The Girl Who Played with Fire (61 page)

“Harley-Davidson,” she said. “Sweet.”

It was a beautiful spring day as Blomkvist drove Berger’s car south towards Nynäsvägen. Already there was a hint of green in the black fields, and there was real warmth in the air. It was perfect weather to forget all his problems and drive out for a few days to be at peace in his cabin in Sandhamn.

He had agreed with Björck that he would be there at 1:00, but he arrived early and stopped in Dalarö to have coffee and read the papers. He did not prepare for the meeting. Björck had something to tell him, and Blomkvist was determined that this time he would come away from Smådalarö with concrete information about Zala.

Björck met him in the driveway. He looked more self-assured, more pleased with himself than he had two days before.
What sort of move are you planning?
Blomkvist did not shake hands with him.

“I can give you information about Zala,” Björck said, “but I have certain conditions.”

“Let’s hear them.”

“I won’t be named in
Millennium’s
exposé.”

“Agreed.”

Björck looked surprised. Blomkvist had accepted straight off, without argument, the point about which Björck was expecting to have a long negotiation. That was his only card. Information about the murders in exchange for anonymity. Blomkvist had agreed, and given up the chance of a strong headline in the magazine.

“I’m serious,” Björck said. “And I want it in writing.”

“You can have it in writing, but a document like that wouldn’t be of any use to you. You’ve committed a crime that I know about and which I’m bound to report to the police. But you know things, and you’re using your position to buy my silence. I’ve thought about the matter and I accept. I won’t mention your name in
Millennium
. Either you take my word for it or you don’t.”

While Björck thought about it, Blomkvist said: “I have some conditions too. The price of my silence is that you tell me everything you know. If I discover that you’re hiding something, our agreement is void, and I’ll hang your name out to dry on every single news headline in Sweden, just as I did with Wennerström.”

Björck shuddered at the memory.

“OK,” he said. “I don’t have a choice. I’ll tell you who Zala is. But I’m going to need absolute confidentiality.”

He reached out his hand. Blomkvist grasped it. He had just promised to assist in covering up a crime, but it didn’t trouble him for a moment. All he had promised was that he himself and
Millennium
magazine would not write about Björck. Svensson had already written the whole story in his book. And the book would be published.

The call came through to the police in Strängnäs at 3:18 p.m. It came directly to the switchboard and not through the emergency services. A man named Öberg, owner of a summer cabin just east of Stallarholmen, reported that he had heard what sounded like a shot and went to see what was going on. He had found two severely wounded men. Well, one of the men may not have been so severely wounded, but he was in a lot of pain. And the cabin they were lying in front of was owned by Nils Bjurman, a lawyer. The late Nils Bjurman, that is—the man there was so much about in the papers.

The Strängnäs police had already had an eventful day with an extensive traffic check in the community. During the course of the morning the traffic assignment had been interrupted when a call came in that a middle-aged woman had been killed by her boyfriend at the house they shared in Finninge. At almost the same time a fire had spread from an outhouse into a property in Storgärdet. One body was found in the wreckage. And to top it all off, two cars had collided head-on on the Enköping highway. Accordingly, the Strängnäs police force was busy, almost to a man.

The duty officer, however, had been following the developments in Nykvarn that morning, and she deduced that this new commotion must have something to do with that Lisbeth Salander everyone was talking about. Not least since Nils Bjurman was a part of the investigation. She took action on three fronts. She requisitioned the only remaining police van and drove directly to Stallarholmen. She called her colleagues in Södertälje and asked for assistance. The Södertälje force was also spread thin since part of their manpower had been sent to dig up bodies around a burned-out warehouse south of Nykvarn, but the possible connection between Nykvarn and Stallarholmen prompted another duty officer in Södertälje to dispatch two cruisers to Stallarholmen to assist. In the end the duty officer from Strängnäs called Inspector Bublanski in Stockholm. She reached him on his mobile.

Bublanski was at Milton Security in a meeting with its CEO, Armansky, and two of his staff, Fräklund and Bohman. Hedström was conspicuous by his absence.

Bublanski immediately sent Andersson out to Bjurman’s summer cabin and told him to take Faste if he could get hold of him. After thinking for a moment, Bublanski also called Holmberg, who was near Nykvarn and therefore considerably closer to Stallarholmen.

