The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (7 page)

Modig was surprised that Erlander had acquiesced to Zalachenko’s wish to be called Bodin. Zalachenko turned his head a little so that he could see Erlander. His voice softened slightly.

“That is . . . unfortunate to hear. I know nothing about Niedermann’s affairs. I have not killed any policeman. I was the victim of attempted murder myself last night.”

“There’s a manhunt under way for Ronald Niedermann even as we speak. Do you have any idea where he might hide?”

“I am not aware of the circles he moves in. I . . .” Zalachenko hesitated a few seconds. His voice took on a confidential tone. “I must admit, just between us, that sometimes I worry about Niedermann.”

Erlander bent towards him.

“What do you mean?”

“I have discovered that he can be a violent person. . . . I am actually afraid of him.”

“You mean you felt threatened by Niedermann?” Erlander said.

“Precisely. I’m old and handicapped. I cannot defend myself.”

“Could you explain your relationship to Niedermann?”

“I’m disabled.” Zalachenko gestured towards his feet. “This is the second time my daughter has tried to kill me. I hired Niedermann as an assistant a number of years ago. I thought he could protect me, but he has actually taken over my life. He comes and goes as he pleases. . . . I have nothing more to say about it.”

“What does he help you with?” Modig broke in. “Doing things that you can’t do yourself?”

Zalachenko gave Modig a long look with his only visible eye.

“I understand that your daughter threw a Molotov cocktail into your car in the early nineties,” Modig said. “Can you explain what prompted her to do that?”

“You would have to ask my daughter. She is mentally ill.” His tone was again hostile.

“You mean that you can’t think of any reason why Lisbeth Salander attacked you in 1991?”

“My daughter is mentally ill. There is substantial documentation.”

Modig cocked her head. Zalachenko’s answers were much more aggressive and hostile when she asked the questions. She saw that Erlander had noticed the same thing.
OK. Good cop, bad cop
. Modig raised her voice.

“You don’t think that her actions could have anything to do with the fact that you had beaten her mother so badly that she suffered permanent brain damage?”

Zalachenko turned his head towards Modig.

“That is all bullshit. Her mother was a whore. It was probably one of her johns who beat her up. I just happened to be passing by.”

Modig raised her eyebrows. “So you’re completely innocent?”

“Of course I am.”

“Zalachenko . . . let me repeat that to see if I’ve understood you correctly. You say that you never beat your girlfriend, Agneta Sofia Salander, Lisbeth’s mother, despite the fact that the whole business is the subject of a long report, stamped TOP SECRET, written at the time by your handler at Säpo, Gunnar Björck.”

“I was never convicted of anything. I have never been charged. I cannot help it if some idiot in the Security Police fantasizes in his reports. If I had been a suspect, they would have at the very least questioned me.”

Modig made no answer. Zalachenko seemed to be grinning beneath his bandages.

“So I wish to press charges against my daughter. For trying to kill me.”

Modig sighed. “I’m beginning to understand why she felt an uncontrollable urge to slam an axe into your head.”

Erlander cleared his throat. “Excuse me, Herr Bodin. We should get back to any information you might have about Ronald Niedermann’s activities.”

Modig made a call to Inspector Bublanski from the corridor outside Zalachenko’s hospital room.

“Nothing,” she said.

“Nothing?”
Bublanski said.

“He’s lodging a complaint with the police against Salander—for aggravated assault and attempted murder. He says that he had nothing to do with the murders in Stockholm.”

“And how does he explain the fact that Salander was buried in a trench on his property in Gosseberga?”

“He says he had a cold and was asleep most of the day. If Salander was shot in Gosseberga, it must have been something that Niedermann decided to do.”

“So what do we have?”

“She was shot with a Browning, .22 calibre. Which is why she’s still alive. We found the weapon. Zalachenko admits that it’s his.”

“I see. In other words, he knows we’re going to find his prints on the gun.”

“Exactly. But he says that the last time he saw the gun, it was in his desk drawer.”

“Which means that the excellent Herr Niedermann took the weapon while Zalachenko was asleep and shot Salander. This is one cold bastard. Do we have any evidence to the contrary?”

