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

by Stieg Larsson

  “Just like Mårtensson. Officially moved to a place where he doesn’t exist.”

  “The chief of Secretariat is the only person who could make this sort of arrangement.”

  “And in normal circumstances everything would be dismissed as muddled red tape. We’ve noticed it only because we’re specifically looking for it. And if anyone starts asking awkward questions, they’ll say it’s confidential or that it has something to do with terrorism.”

  “There’s quite a bit of budget work to check up on.”

  “The chief of Budget?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Sandberg lives in Sollentuna. He’s not married, but he has a child with a teacher in Södertälje. No black marks on his record. Licence for two handguns. Conscientious and a teetotaller. The only thing that doesn’t quite fit is that he seems to be an evangelical and was a member of the Word of Life in the ’90s.”

  “Where did you find that out?”

  “I had a word with my old chief in Uppsala. He remembers Sandberg quite well.”

  “A Christian frogman with two weapons and offspring in Södertälje. More?”

  “We only I.D.’d him about three hours ago. This is pretty fast work, you have to admit.”

  “Fair enough. What do we know about the building on Artillerigatan?”

  “Not a lot yet. Stefan went to chase someone up from the city building office. We have blueprints of the building. A housing association block since the 1890s. Six floors with a total of twenty-two apartments, plus eight apartments in a small building in the courtyard. I looked up the tenants, but didn’t find anything that stood out. Two of the people living in the building have police records.”

  “Who are they?”

  “Lindström on the second floor, sixty-three. Convicted of insurance fraud in the ’70s. Wittfelt on the fourth floor, forty-seven. Twice convicted for beating his ex-wife. Otherwise what sounds like a cross-section of middle-class Sweden. There’s one apartment that raises a question mark though.”

  “What?”

  “It’s on the top floor. Eleven rooms and apparently a bit of a snazzy joint. It’s owned by a company called Bellona Inc.”

  “And what’s their stated business?”

  “God only knows. They do marketing analyses and have annual sales of around thirty million kronor. All the owners live abroad.”

  “Aha.”

  “Aha what?”

  “Nothing. Just ‘aha’. Do some more checks on Bellona.”

  At that moment the officer Blomkvist knew only as Stefan entered the room.

  “Hi, chief,” he greeted Edklinth. “This is really cool. I checked out the story behind the Bellona apartment.”

  “And?” Figuerola said.

  “Bellona Inc. was founded in the ’70s. They bought the apartment from the estate of the former owner, a woman by the name of Kristina Cederholm, born in 1917, married to Hans Wilhelm Francke, the loose cannon who quarrelled with P.G. Vinge at the time S.I.S. was founded.”

  “Good,” Edklinth said. “Very good. Monica, we want surveillance on that apartment around the clock. Find out what telephones they have. I want to know who goes in and who comes out, and what vehicles drop anyone off at that address. The usual.”

  Edklinth turned to Blomkvist. He looked as if he wanted to say something, but he restrained himself. Blomkvist looked at him expectantly.

  “Are you satisfied with the information flow?” Edklinth said at last.

  “Very satisfied. Are you satisfied with Millennium’s contribution?”

  Edklinth nodded reluctantly. “You do know that I could get into very deep water for this.”

  “Not because of me. I regard the information that I receive here as source-protected. I’ll report the facts, but I won’t mention how or where I got them. Before I go to press I’m going to do a formal interview with you. If you don’t want to give me an answer to something, you just say ‘No comment’. Or else you could expound on what you think about the Section for Special Analysis. It’s up to you.”

  “Indeed,” Edklinth nodded.

  Blomkvist was happy. Within a few hours the Section had taken on tangible form. A real breakthrough.

  To Modig’s great frustration the meeting in Ekström’s office was lasting a long time. Mercifully someone had left a full bottle of mineral water on the conference table. She had twice texted her husband to tell him that she was still held up, promising to make it up to him as soon as she could get home. She was starting to get restless and felt like an intruder.

  The meeting did not end until 7.30. She was taken completely by surprise when the door opened and Faste came out. And then Dr Teleborian. Behind them came an older, grey-haired man Modig had never seen before. Finally Prosecutor Ekström, putting on a jacket as he switched off the lights and locked the door to his office.

  Modig held up her mobile to the gap in the curtains and took two low-res photographs of the group outside Ekström’s door. Seconds later they had set off down the corridor.

  She held her breath until they were some distance from the conference room in which she was trapped. She was in a cold sweat by the time she heard the door to the stairwell close. She stood up, weak at the knees.

  Bublanski called Figuerola just after 8.00.

  “You wanted to know if Ekström had a meeting.”

  “Correct,” Figuerola said.

  “It just ended. Ekström met with Dr Peter Teleborian and my former colleague Criminal Inspector Faste, and an older gentleman we didn’t recognize.”

  “Just a moment,” Figuerola said. She put her hand over the mouthpiece and turned to the others. “Teleborian went straight to Ekström.”

  “Hello, are you still there?”

  “Sorry. Do we have a description of the third man?”

  “Even better. I’m sending you a picture.”

  “A picture? I’m in your debt.”

