Saturday, 16.vii – Friday, 7.x Salander found her Palm Tungsten T3 on the hall table. Next to it were her car keys and the shoulder bag she had lost when Lundin attacked her outside the door to her apartment building on Lundagatan. She also found both opened and unopened post that had been collected from her P.O. Box on Hornsgatan. Mikael Blomkvist. She took a slow tour through the furnished part of her apartment. She found traces of him everywhere. He had slept in her bed and worked at her desk. He had used her printer, and in the wastepaper basket she found drafts of the manuscript of The Section along with discarded notes. He had bought a litre of milk, bread, cheese, caviar and a jumbo pack of Billy’s Pan Pizza and put them in the fridge. On the kitchen table she found a small white envelope with her name on it. It was a note from him. The message was brief. His mobile number. That was all. She knew that the ball was in her court. He was not going to get in touch with her. He had finished the story, given back the keys to her apartment, and he would not call her. If she wanted something then she could call him. Bloody pig-headed bastard. She put on a pot of coffee, made four open sandwiches, and went to sit in her window seat to look out towards Djurg?rden. She lit a cigarette and brooded. It was all over, and yet now her life felt more claustrophobic than ever. Miriam Wu had gone to France. It was my fault that you almost died. She had shuddered at the thought of having to see Mimmi, but had decided that that would be her first stop when she was released. But she had gone to France. All of a sudden she was in debt to people. Palmgren. Armansky. She ought to contact them to say thank you. Paolo Roberto. And Plague and Trinity. Even those damned police officers, Bublanski and Modig, who had so obviously been in her corner. She did not like feeling beholden to anyone. She felt like a chess piece in a game she could not control. Kalle Bloody Blomkvist. And maybe even Erika Bloody Berger with the dimples and the expensive clothes and all that self-assurance. But it was over, Giannini had said as they left police headquarters. Right. The trial was over. It was over for Giannini. And it was over for Blomkvist. He had published his book and would end up on T. V. and probably win some bloody prize too. But it was not over for Lisbeth Salander. This was only the first day of the rest of her life. At 4.00 in the morning she stopped thinking. She discarded her punk outfit on the floor of her bedroom and went to the bathroom and took a shower. She cleaned off all the make-up she had worn in court, put on loose, dark linen trousers, a white top and a thin jacket. She packed an overnight bag with a change of underwear and a couple of tops and put on some simple walking shoes. She picked up her Palm and called a taxi to collect her from Mosebacke Torg. She drove out to Arlanda Airport and arrived just before 6.00. She studied the departure board and booked a ticket to the first place that took her fancy. She used her own passport in her own name. She was surprised that nobody at the ticket desk or at the check-in counter seemed to recognize her or react to her name. She had a seat on the morning flight to Málaga and landed in the blazing midday heat. She stood inside the terminal building for a moment, feeling uncertain. At last she went and looked at a map and thought about what she might do now that she was in Spain. A minute later she decided. She did not waste time trying to figure out bus routes or other means of transportation. She bought a pair of sunglasses at an airport shop, went out to the taxi stand and climbed into the back seat of the first taxi. “Gibraltar. I’m paying with a credit card.” The trip took three hours via the new motorway along the coast. The taxi dropped her off at British passport control and she walked across the border and over to the Rock Hotel on Europa Road, partway up the slope of the 425-metre monolith. She asked if they had a room and was told there was a double room available. She booked it for two weeks and handed over her credit card. She showered and sat on the balcony wrapped up in a bath towel, looking out over the Straits of Gibraltar. She could see freighters and a few yachts. She could just make out Morocco in the haze on the other side of the straits. It was peaceful. After a while she went in and lay down and slept. The next morning Salander woke at 5.00. She got up, showered and had a coffee in the hotel bar on the ground floor. At 7.00 she left the hotel and set out to buy mangos and apples. She took a taxi to the Peak and walked over to the apes. She was so early that few tourists had yet appeared, and she was practically alone with the animals. She liked Gibraltar. It was her third visit to the strange rock that housed an absurdly densely populated English town on the Mediterranean. Gibraltar was a place that was not like anywhere else. The town had been isolated for decades, a colony that obstinately refused to be incorporated into Spain. The Spaniards protested the occupation, of course. (But Salander thought that the Spaniards should keep their mouths shut on that score so long as