The Girl Who Played with Fire (54 page)

“In January 2003 you visited Ines Hammujärvi for the first time at her apartment in Norsborg. She had just turned sixteen. Why did you visit her?”

Sandström did not know how to answer. He could hardly make sense of it himself, how it had begun or why he … She raised the Taser.

“I… I don’t know. I wanted her. She was so beautiful.”

“Beautiful?”

“Yes. She was beautiful.”

“And you thought that you had the right to tie her to the bed and fuck her.”

“She went along with it. I swear. She went along with it.”

“You paid her?”

Sandström bit his tongue. “No.”

“Why not? She was a whore. Whores get paid.”

“She was a … she was a present.”

“A present?”
Her voice had taken on a dangerous tone.

“It was in return for a favour I did someone.”

“Per-Åke,” Salander said in a reasonable tone, “you wouldn’t be trying to avoid answering my question, would you?”

“I swear. I’ll answer anything you ask. I won’t lie.”

“Good. What favour and who was it for?”

“I’d smuggled in some anabolic steroids. I was on a business trip to Estonia and I brought the pills back in my car. The guy I went with was called Harry Ranta. Although he didn’t come with me in the car.”

“How did you meet Harry Ranta?”

“I’ve known him for years. Since the eighties, in fact. He’s a friend. We used to go to bars together.”

“And it was Harry Ranta who offered you Ines Hammujärvi as … a present?”

“Yes … no, I’m sorry, that was later, here in Stockholm. It was his brother, Atho Ranta.”

“So you’re saying that Atho Ranta knocked on your door and asked if you wanted to drive to Norsborg and fuck Ines?”

“No … I was at… we had a party in … damn, I can’t remember where we were …”

He was suddenly shaking uncontrollably and felt his knees begin to give way. He needed to brace his legs against something to stand upright.

“Answer calmly,” Salander said. “I’m not going to hang you because you need time to collect your thoughts. But the minute I get the idea you’re trying to dodge a question, then
… pow!”

She raised her eyebrows and to his astonishment looked angelic. As angelic as anyone could look behind such a hideous mask.

Sandström swallowed. His mouth was dry as a bone, and he could feel the rope tightening around his neck.

“Where you went drinking isn’t important. How come Atho Ranta offered you Ines?”

“We were talking about… we … I told him that I wanted …” He realized he was crying.

“You said that you wanted to have one of his whores.”

He nodded. “I was drunk. He said that she needed … needed …”

“What was it she needed?”

“Atho said that she needed punishment. She was difficult. She didn’t do what he wanted.”

“And what did he want her to do?”

“Whore for him. He offered me … I was drunk and didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t mean … Forgive me.”

He snuffled.

“It’s not me you need to ask for forgiveness. So you offered to help Atho punish Ines and the two of you drove over to her place.”

“That’s not how it was.”

“Tell me how it was. Why did you go with Atho to her place?”

She balanced the Taser on her knee. He was shaking again.

“I went because I wanted to have her. She was there and she was available. Ines lived with a girlfriend of Harry Ranta’s. I don’t think I ever knew her name. Atho tied Ines to the bed and I… I had sex with her. Atho watched.”

“No … you didn’t have sex with her. You raped her.”

He said nothing.

“Or what?”

He nodded.

“What did Ines say?”

“She didn’t say anything.”

“Did she protest?”

He shook his head.

“So she thought it was cool that a middle-aged dickwad tied her up and fucked her.”

“She was drunk. She didn’t care.”

Salander sighed in resignation.

“OK. And then you kept on going to visit Ines.”

“She was so … She wanted me.”

“Bullshit.”

He looked at Salander in despair. Then he nodded.

“I… I raped her. Harry and Atho had given permission. They wanted her to be … to be trained.”

“Did you pay them?”

He nodded.

“How much?”

“It was a friendly deal. I helped out with the smuggling.”

“How much?”

“A few grand altogether.”

“In one of your pictures Ines is here in the apartment.”

“Harry brought her here.”

He snuffled again.

“So for a few thousand you got a girl you could do with as you pleased. How many times did you rape her?”

“I don’t know … several times.”

“OK. Who runs this gang?”

“They’re going to kill me if I rat on them.”

