The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Trilogy Bundle
Page 84
“So far this is mere speculation,” said Modig.
The meeting went on for another hour, and also dealt with the fact that Svensson’s laptop was missing. When they broke for lunch they were all frustrated. The investigation was fraught with more question marks than ever.
Berger called Magnus Borgsjö, CEO of Svenska Morgon-Posten, as soon as she reached the office on Tuesday morning.
“I’m interested,” she said.
“I thought you would be.”
“I meant to let you know right after the Easter holiday. But as you’ll have heard, chaos has broken out here.”
“The murder of Dag Svensson. I’m so sorry. A terrible thing.”
“Then you’ll understand that this is no time for me to announce my resignation.”
He was silent for a moment.
“We have a problem,” Borgsjö said. “The last time we spoke, we said that the job would start on August 1. But the thing is, our editor in chief, Håkan Morander, whom you would be replacing, is in very poor health. He has heart problems and has to cut back on work. He talked to his doctor a few days ago, and this weekend I learned that he’s now planning to retire on July 1. The idea was that he would still be here until fall, and that you could work in tandem through August and September. But the way the situation looks now, we have a crisis. Erika—we’re going to need you to start on May 1, and certainly no later than May 15.”
“God. That’s only weeks away.”
“Are you still interested?”
“Yes, of course … but that means I have only a month to tidy things up here at Millennium.”
“I know. I’m sorry to do it, Erika, but I have to rush you. A month should be enough time to straighten out affairs at a magazine with only half a dozen employees.”
“But it means leaving in the midst of a crisis.”
“You’d have to leave in any case. All we’re doing is bringing forward your departure date by a few weeks.”
“I do have some conditions.”
“Let me hear them.”
“I’ll have to remain on Millennium’s board of directors.”
“That might not be appropriate. Millennium is much smaller, of course, and a monthly magazine besides, but technically we’re competitors.”
“That can’t be helped. I won’t have anything to do with Millennium’s editorial work, but I won’t sell my share of the business. So I have to stay on the board.”
“OK, we can probably deal with that.”
They agreed to meet with his board during the first week of April to iron out the details and draw up a contract.
Blomkvist had a feeling of déjà vu when he studied the list of suspects that he and Eriksson had put together over the weekend. Thirty-seven names, all people Dag Svensson was leaning on hard in his book, twenty-one of whom were johns he had identified.
It reminded Blomkvist of the gallery of suspects from when he had set out to track a murderer in Hedestad two years before.
At 10:00 on Tuesday morning he asked Eriksson to come into his office at Millennium. He closed the door behind her. They sat for a few moments, drinking their coffee. Then he passed her the list of names.
“What should we do?” Eriksson said.
“First we have to show the list to Erika—maybe in ten minutes. Then we have to check them off one by one. It’s possible, it’s even probable, that one of these people has a connection to the murders.”
“And how do we check them off?”
“I’m thinking of focusing on the twenty-one johns. They have more to lose than the others. I’m thinking of following in Dag’s footsteps, of going to see them one by one.”
“And what do I do?”
“Two jobs. First, there are seven people here who aren’t identified. Your assignment over the next couple of days is to try and identify them. Some of the names are in Mia’s thesis; there may be ways of cross-referencing that would help you work out their real identities. Second, we know very little about Nils Bjurman, Lisbeth’s guardian. There was a brief CV in the papers, but my guess is that half of it is made up.”
“So I should ferret out his background.”
“Precisely. Everything you can find.”
Harriet Vanger called Blomkvist at 5:00 in the afternoon.
“Can you talk?”
“For a minute.”
“This girl the police are looking for … it’s the same one who helped you track me down, isn’t it?”
Harriet Vanger and Salander had never met.
“That’s right,” Blomkvist said. “I’m sorry I haven’t had time to call and update you. But, yes, she’s the one.”
“What does it mean?”
“As far as you’re concerned? Nothing, I hope.”
“But she knows everything about me and what happened.”
“Yes, she knows everything that happened.”
Harriet was quiet on the other end of the line.
“Harriet, I don’t think she did it. I’m working on the assumption that she’s innocent of all these murders. I trust her.”
“If I’m to believe what’s in the newspapers, then—”
“But you shouldn’t believe what’s in the papers. And as far as it affects you, it’s quite simple: she gave her word that she would keep her mouth shut. I believe she’ll keep that promise for the rest of her life. Everything I know about her tells me that she is extremely principled.”
“And if she didn’t do it?”
“I don’t know. Harriet, I’m doing everything in my power to discover what actually happened. Don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried, but I do want to be prepared for the worst. How are you holding up, Mikael?”
“So-so. We’ve been going nonstop.”
“Mikael … I’m in Stockholm right now. I’m flying to Australia tomorrow—I’ll be gone for a month.”
