Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The - Stieg Larsson [131]
“What do you mean?”
“Armansky tells me you’re 100 percent reliable. But I still want to ask you the question. Can I tell you confidential things without your telling them to anyone else, by any means, ever?”
“Wait a minute. You’ve talked to Dragan? Is he the one who sent you here?” I’m going to kill you, you fucking stupid Armenian.
“Not exactly. You’re not the only one who can find out someone’s address; I did that all on my own. I looked you up in the national registry. There are three Lisbeth Salanders, and the other two weren’t a good match. But I had a long talk with Armansky yesterday. He too thought that I wanted to make trouble over your ferreting around in my private life. In the end I convinced him that I had a legitimate purpose.”
“Which is what?”
“As I told you, Frode’s employer hired me to do a job. I’ve reached a point where I need a skilled researcher. Frode told me about you and said that you were pretty good. He hadn’t meant to identify you, it just slipped out. I explained to Armansky what I wanted. He OK’d the whole thing and tried to call you. And here I am. Call him if you want.”
It took Salander a minute to find her mobile among the clothes that Mimmi had pulled off her. Blomkvist watched her embarrassed search with interest as he patrolled the apartment. All her furniture seemed to be strays. She had a state-of-the-art PowerBook on an apology for a desk in the living room. She had a CD player on a shelf. Her CD collection was a pitiful total of ten CDs by groups he had never heard of, and the musicians on the covers looked like vampires from outer space. Music was probably not her big interest.
Salander saw that Armansky had called her seven times the night before and twice this morning. She punched in his number while Blomkvist leaned against the door frame and listened to the conversation.
“It’s me…sorry…yes…it was turned off…I know, he wants to hire me…no, he’s standing in the middle of my fucking living room, for Christ’s sake…” She raised her voice. “Dragan, I’m hung over and my head hurts, so please, no games, did you OK this job or not?…Thanks.”
Salander looked through the door to the living room at Blomkvist pulling out CDs and taking books off the bookshelf. He had just found a brown pill bottle that was missing its label, and he was holding it up to the light. He was about to unscrew the top, so she reached out and took the bottle from him. She went back to the kitchen and sat down on a chair, massaging her forehead until he joined her.
“The rules are simple,” she said. “Nothing that you discuss with me or with Armansky will be shared with anyone at all. There will be a contract which states that Milton Security pledges confidentiality. I want to know what the job is about before I decide whether I want to work for you or not. That also means that I agree to keep to myself everything you tell me, whether I take the job or not, provided that you’re not conducting any sort of serious criminal activity. In which case, I’ll report it to Dragan, who in turn will report it to the police.”
“Fine.” He hesitated. “Armansky may not be completely aware of what I want to hire you for…”
“Some historical research, he said.”
“Well, yes, that’s right. I want you to help me to identify a murderer.”
It took Blomkvist an hour to explain all the intricate details in the Harriet Vanger case. He left nothing out. He had Frode’s permission to hire her, and to do that he had to be able to trust her completely.
He told her everything about Cecilia Vanger and that he had found her face in Harriet’s window. He gave Salander as good a description of her character as he could. She had moved high up on the list of suspects, his list. But he was still far from believing that she could be in any way associated with a murderer who was active when she was still a young woman.
He gave Salander a copy of the list in the date book: “Magda—32016; Sara—32109; R.J.—30112; R.L.—32027; Mari—32018.” And he gave her a copy of the verses