Inspector Bublanski was in a dismal mood when he met Modig in the parking lot outside the hospital just before 7:00. Blomkvist had woken him up, and he in turn called Modig and woke her up. They met Blomkvist by the entrance and went with him to Paolo Roberto’s room.

Bublanski could hardly grasp the bewildering details, but what was eventually clear was that Wu had been kidnapped and that the boxer had beaten up the kidnapper. Except that to judge by his face, it was far from obvious who had beaten up whom. As far as Bublanski was concerned, the night’s events had lifted the investigation of Lisbeth Salander to a whole new level of complication. Nothing in this infernal case seemed to be normal.

How had Paolo Roberto even gotten involved in the affair?

“I’m a good friend of Lisbeth Salander’s,” he told them.

Bublanski and Modig looked at each other, surprised and sceptical.

“She sparred with me at the gym.”

Bublanski fixed his gaze somewhere on the wall behind Paolo Roberto. Modig could not help laughing out loud. After a while they had written down all the details he could give them.

“I’d like to make a few points,” Blomkvist said dryly.

They turned to him.

“First of all, Paolo’s description of the man who drove away from the warehouse in the van matches the one I gave of the person who attacked Salander at the same spot on Lundagatan. A tall guy with a light brown ponytail and a beer belly. OK?”

Bublanski nodded.

Modig murmured a “yes.”

“Third, it looks less likely that Salander is the lone nutcase she has been portrayed as. And neither of these maniacs seems, on the face of it, to be a member of a lesbian Satanist gang.”

Neither Bublanski nor Modig said a word.

“And finally, number four. I think this story has something to do with a man called Zala. Dag Svensson did a lot of work on him in his last two weeks. All the relevant information is in his computer. Dag linked him to the murder of a prostitute named Irina Petrova in Södertälje. The autopsy recorded that she was very severely beaten. So severely that any one of three of the worst blows would have been fatal on its own. Her injuries sound very like the ones that Miriam Wu and Paolo Roberto have been subjected to. In both cases the instruments of this extraordinary violence could be the hands of a gigantic thug.”

“And Bjurman?” Bublanski said. “Let’s suppose that someone had a reason to silence Svensson. Who would have had a motive to murder Salander’s guardian?”

“All the pieces of the puzzle aren’t in place yet, but there’s a connection between Bjurman and Zala. That’s the only credible solution. Could you agree to start thinking along new lines? I think that these crimes have something to do with the sex trade. And Salander would sooner die than be involved in something like that. I told you she’s a damned moralist.”

“So what was her role? What was she doing at Svensson and Johansson’s apartment?”

“I don’t know. Witness? Opponent? Maybe she was there to warn Dag and Mia that their lives were in danger.”

Bublanski set the wheels in motion. He called the Södertälje police and gave them Paolo Roberto’s directions to a dilapidated warehouse southwest of Lake Yngern. Then he called Holmberg—he lived in Flemings-berg and was closest of the team to Södertälje—and asked him to join up with the Södertälje police as soon as he possibly could to assist with the crime scene investigation.

Bublanski felt a sense of frustration approaching fury.

What the hell was going on? Who were these thugs? Who was this Salander person really? And why was it impossible to find her?

The situation did not improve when Ekström joined the fray at the 9:00 meeting. Bublanski told him about the morning’s dramatic developments and proposed that the search be reprioritized in light of the mysterious events that had taken place, which cast doubt on the scenario that the team had been working on.

Paolo Roberto’s story reinforced Blomkvist’s account of the attack on Salander on Lundagatan. The hypothesis that all three murders were committed by one mentally ill woman no longer seemed valid. The suspicions regarding Salander could not altogether be discarded—they needed an explanation for her fingerprints being on the murder weapon—but it did mean that the investigation had to work on the possibility of a different killer. There was only one theory at present—Blomkvist’s belief that the murders had to do with Svensson’s imminent exposé of the sex trade. Bublanski identified three significant points.

The prime task was to find and identify the abnormally large man and his associate with the ponytail who had kidnapped and assaulted Miriam Wu. The giant should be relatively easy to find.

Andersson reminded them that Salander also had an unusual appearance, and that after three weeks of searching, the police still had no idea where she was.

