The Girl Who Played with Fire (56 page)

“Interesting.”

“I checked out what sort of work he did there. It wasn’t easy to dig up. But he was, for one thing, in charge of legal matters for the Security Police. He worked on immigration.”

“Which tells us?”

“That he worked there with your man Björck.”

“That bastard. He didn’t say a word about having actually worked with Bjurman.”

The van had to be somewhere in the vicinity.

Paolo Roberto had glimpsed it only a minute before he lost it. He reversed onto the grass verge and turned back. He drove slowly, looking for side roads.

After only a hundred and fifty yards he spotted a light glinting through a narrow gap in the curtain of trees. He saw a forest track on the opposite side of the road and drove up it about fifty feet, turned, and parked facing out, not bothering to lock the car. Then he jogged back
across the road and hopped over a ditch. He wished he had a flashlight as he wound his way forward through the undergrowth and low branches.

Very soon he came out onto a sandy gravel area and could see some low, dark buildings. As he walked towards them the light above a loading bay came on.

He dropped to his knees and stayed motionless. A second later the lights went on inside the building. It appeared to be a warehouse about a hundred feet long with a row of narrow windows high on one side. The yard was full of containers, and to his right was parked a yellow front-end loader. Next to it was a white Volvo. In the glow of the outdoor light he suddenly saw the van, parked only twenty-five yards from where he crouched.

Then a door opened in the loading bay right in front of him. A man with mousy hair and a beer belly came out of the warehouse and lit a cigarette. Paolo Roberto saw, against the light from the door, that he had a ponytail.

He kept stock-still. He was in full view less than twenty yards from the man, but the flame from his cigarette lighter had knocked out his night vision. Then he and the man with the ponytail both heard a half-choked howl from the van. As Ponytail moved towards the van, Paolo Roberto eased himself down flat on the ground.

He heard a rattle as the sliding doors of the van opened and saw the huge blond man get out, reach back inside, and haul out Miriam Wu. He took her under one arm and held her in an easy grip as she struggled. The two men exchanged some words, but Paolo Roberto could not hear what they said. Then Ponytail opened the door on the driver’s side and hopped in. He started up the van and made a tight turn in the yard. The beams of the headlights swung past only a few yards from Paolo Roberto. The van disappeared down an access road and the noise of its engine faded into the distance.

The giant carried Miriam Wu through the door in the loading bay. Paolo Roberto could see a shadow through the windows high on the wall. It seemed as if the shadow was moving towards the far end of the building.

He got up cautiously. His clothes felt sticky. He was relieved and uneasy. He was relieved because he had managed to track the van and had Miriam Wu within reach. But he was in awe of the giant who had plucked her out of the van as if she were a bag of groceries.

The sane thing to do would be to retreat and call the police. But his battery was dead, and he had only a vague idea of where he was. He certainly
couldn’t give directions to anyone else as to how to get there. And he had no clue what was happening to the girl inside the building.

He made a slow circuit and discovered that there was only one entrance. After two minutes he was back near the door and had to make a decision. No question that the giant was a bad guy. He had kidnapped Miriam Wu. Paolo Roberto did not feel particularly afraid—he had great self-confidence and knew that he could give as good as he got if it came to a fight. The question was whether the man inside the warehouse was armed and whether there were other people with him. He hesitated. There shouldn’t be any others besides the girl and the blond giant.

The loading bay was wide enough for a front-end loader to drive through it, and there was a normal-sized door fitted into the gate. Paolo Roberto walked over and pressed down the handle to open it. He entered a big warehouse bathed in light, filled with assorted building materials, crushed boxes, and trash.

Miriam Wu felt tears running down her cheeks. She was crying not so much from pain as from helplessness. During the journey the giant had handled her as if she weighed nothing at all. He ripped the tape off her mouth when the van stopped. He lifted her and carried her inside without the least effort and dumped her on the cement floor, paying no heed to her protests. When he looked at her his eyes were ice cold.

Miriam Wu knew that she was going to die in this warehouse.

