The Girl who played with Fire

Bublanski did not normally call his colleagues late in the evening, but this time he couldn’t resist. He picked up the phone and dialled Modig’s number.

“Pardon me for calling so late. Are you up?”

“No problem.”

“I’ve just finished going through Bjorck’s report.”

“I’m sure you had as much trouble putting it down as I did.”

“Sonja… how do you make sense of what’s going on?”

“It seems to me that Gunnar Bjorck, a prominent name on the list of johns, if you remember, had Lisbeth Salander put in an asylum after she tried to protect herself and her mother from a lunatic sadist who was working for Sapo. He was abetted in this by Dr. Teleborian, among others, on whose testimony we in part based our own evaluation of her mental state.”

“This changes the entire picture we have of her.”

“It explains a great deal.”

“Sonja, can you pick me up in the morning at 8:00?”

“Of course.”

“We’re going to go down to Smadalaro to have a talk with Gunnar Bjorck. I made some enquiries. He’s on sick leave.”

“I’m looking forward to it already.”

Beckman looked at his wife as she stood by the window in the living room, staring out at the water. She had her mobile in her hand, and he knew that she was waiting for a call from Blomkvist. She looked so unhappy that he went over and put his arm around her.

“Blomkvist is a grown man,” he said. “But if you’re really so worried you should call that policeman.”

Berger sighed. “I should have done that hours ago. But that’s not why I’m unhappy.”

“Is it something I should know about?”

“I’ve been hiding something from you. And from Mikael. And from everyone else at the magazine.”

“Hiding? Hiding what?”

She turned to her husband and told him that she had been offered the job of editor in chief at Svenska Morgon-Posten. Beckman raised his eyebrows.

“But I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me,” he said. “That’s a huge coup. Congratulations.”

“It’s just that I feel like a traitor.”

“Mikael will understand. Everyone has to move on when it’s time. And right now it’s time for you.”

“I know.”

“Have you already made up your mind?”

“Yes. I’ve made up my mind. But I haven’t had the guts to tell anybody. And it feels as if I’m leaving in the midst of a huge disaster.” Beckman took his wife in his arms.

Armansky rubbed his eyes and looked out into the darkness.

“We ought to call Bublanski,” he said.

“No,” Palmgren said. “Neither Bublanski nor any other authority figure has ever lifted a finger to help her. Let her take care of her own affairs.”

Armansky looked at Salander’s former guardian. He was still amazed by the improvement in Palmgren’s condition compared with when he last saw him over Christmas. He still slurred his words, but he had a new vitality in his eyes. There was also a fury about the man that Armansky had never seen before. Palmgren told him the whole story that Blomkvist had pieced together. Armansky was shocked.

“She’s going to try to kill her father.”

“That’s possible,” Palmgren said calmly.

“Or else Zalachenko might try to kill her.”

“That’s also possible.”

“So we’re just supposed to wait?”

“Dragan… you’re a good person. But what Lisbeth Salander does or doesn’t do, whether she survives or whether she dies, is not your responsibility.”

Palmgren threw out his arms. All of a sudden he had rediscovered a coordination that he hadn’t had in a long time. It was as though the drama of the past few weeks had revived his dulled senses.

“I’ve never been sympathetic towards people who take the law into their own hands. But I’ve never heard of anyone who had such a good reason to do so. At the risk of sounding like a cynic, what happens tonight will happen, no matter what you or I think. It’s been written in the stars since she was born. And all that remains is for us to decide how we’re going to behave towards Lisbeth if she makes it back.”

Armansky sighed and looked grimly at the old lawyer.

“And if she spends the next ten years in prison, at least she was the one who chose that path. I’ll still be her friend,” Palmgren said.

“I had no idea you had such a libertarian view of humanity.”

“Neither did I,” he said.

***

Miriam Wu stared at the ceiling. She had the nightlight on and the radio was playing “On a Slow Boat to China ” at a low volume.

The day before she had woken to find herself in the hospital where Paolo Roberto had brought her. She slept and woke restlessly and went to sleep again with no real grasp of passing time. The doctors told her that she had a concussion. In any case she needed to rest. She had a broken nose, three broken ribs, and bruises all over her body. Her left eyebrow was so swollen that her eye was merely a slit. It hurt whenever she tried to change position. It hurt when she breathed in. Her neck was painful and she was wearing a brace, just to be on the safe side. But the doctors had assured her that she would make a complete recovery.

When she awoke towards evening, Paolo Roberto was sitting next to her bed. He grinned and asked how she felt. She wondered if she looked as awful as he did.

She asked questions and he answered them. For some reason it didn’t seem at all odd that he was a good friend of Salander’s. He was a cocky devil. Lisbeth liked cocky devils, just as she detested pompous jerks. There was only a subtle difference, but Paolo Roberto belonged to the former category.

She now had an explanation for why he had suddenly sprung out of nowhere into the warehouse, but she was surprised that he’d decided so stubbornly to pursue the van. And she was frightened by the news that the police were digging up bodies in the woods around the warehouse.

“Thank you,” she said. “You saved my life.”

He shook his head and sat quietly for a while.

“I tried to explain it to Blomkvist. He didn’t really get it. But I think you might understand since you box yourself.”

She knew what he meant. No-one who hadn’t been there would ever know what it was to fight a monster who couldn’t feel pain. She thought about how helpless she’d been.

After that she had just held his bandaged hand. They didn’t speak for a long time. There was nothing more to say. When she woke up, he was gone. She wished that Lisbeth would get in touch. She was the one Niedermann had been after.

Miriam was afraid that he would catch her.

Salander couldn’t breathe. She had no sense of time, but she knew that she had been shot, and she realized – more by instinct than by rational thought – that she was buried underground. Her left arm was unusable, she couldn’t move a muscle without waves of pain shooting through her shoulder, and she was floating in and out of a foggy consciousness. I have to get air. Her head was bursting with a throbbing pain the likes of which she had never felt before.