Girl Who Played with Fire, The - Stieg Larsson [171]
Svensson had concentrated on Zala in the last weeks of his life. The name had cropped up in his final telephone conversation with Blomkvist three hours before he was killed. Björck claimed to know something about Zala.
Blomkvist ran through everything he had unearthed about Björck, which was not very much.
Gunnar Björck was sixty-two years old, unmarried, born in Falun. Had been in the police force since he was twenty-one. Began as a patrol officer, but studied law and ended up in Säpo, the Security Police, when he was twenty-six or twenty-seven. That was in 1969 or 1970, just at the end of Per Gunnar Vinge’s time as chief there.
Vinge was dismissed after making the claim in a conversation with Ragnar Lassinanti, the governor of Norrbotten County, that Olof Palme was spying for the Russians. Then came the Internal Bureau affair, and Holmér, and the Letter Carrier, and the Palme assassination, and one scandal after another.
Björck’s career between 1970 and 1985 was largely undocumented, which was not so odd, since anything that had to do with Säpo activities was confidential. He could have been sharpening pencils in the stationery department or he could have been a secret agent in China.
In October 1985 Björck moved to the Swedish Embassy in Washington for two years. In 1988, back with Säpo in Stockholm. In 1996 he became a public figure: appointed deputy bureau chief of the immigration division (whatever that entailed). After 1996 he made various statements to the media, in connection with the deportation of suspect Arabs, and drew particular attention in 1998 when several Iraqi diplomats were expelled.
What does any of this have to do with Salander and the murders of Svensson and Johansson? Maybe nothing.
But Björck knows about Zala.
There has to be a connection.
Berger told no-one, not even her husband, from whom she rarely kept secrets, that she was going to Svenska Morgon-Posten. She had about a month left at Millennium. The anxiety was getting to her. The days would rush by and suddenly she would be facing her last day there.
She was also growing uneasy about Blomkvist. She had read his latest email with a sinking feeling. She recognized the signs. It was the same stubbornness that made him stick it out in Hedestad two years ago, the same obsessive determination with which he had gone after Wennerström. Since Maundy Thursday, nothing had existed for him but to find out who had murdered his friends and somehow to establish Salander’s innocence.
She fully sympathized with his objectives—Dag and Mia had been her friends too—but there was a side to Blomkvist that made her uncomfortable. He could become ruthless when he smelled blood.
From the moment he had called her the day before and told her how he had challenged Bublanski and begun sizing him up like some fucking macho cowboy, she knew that the hunt for Salander would keep Blomkvist busy for the foreseeable future. She knew from experience that he would be impossible to deal with until he solved the problem. He would vacillate between self-absorption and depression. And somewhere in the equation he would also take risks that were probably utterly unnecessary.
And Salander. Berger had met her only once, and she didn’t know enough about that strange girl to share Blomkvist’s certainty that she was innocent. What if Bublanski was right? What if she was guilty? What if Blomkvist did manage to track her down and she turned out to be a lunatic armed with a gun?
Nor had Paolo Roberto’s astonishing conversation earlier that morning been reassuring. It was good, of course, that Blomkvist was not the only one on Salander’s side, but Paolo was a cowboy too.
And where was she going to find someone to replace her at Millennium? It was now becoming urgent. She thought of discussing the matter with Malm, but she couldn’t tell him and still keep the news from Blomkvist.
Blomkvist was a brilliant reporter, but he would be a disaster as editor in chief. She and Malm were