Millennium 03 - The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

by Stieg Larsson

  “That can be considered a step forward, at any rate,” Modig said.

  Andersson, as usual, said nothing.

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Bublanski said. “Salander is still suspected of G.B.H. in connection with the events at Stallarholmen and Gosseberga. But we’re no longer involved with those investigations. We have to concentrate on finding Niedermann and working on the graves in the woods at Nykvarn. On the other hand it’s now clear that Ekström is going to bring charges against Salander. The case has been transferred to Stockholm, and an entirely new investigation has been set up for the purpose.”

  “Oh, really?” Modig said.

  “And who do you think is going to investigate Salander?” Bublanski said.

  “I’m fearing the worst.”

  “Hans Faste is back on duty, and he’s going to assist Ekström.”

  “That’s insane. Faste is grossly unsuited to investigate anything at all to do with Salander.”

  “I know that. But Ekström has a good argument. Faste has been out sick since … hmm … he collapsed in April, and this would be the perfect, simple case for him to focus on.”

  Silence.

  “The long and the short of it is that we’re to hand all our material on Salander over to him this afternoon.”

  “And this story about Gunnar Björck and Säpo and the 1991 report …”

  “… is going to be handled by Faste and Ekström.”

  “I don’t like this,” Modig said.

  “Nor do I. But Ekström’s the boss, and he has backing from higher up in the bureaucracy. In other words, our job is still to find the killer. Curt, what’s the situation?”

  Andersson shook his head. “Niedermann seems to have been swallowed up by the earth. I have to admit that in all my years on the force I’ve never seen anything like it. We haven’t had any tip-offs, and we don’t have a single informer who knows him or has any idea where he might be.”

  “That sounds fishy,” Modig said. “But he’s being sought for the police murder in Gosseberga, for G.B.H on another officer, for the attempted murder of Salander, and for the aggravated kidnapping and assault of the dental nurse Anita Kaspersson, as well as for the murders of Svensson and Johansson. In every instance there’s good forensic evidence.”

  “That helps a bit, at least. How’s it going with the case of Svavelsjö M.C.’s treasurer?”

  “Viktor Göransson – and his girlfriend, Lena Nygren. Fingerprints and D.N.A. from Göransson’s body. Niedermann must have bloodied his knuckles pretty badly during the beating.”

  “Anything new on Svavelsjö M.C.?”

  “Nieminen has taken over as club president while Lundin remains in custody, awaiting trial for the kidnapping of Miriam Wu. There’s a whisper that Nieminen has offered a big reward to anyone who could provide information as to Niedermann’s whereabouts.”

  “Which makes it even stranger that he hasn’t been found, if the entire underworld is looking for him. What about Göransson’s car?”

  “Since we found Kaspersson’s car at Göransson’s place, we’re sure that Niedermann switched vehicles. But we have no trace of the car he took.”

  “So we have to ask ourselves, one, is Niedermann still hiding out somewhere in Sweden?; two, if so, with whom?; three, is he out of the country? What do we think?”

  “We have nothing to tell us that he has left the country, but really that seems his most logical course.”

  “If he has gone, where did he ditch the car?”

  Modig and Andersson shook their heads. Nine times out of ten, police work was largely uncomplicated when it came to looking for one specific individual. It was about initiating a logical sequence of inquiries. Who were his friends? Who had he been in prison with? Where does his girlfriend live? Who did he drink with? In what area was his mobile last used? Where is his vehicle? At the end of that sequence the fugitive would generally be found.

  The problem with Niedermann was that he had no friends, no girlfriend, no listed mobile, and he had never been in prison.

  The inquiries had concentrated on finding Göransson’s car, which Niedermann was presumed to be using. They had expected the car to turn up in a matter of days, probably in some car park in Stockholm. But there was as yet no sign of it.

  “If he’s out of the country, where would he be?”

  “He’s a German citizen, so the obvious thing would be for him to head for Germany.”

