The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets Nest Page 0,27

Lundin carrying the pistol and Salander disarming him. Then a shot was fired accidentally that hit him in the foot. I mean, it can't have been her intention to kill him, since he's still alive."

"Or else she shot him in the foot out of sheer sadism. Who's to know? But how did she deal with Nieminen? He has no visible injuries."

"He does have one, or rather two, small burn marks on his chest."

"What sort of burns?"

"I'm guessing a taser."

"So Salander was supposedly armed with a taser, a Mace canister and a pistol. How much would all that stuff weigh? No, I'm quite sure that either Lundin or Nieminen was carrying the gun, and she took it from them. We're not going to be sure how Lundin came to get himself shot until one or other of the parties involved starts talking."

"Alright."

"As things now stand, Lundin has been charged for the reasons I mentioned earlier. But we don't have a damned thing on Nieminen. I'm thinking of turning him loose this afternoon."

Nieminen was in a vile mood when he left the cells at Sodertalje police station. His mouth was dry so his first stop was a corner shop where he bought a Pepsi. He guzzled it down on the spot. He bought a pack of Lucky Strike and a tin of Goteborg's Rape snuff. He flipped open his mobile and checked the battery, then dialled the number of Hans-Åke Waltari, thirty-three years old and number three in Svavelsjo M.C.'s hierarchy. It rang four times before Waltari picked up.

"Nieminen. I'm out."

"Congrats."

"Where are you?"

"Nykoping."

"What the fuck are you doing in Nykoping?"

"We decided to lay low when you and Magge were busted - until we knew the lay of the land."

"So now you know the lay of the land. Where is everybody?"

Waltari told him where the other five members of Svavelsjo M.C. were located. The news neither pleased Nieminen nor made him any calmer.

"So who the fuck is minding the store while all of you hide away like a bunch of girls?"

"That's not fair. You and Magge take off on some fucking job we know nothing about, and all of a sudden you're mixed up in a shootout with that slut the law are after, Magge gets shot and you're busted. Then they start digging up bodies at our warehouse in Nykvarn."

"So?"

"So? So we were starting to wonder if maybe you and Magge were hiding something from the rest of us."

"And what the fuck would that be? We're the ones who took the job for the sake of the club."

"Well, no-one ever told me that the warehouse was doubling up as a woodland cemetery. Who were those dead bodies?"

Nieminen had a vicious retort on the tip of his tongue, but he stopped himself. Waltari may be an idiot, but this was no time to start an argument. The important thing right now was to consolidate their forces. After stonewalling his way through five police interrogations, it was not a good idea to start boasting that he actually knew something on a mobile less than two hundred metres from a police station.

"Forget the bodies," he said. "I don't know anything about that. But Magge is in deep shit. He's going to be in the slammer for a while, and while he's gone, I'm running the club."

"O.K. What happens now?" Waltari said.

"Who's keeping an eye on the property?"

"Benny stayed at the clubhouse to hold the fort. They searched the place the day you were arrested. They didn't find anything."

"Benny Karlsson?" Nieminen yelled. "Benny K.'s hardly dry behind the ears."

"Take it easy. He's with that blond fucker you and Magge always hang out with."

Sonny froze. He glanced around and walked away from the door of the corner shop.

"What did you say?" he asked in a low voice.

"That blond monster you and Magge hang out with, he showed up and needed a place to hide."

"Goddamnit, Waltari! They're looking for him all over the country!"

"Yeah... that's why he needed somewhere to hide. What were we supposed to do? He's your and Magge's pal."

Nieminen shut his eyes for ten full seconds. Niedermann had brought Svavelsjo M.C. a lot of jobs and good money for several years. But he was absolutely not a friend. He was a dangerous bastard and a psychopath - a psychopath that the police were looking for with a vengeance. Nieminen did not trust Niedermann for one second. The best thing would be if he was found with a bullet in his head.