The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest Page 0,253

in the kitchen."

"Thanks," he said, sighing in resignation.

He had, after all, bought the office with her money and at her request, but he had not expected her to turn up without warning. What is more, she had found and apparently read a gay porn magazine that he had kept hidden in a desk drawer.

So embarrassing.

Or maybe not.

When it came to Salander, he felt that she was the most judgemental person he had ever met. But she never once raised an eyebrow at people's weaknesses. She knew that he was officially heterosexual, but his dark secret was that he was attracted to men; since his divorce fifteen years ago he had been making his most private fantasies a reality. It's funny, but I feel safe with her.

Since she was in Gibraltar anyway, Salander had decided to visit MacMillan, the man who handled her finances. She had not been in touch with him since just after New Year, and she wanted to know if he had been busy ruining her ever since.

But there had not been any great hurry, and it was not for him that she had gone straight to Gibraltar after her release. She did it because she felt a burning desire to get away from everything, and in that respect Gibraltar was an excellent choice. She had spent almost a week getting drunk, and then a few days having sex with the German businessman, who eventually introduced himself as Dieter. She doubted it was his real name but had not bothered to check. He spent the days sitting in meetings and the evenings having dinner with her before they went back to his or her room.

He was not at all bad in bed, Salander thought, although he was a bit out of practice and sometimes needlessly rough.

Dieter seemed genuinely astonished that on sheer impulse she had picked up an overweight German businessman who was not even looking for it. He was indeed married, and he was not in the habit of being unfaithful or seeking female company on his business trips. But when the opportunity was presented on a platter in the form of a thin, tattooed young woman, he could not resist the temptation. Or so he said.

Salander did not care much what he said. She had not been looking for anything more than recreational sex, but she was gratified that he actually made an effort to satisfy her. It was not until the fourth night, their last together, that he had a panic attack and started going on about what his wife would say. Salander thought he should keep his mouth shut and not tell his wife a thing.

But she did not tell him what she thought.

He was a grown man and could have said no to her invitation. It was not her problem if he was now attacked by feelings of guilt, or if he confessed anything to his wife. She had lain with her back to him and listened for fifteen minutes, until finally she rolled her eyes in exasperation, turned over and straddled him.

"Do you think you could take a break from the worryguts stuff and get me off again?" she said.

Jeremy MacMillan was a very different story. He held zero erotic attraction for her. He was a crook. Amusingly enough, he looked a lot like Dieter. He was forty-eight, a bit overweight, with greying, dark-blond curly hair that he combed straight back from a high forehead. He wore thin gold-rimmed glasses.

He had once been a Cambridge-educated business lawyer and stockbroker in London. He had had a promising future and was a partner in a law firm that was engaged by big corporations and wealthy yuppies interested in real estate and tax planning. He had spent the go-go '80s hanging out with nouveau riche celebrities. He had drunk hard and snorted coke with people that he really did not want to wake up with the next morning. He had never been charged with anything, but he did lose his wife and two kids along with his job when he mismanaged several transactions and tottered drunk into a mediation hearing.

Without thinking too much about it, he sobered up and fled London with his tail between his legs. Why he picked Gibraltar he did not know, but in 1991 he went into partnership with a local solicitor and opened a modest back-street law office which officially dealt with much less glamorous matters: estate planning, wills and such like. Unofficially, MacMillan&Marks also helped to set up P.O.