Stieg Larsson - The Girl who played with Fire

“You look familiar. Have we met before?”

“I think not,” Blomkvist said.

“I’m sure I’ve seen you somewhere.”

“Maybe in the newspapers.”

“What did you say your name was?”

“Mikael Blomkvist. I’m a journalist, I work at Millennium magazine.”

Björck looked confused. Then the penny dropped. Kalle Blomkvist. The Wennerström affair. But still he did not understand the implications.

“Millennium? I didn’t know you did market research.”

“Once in a while. I’d like to begin by asking you to look at three photographs and tell me which one you like best.”

Blomkvist put images of three girls on the table. One had been downloaded from a porn site on the Internet. The other two were blown-up passport photographs.

Björck turned pale as a corpse.

“I don’t get it.”

“No? This is Lidia Komarova, sixteen years old, from Minsk. Next to her is Myang So Chin, goes by the name of Jo-Jo, from Thailand. She’s twenty-five. And lastly we have Yelena Barasova, nineteen, from Tallinn. You bought sex from all three of these women, and my question is: which one did you like best? Think of it as market research.”

“To sum up, you claim that you have known Lisbeth Salander for about three years. Without expecting to be remunerated she signed over her apartment to you this spring and moved somewhere else. You have sex with her once in a while when she gets in touch, but you don’t know where she lives, what kind of work she does, or how she supports herself. Do you expect me to believe that?”

Miriam Wu glowered at him. “I don’t give a shit what you believe. I haven’t done anything illegal, and how I choose to live my life and who I have sex with is none of your business or anyone else’s.”

Bublanski sighed. That morning, when he had received news of Miriam Wu’s reappearance, he had felt a great sense of relief. Finally a breakthrough. But the information he was getting from her was anything but enlightening. It was most peculiar, in fact. And the problem was that he believed her. She gave clear, intelligible answers, without hesitation. She cited places and dates when she had met Salander, and she gave such a precise account of how it came about that she had moved to Lundagatan that Bublanski and Modig both strongly felt that such a bizarre story had to be true.

Faste had listened to the interview with mounting exasperation, but he managed to keep his mouth shut. He thought that Bublanski was too lenient by far with the Chinese girl, who was an arrogant bitch and used a lot of words to avoid answering the only question that mattered. Namely, where in burning hell was that fucking whore Salander hiding?

But Wu did not know where Salander was. She did not know what kind of work Salander did. She had never heard of Milton Security. She had never heard of Dag Svensson or Mia Johansson, and consequently she could not provide a single scrap of information of any interest. She had had no idea that Salander was under guardianship, or that in her teens she had been committed, or that she had copious psychiatric assessments on her CV.

On the other hand, she was willing to confirm that she and Salander had gone to Kvarnen and kissed and then gone home to Lundagatan and parted early the next morning. Days later Miriam Wu had taken the train to Paris and missed all the headlines in the Swedish papers. Apart from a quick visit to return her car keys, she had not seen Salander since that evening at Kvarnen.

“Car keys?” Bublanski asked. “Salander doesn’t own a car.”

Miriam Wu told him that she had a burgundy Honda which was parked outside the apartment building. Bublanski got up and looked at Modig.

“Can you take over the interview?” he said and left the room.

He had to find Holmberg and have him do a forensic examination of a burgundy Honda parked on Lundagatan. And he needed to be alone to think.

Gunnar Björck, assistant chief of the immigration division of the Security Police, now on sick leave, sat ashen and ghostlike in the kitchen with its lovely view of Jungfrufjärden. Blomkvist watched him with a patient, neutral gaze. By now he was sure that Björck had had nothing to do with the murders. Since Svensson had never managed to confront him, Björck had no idea that he was about to be exposed, his name and photograph published in Millennium and in a book.

Björck did offer one valuable piece of information. He knew Nils Bjurman. They had met at the police shooting club, where Björck had been an active member for twenty-eight years. For a time he had even sat on the board along with Bjurman. They weren’t close friends, but they had spent time together and occasionally had dinner.

No, he had not seen Bjurman in several months. The last time he ran into him was the previous summer, when they had been drinking in the same bar. He was sorry that Bjurman had been murdered – and by that psychopath – but he didn’t plan to go to the funeral.

Blomkvist worried about the coincidence but gradually ran out of questions. Bjurman must have known hundreds of people in his professional and social life. The fact that he happened to know someone who turned up in Svensson’s material was neither improbable nor statistically unusual. Blomkvist was himself casually acquainted with a journalist who also appeared in the book.

It was time to wind things up. Björck had gone through all the expected stages. First denial, then – when shown part of the documentation – anger, threats, attempted bribery, and, finally, pleading. Blomkvist had ignored all his outbursts.

“You’ll ruin my life if you publish this stuff,” said Björck.

“Yes.”

“And you’re going to do it.”

“Absolutely”

“Why? Can’t you give me a break? I’m not well.”

“Interesting that you bring up human kindness as an argument.”

“It doesn’t cost a thing to be compassionate.”

“You’re right about that. While you moan about me destroying your life, you’ve enjoyed destroying the lives of young girls against whom you’ve committed crimes. We can prove three of them. God knows how many others there are. Where was your compassion then?”

He picked up his papers and stuffed them into his briefcase.

“I’ll find my own way out.”

As he reached the door, he turned back to Björck.

“Have you ever heard of a man named Zala?” he said.

Björck stared at him. He was still so agitated that he scarcely heard Blomkvist’s question. Then his eyes widened.

Zala!

It’s not possible.

Bjurman!

Could it be possible?

Blomkvist noticed the change and came back to the table.

“Why do you ask about Zala?” Björck said. He looked to be almost in shock.

“He interests me,” Blomkvist said.

Blomkvist could almost see the wheels turning in Björck’s head. After a while Björck grabbed a pack of cigarettes from the windowsill and lit one.

“If I do know something about Zala… what’s it worth to you?”

“It depends on what you know.”

Feelings and thoughts tumbled through Björck’s head.

How the hell could Blomkvist know anything about Zalachenko?

“It’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time,” Björck finally said.

“So you know who he is?”

“I didn’t say that. What are you after?”

“He’s one of the names on the list of people Svensson was investigating.”

“What’s it worth to you?” he said again.

“What’s what worth?”

“If I can lead you to Zala… Would you leave me out of your report?”

Blomkvist sat down slowly. After Hedestad he had decided never again to bargain over a story. He did not intend to bargain with Björck either; no matter what happened he was going to hang him out to dry. But he realized he was unscrupulous enough to do a deal with Björck, then double-cross him. He felt no guilt. Björck was a policeman who had committed crimes. If he knew the name of a possible murderer, then it was his job to intervene – not to use the information to save his own skin. Blomkvist put his hand in his jacket pocket and switched on the tape recorder he had turned off when he got up from the table. “Let’s hear it,” he said.