Millennium 02 - The Girl Who Played with Fire Page 27

  “How are we doing on the press conference?” Faste said.

  The mood in Berger’s office at 7:00 that evening was grim. Blomkvist had been sitting silent and almost immobile ever since Inspector Bublanski had left. Eriksson had cycled over to Lundagatan to watch what was going on there. She reported that no-one seemed to have been arrested and that traffic was flowing once again. Cortez had called in to tell them that the police were now looking for a second unnamed woman. Berger told him the name.

  Berger and Eriksson had talked through what needed to be done, but the immediate situation was complicated by the fact that Blomkvist and Berger knew what role Salander had played in the denouement of the Wennerström affair—in her capacity as elite-level hacker she had been Blomkvist’s secret source. Eriksson had no knowledge of this and had never even heard Salander’s name mentioned. So the conversation occasionally lapsed into cryptic silences.

  “I’m going home,” Blomkvist said, getting up abruptly. “I’m so tired I can’t think straight. I’ve got to get some sleep. Tomorrow being Good Friday, I plan to sleep and go through papers. Malin, can you work over Easter?”

  “Do I have any choice?”

  “No. We’ll start at noon on Saturday. Could we work at my place rather than in the office?”

  “That would be fine.”

  “I’m thinking of revamping the approach that we decided on this morning. Now it’s no longer just a matter of trying to find out if Dag’s exposé had something to do with the murders. It’s about working out, from the material, who murdered Dag and Mia.”

  Eriksson wondered how they were going to go about doing any such thing, but she said nothing. Blomkvist waved goodbye to the two of them and left without another word.

  At 7:15 Inspector Bublanski reluctantly followed Prosecutor Ekström onto the podium in the police press centre. Bublanski had absolutely no interest in being in the spotlight in front of a dozen TV cameras. He was almost panic-stricken to be the focus of such attention. He would never get used to or begin to enjoy seeing himself on television.

  Ekström, on the other hand, moved with ease, adjusted his glasses, and adopted a suitably serious expression. He let the photographers take their pictures before he raised his hands and asked for quiet.

  “I’d like to welcome you all to this somewhat hastily arranged press conference regarding the murders in Enskede late last night. We have some more information to share with you. My name is Prosecutor Richard Ekström, and this is Criminal Inspector Jan Bublanski of the County Criminal Police Violent Crimes Division, who is leading the investigation. I have a statement to read, and then there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions.”

  Ekström looked at the assembled journalists. The murders in Enskede were big news, and getting bigger. He was pleased to note that Aktuellt, Rapport, and TV4 were all there, and he recognized reporters from the TT wire service and the evening and morning papers. There were also quite a few reporters he did not recognize.

  “As you know, two people were murdered in Enskede last night. A weapon was found at the crime scene, a Colt .45 Magnum. Today the National Forensics Laboratory established that this gun was the murder weapon. The owner of the weapon was identified, and we went looking for him today.”

  Ekström paused for effect.

  “At 4:15 this afternoon the owner of the weapon was found dead in his apartment in the vicinity of Odenplan. He had been shot. He is believed to have been dead at the time of the killings in Enskede. The police”—Ekström here gestured towards Bublanski—“have reason to believe that the same person was responsible for all three murders.”

  A murmur broke out among the reporters. Several of them began talking in low voices on their mobile telephones. “Have you got a suspect?” a reporter from Swedish Radio called out.

  Ekström raised his voice. “If you would refrain from interrupting my statement, we’ll get to that. This evening a person has been named whom the police want to question in connection with these three murders.”

  “Will you give us his name, please?”

  “It’s not a he, but a she. The police are looking for a twenty-six-year-old woman who has a connection to the owner of the weapon, and whom we know to have been at the scene of the murders in Enskede.”

  Bublanski frowned and then looked sullen. They had reached the point in the agenda over which he and Ekström had disagreed, namely the question of whether they should name their suspect.

