Girl Who Played with Fire, The - Stieg Larsson [252]
He weighed his chances. He knew that if he charged the man he could take away the gun. But the man sounded cold and was standing behind the car door. He would be hit by at least one, maybe two bullets. If he moved fast the man might miss, or at least not hit a vital organ, but even if he survived, the bullets would make it difficult and perhaps impossible for him to escape. It would be better to wait for a more suitable opportunity.
“LIE DOWN NOW!” Blomkvist yelled.
He moved the muzzle an inch and fired a round into the ditch.
“The next one hits your kneecap,” Blomkvist said in a loud, clear voice of command.
Niedermann got down on his knees, blinded by the headlights.
“Who are you?” he said.
Blomkvist reached his other hand into the pocket in the car door and took out the flashlight he had bought at the gas station. He shone the beam into Niedermann’s face.
“Hands behind your back,” Blomkvist commanded. “And spread your legs.”
He waited until Niedermann reluctantly obeyed the orders.
“I know who you are. If you even begin to do anything stupid I’ll shoot you without warning. I’m aiming at your lung below your shoulder blade. You might be able to take me … but it’ll cost you.”
He put the flashlight on the ground and took off his belt and made a noose with it, exactly as he’d learned two decades earlier as a rifleman in Kiruna when he did his military service. He stood between the giant’s legs, looped the noose around his arms and pulled it tight above the elbows. The mighty Niedermann was for all practical purposes helpless.
And then what? Blomkvist looked around. They were completely alone on a road in the dark. Paolo Roberto hadn’t been exaggerating when he described Niedermann. The man was huge. The question was only why such a massive guy had come running in the middle of the night as if he were being chased by the Devil himself.
“I’m looking for Lisbeth Salander. I assume you met her.”
Niedermann did not answer.
“Where is Lisbeth Salander?”
Niedermann gave him a peculiar look. He didn’t understand what was happening to him on this strange night when everything seemed to be going wrong.
Blomkvist shrugged. He went back to the car, opened the trunk, and found a neatly coiled rope. He couldn’t leave Niedermann tied up in the middle of the road, so he looked around. Thirty yards further along the road he saw a traffic sign in the headlights. CAUTION: MOOSE CROSSING.
“Get up.”
He put the muzzle of the gun against Niedermann’s neck, led him to the sign, and forced him into the ditch. He told Niedermann to sit with his back against the pole. Niedermann hesitated.
“This is all quite simple,” Blomkvist said. “You killed Dag Svensson and Mia Johansson. They were my friends. I’m not going to let you loose on the road, so either you sit here while I tie you or I’ll shoot you in the kneecap. Your choice.”
Niedermann sat. Blomkvist ran the tow rope around his neck and tied his head securely to the pole. Then he used fifty feet of rope to bind the giant fast around the torso and waist. He saved a length to tie his forearms to the pole, and finished off his handiwork with some real sailor’s knots.
When he was finished, he asked again where Salander was. He got no reply, so he shrugged and left Niedermann there. It wasn’t until he was back in the car that he felt the adrenaline flowing and realized what he had just done. The image of Johansson’s face flickered before his eyes.
Blomkvist lit a cigarette and drank some water out of the bottle. He looked at the figure in the dark beneath the moose sign. Then he looked at the map and saw that he had about half a mile before the turnoff to Karl Axel Bodin’s farm. He started the engine and drove past Niedermann.
• • •
He drove slowly past the turnoff with the sign to Gosseberga and parked next to a barn on a forest road a hundred yards further north. He took his pistol and turned his flashlight on. He found fresh tire tracks in the mud and decided that another car had been parked in that same place earlier, but he didn’t stop to consider what that might mean.