a similar nature.”
Faste whistled and held up a photograph of a woman bound in a brutally uncomfortable position. “This may be something for Domino Fashion or Evil Fingers,” he said.
Bublanski gestured in annoyance for Faste to shut up.
“What are we supposed to make of this?” Bohman said.
“Suppose the tattoo is about two years old,” Bublanski said. “It would have been done around the time that Bjurman got sick. No medical records indicate that he had any illness, other than high blood pressure. So we can assume that there was a connection.”
“Salander changed during that year,” Bohman said. “She stopped working for Milton and without warning, I understand, went overseas.”
“Should we assume that there’s a connection there too? The message in the tattoo plainly says that Bjurman raped someone. Salander is a likely victim. And that would be a motive for murder.”
“There are other ways to interpret this, of course,” Faste said. “I can imagine a scenario where Salander and the Chinese girl are running some sort of escort service with S&M overtones. Bjurman could be one of those nuts who gets off on being whipped by small girls. He could have been in some sort of dependence relationship with Salander and things went wrong.”
“But that doesn’t explain what she was doing in Enskede.”
“If Svensson and Johansson were about to expose the sex trade, they may have stumbled on Salander and Wu. That may be your motive for Salander to commit murder.”
“So far this is mere speculation,” said Modig.
The meeting went on for another hour, and also dealt with the fact that Svensson’s laptop was missing. When they broke for lunch they were all frustrated. The investigation was fraught with more question marks than ever.
Berger called Magnus Borgsjo, CEO of
“I’m interested,” she said.
“I thought you would be.”
“I meant to let you know right after the Easter holiday. But as you’ll have heard, chaos has broken out here.”
“The murder of Dag Svensson. I’m so sorry. A terrible thing.”
“Then you’ll understand that this is no time for me to announce my resignation.”
He was silent for a moment.
“We have a problem,” Borgsjo said. “The last time we spoke, we said that the job would start on August 1. But the thing is, our editor in chief, Hakan Morander, whom you would be replacing, is in very poor health. He has heart problems and has to cut back on work. He talked to his doctor a few days ago, and this weekend I learned that he’s now planning to retire on July 1. The idea was that he would still be here until fall, and that you could work in tandem through August and September. But the way the situation looks now, we have a crisis. Erika – we’re going to need you to start on May 1, and certainly no later than May 15.”
“God. That’s only weeks away.”
“Are you still interested?”
“Yes, of course… but that means I have only a month to tidy things up here at
“I know. I’m sorry to do it, Erika, but I have to rush you. A month should be enough time to straighten out affairs at a magazine with only half a dozen employees.”
“But it means leaving in the midst of a crisis.”
“You’d have to leave in any case. All we’re doing is bringing forward your departure date by a few weeks.”
“I do have some conditions.”
“Let me hear them.”
“I’ll have to remain on
“That might not be appropriate.
“That can’t be helped. I won’t have anything to do with
“OK, we can probably deal with that.”
They agreed to meet with his board during the first week of April to iron out the details and draw up a contract.
Blomkvist had a feeling of deja vu when he studied the list of suspects that he and Eriksson had put together over the weekend. Thirty-seven names, all people Dag Svensson was leaning on hard in his book, twenty-one of whom were johns he had identified.
It reminded Blomkvist of the gallery of suspects from when he had set out to track a murderer in Hedestad two years before.
At 10:00 on Tuesday morning he asked Eriksson to come into his office at
“What should we do?” Eriksson said.
“First we have to show the list to Erika – maybe in ten minutes. Then we have to check them off one by one. It’s possible, it’s even probable, that one of these people has a connection to the murders.”
“And how do we check them off?”
“I’m thinking of focusing on the twenty-one johns. They have more to lose than the others. I’m thinking of following in Dag’s footsteps, of going to see them one by one.”
“And what do I do?”
“Two jobs. First, there are seven people here who aren’t identified. Your assignment over the next couple of days is to try and identify them. Some of the names are in Mia’s thesis; there may be ways of cross-referencing that would help you work out their real identities. Second, we know very little about Nils Bjurman, Lisbeth’s guardian. There was a brief CV in the papers, but my guess is that half of it is made up.”
“So I should ferret out his background.”
“Precisely. Everything you can find.”
Harriet Vanger called Blomkvist at 5:00 in the afternoon.
“Can you talk?”
“For a minute.”
“This girl the police are looking for… it’s the same one who helped you track me down, isn’t it?”
Harriet Vanger and Salander had never met.
“That’s right,” Blomkvist said. “I’m sorry I haven’t had time to call and update you. But, yes, she’s the one.”
“What does it mean?”
“As far as you’re concerned? Nothing, I hope.”
“But she knows everything about me and what happened.”
“Yes, she knows everything that happened.”
Harriet was quiet on the other end of the line.
“Harriet, I don’t think she did it. I’m working on the assumption that she’s innocent of all these murders. I trust her.”
“If I’m to believe what’s in the newspapers, then –”
“But you shouldn’t believe what’s in the papers. And as far as it affects you, it’s quite simple: she gave her word that she would keep her mouth shut. I believe she’ll keep that promise for the rest of her life. Everything I know about her tells me that she is extremely principled.”
