The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Trilogy Bundle (131 page)

Blomkvist shrugged. He went back to the car, opened the trunk, and found a neatly coiled rope. He couldn't leave Niedermann tied up in the middle of the road, so he looked around. Thirty yards further along the road he saw a traffic sign in the headlights.
CAUTION: MOOSE CROSSING
.

“Get up.”

He put the muzzle of the gun against Niedermann's neck, led him to the sign, and forced him into the ditch. He told Niedermann to sit with his back against the pole. Niedermann hesitated.

“This is all quite simple,” Blomkvist said. “You killed Dag Svensson and Mia Johansson. They were my friends. I'm not going to let you loose on the road, so either you sit here while I tie you or I'll shoot you in the kneecap. Your choice.”

Niedermann sat. Blomkvist ran the tow rope around his neck and tied his head securely to the pole. Then he used fifty feet of rope to bind the giant fast around the torso and waist. He saved a length to tie his forearms to the pole, and finished off his handiwork with some real sailor's knots.

When he was finished, he asked again where Salander was. He got no reply, so he shrugged and left Niedermann there. It wasn't until he was back in the car that he felt the adrenaline flowing and realized what he had just done. The image of Johansson's face flickered before his eyes.

Blomkvist lit a cigarette and drank some water out of the bottle. He looked at the figure in the dark beneath the moose sign. Then he looked at the map and saw that he had about half a mile before the turnoff to Karl Axel Bodin's farm. He started the engine and drove past Niedermann.

•  •  •

He drove slowly past the turnoff with the sign to Gosseberga and parked next to a barn on a forest road a hundred yards further north. He took his pistol and turned his flashlight on. He found fresh tire tracks in the mud and decided that another car had been parked in that same place earlier, but he didn't stop to consider what that might mean. He walked back to the turnoff and shone light on the mailbox.
P.O. BOX 192
—K. A. BODIN.
He continued along the road.

It was almost midnight when he saw the lights from Bodin's farmhouse. He stood still for several minutes but heard nothing other than the usual nighttime sounds. Instead of taking the road straight to the farm, he walked along the edge of the field and approached the building from the barn, stopping in the yard about a hundred feet from the house. His every nerve was on edge. The fact that Niedermann had been running away was reason enough to believe that some catastrophe had occurred here.

Suddenly he heard a sound. He spun around and dropped to one knee with his gun raised. It took him a few seconds to identify the source: one of the outbuildings. Somebody moaning. He moved quickly across the grass and stopped by the shed. Peering round the corner he could see a light inside.

He listened. Someone was moving around. Holding the pistol in front of him, he lifted the crossbar with his left hand, pulled open the door, and was confronted by a pair of terrified eyes in a blood-streaked face. He saw the axe on the floor.

“Holy shit,” he said.

Then he saw the prosthesis.

Zalachenko
.

Salander had definitely paid him a visit, but Blomkvist couldn't imagine what must have happened. He closed the door and replaced the crossbar.

With Zalachenko in the woodshed and Niedermann bound hand and foot beside the road to Sollebrunn, Blomkvist hurried across the courtyard to the farmhouse. It was possible that there was a third person who might yet be a danger, but the house seemed unoccupied, almost abandoned. Pointing his gun at the ground, he eased open the front door. He came into a dark hall and saw a rectangle of light from the kitchen. The
only sound was the ticking of a wall clock. When he reached the door he saw Salander lying on the kitchen bench.

For a moment he stood as if petrified, staring at her mangled body. He noticed that she was holding a pistol in her hand, which hung loosely off the edge of the bench. He went to her side and sank to his knees. He thought about how he had found Svensson and Johansson and thought that she was dead too. Then he saw a slight movement in her chest and heard a feeble, wheezing breath.

He reached out his hand and carefully loosened the gun from her grip. Suddenly her fist tightened around its butt. She opened her eyes to two narrow slits and stared at him for many long seconds. Her eyes were unfocused. Then he heard her mutter in such a low voice that he could only with difficulty catch the words.

Kalle Fucking Blomkvist
.

She closed her eyes and let go of the gun. He put it on the floor, took out his mobile, and dialled the number for emergency services.

