The Girl Who Played with Fire

Page 39

Armansky's investigation was formally subordinate to the police investigation, and he had his own agenda. His objective was somehow to watch out for Salander's interests - to discover the truth, preferably a truth in the form of a persuasively mitigating circumstance.
Millennium's investigation was the difficult one. The magazine lacked the resources of the police, obviously, and of Armansky's organization. Unlike the police, however, Blomkvist was not primarily interested in establishing a reasonable scenario for why Salander might have gone down to Enskede and murdered two of his friends. He had decided over the Easter weekend that he simply did not believe the story. If Salander was in some way involved in the murders, there had to be entirely different grounds from those the police were suggesting - someone else may have held the gun or something had happened that was beyond her control.
Hedstrom said nothing during the taxi journey from Slussen to Kungsholmen. He was in a daze from out of the blue ending up in a real police investigation. He glanced at Bohman, who was reading Armansky's presentation again.
Then all at once he smiled to himself. The assignment had given him an unexpected opportunity to realize an ambition that neither Armansky nor Bohman knew anything about. He was going to have a chance to get back at Salander. He hoped that he would be able to help catch her. He hoped above all that she would be sentenced to life in prison.
It was well known that Salander was not a popular person at Milton Security. Most of the staff who had ever had anything to do with her thought she was a pain. But no-one had any idea how profoundly Hedstrom loathed her.
Life had been unfair to Hedstrom. He was good-looking, he was young, and he was clever too. But he was forever denied the possibility of becoming what he had always wanted to be - a policeman. His Achilles heel was a microscopic hole in his pericardium that caused a heart murmur and meant that the wall of one chamber was compromised. He had had an operation and the problem was fixed, but having a heart condition meant that he was once and for all deprived of a place on the police force. He was relegated to second-class.
When he was given the chance to work for Milton Security he accepted, but without the slightest enthusiasm. Milton was a dump for has-beens-police officers who were too old and couldn't cut it anymore. He too had been turned down by the police - but in his case through no fault of his own.
When he started at Milton one of his first assignments had been to work with the operations unit on a personal protection analysis for a famous female singer. She had been frightened by an over-enthusiastic admirer, who also happened to be a mental patient on the run. The singer lived alone in a villa in Sodertorn, and Milton had installed surveillance equipment and alarms and provided an on-site bodyguard.
Over a two-week period Hedstrom had regularly visited the villa in Sodertorn along with other Milton employees. He thought the singer was a snobbish and standoffish old bitch. She gave him only a bewildered look when he turned on the charm, but she ought to have been grateful that any fan remembered her at all.
He hated the way Milton's staff sprang to do her bidding. But of course he didn't say a word about how he felt.
One afternoon, the singer and two of the Milton staff were by her pool while he was in the house taking photographs of windows and doors that might need reinforcing. He had gone from room to room, and when he came to her bedroom he could not resist the temptation to open her desk. He found a dozen photograph albums from when she was a big star in the seventies and eighties and had toured the world. He also found a box with some very private pictures of the singer. The pictures were relatively innocent, but with a little imagination they might be viewed as "erotic studies." God, what a stupid cow she was. He stole five of the most risque images, which had obviously been taken by some lover.
He photographed the images there and then and put the originals back. He waited several months before he sold them to a British tabloid. He was paid 9,000 pounds for the photographs and they gave rise to sensational headlines.
He still did not know how Salander had managed it, but after the photographs were published, he had a visit from her. She knew that he was the one who had sold them. She was going to expose him to Armansky if he ever did anything like that again. She would have exposed him immediately if she could have proved it - but she obviously could not. From that day on he had felt her watching him. He had seen her little piggy eyes every time he turned around.
He felt stressed and frustrated. The only way to get back at her was to undermine her credibility by adding his contributions to the gossip about her in the canteen. But not even that had been very successful. He did not dare draw attention to himself, since for some unknown reason she was under Armansky's protection. He wondered what sort of hold she had over Milton's CEO, or if it was possible that the old bastard was fucking her in secret. But even though nobody at Milton was especially enamoured of Salander, the staff had great respect for Armansky and so they accepted her peculiar presence. It was a monumental relief to him when she began to play less of a role and finally stopped working at Milton altogether.
Now an opportunity had presented itself for him to get even. And it was risk-free. She could accuse him of anything she liked - nobody would believe her. Not even Armansky would take the word of a pathologically sick murderer.
Bublanski saw Faste coming out of the elevator with Bohman and Hedstrom from Milton. He had been sent down to bring these new colleagues through security. Bublanski was not entirely enchanted with the idea of giving outsiders access to a murder investigation, but the decision had been made way over his head and...  what the hell, Bohman was a real police officer with a lot of miles on him. Hedstrom had graduated from the police academy and so could not be an outright idiot. Bublanski pointed towards the conference room.
The hunt for Salander was in its sixth day and it was time for a major evaluation. Prosecutor Ekstrom did not take part in the meeting. The group consisted of criminal inspectors Modig, Faste, Andersson, and Holmberg, reinforced by four officers from the search unit of the National Criminal Police. Bublanski began by introducing their new colleagues from Milton Security and asking if either of them wanted to say a few words. Bohman cleared his throat.
"It's been a while since I was last in this building, but some of you know me and know that I was a police officer for many years before I switched to the private sector. The reason we're here is that Salander worked for Milton over several years and we feel a measure of responsibility. Our job is to try and assist in her arrest. We can contribute some personal knowledge of her, but we're not here in any way to mess up the investigation or to try to trip you up."
"Tell us what she was like to work with," Faste said.
"She wasn't exactly a person you warmed to," Hedstrom said. He stopped when Bublanski held up his hand.
