The Girl Who Played with Fire (15 page)

During the Whitsuntide vacation the year before, Blomkvist had gone to his cabin in Sandhamn for the first time in several months, to have some peace and quiet and sit on the porch and read crime novels. On the Friday afternoon, he was on his way to the kiosk to buy some cigarettes when he ran into Harriet. She had apparently felt a need to get away from Hedestad herself and had booked a weekend at the hotel in Sandhamn. She had not been there since she was a child. She had been sixteen when she left Sweden and fifty-three when she came back. It was Blomkvist who had tracked her down.

After their surprised greetings, Harriet had lapsed into an awkward silence. Blomkvist knew her history, and she was aware that he had compromised his principles in order to cover up the Vanger family’s horrific secrets. And in part he had done it for her.

Blomkvist invited her to his cabin. He made coffee and they sat on the porch outside for several hours, talking. It was the first time they had talked at length since her return.

Blomkvist could not resist asking: “What did you do with the stuff in Martin’s basement?”

“Do you really want to know?”

“Yes.”

“I cleaned it up myself. I burned everything that would burn. I had the house torn down. I couldn’t live there, and I couldn’t sell it and let someone else live there. For me all its associations were with evil. I’m planning another house to take its place, a small cabin.”

“Didn’t people raise their eyebrows when you had the house torn down? It was quite luxurious and modern.”

She smiled. “Dirch Frode put about the story that there was so much
damp in the foundation that it would be more expensive to rebuild than to take it down.” Frode was the family’s lawyer.

“How is Frode getting on?”

“He’s going to be seventy soon. I’m keeping him busy.”

They had lunch together, and Blomkvist realized that Harriet Vanger was sitting there telling him the most intimate and private details about her life. When he asked her why, she thought for a moment and said that there really was no-one else in the whole world with whom she could be so open. Besides, it was hard not to open her heart to a kid she had babysat all of forty years ago.

She had had sex with three men in her life. First her father and then her brother. She had killed her father and run away from her brother. Somehow she had survived and met a man with whom she had created a new life for herself.

“He was tender and loving. Dependable and honest. I was happy with him. We had a wonderful twenty years together before he became ill.”

“You never remarried? Why not?”

She shrugged. “I was the mother of two children in Australia and the owner of a big agricultural business. I could never get away for a romantic weekend. And I’ve never missed sex.” They sat quiet for a while. “It’s late. I should be getting back to the hotel.”

Blomkvist made no move to get up.

“Do you want to seduce me?”

“I do,” he said.

He stood up and took her hand, leading her into the cabin and up to the sleeping loft. Suddenly she stopped him. “I don’t really know how. This is not something I do every day.”

They spent the whole weekend together and then one night every three months after the magazine’s board meetings. It was not a relationship that could be sustained. She worked around the clock and was very often travelling, and every other month she was in Australia. But she had come to value her occasional rendezvous with Blomkvist.

Mimmi made coffee two hours later as Salander lay naked and sweaty on top of the bedclothes. She smoked a cigarette and watched Mimmi through the doorway. She envied Mimmi’s body. She was impressively muscled. She worked out at a gym three evenings a week, one of them
doing Thai boxing or some sort of karate shit, and this had given her body an awesome shape.

She was just delicious. Not beautiful like a model, but genuinely attractive. She loved to provoke and flirt. When she dressed up for a party she could get anyone whatsoever interested in her. Salander did not understand why Mimmi cared about a goose like her. But she was glad she did. Sex with Mimmi was so dramatically liberating that Salander just relaxed and enjoyed it, taking what she wanted for herself and giving in return.

Mimmi came back and put two mugs on a stool beside the bed. She crawled onto the bed and leaned over to nibble at one of Salander’s nipples.

“They’ll do,” she said.

Salander said nothing. She looked at Mimmi’s breasts. Mimmi’s breasts were small too, but they looked completely natural on her body.

“If I’m going to be honest, Lisbeth, you look fantastic.”

“That’s silly. My breasts don’t really make any difference one way or the other, but at least I’ve got some now.”

“You’re so hung up about your body.”

