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

by Stieg Larsson

  “You don’t understand the situation—”

  “I’m tired of hearing that I don’t understand the situation. I’m not some temp. who’s just here for the bus fare.”

  “But your proposal is off the wall.”

  “Why is that?”

  “You’re proposing that the newspaper should not be profitable.”

  “Listen, Sellberg, this year you will be paying out a huge amount of money in dividends to the paper’s twenty-three shareholders. Add to this the unforgivably absurd bonuses that will cost S.M.P. almost ten million kronor for nine individuals who sit on S.M.P.’s board.

  You’ve awarded yourself a bonus of 400,000 kronor for administering cutbacks. Of course it’s a long way from being a bonus as huge as the ones that some of the directors of Skandia grabbed. But in my eyes you’re not worth a bonus of so much as one single öre. Bonuses should be paid to people who do something to strengthen S.M.P. The plain truth is that your cutbacks have weakened S.M.P. and deepened the crisis we now find ourselves in.”

  “That is grossly unfair. The board approved every measure I proposed.”

  “The board approved your measures, of course they did, because you guaranteed a dividend each year. That’s what has to stop, and now.”

  “So you’re suggesting in all seriousness that the board should decide to abolish dividends and bonuses. What makes you think the shareholders would agree to that?”

  “I’m proposing a zero-profit operating budget this year. That would mean savings of almost 21 million kronor and the chance to beef up S.M.P.’s staff and finances. I’m also proposing wage cuts for management. I’m being paid a monthly salary of 88,000 kronor, which is utter insanity for a newspaper that can’t add a job to its sports desk.”

  “So you want to cut your own salary? Is this some sort of wage-communism you’re advocating?”

  “Don’t bullshit me. You make 112,000 kronor a month, if you add in your annual bonus. That’s off the wall. If the newspaper were stable and bringing in a tremendous profit, then pay out as much as you want in bonuses. But this is no time for you to be increasing your own bonus. I propose cutting all management salaries by half.”

  “What you don’t understand is that our shareholders bought stock in the paper because they want to make money. That’s called capitalism. If you arrange that they’re going to lose money, then they won’t want to be shareholders any longer.”

  “I’m not suggesting that they should lose money, though it might come to that. Ownership implies responsibility. As you yourself have pointed out, capitalism is what matters here. S.M.P.’s owners want to make a profit. But it’s the market decides whether you make a profit or take a loss. By your reasoning, you want the rules of cap italism to apply solely to the employees of S.M.P., while you and the shareholders will be exempt.”

  Sellberg rolled his eyes and sighed. He cast an entreating glance at Borgsjö, but the chairman of the board was intently studying Berger’s nine-point program.

  Figuerola waited for forty-nine minutes before Mårtensson and his companion in overalls came out of Bellmansgatan 1. As they started up the hill towards her, she very steadily raised her Nikon with its 300mm telephoto lens and took two pictures. She put the camera in the space under her seat and was just about to fiddle with her map when she happened to glance towards the Maria lift. Her eyes opened wide. At the end of upper Bellmansgatan, right next to the gate to the Maria lift, stood a dark-haired woman with a digital camera filming Mårtensson and his companion. What the hell? Is there some sort of spy convention on Bellmansgatan today?

  The two men parted at the top of the hill without exchanging a word. Mårtensson went back to his car on Tavastgatan. He pulled away from the curb and disappeared from view.

  Figuerola looked into her rear-view mirror, where she could still see the back of the man in the blue overalls. She then saw that the woman with the camera had stopped filming and was heading past the Laurinska building in her direction.

  Heads or tails? She already knew who Mårtensson was and what he was up to. The man in the blue overalls and the woman with the camera were unknown entities. But if she left her car, she risked being seen by the woman.