“I see.”
“I’m at the hotel.”
“I don’t know, Harriet. I feel spread really thin. I have to work tonight and I wouldn’t be very good company.”
“You don’t have to be good company. Come over and relax for a while.”
Mikael got home at one in the morning. He was tired and felt like saying the hell with everything and going to bed, but instead he booted up his iBook and checked his email. There was no new mail of any interest.
He opened the folder
It was almost a physical shock to see the document on his computer. She’s here. Salander has been in my computer. Maybe she’s even connected right now. He double-clicked.
He was not sure what he had expected. A letter. An answer. A protestation of innocence. An explanation. Salander’s reply was exasperatingly brief. The message consisted of one word, four letters.
Zala.
Mikael stared at the name.
Svensson had mentioned Zala in his last phone call, three hours before he was murdered.
What is she trying to say? Is Zala the link between Bjurman and Dag and Mia? How? Why? Who is he? And how did Salander know that? How is she involved?
He opened the document properties and saw that the text had been created not fifteen minutes before. Then he smiled. The document showed Mikael Blomkvist as its author. She had created the document in his computer with his own licenced Word programme. That was better than email and did not leave an IP address that could be traced, even though Blomkvist was sure that Salander in any case would be impossible to trace through the Internet. And it proved beyond all doubt that Salander had done a hostile takeover—her term—of his computer.
He stood by the window and looked out at City Hall. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being watched at that very moment by Salander, almost as if she were there in the room staring at him through the screen of his iBook. She could, of course, be anywhere in the world, but he suspected that she was close. Somewhere in Södermal
m. Within a radius of a couple of miles from where he was.
He sat down and created a new Word document that he called [Sally-2] and placed it on the desktop. He wrote a pithy message.
Lisbeth,
You damn troublesome person. Who the hell is Zala? Is he the link? Do you know who murdered Dag & Mia? If so, tell me so we can solve this mess and go to sleep. Mikael.
She was inside Blomkvist’s iBook now. The reply came within a minute. A new document appeared in the folder on his desktop, this time called [Kalle Blomkvist].
You’re the journalist. Find out.
Blomkvist frowned. She was teasing him and using the nickname she knew he loathed. And she gave him not the slightest help. He wrote the document [Sally-3] and put it on his desktop.
Lisbeth,
A journalist finds out things by asking questions of people who know. I’m asking you. Do you know why Dag and Mia were murdered and who killed them? If you do, please tell me. Give me something to go on. Mikael.
For several hours he waited for another reply. At 4:00 a.m. he gave up and went to bed.
CHAPTER 19
Wednesday, March 30–Friday, April 1
Blomkvist spent Wednesday combing Svensson’s material for every reference to Zala. Just as Salander had done earlier, he discovered the folder
He could see that Svensson had spent a great deal of time on Irina P. From the autopsy report he learned that the woman had been killed in a slow, cruel way. The murder had taken place at the end of February. The police had no leads as to who the killer might have been, but since she was a prostitute they assumed that it was one of her clients.
Blomkvist wondered why Svensson had put the [Irina P] document in the
The document [Zala] looked like rough working notes. Zala (if indeed he existed) seemed almost like a phantom in the criminal world. He did not seem entirely credible, and the text lacked source references.
He closed the document and scratched his head. Solving the murders was going to be a considerably more difficult task than he had imagined. Nor could he avoid being assailed by doubt. Nothing told him unequivocally that Salander was innocent. All he had to go on was his instinct.
He knew that she was not short of funds. She had exploited her skills as a hacker to steal a sum of several billion kronor, but she didn’t know that he knew this. Apart from when he had been forced to explain her computer talents to Berger, he had never betrayed her secrets to any outsider.
He didn’t want to believe that Salander was guilty of the murders. He would never be able to repay his debt to her. She had not only saved his life, she had also salvaged his career and possibly Millennium magazine itself by delivering Hans-Erik Wennerström’s head to them on a platter.
And he felt a great loyalty to her. Whether she was guilty or not, he was going to do everything he could to help her when she eventually was caught.
But there was so much that he didn’t know about her. The psychiatric assessments, the fact that she had been committed to one of the country’s most highly regarded institutions, and that she had even been declared incompetent, all tended to confirm that something was wrong with her. The chief of staff at St. Stefan’s Psychiatric Clinic in Uppsala, Dr. Peter Teleborian, had been widely quoted in the press. As was appropriate, he had not made statements specifically about Salander but had commented on the national collapse of mental health care. Teleborian was renowned and respected not merely in Sweden but internationally as well. He had been thoroughly convincing and had managed to convey his sympathy for the murder victims and their families while making it known that he was most anxious about Salander’s well-being.
