The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (7 page)

“Which means that he’s going to be cleaned out,” Salander said.

“Is he honest?”

“That’s his trust capital, so to speak. His image is to appear as the guardian of robust morality as opposed to the business world, and he is invited pretty regularly to pontificate on television.”

“There probably isn’t much left of that capital after his conviction today,” Frode said.

“I don’t want to claim that I know exactly what demands are made on a journalist, but after this setback it will probably be a long time before Master Detective Blomkvist wins the Grand Prize for Journalism. He’s really made a fool of himself this time,” Salander said. “If I may make a personal comment…”

Armansky opened his eyes wide. In the years Salander had worked for him, she had never made a single personal comment in an investigation of an individual. Bone-dry facts were all that mattered to her.

“It wasn’t part of my assignment to look at the question of fact in the Wennerström affair, but I did follow the trial and have to admit that I was actually flabbergasted. The thing felt wrong, and it’s totally…out of character for Mikael Blomkvist to publish something that seems to be so off the wall.”

Salander scratched her neck. Frode looked patient. Armansky wondered whether he might be mistaken or whether Salander really was unsure how to continue. The Salander he knew was never unsure or hesitant. Finally she seemed to make up her mind.

“Quite off the record, so to speak…I haven’t studied the Wennerström affair properly, but I really think that Mikael Blomkvist was set up. I think there’s something totally different in this story than what the court’s verdict is indicating.”

The lawyer scrutinised Salander with searching eyes, and Armansky noticed that for the first time since she began her report, the client was showing more than a polite interest. He made a mental note that the Wennerström affair held a certain interest for Frode. Correction, Armansky thought at once, Frode was not interested in the Wennerström affair—it was when Salander hinted that Blomkvist was set up that Frode reacted.

“How do you mean, exactly?” Frode said.

“It’s speculation on my part, but I’m convinced that someone tricked him.”

“And what makes you think so?”

“Everything in Blomkvist’s background shows that he’s a very careful reporter. Every controversial revelation he published before was always well documented. I went to court one day and listened. He seemed to have given up without a fight. That doesn’t accord with his character at all. If we are to believe the court, he made up a story about Wennerström without a shred of evidence and published it like some sort of journalistic suicide bomber. That’s simply not Blomkvist’s style.”

“So what do you think happened?”

“I can only guess. Blomkvist believed in his story, but something happened along the way and the information turned out to be false. This in turn means that the source was someone he trusted or that someone deliberately fed him false information—which sounds improbably complicated. The alternative is that he was subjected to such a serious threat that he threw in the towel and would rather be seen as an incompetent idiot than fight back. But I’m just speculating, as I said.”

When Salander made an attempt to continue her account, Frode held up his hand. He sat for a moment, drumming his fingers on the armrest of his chair before he hesitantly turned to her again.

“If we should decide to engage you to unravel the truth in the Wennerström affair…how much chance is there that you’d find out anything?”

“I can’t answer that. There may not be anything to find.”

“But would you be willing to make an attempt?”

She shrugged. “It’s not my place to decide. I work for Herr Armansky, and he decides what jobs he wants to assign to me. And then it depends what sort of information you’re looking for.”

“Let me put it this way…and I take it that we’re speaking in confidence?” Armansky nodded. “I don’t know anything about this particular matter, but I do know beyond any doubt that in other situations Wennerström has acted dishonestly. The Wennerström case has seriously affected Mikael Blomkvist’s life, and I have an interest in discerning whether there’s anything in your speculations.”

The conversation had taken an unexpected turn, and Armansky was instantly on the alert. What Frode was asking was for Milton Security to poke around in a case that had already been concluded. A case in which there may have been some sort of threat to the man Blomkvist, and if they took this on, Milton would risk colliding with Wennerström’s regiment of lawyers. Armansky was not in the least comforted by the thought of turning Salander loose in such a situation, like a cruise missile out of control.

It was not merely a matter of concern for the company. Salander had made plain that she did not want Armansky to act as some sort of worried stepfather, and since their agreement he had been careful never to behave like one, but in reality he would never stop worrying about her. He sometimes caught himself comparing Salander to his daughters. He considered himself a good father who did not interfere unnecessarily in their lives. But he knew that he would not tolerate it if his daughters behaved like Salander or lived the life she led.

