Niedermann saw the crate coming and threw himself to one side. A corner of the crate struck him on the chest, but he seemed not to have been injured. He picked himself up. She was resisting. He started climbing up after her. His head was just appearing over the third crate when she kicked at him. Her boot struck him with full force in the forehead. He grunted and heaved himself up on top of the packing crates. Salander fled, leaping back to the crates on the other side of the aisle. She dropped over the edge and vanished immediately from his sight. He could hear her footsteps and caught a glimpse of her as she passed through the doorway to the inner workshop.
Salander took an appraising look around. Click. She knew that she did not have a chance. She could survive for as long as she could avoid Niedermann’s enormous fists and keep her distance. But when she made a mistake—which would happen sooner or later—she was dead. She had to evade him. He would only have to grab hold of her once, and the fight would be over.
She needed a weapon.
A pistol. A sub-machine gun. A rocket-propelled grenade. A personnel mine.
Any fucking thing at all.
But there was nothing like that at hand.
She looked everywhere.
No weapons.
Only tools. Click. Her eyes fell on the circular saw, but he was hardly going to lie down on the saw bench. Click. Click. She saw an iron rod that could be used as a spear, but it was probably too heavy for her to handle effectively. Click. She glanced through the door and saw that Niedermann was down from the crates and no more than fifty feet away. He was coming towards her again. She started to move away from the door. She had maybe five seconds left before Niedermann was upon her. She glanced one last time at the tools.
A weapon …. or a hiding place.
• • •
Niedermann was in no hurry. He knew that there was no way out and that sooner or later he would catch his sister. But she was dangerous, no doubt about it. She was, after all, Zalachenko’s daughter. And he did not want to be injured. It was better to let her run around and wear herself out.
He stopped in the doorway to the inner room and looked around at the jumble of tools, furniture, and half-finished floorboards. She was nowhere to be seen.
“I know you’re in here. And I’m going to find you.”
Niedermann stood still and listened. All he could hear was his own breathing. She was hiding. He smiled. She was challenging him. Her visit had suddenly turned into a game between brother and sister.
Then he heard a clumsy rustling noise from somewhere in the centre of the room. He turned his head but at first could not tell where the sound was coming from. Then he smiled again. In the middle of the floor, set slightly apart from the other debris, stood a sixteen-foot-long wooden workbench with a row of drawers and sliding cabinet doors beneath it.
He approached the workbench from the side and glanced behind it to make sure that she was not trying to fool him. Nothing there.
She was hiding inside the cabinet. So stupid.
He slid open the first door on the far left.
He instantly heard movement inside the cabinet, from the middle section. He took two quick steps and opened the middle door with a triumphant expression on his face.
Empty.
Then he heard a series of sharp cracks that sounded like pistol shots. The sound was so close that at first he could not tell where it was coming from. He turned to look. Then he felt a strange pressure against his left foot. He felt no pain, but he looked down at the floor just in time to see Salander’s hand moving the nail gun over to his right foot.
She was underneath the cabinet.
He stood as if paralysed for the seconds it took her to put the mouth of the nail gun against his boot and fire another five seven-inch nails straight through his foot.
He tried to move.
It took him precious seconds to realize that his feet were nailed solidly to the newly laid plank floor. Salander’s hand moved the nail gun back to his left foot. It sounded like an automatic weapon getting shots off in bursts. She managed to shoot in another four nails as reinforcement before he was able to react.
He reached down to grab her hand, but immediately lost his balance and regained it only by bracing himself against the workbench as he heard the nail gun being fired again and again, ka-blam, ka-blam, ka-blam. She was back to his right foot. He saw that she was firing the nails diagonally through his heel and into the floor.
Niedermann howled in sudden rage. He lunged again for Salander’s hand.
From her position under the cabinet Salander saw his pant leg slide up, a sign that he was trying to bend down. She let go of the nail gun. Niedermann saw her hand disappear quick as a lizard beneath the cabinet just before he reached her.
He reached for the nail gun, but the instant he touched it with the tips of his fingers she drew it under the cabinet.
The gap between the floor and the cabinet was about eight inches. With all the strength he could muster he toppled the cabinet onto its back. Salander looked up at him with big eyes and an offended expression. She aimed the nail gun and fired it from a distance of twenty inches. The nail hit him in the middle of his shin.
The next instant she dropped the nail gun, rolled fast as lightning away from him, and got to her feet beyond his reach. She backed up several feet and stopped.
Niedermann tried to move and again lost his balance, swaying backwards and forwards with his arms flailing. He steadied himself and bent down in rage.
This time he managed to grab hold of the nail gun. He pointed it at Salander and pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened. He looked in dismay at the nail gun and then at Salander again. She looked back at him blankly and held up the plug. In fury he threw the nail gun at her. She dodged to the side.
Then she plugged in the cord again and hauled in the nail gun.
He met Salander’s expressionless eyes and was amazed. She had defeated him. She’s supernatural. Instinctively he tried to pull one foot from the floor. She’s a monster. He could lift his foot only a fraction of an inch before his boot hit the heads of the nails. They had been driven into his feet at different angles, and to free himself he would have to rip his feet to shreds. Even with his almost superhuman strength he was unable to pull himself loose. For several seconds he swayed back and forth as if he were swimming. He saw a pool of blood slowly forming between his shoes.