  “It would help if you’d tell me what’s going on.”

  “I’ll get back to you.”

  They sat in silence around the conference table for a moment.

  “So,” Edklinth said at last. “Teleborian meets with the Section and then goes directly to see Prosecutor Ekström. I’d give a lot of money to find out what they talked about.”

  “Or you could just ask me,” Blomkvist said.

  Edklinth and Figuerola looked at him.

  “They met to finalize their strategy for nailing Salander at her trial.”

  Figuerola gave him a look. Then she nodded slowly.

  “That’s a guess,” Edklinth said. “Unless you happen to have paranormal abilities.”

  “It’s no guess,” said Mikael. “They met to discuss the forensic psychiatric report on Salander. Teleborian has just finished writing it.”

  “Nonsense. Salander hasn’t even been examined.”

  Blomkvist shrugged and opened his laptop case. “That hasn’t stopped Teleborian in the past. Here’s the latest version. It’s dated, as you can see, the week the trial is scheduled to begin.”

  Edklinth and Figuerola read through at the text before them. At last they exchanged glances and then looked at Blomkvist.

  “And where the devil did you get hold of this?” Edklinth said.

  “That’s from a source I have to protect,” said Blomkvist.

  “Blomkvist … we have to be able to trust each other. You’re withholding information. Have you got any more surprises up your sleeve?”

  “Yes. I do have secrets, of course. Just as I’m persuaded that you haven’t given me carte blanche to look at everything you have here at Säpo.”

  “It’s not the same thing.”

  “It’s precisely the same thing. This arrangement involves cooperation. You said it yourself: we have to trust each other. I’m not holding back anything that could be useful to your investigation of the Section or throw light on the various crimes that have been committed. I’ve already handed over evidence that Telebor
ian committed crimes with Björck in 1991, and I told you that he would be hired to do the same thing again now. And this is the document that proves me right.”

  “But you’re still withholding key material.”

  “Naturally, and you can either suspend our co-operation or you can live with that.”

  Figuerola held up a diplomatic finger. “Excuse me, but does this mean that Ekström is working for the Section?”

  Blomkvist frowned. “That I don’t know. My sense is that he’s more a useful fool being used by the Section. He’s ambitious, but I think he’s honest, if a little stupid. One source did tell me that he swallowed most of what Teleborian fed him about Salander at a presentation of reports when the hunt for her was still on.”

  “So you don’t think it takes much to manipulate him?”

  “Exactly. And Criminal Inspector Faste is an unadulterated idiot who believes that Salander is a lesbian Satanist.”

  Berger was at home. She felt paralysed and unable to concentrate on any real work. All the time she expected someone to call and tell her that pictures of her were posted on some website.

  She caught herself thinking over and over about Salander, although she realized that her hopes of getting help from her were most likely in vain. Salander was locked up at Sahlgrenska. She was not allowed visitors and could not even read the newspapers. But she was an oddly resourceful young woman. Despite her isolation she had managed to contact Berger on I.C.Q. and then by telephone. And two years ago she had single-handedly destroyed Wennerström’s financial empire and saved Millennium.

  At 8.00 Linder arrived and knocked on the door. Berger jumped as though someone had fired a shot in her living room.

  “Hello, Erika. You’re sitting here in the dark looking glum.”

  Berger nodded and turned on a light. “Hi. I’ll put on some coffee—”

  “No. Let me do it. Anything new?”

  You can say that again. Lisbeth Salander got in touch with me and took control of my computer. And then she called to say that Teleborian and somebody called Jonas were meeting at Central Station this afternoon.

  “No. Nothing new,” she said. “But I have something I’d like to try on you.”

  “Try it.”

  “What do you think the chances are that this isn’t a stalker but somebody I know who wants to fuck with me?”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “To me a stalker is someone I don’t know who’s become fixated on me. The alternative is a person who wants to take some sort of revenge and sabotage my life for personal reasons.”

  “Interesting thought. Why did this come up?”

  “I was … discussing the situation with someone today. I can’t give you her name, but she suggested that threats from a real stalker would be different. She said a stalker would never have written the email to the girl on the culture desk. It seems completely beside the point.”

  Linder said: “There is something to that. You know, I never read the emails. Could I see them?”

  Berger set up her laptop on the kitchen table.

  Figuerola escorted Blomkvist out of police headquarters at 10.00 p.m. They stopped at the same place in Kronoberg park as the day before.

  “Here we are again. Are you going to disappear to work or do you want to come to my place and come to bed with me?”

  “Well …”

  “You don’t have to feel pressured, Mikael. If you have to work, then do it.”

  “Listen, Figuerola, you’re worryingly habit-forming.”

  “And you don’t want to be dependent on anything. Is that what you’re saying?”

  “No. That’s not what I’m saying. But there’s someone I have to talk to tonight and it’ll take a while. You’ll be asleep before I’m done.”

  She shrugged.

  “See you.”

  He kissed her cheek and headed for the bus stop on Fridhemsplan.

  “Blomkvist,” she called.

  “What?”

  “I’m free tomorrow morning as well. Come and have breakfast if you can make it.”