The second task was to add to the investigative team a group that would actively focus on the list of prostitutes’ clients in Svensson’s computer. There was a logistical problem associated with this. The team had Svensson’s computer from Millennium and the Zip disks that held the backup of his missing laptop, but they contained several years’ worth of collected research and thousands of pages. It would take time to catalogue and study them. The team needed reinforcements, and Bublanski detailed Modig to head that unit.

The third task was to focus on a person who went by the name of Zala. The team would enlist the assistance of the National Criminal Investigation Department, since they apparently had come across the name. He assigned that task to Faste.

Finally, Andersson was to coordinate the continued search for Salander.

“This is all bullshit. We have a violence-prone nutcase who has grown worse and worse over the years. Do you actually believe that all the psychiatric reports and results from forensics are a joke? She’s tied to the crime scene. We know she’s a hooker, and there’s a large sum of money unaccounted for in her bank account.”

“I’m aware of all that.”

“She’s also a member of some sort of lesbian sex cult. And I’ll be damned if that dyke Cilla Norén doesn’t know more than she’s letting on.”

Bublanski raised his voice. “Faste. Stop it. You’re totally obsessed with this gay angle. It’s way past professional.”

He at once regretted speaking out in front of the whole group. A private talk with Faste would have been more productive. Finally Ekström interrupted the raised voices to approve Bublanski’s plan of action.

Bublanski glanced at Bohman and Hedström.

“As I understand it, we only have you for three more days, so let’s make the best of the situation. Bohman, can you help Andersson track down Salander? Hedström, you’ll stay with Modig.”

Ekström raised his hand as they were about to break up.

“One last thing. We’re keeping the part about Paolo Roberto under our hats. The media will go ballistic if one more celebrity springs to light in this investigation. So not a word about it outside this room.”

After the meeting Modig took Bublanski aside.

“It was unprofessional of me to lose patience with Faste,” Bublanski said.

“I know how it feels,” she said with a smile. “I started on Svensson’s computer last Monday.”

“I know. How far did you get?”

“He had a dozen versions of the manuscript and a huge amount of research material, and I don’t know yet what’s important and what’s safe to ignore. Just cataloguing it with meaningful names and looking through all the documents will take several days.”

“What about Hedström?”

“To tell you the truth … I don’t want to trash him, but he isn’t much help.”

Bublanski frowned. “Out with it.”

“I don’t know, he’s obviously not a real policeman like Bohman. He talks a lot of drivel. He has about the same attitude towards Miriam Wu as Faste does, and he’s totally uninterested in the assignment. And—although I can’t put my finger on it—he has some kind of problem with Salander.”

“How so?”

“I’ve got a feeling there’s some bad blood between them.”

Bublanski nodded slowly. “That’s a shame. Bohman’s OK, but I don’t really like having outsiders involved in this investigation.”

“So what shall we do?”

“You’ll have to put up with him for the rest of the week. Armansky said they’ll break it off if they don’t get results. Keep digging and count on having to do the whole job yourself.”

Modig was interrupted after only forty-five minutes. She was called to Ekström’s office. Bublanski was with him. Both men were red in the face. Tony Scala, the freelance journalist, had just released a scoop with the news that Paolo Roberto had rescued the S&M dyke Miriam Wu from an unknown kidnapper. The article contained several details that could only be known to someone inside the investigation. It was written in such a way as to suggest that the police were considering filing charges against Paolo Roberto for assault.

Ekström had already received several phone calls from other papers that wanted news about the boxer’s role. He was livid. He accused Modig of having leaked the story. Modig vigorously objected to the accusation, but in vain. Ekström wanted her off the investigation.

“Sonja says she didn’t leak anything,” Bublanski said. “That’s good enough for me. It’s insane to remove an experienced detective who’s familiar with every detail of the case.”

Ekström refused to budge.

“Modig, I can’t prove that you leaked the information, but I have no confidence in you with regard to this investigation. You are relieved from the team, effective immediately. Take the rest of the week off. You’ll be given other assignments on Monday.”

Modig nodded and headed for the door. Bublanski stopped her.

Bublanski’s face had taken on a dangerous hue. Ekström looked furious.

Modig went back to her office, where she and Hedström had been working on Svensson’s computer. She was angry and close to tears. Hedström could tell that something was wrong, but he said nothing and she ignored him. She sat at her desk and stared into space. There was an oppressive silence in the room.

