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CHAPTER 21
Saturday, June 4–Monday, June 6

Salander picked up a number of ominous vibrations as she browsed the emails of the news editor, Holm. He was fifty-eight and thus fell outside the group, but Salander had included him anyway because he and Berger had been at each other’s throats. He was a schemer who wrote messages to various people telling them how someone had done a rotten job.

It was obvious to Salander that Holm did not like Berger, and he certainly wasted a lot of space talking about how “the bitch” had said this or done that. He used the Net exclusively for work-related sites. If he had other interests, he must Google them in his own time on some other machine.

She kept him as a candidate for the title of Poison Pen, but he was not a favourite. Salander spent some time thinking about why she did not believe he was the one, and arrived at the conclusion that he was so damned arrogant he did not have to go to the trouble of using anonymous email. If he wanted to call Berger a whore, he would do it openly. And he did not seem the type to go sneaking into Berger’s home in the middle of the night.

At 10:00 in the evening she took a break and went into [Idiotic_Table]. She saw that Blomkvist had not come back yet. She felt slightly peeved and wondered what he was up to, and whether he had made it in time to Teleborian’s meeting.

Then she went back into SMP’s server.

She moved to the next name on the list, assistant sports editor Claes Lundin, twenty-nine. She had just opened his email when she stopped and bit her lip. She closed it again and went instead to Berger’s.

She scrolled back in time. There was relatively little in Berger’s in-box, since her email account had only been opened on May 2. The very first message was a midday memo from Peter Fredriksson. In the course of Berger’s first day several people had emailed her to welcome her to SMP.

Salander carefully read each message in Berger’s in-box. She could see how even from day one there had been a hostile undertone in her correspondence with Holm. They seemed unable to agree on anything, and Salander saw that Holm was already trying to exasperate Berger by sending several emails about complete trivialities.

She skipped over ads, spam, and news memos. She focused on any kind of personal correspondence. She read budget calculations, advertising and marketing projections, an exchange with CFO Sellberg that went on for a week and was virtually a brawl over staff layoffs. Berger had received irritated messages from the head of the legal department about some temp by the name of Johannes Frisk. She had apparently assigned him to work on some story and this had not been appreciated. It seemed as if no-one at management level could see anything positive in any of Berger’s arguments or proposals.

After a while Salander scrolled back to the beginning and did a statistical calculation in her head. Of all the upper-level managers at SMP, only four did not engage in sniping. They were CEO Magnus Borgsjö, assistant editor Fredriksson, assistant front-page editor Magnusson, and culture editor Sebastian Strandlund.

Had they never heard of women at SMP? All the heads of department were men.

Of these, the one that Berger had least to do with was Strandlund. She had exchanged only two emails with the culture editor. The friendliest and most engaging messages came from assistant front-page editor Gunnar Magnusson. Borgsjö’s were terse and to the point.

Why the hell had this group of boys hired Berger at all, if all they did was tear her limb from limb?

The colleague Berger seemed to have the most to do with was Fredriksson. His role was to act as a kind of shadow, to sit in on her meetings as an observer. He prepared memos, briefed Berger on various articles and issues, and got the jobs moving.

He emailed Berger a dozen times a day.

Salander sorted all of Fredriksson’s emails to Berger and read them through. In a number of instances he had objected to some decision Berger had made and presented counter-proposals. Berger seemed to have confidence in him since she would then often change her decision or accept his argument. He was never hostile. But there was not a hint of any personal relationship to her.

Salander closed Berger’s email and thought for a moment.

She opened Fredriksson’s account.

Plague had been fooling around with the home computers of various employees of SMP all evening without much success. He had managed to get into Holm’s machine because it had an open line to his desk at work; any time of the day or night he could go in and access whatever he was working on. Holm’s PC was one of the most boring Plague had ever hacked. He had no luck with the other seventeen names on Salander’s list. One reason was that none of the people he tried to hack was online on a Saturday night. He was beginning to tire of this impossible task when Salander pinged him at 10:30.

<What’s up?>

<OK.>

<Why?>

<There’s a shortcut. Fredriksson is assistant editor and uses a programme called Integrator to keep track of what’s happening on his work computer from home.>

Plague sighed. This girl who had once been his student now had a better handle on things than he did.

<OK. I’ll try.>

• • •

Blomkvist was back at Salander’s apartment on Mosebacke just before midnight. He was tired. He took a shower and put on some coffee, and then he booted up Salander’s computer and pinged her ICQ.

