Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest, The - Stieg Larsson [10]
One policeman killed and another seriously wounded. Drama last night as triple murderer Lisbeth Salander is finally captured.
At first she could not make any sense of it. Was it Salander who had killed a policeman? The news item was sketchy, but bit by bit she gathered that a man was being sought for the killing. A nationwide alert had gone out for a man in his mid-thirties, as yet unnamed. Salander herself was critically injured and at Sahlgrenska hospital in Göteborg.
She switched to the other channel, but she learned nothing more about what had happened. She reached for her mobile and called her brother, Mikael Blomkvist. She only got his voicemail. She felt a small twinge of fear. He had called on his way to Göteborg. He had been tracking Salander. And a murderer who called himself Ronald Niedermann.
As it was growing light an observant police officer found traces of blood on the ground behind the woodshed. A police dog followed the trail to a narrow trench in a clearing in a wood about four hundred metres north-east of the farmhouse.
Blomkvist went with Inspector Erlander. Grimly they studied the site. Much more blood had obviously been shed in and around the trench.
They found a damaged cigarette case that seemed to have been used as a scoop. Erlander put it in an evidence bag and labelled the find. He also gathered samples of blood-soaked clumps of dirt. A uniformed officer drew his attention to a cigarette butt – a filterless Pall Mall – some distance from the hole. This too was saved in an evidence bag and labelled. Blomkvist remembered having seen a pack of Pall Malls on the kitchen counter in Zalachenko’s house.
Erlander glanced up at the lowering rain clouds. The storm that had ravaged Göteborg earlier in the night had obviously passed to the south of the Nossebro area, but it was only a matter of time before the rain came. He instructed one of his men to get a tarpaulin to cover the trench and its immediate surroundings.
“I think you’re right,” Erlander said to Blomkvist as they walked back to the farmhouse. “An analysis of the blood will probably establish that Salander was buried here, and I’m beginning to expect that we’ll find her fingerprints on the cigarette case. She was shot and buried here, but somehow she managed to survive and dig herself out and—”
“And somehow got back to the farm and swung an axe into Zalachenko’s skull,” Blomkvist finished for him. “She can be a moody bitch.”
“But how on earth did she handle Niedermann?”
Blomkvist shrugged. He was as bewildered as Erlander on that score.
CHAPTER 2
Friday, 8.iv
Modig and Holmberg arrived at Göteborg Central Station just after 8.00 a.m. Bublanski had called to give them new instructions. They could forget about finding a car to take them to Gosseberga. They were to take a taxi to police headquarters on Ernst Fontells Plats, the seat of the County Criminal Police in Western Götaland. They waited for almost an hour before Inspector Erlander arrived from Gosseberga with Blomkvist. Blomkvist said hello to Modig, having met her before, and shook hands with Holmberg, whom he did not know. One of Erlander’s colleagues joined them with an update on the hunt for Niedermann. It was a brief report.
“We have a team working under the auspices of the County Criminal Police. An A.P.B. has gone out, of course. The missing patrol car was found in Alingsås early this morning. The trail ends there for the moment. We have to suppose that he switched vehicles, but we’ve had no report of a car being stolen thereabouts.”
“Media?” Modig asked, with an apologetic glance at Blomkvist.
“It’s a police killing and the press is out in force. We’ll be holding a press conference at 10.00.”
“Does anyone have any information on Lisbeth Salander’s condition?