The Girl who played with Fire

that you don’t want anything to do with me.

Mikael

As anticipated he never heard a word from her.

When he had got home the morning after the attack on Lundagatan, he opened the shoulder bag and spread the contents on the kitchen table. There was a wallet with an ID card, about 600 kronor, 200 American dollars, and a monthly travel card. There was a pack of Marlboro Lights, three Bic lighters, a box of throat lozenges, a packet of tissues, a toothbrush, toothpaste, three tampons in a side pocket, an unopened pack of condoms with a price sticker that showed they were bought at Gatwick Airport in London, a bound notebook with stiff black A4 dividers, five ballpoint pens, a can of Mace, a small bag with makeup, an FM radio with an earphone but no batteries, and Saturday’s Aftonbladet.

The most intriguing item was a hammer, easily accessible in an outside pocket. However, the attack had come so suddenly that she had not been able to make use of it or the Mace. She had evidently used her keys as brass knuckles – there were still traces of blood and skin on them.

Of the six keys on the ring, three of them were typical apartment keys-front door, apartment door, and the key to a padlock. But none of them fit the door of the building on Lundagatan.

Blomkvist opened the notebook and went through it page by page. He recognized Salander’s neat hand and could see at once that this was not a girl’s secret diary. Three-quarters of the pages were filled with what looked like mathematical notations. At the top of the first page was an equation that even Blomkvist recognized.

(x³ + y³ = z³)

Blomkvist had never had trouble doing calculations. He had left secondary school with the highest marks in math, which in no way meant, of course, that he was a mathematician, only that he had been able to absorb the content of the school’s curriculum. But Salander’s pages contained formulas of a type that Blomkvist neither understood nor could even begin to understand. One equation stretched across an entire double page and ended with things crossed out and changed. He could not even tell whether they were real mathematical formulas and calculations, but since he knew Salander’s peculiarities he assumed that the equations were genuine and no doubt had some esoteric meaning.

He leafed back and forth for a long time. He might as well have come upon a notebook full of Chinese characters. But he grasped the essentials of what she was trying to do. She had become fascinated by Fermat’s Last Theorem, a classic riddle. He let out a deep sigh.

The last page in the book contained some very brief and cryptic notes which had absolutely nothing to do with math, but nevertheless still looked like a formula:

(Blond Hulk + Magge) = NEB

They were underlined and circled and meant nothing to him. At the bottom of the page was a telephone number and the name of a car rental company in Eskilstuna, Auto-Expert.

Blomkvist made no attempt to interpret the notes. He stubbed out his cigarette and put on his jacket, set the alarm in the office, and walked to the terminal at Slussen, where he took the bus out to the yuppie reserve in Staket, near Lannersta Sound. He had been invited to dinner with his sister, Annika Blomkvist Giannini, who was turning forty-two.

Berger began her long Easter weekend with a furious and anxiety-filled two-mile jog that ended at the steamboat wharf in Saltsjobaden. She had been lazy about her hours at the gym and felt stiff and out of shape. She walked home. Her husband was giving a lecture at the Modern Museum and it would be at least 8:00 before he got home. Berger thought she would open a bottle of good wine, switch on the sauna, and seduce him. At least it would stop her thinking about the problem that was worrying her.

A week earlier she had had lunch with the CEO of the biggest media company in Sweden. Over salad he had set forth in all seriousness his intention to recruit her as editor in chief of the company’s largest daily newspaper, the Svenska Morgon-Posten. The board has discussed several possibilities, but we are agreed that you would be a great asset to the paper. You’re the one we want. Attached to the offer was a salary that made her income at Millennium look ridiculous.

The offer had come like a bolt of lightning out of a clear blue sky, and it left her speechless. Why me?

He had been oddly vague, but gradually the explanation emerged that she was known, respected, and a certifiably talented editor. They were impressed by the way she had dragged Millennium out of the quicksand it had been in two years earlier. The Svenska Morgon-Posten needed to be revitalized in the same way. There was an old-man atmosphere about the newspaper that was causing a steady decline in the new-subscriber rate. Berger was a powerful journalist. She had clout. Putting a woman – a feminist no less – in charge of one of Sweden’s most conservative and male-dominated institutions was a provocative and bold idea. Everyone was agreed. Well, almost everyone. The ones who counted were all on his side.

“But I don’t share the basic political views of the newspaper.”

“Who cares? You’re not an outspoken opponent either. You’re going to be the boss – not an apparatchik – and the editorial page will take care of itself.”

He hadn’t said it in so many words, but it was also a matter of class. Berger came from the right background.

She had told him that she was certainly attracted by the proposal but that she could not give him an answer immediately. She was going to have to think the matter through. But they agreed that she would give them her decision sooner rather than later. The CEO had explained that if the salary offer was the reason for her hesitation, she was probably in a position to negotiate an even higher figure. A strikingly generous golden parachute would also be included. It’s time for you to start thinking about your pension plan.

Her forty-fifth birthday was coming up. She had done her apprenticeship as a trainee and a temp. She had put together Millennium and become its editor in chief on her own merits. The moment when she would have to pick up the telephone and say yes or no was fast approaching, and she did not know what she was going to do. During the past week she had considered time and again discussing the matter with Blomkvist, but she had not been able to summon up the nerve. Instead she had been hiding the offer from him, which gave her a pang of guilt.

There were some obvious disadvantages. A yes would mean breaking up the partnership with Blomkvist. He would never follow her to the Svenska Morgon-Posten, no matter how sweet a deal she or they could offer him. He did not need the money now, and he was getting on fine writing articles at his own pace.

Berger liked being editor in chief of Millennium. It had given her a status within the world of journalism that she considered almost undeserved. She had never been the producer of the news. That was not her thing – she regarded herself as a mediocre writer. On the other hand, she was first-rate on radio or TV, and above all she was a brilliant editor. Besides, she enjoyed the hands-on work of editing, which was a prerequisite for the post of editor in chief at Millennium.

Nevertheless, she was tempted. Not so much by the salary as by the fact that the job meant that she would become without question one of Sweden’s big-time media players. This is a once-in-a-lifetime offer, the CEO had said.

Somewhere near the Grand Hotel in Saltsjobaden she realized to her dismay that she was not going to be able to turn the offer down. And she shuddered at the thought of having to tell Blomkvist.

Dinner at the Gianninis’ was, as always, mildly chaotic. Annika had two children: Monica, thirteen, and Jennie, ten. Her husband, Enrico, who was the head of the Scandinavian arm of an international biotech firm, had custody of Antonio, his sixteen-year-old son from his first marriage. Also at dinner were Enrico’s mother Antonia, his brother Pietro, his sister-in-law Eva-Lotta, and their children Peter and Nicola. Plus Enrico’s sister Marcella and her four kids, who lived in the same neighbourhood. Enrico’s aunt Angelina, who was regarded by the family as stark raving mad, or on good days just extremely eccentric, had also been invited, along with her new boyfriend.

At the dining-room table, abundant with food, the conversation went on in a rattling mixture of Swedish and Italian, sometimes simultaneously. The situation was made more annoying because Angelina spent the evening