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 beli
eved 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.
“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 sa
id.
“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?”
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