Salander sat down on a stool and watched for signs that he might be able to tear his feet loose. Since he could not feel pain, it was a matter of whether he was strong enough to pull the heads of the nails straight through his feet. She sat stock-still and observed his struggle for ten minutes. The whole time her eyes were frozen blank.
After a while she stood up and walked behind him and held the nail gun to his spine, just below the nape of his neck.
Salander was thinking hard. This man had transported, drugged, abused, and sold women both retail and wholesale. He had murdered at least eight people, including a policeman in Gosseberga and a member of Svavelsjö MC and his wife. She had no idea how many other lives her half-brother might have on his account, if not his conscience, but thanks to him she had been hunted all over Sweden like a mad dog, suspected of three of the murders he had committed.
Her finger rested heavily on the trigger.
He had murdered the journalist Dag Svensson and his partner, Mia Johansson.
With Zalachenko he had also murdered her and buried her in Gosseberga. And now he had resurfaced to murder her again.
You could get pretty angry with less provocation.
She saw no reason to let him live any longer. He hated her with a passion that she could not even fathom. What would happen if she turned him over to the police? A trial? A life sentence? When would he be granted parole? How soon would he escape? And now that her father was finally gone …. How many years would she have to look over her shoulder, waiting for the day when her brother would suddenly turn up again? She felt the h
eft of the nail gun. She could end this thing once and for all.
Risk assessment.
She bit her lip.
Salander was afraid of no-one and nothing. She realized that she lacked the necessary imagination—and that was evidence enough that there was something wrong with her brain.
Niedermann hated her, and she responded with an equally implacable hatred towards him. He joined the ranks of men like Magge Lundin and Martin Vanger and Zalachenko and dozens of other creeps who in her estimation had absolutely no claim to be among the living. If she could put them all on a desert island and set off an atomic bomb, then she would be satisfied.
But murder? Was it worth it? What would happen to her if she killed him? What were the odds that she would avoid discovery? What would she be ready to sacrifice for the satisfaction of firing the nail gun one last time?
I could claim self-defence … no, not with his feet nailed to the floorboards.
She suddenly thought of Harriet Fucking Vanger, who had also been tormented by her father and her brother. She recalled the exchange she had had with Mikael Fucking Blomkvist in which she cursed Harriet Vanger in the harshest possible terms. It was Harriet Vanger’s fault that her brother Martin had been allowed to go on murdering women year after year.
“What would you do?” Blomkvist had said.
“I’d kill the fucker,” she had said with a conviction that came from the depths of her cold soul.
And now she was standing in exactly the same position in which Harriet Vanger had found herself. How many more women would Niedermann kill if she let him go? She had the legal right of a citizen and was socially responsible for her actions. How many years of her life did she want to sacrifice? How many years had Harriet Vanger been willing to sacrifice?
Suddenly the nail gun felt too heavy for her to hold against his spine, even with both hands.
She lowered the weapon and felt as though she had come back to reality. She was aware of Niedermann muttering something incoherent. He was speaking German. He was talking about a devil that had come to get him.
She knew that he was not talking to her. He seemed to see somebody at the other end of the room. She turned her head and followed his gaze. There was nothing there. She felt the hairs rise on the back of her neck.
She turned on her heel, grabbed the iron rod, and went to the outer room to find her shoulder bag. As she bent to retrieve it she caught sight of the knife. She still had her gloves on, and she picked up the weapon.
She hesitated a moment and then placed it in full view in the centre aisle between the stacks of packing crates. With the iron rod she spent three minutes prising loose the padlock so that she could get outside.
• • •
She sat in her car and thought for a long time. Finally she flipped open her mobile. It took her two minutes to locate the number for Svavelsjö MC’s clubhouse.
“Yeah?”
“Nieminen,” she said.
“Wait.”
She waited for three minutes before Sonny Nieminen came to the phone.
“Who’s this?”
“None of your fucking business,” Salander said in such a low voice that he could hardly make out the words. He could not even tell whether it was a man or a woman.
“All right, so what do you want?”
“You want a tip about Niedermann?”
“Do I?”
“Don’t give me shit. Want to know where he is or not?”
“I’m listening.”
Salander gave him directions to the brickworks outside Norrtälje. She said that he would be there long enough for Nieminen to find him if he hurried.
She closed her mobile, started the car, and drove up to the gas station across the road. She parked so that she had a clear view of the brickworks.
She had to wait for more than two hours. It was just before 1:30 in the afternoon when she saw a van drive slowly past on the road below her. It stopped at the turning off the main road, stood there for five minutes, and then drove down to the brickworks. On this December day, twilight was setting in.
She opened the glove box and took out a pair of Minolta 16 × 50 binoculars and watched as the van parked. She identified Nieminen and Waltari with three men she did not recognize. New blood. They had to rebuild their operation.
When Nieminen and his pals had found the open door at the end of the building, she opened her mobile again. She composed a message and sent it to the police station in Norrtälje.
