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

Of these, the one that Berger had least to do with was Strandlund. She had exchanged only two emails with the culture editor. The friendliest and most engaging messages came from assistant front-page editor Gunnar Magnusson. Borgsjo's were terse and to the point.

Why the hell had this group of boys hired Berger at all, if all they did was tear her limb from limb?

The colleague Berger seemed to have the most to do with was Fredriksson. His role was to act as a kind of shadow, to sit in on her meetings as an observer. He prepared memos, briefed Berger on various articles and issues, and got the jobs moving.

He emailed Berger a dozen times a day.

Salander sorted all of Fredriksson's emails to Berger and read them through. In a number of instances he had objected to some decision Berger had made and presented counter-proposals. Berger seemed to have confidence in him since she would then often change her decision or accept his argument. He was never hostile. But there was not a hint of any personal relationship to her.

Salander closed Berger's email and thought for a moment.

She opened Fredriksson's account.

Plague had been fooling around with the home computers of various employees of SMP all evening without much success. He had managed to get into Holm's machine because it had an open line to his desk at work; any time of the day or night he could go in and access whatever he was working on. Holm's PC was one of the most boring Plague had ever hacked. He had no luck with the other seventeen names on Salander's list. One reason was that none of the people he tried to hack was online on a Saturday night. He was beginning to tire of this impossible task when Salander pinged him at 10:30.

Plague sighed. This girl who had once been his student now had a better handle on things than he did.

*

Blomkvist was back at Salander's apartment on Mosebacke just before midnight. He was tired. He took a shower and put on some coffee, and then he booted up Salander's computer and pinged her ICQ.

Linder woke with a start when her earpiece beeped. Someone had just tripped the motion detector she had placed in the hall on the ground floor. She propped herself up on her elbow. It was 5:23 on Sunday morning. She slipped silently out of bed and pulled on her jeans, a T-shirt, and sneakers. She stuffed the Mace in her back pocket and picked up her spring-loaded baton.

She passed the door to Berger's bedroom without a sound, noticing that it was closed and therefore locked.

She stopped at the top of the stairs and listened. She heard a faint clinking sound and movement from the ground floor. Slowly she went down the stairs and paused in the hall to listen again.

A chair scraped in the kitchen. She held the baton in a firm grip and crept to the kitchen door. She saw a bald, unshaven man sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of orange juice, reading SMP. He sensed her presence and looked up.

"And who the hell are you?"

Linder relaxed and leaned against the door jamb. "Greger Beckman, I presume. Hello. I'm Susanne Linder."

"I see. Are you going to hit me over the head or would you like a glass of juice?"

"Yes, please," Linder said, putting down her baton. "Juice, that is."

Beckman reached for a glass from the draining board and poured some for her.

"I work for Milton Security," Linder said. "I think it's probably best if your wife explains what I'm doing here."

Beckman stood up. "Has something happened to Erika?"

"Your wife is fine. But there's been some trouble. We tried to get ahold of you in Paris."

"Paris? Why Paris? I've been in Helsinki, for God's sake."

"All right. I'm sorry, but your wife thought you were in Paris."

"That's next month," said Beckman on his way out the door.

"The bedroom is locked. You need a code to open the door," Linder said.

"I beg your pardon? What code?"

She told him the three numbers he had to punch in to open the bedroom door. He ran up the stairs.

At 10:00 on Sunday morning Jonasson came into Salander's room.

"Hello, Lisbeth."

"Hello."

"Just thought I'd warn you: the police are coming at lunchtime."

"Fine."

"You don't seem worried."

"I'm not."

"I have a present for you."

"A present? What for?"

"You've been one of my most interesting patients in a long time."

"You don't say," Salander said sceptically.

"I heard that you're fascinated by DNA and genetics."

"Who's been gossiping? That psychologist lady, I bet."

Jonasson nodded. "If you get bored in prison . . . this is the latest thing on DNA research."

He handed her a brick of a book titled Spirals--Mysteries of DNA, by Professor Yoshito Takamura of Tokyo University. Salander opened it and studied the table of contents.

"Beautiful," she said.

"Someday I'd be interested to hear how it is that you can read academic texts that even I can't understand."

As soon as Jonasson had left the room, she took out her Palm. Last chance. From SMP's personnel department Salander had learned that Fredriksson had worked at the paper for six years. During that time he had been out sick for two extended periods: two months in 2003 and three months in 2004. From the personnel files she concluded that the reason in both instances was burnout. Berger's predecessor Morander had on one occasion questioned whether Fredriksson should indeed stay on as assistant editor.

Yak, yak, yak. Nothing concrete to go on.

At 11:45 Plague pinged her.

Salander logged off from ICQ. She g

lanced at the clock and realized that it would soon be lunchtime. She rapidly composed a message that she addressed to the Yahoo group [Idiotic_Table]:

Mikael. Important. Call Berger right away and tell her Fredriksson is Poison Pen.

The instant she sent the message she heard movement in the corridor. She polished the screen of her Palm Tungsten T3, then switched it off and placed it in the recess behind the bedside table.

"Hello, Lisbeth." It was Giannini in the doorway.