Girl Who Played with Fire, The - Stieg Larsson [119]
Finally he turned off his mobile and crept under the covers. At 11:00 he was still awake. He got up and brewed some coffee. He put on the CD player and listened to Debbie Harry singing “Maria.” He wrapped himself in a blanket and sat on the living-room sofa and drank coffee while he worried about Salander.
What did he actually know about her? Hardly anything.
She had a photographic memory and she was a hell of a hacker. He knew that she was a peculiar, introverted woman who didn’t like to talk about herself, and that she had absolutely no trust in authority of any kind.
She could be viciously violent. He owed his life to that.
But he had had no idea that she had been declared incompetent or was under guardianship, or that she had spent any part of her teenage years in a psychiatric clinic.
He had to choose whose side he was on.
Sometime after midnight he decided that he couldn’t accept the police’s assumption that she had murdered Svensson and Johansson. At the very least, he owed her a chance to explain herself before he passed judgment.
He had no idea when he nodded off, but at 4:30 a.m. he woke up on the sofa. He staggered into the bedroom and fell instantly back to sleep.
CHAPTER 16
Good Friday, March 25–
Easter Saturday, March 26
Eriksson leaned back into Blomkvist’s sofa. Without thinking, she put her feet up on the coffee table—exactly as she would have done at home—and quickly took them off again. Blomkvist gave her a smile.
“That’s OK,” he said. “Make yourself at home.”
She grinned and put her feet up again.
On Good Friday Blomkvist had brought the copies of Svensson’s papers from the Millennium offices to his apartment. He had laid out the material on the floor of the living room, and he and Eriksson had spent eight hours going through emails, notes, jottings in Svensson’s notebook, and above all the manuscript of the book.
On Saturday morning Annika Giannini had come to see her brother. She brought the evening newspapers from the day before with their glaring headlines and a huge reproduction of Salander’s passport photograph on the front page. One read:
WANTED FOR
TRIPLE MURDER
The other had opted for the more sensational headline:
POLICE HUNT
PSYCHOTIC MASS MURDERER
They talked for an hour, during which Blomkvist explained his relationship with Salander and why he couldn’t believe that she was guilty Finally he asked his sister whether she would consider representing Salander if or when she was caught.
“I’ve represented women in various cases of violence and abuse, but I’m not really a criminal defence lawyer,” she said.
“You’re the shrewdest lawyer I know, and Lisbeth is going to need somebody she can trust. I think in the end she would accept you.”
Annika thought for a while before reluctantly agreeing to at least have a discussion with Salander if they ever got to that stage.
At 1:00 on Saturday afternoon, Inspector Modig called and asked if she could come over to pick up Salander’s shoulder bag. The police had evidently opened and read the letter he sent to Salander’s address on Lundagatan.
Modig arrived only twenty minutes later, and Blomkvist asked her to have a seat with Eriksson at the table in the living room. He went into the kitchen and took the bag down from the shelf next to the microwave. He hesitated a moment, then opened the bag and took out the hammer and the Mace canister. Withholding evidence. Mace was an illegal weapon and possession was a punishable offence. The hammer would only serve to support those who believed in Salander’s violent tendencies. That wasn’t necessary, Blomkvist thought.
He offered Modig some coffee.
“May I ask you some questions?” the inspector said.
“Please.”
“In your letter to Salander which my colleagues found at Lundagatan, you wrote that you are in her debt. What exactly did you mean by that?”
“Lisbeth Salander did me an enormous favour.”
“What manner of favour was that?”
“It was a favour strictly between her and me, which I don’t