Girl Who Played with Fire, The - Stieg Larsson [71]
She stood on Götgatan for a minute before heading north. Her internal warning system had suddenly gone on high alert.
Salander stopped at the 7-Eleven and bought a week’s worth of food: a jumbo pack of Billy’s Pan Pizza, three frozen fish casseroles, three bacon pies, two pounds of apples, two loaves of bread, a pound of cheese, milk, coffee, a carton of Marlboro Lights, and the evening papers. She walked up Svartensgatan to Mosebacke and looked all around before she punched in the door code of her building. She put one of the bacon pies in the microwave and drank milk straight from the carton. She switched on the coffee machine and then booted up her computer, clicking on Asphyxia 1.3 and logging in to the mirrored copy of Bjurman’s hard drive. She spent the next half hour going through the contents of his computer.
She found absolutely nothing of interest. He seemed to use his email rarely; she discovered only a dozen brief personal messages to or from acquaintances. None of the emails had any connection to her.
She found a newly created folder with porn photos that made clear that he was still interested in the sadistic humiliation of women. Technically it wasn’t a violation of her rule that he couldn’t have anything to do with women.
She opened the folder of documents dealing with Bjurman’s role as Salander’s guardian and read through each of his monthly reports. They corresponded precisely to the copies he had sent to one of her hotmail addresses.
Everything normal.
Maybe a small discrepancy… When she opened the file properties in Word for the various monthly reports, she could see that he usually wrote them in the first few days of each month, that he spent about four hours editing each report, and sent them punctually to the Guardianship Agency on the twentieth of every month. It was now the middle of March and he had not yet begun work on the current month’s report. Lazy? Out too late? Busy with something else? Up to some tricks? Salander frowned.
She shut down the computer and sat on her window seat and opened her cigarette case. She lit a cigarette and looked out at the darkness. She had been sloppy about keeping track of him. He’s as slippery as an eel.
She was genuinely worried. First Kalle Fucking Blomkvist, then the name Zala, and now Nils Fucking Slimebag Bjurman together with an alpha male on steroids with contacts in some gang of ex-con bikers. Within a few days, several ripples of disquiet had materialized in the orderly life Salander was trying to create for herself.
At 2:30 the following morning Salander put a key in the front door of the building on Upplandsgatan near Odenplan, where Bjurman lived. She stopped outside his door, carefully lifted up the mail slot cover, and shoved in an extremely sensitive microphone she had bought at Counterspy in Mayfair in London. She had never heard of Ebbe Carlsson, but that was the shop where he had bought the famous eavesdropping equipment that caused Sweden’s minister of justice to resign suddenly in the late 1980s. Salander inserted her earpiece and adjusted the volume.
She could hear the dull humming of the refrigerator and the sharp ticking of at least two clocks, one of which was the wall clock in the living room to the left of the front door. She turned up the volume and listened, holding her breath. She heard all sorts of creaks and rumbles from the apartment, but no evidence of human activity. It took her a minute to notice and decipher the faint sounds of heavy, regular breathing.
Bjurman was asleep.
She withdrew the microphone and stuffed it in the pocket of her leather jacket. She was wearing dark jeans and sneakers with crepe soles. She inserted the key in the lock without a sound and pushed the door open a crack. Before she opened it all the way she took the Taser out of her pocket. She had brought no other weapon. She did not think she would need anything more powerful for dealing with Bjurman.
She closed the door behind her and padded on soundless