The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest m(-3

by Stieg Larsson

  Wadensjöö shook his head.

  “I don’t understand your attitude,” Clinton said.

  “I can see that. You’re sixty-eight years old. You’re dying. Your decisions are not rational, and yet you seem to have bewitched Nyström and Sandberg. They obey you as if you were God the Father.”

  “I am God the Father in everything that has to do with the Section. We’re working according to a plan. Our decision to act has given the Section a chance. And it is with the utmost conviction that I say that the Section will never find itself in such an exposed position again. When all this is over, we’re going to put in hand a complete overhaul of our activities.”

  “I see.”

  “Nyström will be the new director. He’s really too old, but he’s the only choice we have, and he’s promised to stay on for six years at least. Sandberg is too young and – as a direct result of your management policies – too inexperienced. He should have been fully trained by now.”

  “Clinton, don’t you see what you’ve done? You’ve murdered a man. Björck worked for the Section for thirty-five years, and you ordered his death. Do you not understand –”

  “You know quite well that it was necessary. He betrayed us, and he would never have withstood the pressure when the police closed in.”

  Wadensjöö stood up.

  “I’m not finished.”

  “Then we’ll have to take it up later. I have a job to do while you lie here fantasizing that you’re the Almighty.”

  “If you’re so morally indignant, why don’t you go to Bublanski and confess your crimes?”

  “Believe me, I’ve considered it. But whatever you may think, I’m doing everything in my power to protect the Section.”

  He opened the door and met Nyström and Sandberg on their way in.

  “Hello, Fredrik,” Nyström said. “We have to talk.”

  “Wadensjöö was just leaving.”

  Nyström waited until the door had closed. “Fredrik, I’m seriously worried.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Sandberg and I have been thinking. Things are happening that we don’t understand. This morning Salander’s lawyer lodged her autobiographical statement with the prosecutor.”

  “What?”

  Inspector Faste scrutinized Advokat Giannini as Ekström poured coffee from a thermos jug. The document Ekström had been handed when he arrived at work that morning had taken both of them by surprise. He and Faste had read the forty pages of Salander’s story and discussed the extraordinary document at length. Finally he felt compelled to ask Giannini to come in for an informal chat.

  They were sitting at the small conference table in Ekström’s office.

  “Thank you for agreeing to come in,” Ekström said. “I have read this… hmm, account that arrived this morning, and there are a few matters I’d like to clarify.”

  “I’ll do what I can to help” Giannini said.

  “I don’t know exactly where to start. Let me say from the outset that both Inspector Faste and I are profoundly astonished.”

  “Indeed?”

  “I’m trying to understand what your objective is.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “This autobiography, or whatever you want to call it… What’s the point of it?”

  “The point is perfectly clear. My client wants to set down her version of what has happened to her.”

  Ekström gave a good-natured laugh. He stroked his goatee, an oft-repeated gesture that was beginning to irritate Giannini.

  “Yes, but your client has had several months to explain herself. She hasn’t said a word in all her interviews with Faste.”

  “As far as I know there is no law that forces my client to talk simply when it suits Inspector Faste.”

  “No, but I mean… Salander’s trial will begin in four days’ time, and at the eleventh hour she comes up with this. To tell the truth, I feel a responsibility here which is beyond my duties as prosecutor.”

  “You do?”

  “I do not in the very least wish to sound offensive. That is not my intention. But we have a procedure for trials in this country. You, Fru Giannini, are a lawyer specialising in women’s rights, and you have never before represented a client in a criminal case. I did not charge Lisbeth Salander because she is a woman, but on a charge of grievous bodily harm. Even you, I believe, must have realized that she suffers from a serious mental illness and needs the protection and assistance of the state.”

  “You’re afraid that I won’t be able to provide Lisbeth Salander with an adequate defence,” Giannini said in a friendly tone.

  “I do not wish to be judgemental,” Ekström said, “and I don’t question your competence. I’m simply making the point that you lack experience.”

  “I do understand, and I completely agree with you. I am woefully inexperienced when it comes to criminal cases.”

  “And yet you have all along refused the help that has been offered by lawyers with considerably more experience –”

  “At the express wish of my client. Lisbeth Salander wants me to be her lawyer, and accordingly I will be representing her in court.” She gave him a polite smile.

  “Very well, but I do wonder whether in all seriousness you intend to offer the content of this statement to the court.”

  “Of course. It’s her story.”

  Ekström and Faste glanced at one another. Faste raised his eyebrows. He could not see what Ekström was fussing about. If Giannini did not understand that she was on her way to sinking her client, then that certainly was not the prosecutor’s fault. All they needed to do was to say thank you, accept the document, and put the issue aside.

  As far as he was concerned, Salander was off her rocker. He had employed all his skills to persuade her to tell them, at the very least, where she lived. But in interview after interview that damn girl had just sat there, silent as a stone, staring at the wall behind him. She had refused the cigarettes he offered, and had never so much as accepted a coffee or a cold drink. Nor had she registered the least reaction when he pleaded with her, or when he raised his voice in moments of extreme annoyance. Faste had never conducted a more frustrating set of interviews.

