Stieg Larsson - The Girl who played with Fire

At 7:30 Blomkvist’s mobile beeped. He’d thought he had shut it off and he almost missed the call as he dug it out of the inside pocket of his jacket, which someone had hung on the coatrack in the hall. It was Svensson.

“Am I interrupting something?”

“Not particularly. I’m at dinner with my sister and a platoon of people from her husband’s family. What’s up?”

“Two things. I’ve tried to get hold of Christer, but he’s not answering.”

“He’s at the theatre with his boyfriend.”

“Damn. I’d promised to meet him at the office tomorrow morning with the photographs and graphics for the book. Christer was going to look at them over the weekend. But Mia has suddenly decided to drive up to see her parents in Dalarna for Easter to show them her thesis. We’ll have to leave early in the morning and some of the pictures I can’t email. Could I messenger them over to you tonight?”

“You could… but look, I’m out in Lännersta. I’ll be here for a while, but I’m coming back into town later. Enskede wouldn’t be that far out of my way. I could drop by and pick them up. Would around 11:00 be OK?”

“That’s fine. The second thing… I don’t think you’re going to like this.”

“Shoot.”

“I stumbled across something I think I had better check out before the book goes to the printer.”

“OK – what is it?”

“Zala, spelled with a Z. ”

“Ah. Zala the gangster. The one people seem to be terrified of and nobody wants to talk about.”

“That’s him. A couple of days ago I came across him again. I believe he’s in Sweden now and that he ought to be in the list of johns in chapter seven.”

“Dag – you can’t start digging up new material three weeks before we go to press.”

“I know. But this is a bit special. I talked to a policeman who had heard some talk about Zala. Anyway, I think it would make sense to spend a couple of days next week checking up on him.”

“Why him? You’ve got plenty of other assholes in the book.”

“This one seems to be an Olympian asshole. Nobody really knows who he is. I’ve got a gut feeling that it would be worth our while to poke around one more time.”

“Don’t ever discount your gut feelings,” Blomkvist said. “But honestly… we can’t push back the deadline. The printer is booked, and the book has to come out simultaneously with the Millennium issue.”

“I know,” Svensson said, sounding dejected.

“I’ll call you later,” Blomkvist said.

Johansson had just brewed a pot of coffee and poured it into the table thermos when the doorbell rang. It was just before 9:00 p.m. Svensson was closer to the door and, thinking it was Blomkvist coming earlier than he had said he would, he opened it without first looking through the peephole. Not Blomkvist. Instead he was confronted by a short, doll-like girl in her late teens.

“I’m looking for Dag Svensson and Mia Johansson,” the girl said.

“I’m Dag Svensson.”

“I’d like to speak with both of you.”

Svensson automatically looked at the clock. Johansson was curious and came into the hall to stand behind her boyfriend.

“It’s a bit late for a visit,” Svensson said.

“I’d like to talk about the book you’re planning on publishing at Millennium.”

Svensson and Johansson looked at each other.

“And who are you?”

“I’m interested in the subject. May I come in, or shall we discuss it here on the landing?”

Svensson hesitated for a second. The girl was a total stranger, and the time of her visit was odd, but she seemed harmless enough, so he held the door open. He showed her to the table in the living room.

“Would you like some coffee?” Johansson said.

“How about first telling us who you are,” Svensson said.

“Yes, please. To the coffee, I mean. My name is Lisbeth Salander.”

Johansson shrugged and opened the table thermos. She had already set out cups in anticipation of Blomkvist’s visit. “And what makes you think I’m publishing a book at Millennium?” Svensson said.

He was suddenly deeply suspicious, but the girl ignored him and turned instead to Johansson. She made a face that could have been a crooked smile.

“Interesting thesis,” she said.

Johansson looked shocked.

“How could you know anything about my thesis?”

“I happened to get hold of a copy,” the girl said cryptically.

Svensson’s annoyance grew. “Now you’re really going to have to explain who you are and what you want.”

The girl’s eyes met his. He suddenly noticed that her irises were so dark that in this light her eyes might be raven black. And perhaps he had underestimated her age.

“I’d like to know why you’re going around asking questions about Zala. Alexander Zala,” Salander said. “And above all I’d like to know exactly what you know about him already.”

Alexander Zala , Svensson thought in shock. He had never known the first name.

The girl lifted her coffee cup and took a sip without releasing him from her gaze. Her eyes had no warmth at all. He suddenly felt vaguely uneasy.

Unlike Blomkvist and the other adults at the dinner party (and despite the fact that she was the birthday girl), Annika Giannini had drunk only light beer and refrained from any wine or aquavit with the meal. So at 10:30 she was stone-cold sober. Since in some respects she took her big brother for a complete idiot who needed to be looked after, she generously offered to drive him home via Enskede. She had already planned to drive him to the bus stop on Värmdövägen, and it wouldn’t take that much longer to go into the city.

“Why don’t you get your own car?” she complained anyway as Blomkvist fastened his seat belt.

“Because unlike you I live within walking distance of my work and need a car about once a year. Besides, I wouldn’t have been able to drive anyway after your husband started serving spirits from Skåne.”

“He’s becoming Swedish. Ten years ago it would have been grappa.”

They spent the ride talking as brothers and sisters do. Apart from a persistent paternal aunt, two less persistent maternal aunts, two distant cousins, and one second cousin, Mikael and Annika had only each other for family. The three-year age difference meant that they had not had much in common during their teens. But they had become closer as adults.

Annika had studied law, and Blomkvist thought of her as a great deal more talented than he was. She sailed through university, spent a few years in the district courts, and then became the assistant to one of the better-known lawyers in Sweden. Then she started her own practice. She had specialized in family law, which gradually developed into work on equal rights. She became an advocate for abused women, wrote a book on the subject, and became a respected name. To top it off, she had become involved politically for the Social Democrats, which prompted Blomkvist to tease her about being an apparatchik. Blomkvist himself had decided early on that he could not combine party membership with journalistic credibility. He never willingly voted, and on the occasions when he felt absolutely obliged to vote he refused to talk about his choices, even with Berger.

“How are you doing?” Annika said as they crossed Skurubron.

“Oh, I’m doing fine.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“What problem?”

“I know you, Micke. You’ve been preoccupied all evening.”

Blomkvist sat in silence for a moment.

“It’s a complicated story. I’ve got two problems right now. One is about a girl I met two years ago who helped me on the Wennerström affair and then just disappeared from my life with no explanation. I haven’t seen hide nor hair of her in more than a year, except for last week.”