Girl Who Played with Fire, The - Stieg Larsson [216]
“What?”
“I don’t think Salander did any of this. Enskede and Odenplan, I mean. I was just as persuaded as all the others when we started, but I don’t believe it now. And I can’t really explain why.”
Bublanski realized that he agreed with Modig.
The giant paced back and forth in Lundin’s house in Svavelsjö. He stopped by the kitchen window and looked down the road. They should have been back by now. He had a sinking feeling in his stomach. Something was wrong.
He didn’t like being alone in this house. He didn’t feel at home here. There was a draft in his room upstairs, and there were always strange noises. He tried to shake off his uneasiness. It was foolish, he knew, but he had never liked being alone. He was not in the least afraid of flesh-and-blood people, but empty houses out in the country he thought were indescribably horrible. The noises got his imagination working. He couldn’t shed the sense that something dark and evil was watching him through the crack in the door. Something he believed he could hear breathing.
When he was younger he’d been troubled by a fear of the dark. That is, he’d been troubled until he had aggressively told off his friends, his own age and sometimes a lot older, who were amused by such weaknesses. He was good at telling people off.
But it was embarrassing. He hated darkness and being alone. He hated the creatures that inhabited darkness and solitude. He wished Lundin would come home. Lundin’s presence would restore the balance, even if they didn’t exchange a word or weren’t even in the same room. He would hear real sounds and he would know that there were people nearby.
He tried to ward off his anxiety by playing CDs on the stereo, and restlessly he tried to find something he wanted to read on Lundin’s shelves. Lundin’s taste in books left much to be desired, and he had to settle for a collection of motorcycle magazines, men’s magazines, and paperback thrillers of the type that had never interested him. The solitude became more and more claustrophobic. He cleaned and oiled the pistol he kept in his bag, and for a while that had a calming effect.
Eventually he had to get out of the house. He walked around the garden to get some fresh air. He stayed out of sight of the neighbouring houses, but stopped so that he could watch the lighted windows where there were people. If he stood quite still he could hear the sound of music in the distance.
When he felt he had to go back inside Lundin’s wooden shack he stood for a long time on the steps before shaking off the oppressive feeling and resolutely going in.
At 7:00 he watched the news on TV4. He listened with horror to the headlines and then to a report on the shoot-out at the summer cabin in Stallarholmen.
He ran up the stairs to his room on the top floor and stuffed his belongings into a bag. Two minutes later he was driving away in his white Volvo.
He had made his escape in the nick of time. Just two miles outside Svavelsjö two police cars with their blue lights flashing passed him, on their way into the village.
After a great deal of patient negotiation Blomkvist was allowed to see Holger Palmgren. He was so insistent that the nurse in charge called Dr. Sivarnandan, who apparently lived nearby. Sivarnandan arrived fifteen minutes later and assumed responsibility for dealing with the stubborn journalist. At first he was not at all sympathetic. Over the past two weeks several reporters had found out where Palmgren was and had used all sorts of strategies to get a statement. Palmgren himself had refused on any account to receive such visitors, and the staff had instructions to let no-one in to see him.
Dr. Sivarnandan had been following the case with much distress. He was shocked at the headlines that Salander had generated in the press. Palmgren had fallen into a deep depression which, Sivarnandan suspected, was a result of his inability to help Salander in any way. Palmgren had broken off his rehabilitation therapy and now spent the days reading newspapers and following the hunt for the girl on TV. Otherwise