The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (60 page)

Linder suspected that her anxiety was not solely due to Poison Pen. But Berger’s life and problems were none of her business. It was a friendly visit. She had come out here just to see Berger and to be sure that everything was
all right. The couple were in the kitchen in a solemn mood. It seemed as though they had spent their Sunday working their way through one or two serious issues.

Beckman put on some coffee. Linder had been there only a few minutes when Berger’s mobile rang.

Berger had answered every call that day with a feeling of impending doom.

“Berger,” she said.

“Hello, Ricky.”

Blomkvist. Shit. I haven’t told him the Borgsjö file has disappeared
.

“Hi, Micke.”

“Salander was moved to the prison in Göteborg this evening, to wait for transport to Stockholm tomorrow.”

“OK.”

“She sent you a . . . well, a message.”

“Oh?”

“It’s pretty cryptic.”

“What did she say?”

“She said: ‘Fredriksson is Poison Pen.’”

Erika sat for ten seconds in silence while thoughts rushed through her head.
Impossible. Peter isn’t like that. Salander has to be wrong
.

“Was that all?”

“That’s the whole message. Do you know what it’s about?”

“Yes.”

“Ricky, what are you and that girl up to? She rang you to tip me off about Teleborian, and—”

“Thanks, Micke. We’ll talk later.”

She turned off her mobile and looked at Linder with an expression of absolute astonishment.

“Tell me,” Linder said.

Linder was of two minds. Berger had been told that her assistant editor was the one sending the vicious emails. She talked non-stop. Then Linder had asked her
how
she knew Fredriksson was her stalker. Berger was silent. Linder noticed her eyes and saw that something had changed in her attitude. She was all of a sudden totally confused.

“I can’t tell you.”

“What do you mean you can’t tell me?”

“Susanne, I just know that Fredriksson is responsible. But I can’t tell you how I got that information. What can I do?”

“If I’m going to help you, you have to tell me.”

“I . . . I can’t. You don’t understand.”

Berger got up and stood at the kitchen window with her back to Linder. Finally she turned.

“I’m going to his house.”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort. You’re not going anywhere, least of all to the home of somebody who obviously hates you.”

Berger looked torn.

“Sit down. Tell me what happened. It was Blomkvist calling you, right?”

Berger nodded.

“I . . . today I asked a hacker to go through the home computers of the staff.”

“Aha. So you’ve probably by extension committed a serious computer crime. And you don’t want to tell me who your hacker is?”

“I promised I would never tell anyone. Other people are involved. Something that Mikael is working on.”

“Does Blomkvist know about the emails and the break-in here?”

“No; he was just passing on a message.”

Linder cocked her head to one side, and all of a sudden a chain of associations formed in her mind.

Erika Berger. Mikael Blomkvist
. Millennium.
Rogue policemen who broke in and bugged Blomkvist’s apartment. Linder watching the watchers. Blomkvist working like a madman on a story about Lisbeth Salander
.

The fact that Salander was a wizard at computers was widely known at Milton Security. No-one knew how she had come by her skills, and Linder had never heard any rumours that Salander might be a hacker. But Armansky had once said something about Salander’s delivering quite incredible reports when she was doing personal investigations. A hacker . . .

But Salander is under guard on a ward in Göteborg
.

It was absurd.

“Is it Salander we’re talking about?” Linder said.

Berger looked as though she had touched a live wire.

“I can’t discuss where the information came from. Not one word.”

Linder laughed aloud.

It
was
Salander. Berger’s confirmation of it could not have been clearer. She’s completely off balance.

Yet it’s impossible
.

Under guard as she was, Salander nevertheless took on the job of finding out who Poison Pen was. Sheer madness
.

Linder thought hard.

She could not understand the whole Salander story. She had met her maybe five times during the years she had worked at Milton Security and had never had so much as a single conversation with her. She regarded Salander as a sullen and asocial individual with a skin like a rhino. She had heard that Armansky himself had taken on Salander, and since she respected Armansky she assumed that he had good reason for his endless patience towards the sullen girl.

Fredriksson is Poison Pen
.

Could she be right? What was the proof?

Linder then spent a long time questioning Erika on everything she knew about Fredriksson, what his role was at
SMP
, and how their relationship had been. The answers did not help her at all.

Berger had displayed a frustrating indecision. She had wavered between a determination to drive out to Fredriksson’s place and confront him and an unwillingness to believe that it could really be true. Finally Linder convinced her that she could not storm into Fredriksson’s apartment and launch into an accusation—if he was innocent, she would make an utter fool of herself.

So Linder had promised to look into the matter. It was a promise she regretted as soon as she made it, because she did not have the faintest idea how she was going to proceed.

She parked her Fiat Strada as close to Fredriksson’s apartment building in Fisksätra as she could. She locked the car and looked around. She was not sure what she was going to do, but she supposed she would have to knock on his door and somehow get him to answer a number of questions. She was acutely aware that this was a job that lay well outside her purview at Milton, and she knew Armansky would be furious if he found out what she was doing.

It was not a good plan, and in any case it fell apart before she had managed to put it into practice. She had reached the courtyard and was approaching Fredriksson’s apartment when the door opened. Linder recognized him at once from the photograph in his personnel file, which she had studied on Berger’s computer. She kept walking and they passed each other. He disappeared in the direction of the garage. It was just before 11:00 and Fredriksson was on his way somewhere. Linder turned and ran back to her car.

•    •    •

Blomkvist sat for a long time looking at his mobile after Berger hung up. He wondered what was going on. In frustration he looked at Salander’s computer. By now she had been moved to the prison in Göteborg, and he had no chance of asking her anything.

He opened his Ericsson T10 and called Idris Ghidi in Angered.

“Hello. Mikael Blomkvist.”

“Hello,” Ghidi said.