they occupied the enclave of Ceuta on Moroccan territory across the straits.) It was a place that was comically shielded from the rest of the world, consisting of a bizarre rock, about three quarters of a square mile of town and an airport that began and ended in the sea. The colony was so small that every square inch of it was used, and any expansion had to be over the sea. Even to get into the town, visitors had to walk across the landing strip at the airport. Gibraltar gave the concept of “compact living” a whole new meaning. Salander watched a big male ape climb up on to a wall next to the path. He glowered at her. He was a Barbary ape. She knew better than to try to stroke any of the animals. “Hello, friend,” she said. “I’m back.” The first time she visited Gibraltar she had not even heard about these apes. She had gone up to the top just to look at the view, and she was surprised when she followed some tourists and found herself in the midst of a group of apes climbing and scrambling on both sides of the pathway. It was a peculiar feeling to be walking along a path and suddenly have two dozen apes around you. She looked at them with great wariness. They were not dangerous or aggressive, but they were certainly capable of giving you a bad bite if they got agitated or felt threatened. She found one of the guards and showed him her bag of fruit and asked if she could give it to the apes. He said that it was O.K. She took out a mango and put it on the wall a little way away from the male ape. “Breakfast,” she said, leaning against the wall and taking a bite of an apple. The male ape stared at her, bared his teeth, and contentedly picked up the mango. In the middle of the afternoon five days later, Salander fell off her stool in Harry’s Bar on a side street off Main Street, two blocks from her hotel. She had been drunk almost continuously since she left the apes on the rock, and most of her drinking had been done with Harry O’Connell, who owned the bar and spoke with a phoney Irish accent, having never in his life set foot in Ireland. He had been watching her anxiously. When she had ordered her first drink several days earlier, he had asked to see her I.D. Her name was Lisbeth, he knew, and he called her Liz. She would come in after lunch and sit on a high stool at the far end of the bar with her back leant against the wall. Then she would drink an impressive number of beers or shots of whisky. When she drank beer she did not care about what brand or type it was; she accepted whatever he served her. When she ordered whisky she always chose Tullamore Dew, except on one occasion when she studied the bottles behind the bar and asked for Lagavulin. When the glass was brought to her, she sniffed at it, stared at it for a moment, and then took a tiny sip. She set down her glass and stared at it for a minute with an expression that seemed to indicate that she considered its contents to be a mortal enemy. Finally she pushed the glass aside and asked Harry to give her something that could not be used to tar a boat. He poured her another Tullamore Dew and she went back to her drinking. Over the past four days she had consumed almost a whole bottle. He had not kept track of the beers. Harry was surprised that a young woman with her slender build could hold so much, but he took the view that if she wanted alcohol she was going to get it, whether in his bar or somewhere else. She drank slowly, did not talk to any of the other customers, and did not make any trouble. Her only activity apart from the consumption of alcohol seemed to be to play with a hand-held computer which she connected to a mobile now and then. He had several times tried to start a conversation but was met with a sullen silence. She seemed to avoid company. Sometimes, when there were too many people in the bar, she had moved outside to a table on the pavement, and at other times she had gone two doors down to an Italian restaurant and had dinner. Then she would come back to Harry’s and order another Tullamore Dew. She usually left the bar at around 10.00 and made her way unsteadily off, always to the north. Today she had drunk more and at a faster rate than on the other days, and Harry had kept a watchful eye on her. When she had put away seven glasses of Tullamore Dew in a little over two hours, he decided not to give her any more. It was then that he heard the crash as she fell off the bar stool. He put down the glass he was drying and went around the counter to pick her up. She seemed offended. “I think you’ve had enough, Liz,” he said. She looked at him, bleary-eyed. “I believe you’re right,” she said in a surprisingly lucid voice. She held on to the bar with one hand as she dug some notes out of her top pocket and then wobbled off towards the door. He took her gently by the shoulder. “Hold on a minute. Why don’t you go to the toilet and throw up the last of that whisky and then sit at the bar for a while? I don’t want to let you go in this condition.” She did not object when he led her to the toilet. She stuck her fingers down her throat. When she came back out to the bar he had poured her a large glass of club soda. She drank the whole glass and burped. He poured