  She sat still. In her rear-view mirror she saw the man in the blue overalls turn into Brännkyrkagatan. She waited until the woman reached the crossing in front of her, but instead of following the man in the overalls, the woman turned 180 degrees and went down the steep hill towards Bellmansgatan 1. Figuerola reckoned that she was in her mid-thirties. She had short dark hair and was dressed in dark jeans and a black jacket. As soon as she was a little way down the hill, Figuerola pushed open her car door and ran towards Brännkyrkagatan. She could not see the blue overalls. The next second a Toyota van pulled away from the kerb. Figuerola saw the man in half-profile and memorized the registration number. But if she got the registration wrong she would be able to trace him anyway. The sides of the van advertised Lars Faulsson Lock and Key Service – with a telephone number.

  There was no need to follow the van. She walked calmly back to the top of the hill just in time to see the woman disappear through the entrance door of Blomkvist’s building.

  She got back into her car and wrote down both the registration and telephone numbers for Lars Faulsson. There was a lot of mysterious traffic around Blomkvist’s address that morning. She looked up towards the roof of Bellmansgatan 1. She knew that Blomkvist’s apartment was on the top floor, but on the blueprints from the city construction office she knew that it was on the other side of the building, with dormer windows looking out on Gamla Stan and the waters of Riddarfjärden. An exclusive address in a fine old cultural quarter. She wondered whether he was an ostentatious nouveau riche.

  Ten minutes later the woman with the camera came out of the building again. Instead of going back up the hill to Tavastgatan, she continued down the hill and turned right at the corner of Pryssgränd. Hmm. If she had a car parked down on Pryssgränd, Figuerola was out of luck. But if she was walking, there was only one way out of the dead end – up to Brännkyrkagatan via Pustegränd and towards Slussen.

  Figuerola decided to leave her car behind and turned left in the direction of Slussen on Brännkyrkagatan. She had almost reached Pustegränd when the woman appeared, coming up towards her. Bingo. She followed her past the Hilton on Södermalmstorg and past the Stadsmuseum at Slussen. The woman walked quickly and purposefully without once looking round. Figuerola gave her a lead of about thirty metres. When she went into Slussen tunnelbana Figuerola picked up her pace, but stopped when she saw the woman head for the Pressbyrån kiosk instead of through the turnstiles.

  She watched the woman as she stood in the queue at the kiosk. She was about one metre seventy and looked to be in pretty good shape. She was wearing running shoes. Seeing her with both feet planted firmly as she stood by the window of the kiosk, Figuerola suddenly had the feeling that she was a policewoman. She bought a tin of Catch Dry snuff and went back out on to Södermalmstorg and turned right across Katarinavägen.

  Figuerola followed her. She was almost certain the woman had not seen her. The woman turned the corner at McDonald’s and Figuerola hurried after her, but when she got to the corner, the woman had vanished without a trace. Figuerola stopped short in consternation. Shit. She walked slowly past the entrances to the buildings. Then she caught sight of a brass plate that read Milton Security.

  Figuerola walked back to Bellmansgatan.

  She drove to Götgatan where the offices of Millennium were and spent the next half hour walking around the streets in the area. She did not see Mårtensson’s car. At lunchtime she returned to police headquarters in Kungsholmen and spent two hours thinking as she pumped iron in the gym.

  “We’ve got a problem,” Cortez said.

  Eriksson and Blomkvist looked up from the typescript of the book about the Zalachenko case. It was 1.30 in the afternoon.

  “Take a seat,” Eriksson said.

  “It’s about Vitavara Inc., t
he company that makes the 1700 kronor toilets in Vietnam.”

  “Alright. What’s the problem?” Blomkvist said.

  “Vitavara Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Svea Construction Inc.”

  “I see. That’s a very large firm.”

  “Yes, it is. The chairman of the board is Magnus Borgsjö, a professional board member. He’s also the chairman of the board of Svenska Morgon-Posten and owns about 10 per cent of it.”

  Blomkvist gave Cortez a sharp look. “Are you sure?”

  “Yep. Berger’s boss is a bloody crook, a man who exploits child labour in Vietnam.”

  Assistant Editor Fredriksson looked to be in a bad mood as he knocked on the door of Berger’s glass cage at 2.00 in the afternoon.

