Girl Who Played with Fire, The - Stieg Larsson [253]
It was almost midnight when he saw the lights from Bodin’s farmhouse. He stood still for several minutes but heard nothing other than the usual nighttime sounds. Instead of taking the road straight to the farm, he walked along the edge of the field and approached the building from the barn, stopping in the yard about a hundred feet from the house. His every nerve was on edge. The fact that Niedermann had been running away was reason enough to believe that some catastrophe had occurred here.
Suddenly he heard a sound. He spun around and dropped to one knee with his gun raised. It took him a few seconds to identify the source: one of the outbuildings. Somebody moaning. He moved quickly across the grass and stopped by the shed. Peering round the corner he could see a light inside.
He listened. Someone was moving around. Holding the pistol in front of him, he lifted the crossbar with his left hand, pulled open the door, and was confronted by a pair of terrified eyes in a blood-streaked face. He saw the axe on the floor.
“Holy shit,” he said.
Then he saw the prosthesis.
Zalachenko.
Salander had definitely paid him a visit, but Blomkvist couldn’t imagine what must have happened. He closed the door and replaced the crossbar.
With Zalachenko in the woodshed and Niedermann bound hand and foot beside the road to Sollebrunn, Blomkvist hurried across the courtyard to the farmhouse. It was possible that there was a third person who might yet be a danger, but the house seemed unoccupied, almost abandoned. Pointing his gun at the ground, he eased open the front door. He came into a dark hall and saw a rectangle of light from the kitchen. The only sound was the ticking of a wall clock. When he reached the door he saw Salander lying on the kitchen bench.
For a moment he stood as if petrified, staring at her mangled body. He noticed that she was holding a pistol in her hand, which hung loosely off the edge of the bench. He went to her side and sank to his knees. He thought about how he had found Svensson and Johansson and thought that she was dead too. Then he saw a slight movement in her chest and heard a feeble, wheezing breath.
He reached out his hand and carefully loosened the gun from her grip. Suddenly her fist tightened around its butt. She opened her eyes to two narrow slits and stared at him for many long seconds. Her eyes were unfocused. Then he heard her mutter in such a low voice that he could only with difficulty catch the words.
Kalle Fucking Blomkvist.
She closed her eyes and let go of the gun. He put it on the floor, took out his mobile, and dialled the number for emergency services.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Stieg Larsson was the editor in chief of the antiracist magazine Expo and for twenty years the graphics editor at a Swedish news agency. He was a leading expert on anti-democratic, right-wing extremist, and Nazi organizations. He died in 2004, shortly after delivering the manuscripts for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl Who Played with Fire, and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest.
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Translation copyright © 2009 by Reg Keeland
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by
Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.aaknopf.com
Originally published in Sweden as Flickan Som Lekte Med Elden by
Norstedts, Stockholm, in 2006. Copyright © 2006 by Norstedts Agency.
This translation originally published in Great Britain by MacLehose Press,
an imprint of Quercus, London, with agreement of Norstedts Agency.
Published by arrangement with Quercus Publishing PLC (UK).
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of
Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Larsson, Stieg, 1954–2004.
[Flickan som lekte med elden. English]
The girl who played with fire / by Stieg Larsson; translated from
the Swedish by Reg Keeland.—1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
Originally