  “Fru Giannini,” Ekström said at last, “I believe that your client ought to be spared this trial. She is not well. I have a psychiatric report from a highly qualified doctor to fall back on. She should be given the psychiatric care that for so many years she has badly needed.”

  “I take it that you will be presenting this recommendation to the district court.”

  “That’s exactly what I’ll be doing. It’s not my business to tell you how to conduct her defence. But if this is the line you seriously intend to take, then the situation is, quite frankly, absurd. This statement contains wild and unsubstantiated accusations against a number of people… in particular against her guardian, Advokat Bjurman, and Dr Peter Teleborian. I hope you do not in all seriousness believe that the court will accept an account that casts suspicion on Dr Teleborian without offering a single shred of evidence. This document is going to be the final nail in your client’s coffin, if you’ll pardon the metaphor.”

  “I hear what you’re saying.”

  “In the course of the trial you may claim that she is not ill and request a supplementary psychiatric assessment, and then the matter can be submitted to the medical board. But to be honest her statement leaves me in very little doubt that every other forensic psychiatrist will come to the same conclusion as Dr Teleborian. Its very existence confirms all documentary evidence that she is a paranoid schizophrenic.”

  Giannini smiled politely. “There is an alternative view,” she said.

  “What’s that?”

  “That her account is in every detail true and that the court will elect to believe it.”

  Ekström looked bewildered by the notion. Then he smiled and stroked his goatee.

  Clinton was sitting at the little side table by the window in his office. He listened attentiv
ely to Nyström and Sandberg. His face was furrowed, but his peppercorn eyes were focused and alert.

  “We’ve been monitoring the telephone and email traffic of Millennium’s key employees since April,” Clinton said. “We’ve confirmed that Blomkvist and Eriksson and this Cortez fellow are pretty downcast on the whole. We’ve read the outline version of the next issue. It seems that even Blomkvist has reversed his position and is now of the view that Salander is mentally unstable after all. There is a socially linked defence for her – he’s claiming that society let her down, and that as a result it’s somehow not her fault that she tried to murder her father. But that’s hardly an argument. There isn’t one word about the break-in at his apartment or the fact that his sister was attacked in Göteborg, and there’s no mention of the missing reports. He knows he can’t prove anything.”

  “That is precisely the problem,” Sandberg said. “Blomkvist must know that someone has their eye on him. But he seems to be completely ignoring his suspicions. Forgive me, but that isn’t Millennium’s style. Besides, Erika Berger is back in editorial and yet this whole issue is so bland and devoid of substance that it seems like a joke.”

  “What are you saying? That it’s a decoy?”

  Sandberg nodded. “The summer issue should have come out in the last week of June. According to one of Malin Eriksson’s emails, it’s being printed by a company in Södertälje, but when I rang them this morning, they told me they hadn’t even got the C.R.C. All they’d had was a request for a quote about a month ago.”

  “Where have they printed before?” Clinton said.

  “At a place called Hallvigs in Morgongåva. I called to ask how far they had got with the printing – I said I was calling from Millennium. The manager wouldn’t tell me a thing. I thought I’d drive up there this evening and take a look.”

  “Makes sense. Georg?”

  “I’ve reviewed all the telephone traffic from the past week,” Nyström said. “It’s bizarre, but the Millennium staff never discuss anything to do with the trial or Zalachenko.”

  “Nothing at all?”

  “No. They mention it only when they’re talking with someone outside Millennium. Listen to this, for instance. Blomkvist gets a call from a reporter at Aftonbladet asking whether he has any comment to make on the upcoming trial.”

  He put a tape recorder on the table.

  “Sorry, but I have no comment.”

  “You’ve been involved with the story from the start. You were the one who found Salander down in Gosseberga. And you haven’t published a single word since. When do you intend to publish?”

  “When the time is right. Provided I have anything to say.”

  “Do you?”

  “Well, you can buy a copy of Millennium and see for yourself.”

  He turned off the recorder.

  “We didn’t think about this before, but I went back and listened to bits at random. It’s been like this the entire time. He hardly discusses the Zalachenko business except in the most general terms. He doesn’t even discuss it with his sister, and she’s Salander’s lawyer.”

  “Maybe he really doesn’t have anything to say.”

  “He consistently refuses to speculate about anything. He seems to live at the offices round the clock; he’s hardly ever at his apartment. If he’s working night and day, then he ought to have come up with something more substantial than whatever’s going to be in the next issue of Millennium.”

  “And we still haven’t been able to tap the phones at their offices?”

  “No,” Sandberg said. “There’s been somebody there twenty-four hours a day – and that’s significant – ever since we went into Blomkvist’s apartment the first time. The office lights are always on, and if it’s not Blomkvist it’s Cortez or Eriksson, or that faggot… er, Christer Malm.”

  Clinton stroked his chin and thought for a moment.

  “Conclusions?”

  Nyström said: “If I didn’t know better, I’d think they were putting on an act for us.”

  Clinton felt a cold shiver run down the back of his neck. “Why hasn’t this occurred to us before?”

