The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

"No. Nothing new," she said. "But I have something I'd like to try on you."



"Try it."



"What do you think the chances are that this isn't a stalker but somebody I know who wants to fuck with me?"



"What's the difference?"



"To me a stalker is someone I don't know who's become fixated on me. The alternative is a person who wants to take some sort of revenge and sabotage my life for personal reasons."



"Interesting thought. Why did this come up?"



"I was... discussing the situation with someone today. I can't give you her name, but she suggested that threats from a real stalker would be different. She said a stalker would never have written the email to the girl on the culture desk. It seems completely beside the point."



Linder said: "There is something to that. You know, I never read the emails. Could I see them?"



Berger set up her laptop on the kitchen table.



Figuerola escorted Blomkvist out of police headquarters at 10.00 p.m. They stopped at the same place in Kronoberg park as the day before.



"Here we are again. Are you going to disappear to work or do you want to come to my place and come to bed with me?"



"Well..."



"You don't have to feel pressured, Mikael. If you have to work, then do it."



"Listen, Figuerola, you're worryingly habit-forming."



"And you don't want to be dependent on anything. Is that what you're saying?"



"No. That's not what I'm saying. But there's someone I have to talk to tonight and it'll take a while. You'll be asleep before I'm done."



She shrugged.



"See you."



He kissed her cheek and headed for the bus stop on Fridhemsplan.



"Blomkvist," she called.



"What?"



"I'm free tomorrow morning as well. Come and have breakfast if you can make it."



CHAPTER 21



SATURDAY, 4.VI  -  MONDAY, 6.VI



Salander picked up a number of ominous vibrations as she browsed the emails of the news editor, Holm. He was fifty-eight and thus fell outside the group, but Salander had included him anyway because he and Berger had been at each other's throats. He was a schemer who wrote messages to various people telling them how someone had done a rotten job.



It was obvious to Salander that Holm did not like Berger, and he certainly wasted a lot of space talking about how the bitch had said this or done that. He used the Net exclusively for work-related sites. If he had other interests, he must google them in his own time on some other machine.



She kept him as a candidate for the title of Poison Pen, but he was not a favourite. Salander spent some time thinking about why she did not believe he was the one, and arrived at the conclusion that he was so damned arrogant he did not have to go to the trouble of using anonymous email. If he wanted to call Berger a whore, he would do it openly. And he did not seem the type to go sneaking into Berger's home in the middle of the night.



At 10.00 in the evening she took a break and went into [Idiotic_Table]. She saw that Blomkvist had not come back yet. She felt slightly peeved and wondered what he was up to, and whether he had made it in time to Teleborian's meeting.



Then she went back into S.M.P.'s server.



She moved to the next name on the list, assistant sports editor Claes Lundin, twenty-nine. She had just opened his email when she stopped and bit her lip. She closed it again and went instead to Berger's.



She scrolled back in time. There was relatively little in her inbox, since her email account had been opened only on May 2. The very first message was a midday memo from Peter Fredriksson. In the course of Berger's first day several people had emailed her to welcome her to S.M.P.



Salander carefully read each message in Berger's inbox. She could see how even from day one there had been a hostile undertone in her correspondence with Holm. They seemed unable to agree on anything, and Salander saw that Holm was already trying to exasperate Berger by sending several emails about complete trivialities.



She skipped over ads, spam and news memos. She focused on any kind of personal correspondence. She read budget calculations, advertising and marketing projections, an exchange with C.F.O. Sellberg that went on for a week and was virtually a brawl over staff layoffs. Berger had received irritated messages from the head of the legal department about some temp. by the name of Johannes Frisk. She had apparently detailed him to work on some story and this had not been appreciated. Apart from the first welcome emails, it seemed as if no-one at management level could see anything positive in any of Berger's arguments or proposals.



After a while Salander scrolled back to the beginning and did a statistical calculation in her head. Of all the upper-level managers at S.M.P., only four did not engage in sniping. They were the chairman of the board Magnus Borgsjo, assistant editor Fredriksson, front-page editor Magnusson, and culture editor Sebastian Strandlund.



Had they never heard of women at S.M.P.? All the heads of department were men.



Of these, the one that Berger had least to do with was Strandlund. She had exchanged only two emails with the culture editor. The friendliest and most engaging messages came from front-page editor Gunnar Magnusson. Borgsjo's were terse and to the point.



Why the hell had this group of boys hired Berger at all, if all they did was tear her limb from limb?



The colleague Berger seemed to have the most to do with was Fredriksson. His role was to act as a kind of shadow, to sit in on her meetings as an observer. He prepared memos, briefed Berger on various articles and issues, and got the jobs moving.



He emailed Berger a dozen times a day.



Salander sorted all of Fredriksson's emails to Berger and read them through. In a number of instances he had objected to some decision Berger had made and presented counter-proposals. Berger seemed to have confidence in him since she would then often change her decision or accept his argument. He was never hostile. But there was not a hint of any personal relationship to her.



Salander closed Berger's email and thought for a moment.



She opened Fredriksson's account.



Plague had been fooling around with the home computers of various employees of S.M.P. all evening without much success. He had managed to get into Holm's machine because it had an open line to his desk at work; any time of the day or night he could go in and access whatever he was working on. Holm's P.C. was one of the most boring Plague had ever hacked. He had no luck with the other eighteen names on Salander's list. One reason was that none of the people he tried to hack was online on a Saturday night. He was beginning to tire of this impossible task when Salander pinged him at 10.30.



-  What is it?



-  Peter Fredriksson.



-  Ok.



-  Go for others. Focus on them.



-  Why?



-  A feeling.



-  That's going to take time.