“I don’t give a shit. Right now I’m a much bigger problem for you than the Ranta brothers.” She held up the Taser.

“Atho. He’s the older one. Harry is the fixer.”

“How many more are there in the gang?”

“I only know Harry and Atho. Atho’s girl is in it too. And a guy called … I don’t know. Pelle something. He’s Swedish. I don’t know who he is. He’s a junkie who runs errands for them.”

“Atho’s girl?”

“Silvia. She’s a whore.”

Salander sat for a moment, thinking. Then she raised her eyes.

“Who is Zala?”

Sandström turned pale.
The same question that Svensson had hounded him about
. He said nothing for so long that he noticed the girl was getting pissed off.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know who he is.”

Salander’s expression darkened.

“You’ve been doing fine up to now. Don’t throw away your only chance,” she said.

“I swear to God, honest. I don’t know who he is. The journalist you shot…”

He stopped. It might not be a good idea to bring up her massacre in Enskede.

“Yes?”

“He asked me the same thing. I don’t know. If I knew I’d tell you. I swear. He’s somebody Atho knows.”

“You’ve talked to him?”

“Just for a minute once on the phone. I talked to someone who said his name was Zala. Or rather, he talked to me.”

“Why?”

Sandström blinked. Drops of sweat were running into his eyes and he could feel snot running down his chin.

“I… they wanted me to do them another favour.”

“The story is getting annoyingly slow,” Salander said.

“They wanted me to take another trip to Tallinn and bring back a car that was prepared already. Amphetamines. I didn’t want to do it.”

“Why not?”

“It was too much. They were such gangsters. I wanted out. I had a job to get on with.”

“So you think you were just a gangster in your free time.”

“I’m not really like that.”

“Oh, right.” Her voice contained such contempt that Sandström closed his eyes.

“Keep going. How did Zala come into the picture?”

“It was a nightmare.”

The tears were running again. He bit his lip so hard that it began to bleed.

“Boring,” Salander said.

“Atho kept after me about it. Harry warned me and said that Atho was getting angry and that he didn’t know how it would pan out. Finally I agreed to meet Atho. That was in August of last year. I drove to Norsborg with Harry …”

His mouth kept moving but the words disappeared. Salander’s eyes narrowed. He found his voice again.

“Atho was a nutcase. He’s very brutal. You have no idea how brutal he can be. He said that it was too late for me to pull out and that if I didn’t do as he said I wouldn’t be allowed to live. He was going to give me a demonstration.”

“Oh yeah?”

“They forced me to go with them. We drove towards Södertälje. Atho told me to put on a hood. It was a bag that he tied over my eyes. I was scared to death.”

“So you were in a car with a bag over your head. Then what happened?”

“The car stopped. I didn’t know where I was.”

“Where did they put the bag on you?”

“Just before Södertälje.”

“And how long did it take you to get there?”

“Maybe … half an hour. They got me out of the car. It was some sort of warehouse.”

“What happened?”

“Harry and Atho led me inside. There were lights on. The first thing I
saw was some poor guy lying on a cement floor. He was tied up. He’d been beaten really badly.”

“Who was it?”

“His name was Kenneth Gustafsson. But I didn’t find that out until later.”

“What happened?”

“There was a man there. He was the biggest man I’ve ever seen. Enormous. Nothing but muscle.”

“What did he look like?”

“He looked like the Devil himself. Blond.”

“Name?”

“He never said his name.”

“OK. A big blond guy. Who else?”

“There was another man. He looked stressed. Hair in a ponytail.”

Magge Lundin
.

“More?”

“Plus me and Harry and Atho.”

“Keep going.”

“The huge guy … he set out a chair for me. He didn’t say a word. It was Atho who did the talking. He said that the guy on the floor was a snitch. He wanted me to know what happened to people who made trouble.” Sandström was blubbering unrestrainedly.

“The big guy lifted the other guy off the floor and put him on another chair facing me. We were sitting a yard or so apart. I looked him in the eyes. Then the giant stood behind him and put his hands around his neck … He … he …”

“Strangled him?”

“Yeah … no … he squeezed him to death. I think he broke his neck with his bare hands. I heard the guy’s neck snap and he died right in front of me.”

