Girl Who Played with Fire, The - Stieg Larsson [236]
“Mikael…”
“I know. But I’m on Lisbeth’s side through it all.”
Berger pressed her lips together and said nothing. Then she nodded.
“Be careful,” she said, but he had already left.
I should go with him, she thought. That was the only decent thing to do. But she still hadn’t told him that she was going to leave Millennium and that it was all over, no matter what happened. She took the folder and headed for the photocopier.
The box was in a post office in a shopping centre. Salander didn’t know Göteborg, nor where in the city she was, but she found the post office and positioned herself in a café where she could keep watch on the box through a gap in a window where there was a poster advertising the Svensk Kassatjänst, the improved Swedish postal system.
Irene Nesser wore more discreet makeup than Lisbeth Salander. She had some silly necklaces on and was reading Crime and Punishment, which she had found in a bookshop one street away. She took her time, occasionally turning a page. She’d begun her surveillance at lunch time and had no idea whether anyone came regularly to pick up the mail, whether it might be daily or every other week, whether it had already been collected earlier in the day, or whether anyone ever turned up at all. But it was her only lead, and she drank a caffè latte while she waited.
She was about to doze off when she suddenly saw the door to the box being opened. She glanced at the clock. A quarter to two. Lucky as shit.
She got up quickly and walked over to the window, where she spotted someone in a black leather jacket leaving the area where the boxes were. She caught up with him on the street outside. He was a thin young man in his twenties. He walked round the corner to a Renault and unlocked the door. Salander memorized the licence plate number and ran back to her Corolla, which was parked only a hundred yards away on the same street. She caught up with the car as it turned onto Linnégatan. She followed him down Avenyn and up towards Nordstan.
• • •
Blomkvist arrived at Central Station in time to catch the X2000 train at 5:10 p.m. He bought a ticket on board with his credit card, took a seat in the restaurant car, and ordered a late lunch.
He felt a gnawing uneasiness in the pit of his stomach and was afraid he had set off too late. He prayed that Salander would call him, but he knew that she wouldn’t.
She had done her best to kill Zalachenko in 1991. Now, after all these years, he had struck back.
Palmgren had delivered a prescient analysis. Salander had experienced personally that it was no use talking to the authorities.
Blomkvist glanced at his laptop bag. He had brought along the Colt that he’d found in her desk. He wasn’t sure why he had taken the gun, but he’d felt instinctively that he must not leave it in her apartment. He knew that wasn’t much of a logical argument.
As the train rolled across Årstabron he flipped open his mobile and called Bublanski.
“What do you want?” Bublanski said, obviously annoyed.
“To tie up loose ends,” Blomkvist said.
“Loose ends of what?”
“This whole mess. Do you want to know who murdered Svensson, Johansson, and Bjurman?”
“If you have information I’d like to hear it.”
“The murderer’s name is Ronald Niedermann. That’s the giant who boxed with Paolo Roberto. He’s a German citizen, thirty-five years old, and he works for a scumbag named Alexander Zalachenko, also known as Zala.”
Bublanski said nothing for a long time, and then Blomkvist heard him sigh, turn over a sheet of paper, and click his ballpoint.
“And you’re sure about this?”
“Yes.”
“OK. So where are Niedermann and this Zalachenko?”
“I don’t know yet. But as soon as I work it out I’ll let you know. In a little while Erika Berger will deliver to you a police report from 1991. In it you’ll find all sorts of information about Zalachenko and Salander.”
“Like what?”
“That Zalachenko is Lisbeth’s father, for example. That he’s a hit man who defected from the Soviet Union during the Cold War.”
“A Russian hit man?” Bublanski echoed.
“A faction within S