<It’s about time.>

<Sorry.>

<Where’ve you been the past few days?>

<Yep. You tipped off Erika?>

<Smart.>

<I’m being moved to prison tomorrow.>

<Plague’s going to help out on the Net.>

<Good.>

<Sally, we’re going to do what we have to.>

<No.>

Linder woke with a start when her earpiece beeped. Someone had just tripped the motion detector she had placed in the hall on the ground floor. She propped herself up on her elbow. It was 5:23 on Sunday morning. She slipped silently out of bed and pulled on her jeans, a T-shirt, and sneakers. She stuffed the Mace in her back pocket and picked up her spring-loaded baton.

She passed the door to Berger’s bedroom without a sound, noticing that it was closed and therefore locked.

She stopped at the top of the stairs and listened. She heard a faint clinking sound and movement from the ground floor. Slowly she went down the stairs and paused in the hall to listen again.

A chair scraped in the kitchen. She held the baton in a firm grip and crept to the kitchen door. She saw a bald, unshaven man sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of orange juice, reading SMP. He sensed her presence and looked up.

“And who the hell are you?”

Linder relaxed and leaned against the door jamb. “Greger Beckman, I presume. Hello. I’m Susanne Linder.”

“I see. Are you going to hit me over the head or would you like a glass of juice?”

“Yes, please,” Linder said, putting down her baton. “Juice, that is.”

Beckman reached for a glass from the draining board and poured some for her.

“I work for Milton Security,” Linder said. “I think it’s probably best if your wife explains what I’m doing here.”

Beckman stood up. “Has something happened to Erika?”

“Your wife is fine. But there’s been some trouble. We tried to get ahold of you in Paris.”

“Paris? Why Paris? I’ve been in Helsinki, for God’s sake.”

“All right. I’m sorry, but your wife thought you were in Paris.”

“That’s next month,” said Beckman on his way out the door.

“The bedroom is locked. You need a code to open the door,” Linder said.

“I beg your pardon? What code?”

She told him the three numbers he had to punch in to open the bedroom door. He ran up the stairs.

At 10:00 on Sunday morning Jonasson came into Salander’s room.

“Hello, Lisbeth.”

“Hello.”

“Just thought I’d warn you: the police are coming at lunchtime.”

“Fine.”

“You don’t seem worried.”

“I’m not.”

“I have a present for you.”

“A present? What for?”

“You’ve been one of my most interesting patients in a long time.”

“You don’t say,” Salander said sceptically.

“I heard that you’re fascinated by DNA and genetics.”

“Who’s been gossiping? That psychologist lady, I bet.”

Jonasson nodded. “If you get bored in prison . . . this is the latest thing on DNA research.”

He handed her a brick of a book titled Spirals—Mysteries of DNA, by Professor Yoshito Takamura of Tokyo University. Salander opened it and studied the table of contents.

“Beautiful,” she said.

“Someday I’d be interested to hear how it is that you can read academic texts that even I can’t understand.”

As soon as Jonasson had left the room, she took out her Palm. Last chance. From SMP’s personnel department Salander had learned that Fredriksson had worked at the paper for six years. During that time he had been out sick for two extended periods: two months in 2003 and three months in 2004. From the personnel files she concluded that the reason in both instances was burnout. Berger’s predecessor Morander had on one occasion questioned whether Fredriksson should indeed stay on as assistant editor.

Yak, yak, yak. Nothing concrete to go on.

At 11:45 Plague pinged her.

<What?>

<It’s him.>

<Thanks.>

<Plague, please.>

<Cool.>

<I’m going to bed. Take care of yourself.>

Salander logged off from ICQ. She glanced at the clock and realized that it would soon be lunchtime. She rapidly composed a message that she addressed to the Yahoo group [Idiotic_Table]:

Mikael. Important. Call Berger right away and tell her Fredriksson is Poison Pen.

The instant she sent the message she heard movement in the corridor. She polished the screen of her Palm Tungsten T3, then switched it off and placed it in the recess behind the bedside table.

“Hello, Lisbeth.” It was Giannini in the doorway.

“Hello.”

“The police are coming for you in a while. I’ve brought you some clothes. I hope they’re the right size.”

Salander looked distrustfully at the selection of neat, dark-coloured linen pants and pastel blouses.

Two uniformed Göteborg policewomen came to get her. Giannini was to go with them to the prison.

