The Girl who played with Fire

Jihad.”

He included the book by Blomkvist because its author had turned up in the preliminary investigation. The last three works were perhaps less obvious. Holmberg had no idea whether the murders were related to any form of political activity – or indeed whether Svensson or Johansson was politically involved – or whether the books were merely indicative of a general interest in politics as part of their academic or journalistic work. On the other hand, if two dead bodies were found in an apartment where there were books about terrorism, he was going to make note of the fact. He placed the books in the suitcase with the other items.

Then he looked through the drawers in an antique desk. On top of the desk was a CD player, and the drawers contained a great number of CDs. Holmberg spent half an hour opening every CD case and verifying that the contents matched the cover. He found about ten CDs that had no label, and were probably burned at home or possibly pirated copies; he inserted the ones without labels into the CD player to check that they were not storing anything besides music. He examined the TV shelf nearest the bedroom door, where there was a large collection of video-cassettes. He test-played several of them. They seemed to be everything from action movies to a hodgepodge of taped news programmes and reports from Cold Facts, Insider, and Assignment Scrutiny. He added thirty-six videocassettes to the inventory. Then he went to the kitchen, opened a thermos of coffee, and took a short break before he went on with his search.

From a shelf in a kitchen cupboard he gathered a number of jars and medicine bottles. They too were placed in a plastic bag and added to the confiscated material. He picked out foodstuffs from the pantry and refrigerator and opened every jar, coffee package, and recorked bottle. In a pot sitting on the windowsill he found 1,220 kronor plus some receipts. From the bathroom he took nothing, but he did observe that the laundry basket was overflowing. He went through all the clothing. He took coats out of a closet in the hall and searched in every pocket.

He found Svensson’s wallet in the inner pocket of a sports jacket and added it to the inventory of confiscated items. Svensson had a membership card to the Friskis&Svettis gym chain, a Handelsbanken ATM card, and just under 400 kronor in cash. He found Johansson’s handbag and spent a few minutes going through its contents. She also had a card to Friskis&Svettis, an ATM card, a Konsum co-op loyalty card, and a membership card to something called Club Horizon, which had a globe as its logo. He found about 2,500 kronor in cash, a relatively large but not unreasonable sum, given that they were on their way out of Stockholm for the holiday weekend. That there was money in their wallets did reduce the likelihood of their deaths being robbery- related.

“From Johansson’s handbag found on the shelf above the coatrack in the hall. One ProPlan pocket diary, a separate address book, and a leather-bound black notebook.”

Holmberg took another break for coffee and noted that for a change he had so far found nothing embarrassing or intimate in the Svensson-Johansson couple’s home – no hidden sex aids, no scandalous underwear, no drawer full of pornographic videos, no marijuana cigarettes or any sign at all of other illegal substances. They seemed to be a normal couple, possibly (from a police standpoint) somewhat duller than average.

Finally he returned to the bedroom and sat down at the desk. He opened the top drawer. He soon found that the desk and shelf unit next to it contained extensive source and reference materials for Johansson’s doctoral thesis “From Russia with Love.” The material was neatly arranged, exactly like a police report, and he lost himself for a while in certain sections of the text. Mia Johansson was good enough to be on the force, he told himself. One section of the bookshelf was only half full and seemed to contain material belonging to Svensson, mainly press clippings of his own articles and others on subjects that had interested him.

Holmberg spent a while going through the computer and found that it held almost five gigabytes, everything from software to letters and downloaded articles and PDF files. Certainly he was not going to be able to read through it in one evening. He added the computer and assorted CDs and a Zip drive with about thirty disks to the confiscated items.

Then he sat brooding for a while. The computer contained Johansson’s work, as far as he could see. Svensson was a journalist, and a computer ought to be his most important tool, but he did not even get email on the desktop. So he must have had a computer somewhere else. Holmberg got up and went through the apartment, thinking. In the hall there was a black backpack with some notebooks that belonged to Svensson and an empty compartment for a computer. He could not find a laptop anywhere in the apartment. He took the keys and went down to the courtyard and searched Johansson’s car and then the apartment’s basement storage area. He found no computer there either.

The strange thing about the dog is that it did not bark, my dear Watson.

He made a note that at least one computer seemed to be missing.

Bublanski and Faste met Ekstrom in his office at 6:30 p.m., soon after they returned from Lundagatan. Andersson, after calling in, had been sent to Stockholm University to interview Johansson’s tutor about her doctoral thesis. Holmberg was still in Enskede, and Modig was running the crime scene investigation at Odenplan. Ten hours had passed since Bublanski was appointed leader of the investigative team, and seven hours since the hunt for Salander had begun.

“And who is Miriam Wu?” Ekstrom said.

“We don’t know much about her yet. She has no criminal record. It’ll be Faste’s task to start looking for her first thing tomorrow morning. But as far as we could see, there’s no sign that Salander lives at Lundagatan. For one thing, all the clothes in the wardrobe were the wrong size for her.”

“And they weren’t your typical clothes, either,” Faste said.

“Meaning what?” Ekstrom asked.

“Well, let’s just say they weren’t the type of clothes you’d buy for Mother’s Day.”

“We know nothing about the Wu woman at present,” Bublanski said.

“How much do you have to know, for God’s sake? She has a closet full of whore outfits.”

“Whore outfits?” Ekstrom said.

“Black leather, patent leather, corsets, and fetishist whips and sex toys in a drawer. They didn’t look like cheap stuff, either.”

“Are you saying that Miriam Wu is a prostitute?”

“We know nothing about Froken Wu at this stage,” Bublanski said a little more sharply.

“One of Salander’s social welfare reports indicated a few years ago that she was involved in prostitution,” Ekstrom said.

“And social welfare usually knows what they’re talking about,” Faste said.

“The social welfare report was not supported by any police reports,” Bublanski said. “There was an incident in Tantolunden when she was sixteen or seventeen; she was in the company of a considerably older man. Later the same year she was arrested for being drunk in public. Again with a considerably older man.”

“You mean that we shouldn’t draw conclusions too hastily,” Ekstrom said. “OK. But it strikes me that Johansson’s thesis having been on trafficking and prostitution, there’s a possibility that in her work she made contact with Salander and this Wu and in some way provoked them, and that this might somehow constitute a motive for murder.”

“Johansson might have got in touch with Salander’s guardian and started the whole merry-go-round,” Faste said.

“That’s possible,” Bublanski said. “But the investigation will have to document that. The important thing for now is to find Salander. She’s obviously no longer living on Lundagatan. That means we also have to find Wu and discover how she came to live in that apartment and what her relationship with Salander is.”

“And how do we find Salander?”

“She’s out there somewhere. The problem is that the only address she ever had was on Lundagatan. No change of address was filed.”

“You’re forgetting that she was also admitted to St.Stefan’s and lived with various different foster families.”

“I’m not forgetting.” Bublanski checked his papers. “She had three separate foster families when she was fifteen. It didn’t go well. From just before she turned sixteen until she was eighteen, she lived with a couple in