The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Trilogy Bundle

by Stieg Larsson

  Over a two-week period Hedström had regularly visited the villa in Södertörn along with other Milton employees. He thought the singer was a snobbish and standoffish old bitch. She gave him only a bewildered look when he turned on the charm, but she ought to have been grateful that any fan remembered her at all.

  He hated the way Milton’s staff sprang to do her bidding. But of course he didn’t say a word about how he felt.

  One afternoon, the singer and two of the Milton staff were by her pool while he was in the house taking photographs of windows and doors that might need reinforcing. He had gone from room to room, and when he came to her bedroom he could not resist the temptation to open her desk. He found a dozen photograph albums from when she was a big star in the seventies and eighties and had toured the world. He also found a box with some very private pictures of the singer. The pictures were relatively innocent, but with a little imagination they might be viewed as “erotic studies.” God, what a stupid cow she was. He stole five of the most risqué images, which had obviously been taken by some lover.

  He photographed the images there and then and put the originals back. He waited several months before he sold them to a British tabloid. He was paid 9,000 pounds for the photographs and they gave rise to sensational headlines.

  He still did not know how Salander had managed it, but after the photographs were published, he had a visit from her. She knew that he was the one who had sold them. She was going to expose him to Armansky if he ever did anything like that again. She would have exposed him immediately if she could have proved it—but she obviously could not. From that day on he had felt her watching him. He had seen her little piggy eyes every time he turned around.

  He felt stressed and frustrated. The only way to get back at her was to undermine her credibility by adding his contributions to the gossip about her in the canteen. But not even that had been very successful. He did not dare draw attention to himself, since for some unknown reason she was under Armansky’s protection. He wondered what sort of hold she had over Milton’s CEO, or if it was possible that the old bastard was fucking her in secret. But even though nobody at Milton was especially enamoured of Salander, the staff had great respect for Armansky and so they accepted her peculiar presence. It was a monumental relief to him when she began to play less of a role and finally stopped working at Milton altogether.

  Now an opportunity had presented itself for him to get even. And it was risk-free. She could accuse him of anything she liked—nobody would believe her. Not even Armansky would take the word of a pathologically sick murderer.

  Bublanski saw Faste coming out of the elevator with Bohman and Hedström from Milton. He had been sent down to bring these new colleagues through security. Bublanski was not entirely enchanted with the idea of giving outsiders access to a murder investigation, but the decision had been made way over his head and … what the hell, Bohman was a real police officer with a lot of miles on him. Hedström had graduated from the police academy and so could not be an outright idiot. Bublanski pointed towards the conference room.

  The hunt for Salander was in its sixth day and it was time for a major evaluation. Prosecutor Ekström did not take part in the meeting. The group consisted of criminal inspectors Modig, Faste, Andersson, and Holmberg, reinforced by four officers from the search unit of the National Criminal Police. Bublanski began by introducing their new colleagues from Milton Security and asking if either of them wanted to say a few words. Bohman cleared his throat.

  “It’s been a while since I was last in this building, but some of you know me and know that I was a police officer for many years before I switched to the private sector. The reason we’re here is that Salander worked for Milton over several years and we feel a measure of responsibility. Our job is to try and assist in her arrest. We can contribute some personal knowledge of her, but we’re not here in any way to mess up the investigation or to try to trip you up.”

  “Tell us what she was like to work with,” Faste said.

  “She wasn’t exactly a person you warmed to,” Hedström said. He stopped when Bublanski held up his hand.

  “We’ll have a chance to talk in detail during the meeting. But let’s take things one by one and get a grip on where we stand. After this meeting, you two will have to go to Prosecutor Ekström and sign a confidentiality statement. Let’s begin with Sonja.”

  “It’s frustrating. We had a breakthrough just a few hours after the murders and were able to identify Salander. We found where she lived—or at least where we thought she lived. After that, not a trace. We’ve received around thirty calls from people who think they’ve seen her, but so far they’ve all been false alarms. She seems to have gone up in smoke.”