her another. “You’re going to feel like death in the morning,” Harry said. She nodded. “It’s none of my business, but if I were you I’d sober up for a couple of days.” She nodded. Then she went back to the toilet and threw up again. She stayed at Harry’s Bar for another hour until she looked sober enough to be turned loose. She left the bar on unsteady legs, walked down to the airport and followed the shoreline around the marina. She walked until after 8.00, when the ground at last stopped swaying under her feet. Then she went back to the hotel. She took the lift to her room, brushed her teeth and washed her face, changed her clothes, and went back down to the hotel bar to order a cup of black coffee and a bottle of mineral water. She sat there, silent and unnoticed next to a pillar, studying the people in the bar. She saw a couple in their thirties engaged in quiet conversation. The woman was wearing a light-coloured summer dress, and the man was holding her hand under the table. Two tables away sat a black family, the man with the beginnings of grey at his temples, the woman wearing a lovely, colourful dress in yellow, black and red. They had two young children with them. She studied a group of businessmen in white shirts and ties, their jackets hung over the backs of their chairs. They were drinking beer. She saw a group of elderly people, without a doubt American tourists. The men wore baseball caps, polo shirts and loose-fitting trousers. She watched a man in a light-coloured linen jacket, grey shirt and dark tie come in from the street and pick up his room key at the front desk before he headed over to the bar and ordered a beer. He sat down three metres away from her. She gave him an expectant look as he took out his mobile and began to speak in German. “Hello, is that you? … Is everything alright? … It’s going fine, we’re having our next meeting tomorrow afternoon … No, I think it’ll work out … I’ll be staying here five or six days at least, and then I go to Madrid … No, I won’t be home before the end of next week … Me too. I love you … Sure … I’ll call you later in the week … Kiss kiss.” He was a little over one metre eighty-five tall, about fifty years old maybe fifty-five, blond hair that was turning grey and was a bit on the long side, a weak chin, and too much weight around the middle. But still reasonably well preserved. He was reading the Financial Times. When he finished his beer and headed for the lift, Salander got up and followed him. He pushed the button for the sixth floor. Salander stood next to him and leaned her head against the side of the lift. “I’m drunk,” she said. He smiled down at her. “Oh, really?” “It’s been one of those weeks. Let me guess. You’re a businessman of some sort, from Hanover or somewhere in northern Germany. You’re married. You love your wife. And you have to stay here in Gibraltar for another few days. I gathered that much from your telephone call in the bar.” The man looked at her, astonished. “I’m from Sweden myself. I’m feeling an irresistible urge to have sex with somebody. I don’t care if you’re married and I don’t want your phone number.” He looked startled. “I’m in room 711, the floor above yours. I’m going to go up to my room, take a bath and get into bed. If you want to keep me company, knock on the door within half an hour. Otherwise I’ll be asleep.” “Is this some kind of joke?” he said as the lift stopped. “No. It’s just that I can’t be bothered to go out to some pick-up bar. Either you knock on my door or you don’t.” Twenty-five minutes later there was a knock on the door of Salander’s room. She had a bath towel around her when she opened the door. “Come in,” she said. He stepped inside and looked around the room suspiciously. “I’m alone here,” she said. “How old are you, actually?” She reached for her passport on top of a chest of drawers and handed it to him. “You look younger.” “I know,” she said, taking off the bath towel and throwing it on to a chair. She went over to the bed and pulled off the bedspread. She glanced over her shoulder and saw that he was staring at her tattoos. “This isn’t a trap. I’m a woman, I’m single, and I’ll be here for a few days. I haven’t had sex for months.” “Why did you choose me?” “Because you were the only man in the bar who looked as if you were here alone.” “I’m married—” “And I don’t want to know who she is or even who you are. And I don’t want to discuss sociology. I want to fuck. Take off your clothes or go back down to your room.” “Just like that?” “Yes. Why not? You’re a grown man – you know what you’re supposed to do.” He thought about it for all of thirty seconds. He looked as if he was going to leave. She sat on the edge of the bed and waited. He bit his lip. Then he took off his trousers and shirt and stood hesitantly in his boxer shorts. “Take it all off,” Salander said. “I don’t intend to fuck somebody in his underwear. And you have to use a condom. I know where I’ve been, but I don’t know where you’ve been.” He took off his shorts and went over to her and put his hand on her shoulder. Salander closed her eyes when he bent down to kiss her. He tasted good. She let him tip her back on to the bed. He was heavy on top of