the newspapers but also created a lot of unnecessary extra work for the police.
This had developed into the most exasperating murder investigation he had ever been involved in. Somehow he had lost his focus. There had to be a chain of logical consequences.
If a teenager is found stabbed to death on Mariatorget, it's a matter of tracking down which skinhead gang or other mob was rampaging through Soder station an hour earlier. There are friends, acquaintances, and witnesses, and very soon there are suspects.
If a man is killed with three bullets in a bar in Skarholmen and it turns out he was a heavy in the Yugoslav mafia, then it's a matter of finding out which thugs are trying to take control of cigarette smuggling.
If a young woman with a decent background and normal lifestyle is found strangled in her apartment, it's a matter of finding out who her boyfriend was, or who was the last person she talked to at the bar the night before.
Bublanski had run so many investigations like these that he could do them in his sleep.
The current investigation had started off so well. After only a few hours they had found a prime suspect. Salander was practically designed for the role - an obvious psycho case, known to have suffered from violent, uncontrollable outbursts her whole life. It was simply a matter of picking her up and getting a confession or, depending on the circumstances, putting her into psychiatric care.
But after the promising beginning everything had gone to hell. Salander did not live at her address. She had friends like Armansky and Blomkvist. She had a relationship with a lesbian who liked sex with handcuffs, and that put the media in a new frenzy. She had 2.5 million kronor in the bank and no known employer. Then Blomkvist shows up with theories about trafficking and conspiracies - and as a celebrity journalist he has the political clout to create utter chaos in the investigation with a single article.
Above all, the prime suspect had proven to be impossible to locate, despite the fact that she was no taller than a hand's breadth and had tattoos all over her body. It had been almost two weeks since the murders and there wasn't so much as a whisper as to where she might be hiding.
Bjorck had had a wretched day since Blomkvist stepped across his threshold. He had a continuous dull ache in his back, but he paced back and forth in his borrowed house, incapable either of relaxing or of taking any initiative. He couldn't make any sense of the story. The pieces of the puzzle would not fall into place.
When he'd first heard the news about Bjurman's murder, he was aghast. But he hadn't been surprised when Salander was almost immediately identified as the prime suspect and then the hue and cry for her began. He had followed every report on TV, and he bought all the daily papers he could get hold of and read every word written about the case.
He didn't doubt for a second that Salander was mentally ill and capable of killing. He had no reason to question her guilt or the assumptions of the police - on the contrary, everything he knew about Salander told him that she really was a psychotic madwoman. He had been just about to call in and offer his advice to the investigation, or at least check that the case was being handled properly, but then he realized that it actually no longer concerned him. Besides, a call from him might attract the sort of attention that he wanted to avoid. Instead he kept following the breaking news developments with absentminded interest.
Blomkvist's visit had turned his peace and quiet upside down. Bjorck never had any inkling that Salander's orgy of murder might involve him personally - that one of her victims had been a media swine who was about to expose him to the whole of Sweden.
He had even less of an idea that the name Zala would crop up in the story like a hand grenade with its pin pulled, and least of all that the name would be known to a journalist like Blomkvist. It defied all common sense.
The day after Blomkvist's visit Bjorck telephoned his former boss, who was seventy-eight years old and living in Laholm. He had to try to worm out the context without letting on that he was calling for any reason other than pure curiosity and professional concern. It