Wednesday, 18.v Figuerola got up at 5.00 on Wednesday morning and went for an unusually short run before she showered and dressed in black jeans, a white top, and a lightweight grey linen jacket. She made coffee and poured it into a thermos and then made sandwiches. She also strapped on a shoulder holster and took her Sig Sauer from the gun cabinet. Just after 6.00 she drove her white Saab 9-5 to Vittangigatan in V?llingby. M?rtensson’s apartment was on the top floor of a three-storey building in the suburbs. The day before, she had assembled everything that could be found out about him in the public archives. He was unmarried, but that did not mean that he might not be living with someone. He had no black marks in police records, no great fortune, and did not seem to lead a fast life. He very seldom called in sick. The one conspicuous thing about him was that he had licences for no fewer than sixteen weapons. Three of them were hunting rifles, the others were handguns of various types. As long as he had a licence, of course, there was no crime, but Figuerola harboured a deep scepticism about anyone who collected weapons on such a scale. The Volvo with the registration beginning KAB was in the car park about thirty metres from where Figuerola herself parked. She poured black coffee into a paper cup and ate a lettuce and cheese baguette. Then she peeled an orange and sucked each segment to extinction. At morning rounds, Salander was out of sorts and had a bad headache. She asked for a Tylenol, which she was immediately given. After an hour the headache had grown worse. She rang for the nurse and asked for another Tylenol. That did not help either. By lunchtime she had such a headache that the nurse called Dr Endrin, who examined her patient briskly and prescribed a powerful painkiller. Salander held the tablets under her tongue and spat them out as soon as she was alone. At 2.00 in the afternoon she threw up. This recurred at around 3.00. At 4.00 Jonasson came up to the ward just as Dr Endrin was about to go home. They conferred briefly. “She feels sick and she has a strong headache. I gave her Dexofen. I don’t understand what’s going on with her. She’s been doing so well lately. It might be some sort of flu …” “Does she have a fever?” asked Jonasson. “No. She had 37.2 an hour ago.” “I’m going to keep an eye on her overnight.” “I’ll be going on holiday for three weeks,” Endrin said. “Either you or Svantesson will have to take over her case. But Svantesson hasn’t had much to do with her …” “I’ll arrange to be her primary care doctor while you’re on holiday.” “Good. If there’s a crisis and you need help, do call.” They paid a short visit to Salander’s sickbed. She was lying with the sheet pulled up to the tip of her nose, and she looked miserable. Jonasson put his hand on her forehead and felt that it was damp. “I think we’ll have to do a quick examination.” He thanked Dr Endrin, and she left. At 5.00 Jonasson discovered that Salander had developed a temperature of 37.8, which was noted on her chart. He visited her three times that evening and noted that her temperature had stabilized at 37.8 – too high, certainly, but not so high as to present a real problem. At 8.00 he ordered a cranial X-ray. When the X-rays came through he studied them intently. He could not see anything remarkable, but he did observe that there was a barely visible darker area immediately adjacent to the bullet hole. He wrote a carefully worded and noncommittal comment on her chart: Radiological examination gives a basis for definitive conclusions but the condition of the patient has deteriorated steadily during the day. It cannot be ruled out that there is a minor bleed that is not visible on the images. The patient should be confined to bedrest and kept under strict observation until further notice. Berger had received twenty-three emails by the time she arrived at S.M.P. at 6.30 on Wednesday morning. One of them had the address editorial-sr@swedishradio.com>. The text was short. A single word. WHORE She raised her index finger to delete the message. At the last moment she changed her mind. She went back to her inbox and opened the message that had arrived two days before. The sender was centraled@smpost.se>. So … two emails with the word “whore” and a phoney sender from the world of mass media. She created a new folder called [MediaFool] and saved both messages. Then she got busy on the morning memo. M?rtensson left home at 7.40 that morning. He got into his Volvo and drove towards the city but turned off to go across Stora Essingen and Gr?ndal into S?dermalm. He drove down Hornsgatan and across to Bellmansgatan via Br?nnkyrkagatan. He turned left on to Tavastgatan at the Bishop’s Arms pub and parked at the corner. Just as Figuerola reached the Bishop’s Arms, a van pulled out and left a parking space on Bellmansgatan at the corner with Tavastgatan. From her ideal location at the top of the hill she had an unobstructed view. She could just see the back window of M?rtensson’s Volvo. Straight ahead of her, on the steep slope down towards Pryssgr?nd, was Bellmansgatan 1. She was looking at the building from the side, so