Stieg Larsson - The Girl who played with Fire

“Before I shot him?”

“Yes.”

“And he asked about Zala then?”

“Yeah.”

“What did you tell him?”

“Nothing. I couldn’t tell him anything. I admitted that I’d spoken to him on the phone. That was all. I didn’t say anything about the blond monster or what they did to Gustafsson.”

“OK. Tell me exactly what Svensson asked.”

“I… he just wanted to know what I knew about Zala. That was all.”

“And you didn’t tell him anything?”

“Nothing of any use. I don’t know anything.”

She bit her lower lip pensively. There was something he wasn’t saying.

“Who did you tell about Svensson’s visit?”

Sandström seemed to shiver.

Salander waved the Taser.

“I called Harry.”

“When?”

He swallowed. “The night Svensson visited me the first time.”

She kept on for another half hour, but he was just repeating himself, adding details here and there. She stood up and put a hand on the rope.

“You must be one of the sorriest perverts I’ve ever met,” Salander said. “What you did to Ines deserves the death penalty. But I told you that you would live if you answered my questions. I keep my promises.”

She loosened the knot. Sandström collapsed in a slobbering heap on the floor. He saw her put a stool on his coffee table and climb up and unhook the block and tackle. She coiled the rope and stuffed it in a backpack. She went into the bathroom. He heard the water running. When she came back she had washed off the makeup.

Her face looked scrubbed and naked.

“You can cut yourself free.”

She dropped a kitchen knife beside him.

He heard her out in the hall for a long time. It sounded as though she was changing clothes. Then he heard the front door open and close. It took him half an hour to cut off the tape. He first sank down on the sofa, then staggered to his feet and searched the apartment. She had taken his Colt 1911 Government.

Salander arrived home at 4:55 a.m. She took off the Irene Nesser wig and went straight to bed without turning on her computer to see whether Blomkvist had solved the mystery of the missing police report.

She was awake at 9:00 and spent all of Tuesday digging up information about the Ranta brothers.

Atho Ranta had an extensive record in the police criminal files. He was a Finnish citizen from an Estonian family. He came to Sweden in 1971. From 1972 to 1978 he worked as a carpenter for Skånska Concrete Pouring. He was dismissed after being caught stealing from a building site and sentenced to seven months in prison. Between 1980 and 1982 he worked for a smaller builder. He was kicked out after turning up drunk at work several times. For the remainder of the eighties he made a living as a bouncer, a technician at a company that serviced oil-fired boilers, a dishwasher, and a janitor at a school. He was fired from all these jobs for drunkenness or for getting into fights. His janitorial job lasted only a few months: a teacher reported him for sexual harassment and threatening behaviour.

In 1987 he was fined and sentenced to a month in prison for car theft, driving without insurance, and receiving stolen property. The following year he was fined for possession of an illegal weapon. In 1990 he was convicted of a sexual offence that wasn’t specified in his criminal record. In 1991 he was charged with intimidation but acquitted. The same year he was fined and put on probation for smuggling alcohol. He served three months in 1992 for beating up his girlfriend and making threats against her sister. He managed to stay out of trouble until 1997, when he was convicted of handling stolen goods and aggravated assault. This time he got ten months in prison.

Harry, his younger brother, followed him to Sweden in 1982 and worked in a warehouse for a long time. His criminal record showed three convictions: in 1990 for insurance fraud, in 1992 with a sentence of two years – for aggravated assault, receiving stolen property, theft, and rape. He was deported to Finland but in 1996 returned to Sweden, when he was once more sentenced to ten months in prison for aggravated assault and rape. The verdict was appealed and the appeals court acquitted him on the rape charge. But the conviction for assault was upheld, and he served six months. In 2000 he was charged again, this time for intimidation and rape. The charges were later dropped and the case dismissed.

Salander traced their last-known addresses: Atho’s was in Norsborg, Harry’s in Alby.

Paolo Roberto got Miriam Wu’s answering machine for the fifteenth time. He’d been to the address on Lundagatan several times already that day. No-one answered when he rang her doorbell.

It was past 8:00 on Tuesday evening. She had to come home sometime, damn it. He understood that Wu would want to stay out of sight, but the worst of the media blitz had subsided. He might as well sit outside the door of her building in case she turned up, even if it was only for a change of clothing. He filled a thermos with coffee and made himself some sandwiches. Before he left his apartment he made the sign of the cross in front of the crucifix and the Madonna.

He parked about a hundred feet from the entrance on Lundagatan and pushed back the seat to make more room for his legs. He played the radio at a low volume. He taped up a photograph of Wu that he’d cut out of a newspaper. She looked great, he thought. He patiently watched the few people walking past. Miriam Wu was not one of them.

Every ten minutes he dialled her number. He gave up trying to call at around 9:00 when his mobile told him that the battery was almost dead.

Sandström spent Tuesday in a state approaching apathy. He had slept the night on the sofa in the living room, incapable of going to bed and unable to stop the sobbing fits that regularly overcame him. On Tuesday morning he went down to Systembolaget in Solna and bought a bottle of Skåne Aquavit. Then he went back to his sofa and drank half of it.

Not until later did he come to a clear understanding of his situation and begin to consider what he could do about it. He wished that he had never heard of the Ranta brothers and their whores. He could not believe that he had been so stupid as to let himself be enticed to the apartment in Norsborg where Atho had tied the heavily drugged Ines Hammujärvi to a bed with her legs spread, then challenged him about who had the bigger rod. They had taken turns, and he had won the contest for the greater number of sexual feats performed that night.

The girl woke up once and tried to resist. Atho spent half an hour alternating between slapping her and filling her with drink, after which she was pacified and he invited Sandström to continue the sport.

Fucking whore.

How could he have been so stupid?

He could hardly expect any mercy from Millennium. They made their living with that type of scandal.

He was scared to death of the madwoman Salander.

Not to mention that blond monster.

Obviously he couldn’t go to the police.

He wasn’t going to be able to manage on his own, and the problem wasn’t going to go away by itself.

There was only one slim possibility open to him, one place where he could expect an ounce of sympathy and maybe a solution of sorts. He was clutching at straws, but it was his only option.

That afternoon he gathered his courage and called Harry Ranta’s mobile. There was no answer. He kept trying until 10:00 that night. After thinking about the matter for a long time (and fortifying himself with the rest of the aquavit) he called Atho Ranta. It was Atho’s girlfriend Silvia who answered. She told him that the Ranta brothers were on vacation in Tallinn. No, she did not know how to reach them. No, she had no idea when they would be back. They would be in Estonia for quite a while. She sounded glad of that.