-  There is a shortcut: Fredriksson is assistant editor, he uses the Integrator  -  a program that helps to control S.M.P. intranet from home.



-  I don't know a thing about Integrator.



-  A small program that appeared a few years ago. It is now completely outdated. Integrator has a bug. There is Hacker Rep. file that can theoretically reverse the program and allow to enter home PC from work.



Plague sighed. This girl who had once been his student now had a better handle on things than he did.



-  Okay. I'll try.



-  If you find something, contact Mikael Blomkvist if I am no longer connected.



Blomkvist was back at Salander's apartment on Mosebacke just before midnight. He was tired. He took a shower and put on some coffee, and then he booted up Salander's computer and pinged her I.C.Q.



-  About time.



-  Sorry.



-  Where have you been all this time?



-  In a bed with a secret agent. And hunting Jonas.



-  Didn't miss the meeting?



-  No. It was you, who called Erika?



-  It was the only way to contact you.



-  Very clever.



-  Tomorrow I'll be put in jail.



-  I know.



-  Plague will help you with the network.



-  Great.



-  Then there's nothing but the end.



Mikael nodded to himself.



-  Sally... Let's do what we have to do.



-  I know. You are very predictable.



-  And you're a charm, as always.



-  Is there anything else I should know?



-  No.



-  In that case, I still have some work on the net.



-  Okay. Have a good time.



Linder woke with a start when her earpiece beeped. Someone had just tripped the motion detector she had placed in the hall on the ground floor. She propped herself up on her elbow. It was 5.23 on Sunday morning. She slipped silently out of bed and pulled on her jeans, a T-shirt and trainers. She stuffed the Mace in her back pocket and picked up her spring-loaded baton.



She passed the door to Berger's bedroom without a sound, noticing that it was closed and therefore locked.



She stopped at the top of the stairs and listened. She heard a faint clinking sound and movement from the ground floor. Slowly she went down the stairs and paused in the hall to listen again.



A chair scraped in the kitchen. She held the baton in a firm grip and crept to the kitchen door. She saw a bald, unshaven man sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of orange juice, reading S.M.P. He sensed her presence and looked up.



"And who the hell are you?"



Linder relaxed and leaned against the door jamb. "Greger Beckman, I presume. Hello. I'm Susanne Linder."



"I see. Are you going to hit me over the head or would you like a glass of juice?"



"Yes, please," Linder said, putting down her baton. "Juice, that is."



Beckman reached for a glass from the draining board and poured some for her.



"I work for Milton Security," Linder said. "I think it's probably best if your wife explains what I'm doing here."



Beckman stood up. "Has something happened to Erika?"



"Your wife is fine. But there's been some trouble. We tried to get hold of you in Paris."



"Paris? Why Paris? I've been in Helsinki, for God's sake."



"Alright. I'm sorry, but your wife thought you were in Paris."



"That's next month," said Beckman on his way out of the door.



"The bedroom is locked. You need a code to open the door," Linder said.



"I beg your pardon... what code?"



She told him the three numbers he had to punch in to open the bedroom door. He ran up the stairs.



At 10.00 on Sunday morning Jonasson came into Salander's room.



"Hello, Lisbeth."



"Hello."



"Just thought I'd warn you: the police are coming at lunchtime."



"Fine."



"You don't seem worried."



"I'm not."



"I have a present for you."



"A present? What for?"



"You've been one of my most interesting patients in a long time."



"You don't say," Salander said sceptically.



"I heard that you're fascinated by D.N.A. and genetics."



"Who's been gossiping? That psychologist lady, I bet."



Jonasson nodded. "If you get bored in prison... this is the latest thing on D.N.A. research."



He handed her a brick of a book entitled Spirals  -  Mysteries of DNA, by Professor Yoshito Takamura of Tokyo University. Salander opened it and studied the table of contents.



"Beautiful," she said.



"Someday I'd be interested to hear how it is that you can read academic texts that even I can't understand."



As soon as Jonasson had left the room, she took out her Palm. Last chance. From S.M.P.'s personnel department Salander had learned that Fredriksson had worked at the paper for six years. During that time he had been off sick for two extended periods: two months in 2003 and three months in 2004. From the personnel files she concluded that the reason in both instances was burnout. Berger's predecessor Morander had on one occasion questioned whether Fredriksson should indeed stay on as assistant editor.



Yak, yak, yak. Nothing concrete to go on.



At 11.45 Plague pinged her.



-  What?



-  You still at Sahlgrenska?



-  How do you think?



-  It's him.



-  Are you sure?



-  He's connected to the computer at work from home half an hour ago. I took a chance and got into his home computer. He has scanned photos of Erika Berger on the hard drive.



-  Thanks.



-  She's pretty good.



-  Plague!



-  I know. Well, what do I do?



-  Has he posted the photos on the net?



-  As far as I know, not.



-  Can you mine his computer?



-  That's already done. If he tries to send photos by mail or uploads more than twenty kilobytes, the hard drive will die.



-  Okay.



-  I wanted to go to sleep. Did you manage it alone?



-  As always.



Salander logged off from I.C.Q. She glanced at the clock and realized that it would soon be lunchtime. She rapidly composed a message that she addressed to the Yahoo group [Idiotic_Table]:



Mikael. Important. Call Berger right away and tell her Fredriksson is Poison Pen.



The instant she sent the message she heard movement in the corridor. She polished the screen of her Palm Tungsten T3 and then switched it off and placed it in the recess behind the bedside table.



"Hello, Lisbeth." It was Giannini in the doorway.



"Hello."



"The police are coming for you in a while. I've brought you some clothes. I hope they're the right size."