As they walked from her room down the hall, Salander noticed that several members of the staff were watching her with curiosity. She gave them a friendly nod, and some of them waved back. As if by chance, Jonasson was standing by the reception desk. They looked at each other and nodded. Even before they had turned the corner, Salander noticed that he was heading for her room.

During the entire procedure of transporting her to the prison, Salander did not say a word to the police.

Blomkvist had closed his iBook at 7:00 on Sunday morning. He sat for a moment at Salander’s desk, listless, staring into space.

Then he went to her bedroom and looked at her gigantic king-size bed. After a while he went back to her office and flipped open his mobile to call Figuerola.

“Hi. It’s Mikael.”

“Hello there. Are you already up?”

“I’ve just finished working and I’m on my way to bed. I just wanted to call and say hello.”

“Men who just call to say hello generally have ulterior motives.”

He laughed.

“Blomkvist . . . you could come here and sleep if you like.”

“I’d be terrible company.”

“I’ll get used to it.”

He took a taxi to Pontonjärgatan.

Berger spent Sunday in bed with her husband. They lay there talking and dozing. In the afternoon they got dressed and went for a walk down to the steamship wharf.

“SMP was a mistake,” Berger said when they got home.

“Don’t say that. Right now it’s tough, but you knew it would be. Things will calm down after you’ve been there awhile.”

“It’s not the job. I can handle that. It’s the atmosphere.”

“I see.”

“I don’t like it there, but on the other hand, I can’t walk out after a few weeks.”

She sat at the kitchen table and stared morosely into space. Beckman had never seen his wife so stymied.

Inspector Faste met Salander for the first time at 12:30 on Sunday afternoon when a female police officer brought her into Erlander’s office at Göteborg police headquarters.

“You were difficult enough to catch,” Faste said.

Salander gave him a long look, satisfied herself that he was an idiot, and decided that she would not waste too many seconds concerning herself with his existence.

“Inspector Gunilla Wäring will accompany you to Stockholm,” Erlander said.

“All right,” Faste said. “Then we’ll leave at once. There are quite a few people who want to have a serious talk with you, Salander.”

Erlander said goodbye to her. She ignored him.

They had decided for simplicity’s sake to do the prisoner transfer to Stockholm by car. Wäring drove. At the start of the journey Hans Faste sat in the front passenger seat with his head turned towards the back as he tried to have some exchange with Salander. By the time they reached Alingsås his neck was aching and he gave up.

Salander looked at the countryside. In her mind Faste did not exist.

Teleborian was right. She’s fucking retarded, Faste thought. We’ll see about changing that attitude when we get to Stockholm.

Every so often he glanced at Salander and tried to form an opinion of the woman he had been desperate to track down for such a long time. Even he had some doubts when he saw the skinny girl. He wondered how much she could weigh. He reminded himself that she was a lesbian and consequently not a real woman.

But it was possible that the bit about Satanism was an exaggeration. She did not look the type.

The irony was that he would have preferred to arrest her for the three murders she was originally suspected of, but reality had caught up with his investigation. Even a skinny girl can handle a weapon. Instead she had been taken in for assaulting the top leadership of Svavelsjö MC, and she was guilty of that crime, no question. There was forensic evidence related to the incident, which she no doubt intended to refute.

Figuerola woke Blomkvist at 1:00 in the afternoon. She had been sitting on her balcony and had finished reading her book about the idea of God in antiquity, listening all the while to Blomkvist’s snores from the bedroom. It had been peaceful. When she went in to look at him it came to her, acutely, that she was more attracted to him than she had been to any other man in years.

It was a pleasant yet unsettling feeling. There he was, but he was not a stable element in her life.

They went down to Norr Mälarstrand for a coffee. Then she took him home and to bed for the rest of the afternoon. He left her at 7:00. She felt a vague sense of loss a moment after he kissed her cheek and was gone.

At 8:00 on Sunday evening Linder knocked on Berger’s door. She would not be sleeping there now that Beckman was home, and this visit was not connected with her job. But during the time she had spent at Berger’s house they had both grown to enjoy the long conversations they had in the kitchen. She had a great liking for Berger. She recognized in her a desperate woman who succeeded in concealing her true nature. She went to work apparently calm, but in reality she was a bundle of nerves.

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.

“Can you stand by yourself?” she said.

He did not answer.

