The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (Millennium 3)

"Is there a computer?"

"No."

"A safe?"

"No . . . not that I can see."

"Take your time. Go through the apartment inch by inch. Martensson reports that Blomkvist is still at the office. You're wearing gloves, right?"

"Of course."

Erlander had a chat with Giannini in a brief interlude between one or the other or both of them talking on their mobiles. He went into Salander's room and held out his hand to introduce himself. Then he said hello to Salander and asked her how she was feeling. Salander looked at him, expressionless. He turned to Giannini.

"I need to ask some questions."

"All right."

"Can you tell me what happened this morning?"

Giannini related what she had seen and heard and how she had reacted up until the moment she had barricaded herself with Salander in the bathroom. Erlander glanced at Salander and then back to her lawyer.

"So you're sure that he came to the door of this room?"

"I heard him trying to push down the door handle."

"And you're perfectly sure about that? It's not difficult to imagine things when you're scared or excited."

"I definitely heard him at the door. He had seen me and pointed his pistol at me; he knew that this was the room I was in."

"Do you have any reason to believe that he had planned, beforehand that is, to shoot you too?"

"I have no way of knowing. When he took aim at me I pulled my head back in and blockaded the door."

"Which was the sensible thing to do. And it was even more sensible of you to carry your client to the bathroom. These doors are so thin that the bullets would have gone clean through them if he had fired. What I'm trying to figure out is whether he wanted to attack you personally or whether he was just reacting to the fact that you were looking at him. You were the person nearest to him in the corridor."

"Apart from the two nurses."

"Did you get the sense that he knew you, or perhaps recognized you?"

"No, not really."

"Could he have recognized you from the papers? You've had a lot of publicity over several widely reported cases."

"It's possible. I can't say."

"And you'd never seen him before?"

"I'd seen him in the elevator; that's the first time I set eyes on him."

"I didn't know that. Did you talk?"

"No. I got in at the same time he did. I was vaguely aware of him for just a few seconds. He had flowers in one hand and a briefcase in the other."

"Did you make eye contact?"

"No. He was looking straight ahead."

"Who got in first?"

"We got in more or less at the same time."

"Did he look confused or--"

"I couldn't say one way or the other. He got into the elevator and stood perfectly still, holding the flowers."

"What happened then?"

"We got out of the elevator on the same floor, and I went to visit my client."

"Did you come straight here?"

"Yes . . . no. That is, I went to the reception desk and showed my ID. The prosecutor has forbidden my client to have visitors."

"Where was this man then?"

Giannini hesitated. "I'm not quite sure. He was behind me, I think. No, wait. He got out of the elevator first, but stopped and held the door for me. I couldn't swear to it, but I think he went to the reception desk too. I was just quicker on my feet than he was. But the nurses would know."

Elderly, polite, and a murderer, Erlander thought.

"Yes, he did go to the reception desk," he confirmed. "He did talk to the nurse, and he left the flowers at the desk, on her instructions. But you didn't see that?"

"No. I have no recollection of any of that."

Erlander had no more questions. Frustration was gnawing at him. He had had the feeling before and had trained himself to interpret it as an alarm triggered by instinct. Something was eluding him, something that was not right.

The murderer had been identified as Evert Gullberg, a former accountant and sometime business consultant and tax lawyer. A man in advanced old age. A man against whom Sapo had lately initiated a preliminary investigation because he was a nutcase who wrote threatening letters to public figures.

Erlander knew from long experience that there were plenty of nutcases out there, some pathologically obsessed ones who stalked celebrities and looked for love by hiding in woods near their villas. When their love was not reciprocated, it could quickly turn to violent hatred. There were stalkers who travelled from Germany or Italy to follow a twenty-one-year-old lead singer in a pop band from gig to gig, and who then got upset because she would not drop everything to start a relationship with them. There were violent individuals who harped on and on about real or imaginary injustices and who sometimes turned to threatening behaviour. There were psychopaths and conspiracy theorists, nutcases who had the gift to read messages hidden from the normal world.

There were plenty of examples of these fools taking the leap from fantasy to action. Was not the assassination of Anna Lindh* the result of precisely such a crazy impulse?

