against the rest of Sweden, which in its simplicity was quite an elegant and lucid equation. Now suddenly she had an ally, or at least a potential ally, who claimed to believe she was innocent. And of course it would be the only man in Sweden that she never wanted to see again under any circumstances. She sighed. Blomkvist was, as always, a naive do-gooder. Salander hadn't been innocent since the age of ten.
There are no innocents. There are, however, different degrees of responsibility.
Bjurman was dead because he had chosen not to play according to the rules she had stipulated. He had had every chance, but still he had hired some fucking alpha male to do her harm. That was not her responsibility.
But Kalle Blomkvist's involvement should not be underrated. He could be useful.
He was good at riddles and he was unmatchably stubborn. She had found that out in Hedestad. When he sank his teeth into something he simply would not let go. He really was naive. But he could move in places where she couldn't. He might be useful until she could get safely out of the country. Which was what she assumed she would soon be forced to do.
Unfortunately, Blomkvist could not be controlled. He needed a reason of his own to act. And he needed a moral excuse as well.
In other words, he was quite predictable. She thought for a while and then created a new document called [To MikBlom] and wrote a single word.
Zala.
That would give him something to think about.
She was still sitting there thinking when she noticed that Blomkvist had booted up his computer. His reply came shortly after he read her message:
Lisbeth,
You damn troublesome person. Who the hell is Zala? Is he the link? Do you know who murdered Dag & Mia? If so, tell me so we can solve this mess and go to sleep. Mikael.
OK. Time to hook him.
She created another document and called it [Kalle Blomkvist]. She knew that would upset him. Then she wrote a brief message:
You're the journalist. Find out.
As expected, he replied at once with an appeal for her to listen to reason, and he tried to play on her feelings. She smiled and closed her connection to his hard drive.
***
Now that she had started snooping around, she moved on and opened Armansky's hard drive. She read the report about herself that he had written the day after Easter. It was not clear to whom the report was addressed, but she assumed that the only reasonable explanation was that Armansky was working with the police to help bring her in.
She spent a while going through Armansky's email, but found nothing of interest. Just as she was about to disconnect, she lit upon a message to the technical chief at Milton Security with instructions for the installation of a hidden surveillance camera in his office.
Bingo.
She looked at the date and saw that the message was sent about an hour after her social call in February.
That meant she would have to adjust certain routines in the automatic surveillance system before she paid another visit to Armansky's office.
CHAPTER 22
Tuesday, March 29 - Sunday, April 3
On Tuesday morning Salander accessed the police criminal register and looked up Alexander Zalachenko. He was not listed, which was not surprising, since as far as she knew he had never been convicted of a crime in Sweden and was not even in the national database.
When she had accessed the criminal register she used the identity of Superintendent Douglas Skiold of the Malmo police. She got a mild shock when her computer suddenly pinged and an icon in the menu toolbar started blinking to signal that someone was looking for her in the ICQ chat programme.
Her first impulse was to pull the plug and shut down. Then she thought about it. Skiold had not had the ICQ programme on his machine. Very few older people did.
Which meant that someone was looking for her. And there were not many alternatives to choose from. She clicked on ICQ and typed the words:
- What is it, Plague?
- You are hard to find, Wasp. Ever read your emails?
- How did you find me?
- By Skiold. I have the same list. I thought you chose the user with the widest access rights.
- What do you want?
- Who is that Zalachenko you were looking for?
- MYOB.
- ...?
- Mind Your Own Business.
- What's happening?
- Fuck off, Plague!
- I thought that it was me, as you say, had problems of social adaptation. But