Holmberg had some news for him too. “We’ve identified the body in the pit.”

“That’s impossible. How so fast?”

“Everything’s simple when the corpse considerately has himself buried with his wallet and laminated ID.”

“Who is it?”

“A bit of a celebrity. Kenneth Gustafsson, known as the Vagabond. Does it ring a bell?”

“Are you kidding? Downtown hooligan, pusher, petty thief, and addict? He’s lying in a hole in Nykvarn?”

“Yes, that’s the man. At least that’s the ID in the wallet. Identification will have to be confirmed by forensics, and it’s going to be like putting a puzzle together. The Vagabond was chopped into five or six pieces.”

“Interesting. Paolo Roberto said that the super heavyweight he was fighting threatened Miriam Wu with a chain saw.”

“Could very well have been a chain saw, but I haven’t looked that closely. We’ve just started digging up the second site. They’re busy setting up the tent.”

“That’s good. Jerker—it’s been a long day, I know, but can you stay on this evening?”

“Sure, OK. I’ll let them get on with it here and head on to Stallarholmen.”

Bublanski disconnected and rubbed his eyes.

The armed response team hastily assembled from Strängnäs arrived at Bjurman’s summer cabin at 3:44 p.m. On the access road they literally collided with a man on a Harley-Davidson, who was wobbling along until he steered right into the oncoming van. It was not a serious collision. The police climbed out and identified Sonny Nieminen, thirty-seven years old and a known killer from the mid-nineties. Nieminen seemed to be in bad shape. When they put the cuffs on him, they were surprised to find that the back of his vest was slashed. A piece of leather about eight inches square was missing. It looked peculiar. Nieminen was unwilling to discuss the matter.

They locked him in the van and drove on two hundred yards to the cabin. They found a retired harbour worker by the name of Öberg putting a splint on the foot of one Carl-Magnus Lundin, thirty-six years old and president of the gang that called itself Svavelsjö MC.

The leader of the police team was Inspector Nils-Henrik Johansson. He climbed out, straightened his shoulder belt, and looked at the sorry creature on the ground.

Öberg stopped bandaging Lundin’s foot and gave Johansson a wry look.

“I’m the one who called.”

“You reported shots being fired.”

“I reported that I heard a single shot and came over to investigate and found these guys. This one has been shot in the foot and beaten up pretty badly. I think he needs an ambulance.”

Öberg glanced towards the police van.

“I see you got the other guy. He was out cold when I arrived, but he didn’t seem to be wounded. He came to after a while, but he didn’t stick around to help his buddy.”

Holmberg arrived at the same time as the police from Södertälje, just as the ambulance was driving away. He was given a brief rundown of the team’s observations. Neither Lundin nor Nieminen had been willing to explain how he came to be there. Lundin was hardly in any condition to talk at all.

“So—two bikers in leathers, one Harley-Davidson, one gunshot victim, and no weapon. Have I got it right?” Holmberg said.

Johansson nodded.

“Should we discount that one of these macho heroes rode bitch?”

“I think that would be considered unmanly in their circles,” Johansson said.

“In that case, we’re missing one motorcycle. Since the weapon is missing too, we may conclude that a third party has left the scene with one motorcycle and one weapon.”

“Sounds reasonable.”

“And it creates a conundrum. If these two gentlemen from Svavelsjö came on motorcycles, we’re also missing the vehicle in which the third party arrived. The third party couldn’t have taken both his own vehicle and the bike. And it’s a pretty long walk from the Strängnäs highway.”

“Unless the third party was living in the cabin.”

“Hmm,” Holmberg said. “But the cabin is owned by the deceased Advokat Bjurman, and he definitely no longer lives here.”

“Maybe there was a fourth party who left in a car.”

“Then why wouldn’t the two have gone in the car together? I’m assuming that this story isn’t about the theft of a Harley, no matter how desirable they are.”

He thought for a moment and then asked the team to assign two uniforms to look for an abandoned vehicle on the forest roads nearby and to knock on doors in the area to ask if anyone had seen anything unusual.

“There aren’t that many cabins inhabited at this time of year,” the team leader said, but he promised to do his best.

Holmberg opened the unlocked door to the cabin. He straightaway found the box of files on the kitchen table with Bjurman’s reports about Salander. He sat down and began paging through them, his astonishment growing.

