skull was hanging by a flap of skin. The blood splattered across the bed and the wall told the tale.
Bublanski pouted.
"What are we supposed to be looking at?" Modig asked.
Samuelsson lifted the plastic sheet which covered Bjurman's lower body. Bublanski put on his glasses when he and Modig stepped closer to read the text tattooed on Bjurman's abdomen. The letters were irregular and clumsy - obviously whoever wrote them was a novice tattoo artist - but the message could not have been clearer: I AM A SADISTIC PIG, A PERVERT, AND A RAPIST.
Modig and Bublanski looked at each other in astonishment.
"Are we possibly looking at a motive?" Modig said at last.
Blomkvist bought a pasta meal from the 7-Eleven on his way home and put the paper carton in the microwave as he undressed and stood under the shower for three minutes. He got a fork and ate standing up, right out of the carton. He was hungry, but he had no appetite for food; he just wanted to take it on board as fast as he could. When it was finished he opened a Vestfyn Pilsner beer and drank it straight from the bottle.
Without turning on a lamp he stood by the window overlooking Gamla Stan for more than twenty minutes, while he tried to stop thinking.
Twenty-four hours ago he had been at his sister's house when Svensson had called him on his mobile. He and Johansson had still been alive.
Blomkvist had not slept for thirty-six hours, and the days when he could skip a night's sleep with impunity were long gone. And he knew that he would not be able to sleep without thinking about what he had seen. The images from Enskede felt ingrained in his memory for all time.
Finally he turned off his mobile and crept under the covers. At 11:00 he was still awake. He got up and brewed some coffee. He put on the CD player and listened to Debbie Harry singing "Maria." He wrapped himself in a blanket and sat on the living-room sofa and drank coffee while he worried about Salander.
What did he actually know about her? Hardly anything.
She had a photographic memory and she was a hell of a hacker. He knew that she was a peculiar, introverted woman who didn't like to talk about herself, and that she had absolutely no trust in authority of any kind.
She could be viciously violent. He owed his life to that.
But he had had no idea that she had been declared incompetent or was under guardianship, or that she had spent any part of her teenage years in a psychiatric clinic.
He had to choose whose side he was on.
Sometime after midnight he decided that he couldn't accept the police's assumption that she had murdered Svensson and Johansson. At the very least, he owed her a chance to explain herself before he passed judgment.
He had no idea when he nodded off, but at 4:30 a.m. he woke up on the sofa. He staggered into the bedroom and fell instantly back to sleep.
CHAPTER 16
Good Friday, March 25 - Easter Saturday, March 26
Eriksson leaned back into Blomkvist's sofa. Without thinking, she put her feet up on the coffee table - exactly as she would have done at home - and quickly took them off again. Blomkvist gave her a smile.
"That's OK," he said. "Make yourself at home."
She grinned and put her feet up again.
On Good Friday Blomkvist had brought the copies of Svensson's papers from the Millennium offices to his apartment. He had laid out the material on the floor of the living room, and he and Eriksson had spent eight hours going through emails, notes, jottings in Svensson's notebook, and above all the manuscript of the book.
On Saturday morning Annika Giannini had come to see her brother. She brought the evening newspapers from the day before with their glaring headlines and a huge reproduction of Salander's passport photograph on the front page. One read:
WANTED FOR
TRIPLE MURDER
The other had opted for the more sensational headline:
PSYCHOTIC MASS MURDERER
They talked for an hour, during which Blomkvist explained his relationship with Salander and why he couldn't believe that she was guilty. Finally he asked his sister whether she would consider representing Salander if or when she was caught.
"I've represented women in various cases of violence and abuse, but I'm not really a criminal defence lawyer," she said.
"You're the shrewdest lawyer I know, and Lisbeth is going to need somebody she can trust. I think in the end she would accept