her. Jeremy Stuart MacMillan, solicitor, felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck as soon as he tried to unlock the door to his office at Buchanan House on Queensway Quay above the marina. It was already unlocked. He opened it and smelled tobacco smoke and heard a chair creak. It was just before 7.00, and his first thought was that he had surprised a burglar. Then he smelled the coffee from the machine in the kitchenette. After a couple of seconds he stepped hesitantly over the threshold and walked down the corridor to look into his spacious and elegantly furnished office. Salander was sitting in his desk chair with her back to him and her feet on the windowsill. His P.C. was turned on. Obviously she had not had any problem cracking his password. Nor had she had any problem opening his safe. She had a folder with his most private correspondence and bookkeeping on her lap. “Good morning, Miss Salander,” he said at last. “Ah, there you are,” she said. “There’s freshly brewed coffee and croissants in the kitchen.” “Thanks,” he said, sighing in resignation. He had, after all, bought the office with her money and at her request, but he had not expected her to turn up without warning. What is more, she had found and apparently read a gay porn magazine that he had kept hidden in a desk drawer. So embarrassing. Or maybe not. When it came to Salander, he felt that she was the most judgemental person he had ever met. But she never once raised an eyebrow at people’s weaknesses. She knew that he was officially heterosexual, but his dark secret was that he was attracted to men; since his divorce fifteen years ago he had been making his most private fantasies a reality. It’s funny, but I feel safe with her. Since she was in Gibraltar anyway, Salander had decided to visit MacMillan, the man who handled her finances. She had not been in touch with him since just after New Year, and she wanted to know if he had been busy ruining her ever since. But there had not been any great hurry, and it was not for him that she had gone straight to Gibraltar after her release. She did it because she felt a burning desire to get away from everything, and in that respect Gibraltar was an excellent choice. She had spent almost a week getting drunk, and then a few days having sex with the German businessman, who eventually introduced himself as Dieter. She doubted it was his real name but had not bothered to check. He spent the days sitting in meetings and the evenings having dinner with her before they went back to his or her room. He was not at all bad in bed, Salander thought, although he was a bit out of practice and sometimes needlessly rough. Dieter seemed genuinely astonished that on sheer impulse she had picked up an overweight German businessman who was not even looking for it. He was indeed married, and he was not in the habit of being unfaithful or seeking female company on his business trips. But when the opportunity was presented on a platter in the form of a thin, tattooed young woman, he could not resist the temptation. Or so he said. Salander did not care much what he said. She had not been looking for anything more than recreational sex, but she was gratified that he actually made an effort to satisfy her. It was not until the fourth night, their last together, that he had a panic attack and started going on about what his wife would say. Salander thought he should keep his mouth shut and not tell his wife a thing. But she did not tell him what she thought. He was a grown man and could have said no to her invitation. It was not her problem if he was now attacked by feelings of guilt, or if he confessed anything to his wife. She had lain with her back to him and listened for fifteen minutes, until finally she rolled her eyes in exasperation, turned over and straddled him. “Do you think you could take a break from the worryguts stuff and get me off again?” she said. Jeremy MacMillan was a very different story. He held zero erotic attraction for her. He was a crook. Amusingly enough, he looked a lot like Dieter. He was forty-eight, a bit overweight, with greying, dark-blond curly hair that he combed straight back from a high forehead. He wore thin gold-rimmed glasses. He had once been a Cambridge-educated business lawyer and stockbroker in London. He had had a promising future and was a partner in a law firm that was engaged by big corporations and wealthy yuppies interested in real estate and tax planning. He had spent the go-go ’80s hanging out with nouveau riche celebrities. He had drunk hard and snorted coke with people that he really did not want to wake up with the next morning. He had never been charged with anything, but he did lose his wife and two kids along with his job when he mismanaged several transactions and tottered drunk into a mediation hearing. Without thinking too much about it, he sobered up and fled London with his tail between his legs. Why he picked Gibraltar he did not know, but in 1991 he went into partnership with a local solicitor and opened a modest back-street law office which officially dealt with much less glamorous matters: estate planning, wills and such like. Unofficially, MacMillan & Marks also