fury that astonished him. Usually he was cool and analytical, but he knew that some time in the future he would have to pay her back and erase the shame. But first he had to get a grip on the chaos that Svavelsjo M.C. had landed in because of Salander and Niedermann.
Nieminen took the two remaining Polish guns, loaded them, and handed one to Waltari.
"Have we got a plan?"
"We're going to drive over and have a talk with Niedermann. He isn't one of us, and he doesn't have a criminal record. I don't know how he's going to react if they catch him, but if he talks he could send us all to the slammer. We'd be sent down so fast it'd make your head spin."
"You mean we should..."
Nieminen had already decided that Niedermann had to be got rid of, but he knew that it would be a bad idea to frighten off Waltari before they were in place.
"I don't know. We'll see what he has in mind. If he's planning to get out of the country as fast as hell then we could help him on his way. But as long as he risks being busted, he's a threat to us."
The lights were out at Goransson's place when Nieminen and Waltari drove up in the twilight. That was not a good sign. They sat in the car and waited.
"Maybe they're out," Waltari said.
"Right. They went to the bar with Niedermann," Nieminen said, opening the car door.
The front door was unlocked. Nieminen switched on an overhead light. They went from room to room. The house was well kept and neat, which was probably because of her, whatever-her-name-was, the woman Goransson lived with.
They found Goransson and his girlfriend in the basement, stuffed into a laundry room.
Nieminen bent down and looked at the bodies. He reached out a finger to touch the woman whose name he could not remember. She was ice-cold and stiff. That meant they had been dead maybe twenty-four hours.
Nieminen did not need the help of a pathologist to work out how they had died. Her neck had been broken when her head was turned 180 degrees. She was dressed in a T-shirt and jeans and had no other injuries that Nieminen could see.
Goransson, on the other hand, wore only his underpants. He had been beaten, had blood and bruises all over his body. His arms were bent in impossible directions, like twisted tree limbs. The battering he had been subjected to could only be defined as torture. He had been killed, as far as Nieminen could judge, by a single blow to the neck. His larynx was rammed deep into his throat.
Nieminen went up the stairs and out of the front door. Waltari followed him. Nieminen walked the fifty metres to the barn. He flipped the hasp and opened the door.
He found a dark-blue 1991 Renault.
"What kind of car does Goransson have?" Nieminen said.
"He drove a Saab."
Nieminen nodded. He fished some keys out of his jacket pocket and opened a door at the far end of the barn. One quick look around told him that they were there too late. The heavy weapons cabinet stood wide open.
Nieminen grimaced. "About 800,000 kronor," he said.
"What?"
"Svavelsjo M.C. had about 800,000 kronor stashed in this cabinet. It was our treasury."
Only three people knew where Svavelsjo M.C. kept the cash that was waiting to be invested and laundered. Goransson, Lundin, and Nieminen. Niedermann was on the run. He needed cash. He knew that Goransson was the one who handled the money.
Nieminen shut the door and walked slowly away from the barn. His mind was spinning as he tried to digest the catastrophe. Part of Svavelsjo M.C.'s assets were in the form of bonds that he could access, and some of their investments could be reconstructed with Lundin's help. But a large part of them had been listed only in Goransson's head, unless he had given clear instructions to Lundin. Which Nieminen doubted - Lundin had never been clever with money. Nieminen estimated that Svavelsjo M.C. had lost upwards of 60 per cent of its assets with Goransson's death. It was a devastating blow. Above all they needed the cash to take care of day-to-day expenses.
"What do we do now?" Waltari said.
"We'll go and tip off the police about what happened here."
"Tip off the police?"
"Yes, damn it. My prints are all over the house. I want Goransson and his bitch to be found as soon as possible, so that forensics can work