  “That’s a little hard to believe,” Andersson said. “She looks unusual and has tattoos and shouldn’t be that hard to find.”

  “The police in Uppsala went in with their weapons drawn yesterday after receiving a tip. They surrounded and scared the hell out of a fourteen-year-old boy who did look a lot like Salander. The parents were quite upset.”

  “It’s a handicap that we’re searching for someone who looks like a fourteen-year-old. She could melt into any crowd of teenagers.”

  “But with the attention she’s been getting in the media, someone should have seen something,” Andersson said. “They’re running her picture on Sweden’s Most Wanted this week, so maybe that will lead to something new.”

  “I doubt it, considering that she’s already been on the front page of every newspaper in the country,” Faste said.

  “Which suggests that maybe we should change our approach,” Bublanski said. “With accomplices, she could have slipped out of the country, but it’s more probable that she’s gone to ground.”

  Bohman held up his hand. Bublanski nodded to him.

  “The profile we have of her is that she’s self-destructive. On the other hand, she’s a strategist who plans all her actions carefully. She does nothing without analysing the consequences. At least that’s what Dragan Armansky thinks.”

  “That was the assessment her one-time psychiatrist gave as well. But let’s hold off on the characterization for a while,” Bublanski said. “Sooner or later she’ll have to make a move. Jerker, what sort of resources does she have?”

  “Now here’s something you can sink your teeth into,” Holmberg said. “She’s had a bank account for several years at Handelsbanken. That’s the income she declares. Or rather, the income that her guardian, Nils Bjurman, declared. A year ago the account held about 100,000 kronor. In the autumn of 2003 she withdrew the entire amount.”

  “She needed cash in the autumn of 2003. That was when she stopped working for Milton Security,” Bohman said.

  “Possibly. The account stood at zero for about two weeks. And then she put the same amount back into it.”

  “She thought she needed money for something, but she didn’t spend it and put the money back?”

  “Possibly. In December 2003 she used the account to pay a number of bills, including her rent for a year in advance. The account dropped to 70,000 kronor. After that the account wasn’t touched for a year, except for a deposit of around 9,000 kronor. I’ve checked—it was an inheritance from her mother. In March this year she took out this sum—the exact amount was 9,312 kronor—and that’s the only time she’s touched the account.”

  “So what the hell does she live on?”

  “Listen to this. In January of this year she opened a new account. This one at Svenska Enskilda Banken. She deposited two million kronor.”

  “Where did the money come from?” Modig asked.

  “The money was transferred to her account from a bank in the Channel Islands.”

  Silence descended over the conference room.

  “I don’t understand any of this,” Modig said after a moment.

  “So this is money she hasn’t declared?” Bublanski asked.

  “No, but technically she doesn’t have to until next year. What’s interes
ting is that the sum is not recorded in Bjurman’s report on her assets, and he filed a report every month.”

  “So—either he didn’t know about it or else they were running a scam together. Jerker, where do we stand on forensics?”

  “I had a report from the leader of the preliminary investigation yesterday evening. This is what we know. One: we can tie Salander to both crime scenes. We found her fingerprints on the murder weapon and on the shards of a broken coffee cup in Enskede. We’re waiting for results from all the DNA samples we gathered, but there’s no doubt that she was there in the apartment. Two: we have her prints on the box we found in Bjurman’s apartment, the one the gun came in. Three: we finally have a witness who can place her at the site of the murders in Enskede. The owner of a corner shop telephoned to say that Salander was definitely in his shop on the night of the murders. She bought a pack of Marlboro Lights.”

  “And he comes out with this days after we asked the public for information?”

  “He was away over the holidays, like everybody else. In any case”—Holmberg pointed at a map—“the corner shop is here, about two hundred yards from the crime scene. She came in just as he was closing at 10:00 p.m. He gave a perfect description of her.”