she could not see the front door itself, but as soon as anyone came out on to the street, she would see them. She had no doubt that this particular address was the reason for M?rtensson’s being there. It was Blomkvist’s front door. Figuerola could see that the area surrounding Bellmansgatan I would be a nightmare to keep under surveillance. The only spot from which the entrance door to the building could be observed directly was from the promenade and footbridge on upper Bellmansgatan near the Maria lift and the Laurinska building. There was nowhere there to park a car, and the watcher would stand exposed on the footbridge like a swallow perched on an old telephone wire in the country. The crossroads of Bellmansgatan and Tavastgatan, where Figuerola had parked, was basically the only place where she could sit in her car and have a view of the whole. She had been incredibly lucky. Yet it was not a particularly good place because any alert observer would see her in her car. But she did not want to leave the car and start walking around the area. She was too easily noticeable. In her role as undercover officer her looks worked against her. Blomkvist emerged at 9.10. Figuerola noted the time. She saw him look up at the footbridge on upper Bellmansgatan. He started up the hill straight towards her. She opened her handbag and unfolded a map of Stockholm which she placed on the passenger seat. Then she opened a notebook and took a pen from her jacket pocket. She pulled out her mobile and pretended to be talking, keeping her head bent so that the hand holding her telephone hid part of her face. She saw Blomkvist glance down Tavastgatan. He knew he was being watched and he must have seen M?rtensson’s Volvo, but he kept walking without showing any interest in the car. Acts calm and cool. Somebody should have opened the car door and scared the shit out of him. The next moment he passed Figuerola’s car. She was obviously trying to find an address on the map while she talked on the telephone, but she could sense Blomkvist looking at her as he passed. Suspicious of everything around him. She saw him in the wing mirror on the passenger side as he went on down towards Hornsgatan. She had seen him on T. V. a couple of times, but this was the first time she had seen him in person. He was wearing blue jeans, a T-shirt and a grey jacket. He carried a shoulder bag and he walked with a long, loose stride. A nice-looking man. M?rtensson appeared at the corner by the Bishop’s Arms and watched Blomkvist go. He had a large sports bag over his shoulder and was just finishing a call on his mobile. Figuerola expected him to follow his quarry, but to her surprise he crossed the street right in front of her car and turned down the hill towards Blomkvist’s building. A second later a man in blue overalls passed her car and caught up with M?rtensson. Hello, where did you spring from? They stopped outside the door to Blomkvist’s building. M?rtensson punched in the code and they disappeared into the stairwell. They’re checking the apartment. Amateur night. What the hell does he think he’s doing? Then Figuerola raised her eyes to the rear-view mirror and gave a start when she saw Blomkvist again. He was standing about ten metres behind her, close enough that he could keep an eye on M?rtensson and his buddy by looking over the crest of the steep hill down towards Bellmansgatan 1. She watched his face. He was not looking at her. But he had seen M?rtensson go in through the front door of his building. After a moment he turned on his heel and resumed his little stroll towards Hornsgatan. Figuerola sat motionless for thirty seconds. He knows he’s being watched. He’s keeping track of what goes on around him. But why doesn’t he react? A normal person would react, and pretty strongly at that … He must have something up his sleeve. Blomkvist hung up and rested his gaze on the notebook on his desk. The national vehicle register had just informed him that the car he had seen at the top of Bellmansgatan with the blonde woman inside was owned by Monica Figuerola, born in 1969, and living on Pontonj?rgatan in Kungsholmen. Since it was a woman in the car, Blomkvist assumed it was Figuerola herself. She had been talking on her mobile and looking at a map that was unfolded on the passenger seat. Blomkvist had no reason to believe that she had anything to do with the Zalachenko club, but he made a note of every deviation from the norm in his working day, and especially around his neighbourhood. He called Karim in. “Who is this woman, Lottie? Dig up her passport picture, where she works … and anything else you can find.” Sellberg looked rather startled. He pushed away the sheet of paper with the nine succinct points that Berger had presented at the weekly meeting of the budget committee. Flodin looked similarly concerned. Chairman Borgsj? appeared neutral, as always. “This is impossible,” Sellberg said with a polite smile. “Why so?” Berger said. “The board will never go along with this. It defies all rhyme or reason.” “Shall we take it from the top?” Berger said. “I was hired to make S.M.P. profitable again. To do that I have to have something