Girl Who Played with Fire, The - Stieg Larsson [215]
“Sonja… this is totally absurd. Magge Lundin and Sonny Nieminen are two hooligans with long police records. Lundin may have put on a pound or two and he may not be in top form, but he’s still dangerous. And Nieminen is a brutal bastard that even the tough guys are afraid of. I simply can’t imagine how a skinny little creature like Salander could beat the shit out of them like that. Not that he doesn’t deserve a beating, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that I don’t understand how it could have happened.”
“We’ll have to ask her when we find her. She has been documented as violent, after all.”
“Even Curt would have thought twice about taking those guys on. And Curt isn’t exactly a pansy.”
“The question is whether she had some reason to attack Lundin and Nieminen.”
“One little girl with two psychopaths in a deserted summer cabin? I can think of a reason or two,” Bublanski said.
“Could she have had help from someone? Could there have been other people involved?”
“There’s nothing in the report to indicate that. Salander was inside the cabin. There was a coffee cup on the table. And besides, we have a statement from Anna Viktoria Hansson, who keeps an eye on everyone’s movements. She swears that the only people who passed her were Salander and our two heroes from Svavelsjö.”
“How did Salander get into the cabin?”
“With a key. I’m guessing she took it from Bjurman’s apartment. You remember—”
“The cut police tape. She’s been busy.”
Modig drummed her fingertips on the table and then took a new approach.
“Has it been confirmed that it was Lundin who had a part in the kidnapping of Miriam Wu?”
“Paolo Roberto looked through mug shots of three dozen bikers. He picked him out right away, no shadow of a doubt that was the man he saw at the warehouse in Nykvarn.”
“And Blomkvist?”
“I haven’t gotten hold of him yet. He’s not answering his mobile.”
“But Lundin matches his description of Salander’s attacker on Lundagatan. So we can assume that Svavelsjö MC has been hunting Salander for a while. Why?”
Bublanski threw up his hands.
Modig asked, “Was Salander living in Bjurman’s summer cabin all the time we were looking for her?”
“I thought of that too. But Jerker doesn’t think so. The cabin doesn’t look as if it’s been lived in recently, and we have a witness who says she arrived on foot earlier today.”
“Why did she go there? I don’t suppose she’d set up a meeting with Lundin.”
“Hardly. She must have been looking for something. And the only thing we found was a bunch of files that seem to contain Bjurman’s own investigation of Salander. It’s all the material about her from social welfare, the Guardianship Agency, and old school reports. But it seems that some of the folders are missing. They were numbered. We have folders 1, 4, and 5.”
“So 2 and 3 are missing.”
“And maybe more with higher numbers.”
“Which raises a question. Why would Salander be looking for information about herself?” Modig said.
“I can think of two reasons. Either she wants to hide something that she knew Bjurman had written about her, or else she wants to find out something. But there’s another question too.”
“What’s that?”
“Why would Bjurman compile an extensive report on her and then hide it in his summer cabin? Salander seems to have found the material in the attic. He was her guardian and was assigned to handle her finances and other matters. But the material there gives the impression that he was almost obsessed with charting her life.”
“Bjurman is looking more and more like a disreputable character. I was thinking about that today when I went through the list of johns at Millennium. I suddenly expected his name to turn up there too.”
“Good thinking. Remember the violent porn you found on his computer. Did you find anything at Millennium?”
“I don’t really know. Blomkvist is busy checking off the names on their list, but according to Malin Eriksson, one of the editors there, he hasn’t turned up anything of interest. Jan … I have