“Oh?”
“It’s pretty cryptic.”
“What did she say?”
“She says: ‘Poison Pen is Peter Fredriksson.’”
Erika sat for ten seconds in silence while thoughts rushed through her head.
“Was that all?”
“That’s the whole message. Do you know what it’s about?”
“Yes.”
“Ricky… what are you and that girl up to? She rang you to tip me off about Teleborian and –”
“Thanks, Micke. We’ll talk later.”
She turned off her mobile and looked at Linder with an expression of absolute astonishment.
“Tell me,” Linder said.
Linder was in two minds. Berger had been told that her assistant editor was the one sending the vicious emails. She talked non-stop. Then Linder had asked her
“I can’t tell you…”
“What do you mean you can’t tell me?”
“Susanne, I just know that Fredriksson is responsible. But I can’t tell you how I got that information. What can I do?”
“If I’m going to help you, you have to tell me.”
“I… I can’t. You don’t understand.”
Berger got up and stood at the kitchen window with her back to Linder. Finally she turned.
“I’m going to his house.”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort. You’re not going anywhere, least of all to the home of somebody who obviously hates you.”
Berger looked torn.
“Sit down. Tell me what happened. It was Blomkvist calling you, right?”
Berger nodded.
“I… today I asked a hacker to go through the home computers of the staff.”
“Aha. So you’ve probably by extension committed a serious computer crime. And you don’t want to tell me who your hacker is?”
“I promised I would never tell anyone… Other people are involved. Something that Mikael is working on.”
“Does Blomkvist know about the emails and the break-in here?”
“No, he was just passing on a message.”
Linder cocked her head to one side, and all of a sudden a chain of associations formed in her mind.
The fact that Salander was a wizard at computers was widely known at Milton Security. No-one knew how she had come by her skills, and Linder had never heard any rumours that Salander might be a hacker. But Armansky had once said something about Salander delivering quite incredible reports when she was doing personal investigations. A hacker…
It was absurd.
“Is it Salander we’re talking about?” Linder said.
Berger looked as though she had touched a live wire.
“I can’t discuss where the information came from. Not one word.”
Linder laughed aloud.
Linder thought hard.
She could not understand the whole Salander story. She had met her maybe five times during the years she had worked at Milton Security and had never had so much as a single conversation with her. She regarded Salander as a sullen and asocial individual with a skin like a rhino. She had heard that Armansky himself had taken Salander on and since she respected Armansky she assumed that he had good reason for his endless patience towards the sullen girl.
Could she be right? What was the proof?
Linder then spent a long time questioning Erika on everything she knew about Fredriksson, what his role was at
Berger had displayed a frustrating indecision. She had wavered between a determination to drive out to Fredriksson’s place and confront him, and an unwillingness to believe that it could really be true. Finally Linder convinced her that she could not storm into Fredriksson’s apartment and launch into an accusation – if he was innocent, she would make an utter fool of herself.
So Linder had promised to look into the matter. It was a promise she regretted as soon as she made it, because she did not have the faintest idea how she was going to proceed.
She parked her Fiat Strada as close to Fredriksson’s apartment building in Fisksatra as she could. She locked the car and looked about her. She was not sure what she was going to do, but she supposed she would have to knock on his door and somehow get him to answer a number of questions. She was acutely aware that this was a job that lay well outside her remit at Milton, and she knew Armansky would be furious if he found out what she was doing.
It was not a good plan, and in any case it fell apart before she had managed to put it into practice. She had reached the courtyard and was approaching Fredriksson’s apartment when the door opened. Linder recognized him at once from the photograph in his personnel file which she had studied on Berger’s computer. She kept walking and they passed each other. He disappeared in the direction of the garage. It was just before 11.00 and Fredriksson was on his way somewhere. Linder turned and ran back to her car.
Blomkvist sat for a long time looking at his mobile after Berger hung up. He wondered what was going on. In frustration he looked at Salander’s computer. By now she had been moved to the prison in Goteborg, and he had no chance of asking her anything.
He opened his Ericsson T10 and called Idris Ghidi in Angered.
“Hello. Mikael Blomkvist.”
“Hello,” Ghidi said.
“Just to tell you that you can stop that job you were doing for me.”
Ghidi had already worked out that Blomkvist would call since Salander had been taken from the hospital.
“I understand,” he said.
“You can keep the mobile as we agreed. I’ll send you the final payment this week.”
“Thanks.”
“I’m the one who should thank you for your help.”
Blomkvist opened his iBook. The events of the past twenty-four hours meant that a significant part of the