  Ekström had maintained that according to all available documentation, Salander was a mentally ill, potentially violent woman and that something had apparently triggered a murderous rage. There was no guarantee that the violence was at an end, and therefore it was in the public interest that she be named and apprehended as soon as possible.

  Bublanski held that there was reason to wait at least for results of the technical examination of Bjurman’s apartment before the investigative team committed itself unequivocally to one approach. But Ekström had prevailed.

  Ekström held up a hand to interrupt the buzzing of the assembled reporters. The revelation that a woman was being sought for three murders would go off like a bomb. He passed the microphone to Bublanski, who cleared his throat twice, adjusted his glasses, and stared hard at the paper with the wording they had agreed on.

  “The police are searching for a twenty-six-year-old woman by the name of Lisbeth Salander. A photograph from the passport office will be distributed. We do not know where she is at present, but we believe that she is in the greater Stockholm area. The police would like the public’s assistance in finding this woman as soon as possible. Lisbeth Salander is four feet eleven inches tall, with a slim build.”

  He took a deep, nervous breath. He could feel the dampness under his arms.

  “Lisbeth Salander has previously been in the care of a psychiatric clinic and is regarded as dangerous to herself and to the public. We would emphasize that we cannot say unequivocally that she is the killer, but circumstances dictate that we question her immediately to ascertain what knowledge she may have about the murders in Enskede and at Odenplan.”

  “You can’t have it both ways,” shouted a reporter from an evening paper. “Either she’s a murder suspect or she isn’t.”

  Bublanski gave Ekström a helpless look.

  “The police are investigating on a broad front, and of course we’re looking at various scenarios. But there is reason to suspect the woman we have named, and the police consider it extremely urgent that she is taken into custody. She is a suspect due to forensic evidence which emerged during the investigation of the crime scene.”

  “What sort of evidence?” someone in the crowded room immediately asked.

  “We are not going to go into it.”

  Several reporters started talking at once. Ekström held up his hand and pointed to a reporter from Dagens Eko. He had dealt with him before and regarded him as objective.

  “Inspector Bublanski said that Fröken Salander had been in a psychiatric clinic. Why was that?”

  “This woman had a … a troubled upbringing and encountered over the years a number of problems. She is under guardianship, and the person who owned the weapon was her guardian.”

  “Who is he?”

  “The individual who was shot in his apartment at Odenplan. At present we are withholding his name until his next of kin are notified.”

  “What motive did she have for the murders?”

  Bublanski took the microphone and said, “We will not speculate as to possible motives.”

  “Does she have a police record?”

  “Yes.”

  Then came a question from a reporter with a deep, distinctive voice that could be heard over the crowd.

  “Is she dangerous to the public?”

  Ekström hesitated for a moment. Then he said: “We have reports which indicate that she could be considered prone to violence in stressful situations. We are issuing this statement because we want to get in touch with her as soon as po
ssible.”

  Bublanski bit his lower lip.

  Criminal Inspector Sonja Modig was still in Advokat Bjurman’s apartment at 9:00 that evening. She had called home to explain the situation to her husband. After eleven years of marriage he had accepted that her job was never going to be nine to five. She was sitting at Bjurman’s desk and reading through the papers that she had found in the drawers when she heard a knock on the door and turned to see Officer Bubble balancing two cups of coffee on his notebook, with a blue bag of cinnamon rolls from the local kiosk in his other hand. Wearily she waved him in.

  “What don’t you want me to touch?” Bublanski said.

  “The techs have finished in here. They’re working on the kitchen and the bedroom. The body’s still in there.”

  Bublanski pulled up a chair and sat down. Modig opened the bag and took out a roll.

  “Thanks. I was having such caffeine withdrawal I thought I’d die.”

  They munched quietly.

  Modig licked her fingers and said, “I heard things didn’t go so well at Lundagatan.”

