The Girl Who Lived Twice (Millennium #6) - David Lagercrantz Page 0,67

because yesterday the Minister tried—”

“I don’t give a shit about Forsell,” she snapped. “I’m only interested in the encrypted links Blomkvist received and forwarded.”

“I didn’t manage to crack them.”

“What do you mean you ‘didn’t manage’? You’ll just have to keep trying.”

Bogdanov bit his lip and looked down at the table.

“I’m no longer in there.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Last night someone chucked out my trojan.”

“How the hell did that happen? I thought it was impossible to get at your trojans.”

“I know, but…”

He chewed at his cuticles.

“So it was some sort of fucking genius, you mean?” she hissed.

“Seems like it,” he agreed, and Kira was about to hit the ceiling when a completely different thought struck her. Instead of yelling and making a scene she smiled.

It had dawned on her that Lisbeth was closer than she had dared hope.

* * *

—

Blomkvist lay in bed in Hotel Hellsten on Luntmakargatan, while Salander sat in an armchair over by the window, looking at him absently. He had slept for barely two hours. It hadn’t been such a good idea to go there. It wasn’t as if it had been a romantic night, nor had they met up as old friends. The whole thing had gone off the rails from the moment they met in the doorway.

At first she had stared at him as if she could not wait to tear his clothes off, and even though he had been thinking about Catrin on the way there, he might not have been able to defend himself. But it was not him she was so keen to get her hands on, it was his computer, and his mobile. She grabbed them from him and squatted in a strange crouched position behind some black screens she unfolded and set up on the floor. There she stayed, silent and immobile, with only her fingers working at a frenzied speed. In the end he could not stand it any longer. He lost his temper and yelled at her that he had nearly drowned. That he had saved a bloody minister. Either he had to get some sleep or at least be allowed to talk and find out what she was up to.

“Shut up,” she said.

“For Christ’s sake!”

He was furious. He felt like walking out and never seeing her again. But in the end he turned his back on it all, got undressed, lay down on one side of the double bed and fell asleep like a sulky child. Some time towards dawn she crept in beside him and whispered in his ear, as if in some demented attempt at seduction:

“You had a trojan, smart-arse,” and that ruined the rest of his night.

He was scared. He began to worry about his sources and insisted that she tell him what was going on, which reluctantly she did. Gradually the scale of the madness became clear to him, although not all of it, of course. As usual she was not very forthcoming and soon her eyelids began to droop. She put her head on the pillow and drifted off, leaving him alone and agitated in the bed, and he groaned, convinced that he would not be able to go back to sleep. But now he had woken up and Salander was back in the armchair, dressed in knickers and a black shirt which was far too long for her. She drifted in and out of sleep, while Blomkvist looked groggily at the muscles in her legs and the black rings under her eyes.

“There’s breakfast out there,” she said.

“Great.” He went to fetch the trays and put them one by one on the bed. He made coffee in the Nespresso machine by the window and sat cross-legged on the mattress, and she sat down opposite him. He looked at her as if she were both stranger and intimate friend and, more clearly than ever, he felt he understood her and yet did not understand her at all.

“Why did you hesitate?” he said.

* * *

—

She didn’t like his question. She didn’t like the look on his face. She wanted to get away from there or pull him down into the bed and shut him up, and she thought about Paulina and her husband and the iron in her hand, and about other far worse things from way back in her childhood. She was not at all sure she would answer him. Then she said:

“I remembered something.”

Blomkvist looked at her intently and she regretted at once that she had not kept her