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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