The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest Page 0,136

been fluctuating up and down. Last night she had a temperature of 38 and vomited on two occasions. During the night the fever subsided; she was almost back down to normal and I thought the episode had passed. But when I examined her this morning her temperature had gone up to almost 39. That is serious."

"So what's wrong with her?"

"I don't know, but the fact that her temperature is fluctuating indicates that it's not flu or any other viral infection. Exactly what's causing it I can't say, but it could be something as simple as an allergy to her medication or to something else she's come into contact with."

He clicked on an image on his computer and turned the screen towards Faste.

"I had a cranial X-ray done. There's a darker area here, as you can see right next to her gunshot wound. I can't determine what it is. It could be scar tissue as a product of the healing process, but it could also be a minor haemorrhage. And until we've found out what's wrong, I can't release her, no matter how urgent it may be from a police point of view."

Faste knew better than to argue with a doctor, since they were the closest things to God's representatives here on earth. Policemen possibly excepted.

"What is going to happen now?"

"I've ordered complete bedrest and put her physiotherapy on hold - she needs therapeutic exercise because of the wounds in her shoulder and hip."

"Understood. I'll have to call Prosecutor Ekstrom in Stockholm. This will come as a bit of a surprise. What can I tell him?"

"Two days ago I was ready to approve a discharge, possibly for the end of this week. As the situation is now, it will take longer. You'll have to prepare him for the fact that probably I won't be in a position to make a decision in the coming week, and that it might be two weeks before you can move her to Stockholm. It depends on her rate of recovery."

"The trial has been set for July."

"Barring the unforeseen, she should be on her feet well before then."

Bublanski cast a sceptical glance at the muscular woman on other side of the table. They were drinking coffee in the pavement area of a cafe on Norr Malarstrand. It was Friday, May 20, and the warmth of summer was in the air. Inspector Monica Figuerola, her I.D. said, S.I.S. She had caught up with him just as he was leaving for home; she had suggested a conversation over a cup of coffee, just that.

At first he had been almost hostile, but she had very straightforwardly conceded that she had no authority to interview him and that naturally he was perfectly free to tell her nothing at all if he did not want to. He asked her what her business was, and she told him that she had been assigned by her boss to form an unofficial picture of what was true and what not true in the so-called Zalachenko case, also in some quarters known as the Salander case. She vouchsafed that it was not absolutely certain whether she had the right to question him. It was entirely up to him to decide whether he would talk to her or not.

"What would you like to know?" Bublanski said at last.

"Tell me what you know about Salander, Mikael Blomkvist, Gunnar Bjorck, and Zalachenko. How do the pieces fit together?"

They talked for more than two hours.

Edklinth thought long and hard about how to proceed. After five days of investigations, Figuerola had given him a number of indisputable indications that something was rotten within S.I.S. He recognized the need to move very carefully until he had enough information. He found himself, furthermore, on the horns of a constitutional dilemma: he did not have the authority to conduct secret investigations, and most assuredly not against his colleagues.

Accordingly he had to contrive some cause that would legitimize what he was doing. If the worst came to the worst, he could always fall back on the fact that it was a policeman's duty to investigate a crime - but the breach was now so sensitive from a constitutional standpoint that he would surely be fired if he took a single wrong step. So he spent the whole of Friday brooding alone in his office.

Finally he concluded that Armansky was right, no matter how improbable it might seem. There really was a conspiracy inside S.I.S., and a number of individuals were