Stieg Larsson - The Girl who played with Fire

“A break-in?” Ekström said with undisguised amazement.

“The neighbour called on Sunday evening to say that the police tape on Bjurman’s door had been cut. I checked on it.”

“And?”

“The tape was cut in three places. Probably a razor blade or a Stanley knife. A slick job. It was hard to see.”

“A burglary? There are hooligans who specialize in dead people’s apartments –”

“Not a burglary. I went through the apartment. All the valuables, DVD player and such, were still there. But Bjurman’s car key was lying on the kitchen table.”

“Car key?”

“Jerker was in the apartment on Wednesday to check if we’d missed something. He also checked the car. He swears there wasn’t a car key on the kitchen table when he left the apartment and put the tape back up.”

“Could he have forgotten and left it out? Nobody’s perfect.”

“Jerker never used that key. He used the one on Bjurman’s key ring, which we had already confiscated.”

Bublanski stroked his chin. “So, not a normal break-in then.”

“Someone got into Bjurman’s apartment and sniffed around. It must have happened between Wednesday and Sunday evening, when the neighbour telephoned.”

“Somebody was looking for something. What? Jerker?”

“There’s nothing of any interest left in there, nothing that we didn’t already confiscate.”

“Nothing that we know of, at least. The motive for the murder is still unclear. We assume that Salander is a psychopath, but even psychopaths need motives.”

“What do you suggest?”

“I don’t know. Someone searched Bjurman’s apartment. First question: Who? Second question: Why? What was it we missed?”

“Jerker?”

Holmberg gave a resigned sigh. “OK. I’ll go through the apartment. This time with tweezers.”

Salander woke up at 11:00 on Monday morning. She lay dozing for about half an hour before she got up, put on coffee, and took a shower. Then she made herself some breakfast and sat down at her PowerBook for an update on what was happening in Prosecutor Ekström’s computer and to read the online editions of the papers. Interest in the Enskede murders had evidently declined. Then she opened Svensson’s research folder and read through his notes from his meeting with the journalist Per-Åke Sandström, the john who ran errands for the sex mafia and who knew something about Zala. When she was finished, she poured herself more coffee and sat in her window seat to think.

By 4:00 she had thought enough.

She needed cash. She had three credit cards. One of them was in her own name and so for all practical purposes useless. One was issued to Irene Nesser, but she wanted to avoid using it since identifying herself with Irene Nesser’s passport would be risky. One was issued to Wasp Enterprises and was linked to an account that held about three million kronor and could be replenished with transfers via the Internet. Anyone could use the card, but they would have to identify themselves.

She went into the kitchen, opened a biscuit tin, and took out a wad of banknotes. She had 950 kronor in cash, not a whole lot. Fortunately she also had 1,800 American dollars that had been lying around since she returned from her travels; she could exchange them without ID at a Forex currency window. That improved the situation.

She put on Irene Nesser’s wig, dressed up, and put a change of clothes and a box of theatre makeup in a backpack. Then she set off on her second expedition from Mosebacke. She walked to Folkungagatan and then down to Erstagatan, and got to the Watski shop just before closing time. She bought electrical tape and a block and tackle with eight yards of cotton rope.

She took the number 66 bus back. At Medborgarplatsen she saw a woman waiting for the bus. She did not recognize her at first, but an alarm went off in the back of her mind, and when she looked again she realized that the woman was Irene Flemström, the salaries clerk at Milton Security. She had a new, trendier hairdo. Salander slipped off the bus as Flemström got on. She looked around carefully, searching as always for faces that might be familiar. She walked past the semicircular Bofills Båge apartment building to Södra station and took the local train north.

Inspector Modig shook hands with Berger, who immediately offered her some coffee. She noticed that all the mugs in the kitchenette had logos and ads for political parties and professional organizations.

“They’re mostly from election-night parties and interviews,” Berger explained, handing her a Liberal Youth Party mug.

Modig worked at Svensson’s old desk. Eriksson offered to help, both in explaining what Svensson’s book and article were about and in navigating the research material. Modig was impressed by the scope of it. It had been an irritation for the investigative team that Svensson’s computer was missing and that his work seemed inaccessible. But in fact backups had been made of most of it and had been available all along at the Millennium offices.

Blomkvist was not in the office, but Berger gave Modig a list of the material he had taken from Svensson’s desk, which dealt exclusively with the identity of sources. Modig called Bublanski and explained the situation. They decided that all the material on Svensson’s desk, including Millennium’s computer, would have to be confiscated and that Bublanski would return with a warrant if necessary to requisition the material that Blomkvist had already removed. Modig then drew up a confiscation inventory, and Cortez helped her carry the cardboard boxes down to her car.

On Monday evening Blomkvist was feeling deeply frustrated. He had now checked off ten of the names Svensson had intended to expose. In each instance he had encountered worried, excitable, and shocked men. He estimated their average income at around 400,000 kronor a year. They were a group of pathetic, frightened individuals.

He had not felt, however, that any of them had anything to hide with respect to the murders.

Blomkvist opened his iBook to check whether he had a new message from Salander. He did not. In her previous note she had said that the johns were of no interest and that he was wasting his time with them. He cursed her with a string of expletives. He was hungry, but he did not feel like making himself supper. Besides, he hadn’t been shopping for two weeks, except to buy milk from the corner store. He put on his jacket and went down to the Greek taverna on Hornsgatan and ordered the grilled lamb.

Salander first took a look at the stairwell and at dusk made two cautious circuits of the adjacent buildings. They were low-frame buildings that she suspected were not soundproof and hardly ideal for her purposes. The journalist Sandström lived in a corner apartment on the fourth floor, the highest. Then the stairwell continued up to an attic door. It would have to do.

The problem was that there was no light in any of the apartment’s windows.

She walked to a pizzeria a few streets away, where she ordered a Hawaiian and sat in a corner to read the evening papers. Just before 9:00 she bought a caffè latte at the Pressbyrå kiosk and returned to the building. The apartment was still in darkness. She entered the stairwell and sat on the steps to the attic. From there she had a view of Sandström’s door half a flight down. She drank her latte while she waited.

Inspector Faste finally tracked down Cilla Norén, lead singer of the Satanist group Evil Fingers, at the studio of Recent Trash Records in an industrial building in Älvsjö. It was a cultural collision of about the same magnitude as the Spanish first encountering the Carib Indians.

After several futile attempts at Norén’s parents’ house, Faste had succeeded at the studio, where according to her sister she was “helping out” with the production of a CD by the band Cold Wax from Borlänge. Faste had never heard of the band, which seemed to consist of guys in their twenties. As soon as he entered the corridor outside the studio he was met by a wall of sound that took his breath away. He watched Cold Wax through a window and waited until there was a pause in the cacophony.