The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (79 page)

It was all over, and yet now her life felt more claustrophobic than ever.

Miriam Wu had gone to France.
It was my fault that you almost died
. She had shuddered at the thought of having to see Mimmi, but had decided
that that would be her first stop when she was released. But she had gone to France.

All of a sudden she was in debt to people.

Palmgren. Armansky. She ought to contact them to say thank you. Paolo Roberto. And Plague and Trinity. Even those damned police officers, Bublanski and Modig, who had so obviously been in her corner. She did not like feeling beholden to anyone. She felt like a chess piece in a game she could not control.

Kalle Fucking Blomkvist
. And maybe even Erika Fucking Berger with the dimples and the expensive clothes and all that self-assurance.

But it was over. Giannini had said so as they left police headquarters. Right. The trial was over. It was over for Giannini. And it was over for Blomkvist. He had published his book and would end up on TV and probably win some fucking prize too.

But it was not over for Lisbeth Salander. This was only the first day of the rest of her life.

At 4:00 in the morning she stopped thinking. She discarded her punk outfit on the floor of her bedroom and went to the bathroom and took a shower. She cleaned off all the make-up she had worn in court, put on loose, dark linen pants, a white top, and a thin jacket. She packed an overnight bag with a change of underwear and a couple of tops and put on some simple walking shoes.

She picked up her Palm and called a taxi to collect her from Mosebacke Torg. She rode out to Arlanda Airport and arrived just before 6:00. She studied the departure board and booked a ticket for the morning flight to Málaga. She used her own passport in her own name. She was surprised that nobody at the ticket desk or at the check-in counter seemed to recognize her or react to her name.

She landed in Málaga in the blazing midday heat. She stood inside the terminal building for a moment, feeling uncertain. Then she bought a pair of sunglasses at an airport shop, went out to the taxi stand, and climbed into the back seat of the first taxi.

“Gibraltar. I’m paying with a credit card.”

The trip took three hours via the new motorway along the coast. The taxi dropped her off at British passport control and she walked across the border and over to the Rock Hotel on Europa Road, partway up the slope of the 1,398-foot monolith. She asked if they had a room and was told there
was a double room available. She booked it for two weeks and handed over her credit card.

She showered and sat on the balcony wrapped up in a bath towel, looking out over the Straits of Gibraltar. She could see freighters and a few yachts. She could just make out Morocco in the haze on the other side of the straits. It was peaceful.

After a while she went in and lay down and slept.

The next morning Salander woke at 5:00. She got up, showered, and had a coffee in the hotel bar on the ground floor. At 7:00 she left the hotel and set out to buy mangoes and apples. She took a taxi to the Peak and walked over to the apes. She was so early that few tourists had yet appeared, and she was practically alone with the animals.

She liked Gibraltar. It was her third visit to the strange rock that housed an absurdly densely populated English town on the Mediterranean. Gibraltar was a place that was not like anywhere else. The town had been isolated for decades, a colony that obstinately refused to be incorporated into Spain. The Spaniards protested the occupation, of course. (But Salander thought that the Spaniards should keep their mouths shut on that score so long as they occupied the enclave of Ceuta on Moroccan territory across the straits.) It was a place that was comically shielded from the rest of the world, consisting of a bizarre rock, about three quarters of a square mile of town, and an airport that began and ended in the sea. The colony was so small that every square inch of it was used, and any expansion had to be over the sea. Even to get into the town, visitors had to walk across the landing strip at the airport.

Gibraltar gave the concept of “compact living” a whole new meaning.

Salander watched a big male ape climb up onto a wall next to the path. He glowered at her. He was a Barbary ape. She knew better than to try to stroke any of the animals.

“Hello, friend,” she said. “I’m back.”

The first time she visited Gibraltar she had not even heard about these apes. She had gone up to the top just to look at the view, and she was surprised when she followed some tourists and found herself in the midst of a group of apes climbing and scrambling on both sides of the pathway.

