The Girl who played with Fire

That was why she was still alive. If she’d been hit with a bullet from Niedermann’s Sig Sauer or from a revolver with heavier ammo, she would have a gigantic hole through her skull.

At that moment she heard the stumbling approach of Niedermann, who then filled the doorway of the shed. He stopped short and registered the scene before him with uncomprehending and staring eyes. Zalachenko was wailing like a man possessed. His face was a bloody mask. He had an axe wedged in his knee. A bloody and filthy Salander was sitting on the floor next to him. She looked like something from a horror movie, and far too many of those had already played out in Niedermann’s mind.

He, who could feel no pain and was built like a tank, had never liked the dark.

With his own eyes he had seen creatures in the dark, and an indeterminate terror was always lurking, waiting for him. And now the terror had materialized.

The girl on the floor was dead. There was no doubt about that.

He had buried her himself.

Consequently, the creature on the floor was no girl, but a being from the other side of the grave who couldn’t be conquered with human strength or weapons known to man.

The transformation from human being to corpse had already begun. Her skin had changed into a lizardlike armour. Her bared teeth were piercing spikes for ripping chunks of meat from her prey. Her reptilian tongue shot out and licked around her mouth. Her bloody hands had razor-sharp claws four inches long. He could see her eyes glowing. He could hear her growling low and saw her tense her muscles to pounce at his throat.

He saw clearly that she had a tail that curled and ominously began to whip the floor.

Then she raised the pistol and fired. The bullet passed so close to Niedermann’s ear that he could feel the lash of the wind. He saw her mouth spout flames at him.

That was too much.

He stopped thinking.

He spun around and ran for his life. She fired another shot that missed him but that seemed to give him wings. He hopped over a fence and was swallowed up by the darkness of the field as he sprinted towards the main road.

Salander watched in astonishment as he disappeared from view.

She shuffled to the doorway and gazed into the darkness, but she couldn’t see him. After a while Zalachenko stopped screaming, but he lay moaning in shock. She opened the pistol, checked that she had one round left, and considered shooting him in the head. Then she remembered that Niedermann was still there, out in the dark, and she had better save it. She would need more than one .22 bullet for him. But it was better than nothing.

***

It took her five minutes to put the crossbar in place. She staggered across the yard and into the house and found the telephone on a sideboard in the kitchen. She dialled a number she hadn’t used in two years. The answering machine clicked in.

Hi. This is Mikael Blomkvist. I can’t answer right now, but please leave your name and number and I’ll call you as soon as I can.

Beep.

“Mir-g-kral,” she said, and heard that her voice sounded like mush. She swallowed. “Mikael. It’s Salander.”

Then she did not know what to say.

She hung up the receiver.

Niedermann’s Sig Sauer lay disassembled for cleaning on the kitchen table in front of her, and next to it Sonny Nieminen’s P-83 Wanad. She dropped Zalachenko’s Browning on the floor and lurched over to pick up the Wanad and check the magazine. She also found her Palm PDA and dropped it in her pocket. Then she hobbled to the sink and filled an unwashed cup with cold water. She drank four cups. When she looked up she saw her face in an old shaving mirror on the wall. She almost fired a shot out of sheer fright. What she saw reminded her more of an animal than a human being. She was a madwoman with a distorted face and a gaping mouth. She was plastered with dirt. Her face and neck were a coagulated gruel of blood and soil. Now she had an idea what Niedermann had encountered in the woodshed.

She went closer to the mirror and was suddenly aware that her left leg was dragging behind her. She had a sharp pain in her hip where Zalachenko’s first bullet had hit her. His second bullet had struck her shoulder and paralyzed her left arm. It hurt.

But the pain in her head was so sharp it made her stagger. Slowly she raised her right hand and fumbled across the back of her head. With her fingers she could feel the crater of the entry wound.

As she fingered the hole in her skull she realized with sudden horror that she was touching her own brain, that she was so seriously wounded she was dying or maybe should already be dead. She couldn’t comprehend how she could still be on her feet.

She was suddenly overcome by a numbing weariness. She wasn’t sure if she was about to faint or fall asleep, but she made her way to the kitchen bench, where she stretched out and laid the unwounded right side of her head on a cushion.

She had to regain her strength, but she knew that she couldn’t risk sleeping while Niedermann was still at large. Sooner or later he would come back. Sooner or later Zalachenko would manage to get out of the woodshed and drag himself to the house. But she no longer had the energy to stay upright. She was freezing. She clicked off the safety on the pistol.

Niedermann stood, undecided, on the road from Sollebrunn to Nossebro. He was alone. It was dark. He had begun to think rationally again and was ashamed that he had run away. He didn’t understand how it could have happened, but he came to the logical conclusion that she must have survived. Somehow she must have managed to dig herself out.

Zalachenko needed him. He ought to go back to the house and wring her neck.

At the same time he had a powerful feeling that everything was over. He had had that feeling for a long time. Things had started to go wrong and kept going wrong from the moment Bjurman had contacted them. Zalachenko had changed beyond recognition when he heard the name Lisbeth Salander. All the rules about caution and moderation he had preached for so many years had been blown away.

Niedermann hesitated.

Zalachenko needed to be looked after.

If she hadn’t already killed him.

That meant there would be questions.

He bit his lower lip.

He had been his father’s partner for many years. They had been good years. He had money put away and he also knew where Zalachenko had hidden his own fortune. He had the resources and the skill required to drive the business forward. The sensible thing would be to walk away from all this and not look back. If there was one thing that Zalachenko had drummed into him, it was always to retain the ability to walk away, without sentimentality, from a situation that felt unmanageable. That was a basic rule for survival. Don’t lift a finger for a lost cause.

She wasn’t supernatural. But she was bad news. She was his half sister.

He had underestimated her.

Niedermann was torn. Part of him wanted to go back and wring her neck. Part of him wanted to keep running through the night.

He had his passport and wallet in his pocket. He didn’t want to go back. There was nothing at the farm he needed.

Except perhaps a car.

He was still hesitating when he saw the gleam of headlights approaching from the other side of the hill. He turned his head. All he needed was a car to get him to Goteborg.