  “Tattoo on her neck?” Andersson said.

  “He was a bit vague about that. He thought he saw a tattoo. But he definitely saw that she had a pierced eyebrow.”

  “What else?”

  “Not that much in the way of technical evidence. But it should hold up.”

  “Faste—the apartment on Lundagatan?”

  “We’ve got her prints, but we don’t think she lives there. We’ve turned the place upside down, and it seems that a Miriam Wu is living there. Her name was added to the contract as recently as February this year.”

  “What do we know about Wu?”

  “No police record. Known lesbian. She appears in shows at the Gay Pride Festival. Seems to be studying sociology and is part owner of Domino Fashion, a sex shop on Tegnérgatan.”

  “Sex shop?” Modig said with raised eyebrows.

  On one occasion she had bought, to her husband’s delight, some sexy lingerie at Domino Fashion. And she had absolutely no intention of revealing that to the men in the room.

  “Yeah, they sell handcuffs and whore outfits and stuff like that. Need a whip?”

  “It’s not a sex shop. It’s a fashion boutique for people who like sexy underwear.”

  “Same shit.”

  “Go on,” Bublanski said angrily. “Is there any sign of Fröken Wu?”

  “Not a trace.”

  “She could have gone away for Easter,” Modig said.

  “Or else Salander whacked her too,” Faste said. “Maybe she wants to make a clean sweep of all her acquaintances.”

  “Wu is a lesbian. Should we conclude that she and Salander are a couple?”

  “I think we can draw the conclusion that there’s a sexual relationship,” Andersson said. “First, we found Salander’s prints on and around the bed in the apartment. We also found her prints on a pair of handcuffs.”

  “Then she’ll appreciate the cuffs I’ve got ready for her,” Faste said.

  Modig groaned.

  “Go on,” Bublanski said to Andersson.

  “We got a tip that Miriam Wu was seen at Kvarnen kissing a girl who matched Salander’s description. That was about two weeks ago. The informant claimed that he knows who Salander is and has run into her there before, although he hadn’t seen her in the past year. I haven’t had time to double-check with the staff, but I’ll do it this afternoon.”

  “In her casebook at social welfare it doesn’t mention a thing about her being a lesbian. A number of times in her teens she ran away from her foster families and picked up men in bars. She was noticed by the police several times in the company of older men.”

  “Which doesn’t mean shit if she was a whore,” Faste said.

  “What do we know about people she knows? Curt?”

  “Hardly anything. She hasn’t had a run-in with the police since she was eighteen. She knows Dragan Armansky and Mikael Blomkvist, we know that much. And she knows Miriam Wu, of course. The same source that tipped us off about her and Wu at Kvarnen says that she used to hang out with a bunch of girls there a while back. Some kind of girl band called Evil Fingers.”

  “Evil Fingers?” Bublanski repeated.

  “Seems to be something occult.”

  “Don’t tell me Salander is some damned Satanist too,” Bublanski said. “The media are going to go nuts.”

  “Lesbian Satanists,” Faste said helpfully.

  “Hans, you’ve got a view of women from the Middle Ages,” Modig said. “Even I’ve heard of Evil Fingers.”

  “You have?” Bublanski said.

  “It was a girl rock band in the late nineties. No superstars, but they were pretty famous for a while.”

  “So, hard-rocking lesbian Satanists,” Faste said.

  “OK, enough goofing around,” Bublanski said. “Hans, you and Curt check out who was in Evil Fingers and talk to them. Does Salander have any other friends?”

  “Not many, other than her former guardian, Holger Palmgren. He’s in long-term care now after a stroke and is apparently unwell. To be honest, I can’t say that I found any circle of friends, though we haven’t seen her address book. For that matter, we still don’t know where she lives.”

  “Nobody can go around without leaving traces, like some kind of ghost. What do we think about Mikael Blomkvist?”

