Girl Who Played with Fire, The - Stieg Larsson [190]
“I want the answer to a simple question.”
He had a high-pitched voice, almost as if it had never broken, and an accent.
“Where is Lisbeth Salander?”
“I don’t know,” Miriam Wu said, obviously in pain.
“That’s the wrong answer. You’ll have one more chance before I start this thing.”
He squatted down and patted the chain saw.
“Where is Lisbeth Salander hiding?”
Wu shook her head.
When the man reached for the chain saw, Paolo Roberto took three determined strides into the room and threw a hard right hook at his kidneys.
Paolo Roberto had not become a world-famous boxer by being tentative in the ring. He had fought thirty-three bouts in his professional career and won twenty-eight of them. When he punched someone as hard as he could he expected to see his opponent feel pain. But this time he felt as if he had smashed his hand into a concrete wall. He had never experienced anything like it in all the years he’d spent as a boxer. He looked in astonishment at the colossus in front of him.
The man turned and looked with equal astonishment at the boxer.
“What do you say we find you somebody in your own weight class?” said Paolo Roberto.
He got off a string of right-left-right punches to the body and put some muscle behind them. They were heavy blows. The only effect was that the giant took half a step back, more from surprise than from the effect of the punches. Then he smiled.
“You’re Paolo Roberto,” he said.
Paolo Roberto stopped, amazed. He had just landed four punches that should have put the giant on the deck while the referee counted to ten. But his blows seemed not to have had the slightest effect.
Good God. This isn’t normal.
Then he saw as if in slow motion the man’s right hook come flying towards him. He was slow and telegraphed the punch in advance. Paolo Roberto had time to move, but the blow glanced off his shoulder. It felt as if he had been hit by a steel bar.
Paolo Roberto backed up two steps, filled with new respect for his opponent.
There’s something wrong with him. Nobody can hit this hard.
He automatically blocked a left hook with his forearm and felt at once a sharp pain. He did not manage to block the right hook that came out of nowhere and landed on his forehead.
Paolo Roberto tumbled backwards out the door. He landed against a mound of wooden pallets and shook his head. He felt blood streaming down his face. He cut my eyebrow. It’ll have to be sewn up. Again.
In the next moment the giant came into view and Paolo Roberto instinctively twisted to the side. He escaped by a hairsbreadth another clublike blow from those enormous fists. He quickly backed up, three, four shuffles, and got his arms up in a defensive position. He was shaken.
The man regarded him with eyes that were curious and almost amused. Then he assumed the same defensive position. This guy is a boxer. They began to circle each other slowly.
The hundred and eighty seconds that followed became the most bizarre match that Paolo Roberto had ever fought. There were no coaches, no referee. There was no bell to call a halt to the round and send the fighters to their corners. No pause for water and smelling salts and a towel to wipe the blood from his eyes.
Paolo Roberto knew now that he was fighting for his life. All his training, all the years of hammering on punching bags, all the sparring, and all the experience from all the bouts he had fought came together as the adrenaline pumped in a way he had never before experienced.
They went at each other in an exchange into which Paolo Roberto put all his power and all his fury. Left, right, left, left again, and a jab with the right to the face, duck the left hook, back up a step, attack with