Holmberg’s team was in luck. Just half an hour after they began knocking on doors among the intermittently populated cabins, they found Anna Viktoria Hansson. She had spent the spring morning clearing up a garden near the access road to the summer-cabin area. Yes indeed, she might be seventy-two, but she had good eyesight. Yes indeed, she had seen a short girl in a dark jacket walk past around lunchtime. At three in the afternoon two men on motorcycles had driven by. They made an
appalling racket. And shortly after that, the girl had gone back the other way on one of the motorcycles, or maybe on a different one altogether. Well, it looked like the girl, but in the helmet she could not be 100 percent certain. And then the police cars started arriving.

Just as Holmberg was getting this statement, Andersson arrived at the cabin.

“What’s happening here?” he said.

Holmberg looked glumly at his colleague. “I don’t quite know how to explain this to you,” he said.

“Jerker, are you trying to tell me that Salander turned up at Bjurman’s cabin and all by herself beat the shit out of the top echelon of the Svavelsjö MC?” Bublanski sounded tense.

“Well, she was trained by Paolo Roberto.”

“Jerker, please. Give me a break.”

“OK, listen to this. Magnus Lundin has a bullet wound in his foot. Which is going to do him permanent damage. The bullet went out the back of his heel, blew his boot to kingdom come.”

“At least she didn’t shoot him in the head.”

“Apparently that wasn’t necessary. According to the local team, Lundin has serious injuries to his face: a broken jaw and two teeth knocked out. The medics suspected a concussion. Besides the gunshot wound to his foot, he also has a massive pain in his abdomen.”

“How’s Nieminen doing?”

“He seems unhurt. But according to the old man who called in, he was unconscious when he arrived. Nieminen came to after a while and was trying to leave just as the Strängnäs team got there.”

Bublanski was speechless.

“There’s one mysterious detail,” Holmberg said.

“Another one?”

“Nieminen’s leather vest… He came here on his bike.”

“Yes?”

“It was ripped.”

“What do you mean, ripped?”

“There’s a chunk missing. About eight by eight inches cut out of the back of it. Just where Svavelsjö MC has its insignia.”

Bublanski raised his eyebrows. “Why would Salander cut a square out of his vest? For a trophy? For revenge? But revenge for what?”

“No idea. But I thought of one other thing,” Holmberg said. “Magnus Lundin is a hefty guy with a ponytail. One of the guys who kidnapped Salander’s girlfriend had a beer belly and a ponytail.”

Salander had not had such a rush since she visited Gröna Lund amusement park several years before and rode on the Freefall. She went on it three times and could have gone another three if she had had the money.

It was one thing to ride a 125cc lightweight Kawasaki, which was really no more than a heavily souped-up moped, but it was something else entirely to maintain control of a 1450cc Harley-Davidson. Her first three hundred yards on Bjurman’s badly maintained forest track was a regular roller coaster, and she felt like a living gyro. Twice she almost rode into the woods before at the last second she managed to regain control of the hog.

The helmet kept slipping down and masking her vision, even though she had put in some extra stuffing using a piece of leather she’d cut out of Nieminen’s padded vest.

She did not dare stop to adjust the helmet for fear she would not be able to manage the bike’s weight. She was too short to reach the ground with both feet and was afraid the Harley would tip over. If that happened, she would never be able to get it upright again.

Things went more smoothly once she got on the wider gravel road leading to the summer-cabin area. When she turned onto the Strängnäs highway a few minutes later, she risked taking one hand off the handlebars to set the helmet right. Then she gave the bike some gas. She covered the distance to Södertälje in record time, smiling in delight the whole way. Just before she reached Södertälje, two blue-and-yellow police Volvos with their sirens on flew by in the other direction.

The sensible course would be to dump the Harley in Södertälje and let Irene Nesser take the shuttle train into Stockholm, but Salander couldn’t resist the temptation. She turned onto the E4 and accelerated. She did not go over the speed limit—well, not much anyway—but it still felt as though she were in freefall. Not until she reached Älvsjö did she turn off and find her way to the fairground, where she managed to park the beast without tipping it over. She was very sad to leave the bike behind, along with the helmet and the piece of leather from Nieminen’s vest. She walked to the shuttle train. She was seriously chilled. She rode the one stop to Södra station, then walked home to Mosebacke and ran herself a hot bath.