The Girl Who Lived Twice (Millennium #6) - David Lagercrantz Page 0,108

to see more of what was going on within the industrial building at Morgonsala, so Bogdanov showed her.

They were images he could have done without.

* * *

—

Salander was just passing Norrviken when the signal on her Google Glass disappeared, and she swore and hit the handlebar with her right hand. She had been expecting it, though, and slowed down until she spotted a small patch of woodland by a roadside rest area with a wooden bench and a table. She settled there with her laptop and hoped she would now reap the rewards from all those hours spent charting Camilla’s circle of helpers that summer.

The operation would have been impossible without the services of members of Svavelsjö M.C., and even though Salander assumed they only had prepaid mobiles with them, she still wanted to believe that one or another of them would have made a small mistake along the way. She tried again to check the men who had been to see Kira at Strandvägen: Marko, Jorma, Conny, Krille and Miro. Once again she drew a blank, in spite of the fact that she had hacked their operator and could access the base stations. She slammed her fist on the wooden table in fury and was ready to give up and look for another solution when suddenly she remembered Peter Kovic.

Of everyone in the club, Kovic had the worst criminal record, and was said to have a problem with alcohol and women, and discipline. She had not seen him anywhere near Strandvägen, but he was one of the men who had been at Fiskargatan that summer, so she tried his mobile as well. A short time later she exclaimed in triumph. Early that morning, Kovic had followed the same route as Camilla was now travelling, only he had carried on further north towards Uppsala, past Storvreta and Björklinge. She was just about to have a closer look when her phone rang.

At first she had no intention of answering, but it was Erika Berger from Millennium. All she could hear was Erika yelling and the only words she could make out were:

“He’s burning…he’s burning!”

She began to grasp what was happening.

“They’ve shoved him into a huge furnace. He’s screaming, he’s in excruciating pain, and they say…they’ve written—”

“What?”

“That they’ll burn him alive unless you, Lisbeth, meet them in the woods outside Sunnersta. They say that if they see any police in the area, or anything suspicious, Mikael will die a terrible death…and then they’ll go after others who are close to you and Mikael, they won’t stop until you give yourself up. My God, Lisbeth, it’s so awful. His feet—”

“I’ll find him, do you hear? I’ll find him!”

“They told me to send you the film, and an e-mail address to communicate with them. Lisbeth, you’ve got to tell me what’s going on!”

Salander hung up. She had no time. She needed to get back to Peter Kovic. Last night he had taken the same route as Camilla now, but had gone further north on the E4 towards Tierp and Gävle, and that was encouraging. In fact it was beginning to look promising, and as she drummed her fingers on the table, she muttered:

“Go on, you bloody drunk. Lead me to them.”

But the trail ended in Månkarbo. Salander stared blankly at the road, and looked so full of rage that a young man who had just pulled into the rest area in a Renault got a fright and drove off again. She did not even register him. With jaws clenched she watched the film Berger had sent, and saw a close-up of Blomkvist.

His eyes were open wide, and so white it was as if the pupils had disappeared into the sockets, and his whole face was so tense and disfigured that he was hardly recognizable. Sweat was pouring off him, off his chin, his lips, and the front of his shirt was soaked, while the camera moved down his body to his jeans and feet. He was wearing red socks which were slowly being fed into a large brown-brick furnace with a raging, hissing fire. The socks and the bottoms of his trouser legs caught fire and, after an extraordinary time lag, as if Blomkvist was holding it back for as long as he could, there was a crazed, heartrending scream.

Salander did not say a word, she hardly moved a muscle. But her hand, at that moment like a claw, scratched three deep furrows into the table in front of her. Then she