  CHAPTER 21

  Saturday, 4.vi – Monday, 6.vi

  Salander picked up a number of ominous vibrations as she browsed the emails of the news editor, Holm. He was fifty-eight and thus fell outside the group, but Salander had included him anyway because he and Berger had been at each other’s throats. He was a schemer who wrote messages to various people telling them how someone had done a rotten job.

  It was obvious to Salander that Holm did not like Berger, and he certainly wasted a lot of space talking about how the bitch had said this or done that. He used the Net exclusively for work-related sites. If he had other interests, he must google them in his own time on some other machine.

  She kept him as a candidate for the title of Poison Pen, but he was not a favourite. Salander spent some time thinking about why she did not believe he was the one, and arrived at the conclusion that he was so damned arrogant he did not have to go to the trouble of using anonymous email. If he wanted to call Berger a whore, he would do it openly. And he did not seem the type to go sneaking into Berger’s home in the middle of the night.

  At 10.00 in the evening she took a break and went into [Idiotic_Table]. She saw that Blomkvist had not come back yet. She felt slightly peeved and wondered what he was up to, and whether he had made it in time to Teleborian’s meeting.

  Then she went back into S.M.P.’s server.

  She moved to the next name on the list, assistant sports editor Claes Lundin, twenty-nine. She had just opened his email when she stopped and bit her lip. She closed it again and went instead to Berger’s.

  She scrolled back in time. There was relatively little in her inbox, since her email account had been opened only on May 2. The very first message was a midday memo from Peter Fredriksson. In the course of Berger’s first day several people had emailed her to welcome her to S.M.P.

  Salander carefully read each message in Berger’s inbox. She could see how even from day one there had been a hostile undertone in her correspondence with Holm. They seemed unable to agree on anything, and Salander saw that Holm was already trying to exasperate Berger by sending several emails about complete trivialities.

  She skipped over ads, spam and news memos. She focused on any kind of personal correspondence. She read budget calculations, advertising and marketing projections, an exchange with C.F.O. Sellberg that went on for a week and was virtually a brawl over staff layoffs. Berger had received irritated messages from the head of the legal department about some temp. by the name of Johannes Frisk. She had apparently detailed him to work on some story and this had not been appreciated. Apart from the first welcome emails, it seemed as if no-one at management level could see anything positive in any of Berger’s arguments or proposals.

  After a while Salander scrolled back to the beginning and did a statistical calculation in her head. Of all the upper-level managers at S.M.P., only four did not engage in sniping. They were the chairman of the board Magnus Borgsjö, assistant editor Fredriksson, front-page editor Magnusson, and culture editor Sebastian Strandlund.

  Had they never heard of women at S.M.P.? All the heads of department were men.

  Of these, the one that Berger had least to do with was Strandlund. She had exchanged only two emails with the culture editor. The friendliest and most engaging messages came from front-page editor Gunnar Magnusson. Borgsjö’s were terse and to the point.

  Why the hell had this group of boys hired Berger at all, if all they did was tear her limb from limb?

  The colleague Berger seemed to have the most to do with was Fredriksson. His role was to act as a kind of shadow, to sit in on her meetings as an observer. He prepared memos, briefed Berger on various articles and issues, and got the jobs moving.

  He emailed Berger a dozen times a day.

  Salander sorted all of Fredriksson’s emails to Berger and read them through. In a number of instances he had objected to some decision Berger had made and
presented counter-proposals. Berger seemed to have confidence in him since she would then often change her decision or accept his argument. He was never hostile. But there was not a hint of any personal relationship to her.

  Salander closed Berger’s email and thought for a moment.

  She opened Fredriksson’s account.

  Plague had been fooling around with the home computers of various employees of S.M.P. all evening without much success. He had managed to get into Holm’s machine because it had an open line to his desk at work; any time of the day or night he could go in and access whatever he was working on. Holm’s P.C. was one of the most boring Plague had ever hacked. He had no luck with the other eighteen names on Salander’s list. One reason was that none of the people he tried to hack was online on a Saturday night. He was beginning to tire of this impossible task when Salander pinged him at 10.30.

  Plague sighed. This girl who had once been his student now had a better handle on things than he did.

  Blomkvist was back at Salander’s apartment on Mosebacke just before midnight. He was tired. He took a shower and put on some coffee, and then he booted up Salander’s computer and pinged her I.C.Q.

  Linder woke with a start when her earpiece beeped. Someone had just tripped the motion detector she had placed in the hall on the ground floor. She propped herself up on her elbow. It was 5.23 on Sunday morning. She slipped silently out of bed and pulled on her jeans, a T-shirt and trainers. She stuffed the Mace in her back pocket and picked up her spring-loaded baton.

  She passed the door to Berger’s bedroom without a sound, noticing that it was closed and therefore locked.

  She stopped at the top of the stairs and listened. She heard a faint clinking sound and movement from the ground floor. Slowly she went down the stairs and paused in the hall to listen again.

  A chair scraped in the kitchen. She held the baton in a firm grip and crept to the kitchen door. She saw a bald, unshaven man sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of orange juice, reading S.M.P. He sensed her presence and looked up.