The Girl Who Played with Fire (Millennium #2)

He looked at her in surprise. Then he smiled.

Jesus, what kind of a fucking monster is this?

She kicked again, but he caught her leg and twisted her foot so hard that she shrieked in pain and had to roll over onto her stomach.

Then he leaned over her and slapped her again. He hit the side of her head. Wu saw stars. It felt like being struck by a sledgehammer. He sat on her back. She tried to lift him, but she could not move him an inch. He twisted her arms behind her back and locked them in handcuffs. She was helpless. Suddenly she felt a paralyzing fear.

Blomkvist was passing the Globe Arena on his way home from Tyreso. He had spent the afternoon and evening visiting three people on Svensson's list. Not a thing had come of it. He had encountered panic-stricken men who had already been confronted by Svensson and were just waiting for the sky to fall. They had begged and pleaded with him. He crossed all of them off his private list of murder suspects.

He took out his mobile as he drove across Skanstullsbron and called Berger. She didn't answer. He tried Eriksson. No answer there either. Damn. It was late. He wanted to talk about this with somebody.

He wondered whether Paolo Roberto had had any success with Miriam Wu and dialled his number. It rang five times before he got an answer.

"Paolo."

"Hi. It's Blomkvist. I'm wondering how it went -"

"Blomkvist, I'm on skrrritch skrrritch a van with Miriam."

"I can't hear you."

"Skrp skrrrraaap skrraaaap."

"You're breaking up. I can't hear you."

Then the connection broke off.

Paolo Roberto swore. His battery died just as he went through Fittja. He pushed the ON button and brought the phone back to life. He dialled the number for emergency services, but as soon as they answered his mobile went dead again.

Shit.

He had a battery charger that worked in the cigarette lighter. But the charger was in the hall at home. He tossed the mobile onto the passenger seat and concentrated on keeping the taillights of the van in sight. He was driving a BMW with a full tank, and there wasn't a chance in hell that the van would be able to outrun him. But he didn't want to attract attention, so he increased the distance to several hundred yards.

A giant on steroids beats up a girl right in front of me. Just wait till I get my hands on that fucker.

If Erika Berger had been there she would have called him a macho cowboy. Paolo Roberto called it being pissed off.

Blomkvist drove down Lundagatan. Miriam Wu's apartment was in darkness. He tried calling Paolo Roberto again, but got the message that the subscriber could not be reached. He swore to himself and then drove home and made coffee and a sandwich.

The drive took longer than Paolo Roberto had anticipated. The van went as far as Sodertalje before it headed west on the E20 towards Strangnas. Just past Nykvarn, it turned off to the left onto smaller roads through the countryside of Sormland.

The smaller the roads, the greater the risk that he would be noticed by the men in the van. He eased off the accelerator and fell back even more.

He was unsure of his geography out here, but as far as he could tell they were passing to the west of Lake Yngern. He lost the van from view and went faster. He came out on a long straightaway.

The van had disappeared. There were small roads on both sides. He had lost them.

Miriam Wu felt pain in her neck and face, but she had overcome her panic at being helpless. He had not hit her again. She had managed to sit up and was leaning against the back of the driver's seat. Her hands were cuffed behind her back and there was a strip of duct tape over her mouth. One nostril was clogged with blood and she was having difficulty breathing.

She looked at her assailant. Since he had taped her mouth he hadn't said a word. She looked at the mark where she had kicked him. It was a blow that should have caused serious damage. He seemed hardly to have noticed it.

He was massively built, and on a huge scale. He had muscles that spoke of long hours spent in a gym. But he was not a bodybuilder. His muscles looked completely natural. His hands were as big as frying pans.

The van was bumping along a road full of potholes. She thought they had taken the E4 south for a long time before they turned off onto country roads.

She knew that even if her hands were free she wouldn't stand a chance against this giant.

Eriksson called Blomkvist a little before midnight.

"I'm sorry for calling so late. I've been trying to reach you for hours, but you didn't answer your mobile."

"I had it turned off all day while I was dealing with some of the johns."