COP KILLER R. NIEDERMANN IN OLD BRICKWORKS BY THE GAS STATION OUTSIDE SKEDERID. ABOUT TO BE MURDERED BY S. NIEMINEN AND MEMBERS OF SVAVELSJÖ MC. WOMEN DEAD IN PIT ON GROUND FLOOR.
She could not see any movement from the factory.
She bided her time.
As she waited she removed the SIM card from her phone and cut it up with some nail scissors. She rolled down the window and tossed out the pieces. Then she took a new SIM card from her wallet and inserted it in her phone. She was using a Comviq cash card, which was virtually impossible to track. She called Comviq and credited 500 kronor to the new card.
Eleven minutes after her message was sent, two police vans with their sirens off but with blue lights flashing drove at high speed up to the factory from the direction of Norrtälje. They parked in the yard next to Nieminen’s van. A minute later two squad cars arrived. The officers conferred and then moved together towards the brickworks. Salander raised her binoculars. She saw one of the policemen radio through the registration number of Nieminen’s van. The officers stood around waiting. Salander watched as another team approached at high speed two minutes later.
Finally it was all over.
The story that had begun on the day she was born had ended at the brickworks.
She was free.
When the officers took out assault rifles from their vehicles, put on Kevlar vests, and started to fan out around the factory site, Salander went inside the shop and bought a coffee and a sandwich wrapped in cellophane. She ate standing at a counter in the café.
It was dark by the time she got back to her car. Just as she opened the door, she heard two distant reports from what she assumed were handguns on the other side of the road. She saw several black figures, presumably policemen, pressed against the wall near the entrance at one end of the building. She heard sirens as another squad car approached from the direction of Uppsala. A few cars had stopped at the side of the road below her to watch the drama.
She started the Honda, turned onto the E18, and drove home.
It was 7:00 that evening when Salander, to her great annoyance, heard the doorbell ring. She was in the bath and the water was still steaming. There was really only one person who could be at her front door.
At first she thought she would ignore it, but at the third ring she sighed, got out of the bath, and wrapped a towel around her. Pouting, she trailed water down the hall floor. She opened the door a crack.
“Hello,” Blomkvist said.
She did not answer.
“Did you hear the evening news?”
She shook her head.
“I thought you might like to know that Ronald Niedermann is dead. He was murdered today in Norrtälje by a gang from Svavelsjö MC.”
“Really?” Salander said.
“I talked to the duty officer in Norrtälje. It seems to have been some sort of internal dispute. Apparently Niedermann had been tortured and slit open with a knife. They found a bag at the factory with several hundred thousand kronor.”
“Jesus.”
“The Svavelsjö mob was arrested, but they put up quite a fight. There was a shoot-out and the police had to send for a backup team from Stockholm. The bikers surrendered at around 6:00.”
“Is that so?”
“Your old friend Sonny Nieminen bit the dust. He went completely nuts and tried to shoot his way out.”
“That’s nice.”
Blomkvist stood there in silence. They looked at each other through the crack in the door.
“Am I interrupting something?” he said.
She shrugged. “I was in the bath.”
“I can see that. Do you want some company?”
She gave him an acid look.
“I didn’t mean in the bath. I’ve brought some bagels,” he said, holding up a bag. “And some espresso. Since you own a Jura Impressa X7, you should at least learn how to use it.”
She raised her eyebrows. She did not know whether to be disappointed or relieved.
“Just company?”
“Just company,” he confirmed. “I’m visiting a good friend. If I’m welcome, that is.”
She hesitated. For two years she had kept as far away from Mikael Blomkvist as she could. And yet he kept sticking to her life like gum on the sole of her shoe, either on the Net or in real life. On the Net it was OK. There he was no more than electrons and words. In real life, standing on her doorstep, he was still fucking attractive. And he knew her secrets just as she knew all of his.
She looked at him for a moment and realized that she now had no feelings for him. At least not those kinds of feelings.
He had in fact been a good friend to her over the past year.
She trusted him. Maybe. It was troubling that one of the few people she trusted was a man she spent so much time avoiding.
Then she made up her mind. It was absurd to pretend that he did not exist. It no longer hurt her to see him.
She opened the door wide and let him into her life again.
NOTES
Olof Palme was the leader of the Social Democratic Party and prime minister of Sweden at the time of his assassination on February 28, 1986. He was an outspoken politician, popular with the left and detested by the right. Two years after his death a petty criminal and drug addict was convicted of his murder but was later acquitted on appeal. Although a number of alternative theories as to who carried out the murder have since been proposed, to this day the crime remains unsolved.
Prompted by Olof Palme’s assassination, Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson called an investigation into the procedures of the Swedish Security Police (Säpo) in the fall of 1987. Carl Lidbom, then Swedish ambassador to France, was given the task of leading the investigation. One of his old acquaintances, the publisher Ebbe Carlsson, firmly believed that the Kurdish organization PKK was involved in the murder and was given resources to start a private investigation. The Ebbe Carlsson affair exploded as a major political scandal in 1988, when it was revealed that the publisher had been secretly supported by the then minister of justice, Anna-Greta Leijon. She was subsequently forced to resign.
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Trilogy Bundle Page 177
