Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest, The - Stieg Larsson [74]
“I’m in,” Sandberg said into a handsfree mobile.
“Good,” Clinton said into his earpiece. “Take your time. Tell me what you see.”
“I’m in the hall with a wardrobe and hat-rack on my right. Bathroom on the left. Otherwise there’s one very large room, about fifty square metres. There’s a small kitchen alcove at the far end on the right.”
“Is there any desk or …”
“He seems to work at the kitchen table or sitting on the living-room sofa … wait.”
Clinton waited.
“Yes. Here we are, a folder on the kitchen table. And Björck’s report is in it. It looks like the original.”
“Very good. Anything else of interest on the table?”
“Books. P.G. Vinge’s memoirs. Power Struggle for Säpo by Erik Magnusson. Four or five more of the same.”
“Is there a computer?”
“No.”
“Any safe?”
“No … not that I can see.”
“Take your time. Go through the apartment centimetre by centimetre. Mårtensson reports that Blomkvist is still at the office. You’re wearing gloves, right?”
“Of course.”
*
Erlander had a chat with Giannini in a brief interlude between one or other or both of them talking on their mobiles. He went into Salander’s room and held out his hand to introduce himself. Then he said hello to Salander and asked her how she was feeling. Salander looked at him, expressionless. He turned to Giannini.
“I need to ask some questions.”
“Alright.”
“Can you tell me what happened this morning?”
Giannini related what she had seen and heard and how she had reacted up until the moment she had barricaded herself with Salander in the bathroom. Erlander glanced at Salander and then back to her lawyer.
“So you’re sure that he came to the door of this room?”
“I heard him trying to push down the door handle.”
“And you’re perfectly sure about that? It’s not difficult to imagine things when you’re scared or excited.”
“I definitely heard him at the door. He had seen me and pointed his pistol at me, he knew that this was the room I was in.”
“Do you have any reason to believe that he had planned, beforehand that is, to shoot you too?”
“I have no way of knowing. When he took aim at me I pulled my head back in and blockaded the door.”
“Which was the sensible thing to do. And it was even more sensible of you to carry your client to the bathroom. These doors are so thin that the bullets would have gone clean through them if he had fired. What I’m trying to figure out is whether he wanted to attack you personally or whether he was just reacting to the fact that you were looking at him. You were the person nearest to him in the corridor.”
“Apart from the two nurses.”
“Did you get the sense that he knew you or perhaps recognized you?”
“No, not really.”
“Could he have recognized you from the papers? You’ve had a lot of publicity over several widely reported cases.”
“It’s possible. I can’t say.”
“And you’d never seen him before?”
“I’d seen him in the lift, that’s the first time I set eyes on him.”
“I didn’t know that. Did you talk?”
“No. I got in at the same time he did. I was vaguely aware of him for just a few seconds. He had flowers in one hand and a briefcase in the other.”
“Did you make eye contact?”
“No. He was looking straight ahead.”
“Who got in first?”
“We got in more or less at the same time.”
“Did he look confused or—”
“I couldn’t say one way or the other. He got into the lift and stood perfectly still, holding the flowers.”
“What happened then?”
“We got out of the lift on the same floor, and I went to visit my client.”
“Did you come straight here?”
“Yes … no. That is, I went to the reception desk and showed my I.D. The prosecutor has forbidden my client to have visitors.”
“Where was this man then?”
Giannini hesitated. “I’m not quite sure. He was behind me, I think. No, wait … he got out of the lift first, but stopped and held the door for me. I couldn’t swear to it, but I think he went to the reception desk too. I was just quicker on my feet than