  “What is it?”

  “Well, this is a little embarrassing, but somebody in the newsroom got an email from you.”

  “From me? So? What does it say?

  He handed her some printouts of emails addressed to Eva Carlsson, a 26-year-old temp on the culture pages. According to the headers the sender was erika.berger@smpost.se>:

  Darling Eva. I want to caress you and kiss your breasts. I’m hot with excitement and can’t control myself. I beg you to reciprocate my feelings. Could we meet? Erika

  And then two emails on the following days:

  Dearest, darling Eva. I beg you not to reject me. I’m crazy with desire. I want to have you naked. I have to have you. I’m going to make you so happy. You’ll never regret it. I’m going to kiss every inch of your naked skin, your lovely breasts, and your delicious grotto. Erika

  Eva. Why don’t you reply? Don’t be afraid of me. Don’t push me away. You’re no innocent. You know what it’s all about. I want to have sex with you and I’m going to reward you handsomely. If you’re nice to me then I’ll be nice to you. You’ve asked for an extension of your temporary job. I have the power to extend it and even make it a full-time position. Let’s meet tonight at 9.00 by my car in the garage. Your Erika

  “Alright,” Berger said. “And now she’s wondering if it was me that wrote to her, is that it?”

  “Not exactly … I mean … geez.”

  “Peter, please speak up.”

  “She sort of halfway believed the first email although she was quite surprised by it. But then she realized that this isn’t exactly your style and then …”

  “Then?”

  “Well, she thinks it’s embarrassing and doesn’t quite know what to do. Part of it is probably that she’s very impressed by you and likes you a lot … as a boss, I mean. So she came to me and asked for my advice.”

  “And what did you tell her?”

  “I said that someone had faked your address and is obviously harassing her. Or possibly both of you. And I said I’d talk to you about it.”

  “Thank you. Could you please ask her to come to my office in ten minutes?”

  In the meantime Berger composed her own email.

  It has come to my attention that an employee of S.M.P. has received a number of emails that appear to come from me. The emails contain vulgar sexual innuendos. I have also received similar emails from a sender who purports to be “centraled” at S.M.P. No such address exists.

  I have consulted the head of the I.T. department, who informs me that it is very easy to fake a sender’s address. I don’t understand how it’s done, but there are sites on the Internet where such things can be arranged. I have to draw the conclusion that some sick individual is doing this.

  I want to know if any other colleagues have received strange emails. If so, I would like them to inform Fredriksson of this immediately. If these very unpleasant pranks continue we will have to consider reporting them to the police.

  Erika Berger, Editor-in-Chief

  She printed a copy of the email and then pressed send so that the message went out to all employees in the company. At that moment, Eva Carlsson knocked on the door.

  “Hello, have a seat,” Berger said. “Peter told me that you got an email from me.”

  “Well, I didn’t really think it came from you.”

  “Thirty seconds ago you did get an email from me. I wrote it all by myself and sent it to everyone in the company.”

  She handed Carlsson the printout.

  “O.K. I get it,” the girl said.

  “I’m really sorry that somebody decided to target you for this ugly campaign.”

  “You don’t have to apologize for the actions of some idiot.”

  “I just want to make sure that you don’t have one lingering grain of a suspicion that I had anything to do with these emails.”

  “I never believed you sent them.”

  “Thanks,” Berger said with a smile.

  Figuerola spent the afternoon gathering information. She started by ordering passport photographs of Faulsson. Then she ran a check in the criminal records and got a hit at once.

  Lars Faulsson, forty-seven years old and known by the nickname Falun, had begun his criminal career stealing cars at seventeen. In the ’70s and ’80s he was twice arrested and charged with breaking and entering, burglary and receiving stolen goods. The first time he was given a light prison sentence; the second time he got three years. At that time he was regarded as “up and coming” in criminal circles and had been questioned as a suspect in three other burglaries, one of which was a relatively complicated and widely reported safecracking heist at a department store in Västerås. When he got out of prison in 1984 he kept his nose clean – or at least he did not pull any jobs that got him arrested and convicted again. But he had retrained himself to be a locksmith (of all professions), and in 1987 he started his own company, the Lock and Key Service, with an address near Norrtull in Stockholm.