"I came up with something that could be of interest," Eriksson said.

"Tell me."

"Bjurman. You asked me to look into his background."

"What did you find?"

"He was born in 1950, and began studying law in 1970. He took his law degree in 1976, started working at Klang and Reine in 1978, and opened his own practice in 1989. One of his side jobs was as a clerk at a district court for a few weeks in 1976. Right after he got his degree in 1976 he worked for two years, from 1976 to 1978, as a lawyer at National Police headquarters."

"Interesting."

"I checked out what sort of work he did there. It wasn't easy to dig up. But he was, for one thing, in charge of legal matters for the Security Police. He worked on immigration."

"Which tells us?"

"That he worked there with your man Bjorck."

"That bastard. He didn't say a word about having actually worked with Bjurman."

The van had to be somewhere in the vicinity.

Paolo Roberto had glimpsed it only a minute before he lost it. He reversed onto the grass verge and turned back. He drove slowly, looking for side roads.

After only a hundred and fifty yards he spotted a light glinting through a narrow gap in the curtain of trees. He saw a forest track on the opposite side of the road and drove up it about fifty feet, turned, and parked facing out, not bothering to lock the car. Then he jogged back across the road and hopped over a ditch. He wished he had a flashlight as he wound his way forward through the undergrowth and low branches.

Very soon he came out onto a sandy gravel area and could see some low, dark buildings. As he walked towards them the light above a loading bay came on.

He dropped to his knees and stayed motionless. A second later the lights went on inside the building. It appeared to be a warehouse about a hundred feet long with a row of narrow windows high on one side. The yard was full of containers, and to his right was parked a yellow front-end loader. Next to it was a white Volvo. In the glow of the outdoor light he suddenly saw the van, parked only twenty-five yards from where he crouched.

Then a door opened in the loading bay right in front of him. A man with mousy hair and a beer belly came out of the warehouse and lit a cigarette. Paolo Roberto saw, against the light from the door, that he had a ponytail.

He kept stock-still. He was in full view less than twenty yards from the man, but the flame from his cigarette lighter had knocked out his night vision. Then he and the man with the ponytail both heard a half-choked howl from the van. As Ponytail moved towards the van, Paolo Roberto eased himself down flat on the ground.

He heard a rattle as the sliding doors of the van opened and saw the huge blond man get out, reach back inside, and haul out Miriam Wu. He took her under one arm and held her in an easy grip as she struggled. The two men exchanged some words, but Paolo Roberto could not hear what they said. Then Ponytail opened the door on the driver's side and hopped in. He started up the van and made a tight turn in the yard. The beams of the headlights swung past only a few yards from Paolo Roberto. The van disappeared down an access road and the noise of its engine faded into the distance.

The giant carried Miriam Wu through the door in the loading bay. Paolo Roberto could see a shadow through the windows high on the wall. It seemed as if the shadow was moving towards the far end of the building.

He got up cautiously. His clothes felt sticky. He was relieved and uneasy. He was relieved because he had managed to track the van and had Miriam Wu within reach. But he was in awe of the giant who had plucked her out of the van as if she were a bag of groceries.

The sane thing to do would be to retreat and call the police. But his battery was dead, and he had only a vague idea of where he was. He certainly couldn't give directions to anyone else as to how to get there. And he had no clue what was happening to the girl inside the building.

He made a slow circuit and discovered that there was only one entrance. After two minutes he was back near the door and had to make a decision. No question that the giant was a bad guy. He had kidnapped Miriam Wu. Paolo Roberto did not feel particularly afraid - he had great self-confidence and knew that he could give as good as he got if it came to a fight. The question was whether the man inside the warehouse was armed and whether there were other people with him. He hesitated. There shouldn't be any others besides the girl and the blond giant.

The loading bay was wide enough for a front-end loader to drive through it, and there was a normal-sized door fitted into the gate. Paolo Roberto walked over and pressed down the handle to open it. He entered a big warehouse bathed in light, filled with assorted building materials, crushed boxes, and trash.

