Girl Who Played with Fire, The - Stieg Larsson [111]
Andersson inspected the kitchen and found nothing out of the ordinary. He looked through a stack of newspapers and checked the counter-top, the cupboards, and the freezer in the refrigerator.
Faste opened the wardrobes and the drawers of the chest in the bedroom. He whistled when he found handcuffs and a number of sex toys. In the wardrobe he found some latex clothing that his mother would have been embarrassed even to look at.
“There’s been a party here,” he said out loud, holding up a patent-leather outfit that according to the label was designed by Domino Fashion—whatever that was.
Bublanski looked in the desk in the hall, where he found a small pile of unopened letters addressed to Salander. He looked through the pile and saw that they were bills and bank statements, and one personal letter. It was from Mikael Blomkvist. So far, Blomkvist’s story held up. Then he bent down and picked up the mail on the doormat, stained with footprints from the armed response team. It consisted of a magazine, Thai Pro Boxing, the free newspaper Södermalm News, and three envelopes addressed to Miriam Wu.
Bublanski was struck by an unpleasant suspicion. He went into the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet. He found a box of paracetamol painkillers and a half-full tube of Citodon, paracetamol with codeine. Citodon was a prescription drug. The medicine was prescribed for Miriam Wu. There was one toothbrush in the medicine cabinet.
“Faste, why does it say SALANDER-WU on the door?” he said.
“No idea.”
“OK, let me put it this way—why is there mail on the doormat addressed to a Miriam Wu, and why is there a prescription tube of Citodon in the medicine cabinet made out to Miriam Wu? Why is there only one toothbrush? And why—when you consider that Lisbeth Salander is, according to our information, only one hand’s breadth tall—do those leather pants you’re holding up fit a person who is at least five foot eight?”
There was a brief, embarrassed silence in the apartment. It was broken by Andersson.
“Shit,” he said.
CHAPTER 15
Maundy Thursday, March 24
Malm felt drained and miserable when he finally got home after the unplanned day at work. He smelled the aroma of something spicy from the kitchen and went in and hugged his boyfriend.
“How are you feeling?” Arnold Magnusson asked.
“Like a sack of shit.”
“I’ve been hearing about it on the news all day long. They haven’t released the names yet. But it sounds fucking awful.”
“It is fucking awful. Dag worked for us. He was a friend and I liked him a lot. I didn’t know his girlfriend, but both Micke and Erika did.”
Malm looked around the kitchen. They had moved into the apartment on Allhelgonagatan only three months ago. Suddenly it felt like another world.
The telephone rang. They looked at each other and decided to ignore it. Then the answering machine switched on and they heard a familiar voice.
“Christer. Are you there? Pick up.”
It was Berger calling to tell him that the police were now looking for Blomkvist’s former researcher, who was the prime suspect for the murders of Svensson and Johansson.
Malm received the news with a sense of unreality.
Cortez had missed the commotion on Lundagatan for the simple reason that he had been standing outside the police press office at Kungsholmen the whole time, from which no news had been released since the press conference earlier that afternoon.
He was tired, hungry, and annoyed at being ignored by the people he was trying to contact. Not until 6:00, when the raid at Salander’s apartment was over, did he pick up a rumour that the police had a suspect in the investigation. The tip came from a colleague at an evening paper. But Cortez soon managed to find out Prosecutor Ekström’s mobile phone number. He introduced himself and asked his questions about who, how, and why.
“What newspaper did you say you were from?” Ekström said.
“Millennium magazine. I knew one of the victims. I understand that the police are looking for a specific person.