Girl Who Played with Fire, The - Stieg Larsson [57]
“Do you need a job? I’m not going to employ you again.”
She shook her head.
“Are you working somewhere else?”
She shook her head again. She seemed to be trying to formulate her words. Armansky waited.
“I’ve been travelling,” she said at last. “I’m only recently back.”
Armansky studied her. There was a new kind of… maturity in her choice of clothes and her bearing. And she had stuffed her bra with something.
“You’ve changed. Where have you been?”
“Here and there …” she said, but when she saw his annoyance she added, “I went to Italy and kept going, to the Middle East, to Hong Kong via Bangkok. I was in Australia for a while and New Zealand, and I island-hopped my way across the Pacific. I was in Tahiti for a month. Then I travelled through the U.S. and I spent the last few months in the Caribbean. I don’t know why I didn’t say goodbye.”
“I’ll tell you why: because you don’t give a shit about other people,” Armansky said matter-of-factly.
Salander bit her lower lip. “Usually it’s other people who don’t give a shit about me.”
“Bullshit,” Armansky said. “You’ve got an attitude problem and you treat people like dirt when they’re trying to be your friends. It’s that simple.”
Silence.
“Do you want me to leave?”
“You do as you like. You always have. But if you leave now I never want to see you again.”
Salander was suddenly afraid. Someone she respected was about to reject her. She did not know what to say.
“It’s been two years since Holger Palmgren had his stroke. You haven’t once visited him,” Armansky went on relentlessly.
Salander stared at Armansky, shocked. “Palmgren is alive?”
“You don’t even know if he’s alive or dead.”
“The doctors said that he—”
“The doctors said a lot about him,” Armansky interrupted. “He was in a very bad way and couldn’t communicate with anyone. But in the last year he’s recovered quite a bit. He doesn’t articulate too well—you have to listen carefully to understand what he’s saying. He needs help with a lot of things, but he can go to the toilet by himself. People who care about him call in to spend time with him.”
Salander sat dumbfounded. She was the one who had found Palmgren after he had his stroke two years earlier. She had called the ambulance and the doctors had shaken their heads and said that the prognosis was not encouraging. She had lived at the hospital for three days until a doctor told her that Palmgren was in a coma and it was extremely unlikely that he would come out of it. She had stood up and left the hospital without looking back. And obviously without checking to find out what had happened.
She frowned. She had had Nils Bjurman foisted on her at the same time, and he had absorbed a lot of her attention. But nobody, not even Armansky, had told her that Palmgren was still alive, or that he was getting better. She had never considered that possibility.
Her eyes filled with tears. Never in her life had she felt like such a selfish shit. And never had she been savaged in such a furious manner. She bowed her head.
They sat in silence until Armansky said, “How are you doing?”
Salander shrugged.
“How are you making a living? Do you have work?”
“No, I don’t, and I don’t know what kind of work I want. But I’ve got a certain amount of money, so I’m getting by.”
Armansky scrutinized her with searching eyes.
“I just came by to say hello … I’m not looking for a job. I don’t know … maybe I’d do a job for you if you need me sometime, but it would have to be something that interests me.”
“I don’t suppose you want to tell me what happened up in Hedestad last year.”
Salander did not answer.
“Well, something happened. Martin Vanger drove his car into a truck after you’d been back here to borrow surveillance gear, and somebody threatened you. And his sister came back from the dead. It was a sensation, to put it mildly.”
“I’ve given my word I wouldn’t talk about it.”
“And you don’t want to tell me what role you played in the Wennerström affair either.”
“I helped Kalle Blomkvist with research.” Her voice was suddenly much cooler. “That was all.