The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Trilogy Bundle (88 page)

“Tell me where you saw her.”

Blomkvist took a deep breath and then gave a brisk account of the events on Lundagatan. Bublanski listened with gathering astonishment, unsure how much of the story Blomkvist was making up.

“So you didn't talk to her?”

“No, she disappeared on upper Lundagatan. I waited a long time, but she never came back. I wrote her a note and asked her to get in touch with me.”

“And you're quite sure you know of no connection between her and the couple in Enskede.”

“I am certain of it.”

“Can you describe the man you say you saw attack her?”

“Not in detail. He attacked, and she defended herself and fled. I saw him from a distance of forty to forty-five yards. It was late at night and quite dark.”

“Were you intoxicated?”

“I was a little under the influence, but I wasn't falling-down drunk. The man had lightish hair in a ponytail. He wore a dark waist-length jacket. He had a prominent belly. When I went up the stairs on Lundagatan I only saw him from behind, but he turned around when he clobbered me. I seem to remember that he had a thin face and blue eyes set close together.”

“Why didn't you tell me this earlier?” Berger said.

Blomkvist shrugged. “There was a weekend in between, and you went to Göteborg to take part in that damned debate programme. You were gone Monday, and on Tuesday we only saw each other briefly. It didn't seem so important.”

“But considering what has happened in Enskede … it's odd that you didn't mention this to the police,” Bublanski said.

“Why would I mention it to the police? That's like saying I should have mentioned that I caught a pickpocket trying to rob me in the tunnelbana at T-Centralen a month ago. There is absolutely no imaginable connection between what happened on Lundagatan and what happened in Enskede.”

“But you didn't report the attack to the police?”

“No.” Blomkvist paused. “Lisbeth Salander is a very private person. I considered going to the police but decided it was up to her to do that if she wanted to. And I wanted to speak to her first.”

“Which you haven't done?”

“I haven't spoken to her since the day after Christmas a year ago.”

“Why did your—if
relationship
is the right word—why did it end?”

Blomkvist's eyes darkened.

“I don't know. She broke off contact with me—it happened practically overnight.”

“Did something happen between you?”

“No, not if you mean an argument or anything like that. One day we were good friends. The next day she didn't answer her telephone. Then she melted into thin air and was gone from my life.”

Bublanski contemplated Blomkvist's explanation. It sounded honest and was supported by the fact that Armansky had described her disappearance from Milton Security in similar terms. Something had apparently happened to Salander during the winter a year earlier. He turned to Berger.

“Do you know Salander too?”

“I met her once. Could you tell us why you're asking questions about her in connection with Enskede?” she said.

Bublanski shook his head. “She has been linked to the crime scene. That's all I can say. But I have to admit that the more I hear about Lisbeth Salander the more surprised I am. What is she like as a person?”

“In what respect?” Blomkvist said.

“How would you describe her?”

“Professionally—one of the best fact finders I have ever come across.”

Berger glanced at Blomkvist and bit her lower lip. Bublanski was convinced that some piece of the puzzle was missing and that they knew something they were unwilling to tell him.

“And privately?”

Blomkvist paused for a long moment before he spoke.

“She is a very lonely and odd person,” Blomkvist said. “Socially introverted. Doesn't like talking about herself. At the same time she's a person with a strong will. She has morals.”

“Morals?”

“Yes. Her own particular moral standards. You can't talk her into doing anything against her will. In her world, things are either right or wrong, so to speak.”

Again Blomkvist had described her in the same terms as Armansky had. Two men who knew her, and the same evaluation.

“Do you know Dragan Armansky?”

“We've met a few times. I took him out for a beer once last year when I was trying to find out where Lisbeth had got to.”

“And you say that she was a competent researcher?”

“The best,” Blomkvist said.

