Girl Who Played with Fire, The - Stieg Larsson [230]
The camera was hidden in what looked like a smoke detector in the hall ceiling, and it took a low-res photograph every second. She played back the sequence from zero, the moment the door was opened and the alarm activated. Then a lopsided smile spread across her face as she looked down at Mikael Blomkvist, who for half a minute acted out a jerky pantomime before he finally punched in the code and then leaned on the doorjamb looking as though he had just avoided having a heart attack.
Kalle Fucking Blomkvist had tracked her down.
He had the keys she had dropped on Lundagatan. He was smart enough to remember that Wasp was her handle on the Net. And if he had found the apartment, then he had probably also worked out that it was owned by Wasp Enterprises. As she watched he began to move jerkily down the hall and disappeared from the camera’s view.
Shit. How could I have been so predictable? And why did I drop those keys?… Now her every secret lay open to Blomkvist’s prying eyes.
After thinking about it for a couple of minutes she decided that it no longer made any difference. She had erased the hard drive. That was the important thing. It could even be to her advantage that he was the one to have found her hideout. He already knew more of her secrets than anyone else did. Practical Pig would do the right thing. He would not sell her out. She hoped. She put the car in drive and pressed on, deep in thought, towards Göteborg.
Eriksson ran into Paolo Roberto in the stairwell to Millennium’s offices when she arrived at 8:30. She recognized him at once, introduced herself, and let him in. He had a bad limp. She smelled coffee and knew that Berger was already there.
“Hello, Erika. Thanks for agreeing to see me at such short notice,” the boxer said.
Berger studied the impressive collection of bruises and lumps on his face before she leaned forward and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
“You look like shit,” she said.
“I’ve broken my nose before. Where are you keeping Blomkvist?”
“He’s out somewhere playing detective, looking for leads. As usual it’s impossible to get hold of him. Except for a strange email last night I haven’t heard from him since yesterday morning. Thank you for … well, thanks.”
She pointed to his face.
Paolo Roberto laughed.
“Would you like coffee? You said you had something to tell me. Malin, join us.”
They sat in the comfortable chairs in Berger’s office.
“It’s that big blond fucker I had the fight with. I told Mikael that his boxing wasn’t worth a rotten lingonberry But the funny thing was, he kept assuming the defensive position with his fists and circled around as if he were a boxer. It seemed as if he had actually had some sort of training.”
“Mikael mentioned that on the phone yesterday,” Eriksson said.
“I couldn’t stop thinking about it, so yesterday when I got home I sat down and sent out emails to boxing clubs all over Europe. I described what had happened and gave as detailed a description as I could of the guy.”
“Did you have any luck?”
“I think I got a nibble.”
He put a faxed photograph on the table in front of Berger and Eriksson. It looked to have been taken during a training session at a boxing club. Two boxers were standing listening to instructions from a heavyset older man in a narrow-brimmed leather hat and tracksuit. Half a dozen people were hanging around the ring listening. In the background stood a large man who looked like a skinhead. A circle had been drawn around him with a marker pen.
“The picture is seventeen years old. The guy in the background is Ronald Niedermann. He was eighteen when the picture was taken, so he should be about thirty-five now. That fits with the giant that kidnapped Miriam Wu. I can’t say with 100 percent certainty that it’s him. The picture is a little too old and it’s poor quality. But I can say that he looks quite similar.”
“Where did you get the picture?”
“I got an answer from Hans Münster, a veteran trainer at Dynamic in Hamburg. Ronald Niedermann boxed for them for a year in the late eighties. Or rather, he tried to box for