Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest, The - Stieg Larsson [184]
Salander updated her download of Armansky’s hard drive and then switched off the Palm, lost in thought. She had mixed feelings.
She had no reason to love Berger. She remembered still the humiliation she had felt when she saw her walk off down Hornsgatan with Blomkvist the day before New Year’s Eve a year and a half ago.
It had been the stupidest moment of her life and she would never again allow herself those sorts of feelings.
She remembered the terrible hatred she had felt, and her desire to run after them and hurt Berger.
Embarrassing.
She was cured.
But she had no reason to sympathize with Berger.
She wondered what the video “of a personal nature” contained. She had her own film of a personal nature which showed how Advokat Bastard Bjurman had raped her. And it was now in Blomkvist’s keeping. She wondered how she would have reacted if someone had broken into her place and stolen the D.V.D. Which Blomkvist by definition had actually done, even though his motives were not to harm her.
Hmm. An awkward situation.
Berger had not been able to sleep on Thursday night. She hobbled restlessly back and forth while Linder kept a watchful eye on her. Her anxiety lay like a heavy fog over the house.
At 2.30 Linder managed to talk Berger into getting into bed to rest, even if she did not sleep. She heaved a sigh of relief when Berger closed her bedroom door. She opened her laptop and summarized the situation in an email to Armansky. She had scarcely sent the message before she heard that Berger was up and moving about again.
At 7.30 she made Berger call S.M.P. and take the day off sick. Berger had reluctantly agreed and then fallen asleep on the living-room sofa in front of the boarded-up picture window. Linder spread a blanket over her. Then she made some coffee and called Armansky, explaining her presence at the house and that she had been called in by Rosin.
“Stay there with Berger,” Armansky told her, “and get a couple of hours’ sleep yourself.”
“I don’t know how we’re going to bill this—”
“We’ll work that out later.”
Berger slept until 2.30. She woke up to find Linder sleeping in a recliner on the other side of the living room.
Figuerola slept late on Friday morning; she did not have time for her morning run. She blamed Blomkvist for this state of affairs as she showered and then rousted him out of bed.
Blomkvist drove to Millennium, where everyone was surprised to see him up so early. He mumbled something, made some coffee, and called Eriksson and Cortez into his office. They spent three hours going over the articles for the themed issue and keeping track of the book’s progress.
“Dag’s book went to the printer yesterday,” Eriksson said. “We’re going down the perfect-bound trade paperback route.”
“The special issue is going to be called The Lisbeth Salander Story,” Cortez said. “They’re bound to move the date of the trial, but at the moment it’s set for Wednesday, July 13. The magazine will be printed by then, but we haven’t fixed on a distribution date yet. You can decide nearer the time.”
“Good. That leaves the Zalachenko book, which right now is a nightmare. I’m calling it The Section. The first half is basically what’s in the magazine. It begins with the murders of Dag and Mia, and then follows the hunt for Salander first, then Zalachenko, and then Niedermann. The second half will be everything that we know about the Section.”
“Mikael, even if the printer breaks every record for us, we’re going to have to send them the camera-ready copy by the end of this month – at the latest,” Eriksson said. “Christer will need a couple of days for the layout, the typesetter, say, a week. So we have about two weeks left for the text. I don’t know how we’re going to make it.”
“We won’t have time to dig up the whole story,” Blomkvist conceded. “But I don’t think we could manage that even if we had a whole year. What we’re going to do in this book is to state what happened. If we don’t have a source for something, then I’ll say so. If we’re flying kites, we’ll make that clear. So,