  “We haven’t had him under direct surveillance, but we’ve checked in with him off and on over the holiday,” Faste said. “On the chance that Salander might pop up, that is. He went home after work on Thursday and doesn’t seem to have left his apartment all weekend.”

  “I can’t see him having anything to do with the murders,” Modig said. “His story holds up, and he can account for every minute of that night.”

  “But he does know Salander. He’s the link between her and the couple in Enskede. And besides, we have his statement that a man attacked Salander a week before the murders took place. What are we supposed to make of that?” Bublanski said.

  “Other than the fact that Blomkvist was the only witness to the attack?” Faste said.

  “You think Blomkvist is imagining things or lying?”

  “Don’t know. But it sounds to me like a bullshit story. How come a full-grown man couldn’t take care of a tiny girl who weighs less than ninety pounds?”

  “Why would Blomkvist lie?”

  “To muddle our thinking about Salander?”

  “But none of this really adds up. Blomkvist’s hypothesis is that his friends were killed because of the book that Svensson was writing.”

  “Bullshit,” Faste said. “It’s Salander. Why would anybody murder their guardian to shut Dag Svensson up? And who else could it be … a policeman?”

  “If Blomkvist goes public with his hypothesis, we’re going to see a hell of a lot of police conspiracy theories,” said Andersson.

  Everyone at the table murmured agreement.

  “All right,” Modig said. “Why did she shoot Bjurman?”

  “And what does the tattoo mean?” Bublanski said, pointing at a photograph of Bjurman’s lower abdomen.

  I AM A SADISTIC PIG, A PERVERT, AND A RAPIST.

  “What does the pathologist’s report say?” Bohman said.

  “The tattoo is between one and three years old. That’s measured by the extent of bleed-through in the skin,” Modig said.

  “I think we can rule out the likelihood of Bjurman actually having commissioned it.”

  “There are plenty of crazies around, but it can hardly be a standard motif among tattoo enthusiasts.”

  Modig waved her index finger. “The pathologist says that the tattoo has to have been done by a rank amateur. The needle penetrated to different depths, and it’s a very large tattoo on a sensitive part of the body. All in all, it must have been a very painful procedure, comp
arable to aggravated assault.”

  “Except for the fact that Bjurman never filed a police report,” Faste said.

  “I wouldn’t file a police report either, if somebody tattooed that on me,” Andersson said.

  “One more thing,” Modig said. “And this might reinforce the confession, as it were, in the tattoo.” She opened a folder of photographic printouts and passed them around. “I printed out some samples from a folder on Bjurman’s hard drive. They’re downloaded from the Internet. His computer contains about two thousand images of a similar nature.”

  Faste whistled and held up a photograph of a woman bound in a brutally uncomfortable position. “This may be something for Domino Fashion or Evil Fingers,” he said.

  Bublanski gestured in annoyance for Faste to shut up.

  “What are we supposed to make of this?” Bohman said.

  “Suppose the tattoo is about two years old,” Bublanski said. “It would have been done around the time that Bjurman got sick. No medical records indicate that he had any illness, other than high blood pressure. So we can assume that there was a connection.”

  “Salander changed during that year,” Bohman said. “She stopped working for Milton and without warning, I understand, went overseas.”

  “Should we assume that there’s a connection there too? The message in the tattoo plainly says that Bjurman raped someone. Salander is a likely victim. And that would be a motive for murder.”

  “There are other ways to interpret this, of course,” Faste said. “I can imagine a scenario where Salander and the Chinese girl are running some sort of escort service with S&M overtones. Bjurman could be one of those nuts who gets off on being whipped by small girls. He could have been in some sort of dependence relationship with Salander and things went wrong.”

  “But that doesn’t explain what she was doing in Enskede.”

  “If Svensson and Johansson were about to expose the sex trade, they may have stumbled on Salander and Wu. That may be your motive for Salander to commit murder.”