“Interesting.”
“Curt is still down in Sodertalje. They’re about to do a search of Carl-Magnus Lundin’s place. Jerker is fully occupied digging up bits of Kenneth ‘the Vagabond’ Gustafsson. And just before I got here he called to say that there’s another body in the second grave. From the clothes it’s probably a woman. Seems to have been there quite a while.”
“A woodland cemetery. Jan, I assume Salander is not a suspect in the murders at Nykvarn.”
Bublanski smiled for the first time in hours. “No. She had to be crossed off that one. But she’s definitely carrying a weapon and she did shoot Lundin.”
“Mind you, she shot him in the foot, not in the head. In Lundin’s case there’s probably not much difference, but don’t forget that whoever committed the murders in Enskede is an excellent shot.”
“Sonja… this is totally absurd. Magge Lundin and Sonny Nieminen are two hooligans with long police records. Lundin may have put on a pound or two and he may not be in top form, but he’s still dangerous. And Nieminen is a brutal bastard that even the tough guys are afraid of. I simply can’t imagine how a skinny little creature like Salander could beat the shit out of them like that. Not that he doesn’t deserve a beating, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that I don’t understand how it could have happened.”
“We’ll have to ask her when we find her. She has been documented as violent, after all.”
“Even Curt would have thought twice about taking those guys on. And Curt isn’t exactly a pansy.”
“The question is whether she had some reason to attack Lundin and Nieminen.”
“One little girl with two psychopaths in a deserted summer cabin? I can think of a reason or two,” Bublanski said.
“Could she have had help from someone? Could there have been other people involved?”
“There’s nothing in the report to indicate that. Salander was inside the cabin. There was a coffee cup on the table. And besides, we have a statement from Anna Viktoria Hansson, who keeps an eye on everyone’s movements. She swears that the only people who passed her were Salander and our two heroes from Svavelsjo.”
“How did Salander get into the cabin?”
“With a key. I’m guessing she took it from Bjurman’s apartment. You remember –”
“The cut police tape. She’s been busy.”
Modig drummed her fingertips on the table and then took a new approach.
“Has it been confirmed that it was Lundin who had a part in the kidnapping of Miriam Wu?”
“Paolo Roberto looked through mug shots of three dozen bikers. He picked him out right away, no shadow of a doubt that was the man he saw at the warehouse in Nykvarn.”
“And Blomkvist?”
“I haven’t gotten hold of him yet. He’s not answering his mobile.”
“But Lundin matches his description of Salander’s attacker on Lundagatan. So we can assume that Svavelsjo MC has been hunting Salander for a while. Why?”
Bublanski threw up his hands.
Modig asked, “Was Salander living in Bjurman’s summer cabin all the time we were looking for her?”
“I thought of that too. But Jerker doesn’t think so. The cabin doesn’t look as if it’s been lived in recently, and we have a witness who says she arrived on foot earlier today.”
“Why did she go there? I don’t suppose she’d set up a meeting with Lundin.”
“Hardly. She must have been looking for something. And the only thing we found was a bunch of files that seem to contain Bjurman’s own investigation of Salander. It’s all the material about her from social welfare, the Guardianship Agency, and old school reports. But it seems that some of the folders are missing. They were numbered. We have folders 1, 4, and 5.”
“So 2 and 3 are missing.”
“And maybe more with higher numbers.”
“Which raises a question. Why would Salander be looking for information about herself?” Modig said.
“I can think of two reasons. Either she wants to hide something that she knew Bjurman had written about her, or else she wants to find out something. But there’s another question too.”
“What’s that?”
“Why would Bjurman compile an extensive report on her and then hide it in his summer cabin? Salander seems to have found the material in the attic. He was her guardian and was assigned to handle her finances and other matters. But the material there gives the impression that he was almost obsessed with charting her life.”
“Bjurman is looking more and more like a disreputable character. I was thinking about that today when I went through the list of johns at
“Good thinking. Remember the violent porn you found on his computer. Did you find anything at
“I don’t really know. Blomkvist is busy checking off the names on their list, but according to Malin Eriksson, one of the editors there, he hasn’t turned up anything of interest. Jan… I have to say one thing.”
“What?”
“I don’t think Salander did any of this. Enskede and Odenplan, I mean. I was just as persuaded as all the others when we started, but I don’t believe it now. And I can’t really explain why.”
Bublanski realized that he agreed with Modig.
The giant paced back and forth in Lundin’s house in Svavelsjo. He stopped by the kitchen window and looked down the road. They should have been back by now. He had a sinking feeling in his stomach. Something was wrong.
He didn’t like being alone in this house. He didn’t feel at home here. There was a draft in his room upstairs, and there were always strange noises. He tried to shake off his uneasiness. It was foolish, he knew, but he had never liked being alone. He was not in the least afraid of flesh-and-blood people, but empty houses out in the country he thought were indescribably horrible. The noises got his imagination working. He couldn’t shed the sense that something dark and evil was watching him through the crack in the door. Something he believed he could hear breathing.
When he was younger he’d been troubled by a fear of the dark. That is, he’d been troubled until he had aggressively told off his friends, his own age and sometimes a lot older, who were amused by such weaknesses. He was good at telling people off.
But it was embarrassing. He hated darkness and being alone. He hated the creatures that inhabited darkness and solitude. He wished Lundin would come home. Lundin’s presence would restore the balance, even if they didn’t exchange a word or weren’t even in the same room. He would hear real sounds and he would know that there were people nearby.
He tried to ward off his anxiety by playing CDs on the stereo, and restlessly he tried to find something he wanted to read on Lundin’s shelves. Lundin’s taste in books left much to be desired, and he had to settle for a collection of motorcycle magazines, men’s magazines, and paperback thrillers of the type that had never interested him. The solitude became more and more claustrophobic. He cleaned and oiled the pistol he kept in his bag, and for a while that had a calming effect.
Eventually he had to get out of the house. He walked around the garden to get some fresh air. He stayed out of sight of the neighbouring houses, but stopped so that he could watch the lighted windows where there were people. If he stood quite still he could hear the sound of music in the distance.
When he felt he had to go back inside Lundin’s wooden shack he stood for a long time on the steps before shaking off the oppressive feeling and resolutely going in.
At 7:00 he watched the news on TV4. He listened with horror to the headlines and then to a report on the shoot-out at the summer cabin in Stallarholmen.
He ran up the stairs to his room on the top floor and stuffed his belongings into a bag. Two minutes later he was driving away in his white Volvo.
He had made his escape in the nick of time. Just two miles outside Svavelsjo two police cars with their blue lights flashing passed him, on their way into the village.