to work with, don’t you think?” “Well, yes, but—” “I can’t wave a magic wand and conjure up the contents of a daily newspaper by sitting in my glass cage and just wishing for things.” “You don’t quite understand the hard economic facts.” “That’s quite possible. But I understand making newspapers. And the reality is that over the past fifteen years, S.M.P.’s personnel has been reduced by 118. Half were graphic artists and so on, replaced by new technology … but the number of reporters contributing to copy was reduced by 48 during that period.” “Those were necessary cuts. If the staff hadn’t been cut, the paper would have folded long since. At least Morander understood the necessity of the reductions.” “Well, let’s wait and see what’s necessary and what isn’t. In three years, nineteen reporter jobs have disappeared. In addition, we now have a situation in which nine positions at S.M.P. are vacant and are being to some extent covered by temps. The sports desk is dangerously understaffed. There should be nine employees there, and for more than a year two positions have remained unfilled.” “It’s a question of saving money we’re not going to have. It’s that simple.” “The culture section has three unfilled positions. The business section has one. The legal desk does not even in practice exist … there we have a chief editor who borrows reporters from the news desk for each of his features. And so on. S.M.P. hasn’t done any serious coverage of the civil service and government agencies for at least eight years. We depend for that on freelancers and the material from the T. T. wire service. And as you know, T. T. shut down its civil service desk some years ago. In other words, there isn’t a single news desk in Sweden covering the civil service and the government agencies.” “The newspaper business is in a vulnerable position—” “The reality is that S.M.P. should either be shut down immediately, or the board should find a way to take an aggressive stance. Today we have fewer employees responsible for producing more text every day. The articles they turn out are terrible, superficial, and they lack credibility. That’s why S.M.P. is losing its readers.” “You don’t understand the situation—” “I’m tired of hearing that I don’t understand the situation. I’m not some temp. who’s just here for the bus fare.” “But your proposal is off the wall.” “Why is that?” “You’re proposing that the newspaper should not be profitable.” “Listen, Sellberg, this year you will be paying out a huge amount of money in dividends to the paper’s twenty-three shareholders. Add to this the unforgivably absurd bonuses that will cost S.M.P. almost ten million kronor for nine individuals who sit on S.M.P.’s board. You’ve awarded yourself a bonus of 400,000 kronor for administering cutbacks. Of course it’s a long way from being a bonus as huge as the ones that some of the directors of Skandia grabbed. But in my eyes you’re not worth a bonus of so much as one single ?re. Bonuses should be paid to people who do something to strengthen S.M.P. The plain truth is that your cutbacks have weakened S.M.P. and deepened the crisis we now find ourselves in.” “That is grossly unfair. The board approved every measure I proposed.” “The board approved your measures, of course they did, because you guaranteed a dividend each year. That’s what has to stop, and now.” “So you’re suggesting in all seriousness that the board should decide to abolish dividends and bonuses. What makes you think the shareholders would agree to that?” “I’m proposing a zero-profit operating budget this year. That would mean savings of almost 21 million kronor and the chance to beef up S.M.P.’s staff and finances. I’m also proposing wage cuts for management. I’m being paid a monthly salary of 88,000 kronor, which is utter insanity for a newspaper that can’t add a job to its sports desk.” “So you want to cut your own salary? Is this some sort of wage-communism you’re advocating?” “Don’t bullshit me. You make 112,000 kronor a month, if you add in your annual bonus. That’s off the wall. If the newspaper were stable and bringing in a tremendous profit, then pay out as much as you want in bonuses. But this is no time for you to be increasing your own bonus. I propose cutting all management salaries by half.” “What you don’t understand is that our shareholders bought stock in the paper because they want to make money. That’s called capitalism. If you arrange that they’re going to lose money, then they won’t want to be shareholders any longer.” “I’m not suggesting that they should lose money, though it might come to that. Ownership implies responsibility. As you yourself have pointed out, capitalism is what matters here. S.M.P.’s owners want to make a profit. But it’s the market decides whether you make a profit or take a loss. By your reasoning, you want the rules of cap italism to apply solely to the employees of S.M.P., while you and the shareholders will be exempt.” Sellberg rolled his eyes and sighed. He cast an entreating glance at Borgsj?, but the chairman of the board was intently studying Berger’s nine-point program. Figuerola waited for forty-nine minutes before M?rtensson and