Girl Who Played with Fire, The - Stieg Larsson [87]
“Dag? Mia?” he called.
No answer.
Suddenly he felt an icy shiver run down his neck. He recognized the smell: cordite. Then he approached the living-room door. The first thing he saw was HolyMotherofGod Svensson slumped beside the dining-room chairs in a pool of blood a yard across.
Blomkvist hurried over. At the same time he pulled out his mobile and dialled 112 for emergency services. They answered right away.
“My name is Mikael Blomkvist. I need an ambulance and police.”
He gave the address.
“What is this regarding?”
“A man. He seems to have been shot in the head and is unconscious.”
Blomkvist bent down and tried to find a pulse on Svensson’s neck. Then he saw the enormous crater in the back of his head and realized that he must be standing in Svensson’s brain matter. Slowly he withdrew his hand.
No ambulance crew in the world would be able to save Dag Svensson now.
Then he noticed shards from one of the coffee cups that Johansson had inherited from her grandmother and that she was so afraid would get broken. He straightened up quickly and looked all around.
“Mia,” he yelled.
The neighbour in the brown dressing gown had come into the hall behind him. Blomkvist turned at the living-room door and held his hand up.
“Stop there,” he said. “Back out to the stairs.”
The neighbour at first looked as if he wanted to protest, but he obeyed the order. Blomkvist stood still for fifteen seconds. Then he stepped around the pool of blood and proceeded warily past Svensson’s body to the bedroom door.
Johansson lay on her back on the floor at the foot of the bed. NonononotMiatooforGodssake. She had been shot in the face. The bullet had entered below her jaw by her left ear. The exit wound in her temple was as big as an orange and her right eye socket gaped empty. The flow of blood was if possible even greater than that from her partner. The force of the bullet had been such that the wall above the head of the bed, several yards away, was covered with blood splatter.
Blomkvist became aware that he was clutching his mobile in a death grip with the line to the emergency centre still open and that he had been holding his breath. He took air into his lungs and raised the telephone.
“We need the police. Two people have been shot. I think they’re dead. Please hurry.”
He heard the voice from emergency services say something but did not catch the words. He felt as if there was something wrong with his hearing. It was utterly silent around him. He did not hear the sound of his own voice when he tried to say something. He backed out of the apartment. When he got out to the landing he realized that his whole body was shaking and that his heart was pounding painfully. Without a word he squeezed through the petrified crowd of neighbours and sat down on the stairs. From far away he could hear the neighbours asking him questions. What happened? Are they hurt? Did something happen? The sound of their voices echoed as if coming through a tunnel.
Blomkvist felt numb. He knew that he was in shock. He leaned his head down between his knees. Then he began to think. Good God—they’ve been murdered. They were shot just a few minutes ago. The killer could still be in the apartment… no, I would have seen him. He couldn’t stop shaking. The sight of Johansson’s shattered face could not be erased from his retina.
Suddenly his hearing came back, as if someone had turned up a volume control. He got up quickly and looked at the neighbour in the dressing gown.
“You,” he said. “Stay here and make sure nobody goes inside the apartment. The police and an ambulance are on their way. I’ll go down and let them in.”
Blomkvist took the stairs three at a time. On the ground floor he glanced at the cellar stairs and stopped short. He took a step towards the cellar. Halfway down the stairs lay a revolver in plain sight. Blomkvist thought it looked like a Colt .45 Magnum—the kind of weapon used to murder Olof Palme.∗
He suppressed the impulse to pick up the weapon. Instead he went and opened the front