Stieg Larsson - The Girl who played with Fire

“I can picture the scene.”

“There was a roar of laughter from half a dozen guys who weighed about twice as much as she did and were obviously a whole lot bigger. I laughed too. It was nothing serious, but we teased her a little. We have a girls’ section too, and I said something stupid about the fact that little chicks were only allowed to box on Thursdays or something like that.”

“She didn’t laugh, I bet.”

“No. She didn’t laugh. She looked at me with those black eyes of hers. Then she reached for a pair of boxing gloves that somebody had left lying around. They weren’t tied up or anything and they were way too big for her. But we weren’t laughing any more. You know what I mean?”

“This doesn’t sound good.”

Paolo Roberto laughed again. “Since I was the instructor I went up and pretended to jab at her, you know, for make-believe.”

“Uh-oh…”

“Right. All of a sudden she whipped out a punch that caught me smack above my mouth. I was just clowning with her and was totally unprepared. She got in two or three punches before I even began to block them. Anyway, she had no muscle strength and it was like being walloped by a feather. But when I started blocking she changed tactics. She boxed instinctively and landed a few more smacks. Then I started blocking seriously and found out that she was quicker than a fucking lizard. If she had been bigger and stronger I would have had a match on my hands.”

“I’m not surprised.”

“And then she switched tactics again and whacked me a good one right in the balls. I felt that one.”

Blomkvist winced.

“Then I jabbed back and got her in the face. I mean, it wasn’t a hard punch or anything, just a pop. Then she kicked me in the shin. Anyway, it was totally freaky. I was three times bigger and heavier and she didn’t have a chance, but she bashed at me as if her life was at stake.”

“You made her angry.”

“I realized that later. And I was ashamed. I mean… we had put up posters and tried to draw in young people, and here she came and asked quite seriously to learn to box, and ran up against a gang of guys who just stood there and made fun of her. I would have lost it, too, if anyone had treated me that way.”

“But you might have thought twice about having a crack at Paolo Roberto!”

“Well, Salander’s problem was that her punches were worthless. So I started training with her. We had her in the girls’ section for a couple of weeks, and she lost several matches because sooner or later somebody would always get a punch in, and then we had to sort of stop and carry her into the locker room because she was so mad and started kicking and biting and slugging us.”

“That sounds like Lisbeth.”

“She never gave up. But finally she had pissed off so many girls that their trainer kicked her out.”

“And then?”

“It was completely impossible to box with her. She only had one style, which we called Terminator Mode. She would try to nail her opponent, and it didn’t matter if it was just a warm-up or friendly sparring. And girls kept going home all scraped up because she had kicked them. That was when I had an idea. I had problems with a guy called Samir. He was seventeen and from Syria. He was a good boxer, powerfully built and with a good jab… but he couldn’t move. He stood still the whole time. So I asked Salander to come to the club one afternoon when I was going to train him. She changed and I put her in the ring with him, headgear and mouthpiece and everything. At first Samir refused to spar with her because she was ‘just a fucking chick,’ all the usual macho crap. So I told him, loud so everyone could hear, that this was no sparring match, and I put up 500 kronor that said she would nail him. To Salander I said that this was no training session and that Samir would pound her in bloody earnest. She looked at me with mistrust. Samir was still standing there babbling when the bell went off. Lisbeth went at him for king and country and thumped him one in the face so he went down on his ass. By then I’d been training her for a whole summer and she was starting to get some muscles and a little power in her punch.”

“I bet your Syrian boy was happy.”

“Well, they talked about that match for months afterwards. Samir took a licking. She won on points. If she’d had more body strength she really could have hurt him. After a while Samir was so frustrated that he started slugging away full force. I was dead afraid he might actually land a punch and we’d have to call an ambulance. She took some bruises when she blocked with her shoulders a few times, and he managed to get her on the ropes because she couldn’t stand up to the force of his blows. But he was nowhere near hitting her for real.”

“I wish I’d seen that.”

“That day the guys in the club began to respect Salander. Especially Samir. So I started putting her in the ring to spar with considerably bigger and heavier guys. She was my secret weapon and it was great training. We arranged sessions so that Lisbeth’s goal was to land five punches on various parts of the body – jaw, forehead, stomach, and so on. And the guys she boxed with had to defend themselves and protect those areas. It turned into sort of a prestige thing to have boxed with Salander. It was like scrapping with a hornet. We actually called her ‘the Wasp,’ and she became like the mascot of the club. I think she even liked it, because one day she came to the club with a wasp tattooed on her neck.”

Blomkvist smiled. He remembered the wasp well. And it was part of the police description of her.

“How long did all this go on?”

“One evening a week for about three years. I was there full-time during that summer and then sporadically after that. The guy who kept up the training with Salander was our junior trainer, Putte Karlsson. Then Salander started working and didn’t have time to come as often, but up until last year she’d be there at least once a month. I saw her a few times a year and did sparring sessions with her. It was good training, and we were sweaty afterwards. She hardly ever talked to anyone. When there was no sparring she would work the heavy bag intensely for two hours, as if it were her mortal enemy.”

Blomkvist made two more espressos. He apologized when he lit a cigarette. Paolo Roberto shrugged.

He had the public reputation of being a cocky type who would say exactly what he thought. Blomkvist quickly saw that he was just as cocky in private, but that he was an intelligent and modest human being. He reminded himself that Paolo Roberto had also made a bid for a political career as a Social Democrat candidate for parliament. He definitely had something between his ears. Blomkvist found he was beginning to like him.

“Why are you coming to me with this story?”

“That girl’s really in the soup, right? I don’t know what to do, but she probably could use a friend in her corner.”

“I agree.”

“Why do you think she’s innocent?”

“It’s hard to explain. Lisbeth is an uncompromising person, but I just don’t believe the story that she could have shot Dag and Mia. Especially not Mia. For one thing, she had no motive –”

“At least none that we know of.”

“Fair enough. Lisbeth would have no problem using violence against somebody who deserved it. But I don’t know. I’ve decided to challenge Bublanski, the detective in charge of the investigation. I think there’s a reason why Dag and Mia were murdered. And I think the reason is somewhere in the story Dag was working on.”

“If you’re right, Salander will need more than a hand to hold when she’s arrested – she’ll need a whole other kind of support.”