He turned his back on her and walked to a table, where he opened a bottle of mineral water, drinking from it in long gulps. He had not taped her legs together, and she attempted to stand up.

He turned to her and smiled. He was closer to the door than she was. She would have no chance of making it past him. Resigned, she sank to her knees, furious at herself.
I’ll be damned if I give up without a fight
. She got up again and clenched her teeth.
Come on, you fucking tub of lard
.

She felt clumsy and off balance with her hands cuffed behind her, but when he came towards her she backed, circling away, watching for an opening. She lashed out with a lightning kick to his ribs, wheeled around and kicked again at his crotch. She hit his hip, backed off a few feet, and switched legs for the next kick. With her hands manacled she did not have the balance to kick at his face, but she delivered a swift kick to his breastbone.

He reached out a hand and grabbed her by the shoulder, spun her around and gave her a single blow with his fist, not very hard, to the kidneys.
Miriam Wu shrieked like a madwoman as a paralyzing pain sliced through her midsection. She sank to her knees again. He gave her one more slap to the side of her head, and she tumbled to the floor. Then he kicked her in the torso. She gasped for breath as she heard a rib crack.

Paolo Roberto saw nothing of the beating, but he did hear Miriam Wu wail in pain, a sharp, shrill scream that was immediately cut off. He looked in the direction of the sound and clenched his teeth. There was a room beyond a dividing wall. He moved silently through the warehouse and peered through the doorway just as the man rolled the girl onto her back. The giant vanished from his field of view for a few seconds and came back with a chain saw, which he set on the floor in front of her. Paolo Roberto slipped off his jacket.

“I want the answer to a simple question.”

He had a high-pitched voice, almost as if it had never broken, and an accent.

“Where is Lisbeth Salander?”

“I don’t know,” Miriam Wu said, obviously in pain.

“That’s the wrong answer. You’ll have one more chance before I start this thing.”

He squatted down and patted the chain saw.

“Where is Lisbeth Salander hiding?”

Wu shook her head.

When the man reached for the chain saw, Paolo Roberto took three determined strides into the room and threw a hard right hook at his kidneys.

Paolo Roberto had not become a world-famous boxer by being tentative in the ring. He had fought thirty-three bouts in his professional career and won twenty-eight of them. When he punched someone as hard as he could he expected to see his opponent feel pain. But this time he felt as if he had smashed his hand into a concrete wall. He had never experienced anything like it in all the years he’d spent as a boxer. He looked in astonishment at the colossus in front of him.

The man turned and looked with equal astonishment at the boxer.

“What do you say we find you somebody in your own weight class?” said Paolo Roberto.

He got off a string of right-left-right punches to the body and put some muscle behind them. They were heavy blows. The only effect was
that the giant took half a step back, more from surprise than from the effect of the punches. Then he smiled.

“You’re Paolo Roberto,” he said.

Paolo Roberto stopped, amazed. He had just landed four punches that should have put the giant on the deck while the referee counted to ten. But his blows seemed not to have had the slightest effect.

Good God. This isn’t normal
.

Then he saw as if in slow motion the man’s right hook come flying towards him. He was slow and telegraphed the punch in advance. Paolo Roberto had time to move, but the blow glanced off his shoulder. It felt as if he had been hit by a steel bar.

Paolo Roberto backed up two steps, filled with new respect for his opponent.

There’s something wrong with him. Nobody can hit this hard
.

He automatically blocked a left hook with his forearm and felt at once a sharp pain. He did not manage to block the right hook that came out of nowhere and landed on his forehead.

Paolo Roberto tumbled backwards out the door. He landed against a mound of wooden pallets and shook his head. He felt blood streaming down his face.
He cut my eyebrow. It’ll have to be sewn up. Again
.

In the next moment the giant came into view and Paolo Roberto instinctively twisted to the side. He escaped by a hairsbreadth another clublike blow from those enormous fists. He quickly backed up, three, four shuffles, and got his arms up in a defensive position. He was shaken.

