Did you read last week that they'd found a girl floating in the canal there? There were headlines in the evening papers. It was Irina P."
"Oh no. That's horrible."
They drove in silence past Skanstull.
"She's in my thesis," Johansson said at last. "I gave her the pseudonym Tamara."
Svensson turned to the interview section of "From Russia with Love" and leafed through it to find "Tamara." He read with concentration as Mia passed Gullmarsplan and the Globe Arena.
"She was brought here by somebody you call Anton."
"I can't use real names. I might get criticism for it during my oral exams, but I cannot name the girls. It would put them in real, mortal danger. And obviously I can't identify the johns either, since they could work out which of the girls I had talked to. So in all the case studies I only use pseudonyms."
"Who's Anton?"
"His name is probably Zala. I've never been able to pin down who he is, but I think he's a Pole or a Yugoslav and that's not his real name. I talked with Irina P. four or five times, and it wasn't until our last meeting that she told me his name. She was trying to straighten out her life and get out of the business, but she was certainly really afraid of him."
"I'm just wondering... I ran into the name Zala a week or so ago."
"Where was that?"
"I confronted Sandstrom - the john who's a journalist. A complete bastard."
"In what way?"
"He's not a real journalist. He does advertising newsletters for various companies. And he has sick fantasies about rape that he'd get off on with that girl... "
"I know. I was the one who interviewed her."
"But did you know that he did the text for a brochure about sexually transmitted diseases for the Public Health Institute?"
"I didn't know that."
"I confronted him last week. He totally lost it when I laid out all the evidence and asked why he uses teenage prostitutes from the East to live out his rape fantasies. Gradually I got some sort of explanation out of him."
"And what was it?"
"Sandstrom had gotten into a situation where he wasn't just another customer. He also ran errands for the sex mafia. He gave me the names he knew, including this Zala. He didn't say anything specific about him, but it's not a common name."
Johansson glanced at him.
"Do you know who he is?" Svensson said.
"No. I've never been able to identify him. He's just a name that crops up now and then. The girls all seem terrified of him, and none of them was willing to tell me anything else."
CHAPTER 9
Sunday, March 6 - Friday, March 11
Dr. Sivarnandan stopped in his tracks on his way into the dining room when he caught sight of Palmgren and Salander. They were bent over their chessboard. She came once a week now, usually on Sundays. She always arrived at around 3:00 and spent a couple of hours playing chess with Palmgren. She left around 8:00 in the evening, when it was time for him to go to bed. The doctor had observed that she did not treat him as you would an invalid - on the contrary, it looked like they were squabbling all the time, and she did not mind Palmgren waiting on her, fetching her coffee.
Dr. Sivarnandan could not make her out, this peculiar young woman who took herself for Palmgren's foster daughter. She had a very striking look about her and she seemed to treat everything around her with suspicion. She appeared to have no sense of humour at all. Or the ability to carry on a normal conversation. And when he asked what kind of work she did, she somehow contrived not to give him an answer.
A few days after her first visit she had come back with a bundle of documents which declared that a nonprofit foundation had been established with the sole purpose of assisting the care centre with Palmgren's rehabilitation. The chair of the trustees of the foundation was a lawyer in Gibraltar. There was another lawyer mentioned, also with an address in Gibraltar, and an accountant by the name of Hugo Svensson with an address in Stockholm. The foundation was to make available funds of up to 2.5 million kronor, which Dr. Sivarnandan could dispose of as he wished, but with the exclusive object of giving the patient Holger Palmgren every possible care and facility towards full recovery. Sivarnandan had only to request the necessary funds from the accountant.