  “He seems not to have had any contact with his old friends in Hamburg.”

  Andersson waved his hand. “If his plan was to go to Germany … Why would he drive to Stockholm? Shouldn’t he have made for Malmö and the bridge to Copenhagen, or for one of the ferries?”

  “I know. And Inspector Erlander in Göteborg has been focusing his search in that direction from day one. The Danish police have been informed about Göransson’s car, and we know for sure that he didn’t take any of the ferries.”

  “But he did drive to Stockholm and to Svavelsjö, and there he murdered the club’s treasurer and – we may assume – went off with an unspecified sum of money. What would his next step be?”

  “He has to get out of Sweden,” Bublanski said. “The most obvious thing would be to take one of the ferries across the Baltic. But Göransson and his girlfriend were murdered late on the night of April 9. Niedermann could have taken the ferry the next morning. We got the alarm roughly sixteen hours after they died, and we’ve had an A.P.B. out on the car ever since.”

  “If he took the morning ferry, then Göransson’s car would have been parked at one of the ports,” Modig said.

  “Perhaps we haven’t found the car because Niedermann drove out of the country to the north via Haparanda? A big detour around the Gulf of Bothnia, but in sixteen hours he could have been in Finland.”

  “Sure, but soon after he would have had to abandon the car in Finland, and it should have been found by now.”

  They sat in silence. Finally Bublanski got up and stood at the window.

  “Could he have found a hiding place where he’s just lying low, a summer cabin or—”

  “I don’t think it would be a summer cabin. This time of year every cabin owner is out checking their property.”

  “And he wouldn’t try anywhere connected to Svavelsjö M.C. They’re the last people he’d want to run into.”

  “And the entire underworld should be excluded as well … Any girlfriend we don’t know about?”

  They could speculate, but they had no facts.

  When Andersson had left for the day, Modig went back to Bublanski’s office and knocked on the door jamb. He waved her in.

  “Have you got a couple of minutes?” she said.

  “What’s up?”

  “Salander. I don’t like this business with Ekström and Faste and a new trial. You’ve read Björck’s report. I’ve read Björck’s report. Salander was unlawfully committed in 1991 and Ekström knows it. What the hell is going on?”

  Bublanski took off his reading glasses and tucked them into his breast pocket. “I don’t know.”

  “Have you got any idea at all?”

  “Ekström claims that Björck’s report and the correspondence with Teleborian were falsified.”

  “That’s rubbish. If it were a fake, then Björck would have said so when we brought him in.”

  “Ekström says Björck refused to discuss it, on the grounds that it was Top Secret. I was given a dressing down because I jumped the gun and brought him in.”

  “I’m beginning to have strong reservations about Ekström.”

  “He’s getting squeezed from all sides.”

  “That’s no excuse.”

  “We don’t have a monopoly on the truth, Sonja. Ekström says he’s received evidence that the report is a fake – that there is no real report with that protocol number. He also says that the forgery is a good one and that the content is a clever blend of truth and fantasy.”

  “Which part was truth and which part was fantas
y, that’s what I need to know,” Modig said.

  “The outline story is pretty much correct. Zalachenko is Salander’s father, and he was a bastard who beat her mother. The problem is the familiar one – the mother never wanted to make a complaint so it went on for several years. Björck was given the job of finding out what happened when Salander tried to kill her father. He corresponded with Teleborian – but the correspondence in the form we’ve seen it is apparently a forgery. Teleborian did a routine psychiatric examination of Salander and concluded that she was mentally unbalanced. A prosecutor decided not to take the case any further. She needed care, and she got it at St Stefan’s.”

  “And if it is a forgery … who did it and why?”

  Bublanski shrugged. As I understand it, Ekström is going to commission one more thorough evaluation of Salander.”

  “I can’t accept that.”

  “It’s not our case any more.”

  “And Faste has replaced us. Jan, I’m going to the media if these bastards piss all over Salander one more time.”