  “There was nobody there. There were unopened letters for Salander, but someone called Miriam Wu lives there. We haven’t found her yet either.”

  “Who is she?”

  “Don’t really know. Faste is working on her background. She was added to the contract about a month ago, but she just seems to be someone who lives in the apartment. I think Salander moved without filing a change of address.”

  “Maybe she planned all this.”

  “What? A triple murder?” Bublanski shook his head dejectedly. “What a mess this is turning into. Ekström insisted on holding a press conference, and now we’re going to get it in the neck from the media. Have you found anything?”

  “Apart from Bjurman’s body in the bedroom, you mean? We found the empty box for the Magnum. It’s being checked for prints. Bjurman has a file with copies of his monthly reports about Salander that he sent to the Guardianship Agency. If they are to be believed, Salander is a regular little angel, big time.”

  “Not him too,” Bublanski said.

  “Not him too what?”

  “Another admirer of Fröken Salander.”

  Bublanski summed up what he had learned from Armansky and Blomkvist. Modig listened without interrupting. When he finished, she ran her fingers through her hair and rubbed her eyes.

  “That sounds completely absurd,” she said.

  Bublanski tugged on his lower lip. Modig glanced at him and had to suppress a smile. He had a rough-chiselled face that looked almost brutal. But when he was confused or unsure of something, his expression turned sullen. It was in those moments that she thought of him as Officer Bubble. She had never used the nickname to his face and did not know who had coined it. But it suited him perfectly.

  “How sure are we?”

  “The prosecutor seems sure. An APB went out nationally for Salander this evening,” Bublanski said. “She spent the past year abroad, and it’s possible she could try to leave again.”

  “But how sure are we?”

  He shrugged. “We’ve taken people in for a lot less.”

  “Her prints were on the murder weapon in Enskede. Her guardian was murdered. Without trying to get ahead of things, I’m guessing it’s the same weapon that was used here. We’ll know tomorrow—the techs found a fairly intact bullet fragment in the bed frame.”

  “Good.”

  “There are some rounds for the revolver in the bottom desk drawer. Bullets with uranium cores and gold tips.”

  “Very useful.”

  “We have lots of paperwork that says Salander is unstable. Bjurman was her guardian and he owned the gun.”

  “Mmm …,” Bublanski said glumly.

  “We have a link between Salander and the couple in Enskede—Mikael Blomkvist.”

  “Mmm …,” he said again.

  “You don’t sound convinced.”

  “I can’t get a clear line on Salander. The paperwork says one thing, but Armansky and Blomkvist say something else. According to the paperwork she is a developmentally disabled near-psychopath. According to the two men who have worked with her, she’s a skilled researcher. That’s a huge discrepancy. We have no motive for Bjurman and nothing to say that she knew the couple in Enskede.”

  “How much of a motive does a psychotic nutcase need?”

  “I haven’t been in the bedroom yet. How does it look?”

  “I found the body prostrate against the bed. He was kneeling on the floor as if he were saying his prayers. He’s naked. Shot in the back of the neck.”

  “One shot, just like in Enskede?”

  “As far as I could see. It seems that Salander, if she’s the one who did it, forced him onto his knees by the bed before she fired. The bullet went up through the back of his head and exited through his face.”

  “Like an execution, then.”

  “Precisely.”

  “I was thinking … somebody must have heard the shot.”

  “His bedroom overlooks the rear courtyard, and the neighbours above and below had left for the holiday. The window was closed. Besides, she used a pillow to muffle the sound.”

  “Smart thinking.”

  At that moment Gunnar Samuelsson from forensics stuck his head in the door.

  “Hi, Bubble,” he said, and then turned to his colleague. “Modig, we were thinking of removing the body, so we turned him over. There’s something you ought to take a look at.”

  They all went into the bedroom. Bjurman’s body had been placed on its back on a wheeled stretcher, the first stop on the way to the pathologist. There was no doubt about the cause of death. His forehead bore a wound four inches across, and a large part of his skull was hanging by a flap of skin. The blood splattered across the bed and the wall told the tale.

