The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest Page 0,122

kicked him. But a source in the police whom I trust tells me that the evidence in each case is woolly. The following is important:

(1) Before Zalachenko was shot he denied everything and claimed that it could only have been Niedermann who shot and buried you. He laid a charge against you for attempting to murder him. The prosecutor is going to go on about this being the second time you have tried to kill him.

(2) Neither Lundin or Sonny Nieminen has said a word about what happened at Stallarholmen. Lundin has been arrested for kidnapping Miriam. Nieminen has been released.

Salander had already discussed all of this with Giannini. That was nothing new. She had told Giannini everything that had happened in Gosseberga, but she had refrained from telling her anything about Bjurman.

What I think you haven't understood are the rules of the game.

It's like this. Sapo got saddled with Zalachenko in the middle of the Cold War. For fifteen years he was protected, no matter what havoc he wrought. Careers were built on Zalachenko. On any number of occasions they cleaned up behind his rampages. This is all criminal activity: Swedish authorities helping to cover up crime against individual citizens.

If this gets out, there'll be a scandal that will affect both the conservative and social democratic parties. Above all, people in high places within Sapo will be exposed as accomplices in criminal and immoral activities. Even though by now the statute of limitations has run out on the specific instances of crime, there'll still be a scandal. It involves big beasts who are either retired now or close to retirement.

They will do everything they can to reduce the damage to themselves and their group, and that means you'll once again be a pawn in their game. But this time it's not a matter of them sacrificing a pawn - it'll be a matter of them actively needing to limit the damage to themselves personally. So you'll have to be locked up again.

This is how it will work. They know that they can't keep the lid on the Zalachenko secret for long. I've got the story, and they know that sooner or later I'm going to publish it. It doesn't matter so much, of course, now that he's dead. What matters to them is their own survival. The following points are therefore high on their agenda:

(1) They have to convince the district court (the public, in effect) that the decision to lock you up in St Stefan's in 1991 was a legitimate one, that you really were mentally ill.

(2) They have to separate the "Salander affair" from the "Zalachenko affair". They'll try to create a situation where they can say that "certainly Zalachenko was a fiend, but that had nothing to do with the decision to lock up his daughter. She was locked up because she was deranged - any claims to the contrary are the sick fantasies of bitter journalists. No, we did not assist Zalachenko in any crime - that's the delusion of a mentally ill teenage girl."

(3) The problem is that if you're acquitted, it would mean that the district court finds you not only not guilty, but also not a nutcase. And that would have to mean that locking you up in 1991 was illegal. So they have, at all costs, to condemn you again to the locked psychiatric ward. If the court determines that you are mentally ill, the media's interest in continuing to dig around in the "Salander affair" will die away. That is how the media work.

Are you with me?

All of this she had already worked out for herself. The problem was that she did not know what she should do.

Lisbeth - seriously - this battle is going to be decided in the mass media and not in the courtroom. Unfortunately the trial is going to be held behind closed doors "to protect your privacy".

The day that Zalachenko was shot there was a robbery at my apartment. There were no signs on my door of a break-in, and nothing was touched or moved - except for one thing. The folder from Bjurman's summer cabin with Bjorck's report was taken. At the same time my sister was mugged and her copy of the report was also stolen. That folder is your most important evidence.

I have let it be known that our Zalachenko documents are gone, disappeared. In fact I had a third