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

"That's true."

"If you had been the prosecutor, I assume that you would have insisted on both social and psychiatric investigations."

"Of course."

"Even then Teleborian was a well-respected child psychiatrist who had also worked in forensic medicine. He was given the assignment, conducted a normal investigation, and came to the conclusion that the girl was mentally ill. I don't have to use their technical terms."

"No, no . . ."

"Teleborian wrote this in a report that he sent to Bjorck. The report was then given to the district court, which decided that Salander should be cared for at St. Stefan's. Blomkvist's version is missing the entire investigation conducted by Teleborian. In its place is an exchange between Bjorck and Teleborian, which has Bjorck instructing Teleborian to falsify a mental examination."

"And you're saying that it's an invention, a forgery?"

"No question about it."

"But who would be interested in creating such a thing?"

Nystrom put down the report and frowned. "Now you're getting to the heart of the problem."

"And the answer is . . . ?"

"We don't know. That's the question our analytical group is working very hard to answer."

"Could it be that Blomkvist made some of it up?"

Nystrom laughed. "That was one of our first thoughts too. But we don't think so. We incline to the view that the falsification was done a long time ago, presumably more or less simultaneously with the writing of the original report. And that leads to one or two disagreeable conclusions. Whoever did the falsification was extremely well informed. In addition, whoever did it had access to the very typewriter that Bjorck used."

"You mean . . ."

"We don't know where Bjorck wrote the report. It could have been at his home or at his office or somewhere else altogether. We can imagine two alternatives. Either the person who did the falsification was someone in the psychiatric or forensic medicine department, who for some reason wanted to involve Teleborian in a scandal, or the falsification was done for a completely different purpose by someone inside the Security Police."

"For what possible reason?"

"This happened in 1991. There could have been a Russian agent inside SIS who had picked up Zalachenko's trail. Right now we're examining a large number of old personnel files."

"But if the GRU had found out it should have leaked years ago."

"You're right. But don't forget that this was during the period when the Soviet Union was collapsing and the GRU was dissolved. We have no idea what went wrong. Maybe it was a planned operation that was shelved. The GRU were masters of forgery and disinformation."

"But why would Soviet military intelligence want to plant such a forgery?"

"We don't know that either. But the most obvious purpose would have been to involve the Swedish government in a scandal."

Ekstrom pinched his lip. "So what you're saying is that the medical assessment of Salander is correct?"

"Oh yes. Salander is, to put it in colloquial terms, stark raving mad. No doubt about that. The decision to commit her to an institution was absolutely correct."

"Toilets?" Eriksson sounded as if she thought Cortez was pulling her leg.

"Toilets," Cortez repeated.

"You want to run a story on toilets? In Millennium?"

Eriksson could not help laughing. She had observed his ill-concealed enthusiasm when he sauntered into the Friday meeting, and she recognized all the signs of a reporter who had a story in the works.

"Explain."

"It's really quite simple," Cortez said. "The biggest industry in Sweden by far is construction. It's an industry that in practice cannot be outsourced overseas, even if Skanska opens an office in London and stuff like that. No matter what, the houses have to be built in Sweden."

"But that's nothing new."

"No, but what is new is that the construction industry is a couple of light-years ahead of all other Swedish industries when it comes to competition and efficiency. If Volvo built cars the same way, the latest model would cost about one million kronor, maybe even two million. For most of industry, cutting prices is the constant challenge. For the construction industry it's the opposite. The price per square foot keeps going up. The state subsidizes the cost with taxpayers' money just so that the prices aren't prohibitive."

"Is there a story in that?"

"Wait. It's complicated. Let's say the price curve for hamburgers had been the same since the seventies--so a Big Mac would cost about 150 kronor or more. I don't want to guess what it would cost with fries and a Coke, but my salary at Millennium might not cover it. How many people around this table would go to McDonald's and buy a burger for 150 kronor?"

Nobody said a word.

"Understandable. But when NCC bangs together some sheet-metal cubes for exclusive rental at Gashaga on Lidingo, they ask 10 to 12,000 kronor a month for a three-cube apartment. How many of you are paying that much?"