After a while Hedström excused himself and said he had to get a cup of coffee. He asked if he could bring her one. She shook her head.

When he had left she got up and put on her jacket. She took her shoulder bag and went to Bublanski’s office. He pointed to the visitor’s chair.

“Sonja, I don’t intend to yield in this matter unless Ekström removes me from the investigation too. I won’t accept it and I’m thinking of filing a complaint. Until you hear otherwise from me, you’ll remain on the team. At my direction. Understand?”

She nodded.

“You will not take the rest of the week off as Ekström said. I want you to go to Millennium’s offices and have another talk with Blomkvist. Ask him for help in guiding you through Dag Svensson’s hard drive. They have a copy there. We can save a lot of time if we have somebody who’s already familiar with the material picking out the things that might be important.”

Modig breathed more easily.

“I didn’t say anything to Hedström.”

“I’ll take care of him. He can help Andersson. Have you seen Faste?”

“No. He left right after the meeting.”

Bublanski sighed.

When she arrived at Millennium’s offices, Modig found that she liked the self-confident and slightly domineering woman with the dimples and shock of short blond hair. She vaguely wondered whether Berger was a dyke too, since all the women in this investigation, according to Faste, seemed to have that inclination. But then she remembered that she had read somewhere that Berger was married to the artist Greger Beckman.

“There’s a problem here,” Berger said, after listening to her request.

“What’s that?”

“It’s not that we don’t want to solve the murders or help the police. Besides, you already have all the material in the computer you took from here. The dilemma is an ethical one. The media and the police don’t work very well together.”

“Believe me, I found that out this morning,” Modig said with a smile.

“How so?”

“Nothing. Just a personal reflection.”

“OK. To maintain their credibility, the media have to keep a clear distance from the authorities. Journalists who run to the police station and cooperate with police investigations will end up being errand boys for the police.”

“I’ve met some of those,” Modig said. “But the opposite can also be true. And the police end up running errands for certain newspapers.”

Berger laughed. “That’s right. I’m afraid to say that at Millennium we simply can’t afford to be associated with that sort of mercenary journalism. This isn’t about you wanting to question any of Millennium’s staff—which we would allow without hesitation—but about a formal request for us to assist actively in a police investigation by placing our journalistic material at your disposal.”

Modig nodded.

“There are two points of view on that,” Berger said. “First, one of our journalists has been murdered. So we will help out all we can. But the second point is that there are some things we cannot and will not give to the police. And that has to do with our sources.”

“I can be flexible. I can pledge to protect your sources.”

“It’s not a matter of your intent or our trust in you. It is that we never reveal a source, no matter what the circumstances.”

“Understood.”

As she caught the shuttle train from Södra station to Södertälje, Irene Nesser was unaware of the drama that had occurred the night before. She was wearing a midlength black leather jacket, dark pants, and a neat red sweater. She wore glasses that she had pushed up on her forehead.

In Södertälje she walked to the Strängnäs bus and bought a ticket to Stallarholmen. She got off the bus a little south of Stallarholmen just after 11:00 a.m. There were no buildings in sight. She visualized the map in her head. Lake Mälaren was a few miles to the northeast. It was summer-cabin country, with a scattering of year-round residences. Bjurman’s property was about two miles from the bus stop. She took a swallow of water from her bottle and started walking. She got there about forty-five minutes later.

She began by making a tour of the area and studying the neighbouring houses. About a hundred and fifty yards to the right, she saw the next cabin. Nobody was at home. To the left was a ravine. She passed two summer houses before she reached a group of cabins where she noticed signs of life: an open window and the sound of a radio. But that was three hundred yards from Bjurman’s cabin. She could work undisturbed.

She had taken the keys from his apartment. Once inside, she first unscrewed a window shutter at the back of the house, giving her an escape route in case any unpleasantness should occur at the front. The unpleasantness she was prepared for was that some cop might get the idea to show up at the cabin.

Bjurman’s was one of the older buildings, with one main room, one bedroom, and a small kitchen with running water. The toilet was a compost outhouse in the backyard. She spent twenty minutes looking through the closets, wardrobes, and dressers. She did not find so much as one scrap of paper that could have anything to do with Lisbeth Salander or Zala.