Modig thought for a few seconds before she replied. “Zalachenko is well versed in Swedish law and police procedure. He doesn’t admit to a thing, and he has Niedermann as a scapegoat. I don’t have any idea what we can prove. I asked Erlander to send his clothes to forensics and have them examined for traces of gunpowder, but he’s bound to say that he was doing target practice two days ago.”

Salander was aware of the smell of almonds and ethanol. It felt as if she had alcohol in her mouth and she tried to swallow, but her tongue felt numb and paralysed. She tried to open her eyes, but she could not. In the distance she heard a voice that seemed to be talking to her, but she could not understand the words. Then she heard the voice quite clearly.

“I think she’s coming around.”

She felt someone touch her forehead and tried to brush away the intrusive hand. At the same moment she felt intense pain in her left shoulder. She forced herself to relax.

“Can you hear me, Lisbeth?”

Go away
.

“Can you open your eyes?”

Who was this fucking idiot harping on at her?

Finally she did open her eyes. At first she just saw strange lights, until a figure appeared in the centre of her field of vision. She tried to focus her gaze, but the figure kept slipping away. She felt as if she had a stupendous hangover, and the bed seemed to keep tilting backwards.

“Pnkllrs,” she said.

“Say that again?”

“’diot,” she said.

“That sounds good. Can you open your eyes again?”

She opened her eyes to narrow slits. She saw the face of a complete stranger and memorized every detail. A blond man with intense blue eyes and a tilted, angular face about a foot from hers.

“Hello. My name is Anders Jonasson. I’m a doctor. You’re in a hospital. You were injured and you’re waking up after an operation. Can you tell me your name?”

“Pshalandr,” Salander said.

“Good. Would you do me a favour and count to ten?”

“One, two, four . . . no . . . three, four, five, six . . .”

Then she passed out.

Dr. Jonasson was pleased with the response he had gotten. She had said her name and started to count. That meant that she still had her cognitive abilities somewhat intact and was not going to end up a vegetable. He wrote down her wake-up time as 9:06 p.m., about sixteen hours after he had finished the operation. He had slept most of the day and then drove back to the hospital at around 7:00 in the evening. He was actually off that day, but he had some paperwork to catch up on.

And he could not resist going to intensive care to look in on the patient whose brain he had rooted around in early that morning.

“Let her sleep awhile, but check her EEG regularly. I’m worried there might be swelling or bleeding in the brain. She seemed to have sharp pain in her left shoulder when she tried to move her arm. If she wakes up again you can give her two milligrams of morphine per hour.”

He felt oddly exhilarated as he left by the main entrance of Sahlgrenska.

Anita Kaspersson, a dental hygienist who lived in Alingsås, was shaking all over as she stumbled through the woods. She had severe hypothermia. She wore only a pair of wet pants and a thin sweater. Her bare feet were bleeding. She had managed to free herself from the barn where the man had tied her up, but she could not untie the rope that bound her hands behind her back. Her fingers had no feeling in them at all.

She felt as if she were the last person on earth, abandoned by everyone.

She had no idea where she was. It was dark, and she had no sense of how long she had been aimlessly walking. She was amazed to still be alive.

Then she saw a light through the trees and stopped.

For several minutes she did not dare to approach the light. She pushed
through some bushes and stood in the yard of a one-storey house of grey brick. She looked around her in astonishment.

She staggered to the door and turned to kick it with her heel.

Salander opened her eyes and saw a light in the ceiling. After a minute she turned her head and became aware that she had on a neck brace. She had a heavy, dull headache and acute pain in her left shoulder. She closed her eyes.

Hospital
, she thought.
What am I doing here?

She felt exhausted, could hardly get her thoughts in order. Then the memories came rushing back to her. For several seconds she was seized by panic as the fragmented images of how she had dug herself out of a grave came flooding over her. Then she clenched her teeth and concentrated on breathing.

She was alive, but she was not sure whether that was a good thing.

She could not piece together all that had happened, but she summoned up a foggy mosaic of images from the woodshed and how she had swung an axe in fury and struck her father in the face. Zalachenko. Was he alive or dead?

She could not clearly remember what had happened with Niedermann. She had a memory of being surprised that he had run away, and she did not know why.

