The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest Page 0,263

of rotting matter grew stronger the further into the workshop she went, and seemed to be worst when she was in the middle of the room. She stopped next to the foundations of one of the old brick furnaces, which was filled with water almost to the brim. She shone her torch on to the coal-black surface of the water but could not make anything out. The surface was partly covered by algae that had formed a green slime. Nearby she found a long steel rod which she stuck into the pool and stirred around. The water was only about fifty centimetres deep. Almost immediately the rod bumped into something. She manipulated it this way and that for several seconds before a body rose to the surface, face first, a grinning mask of death and decomposition. Breathing through her mouth, Salander looked at the face in the beam of the torch and saw that it was a woman, possibly the woman from the passport photograph. She knew nothing about the speed of decay in cold, stagnant water, but the body seemed to have been in the pool for a long time.

There was something moving on the surface of the water. Larvae of some sort.

She let the body sink back beneath the surface and poked around more with the rod. At the edge of the pool she came across something that might have been another body. She left it there and pulled out the rod, letting it fall to the floor as she stood thinking next to the pool.

Salander went back up the stairs. She used the crowbar to break open the middle door. The room was empty.

She went to the last door and slotted the crowbar in place, but before she began to force it, the door swung open a crack. It was not locked. She nudged it open with the crowbar and looked around.

The room was about thirty metres square. It had windows at a normal height with a view of the yard in front of the brickworks. She could see the O.K. petrol station on the hill. There was a bed, a table, and a sink with dishes. Then she saw a bag lying open on the floor. There were banknotes in it. In surprise she took two steps forward before she noticed that it was warm and saw an electric heater in the middle of the room. Then she saw that the red light was on on the coffee machine.

Someone was living here. She was not alone in the building.

She spun around and ran through the inner room, out of the doors and towards the exit in the outer workshop. She stopped five steps short of the stairwell when she saw that the exit had been closed and padlocked. She was locked in. Slowly she turned and looked around, but there was no-one.

"Hello, little sister," came a cheerful voice from somewhere to her right.

She turned to see Niedermann's vast form materialize from behind some packing crates.

In his hand was a large knife.

"I was hoping I'd have a chance to see you again," Niedermann said. "Everything happened so fast the last time."

Salander looked about her.

"Don't bother," Niedermann said. "It's just you and me, and there's no way out except through the locked door behind you."

Salander turned her eyes to her half-brother.

"How's the hand?" she said.

Niedermann was smiling at her. He raised his right hand and showed her. His little finger was missing.

"It got infected. I had to chop it off."

Niedermann could not feel pain. Salander had sliced his hand open with a spade at Gosseberga only seconds before Zalachenko had shot her in the head.

"I should have aimed for your skull," Salander said in a neutral tone. "What the hell are you doing here? I thought you'd left the country months ago."

He smiled at her again.

If Niedermann had tried to answer Salander's question as to what he was doing in the dilapidated brickworks, he probably would not have been able to explain. He could not explain it to himself.

He had left Gosseberga with a feeling of liberation. He was counting on the fact that Zalachenko was dead and that he would take over the business. He knew he was an excellent organizer.

He had changed cars in Alingsås, put the terror-stricken dental nurse Anita Kaspersson in the boot, and driven towards Borås. He had no plan. He improvised as he went. He had not reflected on Kaspersson's fate. It made no difference to him whether she lived or died,