Sandström was swaying on the rope. Tears were streaming down his face. He had never told anyone this before. Salander gave him a minute to collect himself.

“And then?”

“The other man—the one with the ponytail—started up a chain saw and sawed off the guy’s head and then his hands. After that the giant came up to me. He put his hands around my neck. I tried to pull his hands away. I pulled as hard as I could, but I couldn’t budge him an inch. But he didn’t squeeze—he just held his hands there for a long time.

Meanwhile Atho took out his mobile and made a call in Russian. Then he said that Zala wanted to talk to me and held the phone to my ear.”

“What did Zala say?”

“He just asked whether I still wanted to pull out. I promised to go to Tallinn and get the car with the amphetamines. What else could I do?”

Salander sat without speaking for a long time. She contemplated the snuffling journalist on the rope and seemed to be thinking about something.

“Describe his voice.”

“It… sounded normal.”

“Deep voice, high voice?”

“Deep. Ordinary. Gruff.”

“What language did he speak?”

“Swedish.”

“Accent?”

“Yeah, maybe a little. But good Swedish. He and Atho spoke Russian.”

“Do you understand Russian?”

“A little. Not fluent. Just a little.”

“What did Atho say to him?”

“He just said that the demonstration was over.”

“Have you told anyone else about this?”

“No.”

“Svensson?”

“No … no.”

“Svensson visited you.”

Sandström nodded.

“I can’t hear you.”

“Yes.”

“How come?”

“He knew that I had … the whores.”

“What did he ask?”

“He wanted to know … about Zala. He asked about Zala. That was the second visit.”

“The second visit?”

“He got in touch two weeks before he died. That was the first visit. Then he came back two days before you … he …”

“Before I shot him?”

“Yes.”

“And he asked about Zala then?”

“Yeah.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Nothing. I couldn’t tell him anything. I admitted that I’d spoken to him on the phone. That was all. I didn’t say anything about the blond monster or what they did to Gustafsson.”

“OK. Tell me exactly what Svensson asked.”

“I… he just wanted to know what I knew about Zala. That was all.”

“And you didn’t tell him anything?”

“Nothing of any use. I don’t know anything.”

She bit her lower lip pensively.
There was something he wasn’t saying
.

“Who did you tell about Svensson’s visit?”

Sandström seemed to shiver.

Salander waved the Taser.

“I called Harry.”

“When?”

He swallowed. “The night Svensson visited me the first time.”

She kept on for another half hour, but he was just repeating himself, adding details here and there. She stood up and put a hand on the rope.

“You must be one of the sorriest perverts I’ve ever met,” Salander said. “What you did to Ines deserves the death penalty. But I told you that you would live if you answered my questions. I keep my promises.”

She loosened the knot. Sandström collapsed in a slobbering heap on the floor. He saw her put a stool on his coffee table and climb up and unhook the block and tackle. She coiled the rope and stuffed it in a backpack. She went into the bathroom. He heard the water running. When she came back she had washed off the makeup.

Her face looked scrubbed and naked.

“You can cut yourself free.”

She dropped a kitchen knife beside him.

He heard her out in the hall for a long time. It sounded as though she was changing clothes. Then he heard the front door open and close. It took him half an hour to cut off the tape. He first sank down on the sofa, then staggered to his feet and searched the apartment. She had taken his Colt 1911 Government.

Salander arrived home at 4:55 a.m. She took off the Irene Nesser wig and went straight to bed without turning on her computer to see whether Blomkvist had solved the mystery of the missing police report.

She was awake at 9:00 and spent all of Tuesday digging up information about the Ranta brothers.

Atho Ranta had an extensive record in the police criminal files. He was a Finnish citizen from an Estonian family. He came to Sweden in 1971. From 1972 to 1978 he worked as a carpenter for Skånska Concrete Pouring. He was dismissed after being caught stealing from a building site and sentenced to seven months in prison. Between 1980 and 1982 he worked for a smaller builder. He was kicked out after turning up drunk at work several times. For the remainder of the eighties he made a living as a bouncer, a technician at a company that serviced oil-fired boilers, a dishwasher, and a janitor at a school. He was fired from all these jobs for drunkenness or for getting into fights. His janitorial job lasted only a few months: a teacher reported him for sexual harassment and threatening behaviour.