Girl Who Played with Fire, The - Stieg Larsson [141]
“Where have you been staying the past week?”
“I’ve been away. What happened? Was there a break-in?”
“I’m going to have to ask you to come with me to Kungsholmen,” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder.
Bublanski and Mo dig watched as Miriam Wu was escorted by Faste into the interview room. She was plainly angry.
“Please have a seat. My name is Criminal Inspector Jan Bublanski, and this is my colleague Inspector Sonja Modig. I’m sorry we’ve had to bring you in like this, but we have a number of questions we need answered.”
“OK. But why? That guy isn’t very talkative.” She jerked a thumb at Faste.
“We’ve been looking for you for some time. Can you tell us where you’ve been?”
“Yes, I can. But I don’t feel like it, and as far as I’m concerned it’s none of your business.”
Bublanski raised his eyebrows.
“I come home to find my door broken open and police tape across it, and a guy pumped up on steroids drags me down here. Can I get an explanation?”
“Don’t you like men?” Faste said.
Miriam Wu turned and stared at him, astonished. Bublanski gave him a furious look.
“You haven’t read any newspapers in the past week? Have you been out of the country?”
“No, I haven’t read any papers. I’ve been in Paris visiting my parents. For two weeks. I just came from Central Station.”
“You took the train?”
“I don’t like flying.”
“And you didn’t see any news headlines or Swedish papers today?”
“I got off the night train and took the tunnelbana home.”
Bublanski thought for a moment. There hadn’t been anything about Salander in the headlines this morning. He stood up and left the room. When he returned he was carrying Aftonbladet ’s Easter edition with Salander’s photograph on the front page. Miriam Wu almost flipped.
Blomkvist followed the directions that Björck had given him to the cabin in Smådalarö. As he parked he saw that the “cabin” was a modern one-family home which looked to be habitable all year round. It had a view of the sea towards the Jungfrufjärden inlet. He walked up the gravel path and rang the bell. Björck was clearly recognizable from the passport photograph that Svensson had in his file.
“Good morning,” Blomkvist said.
“Good, you found the place.”
“Thanks to your directions.”
“Come in. We can sit in the kitchen.”
Björck appeared to be in good health, but he had a slight limp.
“I’m on sick leave,” he said.
“Nothing serious, I hope.”
“I’m waiting to have surgery on a slipped disk. Would you like coffee?”
“No thanks,” Blomkvist said and sat at the kitchen table and opened his briefcase. He took out a folder. Björck sat down facing him.
“You look familiar. Have we met before?”
“I think not,” Blomkvist said.
“I’m sure I’ve seen you somewhere.”
“Maybe in the newspapers.”
“What did you say your name was?”
“Mikael Blomkvist. I’m a journalist, I work at Millennium magazine.”
Björck looked confused. Then the penny dropped. Kalle Blomkvist. The Wennerström affair. But still he did not understand the implications.
“Millennium? I didn’t know you did market research.”
“Once in a while. I’d like to begin by asking you to look at three photographs and tell me which one you like best.”
Blomkvist put images of three girls on the table. One had been downloaded from a porn site on the Internet. The other two were blown-up passport photographs.
Björck turned pale as a corpse.
“I don’t get it.”
“No? This is Lidia Komarova, sixteen years old, from Minsk. Next to her is Myang So Chin, goes by the name of Jo-Jo, from Thailand. She’s twenty-five. And lastly we have Yelena Barasova, nineteen, from Tallinn. You bought sex from all three of these women, and my question is: which one did you like best? Think of it as market research.”
“To sum up, you claim that you have known Lisbeth Salander for about three