his companion in overalls came out of Bellmansgatan 1. As they started up the hill towards her, she very steadily raised her Nikon with its 300mm telephoto lens and took two pictures. She put the camera in the space under her seat and was just about to fiddle with her map when she happened to glance towards the Maria lift. Her eyes opened wide. At the end of upper Bellmansgatan, right next to the gate to the Maria lift, stood a dark-haired woman with a digital camera filming M?rtensson and his companion. What the hell? Is there some sort of spy convention on Bellmansgatan today? The two men parted at the top of the hill without exchanging a word. M?rtensson went back to his car on Tavastgatan. He pulled away from the curb and disappeared from view. Figuerola looked into her rear-view mirror, where she could still see the back of the man in the blue overalls. She then saw that the woman with the camera had stopped filming and was heading past the Laurinska building in her direction. Heads or tails? She already knew who M?rtensson was and what he was up to. The man in the blue overalls and the woman with the camera were unknown entities. But if she left her car, she risked being seen by the woman. She sat still. In her rear-view mirror she saw the man in the blue overalls turn into Br?nnkyrkagatan. She waited until the woman reached the crossing in front of her, but instead of following the man in the overalls, the woman turned 180 degrees and went down the steep hill towards Bellmansgatan 1. Figuerola reckoned that she was in her mid-thirties. She had short dark hair and was dressed in dark jeans and a black jacket. As soon as she was a little way down the hill, Figuerola pushed open her car door and ran towards Br?nnkyrkagatan. She could not see the blue overalls. The next second a Toyota van pulled away from the kerb. Figuerola saw the man in half-profile and memorized the registration number. But if she got the registration wrong she would be able to trace him anyway. The sides of the van advertised Lars Faulsson Lock and Key Service – with a telephone number. There was no need to follow the van. She walked calmly back to the top of the hill just in time to see the woman disappear through the entrance door of Blomkvist’s building. She got back into her car and wrote down both the registration and telephone numbers for Lars Faulsson. There was a lot of mysterious traffic around Blomkvist’s address that morning. She looked up towards the roof of Bellmansgatan 1. She knew that Blomkvist’s apartment was on the top floor, but on the blueprints from the city construction office she knew that it was on the other side of the building, with dormer windows looking out on Gamla Stan and the waters of Riddarfj?rden. An exclusive address in a fine old cultural quarter. She wondered whether he was an ostentatious nouveau riche. Ten minutes later the woman with the camera came out of the building again. Instead of going back up the hill to Tavastgatan, she continued down the hill and turned right at the corner of Pryssgr?nd. Hmm. If she had a car parked down on Pryssgr?nd, Figuerola was out of luck. But if she was walking, there was only one way out of the dead end – up to Br?nnkyrkagatan via Pustegr?nd and towards Slussen. Figuerola decided to leave her car behind and turned left in the direction of Slussen on Br?nnkyrkagatan. She had almost reached Pustegr?nd when the woman appeared, coming up towards her. Bingo. She followed her past the Hilton on S?dermalmstorg and past the Stadsmuseum at Slussen. The woman walked quickly and purposefully without once looking round. Figuerola gave her a lead of about thirty metres. When she went into Slussen tunnelbana Figuerola picked up her pace, but stopped when she saw the woman head for the Pressbyr?n kiosk instead of through the turnstiles. She watched the woman as she stood in the queue at the kiosk. She was about one metre seventy and looked to be in pretty good shape. She was wearing running shoes. Seeing her with both feet planted firmly as she stood by the window of the kiosk, Figuerola suddenly had the feeling that she was a policewoman. She bought a tin of Catch Dry snuff and went back out on to S?dermalmstorg and turned right across Katarinav?gen. Figuerola followed her. She was almost certain the woman had not seen her. The woman turned the corner at McDonald’s and Figuerola hurried after her, but when she got to the corner, the woman had vanished without a trace. Figuerola stopped short in consternation. Shit. She walked slowly past the entrances to the buildings. Then she caught sight of a brass plate that read Milton Security. Figuerola walked back to Bellmansgatan. She drove to G?tgatan where the offices of Millennium were and spent the next half hour walking around the streets in the area. She did not see M?rtensson’s car. At lunchtime she returned to police headquarters in Kungsholmen and spent two hours thinking as she pumped iron in the gym. “We’ve got a problem,” Cortez said. Eriksson and Blomkvist looked up from the typescript of the book about the Zalachenko case. It was 1.30 in the afternoon. “Take a seat,” Eriksson said. “It&rs............