men.”

She pointed at the recent newspapers that he had collected on the living-room table.

“I’m going to remove the tape from your mouth. If you scream or raise your voice I will zap you with this.” She held up a Taser. “This horrific device puts out 50,000 volts. About 40,000 volts next time, since I’ve used it once and haven’t recharged it. Understand?”

He looked doubtful.

“That means that your muscles will stop functioning. That was what you experienced at the door when you came staggering home.” She smiled at him. “And it means that your legs will not hold you up and
you’ll end up hanging yourself. After I’ve zapped you, all I have to do is get up and leave the apartment.”

He nodded.
Good God, she’s a fucking crazy killer
. He could not help it: the tears flowed uncontrollably down his cheeks. He sniffled.

She got up and pulled off the tape. Her grotesque face was only an inch from his.

“Don’t say a word,” she said. “If you talk without permission, I’ll zap you.”

She waited until he stopped snuffling and met her eyes.

“You have one chance to survive the night,” she said. “One chance—not two. I’m going to ask you a number of questions. If you answer them, I’ll let you live. Nod if you understand.”

He nodded.

“If you refuse to answer a question I’ll have to zap you. Understand?”

He nodded.

“If you lie to me or give an evasive answer I’ll zap you.”

He nodded.

“I’m not going to bargain with you. There will be no second chance. You answer my questions immediately or you die. If you answer satisfactorily, then you’ll survive. It’s that simple.”

He nodded. He believed her. He had no choice.

“Please,” he said. “I don’t want to die …”

“It’s up to you whether you live or die. But you just broke my first rule: you do not talk without my permission.”

He pressed his lips together.
God, she’s completely insane
.

Blomkvist was too frustrated and restless to know what to do. Finally he put on his jacket and scarf and walked aimlessly to Södra station, past Bofills Båge, before he ended up at the
Millennium
offices on Götgatan. It was perfectly quiet. He did not turn on any lights, but he did put on the coffeemaker and then stood at the window looking down at Götgatan. He tried to put his thoughts in order. The murder investigation was like a broken mosaic in which he could make out some pieces while others were simply missing. Somewhere there was a pattern. He could sense it, but he could not figure it out. Too many pieces were missing.

He was assailed by doubt.
She is not a deranged killer
, he reminded himself. She had written to tell him that she had not shot his friends. He believed her. But in some unfathomable way she was still intimately involved in the murders.

Slowly he began to reevaluate the theory he had clung to since he walked into the apartment in Enskede. He had immediately assumed that Svensson’s investigative reporting about sex trafficking was the only plausible motive for the murders. Now he was coming to accept Bublanski’s assertion that this couldn’t explain Bjurman’s murder.

Salander had told him in her message that he should forget about the johns and focus on Zala instead.
Why?
The damn pest. Why couldn’t she tell him anything that made sense?

Blomkvist poured coffee into a Young Left mug. He sat on one of the sofas in the middle of the office, put his feet up on the coffee table, and lit a forbidden cigarette.

Björck was on the list of johns. Bjurman had been Salander’s guardian. It could not be an accident that Bjurman and Björck had both worked at Säpo. A police report about Salander had disappeared.

Could there be more than one motive?

Could Lisbeth Salander be the motive?

Blomkvist sat there with an idea that he couldn’t put into words. There was something still unexplored, but he couldn’t explain exactly what he meant by the idea that Salander herself could be a motive for murder. He experienced a fleeting sense of discovery.

Then he realized that he was too tired and poured out his coffee, rinsed the machine, and went home to bed. Lying in the dark, he took up the thread again and for two hours tried to understand what it was he wanted to articulate.

Salander smoked a cigarette, comfortably leaning back in the chair in front of him. She crossed her right leg over her left and fixed him with her gaze. Sandström had never seen such an intense look before. When she spoke her voice was still soft.