The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest Page 0,160

box in the basement and put that in the master bathroom too.

She put the canister of Mace from her shoulder bag on her bedside table. Finally she found a rubber doorstop and wedged it under the bedroom door. And then she almost hoped that the moron who had called her a whore and destroyed her window would be stupid enough to come back that night.

By the time she felt sufficiently entrenched it was 1.00. She had to be at S.M.P. at 8.00. She checked her diary and saw that she had four meetings, the first at 10.00. Her foot was aching badly. She undressed and crept into bed.

Then, inevitably, she lay awake and worried.

Whore.

She had received nine emails, all of which had contained the word "whore," and they all seemed to come from sources in the media. The first had come from her own newsroom, but the source was a fake.

She got out of bed and took out the new Dell laptop that she had been given when she had started at S.M.P.

The first email - which was also the most crude and intimidating with its suggestion that she would be fucked with a screwdriver - had come on May 16, a couple of weeks ago.

Email number two had arrived two days later, on May 18.

Then a week went by before the emails started coming again, now at intervals of about twenty-four hours. Then the attack on her home. Again, whore.

During that time Carlsson on the culture pages had received an ugly email purportedly sent by Berger. And if Carlsson had received an email like that, it was entirely possible that the emailer had been busy elsewhere too - that other people had got mail apparently from her that she did not know about.

It was an unpleasant thought.

The most disturbing was the attack on her house.

Someone had taken the trouble to find out where she lived, drive out here, and throw a brick through the window. It was obviously premeditated - the attacker had brought his can of spray paint. The next moment she froze when she realized that she could add another attack to the list. All four of her tyres had been slashed when she spent the night with Blomkvist at the Slussen Hilton.

The conclusion was just as unpleasant as it was obvious. She was being stalked.

Someone, for some unknown reason, had decided to harass her.

The fact that her home had been subject to an attack was understandable - it was where it was and impossible to disguise. But if her car had been damaged on some random street in Sodermalm, her stalker must have been somewhere nearby when she parked it. They must have been following her.

CHAPTER 18

THURSDAY, 2. VI

Berger's mobile was ringing. It was 9.05.

"Good morning, Fru Berger. Dragan Armansky. I understand you called last night."

Berger explained what had happened and asked whether Milton Security could take over the contract from Nacka Integrated Protection.

"We can certainly install an alarm that will work," Armansky said. "The problem is that the closest car we have at night is in Nacka centre. Response time would be about thirty minutes. If we took the job I'd have to subcontract out your house. We have an agreement with a local security company, Adam Security in Fisksatra, which has a response time of ten minutes if all goes as it should."

"That would be an improvement on N.I.P., which doesn't bother to turn up at all."

"It's a family-owned business, a father, two sons, and a couple of cousins. Greeks, good people. I've known the father for many years. They handle coverage about 320 days a year. They tell us in advance the days they aren't available because of holidays or something else, and then our car in Nacka takes over."

"That works for me."

"I'll be sending a man out this morning. His name is David Rosin, and in fact he's already on his way. He's going to do a security assessment. He needs your keys if you're not going to be home, and he needs your authorization to do a thorough examination of your house, from top to bottom. He's going to take pictures of the entire property and the immediate surroundings."

"Alright."

"Rosin has a lot of experience, and we'll make you a proposal. We'll have a complete security plan ready in a few days which will include a personal attack alarm, fire security, evacuation and break-in protection."

"O.K."

"If anything should happen, we also want