Girl Who Played with Fire, The - Stieg Larsson [170]
“When the police interviewed her she said she had no idea where Lisbeth was staying. But it’s worth a try.”
“Give me her number. I’ll talk to her.”
Blomkvist gave him the number and the address on Lundagatan.
Björck had spent the weekend analysing his situation. His prospects, he decided, were hanging by a fraying thread, and he would have to make the most of the hand he’d been dealt.
Blomkvist was a fucking swine. The only question was whether he could be persuaded to keep his mouth shut about… about the fact that Björck had hired the services of those bitches. It was a chargeable offence, and he would be fired if it were made public. The press would rip him to shreds. A member of the Security Police who exploited teenage prostitutes … If only those fucking cunts hadn’t been so young.
Sitting here doing nothing would certainly seal his fate. Björck was smart enough not to have said anything to Blomkvist. He had read his expression. The man was in agony. He wanted information. But he was going to be forced to pay for it, and the price was his silence.
Zala brought a whole new dimension to the murder investigation.
Svensson had been hunting Zala.
Bjurman had been hunting Zala.
And Superintendent Björck was the only one who knew that there was a link between Zala and Bjurman, which meant that Zala was a clue to the murders at Enskede and Odenplan.
This created another serious problem for Björck’s future well-being. He was the one who had given Bjurman the information about Zalachenko—as a friendly gesture and in spite of the fact that the file was still top secret. That was a detail, but it meant that he had committed another chargeable offence.
Furthermore, since Blomkvist’s visit on Friday he had involved himself in yet one more crime. As a police officer, if he had information in a murder investigation it was his duty to inform his colleagues immediately. But if he gave the information to Bublanski or Ekström, he would implicate himself. It would all eventually come out. Not just the whores, but the whole Zalachenko affair.
On Saturday he had gone to his office at the Security Police on Kungsholmen. He had picked out all the old documents about Zalachenko and read through them. He was the one who had written the reports, but it was many years ago. The oldest of the documents were almost thirty years old. The most recent was ten years old.
Zalachenko.
A slippery fucker.
Zala.
Björck himself had called him that in his report, although he could not remember ever having used the name.
But the connection was crystal clear. To Enskede. To Bjurman. And to Salander.
Björck still did not understand how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together, but he thought he knew why Salander had been in Enskede. He could also easily imagine her flying into a rage and killing Svensson and Johansson, either because they had refused to cooperate or because they had provoked her. She had a motive, known only to Björck and perhaps two or three other people in the whole country.
She is completely insane. I hope to God that some officer shoots her dead when she’s apprehended. She knows. She could break the whole story wide open if she talked.
No matter how Björck looked at his situation, Blomkvist was his only possible way out. And that was the one thing that mattered to him. He felt a growing desperation. Blomkvist had to be persuaded to treat him as a confidential source and to keep quiet about his … foolish escapades with those fucking whores. Damn, if only Salander would blow Blomkvist’s head off too.
He looked at Zalachenko’s phone number and weighed the pros and cons of contacting him. He was incapable of making up his mind.
Blomkvist had made a point, at every stage, of summing up his thinking on the investigation. When Paolo Roberto left, he spent an hour on the task. It had turned into a journal in which he let his thoughts run free while at the same time he meticulously wrote up every conversation and every meeting, as well as all the research he was doing. He encrypted the document