Millennium 03 - The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest Read online

  The second was an hour-long meeting with the chairman Magnus Borgsjö, S.M.P.’s C.F.O. Christer Sellberg, and Ulf Flodin, the budget chief. The discussion was about the slump in advertising and the downturn in single-copy sales. The budget chief and the C.F.O. were both determined on action to cut the newspaper’s overheads.

  “We made it through the first quarter of this year thanks to a marginal rise in advertising sales and the fact that two senior, highly paid employees retired at the beginning of the year. Those positions have not been filled,” Flodin said. “We’ll probably close out the present quarter with a small deficit. But the free papers, Metro and Stockholm City, are cutting into our ad. revenue in Stockholm. My prognosis is that the third quarter will produce a significant loss.”

  “So how do we counter that?” Borgsjö said.

  “The only option is cutbacks. We haven’t laid anyone off since 2002. But before the end of the year we will have to eliminate ten positions.”

  “Which positions?” Berger said.

  “We need to work on the ‘cheese plane’ principle, shave a job here and a job there. The sports desk has six and a half jobs at the moment. We should cut that to five full-timers.”

  “As I understand it, the sports desk is on its knees already. What you’re proposing means that we’ll have to cut back on sports coverage.”

  Flodin shrugged. “I’ll gladly listen to other suggestions.”

  “I don’t have any better suggestions, but the principle is this: if we cut personnel, then we have to produce a smaller newspaper, and if we make a smaller newspaper, the number of readers will drop and the number of advertisers too.”

  “The eternal vicious circle,” Sellberg said.

  “I was hired to turn this downward trend around,” said Berger. “I see my job as taking an aggressive approach to change the newspaper and make it more attractive to readers. I can’t do that if I have to cut staff.” She turned to Borgsjö. “How long can the paper continue to bleed? How big a deficit can we take before we hit the limit?”

  Borgsjö pursed his lips. “Since the early ’90s S.M.P. has eaten into a great many old consolidated assets. We have a stock portfolio that has dropped in value by about 30 per cent compared to ten years ago. A large portion of these funds were used for investments in I.T. We’ve also had enormous expenses.”

  “I gather that S.M.P. has developed its own text editing system, the A.X.T. What did that cost?”

  “About five million kronor to develop.”

  “Why did S.M.P. go to the trouble of developing its own software? There are inexpensive commercial programs already on the market.”

  “Well, Erika … that may be true. Our former I.T. chief talked us into it. He persuaded us that it would be less expensive in the long run, and that S.M.P. would also be able to license the program to other newspapers.”

  “And did any of them buy it?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, a local paper in Norway bought it.”

  “Meanwhile,” Berger said in a dry voice, “we’re sitting here with P.C.s that are five or six years old …”

  “It’s simply out of the question that we invest in new computers in the coming year,” Flodin said.

  The discussion had gone back and forth. Berger was aware that her objections were being systematically stonewalled by Flodin and Sellberg. For them costcutting was what counted, which was understandable enough from the point of view of a budget chief and a C.F.O., but unacceptable for a newly appointed editor-in-chief. What irritated her most was that they kept brushing off her arguments with patronizing smiles, making her feel like a teenager being quizzed on her homework. Without actually uttering a single inappropriate word, they displayed towards her an attitude that was so antediluvian it was almost comical. You shouldn’t worry your pretty head over complex matters, little girl.

  Borgsjö was not much help. He was biding his time and letting the other participants at the meeting say their piece, but she did not sense the same condescension from him.

  She sighed and plugged in her laptop. She had nineteen new messages. Four were spam. Someone wanted to sell her Viagra, cybersex with “The Sexiest Lolitas on the Net” for only $4.00 per minute, “Animal Sex, the Juiciest Horse Fuck in the Universe,” and a subscription to fashion.nu. The tide of this crap never receded, no matter how many times she tried to block it. Another seven messages were those so-called “Nigeria letters” from the widow of the former head of a bank in Abu Dhabi offering her ludicrous sums of money if she would only assist with a small sum of start-up money, and other such drivel.

  There was the morning memo, the lunchtime memo, three emails from Fredriksson updating her on developments in the day’s lead story, one from her accountant who wanted a meeting to check on the implications of her move from Millennium to S.M.P., and a message from her dental hygienist suggesting a time for her quarterly visit. She put the appointment in her calendar and realized at once that she would have to change it because she had a major editorial conference planned for that day.

  Finally she opened the last one, sent from [email protected]> with the subject line [Attn: Editor-in-Chief]. Slowly she put down her coffee cup.

  YOU WHORE! YOU THINK YOU’RE SOMETHING YOU FUCKING CUNT. DON’T THINK YOU CAN COME HERE AND THROW YOUR WEIGHT AROUND. YOU’RE GOING TO GET FUCKED IN THE CUNT WITH A SCREWDRIVER, WHORE! THE SOONER YOU DISAPPEAR THE BETTER.

  Berger looked up and searched for the news editor, Holm. He was not at his desk, nor could she see him in the newsroom. She checked the sender and then picked up the telephone and called Peter Fleming, the I.T. manager.