It was a peculiar feeling to be walking along a path and suddenly have two dozen apes around you. She looked at them with great wariness. They were not dangerous or aggressive, but they were certainly capable of giving you a bad bite if they got agitated or felt threatened.

She found one of the guards and showed him her bag of fruit and asked if she could give it to the apes. He said it was OK.

She took out a mango and put it on the wall a little way away from the male ape.

“Breakfast,” she said, leaning against the wall and taking a bite of an apple.

The male ape stared at her, bared his teeth, and contentedly picked up the mango.

In the middle of the afternoon five days later, Salander fell off her stool in Harry’s Bar on a side street off Main Street, two blocks from her hotel. She had been drunk almost continuously since she left the apes on the rock, and most of her drinking had been done with Harry O’Connell, who owned the bar and spoke with a phoney Irish accent, having never in his life set foot in Ireland. He had been watching her anxiously.

When she had ordered her first drink several days earlier, he had asked to see her ID. Her name was Lisbeth, he knew, and he called her Liz. She would come in after lunch and sit on a high stool at the far end of the bar with her back against the wall. Then she would drink an impressive number of beers or shots of whisky.

When she drank beer she did not care what brand or type it was; she accepted whatever he served her. When she ordered whisky she always chose Tullamore Dew, except on one occasion when she studied the bottles behind the bar and asked for Lagavulin. When the glass was brought to her, she sniffed at it, stared at it for a moment, and then took a tiny sip. She set down her glass and stared at it for a minute with an expression that seemed to indicate that she considered its contents to be a mortal enemy.

Finally she pushed the glass aside and asked Harry to give her something that could not be used to tar a boat. He poured her another Tullamore Dew and she went back to her drinking. Over the past four days she had consumed almost a whole bottle. He had not kept track of the beers. Harry was surprised that a young woman with her slender build could hold so much, but he took the view that if she wanted alcohol she was going to get it, whether in his bar or somewhere else.

She drank slowly, did not talk to any of the other customers, and did not make any trouble. Her only activity apart from the consumption of alcohol seemed to be to play with a hand-held computer which she connected to a mobile now and then. He had several times tried to start a conversation but was met with a sullen silence. She seemed to avoid company. Sometimes,
when there were too many people in the bar, she moved outside to a table on the sidewalk, and at other times she went two doors down to an Italian restaurant and had dinner. Then she would come back to Harry’s and order another Tullamore Dew. She usually left the bar at around 10:00 and made her way unsteadily off, always to the north.

Today she had drunk more and at a faster rate than on the other days, and Harry had kept a watchful eye on her. When she had put away seven glasses of Tullamore Dew in a little over two hours, he decided not to give her anymore. It was then that he heard the crash as she fell off the bar stool.

He put down the glass he was drying and went around the counter to pick her up. She seemed offended.

“I think you’ve had enough, Liz,” he said.

She looked at him, bleary-eyed.

“I believe you’re right,” she said in a surprisingly lucid voice.

She held on to the bar with one hand as she dug some notes out of her top pocket and then wobbled off towards the door. He took her gently by the shoulder.

“Hold on a minute. Why don’t you go to the toilet and throw up the last of that whisky and then sit at the bar for a while? I don’t want to let you go in this condition.”

She did not object when he led her to the toilet. She stuck her fingers down her throat. When she came back out to the bar he had poured her a large glass of club soda. She drank the whole glass and burped. He poured her another.

“You’re going to feel like death in the morning,” Harry said.

She nodded.

“It’s none of my business, but if I were you I’d sober up for a couple of days.”

She nodded. Then she went back to the toilet and threw up again.

She stayed at Harry’s Bar for another hour, until she looked sober enough to be turned loose. She left the bar on unsteady legs, walked down to the airport, and followed the shoreline around the marina. She walked until after 8:00, when the ground at last stopped swaying under her feet. Then she went back to the hotel. She took the elevator to her room, brushed her teeth and washed her face, changed her clothes, and went back down to the hotel bar to order a cup of black coffee and a bottle of mineral water.

