a little complicated."
"I'm not snooping."
"I know, but I don't mind telling you. It's someone at the university who's a little older than me. She's been married twenty years, but her husband travels a lot, so we get together when he's not around. Suburbs, villa, all that. She's a closet dyke. It's been going on since last autumn and it's getting a bit boring. But she's really luscious. And then I hang out with the usual gang, of course."
"I was just wondering whether I could come and see you again."
"I'd really like to hear from you."
"Even if I disappear for another six months?"
"Just keep in touch. I'd like to know if you're dead or alive. And in any case I'll remember your birthday."
"No strings?"
Mimmi sighed and smiled.
"You know, you're a dyke I could imagine living with. You'd leave me alone when I wanted to be left alone."
Salander said nothing.
"Apart from the fact that you're not really a dyke. You're probably bisexual. But most of all you're sexual - you like sex and you don't care about what gender. You're an entropic chaos factor."
"I don't know what I am," Salander said. "But I'm in Stockholm now and pretty bad at relationships. In fact, I don't know one single person here. You're the first person I've talked to since I got home."
Mimmi studied her with a serious expression.
"Do you really want to know people? You're the most secretive and unapproachable person I know. But your breasts really are luscious." She put her fingers under one nipple and stretched the skin. "They fit you. Not too big and not too small."
Salander sighed with relief that the reviews were satisfactory.
"And they feel real."
She squeezed the breast so hard that Salander gasped. They looked at each other. Then Mimmi bent and gave Salander a deep kiss. Salander responded and threw her arms around Mimmi. The coffee was left to get cold.
CHAPTER 7
Saturday, January 29 - Sunday, February 13
At around 11:00 on Saturday morning, a car drove into Svavelsjo between Jarna and Vagnharad - the community consisted of no more than fifteen buildings - and stopped in front of the last building, about 500 feet outside the village proper. It was a tumbledown industrial structure that had once been a printing factory but now had a sign over the main door identifying it as Svavelsjo Motorcycle Club. There was no other car in sight. Nevertheless the driver looked around carefully before he got out of his car. He was huge and blond. The air was cold. He put on brown leather gloves and took a black sports bag from the trunk.
He was not worried about being observed. It would be impossible to park close to the old printing factory without being seen. If any police or government unit wanted to keep the building under surveillance, they would have to equip their people with camouflage and telescopes and dig them in at the far end of a field. Inevitably that would be talked about by the villagers, and three of the houses were owned by Svavelsjo MC members.
On the other hand, he did not want to go inside the building. The police had raided the clubhouse on several occasions, and no-one could be sure whether or not bugging equipment had been hidden there. This meant that conversation inside was pretty much about cars, girls, and beer, and sometimes about which stocks were good to invest in.
So the man waited until Carl-Magnus Lundin came out to the yard. Magge Lundin was club president. He was tall with a slim build, but over time he had acquired a hefty beer belly. He was only thirty-six. He had dark blond hair in a ponytail and wore black jeans, boots, and a heavy winter jacket. He had five counts on his police record. Two of them were for minor drug offences, one for receiving stolen goods, and one for stealing a car and drunk driving. The fifth charge, the most serious, had sent him to prison for a year: it was for grievous bodily harm when, several years ago, he had gone berserk in a bar in Stockholm.
Lundin and his huge visitor shook hands and walked slowly along the fence around the yard.
"It's been a few months," Lundin said.
The man said: "We've got a deal going down. 3,060 grams of methamphetamine."
"Same terms as last time?"
"Fifty-fifty."
Lundin pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his breast pocket. He liked doing business with the giant. Meth brought a street price of between 160 and