“You’re one to talk, working out like an idiot.”

“I work out like an idiot because I like to work out. It’s a kick, almost as good as sex. You ought to try it.”

“I do some boxing.”

“Bullshit—you boxed once a month max. And mostly because you got a buzz out of smacking those snotty guys around. That’s not the same as working out to feel good.”

Salander shrugged. Mimmi sat straddling her.

“Lisbeth, you’re so obsessed. You should know by now that I like having you in bed not because of how you look but because of the way you act. I think you’re sexy as hell.”

“You too. That’s why I kept coming back.”

“Not for love?” Mimmi said, pretending to be hurt.

Salander shook her head.

“Are you seeing somebody?”

Mimmi hesitated a moment before she nodded.

“Maybe. In a way. Possibly. It’s a little complicated.”

“I’m not snooping.”

“I know, but I don’t mind telling you. It’s someone at the university who’s a little older than me. She’s been married twenty years, but her
husband travels a lot, so we get together when he’s not around. Suburbs, villa, all that. She’s a closet dyke. It’s been going on since last autumn and it’s getting a bit boring. But she’s really luscious. And then I hang out with the usual gang, of course.”

“I was just wondering whether I could come and see you again.”

“I’d really like to hear from you.”

“Even if I disappear for another six months?”

“Just keep in touch. I’d like to know if you’re dead or alive. And in any case I’ll remember your birthday.”

“No strings?”

Mimmi sighed and smiled.

“You know, you’re a dyke I could imagine living with. You’d leave me alone when I wanted to be left alone.”

Salander said nothing.

“Apart from the fact that you’re not really a dyke. You’re probably bisexual. But most of all you’re sexual—you like sex and you don’t care about what gender. You’re an entropic chaos factor.”

“I don’t know what I am,” Salander said. “But I’m in Stockholm now and pretty bad at relationships. In fact, I don’t know one single person here. You’re the first person I’ve talked to since I got home.”

Mimmi studied her with a serious expression.

“Do you really want to know people? You’re the most secretive and unapproachable person I know. But your breasts really are luscious.” She put her fingers under one nipple and stretched the skin. “They fit you. Not too big and not too small.”

Salander sighed with relief that the reviews were satisfactory.

“And they feel real.”

She squeezed the breast so hard that Salander gasped. They looked at each other. Then Mimmi bent and gave Salander a deep kiss. Salander responded and threw her arms around Mimmi. The coffee was left to get cold.

At around 11:00 on Saturday morning, a car drove into Svavelsjö between Järna and Vagnhärad—the community consisted of no more than fifteen buildings—and stopped in front of the last building, about 500 feet outside the village proper. It was a tumbledown industrial structure that had once been a printing factory but now had a sign over the main door identifying it as Svavelsjö Motorcycle Club. There was no other car in sight. Nevertheless the driver looked around carefully before he got out of his car. He was huge and blond. The air was cold. He put on brown leather gloves and took a black sports bag from the trunk.

He was not worried about being observed. It would be impossible to park close to the old printing factory without being seen. If any police or government unit wanted to keep the building under surveillance, they would have to equip their people with camouflage and telescopes and dig them in at the far end of a field. Inevitably that would be talked about by the villagers, and three of the houses were owned by Svavelsjö MC members.

On the other hand, he did not want to go inside the building. The police had raided the clubhouse on several occasions, and no-one could be sure whether or not bugging equipment had been hidden there. This meant that conversation inside was pretty much about cars, girls, and beer, and sometimes about which stocks were good to invest in.

So the man waited until Carl-Magnus Lundin came out to the yard. Magge Lundin was club president. He was tall with a slim build, but over time he had acquired a hefty beer belly. He was only thirty-six. He had dark blond hair in a ponytail and wore black jeans, boots, and a heavy
winter jacket. He had five counts on his police record. Two of them were for minor drug offences, one for receiving stolen goods, and one for stealing a car and drunk driving. The fifth charge, the most serious, had sent him to prison for a year: it was for grievous bodily harm when, several years ago, he had gone berserk in a bar in Stockholm.

