Stieg Larsson - The Girl who played with Fire

“I know.”

Paolo Roberto had a dangerous glint in his eye. “If she’s innocent she’s been subjected to one of the worst fucking legal scandals in history. She’s been painted as a murderer by the media and the police, and after all the shit that’s been written…”

“I know.”

“What can we do? Can I help out somehow?”

“The best help we could offer would be to find an alternative suspect. That’s what I’m working on. The next best thing would be to get to her before some police thug shoots her dead. Lisbeth isn’t the type of person who would give herself up voluntarily.”

“So how do we find her?”

“I don’t know. But there is one thing you could do. Something practical, if you have the time and energy.”

“My girlfriend is away all week. So I do have the time and the energy.”

“Well, I was thinking that since you’re a boxer…”

“Yes?”

“Lisbeth has a girlfriend, Miriam Wu. You’ve probably read about her.”

“Better known as the S&M dyke… Yeah, I’ve read about her.”

“I have her mobile number and I’ve been trying to get hold of her. She hangs up as soon as she hears it’s a reporter.”

“I don’t blame her.”

“I don’t really have time to chase after Fröken Wu. But I read somewhere that she trains in kickboxing. I was thinking that if a famous boxer wanted to get in touch with her…”

“I’m with you. And you’re hoping that she might provide a lead to Salander.”

“When the police interviewed her she said she had no idea where Lisbeth was staying. But it’s worth a try.”

“Give me her number. I’ll talk to her.”

Blomkvist gave him the number and the address on Lundagatan.

Björck had spent the weekend analysing his situation. His prospects, he decided, were hanging by a fraying thread, and he would have to make the most of the hand he’d been dealt.

Blomkvist was a fucking swine. The only question was whether he could be persuaded to keep his mouth shut about… about the fact that Björck had hired the services of those bitches. It was a chargeable offence, and he would be fired if it were made public. The press would rip him to shreds. A member of the Security Police who exploited teenage prostitutes… If only those fucking cunts hadn’t been so young.

Sitting here doing nothing would certainly seal his fate. Björck was smart enough not to have said anything to Blomkvist. He had read his expression. The man was in agony. He wanted information. But he was going to be forced to pay for it, and the price was his silence.

Zala brought a whole new dimension to the murder investigation.

Svensson had been hunting Zala.

Bjurman had been hunting Zala.

And Superintendent Björck was the only one who knew that there was a link between Zala and Bjurman, which meant that Zala was a clue to the murders at Enskede and Odenplan.

This created another serious problem for Björck’s future well-being. He was the one who had given Bjurman the information about Zalachenko – as a friendly gesture and in spite of the fact that the file was still top secret. That was a detail, but it meant that he had committed another chargeable offence.

Furthermore, since Blomkvist’s visit on Friday he had involved himself in yet one more crime. As a police officer, if he had information in a murder investigation it was his duty to inform his colleagues immediately. But if he gave the information to Bublanski or Ekström, he would implicate himself. It would all eventually come out. Not just the whores, but the whole Zalachenko affair.

On Saturday he had gone to his office at the Security Police on Kungsholmen. He had picked out all the old documents about Zalachenko and read through them. He was the one who had written the reports, but it was many years ago. The oldest of the documents were almost thirty years old. The most recent was ten years old.

Zalachenko.

A slippery fucker.

Zala.

Björck himself had called him that in his report, although he could not remember ever having used the name.

But the connection was crystal clear. To Enskede. To Bjurman. And to Salander.

Björck still did not understand how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together, but he thought he knew why Salander had been in Enskede. He could also easily imagine her flying into a rage and killing Svensson and Johansson, either because they had refused to cooperate or because they had provoked her. She had a motive, known only to Björck and perhaps two or three other people in the whole country.

She is completely insane. I hope to God that some officer shoots her dead when she’s apprehended. She knows. She could break the whole story wide open if she talked.

No matter how Björck looked at his situation, Blomkvist was his only possible way out. And that was the one thing that mattered to him. He felt a growing desperation. Blomkvist had to be persuaded to treat him as a confidential source and to keep quiet about his… foolish escapades with those fucking whores. Damn, if only Salander would blow Blomkvist’s head off too.

He looked at Zalachenko’s phone number and weighed the pros and cons of contacting him. He was incapable of making up his mind.

Blomkvist had made a point, at every stage, of summing up his thinking on the investigation. When Paolo Roberto left, he spent an hour on the task. It had turned into a journal in which he let his thoughts run free while at the same time he meticulously wrote up every conversation and every meeting, as well as all the research he was doing. He encrypted the document using PGP and emailed copies to Berger and Eriksson, so that his colleagues were kept up to date.

Svensson had concentrated on Zala in the last weeks of his life. The name had cropped up in his final telephone conversation with Blomkvist three hours before he was killed. Björck claimed to know something about Zala.

Blomkvist ran through everything he had unearthed about Björck, which was not very much.

Gunnar Björck was sixty-two years old, unmarried, born in Falun. Had been in the police force since he was twenty-one. Began as a patrol officer, but studied law and ended up in Säpo, the Security Police, when he was twenty-six or twenty-seven. That was in 1969 or 1970, just at the end of Per Gunnar Vinge’s time as chief there.

Vinge was dismissed after making the claim in a conversation with Ragnar Lassinanti, the governor of Norrbotten County, that Olof Palme was spying for the Russians. Then came the Internal Bureau affair, and Holmér, and the Letter Carrier, and the Palme assassination, and one scandal after another.

Björck’s career between 1970 and 1985 was largely undocumented, which was not so odd, since anything that had to do with Säpo activities was confidential. He could have been sharpening pencils in the stationery department or he could have been a secret agent in China.

In October 1985 Björck moved to the Swedish Embassy in Washington for two years. In 1988, back with Säpo in Stockholm. In 1996 he became a public figure: appointed deputy bureau chief of the immigration division (whatever that entailed). After 1996 he made various statements to the media, in connection with the deportation of suspect Arabs, and drew particular attention in 1998 when several Iraqi diplomats were expelled.

What does any of this have to do with Salander and the murders of Svensson and Johansson? Maybe nothing.

But Björck knows about Zala.

There has to be a connection.

Berger told no-one, not even her husband, from whom she rarely kept secrets, that she was going to Svenska Morgon-Posten. She had about a month left at Millennium. The anxiety was getting to her. The days would rush by and suddenly she would be facing her last day there.