thinking about Salander?"
"But none of this really adds up. Blomkvist's hypothesis is that his friends were killed because of the book that Svensson was writing."
"Bullshit," Faste said. "It's Salander. Why would anybody murder their guardian to shut Dag Svensson up? And who else could it be... a policeman?"
"If Blomkvist goes public with his hypothesis, we're going to see a hell of a lot of police conspiracy theories," said Andersson.
Everyone at the table murmured agreement.
"All right," Modig said. "Why did she shoot Bjurman?"
"And what does the tattoo mean?" Bublanski said, pointing at a photograph of Bjurman's lower abdomen.
I AM A SADISTIC PIG, A PERVERT, AND A RAPIST.
"What does the pathologist's report say?" Bohman said.
"The tattoo is between one and three years old. That's measured by the extent of bleed-through in the skin," Modig said.
"I think we can rule out the likelihood of Bjurman actually having commissioned it."
"There are plenty of crazies around, but it can hardly be a standard motif among tattoo enthusiasts."
Modig waved her index finger. "The pathologist says that the tattoo has to have been done by a rank amateur. The needle penetrated to different depths, and it's a very large tattoo on a sensitive part of the body. All in all, it must have been a very painful procedure, comparable to aggravated assault."
"Except for the fact that Bjurman never filed a police report," Faste said.
"I wouldn't file a police report either, if somebody tattooed that on me," Andersson said.
"One more thing," Modig said. "And this might reinforce the confession, as it were, in the tattoo." She opened a folder of photographic printouts and passed them around. "I printed out some samples from a folder on Bjurman's hard drive. They're downloaded from the Internet. His computer contains about two thousand images of a similar nature."
Faste whistled and held up a photograph of a woman bound in a brutally uncomfortable position. "This may be something for Domino Fashion or Evil Fingers," he said.
Bublanski gestured in annoyance for Faste to shut up.
"What are we supposed to make of this?" Bohman said.
"Suppose the tattoo is about two years old," Bublanski said. "It would have been done around the time that Bjurman got sick. No medical records indicate that he had any illness, other than high blood pressure. So we can assume that there was a connection."
"Salander changed during that year," Bohman said. "She stopped working for Milton and without warning, I understand, went overseas."
"Should we assume that there's a connection there too? The message in the tattoo plainly says that Bjurman raped someone. Salander is a likely victim. And that would be a motive for murder."
"There are other ways to interpret this, of course," Faste said. "I can imagine a scenario where Salander and the Chinese girl are running some sort of escort service with S&M overtones. Bjurman could be one of those nuts who gets off on being whipped by small girls. He could have been in some sort of dependence relationship with Salander and things went wrong."
"But that doesn't explain what she was doing in Enskede."
"If Svensson and Johansson were about to expose the sex trade, they may have stumbled on Salander and Wu. That may be your motive for Salander to commit murder."
"So far this is mere speculation," said Modig.
The meeting went on for another hour, and also dealt with the fact that Svensson's laptop was missing. When they broke for lunch they were all frustrated. The investigation was fraught with more question marks than ever.
Berger called Magnus Borgsjo, CEO of Svenska Morgon-Posten, as soon as she reached the office on Tuesday morning.
"I'm interested," she said.
"I thought you would be."
"I meant to let you know right after the Easter holiday. But as you'll have heard, chaos has broken out here."
"The murder of Dag Svensson. I'm so sorry. A terrible thing."
"Then you'll understand that this is no time for me to announce my resignation."
He was silent for a moment.
"We have a problem," Borgsjo said. "The last time we spoke, we said that the job would start on August 1. But the thing is, our editor in chief, Håkan Morander, whom you would be replacing, is in very poor health. He has heart problems and has to cut back on work. He talked to his doctor a few days ago, and this weekend I learned that he's now planning to retire on July 1. The idea was that he would still be here until fall, and that you could work in tandem through August and September. But the way the