  Bublanski pouted.

  “What are we supposed to be looking at?” Modig asked.

  Samuelsson lifted the plastic sheet which covered Bjurman’s lower body. Bublanski put on his glasses when he and Modig stepped closer to read the text tattooed on Bjurman’s abdomen. The letters were irregular and clumsy—obviously whoever wrote them was a novice tattoo artist—but the message could not have been clearer: I AM A SADISTIC PIG, A PERVERT, AND A RAPIST.

  Modig and Bublanski looked at each other in astonishment.

  “Are we possibly looking at a motive?” Modig said at last.

  Blomkvist bought a pasta meal from the 7-Eleven on his way home and put the paper carton in the microwave as he undressed and stood under the shower for three minutes. He got a fork and ate standing up, right out of the carton. He was hungry, but he had no appetite for food; he just wanted to take it on board as fast as he could. When it was finished he opened a Vestfyn Pilsner beer and drank it straight from the bottle.

  Without turning on a lamp he stood by the window overlooking Gamla Stan for more than twenty minutes, while he tried to stop thinking.

  Twenty-four hours ago he had been at his sister’s house when Svensson had called him on his mobile. He and Johansson had still been alive.

  Blomkvist had not slept for thirty-six hours, and the days when he could skip a night’s sleep with impunity were long gone. And he knew that he would not be able to sleep without thinking about what he had seen. The images from Enskede felt ingrained in his memory for all time.

  Finally he turned off his mobile and crept under the covers. At 11:00 he was still awake. He got up and brewed some coffee. He put on the CD player and listened to Debbie Harry singing “Maria.” He wrapped himself in a blanket and sat on the living-room sofa and drank coffee while he worried about Salander.

  What did he actually know about her? Hardly anything.

  She had a photographic memory and she was a hell of a hacker. He knew that she was a peculiar, introverted woman who didn’t like to talk about herself, and that she had absolutely no trust in authority of any kind.

  She could be viciously violent. He owed his life to that.

  But
he had had no idea that she had been declared incompetent or was under guardianship, or that she had spent any part of her teenage years in a psychiatric clinic.

  He had to choose whose side he was on.

  Sometime after midnight he decided that he couldn’t accept the police’s assumption that she had murdered Svensson and Johansson. At the very least, he owed her a chance to explain herself before he passed judgment.

  He had no idea when he nodded off, but at 4:30 a.m. he woke up on the sofa. He staggered into the bedroom and fell instantly back to sleep.

  CHAPTER 16

  Good Friday, March 25–

  Easter Saturday, March 26

  Eriksson leaned back into Blomkvist’s sofa. Without thinking, she put her feet up on the coffee table—exactly as she would have done at home—and quickly took them off again. Blomkvist gave her a smile.

  “That’s OK,” he said. “Make yourself at home.”

  She grinned and put her feet up again.

  On Good Friday Blomkvist had brought the copies of Svensson’s papers from the Millennium offices to his apartment. He had laid out the material on the floor of the living room, and he and Eriksson had spent eight hours going through emails, notes, jottings in Svensson’s notebook, and above all the manuscript of the book.

  On Saturday morning Annika Giannini had come to see her brother. She brought the evening newspapers from the day before with their glaring headlines and a huge reproduction of Salander’s passport photograph on the front page. One read:

  WANTED FOR

  TRIPLE MURDER

  The other had opted for the more sensational headline:

  POLICE HUNT

  PSYCHOTIC MASS MURDERER

  They talked for an hour, during which Blomkvist explained his relationship with Salander and why he couldn’t believe that she was guilty Finally he asked his sister whether she would consider representing Salander if or when she was caught.

  “I’ve represented women in various cases of violence and abuse, but I’m not really a criminal defence lawyer,” she said.