  “Good morning, Peter. Who uses the address [email protected]>?”

  “That isn’t a valid address at S.M.P.”

  “I just got an email from that address.”

  “It’s a fake. Does the message contain a virus?”

  “I wouldn’t know. At least, the antivirus program didn’t react.”

  “O.K. That address doesn’t exist. But it’s very simple to fake an apparently legitimate address. There are sites on the Net that you can use to send anonymous mail.”

  “Is it possible to trace an email like that?”

  “Almost impossible, even if the person in question is so stupid that he sends it from his home computer. You might be able to trace the I.P. number to a server, but if he uses an account that he set up at hotmail, for instance, the trail will fizzle out.”

  Berger thanked him. She thought for a moment. It was not the first time she had received a threatening email or a message from a crackpot. This one was obviously referring to her new job as editor-in-chief. She wondered whether it was some lunatic who had read about her in connection with Morander’s death, or whether the sender was in the building.

  Figuerola thought long and hard as to what she should do about Gullberg. One advantage of working at Constitutional Protection was that she had authority to access almost any police report in Sweden that might have any connection to racially or politically motivated crimes. Zalachenko was technically an immigrant, and her job included tracking violence against persons born abroad to decide whether or not the crime was racially motivated. Accordingly she had the right to involve herself in the investigation of Zalachenko’s murder, to determine whether Gullberg, the known killer, had a connection to any racist organization, or whether he was overheard making racist remarks at the time of the murder. She requisitioned the report. She found the letters that had been sent to the Minister of Justice and discovered that alongside the diatribe and the insulting personal attacks were also the words nigger-lover and traitor.

  By then it was 5.00 p.m. Figuerola locked all the material in her safe, shut down her computer, washed up her coffee mug, and clocked out. She walked briskly to a gym at St Eriksplan and spent the next hour doing some easy strength training.

  When she was finished she went home to her one-bedroom apartment on Pontonjärgatan, showered, and ate a late but nutritious dinner. She considered calli
ng Daniel Mogren, who lived three blocks down the same street. Mogren was a carpenter and bodybuilder and had been her training partner off and on for three years. In recent months they had also had sex as friends.

  Sex was almost as satisfying as a rigorous workout at the gym, but at a mature thirty-plus or, rather, forty-minus, Figuerola had begun to think that maybe she ought to start looking for a steady partner and a more permanent living arrangement. Maybe even children. But not with Mogren.

  She decided that she did not feel like seeing anyone that evening. Instead she went to bed with a history of the ancient world.

  CHAPTER 13

  Tuesday, 17.v

  Figuerola woke at 6.10 on Tuesday morning, took a long run along Norr Mälarstrand, showered, and clocked in at police headquarters at 8.10. She prepared a memorandum on the conclusions she had arrived at the day before.

  At 9.00 Edklinth arrived. She gave him twenty minutes to deal with his post, then knocked on his door. She waited while he read her four pages. At last he looked up.

  “The chief of Secretariat,” he said.

  “He must have approved loaning out Mårtensson. So he must know that Mårtensson is not at Counter-Espionage, even though according to Personal Protection that’s where he is.”

  Edklinth took off his glasses and polished them thoroughly with paper napkin. He had met Chief of Secretariat Albert Shenke at meetings and internal conferences on countless occasions, but he could not claim to know the man well. Shenke was rather short, with thin reddish-blond hair, and by now rather stout. He was about fifty-five and had worked at S.I.S. for at least twenty-five years, possibly longer. He had been chief of Secretariat for a decade, and was assistant chief before that. Edklinth thought him taciturn, and a man who could act ruthlessly when necessary. He had no idea what he did in his free time, but he had a memory of having once seen him in the garage of the police building in casual clothes, with a golf bag slung over his shoulder. He had also run into him once at the Opera.

  “There was one thing that struck me,” Figuerola said

  “What’s that?”

  “Evert Gullberg. He did his military service in the ’40s and became an accountant or some such, and then in the ’50s he vanished into thin air.”

  “And?”

  “When we were discussing this yesterday, we were talking about him as if he were some sort of a hired killer.”

  “It sounds far-fetched, I know, but—”

  “It struck me that there is so little background on him that it seems almost like a smokescreen. Both IB and S.I.S. established cover companies outside the building in the ’50s and ’60s.”

  “I was wondering when you’d think of that,” Edklinth said.

  “I’d like permission to go through the personnel files from the ’50s,” Figuerola said.

  “No,” Edklinth said, shaking his head. “We can’t go into the archives without authorization from the chief of Secretariat, and we don’t want to attract attention until we have more to go on.”

  “So what next?”

  “Mårtensson,” Edklinth said. “Find out what he’s working on.”

  Salander was studying the vent window in her room when she heard the key turn in the door. In came Jonasson. It was past 10.00 on Tuesday night. He had interrupted her planning how to break out of Sahlgrenska hospital.

  She had measured the window and discovered that her head would fit through it and that she would not have much problem squeezing the rest of her body through. It was three storeys to the ground, but a combination of torn sheets and a ten-foot extension cord from a floor lamp would dispose of that problem.

