In the weeks before he was murdered, Svensson had spent more and more time researching Zala.
Blomkvist wished he could phone Svensson and ask him why the document about Irina P. was in the folder. The only reasonable conclusion was that Svensson had suspected Zala of murdering her.
At 5:00 p.m. Bublanski called and gave him Miriam Wu's phone number. He didn't know what had made the detective change his mind, but now that he had the number he tried it about once every half hour. Not until 11:00 p.m. did she answer. It was a short conversation.
"Hello, Miriam. My name is Mikael Blomkvist."
"And who the hell are you?"
"I'm a journalist and I work at a magazine called Millennium."
Miriam Wu expressed her feelings in a pithy way. "Ah yes. That Blomkvist. Go to hell, journalist creep."
She broke off the connection before Blomkvist had a chance to explain what he wanted. He directed some bad thoughts at Tony Scala and tried to call back. She did not answer. In the end he sent a text message.
Please call me. It's important.
She never called.
Late that night Blomkvist shut down his computer, undressed, and crawled into bed. He wished he had Berger to keep him company.
CHAPTER 21
PART 4. Terminator Mode
March 24 - April 8
A root of an equation is a number which substituted into the equation instead of an unknown converts the equation into an identity. The root is said to satisfy the equation. Solving an equation implies finding all of its roots. An equation that is always satisfied, no matter the choice of values for its unknowns, is called an identity.
(a + b)2 = a2 + 2ab + b2
CHAPTER 21
Maundy Thursday, March 24 - Monday, April 4
Salander spent the first week of the police hunt far from the drama. She remained in peace and quiet in her apartment on Fiskargatan. Her mobile was turned off and the SIM card taken out. She did not intend to use that phone again. Her eyes grew wide with astonishment as she followed the stories in the online editions of the newspapers and on the TV news programmes.
She was irritated by the passport photograph that appeared everywhere. She looked stupid.
Despite her years of striving for anonymity, she had been transformed overnight into one of the most notorious and talked-about individuals in Sweden. She began to realize that a nationwide alert for a short girl suspected of three murders was one of the year's biggest news stories. She followed the commentary and speculation in the media with amazement, fascinated that confidential documents about her medical history seemed to be accessible to any newsroom that wanted to publish them. One headline in particular awakened buried memories:
ARRESTED FOR
ASSAULT IN GAMLA STAN
A court reporter at TT wire service had scooped his competitors by digging up a medical report that had been written when Salander was arrested for kicking a passenger in the face at Gamla Stan tunnelbana station.
She had been at Odenplan and was on her way back to her foster home in Hagersten. At Rådmansgatan an apparently sober stranger got on the train and immediately focused his attention on her. Later she discovered that he was Karl Evert Norgren, an unemployed former athlete from Gavle. Despite the fact that the carriage was half empty, he sat down next to her and began to bother her. He put his hand on her knee and tried to start a conversation along the lines of "I'll give you two hundred if you come home with me." When she ignored him he got pushy and called her a sour old cunt. The fact that she refused to talk to him and had changed seats at T-Centralen had no effect.
As they were approaching Gamla Stan he put his arms around her from behind and pushed them up inside her sweater, whispering in her ear that she was a whore. She replied with an elbow to his eye and then grabbed one of the upright poles, lifted herself up, and kicked him with both heels across the bridge of his nose, which prompted heavy bleeding.
She was dressed as a punk and had blue-dyed hair, so she had little chance to melt into the crowd when the train stopped at the platform. A friend of law and order had grappled with her and held her down on the ground until the police arrived.
She cursed her gender. Nobody would have dared attack her if she had been a man.
She hardly made any attempt to explain why she had kicked