She sat on the porch and drank some water and ate an apple.

When she went to close the shutter, she stopped short in the hallway as she caught sight of an aluminium stepladder three feet high. She went into the main room again and examined the clapboard ceiling. The opening to the attic was almost invisible between two roof beams. She got the stepladder, opened the trapdoor, and immediately found two A4 file boxes, each containing several folders and various other documents.

Things had gone all wrong. One disaster had followed another. The blond giant was worried.

Sandström had gotten hold of the Rantas. They said he sounded terrified and reported that the journalist Svensson had been planning an exposé about his whoring activities and about the Rantas. So far it hadn’t been a big deal. If the media exposed Sandström it was none of his business, and the Ranta brothers could lie low for as long as they needed to. They had taken the Baltic Star to Estonia for a vacation. It was unlikely that the whole mess would lead to a court case, but if the worst should happen they had done time before. It was part of the job description.

More troublesome was that Salander had managed to elude Magge Lundin. This was incredible, since Salander was a rag doll compared to Lundin. All he had to do was stuff her in a car and take her to the warehouse south of Nykvarn.

Then Sandström had received another visit, and this time Svensson was after Zala. That put everything in a whole new light. Between Bjurman’s panic and Svensson’s continued snooping, a potentially dangerous situation had arisen.

An amateur is a gangster who is not prepared to take the consequences. Bjurman was a rank amateur. The giant had advised Zala not to have anything to do with Bjurman, but for Zala the name Lisbeth Salander had been irresistible. He loathed Salander. It was a reflex, like pressing a button.

To top it off, Bjurman had fetched his cowboy pistol to threaten him. The giant had just looked at Bjurman in surprise and had taken the gun from him. He was already wearing gloves, so fingerprints weren’t a problem. He had no choice. Bjurman had obviously flipped out.

Bjurman knew about Zala, of course. That was why he was a liability. The giant couldn’t really explain why he made Bjurman take off his clothes, except that he hated the lawyer and wanted to make that clear to him. He had almost lost it when he saw the tattoo on Bjurman’s abdomen: I AM A SADISTIC PIG, A PERVERT, AND A RAPIST.

For a moment he almost felt sorry for the man. He was such a total idiot. But he was in a business where such feelings could not be allowed to interfere with what they had to do. So he had led Bjurman into the bedroom, forced him to his knees, and used a pillow as a silencer.

He had spent five minutes searching through Bjurman’s apartment for the slightest connection to Zala. The only thing he found was his own mobile number. To be on the safe side he took Bjurman’s mobile with him.

Svensson was the next problem. When Bjurman was found dead, Svensson would inevitably call the police and tell them about his call to the lawyer to ask about Zala. Zala would then become the object of police interest.

The blond giant considered himself smart, but he had an enormous respect for Zala’s almost uncanny strategic gifts. They had been working together for nearly twelve years. It had been a successful decade, and he looked up to Zala with reverence. He could listen for hours as Zala explained human nature and its weaknesses and how one could profit from them.

But quite unexpectedly their business dealings were in trouble.

He had driven straight from Bjurman’s to Enskede and parked the white Volvo two streets away. As luck would have it, the front door of the building was not locked. He went up and rang the doorbell with the nameplate SVENSSON-JOHANSSON.

The dropped revolver had been at first a source of criticism until Zala realized its implications. They were astonished when the police began a search for Salander. His mistake had turned into an incredible stroke of luck.

It also created a new problem. Salander became the only remaining weak link. She had known Bjurman and she knew Zala. She could put two and two together. When he and Zala conferred about the matter they were in agreement. They had to find Salander and bury her somewhere. It would be ideal if she were never found. Then the murder investigation would eventually be shelved.

They had taken a chance that Miriam Wu could lead them to Salander. And then everything had gone wrong again. Paolo Roberto. Of all people. Out of nowhere. And according to the newspapers he was also friends with Salander.

The giant was dumbfounded.

After Nykvarn he had gone to Lundin’s house in Svavelsjö, only a hundred yards from Svavelsjö MC’s headquarters. Not an ideal hiding place, but he didn’t have many options. He had to find somewhere to lie low until the bruises on his face began to fade and he could make himself scarce. He fingered his broken nose and felt the lump on his neck. The swelling had begun to subside.

