Stieg Larsson - The Girl who played with Fire

“The next one hits your kneecap,” Blomkvist said in a loud, clear voice of command.

Niedermann got down on his knees, blinded by the headlights.

“Who are you?” he said.

Blomkvist reached his other hand into the pocket in the car door and took out the flashlight he had bought at the gas station. He shone the beam into Niedermann’s face.

“Hands behind your back,” Blomkvist commanded. “And spread your legs.”

He waited until Niedermann reluctantly obeyed the orders.

“I know who you are. If you even begin to do anything stupid I’ll shoot you without warning. I’m aiming at your lung below your shoulder blade. You might be able to take me… but it’ll cost you.”

He put the flashlight on the ground and took off his belt and made a noose with it, exactly as he’d learned two decades earlier as a rifleman in Kiruna when he did his military service. He stood between the giant’s legs, looped the noose around his arms and pulled it tight above the elbows. The mighty Niedermann was for all practical purposes helpless.

And then what? Blomkvist looked around. They were completely alone on a road in the dark. Paolo Roberto hadn’t been exaggerating when he described Niedermann. The man was huge. The question was only why such a massive guy had come running in the middle of the night as if he were being chased by the Devil himself.

“I’m looking for Lisbeth Salander. I assume you met her.”

Niedermann did not answer.

“Where is Lisbeth Salander?”

Niedermann gave him a peculiar look. He didn’t understand what was happening to him on this strange night when everything seemed to be going wrong.

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.

Stieg Larsson (1954–2004) was a Swedish writer and journalist.

Prior to his sudden death of a heart attack in November 2004 he finished three detective novels in his trilogy "The Millenium-series" which were published posthumously; "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo", "The Girl Who Played With Fire" and "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest". Altogether, his trilogy has sold more than 12 million copies worldwide (summer of 2009), and he was the second bestselling author in the world 2008.

Before his career as a writer, Stieg Larsson was mostly known for his struggle against racism and right-wing extremism. Starting in the late 1970's, he combined his work as a graphic designer with holding lectures on right-wing extremism for the Scotland Yard. During the following years he became an expert on the subject and has held many lectures as well as written many novels on the subject. In 1995, when 8 persons were killed by neo-Nazis in Sweden, he was the main force behind the founding of the Expo-foundation, a group intended on exposing neo-Nazi activity in Sweden. From 1999 and on, he was appointed chief editor of the magazine Expo.