helped to set up P.O. Box companies and acted as gatekeepers for a number of shady figures in Europe. The firm was barely making ends meet when Salander selected Jeremy MacMillan to administer the $2.4 billion she had stolen from the collapsing empire of the Swedish financier Hans-Erik Wennerstr?m. MacMillan was a crook, no doubt about it, but she regarded him as her crook, and he had surprised himself by being impeccably honest in his dealings with her. She had first hired him for a simple task. For a modest fee he had set up a string of P.O. Box companies for her to use; she put a million dollars into each of them. She had contacted him by telephone and had been nothing more than a voice from afar. He never tried to discover where the money came from. He had done what she asked and took 5 per cent commission. A little while later she had transferred a large sum of money that he was to use to set up a corporation, Wasp Enterprises, which then acquired a substantial apartment in Stockholm. His dealings with Salander were becoming quite lucrative, even if it was still only quite modest pickings. Two months later she had paid a visit to Gibraltar. She had called him and suggested dinner in her room at the Rock Hotel, which was, if not the biggest hotel in Gibraltar, then certainly the most famous. He was not sure what he had expected, but he could not believe that his client was this doll-like girl who looked as if she were in her early teens. He thought he was the butt of some outlandish practical joke. He soon changed his mind. The strange young woman talked with him impersonally, without ever smiling or showing any warmth. Or coolness, for that matter. He had sat paralysed as, over the course of a few minutes, she obliterated the professional facade of sophisticated respectability that he was always so careful to maintain. “What is it that you want?” he had asked. “I’ve stolen a sum of money,” she replied with great seriousness. “I need a crook who can administer it.” He had stared at her, wondering whether she was deranged, but politely he played along. She might be a possible mark for a con game that could bring in a small income. Then he had sat as if struck by lightning when she explained who she had stolen the money from, how she did it, and what the amount was. The Wennerstr?m affair was the hottest topic of conversation in the world of international finance. “I see.” The possibilities flew through his head. “You’re a skilled business lawyer and stockbroker. If you were an idiot you would never have got the jobs you did in the ’80s. However, you behaved like an idiot and managed to get yourself fired.” He winced. “In the future I will be your only client.” She had looked at him with the most ingenuous expression he had ever seen. “I have two conditions. The first is that you never ever commit a crime or get mixed up in anything that could create problems for us and focus the authorities’ attention on my companies and accounts. The second is that you never lie to me. Never ever. Not a single time. And not for any reason. If you lie to me, our business relationship will terminate instantly, and if you make me cross enough I will ruin you.” She poured him a glass of wine. “There’s no reason to lie to me. I already know everything worth knowing about your life. I know how much you make in a good month and a bad month. I know how much you spend. I know that you never really have enough money. I know that you owe ￡120,000 in both long-term and short-term debts, and that you always have to take risks and skim some money to make the loan payments. You wear expensive clothes and try to keep up appearances, but in reality you’ve gone to the dogs and haven’t bought a new sports jacket in several months. But you did take an old jacket in to have the lining mended two weeks ago. You used to collect rare books but have been gradually selling them off. Last month you sold an early edition of Oliver Twist for ￡760.” She stopped talking and fixed him with her gaze. He swallowed hard. “Last week you actually made a killing. A quite clever fraud perpetrated against that widow you represent. You ripped her off ￡6,000, which she’ll probably never miss.” “How the hell do you know that?” “I know that you were married, that you have two children in England who don’t want to see you, and that you’ve taken the big leap since your divorce and now have primarily homosexual relationships. You’re probably ashamed of that and avoid the gay clubs, and you avoid being seen in town with any of your male friends. You regularly cross the border into Spain to meet men.” MacMillan was shaken to the core. And he was suddenly terrified. He had no idea how she had come by all this information, but she knew enough to destroy him. “And I’m only going to say this one time. I don’t give a shit who you have sex with. It’s none of my business. I want to know who you are, but I will never use what I know. I won’t threaten you or blackmail you.” MacMillan was no fool. He was perfectly aware, of course, that her knowledge of all that information about him constituted a threat. She was in control. For a moment he had considered picking her up and throwing her over the