“Just to tell you that you can stop that job you were doing for me.”

Ghidi had already worked out that Blomkvist would call since Salander had been taken from the hospital.

“I understand,” he said.

“You can keep the mobile, as we agreed. I’ll send you the final payment this week.”

“Thanks.”

“I’m the one who should thank you for your help.”

Blomkvist opened his iBook. The events of the past twenty-four hours meant that a significant part of the manuscript had to be revised, and that in all probability a whole new section would have to be added.

He sighed and got to work.

At 11:15 Fredriksson parked three blocks away from Berger’s house. Linder had already guessed where he was going and had stopped trying to keep him in sight. She drove past his car fully two minutes after he parked. The car was empty. She went on a short distance past Berger’s house and stopped well out of sight. Her palms were sweating.

She opened her tin of Catch Dry snuff and tucked some inside her upper lip.

Then she opened her car door and looked around. As soon as she could tell that Fredriksson was on his way to Saltsjöbaden, she knew that Salander’s information must be correct. And obviously he had not come all this way for fun. Trouble was brewing. Which was fine by her, so long as she could catch him red-handed.

She took her telescopic baton from the side pocket of her car door and weighed it in her hand for a moment. She pressed the lock in the handle and out shot a heavy, spring-loaded steel cable. She clenched her teeth.

That was why she had left the Södermalm force.

She had had one mad outbreak of rage when for the third time in as many days the squad car had driven to an address in Hägersten after the same woman had called the police and screamed for help because her husband
had abused her. And just as on the first two occasions, the situation had resolved itself before they arrived.

They had detained the husband on the staircase while the woman was questioned. No, she did not want to file a police report. No, it was all a mistake. No, he was fine; it was actually all her fault. She had provoked him. . . .

And the whole time the bastard had stood there grinning, looking Linder straight in the eye.

She could not explain why she did it. But suddenly something snapped in her, and she took out her baton and slammed it across his face. The first blow had lacked power. She had only given him a fat lip and forced him to his knees. In the next ten seconds—until her colleagues grabbed her and half dragged, half carried her out of the hallway—she had let the blows rain down on his back, kidneys, hips, and shoulders.

Charges were never filed. She had resigned the same evening and gone home and cried for a week. Then she pulled herself together and went to see Dragan Armansky. She explained what she had done and why she had left the force. She was looking for a job. Armansky had been sceptical and said he would need some time to think it over. She had given up hope by the time he called six weeks later and told her he was ready to take her on trial.

Linder frowned and stuck the baton into her belt at the small of her back. She checked that she had the Mace canister in her right-hand pocket and that the laces of her sneakers were securely tied. She walked back to Berger’s house and slipped into the garden.

She knew that the outside motion detector had not yet been installed, and she moved soundlessly across the lawn, along the hedge at the border of the property. She could not see Fredriksson. She went around the house and stood still. Then she spotted him as a shadow in the darkness near Beckman’s studio.

He can’t know how stupid it is for him to come back here
.

He was squatting down, trying to see through a gap in a curtain in the room next to the living room. Then he moved up onto the veranda and looked through the cracks in the drawn blinds at the big picture window.

Linder suddenly smiled.

She crossed the lawn to the corner of the house while he still had his back to her. She crouched behind some currant bushes by the gable end and waited. She could see him through the branches. From his position, Fredriksson would be able to look down the hall and into part of the kitchen. Apparently he had found something interesting to look at, and it was ten minutes before he moved again. This time he came closer to Linder.

As he rounded the corner and passed her, she stood up and spoke in a low voice.

“Hello there, Herr Fredriksson.”

He stopped short and spun towards her.

She saw his eyes glistening in the dark. She could not see his expression, but she could hear that he was holding his breath and she could sense his shock.

“We can do this the easy way or we can do it the hard way,” she said. “We’re going to walk to your car and—”

He turned and made to run away.

Linder raised her baton and directed a devastatingly painful blow to his left kneecap.

He fell with a moan.

She raised the baton a second time, but then caught herself. She thought she could feel Armansky’s eyes on the back of her neck.

She bent down, flipped Fredriksson over onto his stomach, and put her knee in the small of his back. She took hold of his right hand and twisted it around onto his back and handcuffed him. He was frail, and he put up no resistance.

Berger turned off the lamp in the living room and limped upstairs. She no longer needed the crutches, but the sole of her foot still hurt when she put any weight on it. Beckman turned off the light in the kitchen and followed his wife upstairs. He had never before seen her so unhappy. Nothing he said could soothe her or alleviate the anxiety she was feeling.

She got undressed, crept into bed, and turned her back to him.

“It’s not your fault, Greger,” she said when she heard him get in beside her.

“You’re not well,” he said. “I want you to stay at home for a few days.”

He put an arm around her shoulders. She did not push him away, but she was completely passive. He bent over, kissed her cautiously on the neck, and held her.

“There’s nothing you can say or do to make the situation any better. I know I need to take a break. I feel as though I’ve climbed onto an express train and discovered that I’m on the wrong track.”

“We could go sailing for a few days. Get away from it all.”

“No. I can’t get away from it all.”

She turned to him. “The worst thing I could do now would be to run away. I have to sort things out first. Then we can go.”

“OK,” Beckman said. “I’m not being much help.”

She smiled wanly. “No, you’re not. But thanks for being here. I love you insanely—you know that.”

He mumbled something inaudible.

“I simply can’t believe it’s Fredriksson,” Berger said. “I’ve never felt the least bit of hostility from him.”

Linder was just wondering whether she should ring Berger’s doorbell when she saw the lights go off on the ground floor. She looked down at Fredriksson. He had not said a word. He was quite still. She thought for a long time before she made up her mind.

She bent down and grabbed the handcuffs, pulled him to his feet, and leaned him against the wall.