say a word," she said. "If you talk without permission, I'll zap you."
She waited until he stopped snuffling and met her eyes.
"You have one chance to survive the night," she said. "One chance - not two. I'm going to ask you a number of questions. If you answer them, I'll let you live. Nod if you understand."
He nodded.
"If you refuse to answer a question I'll have to zap you. Understand?"
He nodded.
"If you lie to me or give an evasive answer I'll zap you."
He nodded.
"I'm not going to bargain with you. There will be no second chance. You answer my questions immediately or you die. If you answer satisfactorily, then you'll survive. It's that simple."
He nodded. He believed her. He had no choice.
"Please," he said. "I don't want to die... "
"It's up to you whether you live or die. But you just broke my first rule: you do not talk without my permission."
He pressed his lips together. God, she's completely insane.
Blomkvist was too frustrated and restless to know what to do. Finally he put on his jacket and scarf and walked aimlessly to Sodra station, past Bofills Båge, before he ended up at the Millennium offices on Gotgatan. It was perfectly quiet. He did not turn on any lights, but he did put on the coffeemaker and then stood at the window looking down at Gotgatan. He tried to put his thoughts in order. The murder investigation was like a broken mosaic in which he could make out some pieces while others were simply missing. Somewhere there was a pattern. He could sense it, but he could not figure it out. Too many pieces were missing.
He was assailed by doubt. She is not a deranged killer, he reminded himself. She had written to tell him that she had not shot his friends. He believed her. But in some unfathomable way she was still intimately involved in the murders.
Slowly he began to reevaluate the theory he had clung to since he walked into the apartment in Enskede. He had immediately assumed that Svensson's investigative reporting about sex trafficking was the only plausible motive for the murders. Now he was coming to accept Bublanski's assertion that this couldn't explain Bjurman's murder.
Salander had told him in her message that he should forget about the johns and focus on Zala instead. Why? The damn pest. Why couldn't she tell him anything that made sense?
Blomkvist poured coffee into a Young Left mug. He sat on one of the sofas in the middle of the office, put his feet up on the coffee table, and lit a forbidden cigarette.
Bjorck was on the list of johns. Bjurman had been Salander's guardian. It could not be an accident that Bjurman and Bjorck had both worked at Sapo. A police report about Salander had disappeared.
Could there be more than one motive?
Could Lisbeth Salander be the motive?
Blomkvist sat there with an idea that he couldn't put into words. There was something still unexplored, but he couldn't explain exactly what he meant by the idea that Salander herself could be a motive for murder. He experienced a fleeting sense of discovery.
Then he realized that he was too tired and poured out his coffee, rinsed the machine, and went home to bed. Lying in the dark, he took up the thread again and for two hours tried to understand what it was he wanted to articulate.
Salander smoked a cigarette, comfortably leaning back in the chair in front of him. She crossed her right leg over her left and fixed him with her gaze. Sandstrom had never seen such an intense look before. When she spoke her voice was still soft.
"In January 2003 you visited Ines Hammujarvi for the first time at her apartment in Norsborg. She had just turned sixteen. Why did you visit her?"
Sandstrom did not know how to answer. He could hardly make sense of it himself, how it had begun or why he... She raised the Taser.
"I... I don't know. I wanted her. She was so beautiful."
"Beautiful?"
"Yes. She was beautiful."
"And you thought that you had the right to tie her to the bed and fuck her."
"She went along with it. I swear. She went along with it."
"You paid her?"
Sandstrom bit his tongue. "No."
"Why not? She was a whore. Whores get paid."
"She was a... she was a present."
"A present?" Her voice had taken on a dangerous tone.
"It was in return for a favour I did someone."
"Per-Åke," Salander said in a reasonable tone, "you wouldn't be trying to avoid