Miriam Wu felt tears running down her cheeks. She was crying not so much from pain as from helplessness. During the journey the giant had handled her as if she weighed nothing at all. He ripped the tape off her mouth when the van stopped. He lifted her and carried her inside without the least effort and dumped her on the cement floor, paying no heed to her protests. When he looked at her his eyes were ice cold.

Miriam Wu knew that she was going to die in this warehouse.

He turned his back on her and walked to a table, where he opened a bottle of mineral water, drinking from it in long gulps. He had not taped her legs together, and she attempted to stand up.

He turned to her and smiled. He was closer to the door than she was. She would have no chance of making it past him. Resigned, she sank to her knees, furious at herself. I'll be damned if I give up without a fight. She got up again and clenched her teeth. Come on, you fucking tub of lard.

She felt clumsy and off balance with her hands cuffed behind her, but when he came towards her she backed, circling away, watching for an opening. She lashed out with a lightning kick to his ribs, wheeled around and kicked again at his crotch. She hit his hip, backed off a few feet, and switched legs for the next kick. With her hands manacled she did not have the balance to kick at his face, but she delivered a swift kick to his breastbone.

He reached out a hand and grabbed her by the shoulder, spun her around and gave her a single blow with his fist, not very hard, to the kidneys. Miriam Wu shrieked like a madwoman as a paralyzing pain sliced through her midsection. She sank to her knees again. He gave her one more slap to the side of her head, and she tumbled to the floor. Then he kicked her in the torso. She gasped for breath as she heard a rib crack.

Paolo Roberto saw nothing of the beating, but he did hear Miriam Wu wail in pain, a sharp, shrill scream that was immediately cut off. He looked in the direction of the sound and clenched his teeth. There was a room beyond a dividing wall. He moved silently through the warehouse and peered through the doorway just as the man rolled the girl onto her back. The giant vanished from his field of view for a few seconds and came back with a chain saw, which he set on the floor in front of her. Paolo Roberto slipped off his jacket.

"I want the answer to a simple question."

He had a high-pitched voice, almost as if it had never broken, and an accent.

"Where is Lisbeth Salander?"

"I don't know," Miriam Wu said, obviously in pain.

"That's the wrong answer. You'll have one more chance before I start this thing."

He squatted down and patted the chain saw.

"Where is Lisbeth Salander hiding?"

Wu shook her head.

When the man reached for the chain saw, Paolo Roberto took three determined strides into the room and threw a hard right hook at his kidneys.

Paolo Roberto had not become a world-famous boxer by being tentative in the ring. He had fought thirty-three bouts in his professional career and won twenty-eight of them. When he punched someone as hard as he could he expected to see his opponent feel pain. But this time he felt as if he had smashed his hand into a concrete wall. He had never experienced anything like it in all the years he'd spent as a boxer. He looked in astonishment at the colossus in front of him.

The man turned and looked with equal astonishment at the boxer.

"What do you say we find you somebody in your own weight class?" said Paolo Roberto.

He got off a string of right-left-right punches to the body and put some muscle behind them. They were heavy blows. The only effect was that the giant took half a step back, more from surprise than from the effect of the punches. Then he smiled.

"You're Paolo Roberto," he said.

Paolo Roberto stopped, amazed. He had just landed four punches that should have put the giant on the deck while the referee counted to ten. But his blows seemed not to have had the slightest effect.

Good God. This isn't normal.

Then he saw as if in slow motion the man's right hook come flying towards him. He was slow and telegraphed the punch in advance. Paolo Roberto had time to move, but the blow glanced off his shoulder. It felt as if he had been hit by a steel bar.

Paolo Roberto backed up two steps, filled with new respect for his opponent.

There's something wrong with him. Nobody can hit this hard.

He automatically blocked a left hook with his forearm and felt at once a sharp pain. He did not manage to block the right hook that came out of nowhere and landed on his forehead.

Paolo Roberto tumbled backwards out the door. He landed against a mound of wooden pallets and shook his head. He felt blood streaming down his face. He cut my eyebrow. It'll have to be sewn up. Again.