The Girl who played with Fire

CHAPTER 14

Maundy Thursday, March 24

Modig tried three times in half an hour to reach Nils Bjurman on his mobile. Each time she got the message that the subscriber could not be reached.

At 3:30 p.m. she drove to Odenplan and rang his doorbell. Once more, no answer. She spent the next twenty minutes knocking on doors in the apartment building to see if any of Bjurman’s neighbours knew where he might be.

In eleven of the nineteen apartments no-one was there. It was obviously the wrong time of day to be knocking on doors, and it would not get any better over the Easter weekend. In the eight apartments that were occupied, everyone was helpful. Five of them knew who Bjurman was – a polite, well-mannered gentleman on the fifth floor. No-one could provide any information as to his whereabouts. She managed to ascertain that Bjurman might be visiting one of his closest neighbours, a businessman named Sjoman. But nobody answered the door there either.

Frustrated, Modig took out her mobile and called Bjurman’s answering machine once again. She gave her name, left her number, and asked him to please contact her as soon as he could.

She went back to Bjurman’s door and wrote him a note asking him to call her. She got out a business card and dropped that through the mail slot as well. Just as she closed the flap, she heard a telephone ring inside the apartment. She leaned down and listened intently as it rang four times. She heard the answering machine click on, but she could not hear any message.

She closed the flap on the mail slot and stared at the door. Exactly what impulse made her reach out and touch the handle she could not have said, but to her great surprise the door was unlocked. She pushed it open and peered into the hall.

“Hello!” she called cautiously and listened. There was no sound.

She took a step into the hall and then hesitated. She had no warrant to search the premises and no right to be in the apartment, even if the door was unlocked. She looked to her left and got a glimpse of the living room. She had just decided to back out of the apartment when her glance fell on the hall table. She saw a box for a Colt Magnum pistol.

Modig suddenly had a strong sense of unease. She opened her jacket and drew her service weapon, which she had rarely done before.

She clicked off the safety catch and aimed the gun at the floor as she went to the living room and looked in. She saw nothing untoward, but her apprehension increased. She backed out and peered into the kitchen. Empty. She went down the corridor and pushed open the bedroom door.

Bjurman’s naked body lay half stretched out on the bed. His knees were on the floor. It was as though he had knelt to say his prayers.

Even from the door Modig could tell that he was dead. Half of his forehead had been blown away by a shot to the back of his head.

Modig closed the apartment door behind her. She still had her service revolver in her hand as she flipped open her mobile and called Inspector Bublanski. She could not reach him. Next she called Prosecutor Ekstrom. She made a note of the time. It was 4:18.

Faste looked at the entrance door to the building on Lundagatan. He looked at Andersson and then at his watch. 4:10.

After obtaining the entry code from the caretaker, they had already been inside the building and listened at the door with the nameplate SALANDER-WU. They had heard no sound from the apartment, and nobody had answered the bell. They returned to their car and parked where they could keep watch on the door.

From the car they had ascertained by phone that the person in Stockholm whose name had been recently added to the contract for the apartment on Lundagatan was Miriam Wu, born in 1974 and previously living at St.Eriksplan.

They had a passport photograph of Salander taped above the car radio. Faste muttered out loud that she looked like a bitch.

“Shit, the whores are looking worse all the time. You’d have to be pretty desperate to pick her up.”

Andersson kept his mouth shut.

At 4:20 they were called by Bublanski, who told them he was on his way from Armansky’s to the Millennium offices. He asked Faste and Andersson to maintain their watch at Lundagatan. Salander would have to be brought in for questioning, but they should be aware that the prosecutor did not think she could be linked to the killings in Enskede.

“All right,” Faste said. “According to Bubble the prosecutor wants to have a confession before they arrest anybody.”

Andersson said nothing. Listlessly they watched people moving through the neighbourhood.

At 4:40, Prosecutor Ekstrom called Faste’s mobile.

“Things are happening. We found Bjurman shot in his apartment. He’s been dead for at least twenty-four hours.”

Faste sat up in his seat. “Got it. What should we do?”

“I’m going to issue an alert on Salander. She’s being sought as a suspect in three murders. We’ll send it out county-wide. We have to consider her dangerous and very possibly armed.”

“Got it.”

“I’m sending a van to Lundagatan. They’ll go in and secure the apartment.”

“Understood.”

“Have you been in touch with Bublanski?”

“He’s at Millennium.”

“And seems to have turned off his phone. Could you try to reach him and let him know?”

Faste and Andersson looked at each other.

“The question is, what do we do if she turns up?” Andersson said.

“If she’s alone and things look good, we’ll pick her up. This girl is as crazy as hell and obviously on a killing spree. There may be more weapons in the apartment.”

Blomkvist was dead tired when he laid the pile of manuscript pages on Berger’s desk and slumped into the chair by the window overlooking Gotgatan. He had spent the whole afternoon trying to make up his mind what they ought to do with Svensson’s unfinished book.

Svensson had been dead only a few hours, and already his publisher was debating what to do with the work he had left behind. An outsider might think it cynical and coldhearted, but Blomkvist did not see it that way. He felt as if he were in an almost weightless state. It was a sensation that every reporter or newspaper editor knew well, and it kicked in at moments of direst crisis.

When other people are grieving, the newspaperman turns efficient. And despite the numbing shock that afflicted the members of the Millennium team who were there that Maundy Thursday morning, professionalism took over and was rigorously channelled into work.

For Blomkvist this went without saying. He and Svensson were two of a kind, and Svensson would have done the same himself if their roles had been reversed. He would have asked himself what he could do for Blomkvist. Svensson had left a legacy in the form of a manuscript with an explosive story. He had worked on it for four years; he had put his soul into a task which he would now never complete.

And he had chosen to work at Millennium.

The murders of Dag Svensson and Mia Johansson were not a national trauma on the scale of the murder of Olof Palme, and the investigation would not be minutely followed by a grieving nation. But for employees of Millennium the shock was perhaps greater – they were affected personally – and Svensson had a broad network of contacts in the media who were going to demand answers to their questions.

But now it was Blomkvist’s and Berger’s duty to finish Svensson’s book, and to answer the questions Who