  “We’ve been listening to what they’ve been saying, not to what they haven’t been saying. We’ve been gratified when we’ve heard their confusion or noticed it in an email. Blomkvist knows damn well that someone stole copies of the 1991 Salander report from him and his sister. But what the hell is he doing about it?”

  “And they didn’t report her mugging to the police?”

  Nyström shook his head. “Giannini was present at the interviews with Salander. She’s polite, but she never says anything of any weight. And Salander herself never says anything at all.”

  “But that will work in our favour. The more she keeps her mouth shut, the better. What does Ekström say?”

  “I saw him a couple of hours ago. He’d just been given Salander’s statement.” He pointed to the pages in Clinton’s lap.

  “Ekström is confused. It’s fortunate that Salander is no good at expressing herself in writing. To an outsider this would look like a totally insane conspiracy theory with added pornographic elements. But she still shoots very close to the mark. She describes exactly how she came to be locked up at St Stefan’s, and she claims that Zalachenko worked for Säpo and so on. She says she thinks everything is connected with a little club inside Säpo, pointing to the existence of something corresponding to the Section. All in all it’s fairly accurate. But as I said, it’s not plausible. Ekström is in a dither because this also seems to be the line of defence Giannini is going to use at the trial.”

  “Shit,” Clinton said. He bowed his head and thought intently for several minutes. Finally he looked up.

  “Jonas, drive up to Morgongåva this evening and find out if anything is going on. If they’re printing Millennium, I want a copy.”

  “I’ll take Falun with me.”

  “Good. Georg, I want you to see Ekström this afternoon and take his pulse. Everything has gone smoothly until now, but I can’t ignore what you two are telling me.”

  Clinton sat in silence for a moment more.

  “The best thing would be if there wasn’t any trial…” he said at last.

  He raised his eyes and looked at Nyström. Nyström nodded. Sandberg nodded.

  “Nyström, can you investigate our options?”

  Sandberg and the locksmith known as Falun parked a short distance from the railway tracks and walked through Morgongåva. It was 8.30 in the evening. It was too light and too early to do anything, but they wanted to reconnoitre and get a look at the place.

  “If the building is alarmed, I’m not doing it,” Falun said. “It would be better to have a look through the window. If there’s anything lying around, you can just chuck a rock through, jump in, grab what you need and run like hell.”

  “That’ll work,” Sandberg said.

  “If you only need one copy of the magazine, we can check the dustbins round the back. There must be overruns and test printings and things like that.”

  Hallvigs Reklam printing factory was in a low, brick building. They approached from the south on the other side of the street. Sandberg was about to cross when Falun took hold of his elbow.

  “Keep going straight,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Keep going straight, as if we’re out for an evening stroll.”

  They passed Hallvigs and made a tour of the neighbourhood.

  “What was all that about?” Sandberg said.

  “You’ve got to keep your eyes peeled. The place isn’t just alarmed. There was a car parked alongside the building.”

  “You mean somebody’s there?”

  “It was a car from Milton Security. The factory is under surveillance, for Christ’s sake.”

  “Milton Security?” Clinton felt the shock hit him in the gut.

  “If it hadn’t been for Falun, I would have walked right into their arms,” Sandberg said.

  “There’s something fishy goin
g on,” Nyström said. “There is no rationale for a small out-of-town printer to hire Milton Security for 24-hour surveillance.”

  Clinton’s lips were pressed tight. It was after 11.00 and he needed to rest.

  “And that means Millennium really is up to something,” Sandberg said.

  “I can see that,” Clinton said. “O.K. Let’s analyse the situation. What’s the worst-case scenario? What could they know?” He gave Nyström an urgent look.

  “It has to be the Salander report,” he said. “They beefed up their security after we lifted the copies. They must have guessed that they’re under surveillance. The worst case is that they still have a copy of the report.”

  “But Blomkvist was at his wits’ end when it went missing.”

  “I know. But we may have been duped. We can’t shut our eyes to that possibility.”

  “We’ll work on that assumption,” Clinton said. “Sandberg?”

  “We do know what Salander’s defence will be. She’s going to tell the truth as she sees it. I’ve read this autobiography of hers. In fact it plays right into our hands. It’s full of such outrageous accusations of rape and violation of her civil rights that it will come across as the ravings of a paranoid personality.”

  Nyström said: “Besides, she can’t prove a single one of her claims. Ekström will use the account against her. He’ll annihilate her credibility.”

  “O.K. Teleborian’s new report is excellent. There is, of course, the possibility that Giannini will call in her own expert who’ll say that Salander isn’t crazy, and the whole thing will end up before the medical board. But again – unless Salander changes tactics, she’s going to refuse to talk to them too, and then they’ll conclude that Teleborian is right. She’s her own worst enemy.”

  “The best thing would still be if there was no trial,” Clinton said.

  Nyström shook his head. “That’s virtually impossible. She’s in Kronoberg prison and she has no contact with other prisoners. She gets an hour’s exercise each day in the little area on the roof, but we can’t get to her up there. And we have no contacts among the prison staff.”