  “No, Sonja. You won’t. First of all, we no longer have access to the report, so you have no way of backing up your claims. You’re going to look like a paranoid, and then your career will be over.”

  “I still have the report,” Modig said in a low voice. “I made a copy for Curt but I never had a chance to give it to him before the Prosecutor General collected the others.”

  “If you leak that report, you’ll not only be fired but you’ll be guilty of gross misconduct.”

  Modig sat in silence for a moment and looked at her superior.

  “Sonja, don’t do it. Promise me.”

  “No, Jan. I can’t promise that. There’s something very sick about this whole story.”

  “You’re right, it is sick. But since we don’t know who the enemy is, you’re not going to do anything for the moment.”

  Modig tilted her head to one side. “Are you going to do anything?”

  “I’m not going to discuss that with you. Trust me. It’s Friday night. Take a break, go home. And … this discussion never took place.”

  Niklas Adamsson, the Securitas guard, was studying for a test in three weeks’ time. It was 1.30 on Saturday afternoon when he heard the sound of rotating brushes from the low-humming floor polisher and saw that it was the dark-skinned immigrant who walked with a limp. The man would always nod politely but never laughed if he said anything humorous. Adamsson watched as he took a bottle of cleaning fluid and sprayed the reception counter-top twice before wiping it with a rag. Then he took his mop and swabbed the corners in the reception area where the brushes of the floor polisher could not reach. The guard put his nose back into his book about the national economy and kept reading.

  It took ten minutes for the cleaner to work his way over to Adamsson’s spot at the end of the corridor. They nodded to each other. Adamsson stood to let the man clean the floor around his chair outside Salander’s room. He had seen him almost every day since he had been posted outside the room, but he could not remember his name – some sort of foreign name – but Adamsson did not feel the need to check his I.D. For one thing, the nigger was not allowed to clean inside the prisoner’s room – that was done by two cleaning women in the morning – and besides, he did not feel that the cripple was any sort of threat.

  When the cleaner had finished in the corridor, he opened the door to the room next to Salander’s. Adamsson glanced his way, but this was no deviation from the daily routine. This was where the cleaning supplies were kept. In the course of the next five minutes he emptied his bucket, cleaned the brushes, and replenished the cart with plastic bags for the wastepaper baskets. Finally he manoeuvred the cart into the cubbyhole.

  Ghidi was aware of the guard in the corridor. It was a young blond man who was usually there two or three days a week, reading books. Part-time guard, and part-time student. He was about as aware of his surroundings as a brick.

  Ghidi wondered what Adamsson would do if someone actually tried to get into the Salander woman’s room.

  He also wondered what Blomkvist was really after. He had read about the eccentric journalist in the newspapers, and he had made the connection to the woman in 11C, expecting that he would be asked to smuggle something in for her. But he did not have access to her room and had never even seen her. Whatever he had expected, it was not this.

  He could not see anything illegal about his task. He looked through the crack in the doorway at Adamsson, who was once more reading his book. He checked that nobody else was in the corridor. He reached into the pocket of his smock and took out the Sony Ericsson Z600 mobile. Ghidi had seen in an advertisement that it cost around 3,500 kronor and had all the latest features.

  He took a screwdriver from his pocket, stood on tiptoe and unscrewed the three screws in the round white cover of a vent in the wall of Salander’s room. He pushed the telephone as far into the vent as he could, just as Blomkvist had asked him to. Then he screwed on the cover again.

  It took him forty-five seconds. The next day it would take less. He was supposed to get down the mobile, change the batteries and put it back in the vent. He would then take the used batteries home and recharge them overnight.

  That was all Ghidi had to do.

  But this was not going to be of any help to Salander. On her side of the wall there was presumably a similar screwed-on cover. She would never be able to get at the mobile, unless she had a screwdriver and a ladder.

  “I know that,” Blomkvist had said. “But she doesn’t have to reach the phone.”

  Ghidi was to do this every day until Blomkvist told him it was no longer necessary.

  And for this job Ghidi would be paid 1000 kronor a week, straight into his pocket. And he could keep the mobile when the job was over.

  He knew, of course, that Blomkvist was up to some sort of funny business, but he could not work out what it was. Putting a mobile telephone into an air vent inside a locked cleaning supplies room, turned on but not uplinked, was so crazy that Ghidi could not imagine what use it could be. If Blomkvist wanted a way of communicating with the patient, he would be better off bribing one of the nurses to smuggle the telephone in to her.

  On the other hand, he had no objection to doing Blomkvist this favour – a favour worth 1000 kronor a week. He was better off not asking any questions.

  Jonasson slowed his pace when he saw a man with a briefcase leaning on the wrought-iron gates outside his housing association apartment on Hagagatan. He looked somehow familiar.

  “Dr Jonasson?” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “Apologies for bothering you on the street outside your home. It’s just that I didn’t want to track you down at work, and I do need to talk to you.”

  “What’s this about, and who are you?”

  “My name is Blomkvist, Mikael Blomkvist. I’m a journalist and I work at Millennium magazine. It’s about Lisbeth Salander.”

  “Oh, now I recognize you. You were the one who called the paramedics. Was it you who put duct tape on her wounds?”

  “Yes.”

  “That was a smart thing to have done. But I don’t discuss my patients with journalists. You’ll have to speak to the P.R. department at Sahlgrenska, like everyone else.”

  “You misunderstand me. I don’t want information and I’m here in a completely private capacity. You don’t have to say a word or give me any information. Quite the opposite: I want to give you some information.”

  Jonasson frowned.

  “Please hear me out,” Blomkvist said. “I don’t go around accosting surgeons on the street, but what I have to tell you is very important. Can I buy you a cup of coffee?”

  “Tell me what it’s about.”

  “It’s about Lisbeth Salander’s future and wellbeing. I’m a friend.”

  Jonasson thought that if it had been anyone other than Blomkvist he would have refused. But Blomkvist was a man in the public eye, and Jonasson could not imagine that this would be some sort of tomfo
olery.

  “I won’t under any circumstances be interviewed, and I won’t discuss my patient.”

  “Perfectly understood,” Blomkvist said.

  Jonasson accompanied Blomkvist to a café nearby.

  “So what’s this all about?” he said when they had got their coffee.

  “First of all, I’m not going to quote you or mention you even in anything I write. And as far as I’m concerned this conversation never took place. Which said, I am here to ask you a favour. But I have to explain why, so that you can decide whether you can or you can’t.”

  “I don’t like the sound of this.”

  “All I ask is that you hear me out. It’s your job to take care of Lisbeth’s physical and mental health. As her friend, it’s my job to do the same. I can’t poke around in her skull and extract bullets, but I have another skill that is as crucial to her welfare.”

  “Which is?”

  “I’m an investigative journalist, and I’ve found out the truth about what happened to her.”

  “O.K.”

  “I can tell you in general terms what it’s about and you can come to your own conclusions.”

  “Alright.”

  “I should also say that Annika Giannini, Lisbeth’s lawyer – you’ve met her I think – is my sister, and I’m the one paying her to defend Salander.”

  “I see.”

  “I can’t, obviously, ask Annika to do this favour. She doesn’t discuss Lisbeth with me. She has to keep her conversations with Lisbeth confidential. I assume you’ve read about Lisbeth in the newspapers.”

  Jonasson nodded.

  “She’s been described as a psychotic, and a mentally ill lesbian mass murderer. All that is nonsense. Lisbeth Salander is not psychotic. She may be as sane as you and me. And her sexual preferences are nobody’s business.”

  “If I’ve understood the matter correctly, there’s been some reassessment of the case. Now it’s this German who’s being sought in connection with the murders.”