Figuerola escorted Blomkvist out of police headquarters at 10.00 p.m. They stopped at the same place in Kronoberg park as the day before.
“Here we are again. Are you going to disappear to work or do you want to come to my place and come to bed with me?”
“Well…”
“You don’t have to feel pressured, Mikael. If you have to work, then do it.”
“Listen, Figuerola, you’re worryingly habit-forming.”
“And you don’t want to be dependent on anything. Is that what you’re saying?”
“No. That’s not what I’m saying. But there’s someone I have to talk to tonight and it’ll take a while. You’ll be asleep before I’m done.”
She shrugged.
“See you.”
He kissed her cheek and headed for the bus stop on Fridhemsplan.
“Blomkvist,” she called.
“What?”
“I’m free tomorrow morning as well. Come and have breakfast if you can make it.”
CHAPTER 21
Salander picked up a number of ominous vibrations as she browsed the emails of the news editor, Holm. He was fifty-eight and thus fell outside the group, but Salander had included him anyway because he and Berger had been at each other’s throats. He was a schemer who wrote messages to various people telling them how someone had done a rotten job.
It was obvious to Salander that Holm did not like Berger, and he certainly wasted a lot of space talking about how the bitch had said this or done that. He used the Net exclusively for work-related sites. If he had other interests, he must google them in his own time on some other machine.
She kept him as a candidate for the title of Poison Pen, but he was not a favourite. Salander spent some time thinking about why she did not believe he was the one, and arrived at the conclusion that he was so damned arrogant he did not have to go to the trouble of using anonymous email. If he wanted to call Berger a whore, he would do it openly. And he did not seem the type to go sneaking into Berger’s home in the middle of the night.
At 10.00 in the evening she took a break and went into [Idiotic_Table]. She saw that Blomkvist had not come back yet. She felt slightly peeved and wondered what he was up to, and whether he had made it in time to Teleborian’s meeting.
Then she went back into
She moved to the next name on the list, assistant sports editor Claes Lundin, twenty-nine. She had just opened his email when she stopped and bit her lip. She closed it again and went instead to Berger’s.
She scrolled back in time. There was relatively little in her inbox, since her email account had been opened only on May 2. The very first message was a midday memo from Peter Fredriksson. In the course of Berger’s first day several people had emailed her to welcome her to
Salander carefully read each message in Berger’s inbox. She could see how even from day one there had been a hostile undertone in her correspondence with Holm. They seemed unable to agree on anything, and Salander saw that Holm was already trying to exasperate Berger by sending several emails about complete trivialities.
She skipped over ads, spam and news memos. She focused on any kind of personal correspondence. She read budget calculations, advertising and marketing projections, an exchange with C.F.O. Sellberg that went on for a week and was virtually a brawl over staff layoffs. Berger had received irritated messages from the head of the legal department about some temp. by the name of Johannes Frisk. She had apparently detailed him to work on some story and this had not been appreciated. Apart from the first welcome emails, it seemed as if no-one at management level could see anything positive in any of Berger’s arguments or proposals.
After a while Salander scrolled back to the beginning and did a statistical calculation in her head. Of all the upper-level managers at
Of these, the one that Berger had least to do with was Strandlund. She had exchanged only two emails with the culture editor. The friendliest and most engaging messages came from front-page editor Gunnar Magnusson. Borgsjo’s were terse and to the point.
The colleague Berger seemed to have the most to do with was Fredriksson. His role was to act as a kind of shadow, to sit in on her meetings as an observer. He prepared memos, briefed Berger on various articles and issues, and got the jobs moving.
He emailed Berger a dozen times a day.
Salander sorted all of Fredriksson’s emails to Berger and read them through. In a number of instances he had objected to some decision Berger had made and presented counter-proposals. Berger seemed to have confidence in him since she would then often change her decision or accept his argument. He was never hostile. But there was not a hint of any personal relationship to her.
Salander closed Berger’s email and thought for a moment.
She opened Fredriksson’s account.
Plague had been fooling around with the home computers of various employees of
– What is it?
– Peter Fredriksson.
– Ok.
– Go for others. Focus on them.
– Why?
– A feeling.
– That's going to take time.
– There is a shortcut: Fredriksson is assistant editor, he uses the Integrator – a program that helps to control S.M.P. intranet from home.
– I don't know a thing about Integrator.
– A small program that appeared a few years ago. It is now completely outdated. Integrator has a bug. There is Hacker Rep. file that can theoretically reverse the program and allow to enter home PC from work.
Plague sighed. This girl who had once been his student now had a better handle on things than he did.
– Okay. I'll try.
– If you find something, contact Mikael Blomkvist if I am no longer connected.
Blomkvist was back at Salander’s apartment on Mosebacke just before midnight. He was tired. He took a
