"Can one get pancakes and jam anywhere round here?"
"Waffles," Jonasson said. "At my house. Let me call my wife to warn her, then we can take a taxi." He stopped and looked at the clock. "On second thoughts, it might be better if we didn't call."
Annika Giannini woke with a start. She saw that it was 5.58 a.m... She had her first client meeting at 8.00. She turned to look at Enrico, who was sleeping peacefully and probably would not be awake before 8.00. She blinked hard a few times and got up to turn on the coffeemaker before she took her shower. She dressed in black trousers, a white polo neck, and a muted brick-red jacket. She made two slices of toast with cheese, orange marmalade and a sliced avocado, and carried her breakfast into the living room in time for the 6.30 television news. She took a sip of coffee and had just opened her mouth to take a bite of toast when she heard the headlines.
One policeman killed and another seriously wounded. Drama last night as triple murderer Lisbeth Salander is finally captured.
At first she could not make any sense of it. Was it Salander who had killed a policeman? The news item was sketchy, but bit by bit she gathered that a man was being sought for the killing. A nationwide alert had gone out for a man in his mid-thirties, as yet unnamed. Salander herself was critically injured and at Sahlgrenska hospital in Goteborg.
She switched to the other channel, but she learned nothing more about what had happened. She reached for her mobile and called her brother, Mikael Blomkvist. She only got his voicemail. She felt a small twinge of fear. He had called on his way to Goteborg. He had been tracking Salander. And a murderer who called himself Ronald Niedermann.
As it was growing light an observant police officer found traces of blood on the ground behind the woodshed. A police dog followed the trail to a narrow trench in a clearing in a wood about four hundred metres north-east of the farmhouse.
Blomkvist went with Inspector Erlander. Grimly they studied the site. Much more blood had obviously been shed in and around the trench.
They found a damaged cigarette case that seemed to have been used as a scoop. Erlander put it in an evidence bag and labelled the find. He also gathered samples of blood-soaked clumps of dirt. A uniformed officer drew his attention to a cigarette butt - a filterless Pall Mall - some distance from the hole. This too was saved in an evidence bag and labelled. Blomkvist remembered having seen a pack of Pall Malls on the kitchen counter in Zalachenko's house.
Erlander glanced up at the lowering rain clouds. The storm that had ravaged Goteborg earlier in the night had obviously passed to the south of the Nossebro area, but it was only a matter of time before the rain came. He instructed one of his men to get a tarpaulin to cover the trench and its immediate surroundings.
"I think you're right," Erlander said to Blomkvist as they walked back to the farmhouse. "An analysis of the blood will probably establish that Salander was buried here, and I'm beginning to expect that we'll find her fingerprints on the cigarette case. She was shot and buried here, but somehow she managed to survive and dig herself out and - "
"And somehow got back to the farm and swung an axe into Zalachenko's skull," Blomkvist finished for him. "She can be a moody bitch."
"But how on earth did she handle Niedermann?"
Blomkvist shrugged. He was as bewildered as Erlander on that score.
CHAPTER 2
FRIDAY, 8.IV
Modig and Holmberg arrived at Goteborg Central Station just after 8.00 a.m. Bublanski had called to give them new instructions. They could forget about finding a car to take them to Gosseberga. They were to take a taxi to police headquarters on Ernst Fontells Plats, the seat of the County Criminal Police in Western Gotaland. They waited for almost an hour before Inspector Erlander arrived from Gosseberga with Blomkvist. Blomkvist said hello to Modig, having met her before, and shook hands with Holmberg, whom he did not know. One of Erlander's colleagues joined them with an update on the hunt for Niedermann. It was a brief report.
"We have a team working under the auspices of the County Criminal Police. An A.P.B. has gone out, of course. The missing patrol car was found in Alingsås