Stieg Larsson - The Girl who played with Fire

On the other hand, Teleborian had confirmed that Salander’s violence was directed at people whom she regarded as a threat or who had offended her.

He had seemed genuinely protective, as if he did not want his former patient to come to any harm. All the same, the investigation had been based largely on his analysis of her – as a sociopath on the border of psychosis.

But Blomkvist’s theory was attractive.

She chewed her lower lip as she tried to visualize some alternative scenario to Salander the killer, working alone. Finally she wrote a line in her notebook.

Two completely separate motives? Two murderers? One murder weapon?

She had a fleeting thought that she could not quite pin down, but it was something she intended to ask Bublanski at the morning meeting. She could not explain why she suddenly felt so uncomfortable with the theory of Salander as a killer working alone.

Then she called it a night, resolutely shut down her computer, and locked the disks in her desk drawer. She put on her jacket, turned off the desk lamp, and was just about to lock the door to her office when she heard a sound further down the corridor. She frowned. She had thought she was alone in the department. She walked down the corridor to Faste’s office. His door was ajar and she heard him talking on the phone.

“It undeniably links things together,” she heard him say.

She stood undecided for a moment before she took a deep breath and knocked on the doorjamb. Faste looked up in surprise. She waved.

“Modig is still in the building,” Faste said into the phone. He listened and nodded without releasing her from his gaze. “OK, I’ll tell her.” He hung up. “Bubble,” he said in explanation. “What do you want?”

“What is it that links things together?” she asked.

He gave her a searching look. “Were you eavesdropping?”

“No, but your door was open and I heard you say that just as I knocked.”

Faste shrugged. “I called Bubble to tell him that the NFL have finally come up with something useful.”

“What’s that?”

“Svensson had a mobile with a Comviq cash card. They’ve produced a list of calls which confirms the conversation with Mikael Blomkvist at 7:30 p.m. That’s when Blomkvist was at dinner at his sister’s house.”

“Good. But I don’t think Blomkvist has anything to do with the murders.”

“Me neither. But Svensson made another call that night. At 9:34. The call lasted three minutes.”

“And?”

“He called Nils Bjurman’s home phone. In other words, there’s a link between the two murders.”

Modig sank down into Faste’s visitor’s chair.

“Sure. Have a seat, be my guest.”

She ignored him.

“OK. What does the time frame look like? At 7:30 Svensson calls Blomkvist and sets up a meeting for later that evening. At 9:30 Svensson calls Bjurman. Just before closing time at 10:00 Salander buys cigarettes at the corner shop in Enskede. Soon after 11:00 Blomkvist and his sister arrive in Enskede and at 11:11 he calls the police.”

“That seems to be correct, Miss Marple.”

“But it isn’t correct at all. According to the pathologist, Bjurman was shot between 10:00 and 11:00 that night. By which time Salander was in Enskede. We’ve been working on the assumption that Salander shot Bjurman first and then the couple in Enskede.”

“That doesn’t mean a thing. I talked with the pathologist again. We didn’t find Bjurman until the night after, almost twenty-four hours later. The pathologist says that the time of death could be plus or minus an hour.”

“But Bjurman must have been the first victim, since we found the murder weapon in Enskede. That would mean that she shot Bjurman sometime after 9:34 and then drove to Enskede, where she bought her cigarettes. Was there enough time to get from Odenplan to Enskede?”

“Yes, there was. She didn’t take public transportation as we assumed earlier. She had a car. Sonny Bohman and I test-drove the route and we had plenty of time.”

“But then she waits for an hour before she shoots Svensson and Johansson? What was she doing all that time?”

“She had coffee with them. We have her prints on the cup.”

He gave her a triumphant look. Modig sighed and sat silently for a minute.

“Hans, you’re looking at this like it’s some sort of prestige thing. You can be a fucking shithead and you drive people crazy sometimes, but I actually knocked on your door to ask you to forgive me for slapping you. I was out of line.”

He looked at her for a long moment. “Modig, you might think I’m a shithead. But I think you’re unprofessional and don’t have any business being a police officer. At least not at this level.”

Modig weighed various replies, but in the end she just shrugged and stood up.

“Well, now we know where we stand.”

“We know where we stand. And believe me, you’re not going to last long here.”

Modig closed the door behind her harder than she meant to. Don’t let that fucking asshole get to you. She went down to the garage.

Faste smiled contentedly at the closed door.

Blomkvist had just gotten home when his mobile rang.

“Hi. It’s Malin. Can you talk?”

“Sure.”

“Something struck me yesterday.”

“Tell me.”

“I was going through all the clippings we have here on the hunt for Salander, and I found that spread on her time at the psychiatric clinic. What I’m wondering is why there’s such a big gap in her biography.”

“What gap?”

“There’s plenty of stuff about the trouble she was mixed up in at school. Trouble with teachers and classmates and so on.”

“I remember that. There was even a teacher who said she was afraid of Lisbeth when she was eleven.”

“Birgitta Miåås.”

“That’s the one.”

“And there are details about Lisbeth at the psychiatric clinic. Plus a lot of stuff about her with foster families during her teens and about the assault in Gamla Stan.”

“So what are you thinking?”

“She was taken into the clinic just before her thirteenth birthday.”

“Yes?”

“And there isn’t a word about why she was committed. Obviously if a twelve-year-old is committed, something has to have happened. And in Lisbeth’s case it was most likely some huge outburst that should have shown up in her biography. But there’s nothing there.”

Blomkvist frowned. “Malin, I have it from a source I trust that there’s a police report on Lisbeth dated March 1991, when she was twelve. It’s not in the file. I was at the point of asking you to dig around for it.”

“If there’s a report then it would have to be a part of her file. It would be breaking the law not to have it there. Have you really checked?”

“No, but my source says that it’s not in the file.”

Eriksson paused for a second. “And how reliable is your source?”

“Very.”

Eriksson and Blomkvist had arrived at the same conclusion simultaneously.

“Säpo,” Eriksson said.

“Björck,” Blomkvist said.

Per-Åke Sandström, a freelance journalist in his late forties, came home just after midnight. He was a little drunk and felt a lump of panic lurking in his stomach. He had spent the day doing nothing. He was, quite simply, terrified.

It was almost two weeks since Svensson had been killed. Sandström had watched the TV news that night in shock. He had felt a wave of relief and hope – Svensson was dead, so maybe the book about trafficking, in which Sandström would be exposed, was history.

He hated Svensson. He had begged and pleaded, he had crawled for that fucking pig.