Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest, The - Stieg Larsson [32]
Göransson, on the other hand, wore only his underpants. He had been beaten, had blood and bruises all over his body. His arms were bent in impossible directions, like twisted tree limbs. The battering he had been subjected to could only be defined as torture. He had been killed, as far as Nieminen could judge, by a single blow to the neck. His larynx was rammed deep into his throat.
Nieminen went up the stairs and out of the front door. Waltari followed him. Nieminen walked the fifty metres to the barn. He flipped the hasp and opened the door.
He found a dark-blue 1991 Renault.
“What kind of car does Göransson have?” Nieminen said.
“He drove a Saab.”
Nieminen nodded. He fished some keys out of his jacket pocket and opened a door at the far end of the barn. One quick look around told him that they were there too late. The heavy weapons cabinet stood wide open.
Nieminen grimaced. “About 800,000 kronor,” he said.
“What?”
“Svavelsjö M.C. had about 800,000 kronor stashed in this cabinet. It was our treasury.”
Only three people knew where Svavelsjö M.C. kept the cash that was waiting to be invested and laundered. Göransson, Lundin, and Nieminen. Niedermann was on the run. He needed cash. He knew that Göransson was the one who handled the money.
Nieminen shut the door and walked slowly away from the barn. His mind was spinning as he tried to digest the catastrophe. Part of Svavelsjö M.C.’s assets were in the form of bonds that he could access, and some of their investments could be reconstructed with Lundin’s help. But a large part of them had been listed only in Göransson’s head, unless he had given clear instructions to Lundin. Which Nieminen doubted – Lundin had never been clever with money. Nieminen estimated that Svavelsjö M.C. had lost upwards of 60 per cent of its assets with Göransson’s death. It was a devastating blow. Above all they needed the cash to take care of day-to-day expenses.
“What do we do now?” Waltari said.
“We’ll go and tip off the police about what happened here.”
“Tip off the police?”
“Yes, damn it. My prints are all over the house. I want Göransson and his bitch to be found as soon as possible, so that forensics can work out that they died while I was still locked up.”
“I get it.”
“Good. Go and find Benny. I want to talk to him. If he’s still alive, that is. And then we’ll track down Niedermann. We’ll need every contact we have in the clubs all over Scandinavia to keep their eyes peeled. I want that bastard’s head on a platter. He’s probably riding around in Göransson’s Saab. Find out the registration number.”
When Salander woke up it was 2.00 on Saturday afternoon and a doctor was poking at her.
“Good morning,” he said. “My name is Benny Svantesson. I’m a doctor. Are you in pain?”
“Yes,” Salander said.
“I’ll make sure you get some painkillers in a minute. But first I’d like to examine you.”
He squeezed and poked and fingered her lacerated body. Salander was extremely aggravated by the time he had finished, but she held back; she was exhausted and decided it would be better to keep quiet than tarnish her stay at Sahlgrenska with a fight.
“How am I doing?” she said.
“You’ll pull through,” the doctor said and made some notes before he stood up. This was not very informative.
After he left, a nurse came in and helped Salander with a bedpan. Then she was allowed to go back to sleep.
Zalachenko, alias Karl Axel Bodin, was given a liquid lunch. Even small movements of his facial muscles caused sharp pains in his jaw and cheekbone, and chewing was out of the question. During surgery the night before, two titanium screws had been fixed into his jawbone.
But the pain was manageable. Zalachenko was used to pain. Nothing could compare with the pain he had undergone for several weeks, months even, fifteen years before when he had burned like a torch in his car. The follow-up care had been a marathon of agony.
The doctors had decided that his life was no longer at risk but that he was severely injured. In view of his age, he would stay in the intensive care unit for a few more