Girl Who Played with Fire, The - Stieg Larsson [85]
Svensson and Johansson looked at each other.
“And who are you?”
“I’m interested in the subject. May I come in, or shall we discuss it here on the landing?”
Svensson hesitated for a second. The girl was a total stranger, and the time of her visit was odd, but she seemed harmless enough, so he held the door open. He showed her to the table in the living room.
“Would you like some coffee?” Johansson said.
“How about first telling us who you are,” Svensson said.
“Yes, please. To the coffee, I mean. My name is Lisbeth Salander.”
Johansson shrugged and opened the table thermos. She had already set out cups in anticipation of Blomkvist’s visit. “And what makes you think I’m publishing a book at Millennium?” Svensson said.
He was suddenly deeply suspicious, but the girl ignored him and turned instead to Johansson. She made a face that could have been a crooked smile.
“Interesting thesis,” she said.
Johansson looked shocked.
“How could you know anything about my thesis?”
“I happened to get hold of a copy,” the girl said cryptically.
Svensson’s annoyance grew. “Now you’re really going to have to explain who you are and what you want.”
The girl’s eyes met his. He suddenly noticed that her irises were so dark that in this light her eyes might be raven black. And perhaps he had underestimated her age.
“I’d like to know why you’re going around asking questions about Zala. Alexander Zala,” Salander said. “And above all I’d like to know exactly what you know about him already.”
Alexander Zala, Svensson thought in shock. He had never known the first name.
The girl lifted her coffee cup and took a sip without releasing him from her gaze. Her eyes had no warmth at all. He suddenly felt vaguely uneasy.
Unlike Blomkvist and the other adults at the dinner party (and despite the fact that she was the birthday girl), Annika Giannini had drunk only light beer and refrained from any wine or aquavit with the meal. So at 10:30 she was stone-cold sober. Since in some respects she took her big brother for a complete idiot who needed to be looked after, she generously offered to drive him home via Enskede. She had already planned to drive him to the bus stop on Värmdövägen, and it wouldn’t take that much longer to go into the city.
“Why don’t you get your own car?” she complained anyway as Blomkvist fastened his seat belt.
“Because unlike you I live within walking distance of my work and need a car about once a year. Besides, I wouldn’t have been able to drive anyway after your husband started serving spirits from Skåne.”
“He’s becoming Swedish. Ten years ago it would have been grappa.”
They spent the ride talking as brothers and sisters do. Apart from a persistent paternal aunt, two less persistent maternal aunts, two distant cousins, and one second cousin, Mikael and Annika had only each other for family. The three-year age difference meant that they had not had much in common during their teens. But they had become closer as adults.
Annika had studied law, and Blomkvist thought of her as a great deal more talented than he was. She sailed through university, spent a few years in the district courts, and then became the assistant to one of the better-known lawyers in Sweden. Then she started her own practice. She had specialized in family law, which gradually developed into work on equal rights. She became an advocate for abused women, wrote a book on the subject, and became a respected name. To top it off, she had become involved politically for the Social Democrats, which prompted Blomkvist to tease her about being an apparatchik. Blomkvist himself had decided early on that he could not combine party membership with journalistic credibility. He never willingly voted, and on the occasions when he felt absolutely obliged to vote he refused to talk about his choices, even with Berger.
“How are you doing?” Annika said as they crossed Skurubron.
“Oh, I’m doing fine.”
“So what’s the problem?”
“What problem?”
“I know you, Micke. You’ve been preoccupied all evening.