The Girl who played with Fire

dramatically prominent greenish-black eye shadow. The rest of her face was covered in white makeup. She had painted a red stripe from the left side of her forehead across her nose and down to the right side of her chin.

It was a grotesque mask. She looked out of her fucking mind.

His brain resisted. It seemed unreal.

Salander grasped the end of the rope and pulled. He felt the rope cut into his neck and for a few seconds he couldn’t breathe. Then he fought to get his feet under himself. With a block and tackle she hardly had to exert herself to pull him to his feet. When he was upright she stopped pulling and looped the rope a few times around a radiator pipe. She tied it with a clove hitch.

Then she vanished from his field of vision. She was gone for more than fifteen minutes. When she came back she pulled up a chair and sat in front of him. He tried to avoid looking at her painted face, but he could not help it. She laid a pistol on the living-room table. His pistol. She had found it in the shoebox in the wardrobe. A Colt 1911 Government. An illegal weapon he had had for several years. He had bought it from a friend but never even fired it. Right before his eyes she took out the magazine and filled it with rounds. She shoved it back in and cocked the weapon. Sandstrom was about to faint. He forced himself to meet her gaze.

“I don’t understand why men always have to document their perversions,” she said.

She had a soft but ice-cold voice. She held up a photograph. She must have printed it from his hard drive, for God’s sake.

“I assume that this is Ines Hammujarvi, Estonian, seventeen years old, from Riepalu near Narva. Did you have fun with her?”

The question was rhetorical. Sandstrom had no way of answering. His mouth was taped shut and his brain was incapable of formulating a response. The photograph showed… Good God, why did I save those pictures?

“You know who I am? Nod.”

Sandstrom nodded.

“You’re a sadistic pig, a pervert, and a rapist.”

He made no move.

“Nod.”

He nodded. Suddenly he had tears in his eyes.

“Let’s get the rules of engagement 100 percent clear,” Salander said. “As far as I’m concerned, you should be put to death at once. Whether you survive the night or not makes no difference to me at all. Understand?”

He nodded.

“It has probably not escaped your attention that I’m a madwoman who likes killing people. Especially men.”

She pointed at the recent newspapers that he had collected on the living-room table.

“I’m going to remove the tape from your mouth. If you scream or raise your voice I will zap you with this.” She held up a Taser. “This horrific device puts out 50,000 volts. About 40,000 volts next time, since I’ve used it once and haven’t recharged it. Understand?”

He looked doubtful.

“That means that your muscles will stop functioning. That was what you experienced at the door when you came staggering home.” She smiled at him. “And it means that your legs will not hold you up and you’ll end up hanging yourself. After I’ve zapped you, all I have to do is get up and leave the apartment.”

He nodded. Good God, she’s a fucking crazy killer. He could not help it: the tears flowed uncontrollably down his cheeks. He sniffled.

She got up and pulled off the tape. Her grotesque face was only an inch from his.

“Don’t say a word,” she said. “If you talk without permission, I’ll zap you.”

She waited until he stopped snuffling and met her eyes.

“You have one chance to survive the night,” she said. “One chance – not two. I’m going to ask you a number of questions. If you answer them, I’ll let you live. Nod if you understand.”

He nodded.

“If you refuse to answer a question I’ll have to zap you. Understand?”

He nodded.

“If you lie to me or give an evasive answer I’ll zap you.”

He nodded.

“I’m not going to bargain with you. There will be no second chance. You answer my questions immediately or you die. If you answer satisfactorily, then you’ll survive. It’s that simple.”

He nodded. He believed her. He had no choice.

“Please,” he said. “I don’t want to die…”

“It’s up to you whether you live or die. But you just broke my first rule: you do not talk without my permission.”

He pressed his lips together. God, she’s completely insane.

Blomkvist was too frustrated and restless to know what to do. Finally he put on his jacket and scarf and walked aimlessly to Sodra station, past Bofills Bage, before he ended up at the Millennium offices on Gotgatan. It was perfectly quiet. He did not turn on any lights, but he did put on the coffeemaker and then stood at the window looking down at Gotgatan. He tried to put his thoughts in order. The murder investigation was like a broken mosaic in which he could make out some pieces while others were simply missing. Somewhere there was a pattern. He could sense it, but he could not figure it out. Too many pieces were missing.

He was assailed by doubt. She is not a deranged killer, he reminded himself. She had written to tell him that she had not shot his friends. He believed her. But in some unfathomable way she was still intimately involved in the murders.

Slowly he began to reevaluate the theory he had clung to since he walked into the apartment in Enskede. He had immediately assumed that Svensson’s investigative reporting about sex trafficking was the only plausible motive for the murders. Now he was coming to accept Bublanski’s assertion that this couldn’t explain Bjurman’s murder.

Salander had told him in her message that he should forget about the johns and focus on Zala instead. Why? The damn pest. Why couldn’t she tell him anything that made sense?

Blomkvist poured coffee into a Young Left mug. He sat on one of the sofas in the middle of the office, put his feet up on the coffee table, and lit a forbidden cigarette.

Bjorck was on the list of johns. Bjurman had been Salander’s guardian. It could not be an accident that Bjurman and Bjorck had both worked at Sapo. A police report about Salander had disappeared.

Could there be more than one motive?

Could Lisbeth Salander be the motive?

Blomkvist sat there with an idea that he couldn’t put into words. There was something still unexplored, but he couldn’t explain exactly what he meant by the idea that Salander herself could be a motive for murder. He experienced a fleeting sense of discovery.

Then he realized that he was too tired and poured out his coffee, rinsed the machine, and went home to bed. Lying in the dark, he took up the thread again and for two hours tried to understand what it was he wanted to articulate.

Salander smoked a cigarette, comfortably leaning back in the chair in front of him. She crossed her right leg over her left and fixed him with her gaze. Sandstrom had never seen such an intense look before. When she spoke her voice was still soft.

“In January 2003 you visited Ines Hammujarvi for the first time at her apartment in Norsborg. She had just turned sixteen. Why did you visit her?”

Sandstrom did not know how to answer. He could hardly make sense of it himself, how it had begun or why he… She raised the Taser.

“I… I don’t know. I wanted her. She was so beautiful.”

“Beautiful?”