Stieg Larsson - The Girl who played with Fire

In other words, he was quite predictable. She thought for a while and then created a new document called [To MikBlom] and wrote a single word.

Zala.

That would give him something to think about.

She was still sitting there thinking when she noticed that Blomkvist had booted up his computer. His reply came shortly after he read her message:

Lisbeth,

You damn troublesome person. Who the hell is Zala? Is he the link? Do you know who murdered Dag & Mia? If so, tell me so we can solve this mess and go to sleep. Mikael.

OK. Time to hook him.

She created another document and called it [Kalle Blomkvist]. She knew that would upset him. Then she wrote a brief message:

You’re the journalist. Find out.

As expected, he replied at once with an appeal for her to listen to reason, and he tried to play on her feelings. She smiled and closed her connection to his hard drive.

Now that she had started snooping around, she moved on and opened Armansky’s hard drive. She read the report about herself that he had written the day after Easter. It was not clear to whom the report was addressed, but she assumed that the only reasonable explanation was that Armansky was working with the police to help bring her in.

She spent a while going through Armansky’s email, but found nothing of interest. Just as she was about to disconnect, she lit upon a message to the technical chief at Milton Security with instructions for the installation of a hidden surveillance camera in his office.

Bingo.

She looked at the date and saw that the message was sent about an hour after her social call in February.

That meant she would have to adjust certain routines in the automatic surveillance system before she paid another visit to Armansky’s office.

On Tuesday morning Salander accessed the police criminal register and looked up Alexander Zalachenko. He was not listed, which was not surprising, since as far as she knew he had never been convicted of a crime in Sweden and was not even in the national database.

When she had accessed the criminal register she used the identity of Superintendent Douglas Skiöld of the Malmö police. She got a mild shock when her computer suddenly pinged and an icon in the menu toolbar started blinking to signal that someone was looking for her in the ICQ chat programme.

Her first impulse was to pull the plug and shut down. Then she thought about it. Skiöld had not had the ICQ programme on his machine. Very few older people did.

Which meant that someone was looking for her. And there were not many alternatives to choose from. She clicked on ICQ and typed the words:

– What is it, Plague?

– You are hard to find, Wasp. Ever read your emails?

– How did you find me?

– By Skiöld. I have the same list. I thought you chose the user with the widest access rights.

– What do you want?

– Who is that Zalachenko you were looking for?

– MYOB.

– ...?

– Mind Your Own Business.

– What's happening?

– Fuck off, Plague!

– I thought that it was me, as you say, had problems of social adaptation. But according to the newspapers compared to you I am normality personified.

– I

– Another finger for you. Need help? [4] Icq talk was absent in the english version of the book. Translated from the russian version by Джим.

Salander hesitated. First Blomkvist and now Plague. Was there no end to all the people coming to her rescue? The problem with Plague was that he was a 350-pound recluse who communicated almost exclusively via the Internet and made Salander look like a miracle of social skills. When she didn’t answer, Plague typed another line:

– Are you still there? Need help getting out of the country?

– No.

– Why did you shoot?

– Piss off.

– Do you think killing more people? And if so, should I worry? Surely I am the only person who can trace you.

– Mind your own business, do not have to worry about.

– I do not worry. Find me on hotmail if you need anything. Guns? Passport again?

– You're a sociopath.

– Look who's talking. [5] The same as in note 4

Lisbeth disconnected from ICQ and sat down on the sofa to think. Ten minutes later she sent an email to Plague’s hotmail address.

Prosecutor Richard Ekström, leader of the preliminary investigation, lives in Täby. He’s married with two children and has a broadband connection to his house. I need access to his laptop or home computer. I need to read him in real time. Hostile takeover with mirrored hard drive.

She knew that Plague himself seldom left his apartment in Sundbyberg, so she hoped he had cultivated some pimply teenager to do the field work. There was no need to sign the message. She got an answer fifteen minutes later.

– How much are you paying?

– 10,000 to your account + expenses and 5,000 to your assistant.

– I’ll be in touch.

On Thursday morning she had one email from Plague containing an FTP address. Salander was amazed. She had not expected a result for at least two weeks. Doing a hostile takeover, even with Plague’s brilliant programme and his specially designed hardware, was a laborious process that required slipping bits of information into a computer one kilobyte at a time until a simple piece of software had been created. How rapidly it could be done depended on how often Ekström used his computer, and then it should normally take another few days to transfer all the data to a mirrored hard drive. Forty-eight hours was not merely exceptional, it was theoretically impossible. Salander was impressed. She pinged his ICQ:

– How did you manage it?

– Four family members have computers. You will not believe – they have no firewall! Zero safety. I had only to get hooked to the cable and load. My expenditure was 6000 kronor. Can you afford this much?

– Yes. Plus a bonus for urgency. [6] Same as note 4.

She thought for a moment and then transferred 30,000 kronor to Plague’s account via the Internet. She did not want to frighten him off with excessive amounts. Then she made herself comfortable on her Verksam IKEA chair and opened Ekström’s laptop.

Within an hour she had read all the reports that Inspector Bublanski had sent to Ekström. Salander suspected that, technically, reports like these were not allowed to leave police headquarters. It proved once again the theory that no security system is a match for a stupid employee. Through Ekström’s computer she gleaned several important pieces of information.

First, she discovered that Armansky had assigned two of his staff to join Bublanski’s investigative team without remuneration, which in practice meant that Milton Security was sponsoring the police hunt for her. Their assignment was to assist in the arrest of Salander by all possible means. Thanks a lot, Armansky. I’ll remember that. She frowned when she discovered which employees they were. Bohman she had taken for a straight arrow, and he had been perfectly decent in his behaviour towards her. Hedström was a corrupt nobody who had exploited his position at Milton Security to swindle one of the company’s clients.

Salander had a selective morality. She had nothing at all against swindling the company’s clients herself – provided they deserved it – but if she had accepted a job with a confidentiality agreement in it, she would never have broken it.

Salander soon discovered that the person who had leaked the information to the media was Ekström himself. This was evident from an email in which he answered follow-up questions about both Salander’s psychiatric report and the connection between her and Miriam Wu.