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Elderly, polite, and a murderer, Erlander thought.

“Yes, he did go to the reception desk,” he confirmed. “He did talk to the nurse and he left the flowers at the desk, at her instruction. But you didn’t see that?”

“No. I have no recollection of any of that.”

Erlander had no more questions. Frustration was gnawing at him. He had had the feeling before and had trained himself to interpret it as an alarm triggered by instinct. Something was eluding him, something that was not right.

The murderer had been identified as Evert Gullberg, a former accountant and sometime business consultant and tax lawyer. A man in advanced old age. A man against whom Säpo had lately initiated a preliminary investigation because he was a nutter who wrote threatening letters to public figures.

Erlander knew from long experience that there were plenty of nutters out there, some pathologically obsessed ones who stalked celebrities and looked for love by hiding in woods near their villas. When their love was not reciprocated – as why would it be? – it could quickly turn to violent hatred. There were stalkers who travelled from Germany or Italy to follow a 21-year-old lead singer in a pop band from gig to gig, and who then got upset because she would not drop everything to start a relationship with them. There were bloody-minded individuals who harped on and on about real or imaginary injustices and who sometimes turned to threatening behaviour. There were psychopaths and conspiracy theorists, nutters who had the gift to read messages hidden from the normal world.

There were plenty of examples of these fools taking the leap from fantasy to action. Was not the assassination of Anna Lindh* the result of precisely such a crazy impulse?

But Inspector Erlander did not like the idea that a mentally ill accountant, or whatever he was, could wander into a hospital with a bunch of flowers in one hand and a pistol in the other. Or that he could, for God’s sake, execute someone who was the object of a police investigation – his investigation. A man whose name in the public register was Karl Axel Bodin but whose real name, according to Blomkvist, was Zalachenko. A bastard defected Soviet Russian agent and professional gangster.

At the very least Zalachenko was a witness; but in the worst case he was involved up to his neck in a series of murders. Erlander had been allowed to conduct two brief interviews with Zalachenko, and at no time during either had he been swayed by the man’s protest ations of innocence.

His murderer had shown interest also in Salander, or at least in her lawyer. He had tried to get into her room.

And then he had attempted suicide. According to the doctors, he had probably succeeded, even if his body had not yet absorbed the message that it was time to shut down. It was highly unlikely that Evert Gullberg would ever be brought before a court.

Erlander did not like the situation, not for a moment. But he had no proof that Gullberg’s shots had been anything other than what they seemed. So he had decided to play it safe. He looked at Giannini.

“I’ve decided that Salander should be moved to a different room. There’s a room in the connecting corridor to the right of the reception area that would be better from a security point of view. It’s in direct line-of-sight of the reception desk and the nurses’ station. No visitors will be permitted other than you. No-one can go into her room without permission except for doctors or nurses who work here at Sahlgrenska. And I’ll see to it that a guard is stationed outside her door round the clock.”

“Do you think she’s in danger?”

“I know of nothing to indicate that she is. But I want to play it safe.”

Salander listened attentively to the conversation between her lawyer and her adversary, a member of the police. She was impressed that Giannini had replied so precisely and lucidly, and in such detail. She was even more impressed by her lawyer’s way of keeping cool under stress.

Otherwise she had had a monstrous headache ever since Giannini had dragged her out