"We'll have a chance to talk in detail during the meeting. But let's take things one by one and get a grip on where we stand. After this meeting, you two will have to go to Prosecutor Ekstrom and sign a confidentiality statement. Let's begin with Sonja."
"It's frustrating. We had a breakthrough just a few hours after the murders and were able to identify Salander. We found where she lived - or at least where we thought she lived. After that, not a trace. We've received around thirty calls from people who think they've seen her, but so far they've all been false alarms. She seems to have gone up in smoke."
"That's a little hard to believe," Andersson said. "She looks unusual and has tattoos and shouldn't be that hard to find."
"The police in Uppsala went in with their weapons drawn yesterday after receiving a tip. They surrounded and scared the hell out of a fourteen-year-old boy who did look a lot like Salander. The parents were quite upset."
"It's a handicap that we're searching for someone who looks like a fourteen-year-old. She could melt into any crowd of teenagers."
"But with the attention she's been getting in the media, someone should have seen something," Andersson said. "They're running her picture on Sweden's Most Wanted this week, so maybe that will lead to something new."
"I doubt it, considering that she's already been on the front page of every newspaper in the country," Faste said.
"Which suggests that maybe we should change our approach," Bublanski said. "With accomplices, she could have slipped out of the country, but it's more probable that she's gone to ground."
Bohman held up his hand. Bublanski nodded to him.
"The profile we have of her is that she's self-destructive. On the other hand, she's a strategist who plans all her actions carefully. She does nothing without analysing the consequences. At least that's what Dragan Armansky thinks."
"That was the assessment her one-time psychiatrist gave as well. But let's hold off on the characterization for a while," Bublanski said. "Sooner or later she'll have to make a move. Jerker, what sort of resources does she have?"
"Now here's something you can sink your teeth into," Holmberg said. "She's had a bank account for several years at Handelsbanken. That's the income she declares. Or rather, the income that her guardian, Nils Bjurman, declared. A year ago the account held about 100,000 kronor. In the autumn of 2003 she withdrew the entire amount."
"She needed cash in the autumn of 2003. That was when she stopped working for Milton Security," Bohman said.
"Possibly. The account stood at zero for about two weeks. And then she put the same amount back into it."
"She thought she needed money for something, but she didn't spend it and put the money back?"
"Possibly. In December 2003 she used the account to pay a number of bills, including her rent for a year in advance. The account dropped to 70,000 kronor. After that the account wasn't touched for a year, except for a deposit of around 9,000 kronor. I've checked - it was an inheritance from her mother. In March this year she took out this sum - the exact amount was 9,312 kronor - and that's the only time she's touched the account."
"So what the hell does she live on?"
"Listen to this. In January of this year she opened a new account. This one at Svenska Enskilda Banken. She deposited two million kronor."
"Where did the money come from?" Modig asked.
"The money was transferred to her account from a bank in the Channel Islands."
Silence descended over the conference room.
"I don't understand any of this," Modig said after a moment.
"So this is money she hasn't declared?" Bublanski asked.
"No, but technically she doesn't have to until next year. What's interesting is that the sum is not recorded in Bjurman's report on her assets, and he filed a report every month."
"So - either he didn't know about it or else they were running a scam together. Jerker, where do we stand on forensics?"
"I had a report from the leader of the preliminary investigation yesterday evening. This is what we know. One: we can tie Salander to both crime scenes. We found her fingerprints on the murder weapon and on the shards of a broken coffee cup in Enskede. We're waiting for results from all the DNA samples we gathered, but there's no doubt that she was there in the apartment. Two: we have her prints on the box we found in Bjurman's apartment, the one the gun came in. Three: we finally have a witness who can place her at the site of the murders in Enskede. The owner of a corner shop telephoned to say that Salander was definitely in his shop on the night of the murders. She bought a pack of Marlboro Lights."
"And he comes out with this days after we asked the public for information?"
"He was away over the holidays, like everybody else. In any case" - Holmberg pointed at a map - "the corner shop is here, about two hundred yards from the crime scene. She came in just as he was closing at 10:00 p.m. He gave a perfect description of her."
"Tattoo on her neck?" Andersson said.
"He was a bit vague about that. He thought he saw a tattoo. But he definitely saw that she had a pierced eyebrow."
"What else?"
"Not that much in the way of technical evidence. But it should hold up."
"Faste - the apartment on Lundagatan?"
"We've got her prints, but we don't think she lives there. We've turned the place upside down, and it seems that a Miriam Wu is living there. Her name was added to the contract as recently as February this year."
"What do we know about Wu?"
"No police record. Known lesbian. She appears in shows at the Gay Pride Festival. Seems to be studying sociology and is part owner of Domino Fashion, a sex shop on Tegnergatan."
"Sex shop?" Modig said with raised eyebrows.
On one occasion she had bought, to her husband's delight, some sexy lingerie at Domino Fashion. And she had absolutely no intention of revealing that to the men in the room.
"Yeah, they sell handcuffs and whore outfits and stuff like that. Need a whip?"
"It's not a sex shop. It's a fashion boutique for people who like sexy underwear."
"Same shit."
"Go on," Bublanski said angrily. "Is there any sign of Froken Wu?"
"Not a trace."
"She could have gone away for Easter," Modig said.
"Or else Salander whacked her too," Faste said. "Maybe she wants to make a clean sweep of all her acquaintances."
"Wu is a lesbian. Should we conclude that she and Salander are a couple?"
"I think we can draw the conclusion that there's a sexual relationship," Andersson said. "First, we found Salander's prints on and around the bed in the apartment. We also found her prints on a pair of handcuffs."