It had been a good move to go back and burn down the whole fucking place.

Then, suddenly, he went ice cold.

Bjurman. He had met Bjurman once at his summer cabin. In early February—when Zala had accepted the job of taking care of Salander. Bjurman had had a file about Salander that he had leafed through. How could he have forgotten that? It could lead to Zala.

He went down to the kitchen and told Lundin to get himself to Stallarholmen as fast as he could and start another fire.

He tried to find Faste, but he was not in the building and did not answer his mobile. After the stormy meeting, Faste had vanished.

Bublanski then went to see Ekström to try to defuse the problem with Modig. He set out all his reasons for thinking the decision to take her off the case was foolhardy. Ekström would not listen, and Bublanski decided to file a complaint after the weekend. It was an idiotic situation.

Just after 3:00 he stepped into the corridor and saw Hedström coming out of Modig’s office, where he was still supposed to be combing through Svensson’s hard drive. Bublanski thought it was now a meaningless exercise, since no real detective was looking over his shoulder to check what he might have missed. He decided that Hedström should be with Andersson for the rest of the week.

Before he had a chance to say anything, Hedström disappeared into the toilet at the far end of the corridor. Bublanski went over to Modig’s empty office to wait for him to return.

Then his eye fell on Hedström’s mobile, which lay forgotten on the shelf behind his desk.

Bublanski glanced at the door to the toilet, still closed. On pure impulse he stepped into the office, stuffed Hedström’s mobile into his pocket, walked rapidly back to his own office, and closed the door. He clicked up the list of calls.

At 9:57, five minutes after the morning meeting was over, Hedström had called a number with an 070 area code. Bublanski lifted the receiver of his desk telephone and dialled the number. Tony Scala answered.

He hung up and stared at Hedström’s mobile. Then he got up with an expression like a thundercloud. He had taken two steps towards the door when his telephone rang. He went back to pick it up and shouted his name into the receiver.

“It’s Jerker. I’m back at the warehouse outside Nykvarn.”

“What did you find?”

“The fire is out. We’ve been busy the last two hours. The Södertälje police brought a corpse-sniffing dog to check the area in case there was someone in the wreckage.”

“Was there?”

“Get to the point, Jerker. I’m a bit pressed here.”

“Well, he took a walk and let the dog loose away from the site of the fire. The dog signalled a spot about seventy-five yards into the woods behind the warehouse. We started digging. Ten minutes ago we found a human leg with a shoe. It seems to be a man’s shoe. It was buried fairly shallow.”

“Oh shit. Jerker, you’ve got to—”

“I’ve already taken command of the site and put a stop to the digging. I want to get forensics out here and proper techs before we proceed.”

“Very well done.”

“But that’s not all. Five minutes ago the dog marked another spot some eighty yards from the first.”

Salander had made coffee on Bjurman’s stove and eaten another apple. She spent two hours reading through Bjurman’s notes on her, page by page. She was actually impressed. He had put quite a lot of effort into the task and systematized the information. He had found material about her that she didn’t even know existed.

She read Palmgren’s journal with mixed feelings. It took up two black notebooks. He had started keeping a diary about her when she was fifteen. She had just run away from her third set of foster parents, an elderly couple in Sigtuna; he was a sociologist and she was an author of children’s books. Salander had stayed with them for twelve days and could tell that they were tremendously proud of making a social contribution by taking her in, and that they expected her constantly to express gratitude. She had finally had enough when her foster mother, boasting to a neighbour, started expounding about how important it was that someone took care of young people who had obvious problems. I’m not a fucking social project, she wanted to scream. On the twelfth day she stole 100 kronor from their food money and took the bus to Upplands-Väsby and the shuttle train to Stockholm Central. The police found her six weeks later in the house of a sixty-seven-year-old man in Haninge.

Someone had finally spotted her and called the police. A social worker did her best to persuade her to report the man for sexual assault. She had obstinately refused to say that anything untoward had occurred, and in any case she was fifteen and legal. Fuck you. Then Palmgren had intervened and signed for her. He started a diary in what appeared to be a frustrated attempt to allay and resolve his own doubts. The first entries were written in December 1993: