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

One of them had the address . The text was short. A single word.

WHORE

She raised her index finger to delete the message. At the last moment she changed her mind. She went back to her in-box and opened the message that had arrived two days before. The sender was . So . . . two emails with the word whore and a phoney sender from the world of mass media. She created a new folder called [Mediafool] and saved both messages. Then she got busy on the morning memo.

Martensson left home at 7:40 that morning. He got into his Volvo and drove towards the city but turned off to go across Stora Essingen and Grondal into Sodermalm. He drove down Hornsgatan and across to Bellmansgatan via Brannkyrkagatan. He turned left onto Tavastgatan at the Bishop's Arms pub and parked at the corner.

Just as Figuerola reached the Bishop's Arms, a van pulled out and left a parking space on Bellmansgatan at the corner with Tavastgatan. From her ideal location at the top of the hill she had an unobstructed view. She could just see the back window of Martensson's Volvo. Straight ahead of her, on the steep slope down towards Pryssgrand, was Bellmansgatan 1. She was looking at the building from the side, so she could not see the front door itself, but as soon as anyone came out onto the street, she would see them. She had no doubt that this particular address was the reason for Martensson's being there. It was Blomkvist's building.

Figuerola could see that the area surrounding Bellmansgatan 1 would be a nightmare to keep under surveillance. The only spot from which the door to the building could be observed directly was from the promenade and footbridge on upper Bellmansgatan near the Maria lift and the Laurinska building. There was nowhere there to park a car, and the person doing the surveillance would stand exposed on the footbridge like a swallow perched on an old telephone wire in the country. The intersection of Bellmansgatan and Tavastgatan, where Figuerola had parked, was basically the only place where she could sit in her car and have a view of the whole. She had been incredibly lucky. Yet it was not a particularly good place because any alert observer would see her in her car. But she did not want to leave the car and start walking around the area. She was too easily noticeable. In her role as undercover officer her looks worked against her.

Blomkvist emerged at 9:10. Figuerola noted the time. She saw him look up at the footbridge on upper Bellmansgatan. He started up the hill straight towards her.

She opened her handbag and unfolded a map of Stockholm, which she placed on the passenger seat. Then she opened a notebook and took a pen from her jacket pocket. She pulled out her mobile and pretended to be talking, keeping her head bent so that the hand holding her phone hid part of her face.

She saw Blomkvist glance down Tavastgatan. He knew he was being watched and he must have seen Martensson's Volvo, but he kept walking without showing any interest in the car. Acts calm and cool. Somebody should have opened the car door and scared the shit out of him.

The next moment he passed Figuerola's car. She was obviously trying to find an address on the map while she talked on the phone, but she could sense Blomkvist looking at her as he passed. Suspicious of everything around him. She saw him in the side-view mirror on the passenger side as he went on down towards Hornsgatan. She had seen him on TV a couple of times, but this was the first time she had seen him in person. He was wearing blue jeans, a T-shirt, and a grey jacket. He carried a shoulder bag and he walked with a long, loose stride. A nice-looking man.

Martensson appeared at the corner by the Bishop's Arms and watched Blomkvist go. He had a large sports bag over his shoulder and was just finishing a call on his mobile. Figuerola expected him to follow his quarry, but to her surprise he crossed the street right in front of her car and turned down the hill towards Blomkvist's building. A second later a man in blue overalls passed her car and caught up with Martensson. Hello, where did you come from?

They stopped outside the door to Blomkvist's building. Martensson punched in the code and they disappeared into the stairwell. They're checking the apartment. Amateur night. What the hell does he think he's doing?

Then Figuerola raised her eyes to the rear-view mirror and gave a start when she saw Blomkvist again. He was standing about ten yards behind her, close enough that he could keep an eye on Martensson and his buddy by looking over the crest of the steep hill down towards Bellmansgatan 1. She watched his face. He was not looking at her. But he had seen Martensson go in through the front door of his building. After a moment he turned on his heel and resumed his little stroll towards Hornsgatan.

Figuerola sat motionless for thirty seconds. He knows he's being watched. He's keeping track of what goes on around him. But why doesn't he react? A normal person would react, and pretty strongly at that. . . . He must have something up his sleeve.

Blomkvist hung up and rested his gaze on the notebook on his desk. The national vehicle registry had just informed him that the car he had seen at the top of Bellmansgatan with the blonde woman inside was owned by Monica Figuerola, born in 1969, and living on Pontonjargatan in Kungsholmen. Since it was a woman in the car, Blomkvist assumed it was Figuerola herself.

She had been talking on her mobile and looking at a map that was unfolded on the passenger seat. Blomkvist had no reason to believe that she had anything to do with the Zalachenko club, but he made a note of every deviation from the norm in his working day, and especially around his neighbourhood.

He called Karim in.

"Who is this woman, Lotta? Dig up her passport picture, where she works, and anything else you can find."

Sellberg looked rather startled. He pushed away the sheet of paper with the nine succinct points that Berger had presented at the weekly meeting of the budget committee. Flodin looked similarly concerned. Borgsjo appeared neutral, as always.

"This is impossible," Sellberg said with a polite smile.

"How so?" Berger said.

"The board will never go along with this. It defies all rhyme or reason."

"Shall we take it from the top?" Berger said. "I was hired to make SMP profitable again. To do that I have to have something to work with, don't you think?"

"Well, yes, but--"

"I can't wave a magic wand and conjure up the contents of a daily newspaper by sitting in my glass cage and just wishing for things."

"You don't understand the hard economic facts."

"That's possible. But I understand making newspapers. And the reality is that over the past fifteen years, SMP's personnel has been reduced by 118. Half were graphic artists and so on, replaced by new technology . . . but the number of reporters contributing to copy was reduced by 48 during that period."

"Those were necessary cuts. If the staff hadn't been cut, the paper would have folded long ago. At least Morander understood the necessity of the reductions."

"Well, let's wait and see what's necessary and what isn't. In three years, nineteen reporter jobs have disappeared. In addition, we now have a situation in which nine positions at SMP are vacant and are being to some extent covered by temps. The sports desk is dangerously understaffed. There should be nine employees there, and for more than a year two positions have remained unfilled."

"It's a question of saving money. It's that simple."

"The culture section has three unfilled positions. The business section has one. The legal desk does not even in practice exist; there we have a chief editor who borrows reporters from the news desk for each of his features. And so on. SMP hasn't done any serious coverage of the civil service and government agencies for at least eight years. We depend for that on freelancers and the material from the TT wire service. And as you know, TT shut down its civil service desk some years ago. In other words, there isn't a single news desk in Sweden covering the civil service and the government agencies."

"The newspaper business is in a vulnerable position--"

"The reality is that SMP should either be shut down immediately, or the board should find a way to take an aggressive stance. Today we have fewer e

mployees responsible for producing more copy every day. The articles they turn out are terrible, superficial, and they lack credibility. That's why SMP is losing its readers."

"You don't understand the situation--"

"I'm tired of hearing that I don't understand the situation. I'm not some temp who's just here for the bus fare."

"But your proposal is crazy."

"Why is that?"

"You're proposing that the newspaper should not be profitable."

"Listen, Sellberg, this year you will be paying out a huge amount of money in dividends to the paper's twenty-three stockholders. Add to this the unforgivably absurd bonuses that will cost SMP almost 10 million kronor for nine individuals who sit on SMP's board. You've awarded yourself a bonus of 400,000 kronor for administering cutbacks. Of course, it's a long way from being a bonus as huge as the ones that some of the directors of Skandia grabbed. But in my eyes you're not worth a bonus of so much as one single ore. Bonuses should be paid to people who do something to strengthen SMP. The plain truth is that your cutbacks have weakened SMP and deepened the crisis we now find ourselves in."

"That is grossly unfair. The board approved every measure I proposed."

"Of course the board approved your measures, because you guaranteed a dividend each year. That's what has to stop, and now."

"So you're suggesting in all seriousness that the board should decide to abolish dividends and bonuses. What makes you think the stockholders would agree to that?"

"I'm proposing a zero-profit operating budget this year. That would mean savings of almost twenty-one million kronor and the chance to beef up SMP's staff and finances. I'm also proposing wage cuts for management. I'm being paid a monthly salary of 88,000 kronor, which is utter insanity for a newspaper that can't add a job to its sports desk."

"So you want to cut your own salary? Is this some sort of wage communism you're advocating?"