The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest Page 0,266

aroused when he followed the reports of Salander's trial. He was appalled when she was acquitted and released. It did not feel right. She was free while he was forced to hide.

He bought the Millennium special issue at the O.K. shop and read all about Salander and Zalachenko and Niedermann. A journalist named Blomkvist had described Niedermann as a pathological murderer and a psychopath. He frowned.

Autumn came suddenly and still he had not made a move. When it got colder he bought an electric heater at the O.K. shop. He did not know what kept him from leaving the brickworks.

Occasionally some young people had driven into the yard and parked there, but no-one had disturbed him or tried to break into the building. In September a car drove up and a man in a blue windcheater had tried the doors and snooped around the property. Niedermann had watched him from the window on the upper floor. The man kept writing in his notebook. He had stayed for twenty minutes before he looked around one last time and got into his car and drove away. Niedermann breathed a sigh of relief. He had no idea who the man was or what business had brought him there, but he appeared to be doing a survey of the property. It did not occur to Niedermann that Zalachenko's death had prompted an inventory of his estate.

He thought a lot about Salander. He had never expected to see her again, but she fascinated and frightened him. He was not afraid of any living person. But his sister - his half-sister - had made a particular impression on him. No-one else had ever defeated him the way she had done. She had come back to life, even though he had buried her. She had come back and hunted him down. He dreamed about her every night. He would wake up in a cold sweat, and he recognized that she had replaced his usual phantoms.

In October he made a decision. He was not going to leave Sweden before he had found his sister and destroyed her. He did not have a plan, but at least his life now had a purpose. He did not know where she was or how he would trace her. He just sat in his room on the upper floor of the brickworks, staring out of the window, day after day, week after week.

Until one day a burgundy Honda parked outside the building and, to his complete astonishment, he saw Salander get out of the car. God is merciful, he thought. Salander would join the two women whose names he no longer remembered in the pool downstairs. His wait was over, and he could at last get on with his life.

Salander assessed the situation and saw that it was anything but under control. Her brain was working at high speed. Click, click, click. She still held the crowbar in her hand but she knew that it was a feeble weapon against a man who could not feel pain. She was locked inside an area of about a thousand square metres with a murderous robot from hell.

When Niedermann suddenly moved towards her she threw the crowbar at him. He dodged it easily. Salander moved fast. She stepped on to a pallet, swung herself up on to a packing crate and kept climbing, like a monkey, up two more crates. She stopped and looked down at Niedermann, now four metres below her. He was looking up at her and waiting.

"Come down," he said patiently. "You can't escape. The end is inevitable."

She wondered if he had a gun of some sort. Now that would be a problem.

He bent down and picked up a chair and threw it at her. She ducked.

Niedermann was getting annoyed. He put his foot on the pallet and started climbing up after her. She waited until he was almost at the top before she took a running start of two quick steps and jumped across an aisle to land on top of another crate. She swung down to the floor and grabbed the crowbar.

Niedermann was not actually clumsy, but he knew that he could not risk jumping from the stack of crates and perhaps breaking a bone in his foot. He had to climb down carefully and set his feet on the floor. He always had to move slowly and methodically, and he had spent a lifetime mastering his body. He had almost reached the floor when he