But Inspector Erlander did not like the idea that a mentally ill accountant, or whatever he was, could wander into a hospital with a bunch of flowers in one hand and a pistol in the other. Or that he could, for God's sake, execute someone who was the object of a police investigation--his investigation. A man whose name in the public registry was Karl Axel Bodin but whose real name, according to Blomkvist, was Zalachenko. A fucking defected Soviet Russian agent and professional gangster.

At the very least, Zalachenko was a witness, but in the worst case he was involved up to his neck in a series of murders. Erlander had been allowed to conduct two brief interviews with Zalachenko, and at no time during either had he been swayed by the man's protestations of innocence.

His murderer had shown interest also in Salander, or at least in her lawyer. He had tried to get into her room.

And then he had attempted suicide. According to the doctors, he had probably succeeded, even if his body had not yet absorbed the message that it was time to shut down. It was highly unlikely that Evert Gullberg would ever be brought before a court.

Erlander did not like the situation, not for a moment. But he had no proof that Gullberg's shots had been anything other than what they seemed. So he had decided to play it safe. He looked at Giannini.

"I've decided that Salander should be moved to a different room. There's a room in the connecting corridor to the right of the reception area that would be better from a security point of view. It's in direct line-of-sight of the reception desk and the nurses' station. No visitors will be permitted other than you. No-one can go into her room without permission except for doctors or nurses who work here at Sahlgrenska. And I'll see to it that a guard is stationed outside her door around the clock."

"Do you think she's in danger?"

"I know of nothing to indicate that she is. But I want to play it safe."

Salander listened attentively to the conversation between her lawyer and her adversary, a member of the police. She was impressed that Giannini had replied so precisely and lucidly, and in such detail. She was even more impressed by her lawyer's grace under pressure.

Otherwise she had had a monstrous headache ever since Giannini had dragged her out of bed and carried her into the bathroom. Instinctively she wanted as little as possible to do with the hospital staff. She did not like asking for help or showing any sign of weakness. But the headaches were so overpowering that she could not think straight. She reached out and rang for a nurse.

*

Giannini had planned her visit to Goteborg as a brisk, necessary prologue to long-term work. She wanted to get to know Salander, question her about her actual condition, and present a draft outline of the strategy that she and Blomkvist had cobbled together to deal with the legal proceedings. She had originally intended to return to Stockholm that evening, but because of the dramatic eve

nts at Sahlgrenska, she still had not had a real conversation with Salander. Her client was in much worse shape than she had been led to believe. She was suffering from acute headaches and a high fever, which prompted a doctor by the name of Endrin to prescribe a strong painkiller, an antibiotic, and rest. Consequently, as soon as her client had been moved to a new room and a security guard had been posted outside, Giannini was asked, quite firmly, to leave.

It was already 4:30 p.m. She hesitated. She could go back to Stockholm knowing that she might have to take the train to Goteborg again as soon as the following day. Or she could stay overnight. But her client might be too ill to deal with a visit tomorrow as well. She had not booked a hotel room. As a lawyer who mainly represented abused women without any great financial resources, she tried to avoid padding her bill with expensive hotel charges. She called home first and then rang Lillian Josefsson, a lawyer colleague who was a member of the Women's Network and an old friend from law school.

"I'm in Goteborg," she said. "I was thinking of going home tonight, but certain things happened today that require me to stay overnight. Is it OK if I sleep at your place?"

"Oh, please do; that would be fun. We haven't seen each other in ages."

"I'm not interrupting anything?"

"No, of course not. But I've moved. I'm now on a side street off Linnegatan. But I do have a guest room. And we can go out to a bar later if we feel like it."

"If I have the energy," Giannini said. "What time is good?"

They agreed that Giannini should turn up at around 6:00.

Giannini took the bus to Linnegatan and spent the next hour in a Greek restaurant. She was famished, and ordered a shish kebab with salad. She sat for a long time thinking about the day's events. She was a little shaky now that the adrenaline had worn off, but she was pleased with herself. In a time of great danger she had been cool, calm, and collected. She had instinctively made the right decisions. It was a pleasant feeling to know that her reactions were up to an emergency.