Girl Who Played with Fire, The - Stieg Larsson [95]
Bublanski’s statistics were good in terms of the number of cases he had solved, and he was held in high esteem by his colleagues. But they also considered him a bit odd, partly because he was Jewish. On certain high holy days he had been seen wearing a yarmulke in the corridors of police headquarters. This had occasioned a comment from a police commissioner, soon after retired, who was of the opinion that it was inappropriate to wear a yarmulke in police headquarters, in the same way he found it inappropriate for a policeman to wear a turban on duty. There was no further discussion about the matter. A journalist heard the comment and started asking questions, at which point the commissioner quickly repaired to his office.
Bublanski belonged to the Söder congregation and ate vegetarian food if kosher fare was unavailable. But he was not so Orthodox that he refused to work on the Sabbath. He immediately recognized that the killings in Enskede were not going to be a routine investigation. Ekström had taken him aside as soon as he appeared, just after 8:00.
“This seems to be a miserable story,” Ekström said. “The two who were shot were a journalist and his partner, a criminologist. And that’s not all. They were found by another journalist.”
Bublanski nodded. That effectively guaranteed that the case would be closely watched by the media.
“And to add a pinch more salt to the wound, the journalist who found the couple was Mikael Blomkvist of Millennium magazine.”
“Whoops,” Bublanski said.
“Well known from the circus surrounding the Wennerström affair.”
“What do we know about the motive?”
“So far, not a thing. Neither of the victims is known to us. They seem to have been a conscientious pair. The woman was going to get her doctorate in a few weeks. This case gets top priority.”
For Bublanski, murder always had top priority.
“We’re putting together a team. You’ll have to work fast, and I’ll ensure that you have all the resources you need. You’ve got Faste and Andersson. You’ll have Holmberg. He’s on the Rinkeby murder case, but it seems that the perp has skipped the country. You can also draw on the National Criminal Police as required.”
“I want Sonja Modig.”
“Isn’t she a little young?”
Bublanski raised his eyebrows in surprise.
“She’s thirty-nine, just about your age, and besides, she’s exceedingly sharp.”
“OK, you decide who you want on the team, but do it quickly. The brass are already after us.”
Bublanski took that to be an exaggeration. At this hour, the brass would be at breakfast.
The investigation formally began with a meeting just before 9:00, when Inspector Bublanski assembled his troops in a conference room at county police headquarters. He studied the group, not altogether happy with its composition.
Modig was the one he had the most confidence in. She had twelve years’ experience, four of them in the violent crimes division, where she had been involved in several of the investigations led by Bublanski. She was exacting and methodical, but Bublanski had observed in her the trait he regarded as the most valuable in tricky investigations: she had imagination and the ability to make associations. In at least two complex cases, Modig had discovered peculiar and improbable connections that all the others had missed, and these had led to breakthroughs. She also had a fresh, intellectual humour that Bublanski appreciated.
He was pleased to have Jerker Holmberg on his team. Holmberg was fifty-five and originally from Ångermanland. He was a stocky, plain individual, who had none of Modig’s imagination, but he was, in Bublanski’s view, perhaps the best crime scene investigator in the entire Swedish police force. They had worked