edge of the terrace, but he restrained himself. He had never in his life been so scared. “What do you want?” he managed to say. “I want to have a partnership with you. You will bring to a close all the other business you’re working on and will work exclusively for me. You will make more money from my company than you could ever dream of making any other way.” She explained what she required him to do, and how she wanted the arrangements to be made. “I want to be invisible,” she said. “And I want you to take care of my affairs. Everything has to be legitimate. Whatever money I make on my own will not have any connection to our business together.” “I understand.” “You have one week to phase out your other clients and put a stop to all your little schemes.” He also realized that he had been given an offer that would never come round again. He thought about it for sixty seconds and then accepted. He had only one question. “How do you know that I won’t swindle you?” “Don’t even think about it. You’d regret it for the rest of your miserable life.” He had no reason to cook the books. Salander had made him an offer that had the potential of such a silver lining that it would have been idiotic to risk it for bits of change on the side. As long as he was relatively discreet and did not get involved in any financial chicanery, his future would be assured. Accordingly he had no thought of swindling Ms Salander. So he went straight, or as straight as a burned-out lawyer could go who was administering an astronomical sum of stolen money. Salander was simply not interested in the management of her finances. MacMillan’s job was to invest her money and see to it that there were funds to cover the credit cards she used. She told him how she wanted her finances to be handled. His job was to make sure it was done. A large part of the money had been invested in gilt-edged funds that would provide her with economic independence for the rest of her life, even if she chose to live it recklessly and dissolutely. It was from these funds that her credit card bills were paid. The rest of the money he could play with and invest as he saw fit, provided that he did not invest in anything that might cause problems with the police in any way. She forbade him to engage in stupid petty crimes and cheap con games which – if he was unlucky – might prompt investigations which in turn could put her under scrutiny. All that remained was to agree on how much he would make on the transactions. “I’ll pay you ￡500,000 as a retainer. With that you can pay off all your debts and have a good deal left over. After that you’ll earn money for yourself. You will start a company with the two of us as partners. You get 20 per cent of all the profits generated. I want you to be rich enough that you won’t be tempted to try it on, but not so rich that you won’t make an effort.” He had started his new job on February 1 the year before. By the end of March he had paid off all his debts and stabilized his personal finances. Salander had insisted that he make cleaning up his own affairs a priority so that he would be solvent. In May he dissolved the partnership with his alcoholic colleague George Marks. He felt a twinge of conscience towards his former partner, but getting Marks mixed up in Salander’s business was out of the question. He discussed the matter with Salander when she returned to Gibraltar on another unheralded visit in early July and discovered that MacMillan was working out of his apartment instead of from the office he had previously occupied. “My partner’s an alcoholic and wouldn’t be able to handle this. And he would be an enormous risk factor. At the same time, fifteen years ago he saved my life when he took me into his business.” She pondered this a while as she studied MacMillan’s face. “I see. You’re a crook who’s loyal. That could be a commendable quality. I suggest you set up a small account that he can play around with. See to it that he makes a couple of thousand a month so he gets by.” “Is that O.K. with you?” She nodded and looked around his bachelor pad. He lived in a studio apartment with a kitchen nook on one of the alleys near the hospital. The only pleasant thing about the place was the view. On the other hand, it was a view that was hard to avoid in Gibraltar. “You need an office and a nicer place to live,” she said. “I haven’t had time,” he said. Then she went out and found an office for him, choosing a 130-square-metre place with a little balcony facing the sea in Buchanan House on Queensway Quay, which was definitely upmarket in Gibraltar. She hired an interior decorator to renovate and furnish it. MacMillan recalled that while he had been busy shuffling papers, Salander had personally supervised the installation of an alarm system, computer equipment, and the safe that she had already rummaged through by the time he entered the office that morning. “Am I in trouble?” he said. She put down the folder with the correspondence she had been perusing. “No, Jeremy. You’re not in trouble.” “That’s good,” he said as he poured himself some coffee. “You have a way of popping up when I least expect it.” “I’ve been busy lately. I just wanted to get a............