Girl Who Played with Fire, The - Stieg Larsson [184]
Meanwhile Atho took out his mobile and made a call in Russian. Then he said that Zala wanted to talk to me and held the phone to my ear.”
“What did Zala say?”
“He just asked whether I still wanted to pull out. I promised to go to Tallinn and get the car with the amphetamines. What else could I do?”
Salander sat without speaking for a long time. She contemplated the snuffling journalist on the rope and seemed to be thinking about something.
“Describe his voice.”
“It… sounded normal.”
“Deep voice, high voice?”
“Deep. Ordinary. Gruff.”
“What language did he speak?”
“Swedish.”
“Accent?”
“Yeah, maybe a little. But good Swedish. He and Atho spoke Russian.”
“Do you understand Russian?”
“A little. Not fluent. Just a little.”
“What did Atho say to him?”
“He just said that the demonstration was over.”
“Have you told anyone else about this?”
“No.”
“Svensson?”
“No … no.”
“Svensson visited you.”
Sandström nodded.
“I can’t hear you.”
“Yes.”
“How come?”
“He knew that I had … the whores.”
“What did he ask?”
“He wanted to know … about Zala. He asked about Zala. That was the second visit.”
“The second visit?”
“He got in touch two weeks before he died. That was the first visit. Then he came back two days before you … he …”
“Before I shot him?”
“Yes.”
“And he asked about Zala then?”
“Yeah.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Nothing. I couldn’t tell him anything. I admitted that I’d spoken to him on the phone. That was all. I didn’t say anything about the blond monster or what they did to Gustafsson.”
“OK. Tell me exactly what Svensson asked.”
“I… he just wanted to know what I knew about Zala. That was all.”
“And you didn’t tell him anything?”
“Nothing of any use. I don’t know anything.”
She bit her lower lip pensively. There was something he wasn’t saying.
“Who did you tell about Svensson’s visit?”
Sandström seemed to shiver.
Salander waved the Taser.
“I called Harry.”
“When?”
He swallowed. “The night Svensson visited me the first time.”
She kept on for another half hour, but he was just repeating himself, adding details here and there. She stood up and put a hand on the rope.
“You must be one of the sorriest perverts I’ve ever met,” Salander said. “What you did to Ines deserves the death penalty. But I told you that you would live if you answered my questions. I keep my promises.”
She loosened the knot. Sandström collapsed in a slobbering heap on the floor. He saw her put a stool on his coffee table and climb up and unhook the block and tackle. She coiled the rope and stuffed it in a backpack. She went into the bathroom. He heard the water running. When she came back she had washed off the makeup.
Her face looked scrubbed and naked.
“You can cut yourself free.”
She dropped a kitchen knife beside him.
He heard her out in the hall for a long time. It sounded as though she was changing clothes. Then he heard the front door open and close. It took him half an hour to cut off the tape. He first sank down on the sofa, then staggered to his feet and searched the apartment. She had taken his Colt 1911 Government.
Salander arrived home at 4:55 a.m. She took off the Irene Nesser wig and went straight to bed without turning on her computer to see whether Blomkvist had solved the mystery of the missing police report.
She was awake at 9:00 and spent all of Tuesday digging up information about the Ranta brothers.
Atho Ranta had an extensive record in the police criminal files. He was a Finnish citizen from an Estonian family. He came to Sweden in 1971. From 1972 to 1978 he worked as a carpenter for Skånska Concrete Pouring. He was dismissed after being caught stealing from a building site and sentenced to seven months in prison. Between 1980 and 1982 he worked for a smaller builder. He was kicked out after turning up drunk at work several times. For the remainder of the eighties he made a living as a bouncer, a technician at a company that serviced oil-fired boilers, a dishwasher, and a janitor at a school. He was fired from all these jobs for drunkenness