Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest, The - Stieg Larsson [77]
Slowly she sat down on the staircase.
Then she jumped up and dug into her jacket pocket. The Filofax. Thank God. Leaving the restaurant she had stuffed it into her pocket instead of putting it back in her briefcase. It contained the draft of her strategy in the Salander case, point by detailed point.
Then she stumbled up the stairs to the fifth floor and pounded on her friend’s door.
Half an hour had passed before she had recovered enough to call her brother. She had a black eye and a gash above her eyebrow that was still bleeding. Lillian had cleaned it with alcohol and put a bandage on it. No, she did not want to go to hospital. Yes, she would like a cup of tea. Only then did she begin to think rationally again. The first thing she did was to call Blomkvist.
He was still at Millennium, where he was searching for information about Zalachenko’s murderer with Cortez and Eriksson. He listened with increasing dismay to Giannini’s account of what had happened.
“No bones broken?” he said.
“Black eye. I’ll be O.K. after I’ve had a chance to calm down.”
“Did you disturb a robbery, was that it?”
“Mikael, my briefcase was stolen, with the Zalachenko report you gave me.”
“Not a problem. I can make another copy—”
He broke off as he felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. First Zalachenko. Now Annika.
He closed his iBook, stuffed it into his shoulder bag and left the office without a word, moving fast. He jogged home to Bellmansgatan and up the stairs.
The door was locked.
As soon as he entered the apartment he saw that the folder he had left on the kitchen table was gone. He did not even bother to look for it. He knew exactly where it had been. He sank on to a chair at the kitchen table as thoughts whirled through his head.
Someone had been in his apartment. Someone who was trying to cover Zalachenko’s tracks.
His own copy and his sister’s copy were gone.
Bublanski still had the report.
Or did he?
Blomkvist got up and went to the telephone, but stopped with his hand on the receiver. Someone had been in his apartment. He looked at his telephone with the utmost suspicion and took out his mobile.
But how easy is it to eavesdrop on a mobile conversation?
He slowly put the mobile down next to his landline and looked around.
I’m dealing with pros here, obviously. People who could bug an apartment as easily as get into one without breaking a lock.
He sat down again.
He looked at his laptop case.
How hard is it to hack into my email? Salander can do it in five minutes.
He thought for a long time before he went back to the landline and called his sister. He chose his words with care.
“How are you doing?”
“I’m fine, Micke.”
“Tell me what happened from the moment you arrived at Sahlgrenska until you were attacked.”
It took ten minutes for Giannini to give him her account. Blomkvist did not say anything about the implications of what she told him, but asked questions until he was satisfied. He sounded like an anxious brother, but his mind was working on a completely different level as he reconstructed the key points.
She had decided to stay in Göteborg at 4.30 that afternoon. She called her friend on her mobile, got the address and door code. The robber was waiting for her inside the stairwell at 6.00 on the dot.
Her mobile was being monitored. It was the only possible explanation.
Which meant that his was being monitored too.
Foolish to think otherwise.
“And the Zalachenko report is gone,” Giannini repeated.
Blomkvist hesitated. Whoever had stolen the report already knew that his copy too had been stolen. It would only be natural to mention that.
“Mine too,” he said.
“What?”
He explained that he had come home to find that the blue folder on his kitchen table was gone.
“It’s a disaster,” he said in a gloomy voice. “That was the crucial part of the evidence.”
“Micke … I’m so sorry.”
“Me too,” Blomkvist said. “Damn it! But it’s not your fault. I should have published the report the day I got it.”
“What do we do now?”
“I have no idea. This is the worst thing that could have happened. It