“Right, we’ll make this easy. You struggle in any way and you’ll get the same treatment on your right leg. You struggle even more and I’ll break your arms. Do you understand?”

She could hear him breathing heavily. Fear?

She pushed him along in front of her out onto the street and all the way to his car. He was limping badly, so she held him up. Just as they reached the car, they met a man out walking his dog. The man stopped and looked at Fredriksson in his handcuffs.

“This is a police matter,” Linder said in a firm voice. “You go home.” The man turned and walked away in the direction he had come from.

She put Fredriksson in the back seat and drove him home to Fisksätra. It was 12:30 and they saw no-one as they walked into his building. Linder fished out his keys and followed him up the stairs to his apartment on the fourth floor.

“You can’t go into my apartment,” said Fredriksson.

It was the first thing he had said since she cuffed him. She opened the apartment door and shoved him inside.

“You have no right. You have to have a search warrant—”

“I’m not a police officer,” she said in a low voice.

He stared at her suspiciously.

She took hold of his shirt and dragged him into the living room, pushing him down onto a sofa. He had a neatly kept two-bedroom apartment. Bedroom to the left of the living room, kitchen across the hall, a small office off the living room.

She looked in the office and heaved a sigh of relief. The smoking gun. Right away she saw photographs from Berger’s album spread out on a desk next to a computer. He had pinned up thirty or so pictures on the wall behind the computer. She regarded the exhibition with raised eyebrows. Berger was a fine-looking woman. And her sex life was more active than Linder’s own.

She heard Fredriksson moving and went back to the living room, rapped him once across his lower back, and then dragged him into the office and sat him down on the floor.

“You stay there,” she said.

She went into the kitchen and found a paper shopping bag from Konsum. She took down one picture after another and then found the stripped album and Berger’s diaries.

“Where’s the video?” she said.

Fredriksson did not answer. Linder went into the living room and turned on the TV. There was a tape in the VCR, but it took a while before she found the video channel on the remote so she could check it. She popped out the video and looked around to ensure that he had not made any copies.

She found Berger’s teenage love letters and the Borgsjö folder. Then she turned her attention to Fredriksson’s computer. She saw that he had a Microtek scanner hooked up to his PC, and when she lifted the lid she found a photograph of Berger at a Club Xtreme party—New Year’s Eve 1986, according to a banner on the wall.

She booted up the computer and discovered that it was password-protected.

“What’s your password?” she asked.

Fredriksson sat obstinately silent and refused to answer.

Linder suddenly felt utterly calm. She knew that technically she had committed one crime after another this evening, including unlawful restraint and even aggravated kidnapping. She did not care. On the contrary, she felt almost exhilarated.

After a while she shrugged and dug in her pocket for her Swiss Army knife. She unplugged all the cables from the computer, turned it around, and used the screwdriver to open the back. It took her fifteen minutes to take it apart and remove the hard drive.

She had taken everything, but for safety’s sake she did a thorough search of the desk drawers, the stacks of paper, and the shelves. Suddenly her gaze fell on an old school yearbook lying on the windowsill. She saw that it was from Djursholm Gymnasium, 1978. Did Berger not come from Djursholm’s upper class? She opened the yearbook and began to look through the pictures of that year’s graduating class.

She found Erika Berger, eighteen years old, with a mortarboard and a sunny smile with dimples. She wore a thin white cotton dress and held a bouquet of flowers in her hand. She looked the epitome of an innocent teenager with top grades.

Linder almost missed the connection, but there it was on the next page. She would never have recognized him but for the caption. Peter Fredriksson. He was in a different class from Berger. Linder studied the photograph of a thin boy who looked into the camera with a serious expression.

Her eyes met Fredriksson’s.

“Even then she was a whore.”

“Fascinating,” Linder said.

“She fucked every guy in the school.”

“I doubt that.”

“She was a fucking—”

“Don’t say it. So what happened? Couldn’t you get into her pants?”

“She treated me as though I didn’t exist. She laughed at me. And when she started at SMP she didn’t even recognize me.”

“Right,” said Linder wearily. “I’m sure you had a terrible childhood. How about we have a serious talk?”

“What do you want?”

“I’m not a police officer,” Linder said. “I’m someone who takes care of people like you.”

She paused and let his imagination do the work.

“I want to know if you put photographs of her anywhere on the Internet.”

He shook his head.

“Are you quite sure about that?”

He nodded.

