Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest, The - Stieg Larsson [227]
“It sounds like some sort of mental illness, don’t you think?”
“That wouldn’t be an inaccurate description.”
Blomkvist took the tunnelbana to Slussen. It was too early to go to Samir’s Cauldron. He stood on Södermalmstorg for a while. He was worried still, yet all of a sudden life felt right again. It was not until Berger came back to Millennium that he realized how terribly he had missed her. Besides, her retaking of the helm had not led to any internal strife; Eriksson had reverted happily to the position of assistant editor, indeed was almost ecstatic – as she put it – that life would now return to normal.
Berger’s coming back had also meant that everyone discovered how incredibly understaffed they had been during the past three months. Berger had had to resume her duties at Millennium at a run, and she and Eriksson managed to tackle together some of the organizational issues that had been piling up.
Blomkvist decided to buy the evening papers and have coffee at Java on Hornsgatan to kill time before he was to meet Berger.
*
Prosecutor Ragnhild Gustavsson of the National Prosecutors’ Office set her reading glasses on the conference table and studied the group. She had a lined but apple-cheeked face and short, greying hair. She had been a prosecutor for twenty-five years and had worked at the N.P.O. since the early ’90s. She was fifty-eight Only three weeks had passed since she had been without warning summoned to the N.P.O. to meet Superintendent Edklinth, Director of Constitutional Protection. That day she had been busily finishing up one or two routine matters so she could begin her six-week leave at her cabin on the island of Husarö with a clear conscience. Instead she had been assigned to lead the investigation of a group of civil servants who went by the name of “the Section”. Her holiday plans had quickly to be shelved. She had been advised that this would be her priority for the foreseeable future, and she had been given a more or less free hand to shape her operational team and take the necessary decisions.
“This may prove one of the most sensational criminal investigations this country has witnessed,” the Prosecutor General had told her.
She was beginning to think he was right.
She had listened with increasing amazement to Edklinth’s summary of the situation and the investigation he had undertaken at the instruction of the Prime Minister. The investigation was not yet complete, but he believed that his team had come far enough to be able to present the case to a prosecutor.
First of all Gustavsson had reviewed all the material that Edklinth had delivered. When the sheer scope of the criminal activity began to emerge, she realized that every decision she made would some day be pored over by historians and their readers. Since then she had spent every waking minute trying to get to grips with the numerous crimes. The case was unique in Swedish law, and since it involved charting criminal activity that had gone on for at least thirty years, she recognized the need for a very particular kind of operational team. She was reminded of the Italian government’s anti-Mafia investigators who had been forced in the ’70s and ’80s to work almost underground in order to survive. She knew why Edklinth himself had been bound to work in secret. He did not know whom he could trust.
Her first action was to call in three colleagues from the N.P.O. She selected people she had known for many years. Then she hired a renowned historian who had worked on the Crime Prevention Council to help with an analysis of the growth of Security Police responsibilities and powers over the decades. She formally appointed Inspector Figuerola head of the investigation.
At this point the investigation of the Section had taken on a