Girl Who Played with Fire, The - Stieg Larsson [102]
“Armansky … Russian?” Bublanski said. “My name ends in-ski too.”
“My family comes from Armenia. And yours?”
“Poland.”
“How can I help you?”
Bublanski took out his notebook.
“I’m investigating the killings in Enskede. I assume you heard the news today.”
Armansky gave a brisk nod.
“Ekström said that you’re discreet.”
“In my position it pays to cooperate with the police. I can keep a secret, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
“Good. We’re looking for an individual who worked for your company at one time. Lisbeth Salander. Do you know her?”
Armansky felt a lump of cement form in his stomach. His expression did not change.
“And why are you looking for Fröken Salander?”
“Let’s say that we have reason to consider her a person of interest in the investigation.”
The lump of cement in Armansky’s stomach expanded. It almost caused him physical pain. Since the day he had first met Salander he had had a strong presentiment that her life was on a trajectory towards catastrophe. But he had always imagined her as a victim, not an offender. He still showed no emotion.
“So you suspect Lisbeth Salander of the killings in Enskede. Do I understand you correctly?”
Bublanski hesitated a moment, and then he nodded.
“What can you tell me about her?”
“What do you want to know?”
“First of all, how can we find her?”
“She lives on Lundagatan. I’ll have to look up the exact address. I have a mobile telephone number for her.”
“We have the address. The mobile number would be helpful.”
Armansky went to his desk and read out the number, which Bublanski wrote down.
“She works for you?”
“She has her own business. I gave her freelance assignments now and then from 1998 until about a year and a half ago.”
“What sort of jobs did she do?”
“Research.”
Bublanski looked up from his notebook.
“Research?” he said.
“Personal investigations, to be more precise.”
“Just a moment… are we talking about the same girl? The Lisbeth Salander we’re looking for didn’t finish school and was officially declared incompetent to manage her affairs.”
“They don’t say ‘incompetent’ nowadays,” Armansky said calmly.
“I don’t give a damn what they say nowadays. The girl we’re looking for has a record which says she is a deeply disturbed and violence-prone individual. It says in her social welfare agency file that she was a prostitute in the late nineties. There is nothing anywhere in her records to indicate that she could hold down a white-collar job.”
“Files are one thing. People are something else.”
“You mean that she is qualified to do personal investigations for Milton Security?”
“Not only that. She is by far the best researcher I’ve ever had.”
Bublanski put down his pen and frowned.
“It sounds as though you have … respect for her.”
Armansky looked at his hands. The question marked a fork in the road. He had always feared that Salander would end up in hot water sooner or later, but he could not conceive of her being mixed up in a double murder in Enskede—as the killer or in any other way. But what did he know about her private life? Armansky thought of her recent visit to his office in which she had cryptically explained that she had enough money to get by and did not need a job.
The wisest thing to do at that moment would be to distance himself, and above all Milton Security, from all contact with Salander. But then Salander was probably the loneliest person he knew.
“I have respect for her skills. You won’t find that in her school results or personal record.”
“So you know about her background.”
“The fact that she’s under guardianship and that she had a pretty confused upbringing, yes.”
“And yet you trusted her.”
“That is precisely why I trusted her.”
“Please explain.”
“Her previous guardian, Holger Palmgren, was old J. F. Milton’s lawyer. He took on her case when she was a teenager, and he persuaded me to give her a job. I employed her initially to sort the mail and look after the photocopier, things like that. But she turned out to have unbelievable talents.