news. She took a sip of coffee and had just opened her mouth to take a bite of toast when she heard the headlines.
At first she could not make any sense of it. Was it Salander who had killed a policeman? The news item was sketchy, but bit by bit she gathered that a man was being sought for the killing. A nationwide alert had gone out for a man in his mid-thirties, as yet unnamed. Salander herself was critically injured and at Sahlgrenska hospital in Goteborg.
She switched to the other channel, but she learned nothing more about what had happened. She reached for her mobile and called her brother, Mikael Blomkvist. She only got his voicemail. She felt a small twinge of fear. He had called on his way to Goteborg. He had been tracking Salander. And a murderer who called himself Ronald Niedermann.
As it was growing light an observant police officer found traces of blood on the ground behind the woodshed. A police dog followed the trail to a narrow trench in a clearing in a wood about four hundred metres north-east of the farmhouse.
Blomkvist went with Inspector Erlander. Grimly they studied the site. Much more blood had obviously been shed in and around the trench.
They found a damaged cigarette case that seemed to have been used as a scoop. Erlander put it in an evidence bag and labelled the find. He also gathered samples of blood-soaked clumps of dirt. A uniformed officer drew his attention to a cigarette butt – a filterless Pall Mall – some distance from the hole. This too was saved in an evidence bag and labelled. Blomkvist remembered having seen a pack of Pall Malls on the kitchen counter in Zalachenko’s house.
Erlander glanced up at the lowering rain clouds. The storm that had ravaged Goteborg earlier in the night had obviously passed to the south of the Nossebro area, but it was only a matter of time before the rain came. He instructed one of his men to get a tarpaulin to cover the trench and its immediate surroundings.
“I think you’re right,” Erlander said to Blomkvist as they walked back to the farmhouse. “An analysis of the blood will probably establish that Salander was buried here, and I’m beginning to expect that we’ll find her fingerprints on the cigarette case. She was shot and buried here, but somehow she managed to survive and dig herself out and –”
“And somehow got back to the farm and swung an axe into Zalachenko’s skull,” Blomkvist finished for him. “She can be a moody bitch.”
“But how on earth did she handle Niedermann?”
Blomkvist shrugged. He was as bewildered as Erlander on that score.
CHAPTER 2
Modig and Holmberg arrived at Goteborg Central Station just after 8.00 a.m. Bublanski had called to give them new instructions. They could forget about finding a car to take them to Gosseberga. They were to take a taxi to police headquarters on Ernst Fontells Plats, the seat of the County Criminal Police in Western Gotaland. They waited for almost an hour before Inspector Erlander arrived from Gosseberga with Blomkvist. Blomkvist said hello to Modig, having met her before, and shook hands with Holmberg, whom he did not know. One of Erlander’s colleagues joined them with an update on the hunt for Niedermann. It was a brief report.
“We have a team working under the auspices of the County Criminal Police. An A.P.B. has gone out, of course. The missing patrol car was found in Alingsas early this morning. The trail ends there for the moment. We have to suppose that he switched vehicles, but we’ve had no report of a car being stolen thereabouts.”
“Media?” Modig asked, with an apologetic glance at Blomkvist.
“It’s a police killing and the press is out in force. We’ll be holding a press conference at 10.00.”
“Does anyone have any information on Lisbeth Salander’s condition?” Blomkvist said. He felt strangely uninterested in everything to do with the hunt for Niedermann.
“She was operated on during the night. They removed a bullet from her head. She hasn’t regained consciousness yet.”
“Is there any prognosis?”
“As I understand it, we won’t know anything until she wakes up. But the surgeon says he has high hopes that she’ll survive, barring unforeseen complications.”
“And Zalachenko?”
“Who?” Erlander’s colleague said. He had not yet been brought up to date with all the details.
“Karl Axel Bodin.”
“I see… yes, he was operated on last night too. He had a very deep gash across his face and another just below one kneecap. He’s in bad shape, but the injuries aren’t life-threatening.”
Blomkvist absorbed this news.
“You look tired,” Modig said.
“You got that right. I’m into my third day with hardly any sleep.”
“Believe it or not, he actually slept in the car coming down from Nossebro,” Erlander said.
“Could you manage to tell us the whole story from the beginning?” Holmberg said. “It feels to us as though the score between the private investigators and the police investigators is about 3–0.”
Blomkvist gave him a wan smile. “That’s a line I’d like to hear from Officer Bubble.”
They made their way to the police canteen to have breakfast. Blomkvist spent half an hour explaining step by step how he had pieced together the story of Zalachenko. When he had finished, the detectives sat in silence.
“There are a few holes in your account,” Holmberg said at last.
“That’s possible,” Blomkvist said.
“You didn’t say, for example, how you came to be in possession of the Top Secret Sapo report on Zalachenko.”
“I found it yesterday at Lisbeth Salander’s apartment when I finally worked out where she was. She probably found it in Bjurman’s summer cabin.”
“So you’ve discovered Salander’s hideout?” Modig said.
Blomkvist nodded.
“And?”
“You’ll have to find out for yourselves where it is. Salander put a lot of effort into establishing a secret address for herself, and I have no intention of revealing its whereabouts.”
Modig and Holmberg exchanged an anxious look.
“Mikael… this is a murder investigation,” Modig said.
“You still haven’t got it, have you? Lisbeth Salander is in fact innocent and the police have violated her and destroyed her reputation in ways that beggar belief. ‘Lesbian Satanist gang’… where the hell do you get this stuff? Not to mention her being sought in connection with three murders she had nothing to do with. If she wants to tell you where she lives, then I’m sure she will.”
“But there’s another gap I don’t really understand,” Holmberg said. “How does Bjurman come into the story in the first place? You say he was the one who started the whole thing by contacting Zalachenko and asking him to kill Salander. Why would he do that?”
“I reckon he hired Zalachenko to get rid of Salander. The plan was for her to end up in that warehouse in Nykvarn.”
“He was her guardian. What motive would he have had to get rid of her?”
“It’s complicated.”
“I can do complicated.”
“He had a hell of a good motive. He had done something that Salander knew about. She was a threat to his