Bublanski drummed his fingers on the table and looked down at the flow of people on Götgatan. He felt strangely torn. The psychiatric reports that Faste had retrieved from the Guardianship Agency claimed that Salander was a deeply disturbed and possibly violent person who was for all intents and purposes mentally handicapped. What Armansky and Blomkvist had told him painted a very different picture from the one established by medical experts over several years of study. Both men conceded that Salander was an odd person, but both held her in high regard professionally.

Blomkvist had also said that he had been “seeing her” for a period—which indicated a sexual relationship. Bublanski wondered what rules applied for individuals who had been declared incompetent. Could Blomkvist have implicated himself in some form of abuse by exploiting a person in a position of dependency?

“And how did you perceive her social handicap?” he asked.

“What handicap?”

“The guardianship and her psychiatric problems.”

“Guardianship?”

“What psychiatric problems?” Berger said.

Bublanski looked in astonishment from Blomkvist to Berger and back.
They didn't know. They really did not know
. Bublanski was suddenly
angry at both Armansky and Blomkvist, and especially at Berger with her elegant clothes and her fashionable office looking down on Götgatan.
Here she sits
,
telling people what to think
. But he directed his annoyance at Blomkvist.

“I don't understand what's wrong with you and Armansky,” he said.

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Lisbeth Salander has been in and out of psychiatric units since she was a teenager. A psychiatric assessment and a judgment in the district court determined that she was and still is unable to look after her own affairs. She was declared incompetent. She has a documented violent tendency and has been in trouble with the authorities all her life. And now she is a prime suspect in a murder investigation. And you and Armansky talk about her as though she were some sort of princess.”

Blomkvist sat motionless, staring at Bublanski.

“I'll put it another way,” Bublanski said. “We were looking for a connection between Salander and the couple in Enskede. It turns out that you not only discovered the victims, you are also the connection. Do you have anything to say to this?”

Blomkvist leaned back, closed his eyes, and tried to make heads or tails of the situation. Salander suspected of murdering Svensson and Johansson?
That can't be right. It doesn't make sense
. Was she capable of murder? Blomkvist suddenly saw in his mind's eye her expression from two years ago when she had gone after Martin Vanger with a golf club.
There was no shadow of doubt that she could have killed him. But she didn't
,
because she had to save my life
. He unconsciously reached for his neck, where Vanger's noose had been. But Svensson and Johansson
… it doesn't make any logical sense whatsoever
.

He was aware that Bublanski was watching him closely. Like Armansky, Blomkvist had to make a choice. Sooner or later he would have to decide which corner of the ring he was going to be in if Salander was accused of murder.
Guilty or not guilty
?

Before he managed to say anything, the telephone on Berger's desk rang. She picked it up, listened, then handed the receiver to Bublanski.

“Somebody called Faste wants to speak to you.”

Bublanski took the receiver and listened attentively. Blomkvist and Berger could see his expression change.

“When are they going in?”

Silence.

“What's the address again? Lundagatan. And the number? OK. I'm in the vicinity. I'll drive there.”

Bublanski stood up.

“Excuse me, but I'll have to cut this conversation short. Salander's guardian has just been found shot dead. She's now being formally charged, in absentia, with three murders.”

Berger's mouth dropped open. Blomkvist looked as if he had been struck by lightning.

The occupation of the apartment on Lundagatan was an uncomplicated procedure from a tactical perspective. Faste and Andersson leaned on the hood of their car keeping watch while the armed response team, supplied with backup weapons, occupied the stairwell and took control of the building and the rear courtyard.

The team swiftly confirmed what Faste and Andersson already knew. No-one opened the door when they rang the bell.

Faste looked down Lundagatan, which was blocked off from Zinkensdamm to Högalid Church, to the great annoyance of the passengers on the number 66 bus.

One bus had been stuck inside the barriers on the hill and could not go forward or back. Eventually Faste went over and ordered a patrolman to step aside and let the bus through. A large number of onlookers were watching the commotion from upper Lundagatan.