"I couldn't afford it," Nilsson said.

"No, of course not. But you already live in a one-bedroom apartment by Danvikstull which your father bought for you twenty years ago, and if you were to sell it you'd probably get a million and a half for it. But what does a twenty-year-old who wants to move out of the family home do? He can't afford to. So he sublets or sub-sublets or lives at home with his mother until he retires."

"So where do the toilets come into the picture?" Malm said.

"I'm getting to that. The question is, why are apartments so fucking expensive? Because the people commissioning the buildings don't know how to set the price. To put it simply, a developer calls up Skanska, says they want a hundred apartments, and asks what it will cost. Skanska calculates it, comes back and says it'll cost around 500 million kronor. Which means that the price per square foot will be X kronor and it would cost 10,000 a month if you wanted to move in. But unlike the McDonald's example, you don't really have a choice--you have to live somewhere. So you have to pay the going rate."

"Henry, dear, please get to the point."

"But that is the point. Why should it cost 10,000 a month to live in those crappy dumps in Hammarbyhamnen? Because the construction companies don't give a damn about keeping prices down. The customer's going to have to pay, come what may. One of the big costs is building materials. The trade in building materials goes through wholesalers who set their own prices. Since there isn't any real competition there, a bathtub retails for 5,000 kronor in Sweden. The same bathtub from the same manufacturer retails for the equivalent of 2,000 kronor in Germany. There is no added cost that can satisfactorily explain the price difference."

There was impatient muttering around the table.

"You can read about a lot of this in a report from the government's Construction Cost Delegation, which was active in the late nineties. Since then not much has happened. No one is talking to the construction companies about the unreasonable prices. The buyers cheerfully pay what they are told it costs, and in the end the price burden falls on the renters or the taxpayers."

"Henry, the toilets?"

"The little that has changed since the Construction Cost Delegation's report has happened at the local level, and primarily outside Stockholm. There are buyers who got fed up with the high construction prices. One example is Karlskrona Homes, which builds houses less expensively than anyone else by buying the materials themselves. And Svensk Handel has also gotten into the game. They think that the price of construction materials is absurd, so they've been trying to make it easier for companies to buy less expensive products that are equally good. And that led to a little clash at the Construction Fair in Alvsjo last year. Svensk Handel had brought in a man from Thailand who was selling toilets for 500 kronor apiece."

"And what happened?"

"His nearest competitor was a Swedish wholesale outfit called Vitavara Inc., which sells genuine Swedish toilets for 1,700 kronor apiece. And shrewd municipal buyers started to scratch their heads and wonder why they

were shelling out 1,700 kronor when they could get a similar toilet from Thailand for 500."

"Better quality, maybe," Karim said.

"No. The exact same."

"Thailand," Malm said. "That sounds like child labour and stuff like that. Which could explain the low price."

"Not so," Cortez said. "Child labour exists mostly in the textile and souvenir industries in Thailand. And the paedophile industry, of course. The United Nations keeps an eye on child labour, and I've checked out this company. They're a reputable manufacturer. It's a big, modern, respectable operation producing appliances and plumbing goods."

"All right . . . but we're talking about low-wage countries, and that means you risk writing an article proposing that Swedish industry should be outbid by Thai industry. Fire the Swedish workers and close the factories here, and import everything from Thailand. You won't win any points with the Trade Union Confederation."

A smile spread over Cortez's face. He leaned back and looked ridiculously pleased with himself.

"No again," he said. "Guess where Vitavara Inc. makes its toilets to sell at 1,700 kronor apiece?"

Silence fell over the room.

"Vietnam," Cortez said.

"You've got to be kidding," Eriksson said.

"They've been making toilets there for at least ten years. Swedish workers were already out of that race in the nineties."

"Oh, shit."

"But here comes my point. If you imported directly from the factory in Vietnam, the price would be in the order of 390 kronor. Guess how you can explain the price difference between Thailand and Vietnam?"

"Don't tell me that--"