  She had plotted her escape step by step. The problem was what she would wear. She had knickers, a hospital nightshirt and a pair of plastic flip-flops that she had managed to borrow. She had 200 kronor in cash from Annika Giannini to pay for sweets from the hospital snack shop. That should be enough for a cheap pair of jeans and a T-shirt at the Salvation Army store, if she could find one in Göteborg. She would have to spend what was left of the money on a call to Plague. Then everything would work out. She planned on landing in Gibraltar a few days after she escaped, and from there she would create a new identity somewhere in the world.

  Jonasson sat in the visitor’s chair. She sat on the edge of her bed.

  “Hello, Lisbeth. I’m sorry I’ve not come to see you the past few days, but I’ve been up to my eyes in A. & E. and I’ve also been made a mentor for a couple of interns.”

  She had not expected Jonasson to make special visits to see her.

  He picked up her chart and studied her temperature graph and the record of medications. Her temperature was steady, between 37 and 37.2 degrees, and for the past week she had not taken any headache tablets.

  “Dr Endrin is your doctor. Do you get along with her?”

  “She’s alright,” Salander said without enthusiasm.

  “Is it O.K. if I do an examination?”

  She nodded. He took a pen torch out of his pocket and bent over to shine it into her eyes, to see how her pupils contracted and expanded. He asked her to open her mouth and examined her throat. Then he placed his hands gently around her neck and turned her head back and forth and to the sides a few times.

  “You don’t have any pain in your neck?” he said.

  She shook her head.

  “How’s the headache?”

  “I feel it now and then, but it passes.”

  “The healing process is still going on. The headache will eventually go away altogether.”

  Her hair was still so short that he hardly needed to push aside the tufts to feel the scar above her ear. It was healing, but there was still a small scab.

  “You’ve been scratching the wound. You shouldn’t do that.”

  She nodded. He took her left elbow and raised the arm.

  “Can you lift it by yourself?”

  She lifted her arm.

  “Do you have any pain or discomfort in the shoulder?”

  She shook her head.

  “Does it feel tight?”

  “A little.”

  “I think you have to do a bit more physio on your shoulder muscles.”

  “It’s hard when you’re locked up like this.”

  He smiled at her. “That won’t last. Are you doing the exercises the therapist recommended?”

  She nodded.

  He pressed his stethoscope against his wrist for a moment to warm it. Then he sat on the edge of the bed and untied the strings of her nightshirt, listened to her heart and took her pulse. He asked her to lean forward and placed the stethoscope on her back to listen to her lungs.

  “Cough.”

  She coughed.

  “O.K., you can do up your nightshirt and get into bed. From a medical standpoint, you’re just about recovered.”

  She expected him to get up and say he would come back in a few days, but he stayed, sitting on the bed. He seemed to be thinking about something. Salander waited patiently.

  “Do you know why I became a doctor?” he said.

  She shook her head.

  “I come from a working-class family. I always thought I wanted to be a doctor. I’d actually thought about becoming a psychiatrist when I was a teenager. I was terribly intellectual.”

  Salander looked at him with sudden alertness as soon as he mentioned the word “psychiatrist”.

  “But I wasn’t sure that I could handle the studies. So when I finished school I studied to be a welder and I even worked as one for several years. I thought it was a good idea to have something to fall back on if the medical studies didn’t work out. And being a welder wasn’t so different from being a doctor. It’s all about patching up things. And now I’m working here at Sahlgrenska and patching up people like you.”

  She wondered if he were pulling her leg.

  “Lisbeth … I’m wondering …”

  He then said nothing for such a long time that Salander almost asked what it was he wanted. But she waited for him to spe
ak.

  “Would you be angry with me if I asked you a personal question? I want to ask you as a private individual, not as a doctor. I won’t make any record of your answer and I won’t discuss it with anyone else. And you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

  “What is it?”

  “Since you were shut up at St Stefan’s when you were twelve, you’ve refused to respond when any psychiatrist has tried to talk to you. Why is that?”

  Salander’s eyes darkened, but they were utterly expressionless as she looked at Jonasson. She sat in silence for two minutes.

  “Why?” she said at last.

  “To be honest, I’m not really sure. I think I’m trying to understand something.”

  Her lips curled a little. “I don’t talk to crazy-doctors because they never listen to what I have to say.”

  Jonasson laughed. “O.K. Tell me … what do you think of Peter Teleborian?”

  Jonasson threw out the name so unexpectedly that Salander almost jumped. Her eyes narrowed.

  “What the hell is this, ‘Twenty Questions’? What are you after?” Her voice sounded like sandpaper.

  Jonasson leaned forward, almost too close.

  “Because a … what did you call it … a crazy-doctor by the name of Peter Teleborian, who’s somewhat renowned in my profession, has been to see me twice in the past few days, trying to convince me to let him examine you.”

  Salander felt an icy chill run down her spine.

  “The district court is going to appoint him to do a forensic psychiatric assessment of you.”

  “And?”

  “I don’t like the man. I’ve told him he can’t see you. Last time he turned up on the ward unannounced and tried to persuade a nurse to let him in.”