Lundin and his huge visitor shook hands and walked slowly along the fence around the yard.

“It’s been a few months,” Lundin said.

The man said: “We’ve got a deal going down. 3,060 grams of methamphetamine.”

“Same terms as last time?”

“Fifty-fifty.”

Lundin pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his breast pocket. He liked doing business with the giant. Meth brought a street price of between 160 and 230 kronor per gram, depending on availability. So 3,060 grams would yield a cut value of about 600,000 kronor. Svavelsjö MC would distribute the three kilos in batches of about 250 grams each to known dealers. At that stage the price would drop to somewhere between 120 and 130 kronor per gram.

It was an exceptionally attractive deal for Svavelsjö MC. Unlike deals with other suppliers, there was never any crap about advance payment or fixed prices. The blond giant supplied the goods and demanded 50 percent, an entirely reasonable share of the revenue. They knew more or less what a kilo of meth would bring in. The exact amount depended on to what extent Lundin could get away with cutting the stuff. It could vary by a few thousand one way or the other, but when the deal was done the giant would collect around 190,000 kronor.

They had done a lot of business together over the years, always using the same system. Lundin knew that the giant could have doubled his take by handling the distribution himself. He also knew why the man accepted a lower profit: he could stay in the background and let Svavelsjö MC have all the risk. He made a smaller but a safer income. And unlike with all other suppliers he had ever come across, it was a relationship that was based on sound business principles, credit, and goodwill. No hassle, no bullshit, and no threats.

The giant had also swallowed a loss of almost 100,000 kronor over a weapons delivery that went bust. Lundin knew no-one else in the business who could absorb a loss like that. He was terrified when he’d had to tell him. Lundin explained how the deal had gone sour and how a policeman
at the Crime Prevention Centre might be about to make a big score off a member of the Aryan Brotherhood in Värmland. But the giant had not so much as raised an eyebrow. He was almost sympathetic. Shit happens. The whole delivery had to be written off.

Lundin was not without talents. He understood that a smaller, less risky profit was good business.

He had never once considered double-crossing the giant. That would be bad form. The giant and his associates settled for a lower profit so long as the accounting was honest. If he cheated the blond, he would come calling, and Lundin was convinced that he would not survive such a visit.

“When can you deliver?”

The giant dropped his sports bag to the ground.

“Delivery has been made.”

Lundin did not feel like opening the bag to check the contents. Instead he reached out his hand as a sign that they had a deal and he intended to do his part.

“There’s one more thing,” the giant said.

“What’s that?”

“We’d like to put a special job your way.”

“Let’s hear it.”

He pulled an envelope out of his inside jacket pocket and gave it to Lundin, who opened it and took out a passport photograph and a sheet of A4 containing personal data. He raised his eyebrows inquiringly.

“Her name is Lisbeth Salander and she lives in Stockholm, on Lundagatan in Södermalm.”

“Right.”

“She’s probably out of the country at present, but she’ll turn up sooner or later.”

“OK.”

“My employer would like to have a quiet talk with her. She has to be delivered alive. We suggest that warehouse near Yngern. And we need someone to clean up afterwards. She has to disappear without a trace.”

“We should be able to handle that. How will we know when she’s home?”

“I’ll tell you.”

“And the price?”

“What do you say to ten thousand for the whole job? It’s pretty straightforward. Drive to Stockholm, pick her up, deliver her to me.”

They shook hands again.

•  •  •

On her second visit to Lundagatan, Salander flopped down on the lumpy sofa to think. She had to make a number of decisions, and one of these was whether or not she should keep the apartment.

She lit a cigarette, blew smoke up towards the ceiling, and tapped the ash into an empty Coke can.

She had no reason to love this apartment. She had moved in with her mother and her sister when she was four. Her mother had slept in the living room, and she and Camilla shared the tiny bedroom. When she was twelve and “All The Evil” happened, she was moved to a children’s clinic and then, when she was fifteen, to the first in a series of foster families. The apartment had been rented out by her trustee, Holger Palmgren, who had also seen to it that it was returned to her when she turned eighteen and needed a place to live.