  Identifying the woman who had filmed Mårtensson and Faulsson proved to be easier than she had anticipated. She simply called Milton Security and explained that she was looking for a female employee she had met a while ago and whose name she had forgotten. She could give a good description of the woman. The switchboard told her that it sounded like Susanne Linder, and put her through. When Linder answered the telephone, Figuerola apologized and said she must have dialled the wrong number.

  The public register listed eighteen Susanne Linders in Stockholm county, three of them around thirty-five years old. One lived in Norrtälje, one in Stockholm, and one in Nacka. She requisitioned their passport photographs and identified at once the woman she had followed from Bellmansgatan as the Susanne Linder who lived in Nacka.

  She set out her day’s work in a memo and went in to see Edklinth.

  Blomkvist closed Cortez’s research folder and pushed it away with distaste. Malm put down the printout of his article, which he had read four times. Cortez sat on the sofa in Eriksson’s office looking guilty.

  “Coffee,” Eriksson said, getting up. She came back with four mugs and the coffee pot.

  “This is a great sleazy story,” Blomkvist said. “First-class research. Documentation to the hilt. Perfect dramaturgy with a bad guy who swindles Swedish tenants through the system – which is legal – but who is so greedy and so bloody stupid that he outsources to this company in Vietnam.”

  “Very well written too,” Malm said. “The day after we publish this, Borgsjö is going to be persona non grata. T. V. is going to pick this up. He’s going to be right up there with the directors of Skandia. A genuine scoop for Millennium. Well done, Henry.”

  “But this thing with Erika is a real fly in the ointment,” Blomkvist said.

  “Why should that be a problem?” Eriksson said. “Erika isn’t the villain. We have to be free to examine any chairman of the board, even if he happens to be her boss.”

  “It’s a hell of a dilemma,” Blomkvist said.

  “Erika hasn’t altogether left here,” Malm said. “She owns 30 per cent of Millennium and sits on our board. In fact, she’s chairman of the board until we can elect Harriet Vanger at the next board meeting, and that won’t be until August. Plus Erika is working at S.M.P., where she al
so sits on the board, and you’re about to expose her chairman.”

  Glum silence.

  “So what the hell are we going to do?” Cortez said. “Do we kill the article?”

  Blomkvist looked Cortez straight in the eye. “No, Henry. We’re not going to kill the article. That’s not the way we do things at Millennium.

  But this is going to take some legwork. We can’t just dump it on Erika’s desk as a newspaper billboard.”

  Malm waved a finger in the air. “We’re really putting Erika on the spot. She’ll have to choose between selling her share of Millennium and leaving our board … or in the worst case, she could get fired by S.M.P. Either way she would have a fearful conflict of interest. Honestly, Henry … I agree with Mikael that we should publish the story, but we may have to postpone it for a month.”

  “Because we’re facing a conflict of loyalties too,” Blomkvist said.

  “Should I call her?”

  “No, Christer,” Blomkvist said. “I’ll call her and arrange to meet. Say for tonight.”

  Figuerola gave a summary of the circus that had sprung up around Blomkvist’s building on Bellmansgatan. Edklinth felt the floor sway slightly beneath his chair.

  “An employee of S.I.S. goes into Blomkvist’s building with an ex-safebreaker, now retrained as a locksmith.”

  “Correct.”

  “What do you think they did in the stairwell?”

  “I don’t know. But they were in there for forty-nine minutes. My guess is that Faulsson opened the door and Mårtensson spent the time in Blomkvist’s apartment.”

  “And what did they do there?”

  “It couldn’t have been to plant bugs, because that takes only a minute or so. Mårtensson must have been looking through Blomkvist’s papers or whatever else he keeps at his place.”

  “But Blomkvist has already been warned … they stole Björck’s report from there.”