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Part 1 - Intermezzo in a Corridor

Chapter 1 - Friday, April 8

Chapter 2 - Friday, April 8

Chapter 3 - Friday, April 8–Saturday, April 9

Chapter 4 - Saturday, April 9–Sunday, April 10

Chapter 5 - Sunday, April 10

Chapter 6 - Monday, April 11

Chapter 7 - Monday, April 11–Tuesday, April 12

Part 2 - Hacker Republic

Chapter 8 - Sunday, May 1–Monday, May 2

Chapter 9 - Wednesday, May 4

Chapter 10 - Saturday, May 7–Thursday, May 12

Chapter 11 - Friday, May 13–Saturday, May 14

Chapter 12 - Sunday, May 15–Monday, May 16

Chapter 13 - Tuesday, May 17

Chapter 14 - Wednesday, May 18

Chapter 15 - Thursday, May 19–Sunday, May 22

Part 3 - Disk Crash

Chapter 16 - Friday, May 27–Tuesday, May 31

Chapter 17 - Wednesday, June 1

Chapter 18 - Thursday, June 2

Chapter 19 - Friday, June 3–Saturday, June 4

Chapter 20 - Saturday, June 4

Chapter 21 - Saturday, June 4–Monday, June 6

Chapter 22 - Monday, June 6

Part 4 - Rebooting System

Chapter 23 - Friday, July 1–Sunday, July 10

Chapter 24 - Monday, July 11

Chapter 25 - Wednesday, July 13–Thursday, July 14

Chapter 26 - Friday, July 15

Chapter 27 - Friday, July 15

Chapter 28 - Friday, July 15–Saturday, July 16

Chapter 29 - Saturday, July 16–Friday, October 7

Epilogue: Inventory of Estate: Friday, December 2–Sunday, December 18

Notes

A Note About the Author

APRIL 8–12

An estimated 600 women served during the American Civil War. They had signed up disguised as men. Hollywood has missed a significant chapter of cultural history here—or is this history ideologically too difficult to deal with? Historians have often struggled to deal with women who do not respect gender distinctions, and nowhere is that distinction more sharply drawn than in the question of armed combat. (Even today, it can cause controversy having a woman on a typical Swedish moose hunt.)

But from antiquity to modern times, there are many stories of female warriors, of Amazons. The best known find their way into the history books as warrior queens, rulers as well as leaders. They have been forced to act as any Churchill, Stalin, or Roosevelt: Semiramis from Nineveh, who shaped the Assyrian Empire, and Boudicca, who led one of the bloodiest English revolts against the Roman forces of occupation, to cite just two. Boudicca is honoured with a statue on the Thames at Westminster Bridge, opposite Big Ben. Be sure to say hello to her if you happen to pass by.

On the other hand, history is reticent about women who were common soldiers, who bore arms, belonged to regiments, and took part in battles on the same terms as men, though hardly a war has been waged without women soldiers in the ranks.

Dr. Jonasson was woken by a nurse five minutes before the helicopter was expected to land. It was just before 1:30 in the morning.

“What?” he said, confused.

“Rescue Service helicopter coming in. Two patients. An injured man and a younger woman. The woman has gunshot wounds.”

“All right,” Jonasson said wearily.

Although he had slept for only half an hour, he felt groggy. He was on the night shift in the ER at Sahlgrenska hospital in Göteborg. It had been a strenuous evening.

By 12:30 the steady flow of emergency cases had eased off. He had made a round to check on the state of his patients and then gone back to the staff bedroom to try to rest for a while. He was on duty until 6:00, and seldom got the chance to sleep even if no emergency patients came in. But this time he had fallen asleep almost as soon as he turned out the light.

Jonasson saw lightning out over the sea. He knew that the helicopter was coming in the nick of time. All of a sudden a heavy downpour lashed at the window. The storm had moved in over Göteborg.

He heard the sound of the chopper and watched as it banked through the storm squalls down towards the helipad. For a second he held his breath when the pilot seemed to have difficulty controlling the aircraft. Then it vanished from his field of vision and he heard the engine slowing to land. He took a hasty swallow of his tea and set down the cup.

Jonasson met the emergency team in the admissions area. The other doctor on duty took on the first patient who was wheeled in—an elderly man with
his head bandaged, apparently with a serious wound to the face. Jonasson was left with the second patient, the woman who had been shot. He did a quick visual examination: it looked like she was a teenager, very dirty and bloody, and severely wounded. He lifted the blanket that the Rescue Service had wrapped around her body and saw that the wounds to her hip and shoulder were bandaged with duct tape, which he considered a pretty clever idea. The tape kept bacteria out and blood in. One bullet had entered her hip and gone straight through the muscle tissue. He gently raised her shoulder and located the entry wound in her back. There was no exit wound: the round was still inside her shoulder. He hoped it had not penetrated her lung, and since he did not see any blood in the woman's mouth he concluded that probably it had not.