The man regarded him with eyes that were curious and almost amused. Then he assumed the same defensive position.
This guy is a boxer
. They began to circle each other slowly.

The hundred and eighty seconds that followed became the most bizarre match that Paolo Roberto had ever fought. There were no coaches, no referee. There was no bell to call a halt to the round and send the fighters to their corners. No pause for water and smelling salts and a towel to wipe the blood from his eyes.

Paolo Roberto knew now that he was fighting for his life. All his training, all the years of hammering on punching bags, all the sparring, and all the experience from all the bouts he had fought came together as the adrenaline pumped in a way he had never before experienced.

They went at each other in an exchange into which Paolo Roberto put
all his power and all his fury. Left, right, left, left again, and a jab with the right to the face, duck the left hook, back up a step, attack with the right. Every punch landed with solid force.

He was in the biggest battle of his life. He was hitting with his brain as much as with his fists. He managed to avoid every punch his opponent threw at him.

He landed a right hook clear as a bell to the jaw that felt like he had broken a bone in his hand and that should have made his opponent collapse in a heap. He glanced at his knuckles and saw that they were bloody. He could see bruises and a swollen area on the giant’s face. But his opponent seemed not even to feel the blows.

Paolo Roberto backed up, breathed as steadily as he could, and took stock.
He’s no boxer. He moves like a boxer, but he can’t box for shit. He’s only pretending. He can’t block. He telegraphs his punches. And he’s as slow as a tortoise
.

In the next instant the giant got in a left hook to the side of Paolo Roberto’s rib cage. That was the second time he had connected well. Paolo Roberto felt pain shoot through his body as a rib cracked. Again he backed away, but he tripped over a pile of scaffolding and fell on his back. He saw the giant towering over him, but he flung himself into a roll to the side and staggered to his feet.

He squared up, trying to gather his strength, but the man was on him again. He ducked, ducked again, and backed away, feeling terrible pain each time he parried a blow with his shoulder.

Then came the moment that every boxer has experienced with dread. The feeling that could turn up any time in the middle of a bout. The feeling of just not being good enough. The realization that you are
about to lose
.

That’s the crux of almost every fight, the moment when the strength drains out of you and the adrenaline pumps so hard that it becomes a burden and surrender appears like a ghost at ringside. That’s the moment that separates the pros from the amateurs and the winner from the loser. Few boxers who find themselves at the edge of that abyss manage to turn the match around, turn certain defeat into victory.

Paolo Roberto was struck by this insight. He felt a roaring in his head that made him dizzy and he experienced the moment as if he were watching the scene from outside, peering at this giant through a camera lens. This was the moment when it was a matter of winning or disappearing for good.

He backed in a wide semicircle to collect his strength and buy time.
The man followed him steadily but slowly, precisely as though he knew that the outcome was decided but he wanted to draw the round out.
He boxes, but he can’t really box. He knows who I am. He’s a rank amateur. But he has a devastating power in his punch and he seems insensitive to all punishment
.

These thoughts rattled around in Paolo Roberto’s head as he tried to decide what to do.

Suddenly he was reliving the night in Mariehamn two years before when his career as a professional boxer had ended in the most brutal way. He had met the Argentine Sebastián Luján, or rather, Sebastián Luján met him. Paolo Roberto had walked into the first knockout of his life and had been unconscious for fifteen seconds.

He often thought about what had gone wrong. He was in tip-top shape. He was focused. But the Argentine had landed a solid punch and the round had been transformed into a raging sea.

Watching the video afterwards, he saw how he had staggered around the ring, as defenceless as Donald Duck. The knockout came twenty-three seconds later.

Sebastián Luján hadn’t been any better, or better trained than he was. The margins of error being so small, the bout could have gone either way.

The only difference he could detect later was that Luján had been hungrier. When Paolo Roberto went into that ring in Mariehamn he was set on winning, but he wasn’t dying to box. It did not mean life or death any more. A loss was not a catastrophe.