Stieg Larsson - The Girl who played with Fire

Norén had raven black hair with red and green braids and black eye makeup. She was on the chubby side and wore a short skirt and top which revealed a pierced belly button. She had a belt full of rivets around her hips and looked like something out of a French horror movie.

Faste held up his police ID and said he needed to talk to her. She went on chewing gum and gave him a sceptical look. She pointed to a door and led him into a sort of canteen, where he tripped and almost fell over a bag of trash that had been dumped right by the door. Norén ran water into an empty plastic bottle, drank about half of it, and then sat down at a table and lit a cigarette. She fixed Faste with her clear blue eyes.

“What is Recent Trash Records?”

She seemed bored out of her skull.

“It’s a record company that produces new bands.”

“What’s your role here?”

“I’m the sound engineer.”

Faste gave her a hard look. “Are you trained to do that?”

“Nope. I taught myself.”

“Can you make a living from it?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I’m just curious. I assume you’ve read about Lisbeth Salander in the papers lately.”

She nodded.

“We believe that you know her. Is that correct?”

“Could be.”

“Is it correct or not correct?”

“It depends what you’re looking for.”

“I’m looking for an insane woman who committed a triple murder. I want information about Lisbeth Salander.”

“I haven’t heard from Lisbeth since last year.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“Sometime in the fall two years ago. At Kvarnen. She used to hang out there, but then she stopped coming.”

“Have you tried to get in touch with her?”

“I’ve called her mobile a few times. The number’s been disconnected.”

“And you don’t know how to get hold of her otherwise?”

“No.”

“What is Evil Fingers?”

Norén looked amused. “Don’t you read the papers?”

“What does that mean?”

“They say we’re a Satanist band.”

“Are you?”

“Do I look like a Satanist?”

“What does a Satanist look like?”

“Well, I don’t know who’s dumber – the police or the newspapers.”

“Listen here, young lady, this is a very serious matter.”

“Whether we’re Satanists or not?”

“Stop screwing around and answer the question.”

“And what was the question?”

Faste closed his eyes for a second and thought about a visit he had paid to the police in Greece when he was on vacation some years earlier. The Greek police, despite all their problems, had one big advantage compared to the Swedish police. If this young woman had taken the same attitude over there he would have been able to bend her over and give her three whacks with a baton. He looked at her.

“Was Lisbeth Salander a member of Evil Fingers?”

“I wouldn’t think so.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Lisbeth is probably the most tone-deaf person I’ve ever met.”

“Tone-deaf?”

“She can tell the difference between trumpet and drums, but that’s about as far as her musical talent stretches.”

“I mean, was she in the group Evil Fingers?”

“And I just answered your question. What the hell do you think Evil Fingers is?”

“You tell me.”

“You’re running a police investigation by reading idiotic newspaper articles.”

“Answer the question.”

“Evil Fingers was a rock band. We were a bunch of girls in the mid-nineties who liked hard rock and played for fun. We promoted ourselves with a pentagram and a little ‘Sympathy for the Devil.’ Then the band broke up, and I’m the only one who’s still working in music.”

“And Lisbeth Salander was not, you say, a member of the band?”

“Like I said.”

“So why do our sources claim that Salander was in the band?”

“Because your sources are about as stupid as the newspapers.”

“Explain.”

“There were five of us girls in the band, and we still get together now and then. In the old days we used to meet once a week at Kvarnen. Now it’s about once a month. But we stay in touch.”

“And what do you do when you get together?”

“What do you think people do at Kvarnen?”

Faste sighed. “So you get together to drink.”

“We usually drink beer. And we gossip. What do you do when you get together with your friends?”

“And how does Salander come into the picture?”

“I met her at KomVux several years ago. She used to show up from time to time at Kvarnen and have a beer with us.”

“So Evil Fingers can’t be regarded as an organization?”

Norén looked at him as if he were from another planet.

“Are you dykes?”

“Would you like a punch in the mouth?”

“Answer the question.”

“It’s none of your business what we are.”

“Take it easy. You can’t provoke me.”

“Hello? The police are claiming that Lisbeth murdered three people and you come here to ask me about my sexual preferences. You can go to hell.”

“You know, I could take you in.”

“For what? By the way, I forgot to tell you that I’ve been studying law for three years and my father is Ulf Norén of Norén & Knape, the law firm. See you in court.”

“I thought you worked in the music business.”

“I do this because it’s fun. You think I make a living doing this?”

“I have no idea how you make a living.”

“I don’t make a living as a lesbian Satanist, if that’s what you think. And if that’s the basis of the police search for Lisbeth, then I can see why you haven’t found her.”

“Do you know where she is?”

Norén began rocking her upper body back and forth and let her hands glide up in front of her.

“I can feel that she’s close… Wait a minute, I’ll check my telepathic powers.”

“Cut it out.”

“I’ve already told you I haven’t heard from her for almost two years. I have no idea where she is. So now, if there isn’t anything else…”

Modig hooked up Svensson’s computer and spent the evening cataloguing the contents of his hard drive and the disks. She sat there until 11:00 reading his book.

She came to two realizations. First, that Svensson was a brilliant writer who described the business of the sex trade with compelling objectivity. She wished he could have lectured at the police academy – his knowledge would have been a valuable addition to the curriculum. Faste, for example, could have benefited from Svensson’s insights.

The second realization was that Blomkvist’s theory about Svensson’s research providing a motive for murder was completely valid. Svensson’s planned exposure of prostitutes’ clients would have done more than merely hurt a number of men. It was a brutal revelation. Some of the prominent players, several of whom had handed down verdicts in sex-crime trials or participated in the public debate, would be annihilated.

The problem was that even if a john who risked being exposed had decided to murder Svensson, there was, as yet, no prospect of such a link to Nils Bjurman. He did not feature in Svensson’s material, and that fact not only diminished the strength of Blomkvist’s argument but also reinforced the likelihood of Salander’s being the only possible suspect.

Even if a motive for the murders of Svensson and Johansson was still unclear, Salander had been at the crime scene and her fingerprints were on the murder weapon.

The weapon was also directly linked to the murder of Bjurman. There was a personal connection and a possible motive – the decoration on Bjurman’s abdomen raised the possibility of some form of sexual assault or a sadomasochistic relationship between the two. It was impossible to imagine Bjurman having voluntarily submitted to such a bizarre and painful tattoo. Either he had found pleasure in the humiliation or Salander – if she was the one who had done the tattooing – had first made him powerless. How it had actually happened was not something Modig wanted to speculate about.