“Berger will have to decide for herself whether she wants to make a formal complaint against you for harassment, threats, and breaking and entering, or whether she wants to settle things amicably.”

He said nothing.

“If she decides to ignore you—and I think that’s about what you’re worth—then I’ll be keeping an eye on you.”

She held up her baton.

“If you ever go near her house again, or send her email or otherwise molest her, I’ll be back. I’ll beat you so hard that even your own mother won’t recognize you. Do I make myself clear?”

Still he said nothing.

“So you have the opportunity to influence how this story ends. Are you interested?”

He nodded slowly.

“In that case, I’m going to recommend to Fru Berger that she let you off, but don’t think about coming in to work again. As of right now you’re fired.”

He nodded.

“You will disappear from her life and move out of Stockholm. I don’t give a shit what you do with your life or where you end up. Find a job in Göteborg or Malmö. Go on sick leave again. Do whatever you like. But leave Berger in peace. Are we agreed?”

Fredriksson began to sob.

“I didn’t mean any harm,” he said. “I just wanted—”

“You just wanted to make her life a living hell, and you certainly succeeded. Do I or do I not have your word?”

He nodded.

She bent over, turned him onto his stomach, and unlocked the handcuffs. She took the Konsum bag containing Berger’s life and left him there on the floor.

It was 2:30 a.m. on Monday when Linder left Fredriksson’s building. She considered letting the matter rest until the next day, but then it occurred to her that if she had been the one involved, she would have wanted to know right away. Besides, her car was still parked out in Saltsjöbaden. She called a taxi.

Beckman opened the door even before she managed to ring the bell. He was wearing jeans and did not look as if he had just got out of bed.

“Is Erika awake?” Linder asked.

He nodded.

“Has something else happened?” he said.

She smiled at him.

“Come in. We’re just talking in the kitchen.”

They went in.

“Hello, Erika,” Linder said. “You need to learn to get some sleep once in a while.”

“What’s happened?”

Linder held out the Konsum bag.

“Fredriksson promises to leave you alone from now on. God knows if we can trust him, but if he keeps his word it’ll be less painful than hassling with a police report and a trial. It’s up to you.”

“So it was him?”

Linder nodded. Beckman poured her a coffee, but she did not want one. She had drunk much too much coffee over the past few days. She sat down and told them what had happened outside their house that night.

Berger sat in silence for a moment. Then she went upstairs and came back with her copy of the school yearbook. She looked at Fredriksson’s face for a long time.

“I do remember him,” she said at last. “But I had no idea it was the same Peter Fredriksson. I wouldn’t even have remembered his name if it weren’t written here.”

“What happened?” Linder asked.

“Nothing. Absolutely nothing. He was a quiet and totally uninteresting boy in another class. I think we might have had some subjects together. French, if I remember correctly.”

“He said you treated him as though he didn’t exist.”

“I probably did. He wasn’t somebody I knew, and he wasn’t in our group.”

“I know how cliques work. Did you bully him or anything like that?”

“No . . . no, for God’s sake. I hated bullying. We had campaigns against bullying in the school, and I was president of the student council. I don’t remember that he ever spoke to me.”

“OK,” Linder said. “But he obviously had a grudge against you. He was out sick for two long periods, suffering from stress and overwork. Maybe there were other reasons for his being out that we don’t know about.”

She got up and put on her leather jacket.

“I’ve got his hard drive. Technically it’s stolen goods, so I shouldn’t leave it with you. You don’t have to worry—I’ll destroy it as soon as I get home.”

“Wait, Susanne. How can I ever thank you?”

“Well, you can back me up when Armansky’s wrath hits me like a bolt of lightning.”

Berger gave her a concerned look.

“Will you get into trouble for this?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t know.”

“Can we pay you for—”

“No. But Armansky may bill you for tonight. I hope he does, because that would mean he approves of what I did and probably won’t decide to fire me.”

“I’ll make sure he sends us a bill.”

Berger stood up and gave Linder a long hug.

“Thanks, Susanne. If you ever need a friend, you’ve got one in me. If there’s anything I can do for you . . .”

“Thanks. Don’t leave those pictures lying around. And while we’re on the subject, Milton could install a much better safe for you.”

Berger smiled as Beckman walked Linder back to her car.

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CHAPTER 21 Saturday, June 4–Monday, June 6

The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet’s Nest

CHAPTER 21
Saturday, June 4–Monday, June 6