Girl Who Played with Fire, The - Stieg Larsson [176]
“I wouldn’t think so.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Lisbeth is probably the most tone-deaf person I’ve ever met.”
“Tone-deaf?”
“She can tell the difference between trumpet and drums, but that’s about as far as her musical talent stretches.”
“I mean, was she in the group Evil Fingers?”
“And I just answered your question. What the hell do you think Evil Fingers is?”
“You tell me.”
“You’re running a police investigation by reading idiotic newspaper articles.”
“Answer the question.”
“Evil Fingers was a rock band. We were a bunch of girls in the mid-nineties who liked hard rock and played for fun. We promoted ourselves with a pentagram and a little ‘Sympathy for the Devil.’ Then the band broke up, and I’m the only one who’s still working in music.”
“And Lisbeth Salander was not, you say, a member of the band?”
“Like I said.”
“So why do our sources claim that Salander was in the band?”
“Because your sources are about as stupid as the newspapers.”
“Explain.”
“There were five of us girls in the band, and we still get together now and then. In the old days we used to meet once a week at Kvarnen. Now it’s about once a month. But we stay in touch.”
“And what do you do when you get together?”
“What do you think people do at Kvarnen?”
Faste sighed. “So you get together to drink.”
“We usually drink beer. And we gossip. What do you do when you get together with your friends?”
“And how does Salander come into the picture?”
“I met her at KomVux several years ago. She used to show up from time to time at Kvarnen and have a beer with us.”
“So Evil Fingers can’t be regarded as an organization?”
Norén looked at him as if he were from another planet.
“Are you dykes?”
“Would you like a punch in the mouth?”
“Answer the question.”
“It’s none of your business what we are.”
“Take it easy. You can’t provoke me.”
“Hello? The police are claiming that Lisbeth murdered three people and you come here to ask me about my sexual preferences. You can go to hell.”
“You know, I could take you in.”
“For what? By the way, I forgot to tell you that I’ve been studying law for three years and my father is Ulf Norén of Norén & Knape, the law firm. See you in court.”
“I thought you worked in the music business.”
“I do this because it’s fun. You think I make a living doing this?”
“I have no idea how you make a living.”
“I don’t make a living as a lesbian Satanist, if that’s what you think. And if that’s the basis of the police search for Lisbeth, then I can see why you haven’t found her.”
“Do you know where she is?”
Norén began rocking her upper body back and forth and let her hands glide up in front of her.
“I can feel that she’s close … Wait a minute, I’ll check my telepathic powers.”
“Cut it out.”
“I’ve already told you I haven’t heard from her for almost two years. I have no idea where she is. So now, if there isn’t anything else …”
Modig hooked up Svensson’s computer and spent the evening cataloguing the contents of his hard drive and the disks. She sat there until 11:00 reading his book.
She came to two realizations. First, that Svensson was a brilliant writer who described the business of the sex trade with compelling objectivity. She wished he could have lectured at the police academy—his knowledge would have been a valuable addition to the curriculum. Faste, for example, could have benefited from Svensson’s insights.
The second realization was that Blomkvist’s theory about Svensson’s research providing a motive for murder was completely valid. Svensson’s planned exposure of prostitutes’ clients would have done more than merely hurt a number of men. It was a brutal revelation. Some of the prominent players, several of whom had handed down verdicts in sex-crime trials or participated in the public debate, would be annihilated.
The problem was that even if a john who risked being exposed had decided to murder Svensson, there was, as yet, no prospect of such a link to Nils Bjurman. He did not feature in Svensson’s material, and that fact not only diminished the strength of Blomkvist’s