She sat there, silent and unnoticed next to a pillar, studying the people in the bar. She saw a couple in their thirties engaged in quiet conversation.
The woman was wearing a light-coloured summer dress, and the man was holding her hand under the table. Two tables away sat a black family, the man with the beginnings of grey at his temples, the woman wearing a lovely, colourful dress in yellow, black, and red. They had two young children with them. She studied a group of businessmen in white shirts and ties, their jackets hung over the backs of their chairs. They were drinking beer. She saw a group of elderly people, without a doubt American tourists. The men wore baseball caps, polo shirts, and loose-fitting trousers. She watched a man in a light-coloured linen jacket, grey shirt, and dark tie come in from the street and pick up his room key at the front desk before he headed over to the bar and ordered a beer. He sat down nine feet away from her. She gave him an expectant look as he took out his mobile and began to speak in German.

“Hello, is that you? . . . Is everything all right? . . . It’s going fine; we’re having our next meeting tomorrow afternoon. . . . No, I think it’ll work out. . . . I’ll be staying here five or six days at least, and then I go to Madrid. . . . No, I won’t be home before the end of next week. . . . Me too. I love you. . . . Sure. . . . I’ll call you later in the week. . . . Kiss kiss.”

He was a little over six feet tall, about fifty years old (maybe fifty-five), with blond hair that was turning grey and was a bit on the long side, a weak chin, and too much weight around the middle. But still reasonably well preserved. He was reading the
Financial Times
. When he finished his beer and headed for the elevator, Salander got up and followed him.

He pushed the button for the sixth floor. Salander stood next to him and leaned her head against the side of the elevator.

“I’m drunk,” she said.

He smiled down at her. “Oh, really?”

“It’s been one of those weeks. Let me guess. You’re a businessman of some sort, from Hanover or somewhere in northern Germany. You’re married. You love your wife. And you have to stay here in Gibraltar for another few days. I gathered that much from your phone call in the bar.”

The man looked at her, astonished.

“I’m from Sweden myself. I’m feeling an irresistible urge to have sex with somebody. I don’t care if you’re married and I don’t want your phone number.”

He looked startled.

“I’m in room 711, on the floor above yours. I’m going to go up to my room, take a bath, and get into bed. If you want to keep me company, knock on the door within half an hour. Otherwise I’ll be asleep.”

“Is this some kind of joke?” he said as the elevator stopped.

“No. It’s just that I can’t be bothered to go out to some pick-up bar. Either you knock on my door or you don’t.”

Twenty-five minutes later there was a knock on the door of Salander’s room. She had a bath towel around her when she opened the door.

“Come in,” she said.

He stepped inside and looked around the room suspiciously.

“I’m alone here,” she said.

“How old are you, actually?”

She reached for her passport on top of a chest of drawers and handed it to him.

“You look younger.”

“I know,” she said, taking off the bath towel and throwing it onto a chair. She went over to the bed and pulled off the bedspread.

She glanced over her shoulder and saw that he was staring at her tattoos.

“This isn’t a trap. I’m a woman, I’m single, and I’ll be here for a few days. I haven’t had sex for months.”

“Why did you choose me?”

“Because you were the only man in the bar who looked as if you were here alone.”

“I’m married—”

“And I don’t want to know who she is, or even who you are. And I don’t want to discuss sociology. I want to fuck. Take off your clothes or go back down to your room.”

“Just like that?”

“Yes. Why not? You’re a grown man—you know what you’re supposed to do.”

He thought about it for all of thirty seconds. He looked as if he was going to leave. She sat on the edge of the bed and waited. He bit his lip. Then he took off his trousers and shirt and stood hesitantly in his boxer shorts.

“Take it all off,” Salander said. “I don’t intend to fuck somebody in his underwear. And you have to use a condom. I know where I’ve been, but I don’t know where you’ve been.”

He took off his shorts and went over to her and put his hand on her shoulder. Salander closed her eyes when he bent down to kiss her. He tasted good. She let him tip her back onto the bed. He was heavy on top of her.