“There has to be a simpler way,” Faste said.

“Simpler than what?” Andersson said.

“Simpler than sending in the storm troopers every time a stray hooligan has to be brought in.”

Andersson refrained from commenting.

“After all, she's less than five feet tall and weighs about ninety pounds.”

It had been decided that it was not necessary to break down the door with a sledgehammer. Bublanski joined them as they waited for a locksmith to drill out the lock, and then he stepped aside so that the troops could enter the apartment. It took about eight seconds to eyeball the 500 square feet and confirm that Salander was not hiding under the bed, in the bathroom, or in a wardrobe. Then Bublanski was given the all clear to come in.

The three detectives looked with curiosity around the impeccably kept and tastefully furnished apartment. The furniture was simple. The kitchen chairs were painted in different pastel colours. There were attractive black-and-white photographs in frames on the walls. In the hall was
a shelf with a CD player and a large collection of CDs. Everything from hard rock to opera. It all looked arty. Elegant. Tasteful.

Andersson inspected the kitchen and found nothing out of the ordinary. He looked through a stack of newspapers and checked the counter-top, the cupboards, and the freezer in the refrigerator.

Faste opened the wardrobes and the drawers of the chest in the bedroom. He whistled when he found handcuffs and a number of sex toys. In the wardrobe he found some latex clothing that his mother would have been embarrassed even to look at.

“There's been a party here,” he said out loud, holding up a patent-leather outfit that according to the label was designed by Domino Fashion—whatever that was.

Bublanski looked in the desk in the hall, where he found a small pile of unopened letters addressed to Salander. He looked through the pile and saw that they were bills and bank statements, and one personal letter. It was from Mikael Blomkvist. So far, Blomkvist's story held up. Then he bent down and picked up the mail on the doormat, stained with footprints from the armed response team. It consisted of a magazine,
Thai Pro Boxing
, the free newspaper
Södermalm News
, and three envelopes addressed to Miriam Wu.

Bublanski was struck by an unpleasant suspicion. He went into the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. He found a box of paracetamol painkillers and a half-full tube of Citodon, paracetamol with codeine. Citodon was a prescription drug. The medicine was prescribed for Miriam Wu. There was one toothbrush in the medicine cabinet.

“Faste, why does it say
SALANDER-WU
on the door?” he said.

“No idea.”

“OK, let me put it this way—why is there mail on the doormat addressed to a Miriam Wu, and why is there a prescription tube of Citodon in the medicine cabinet made out to Miriam Wu? Why is there only one toothbrush? And why—when you consider that Lisbeth Salander is, according to our information, only one hand's breadth tall—do those leather pants you're holding up fit a person who is at least five foot eight?”

There was a brief, embarrassed silence in the apartment. It was broken by Andersson.

“Shit,” he said.

Malm felt drained and miserable when he finally got home after the unplanned day at work. He smelled the aroma of something spicy from the kitchen and went in and hugged his boyfriend.

“How are you feeling?” Arnold Magnusson asked.

“Like a sack of shit.”

“I've been hearing about it on the news all day long. They haven't released the names yet. But it sounds fucking awful.”

“It
is
fucking awful. Dag worked for us. He was a friend and I liked him a lot. I didn't know his girlfriend, but both Micke and Erika did.”

Malm looked around the kitchen. They had moved into the apartment on Allhelgonagatan only three months ago. Suddenly it felt like another world.

The telephone rang. They looked at each other and decided to ignore it. Then the answering machine switched on and they heard a familiar voice.

“Christer. Are you there? Pick up.”

It was Berger calling to tell him that the police were now looking for Blomkvist's former researcher, who was the prime suspect for the murders of Svensson and Johansson.

Malm received the news with a sense of unreality.

Cortez had missed the commotion on Lundagatan for the simple reason that he had been standing outside the police press office at Kungsholmen
the whole time, from which no news had been released since the press conference earlier that afternoon.