Stieg Larsson - The Girl who played with Fire

“I’ve met her,” Eriksson said suddenly. “I did an interview with her two years ago when she published a report comparing the way men and women were treated by the courts.”

Svensson smiled. “That did create a stir. But she’s been researching trafficking for five or six years. That’s how we met. I was working on a story about the sex trade on the Internet and got a tip that she knew something about it. And she did. To make a long story short: she and I began working together, I as a journalist and she as a researcher. In the process we started dating, and a year ago we moved in together. She’s working on her doctorate and she’ll be defending her dissertation this year.”

“So she’s writing a doctoral thesis while you…?”

“I’m writing a popular version of her dissertation and adding my own research. As well as a shorter version in the form of the article that I outlined for Erika.”

“OK, you’re working as a team. What’s the story?”

“We have a government that introduced a tough sex-trade law, we have police who are supposed to see to it that the law is obeyed, and we have courts that are supposed to convict sex criminals – we call the johns sex criminals since it has become a crime to buy sexual services – and we have the media, which write indignant articles about the subject, et cetera. At the same time, Sweden is one of the countries that imports the most prostitutes per capita from Russia and the Baltics.”

“And you can substantiate this?”

“It’s no secret. It’s not even news. What’s new is that we have met and talked with a dozen girls. Most of them are fifteen to twenty years old. They come from social misery in Eastern Europe and are lured to Sweden with a promise of some kind of job but end up in the clutches of an unscrupulous sex mafia. Those girls have experienced things that you couldn’t even show in a movie.”

“OK.”

“It’s the focus of Mia’s dissertation, so to speak. But not of the book.”

Everyone was listening intently.

“Mia interviewed the girls. What I did was to chart the suppliers and the client base.”

Blomkvist smiled. He had never met Svensson before, but he felt at once that Svensson was the kind of journalist he liked – someone who got right to the heart of the story. For Blomkvist the golden rule of journalism was that there were always people who were responsible. The bad guys.

“And you found some interesting facts?”

“I can document, for instance, that a civil servant in the Ministry of Justice who was involved with the drafting of the sex-trade law has exploited at least two girls who came to Sweden through the agency of the sex mafia. One of them was fifteen.”

“Whoa.”

“I’ve been working on this story off and on for three years. The book will contain case studies of the johns. There are three policemen, one of whom works for the Security Police, another on the vice squad. There are five lawyers, one prosecutor, and one judge. There are also three journalists, one of whom has written articles on the sex trade. In his private life he’s into rape fantasies with a teenage whore from Tallinn – and in this case it’s not consensual sex play. I’m thinking of naming names. I’ve got watertight documentation.”

Blomkvist whistled. “Since I’ve become publisher again, I’ll want to go over the documentation with a fine-tooth comb,” he said. “The last time I was sloppy about checking sources I ended up spending two months in prison.”

“If you want to publish the story I can give you all the documentation you want. But I have one condition for selling the story to Millennium.”

“Dag wants us to publish the book too,” Berger said.

“Precisely. I want it to be dropped like a bomb, and right now Millennium is the most credible and outspoken magazine in the country. I don’t believe any other publisher would dare publish a book of this type.”

“So, no book, no article?” said Blomkvist.

“I think it sounds seriously good,” Eriksson said. There was a murmur of agreement from Cortez.

“The article and the book are two different things,” Berger said. “For the magazine, Mikael is the publisher and responsible for the content. With regard to the book publication, the author is responsible for the content.”

“I know,” Svensson said. “That doesn’t bother me. The moment the book is published, Mia will file a police report against everyone I name.”

“That’ll stir up a hell of a fuss,” Cortez said.

“That’s only half the story,” said Svensson. “I’ve also been analyzing some of the networks that make money off the sex trade. We’re talking about organized crime.”

“And who’s involved?”

“That’s what’s so tragic. The sex mafia is a sleazy bunch of nobodies. I don’t really know what I expected when I started this research, but somehow we – at least I – had the idea that the ‘mafia’ was a gang in the upper echelon of society. A number of American movies on the subject have probably contributed to that image. Your story about Wennerström” – Svensson turned to Blomkvist – “also showed that sometimes this is actually the case. But Wennerström was an exception in a sense. What I’ve turned up is a gang of brutal and sadistic losers who can hardly read or write; they’re total morons when it comes to organization and strategic thinking. There are connections to bikers and somewhat more organized groups, but in general it’s a bunch of assholes who run the sex business.”

“This is all made clear in your article,” Berger said. “We have laws and a police force and a judicial system that we finance with millions of kronor in taxes each year to deal with the sex trade… and they can’t even nail a bunch of morons.”

“It’s a tremendous assault on human rights, and the girls involved are so far down society’s ladder that they’re of no interest to the legal system. They don’t vote. They can hardly speak Swedish except for the vocabulary they need to set up a trick. Of all crimes involving the sex trade, 99.99 percent are not reported to the police, and those that are hardly ever lead to a charge. This has got to be the biggest iceberg of all in the Swedish criminal world. Imagine if bank robberies were handled with the same nonchalance. It’s unthinkable. Unfortunately I’ve come to the conclusion that this method of handling the problem would not survive for a single day if it weren’t for the fact that the criminal justice system simply does not want to deal with it. Attacks on teenage girls from Tallinn and Riga are not a priority. A whore is a whore. It’s part of the system.”

“And everyone knows it,” Nilsson said.

“So what do you all think?” Berger said.

“I like it,” Blomkvist said. “We’ll be sticking our necks out with that story, and that was the whole point of starting Millennium in the first place.”

“That’s why I’m still working at the magazine. The publisher has to jump off a cliff every now and then,” Nilsson said.

Everyone laughed except Blomkvist.

“He was the only one crazy enough to take on the job of publisher,” Berger said. “We’re going to run this in May. And your book will come out at the same time.”

“Is the book done?” Blomkvist said.

“No. I have the whole outline but only half the text. If you agree to publish the book and give me an advance, then I can work on it full-time. Almost all the research is done. All that’s left are some supplementary details – actually just checking stuff I already know – and confronting the johns I’m going to hang out to dry.”

“We’ll produce it just like the Wennerström book. It’ll take a week to do the layout” – Malm nodded – “and two weeks to print. We’ll complete the confrontations in March and April and sum it all up in a final fifteen-page section. We’ll have the manuscript ready by April 15 so we’ll have time to go over all the sources.”