Girl Who Played with Fire, The - Stieg Larsson [51]
“When can you deliver?”
The giant dropped his sports bag to the ground.
“Delivery has been made.”
Lundin did not feel like opening the bag to check the contents. Instead he reached out his hand as a sign that they had a deal and he intended to do his part.
“There’s one more thing,” the giant said.
“What’s that?”
“We’d like to put a special job your way.”
“Let’s hear it.”
He pulled an envelope out of his inside jacket pocket and gave it to Lundin, who opened it and took out a passport photograph and a sheet of A4 containing personal data. He raised his eyebrows inquiringly.
“Her name is Lisbeth Salander and she lives in Stockholm, on Lundagatan in Södermalm.”
“Right.”
“She’s probably out of the country at present, but she’ll turn up sooner or later.”
“OK.”
“My employer would like to have a quiet talk with her. She has to be delivered alive. We suggest that warehouse near Yngern. And we need someone to clean up afterwards. She has to disappear without a trace.”
“We should be able to handle that. How will we know when she’s home?”
“I’ll tell you.”
“And the price?”
“What do you say to ten thousand for the whole job? It’s pretty straightforward. Drive to Stockholm, pick her up, deliver her to me.”
They shook hands again.
• • •
On her second visit to Lundagatan, Salander flopped down on the lumpy sofa to think. She had to make a number of decisions, and one of these was whether or not she should keep the apartment.
She lit a cigarette, blew smoke up towards the ceiling, and tapped the ash into an empty Coke can.
She had no reason to love this apartment. She had moved in with her mother and her sister when she was four. Her mother had slept in the living room, and she and Camilla shared the tiny bedroom. When she was twelve and “All The Evil” happened, she was moved to a children’s clinic and then, when she was fifteen, to the first in a series of foster families. The apartment had been rented out by her trustee, Holger Palmgren, who had also seen to it that it was returned to her when she turned eighteen and needed a place to live.
The apartment had been a fixed point for almost all of her life. Although she no longer needed it, she did not like the idea of selling it. That would mean strangers in her space.
The logistical problem was that all her mail—insofar as she received any at all—came to Lundagatan. If she got rid of the apartment she would have to find another address to use. Salander did not want to be an official entry in all the databases. In this regard she was almost paranoid. She had no reason to trust the authorities, or anyone else for that matter.
She looked out at the firewall of the back courtyard, as she had done her whole life. She was suddenly glad of her decision to leave the apartment. She had never felt safe there. Every time she turned onto Lundagatan and approached the street door—sober or not—she had been acutely aware of her surroundings, of parked cars and passersby She felt sure that somewhere out there were people who wished her harm, and they would most probably attack her as she came or went from the apartment.
There had been no attack. But that did not mean that she could relax. The address on Lundagatan was on every public register and database, and in all those years she had never had the means to improve her security; she could only stay on her guard. Now the situation was different. She did not want anyone to know her new address in Mosebacke. Instinct warned her to remain as anonymous as possible.
But that did not solve the problem of what to do with the old apartment. She brooded about it for a while and then took out her mobile and called Mimmi.
“Hi, it’s me.”
“Hi, Lisbeth. So you make contact after only a week this time?”
“I’m at Lundagatan.”
“OK.”
“I was wondering if you’d like to take over the apartment.”
“What do you mean?”
“You live in a shoebox.”
“I like my shoebox. Are you moving?”
“It’s empty here.”
Mimmi seemed to hesitate