Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest, The - Stieg Larsson [124]
Figuerola thought long and hard as to what she should do about Gullberg. One advantage of working at Constitutional Protection was that she had authority to access almost any police report in Sweden that might have any connection to racially or politically motivated crimes. Zalachenko was technically an immigrant, and her job included tracking violence against persons born abroad to decide whether or not the crime was racially motivated. Accordingly she had the right to involve herself in the investigation of Zalachenko’s murder, to determine whether Gullberg, the known killer, had a connection to any racist organization, or whether he was overheard making racist remarks at the time of the murder. She requisitioned the report. She found the letters that had been sent to the Minister of Justice and discovered that alongside the diatribe and the insulting personal attacks were also the words nigger-lover and traitor.
By then it was 5.00 p.m. Figuerola locked all the material in her safe, shut down her computer, washed up her coffee mug, and clocked out. She walked briskly to a gym at St Eriksplan and spent the next hour doing some easy strength training.
When she was finished she went home to her one-bedroom apartment on Pontonjärgatan, showered, and ate a late but nutritious dinner. She considered calling Daniel Mogren, who lived three blocks down the same street. Mogren was a carpenter and bodybuilder and had been her training partner off and on for three years. In recent months they had also had sex as friends.
Sex was almost as satisfying as a rigorous workout at the gym, but at a mature thirty-plus or, rather, forty-minus, Figuerola had begun to think that maybe she ought to start looking for a steady partner and a more permanent living arrangement. Maybe even children. But not with Mogren.
She decided that she did not feel like seeing anyone that evening. Instead she went to bed with a history of the ancient world.
CHAPTER 13
Tuesday, 17.v
Figuerola woke at 6.10 on Tuesday morning, took a long run along Norr Mälarstrand, showered, and clocked in at police headquarters at 8.10. She prepared a memorandum on the conclusions she had arrived at the day before.
At 9.00 Edklinth arrived. She gave him twenty minutes to deal with his post, then knocked on his door. She waited while he read her four pages. At last he looked up.
“The chief of Secretariat,” he said.
“He must have approved loaning out Mårtensson. So he must know that Mårtensson is not at Counter-Espionage, even though according to Personal Protection that’s where he is.”
Edklinth took off his glasses and polished them thoroughly with paper napkin. He had met Chief of Secretariat Albert Shenke at meetings and internal conferences on countless occasions, but he could not claim to know the man well. Shenke was rather short, with thin reddish-blond hair, and by now rather stout. He was about fifty-five and had worked at S.I.S. for at least twenty-five years, possibly longer. He had been chief of Secretariat for a decade, and was assistant chief before that. Edklinth thought him taciturn, and a man who could act ruthlessly when necessary. He had no idea what he did in his free time, but he had a memory of having once seen him in the garage of the police building in casual clothes, with a golf bag slung over his shoulder. He had also run into him once at the Opera.
“There was one thing that struck me,” Figuerola said
“What’s that?”
“Evert Gullberg. He did his military service in the ’40s and became an accountant or some such, and then in the ’50s he vanished into thin air.”
“And?”
“When we were discussing this yesterday, we were talking about him as if he were some sort of a hired killer.”
“It sounds far-fetched, I know, but—”
“It struck me that there is so little background on him that it seems almost like a smokescreen. Both IB and S.I.S. established cover companies