"This is the last report I can deliver. I've been kicked off the investigation," Bohman said.
"Not your fault," Fraklund said.
"No, not your fault," Armansky said and sat down. He had collected all the material that Bohman had provided over the course of two weeks in a pile on the conference table.
"I talked to Bublanski. You've done a good job, Sonny. He is sorry to lose you, but he had no choice because of Hedstrom."
"That's OK. I discovered that I get along much better here at Milton than down at Kungsholmen."
"Can you give us a summary?"
"Well, if the objective was to find Lisbeth Salander, then obviously we failed. It was a very messy investigation with a number of competing personalities, and Bublanski may not have had ultimate control over the search."
"Hans Faste -"
"Faste is a real fuckup. But the problem is not just Faste and a sloppy investigation. Bublanski saw to it that all the leads were followed as far as they could be. The fact is, Salander has been damn good at covering her tracks."
"But your job wasn't only to pin down Salander," Armansky said.
"No, and I'm thankful that we didn't tell Hedstrom about my other assignment to act as your mole and see to it that Salander wasn't falsely accused."
"And what do you think today?"
"When we started I was positive that she was guilty. Today I'm not sure one way or the other. So many things don't fit... "
"Yes?"
"Well, I would no longer consider her the prime suspect. I'm leaning more and more towards thinking there's something to Mikael Blomkvist's reasoning."
"Which means that we have to identify and find the killers. Shall we take the investigation from the beginning?" Armansky said, pouring coffee.
Salander had one of the worst evenings of her life. She was thinking about when she had thrown the firebomb into Zalachenko's car. In that instant the nightmares stopped and she had felt a great inner peace. She had had other problems, but they had always been about her, and she could handle them. Now it was about Mimmi.
Mimmi had been beaten up and was in the hospital. She was innocent. She'd had nothing to do with any of this. Her only crime was that she knew Salander.
She cursed herself. She was riddled with feelings of guilt. The blame was all hers. Her address was secret; she was safe. And then she had persuaded Mimmi to live in her apartment, at the address that anyone could find.
How could she have been so thoughtless? She might as well have beaten her up herself.
She felt so wretched that tears came to her eyes. But Salander never cried. She wiped them away.
At 10:30 she was so restless that she could not stay in the apartment. She put on her coat and boots and set off into the night. She walked down side streets until she reached Ringvagen and stood at the end of the driveway to Soder hospital. She wanted to go to Mimmi's room and wake her up and tell her that everything was going to be all right. Then she saw blue lights from a police car near Zinken and stepped into an alleyway to avoid being seen.
She was home again just after midnight. She was freezing, so she undressed and crawled into bed. She could not sleep. At 1:00 a.m. she was up again, walking naked through the unlit apartment. She went into the guest bedroom, where there was a bed and a desk. She had never set foot in it before. She sat on the floor with her back to the wall and stared into the night.
Lisbeth Salander has a guest bedroom. What a joke.
She sat there until after 2:00, and by then she was so cold that she was shivering. Then she started to cry again.
Some time before dawn, Salander took a shower and dressed. She put on the coffeemaker and made breakfast and turned on her computer. She went into Blomkvist's hard drive. She was surprised to discover that he had not updated his research journal, and instead she opened the folder. There was a new document titled [Lisbeth-IMPORTANT]. She looked at the document properties. It had been created at 12:52 a.m. She double-clicked.
Lisbeth, contact me right away. This story is worse than I could have dreamed. I know who Zalachenko is and I think I know what happened. I've talked to Holger Palmgren. I understand Teleborian's role and why they locked you up at the clinic. I think I know who