Saturday, 4.vi – Monday, 6.vi 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 S.M.P.’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 her inbox, since her email account had been opened only 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 S.M.P. Salander carefully read each message in Berger’s inbox. 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 C.F.O. 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 detailed him to work on some story and this had not been appreciated. Apart from the first welcome emails, 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 S.M.P., only four did not engage in sniping. They were the chairman of the board Magnus Borgsj?, assistant editor Fredriksson, front-page editor Magnusson, and culture editor Sebastian Strandlund. Had they never heard of women at S.M.P.? 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 front-page editor Gunnar Magnusson. Borgsj?’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 S.M.P. 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 P.C. was one of the most boring Plague had ever hacked. He had no luck with the other eighteen 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. Plague sighed. This girl who had once been his student now had a better handle on things than he did. 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 I.C.Q. 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 trainers. 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 S.M.P. 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 hold of you in Paris.” “Paris? Why Paris? I’ve been in Helsinki, for God’s sake.” “Alright. I’m sorry, but your wife thought you were in Paris.” “That’s next month,” said Beckman on his way out of 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 D.N.A. 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 D.N.A. research.” He handed her a brick of a book entitled 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 S.M.P.’s personnel department Salander had learned that Fredriksson had worked at the paper for six years. During that time he had been off 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. Salander logged off from I.C.Q. 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 and 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 trousers and pastel-coloured blouses. Two uniformed G?teborg policewomen came to get her. Giannini was to go with them to the prison. As they walked from her room down the corridor, Salander noticed that several 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 want to call and say hello generally have ulterior motives.” He laughed. “Blomkvist … you could come here and sleep if you like.” “I’d be wretched company.” “I’ll get used to it.” He took a taxi to Pontonj?rgatan. 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 dock. “S.M.P. 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 a while.” “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 11.30 on Sunday morning when a woman police officer brought her into Erlander’s office at G?teborg 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 W?ring will accompany you to Stockholm,” Erlander said. “Alright,” 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. W?ring 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 Alings?s 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 that 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 Svavelsj? M.C., 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 M?larstrand 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 discovered 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 due not solely 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 alright. 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 Borgsj? file has disappeared. “Hi, Micke.” “Salander was moved to the prison in G?teborg this evening, to wait for transport to Stockholm tomorrow.” “O.K.” “She sent you a … well, a message.” “Oh?” “It’s pretty cryptic.” “What did she say?” “She says: ‘Poison Pen is Peter Fredriksson.’” 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 in 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. Then 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 delivering quite incredible reports when she was doing personal investigations. A hacker … But Salander is under guard on a ward in G?teborg. 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 was completely off balance. Yet it’s impossible. Under guard as she was, Salander had nevertheless taken 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 Salander on and since she respected Armansky she assumed that he had good reason for his endless patience towards the sullen girl. Poison Pen is Peter Fredriksson. 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 S.M.P., and how their relationship............