Suddenly she remembered having seen Kalle Fucking Blomkvist. Perhaps she had dreamed the whole thing, but she remembered a kitchen—it must have been the kitchen in the Gosseberga farmhouse—and she thought she remembered seeing him coming towards her.
I must have been hallucinating
.

The events in Gosseberga already seemed like the distant past, or possibly a ridiculous dream. She concentrated on the present and opened her eyes again.

She was in a bad way. She did not need anyone to tell her that. She raised her right hand and felt her head. There were bandages. Then she remembered it all.
Niedermann. Zalachenko. The old bastard had a pistol too. A .22-calibre Browning
. Which, compared to all other handguns, had to be considered a toy. That was why she was still alive.

I was shot in the head. I could stick my finger in the entry wound and touch my brain
.

She was surprised to be alive. Yet she felt indifferent. If death was the black emptiness from which she had just woken up, then death was nothing
to worry about. She would hardly notice the difference. With this esoteric thought she closed her eyes and fell asleep again.

She had been dozing only a few minutes when she became aware of movement and opened her eyelids to a narrow slit. She saw a nurse in a white uniform bending over her. She closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep.

“I think you’re awake,” the nurse said.

“Mmm,” Salander said.

“Hello. My name is Marianne. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Salander tried to nod, but her head was immobilized by the brace.

“No, don’t try to move. You don’t have to be afraid. You’ve been hurt and had surgery.”

“Could I have some water?” Salander whispered.

The nurse gave her a beaker with a straw to drink water through. As she swallowed the water she saw another person appear on her left side.

“Hello, Lisbeth. Can you hear me?”

“Mmm.”

“I’m Dr. Helena Endrin. Do you know where you are?”

“Hospital.”

“You’re at Sahlgrenska hospital in Göteborg. You’ve had an operation and you’re in the intensive care unit.”

“Umm-hmm.”

“There is no need to be afraid.”

“I was shot in the head.”

Endrin hesitated for a moment, then said, “That’s right. So you remember what happened.”

“The old bastard had a pistol.”

“Ah . . . yes, well, someone did.”

“A .22.”

“I see. I didn’t know that.”

“How badly hurt am I?”

“Your prognosis is positive. You were in pretty bad shape, but we think you have a good chance of making a full recovery.”

Salander weighed this information. Then she tried to fix her eyes on the doctor. Her vision was blurred.

“What happened to Zalachenko?”

“Who?”

“The old bastard. Is he alive?”

“You must mean Karl Axel Bodin.”

“No, I don’t. I mean Alexander Zalachenko. That’s his real name.”

“I don’t know anything about that. But the elderly man who came in at the same time as you is critical but out of danger.”

Salander’s heart sank. She considered the doctor’s words.

“Where is he?”

“He’s down the hall. But don’t worry about him for the time being. You have to concentrate on getting well.”

Salander closed her eyes. She wondered whether she could manage to get out of bed, find something to use as a weapon, and finish the job. But she could scarcely keep her eyes open. She thought,
He’s going to get away again
. She had missed her chance to kill Zalachenko.

“I’d like to examine you for a moment. Then you can go back to sleep,” Dr. Endrin said.

Blomkvist was suddenly awake, and he did not know why. He did not know where he was, and then he remembered that he had booked himself a room in City Hotel. It was as dark as coal. He fumbled to turn on the bedside lamp and looked at the clock: 2:00 a.m. He had slept fifteen hours straight.

He got up and went to the bathroom. He would not be able to get back to sleep. He took a long shower. Then he put on his jeans and sweatshirt. He called the front desk to ask if he could get coffee and a sandwich at this early hour. The night porter said that was possible.

He put on his sports jacket and went downstairs. He ordered a coffee and a cheese and liver pâté sandwich. He bought the
Göteborgs-Posten
. The arrest of Lisbeth Salander was front-page news. He took his breakfast back to his room and read the paper. The reports were somewhat confused, but they were on the right track. Ronald Niedermann, thirty-five, was being sought for the killing of a policeman. The police wanted to question him also in connection with several murders in Stockholm. The police had released nothing about Salander’s condition, and the name Zalachenko was not mentioned. He was referred to only as a sixty-five-year-old landowner from Gosseberga, and apparently the media had taken him for an innocent victim.