Blomkvist wondered whether he ought to get in touch with Dr. Teleborian and whether he might be able to help in some way. But he refrained. The doctor would have plenty of time to help Salander once she was caught.
Finally he went to the kitchenette and poured coffee into a cup with the logo of the Moderate Unity Party and went in to see Berger.
“I have a long list of johns and pimps I have to interview,” he said.
She looked at him with concern.
“It’ll probably take a week or two to check off everyone on the list. They’re dotted about from Strängnäs to Norrköping. I’ll need a car.”
She opened her handbag and took out the keys to her BMW.
“Is that really all right?”
“Of course it’s all right. I drive to work as rarely as I drive out to Saltsjöbaden. And if need be I can take Greger’s car.”
“Thanks.”
“There’s one condition, though.”
“What’s that?”
“Some of these guys are serious thugs. If you’re going out to accuse pimps of murdering Dag and Mia, I want you to take this with you and always keep it in the pocket of your jacket.”
She put a canister of Mace on the desk.
“Where’d you get that?”
“I bought it in the States last year. I’ll be damned if I’m going to run around alone at night without some sort of weapon.”
“There’ll be hell to pay if I get caught in possession of an illegal weapon.”
“Better that than me having to write your obituary, Mikael … I’m not sure if you know this, but sometimes I really worry about you.”
“I see.”
“You take risks and you’re so pigheaded that you can never back down from a stupid decision.”
Blomkvist smiled and put the Mace on Erika’s desk.
“Thanks for the concern. But I don’t need it.”
“Micke, I insist.”
“That’s fine. But I’ve already taken precautions.”
He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a canister. It was the Mace he had taken out of Salander’s shoulder bag and had carried with him ever since.
Bublanski knocked on the open door of Modig’s office and then sat down on the visitor’s chair by her desk.
“Dag Svensson’s computer,” he said.
“I’ve been thinking about that too,” she said. “I did a timeline of Svensson and Johansson’s last day. There are still a few gaps, but Svensson never went to Millennium’s offices that day. On the other hand he did go into the centre of town, and at around 4:00 in the afternoon he ran into an old school friend. It was a chance meeting at a café on Drottninggatan. The friend says that Svensson definitely had his computer. He saw it and even made a comment about it.”
“And by 11:00 that night—by the time the police arrived at his apartment—the computer was gone.”
“Correct.”
“What should we deduce from that?”
“He could have stopped somewhere else and for some reason left or forgotten his computer.”
“How likely is that?”
“Not very likely. But he could have dropped it off for repair. Then there’s the possibility that there was some other place he worked that we don’t know about. For example, he once rented a desk at a freelancers’ office near St. Eriksplan. Then, of course, there’s the possibility that the killer took the computer with him.”
“According to Armansky, Salander is very good with computers.”
“Exactly,” Modig said, nodding.
“Hmm. Blomkvist’s theory is that Svensson and Johansson were murdered because of the research Svensson was doing. Which would all be on his computer.”
“We’re lagging a little behind. Three murder victims create so many loose ends that we can’t really keep up, but we actually haven’t done a proper search of Sve
nsson’s workplace at Millennium yet.”
“I talked with Erika Berger this morning. She says they’re surprised that we haven’t been over to take a look at what he left there.”
“We’ve been focusing too much on the hunt for Salander, and so far we don’t have a clue about the motive. Could you …?”
“I’ve made a rendezvous with Berger at Millennium for tomorrow.”
“Thanks.”
On Thursday Blomkvist was at his desk talking to Eriksson when a telephone rang somewhere else in the offices. Through the doorway he caught a glimpse of Cortez on his way to answer it. Then he registered somewhere in the back of his mind that it was the phone on Svensson’s desk. He jumped to his feet.
“Stop—don’t touch that phone!” he yelled.
Cortez had his hand on the receiver. Blomkvist hurried across the room. What the hell was the name of that phony company Svensson made up?
“Indigo Market Research, this is Mikael. May I help you?”
“Uh … hello, my name is Gunnar Björck. I got a letter saying I’ve won a mobile phone.”
“Congratulations,” Blomkvist said. “It’s a Sony Ericsson, the latest model.”
“And it’s free?”
“That’s right, it’s free. To receive the gift you only have to be interviewed. We do market research studies and in-depth analyses for various companies. It’ll take about an hour to answer the questions. After that your name will be entered in another drawing and you’ll have the chance to win 100,000 kronor.”
“I understand. Can we do it over the phone?”
“Unfortunately not. The questionnaire involves looking at company logos and identifying them. We will also be asking about what type of advertising images you like and we show you various alternatives. We have to send out one of our employees.”
“I see … and how did I happen to be selected?”
“We do this type of study several times a year. Right now we’re focusing on a number of successful men in your age group. We’ve drawn social security numbers at random within that demographic.”