In the depths of his Croatian—or possibly Bosnian or Armenian—heart he had never been able to shed the conviction that Salander’s life was heading for disaster. She seemed the perfect victim for anyone who wished her ill, and he dreaded the morning he would be awakened by the news that someone had done her harm.

“An investigation of this kind could get expensive,” Armansky said, issuing a warning so as to gauge the seriousness of Frode’s inquiry.

“Then we’ll set a ceiling,” Frode said. “I don’t demand the impossible, but it’s obvious that your colleague, just as you assured me, is exceedingly competent.”

“Salander?” Armansky said, turning to her with a raised eyebrow.

“I’m not working on anything else right now.”

“OK. But I want us to be in agreement about the constraints of the job. Let’s hear the rest of your report.”

“There isn’t much more apart from his private life. In 1986 he married Monica Abrahamsson and the same year they had a daughter, Pernilla. The marriage didn’t last; they were divorced in 1991. Abrahamsson has remarried, but they seem to be friends still. The daughter lives with her mother and doesn’t see Blomkvist often.”

Frode asked for more coffee and then turned to Salander.

“You said that everyone has secrets. Did you find any?”

“I meant that all people have things they consider to be private and that they don’t go around airing in public. Blomkvist is obviously a big hit with women. He’s had several love affairs and a great many casual flings. But one person has kept turning up in his life over the years, and it’s an unusual relationship.”

“In what way?”

“Erika Berger, editor in chief of
Millennium
: upper-class girl, Swedish mother, Belgian father resident in Sweden. Berger and Blomkvist met in journalism school and have had an on-and-off relationship ever since.”

“That may not be so unusual,” Frode said.

“No, possibly not. But Berger happens to be married to the artist Greger Beckman, a minor celebrity who has done a lot of terrible things in public venues.”

“So she’s unfaithful.”

“Beckman knows about their relationship. It’s a situation apparently accepted by all parties concerned. Sometimes she sleeps at Blomkvist’s and sometimes at home. I don’t know exactly how it works, but it was probably a contributing factor to the breakup of Blomkvist’s marriage to Abrahamsson.”

CHAPTER
3

Friday, December 20–Saturday, December 21

Erika Berger looked up quizzically when an apparently freezing Blomkvist came into the editorial office.
Millennium
’s offices were in the centre of the trendy section of Götgatan, above the offices of Greenpeace. The rent was actually a bit too steep for the magazine, but they had all agreed to keep the space.

She glanced at the clock. It was 5:10, and darkness had fallen over Stockholm long before. She had been expecting him around lunchtime.

“I’m sorry,” he said before she managed to say anything. “But I was feeling the weight of the verdict and didn’t feel like talking. I went for a long walk to think things over.”

“I heard the verdict on the radio.
She
from TV4 called and wanted a comment.”

“What’d you say?”

“Something to the effect that we were going to read the judgement carefully before we make any statements. So I said nothing. And my opinion still holds: it’s the wrong strategy. We come off looking weak with the media. They will run something on TV this evening.”

Blomkvist looked glum.

“How are you doing?”

Blomkvist shrugged and plopped down in his favourite armchair next to the window in Erika’s office. The decor was spartan, with a desk and functional bookcases and cheap office furniture. All of it was from IKEA apart from the two comfortable and extravagant armchairs and a small end table—a concession to my upbringing, she liked to say. She would sit reading in one of the armchairs with her feet tucked underneath her when she wanted to get away from the desk. Blomkvist looked down on Götgatan, where people were hurrying by in the dark. Christmas shopping was in full swing.

“I suppose it’ll pass,” he said. “But right now it feels as if I’ve got myself a very raw deal.”

“Yes, I can imagine. It’s the same for all of us. Janne Dahlman went home early today.”

“I assume he wasn’t over the moon about the verdict.”

“He’s not the most positive person anyway.”

Mikael shook his head. For the past nine months Dahlman had been managing editor. He had started there just as the Wennerström affair got going, and he found himself on an editorial staff in crisis mode. Blomkvist tried to remember what their reasoning had been when he and Berger decided to hire him. He was competent, of course, and had worked at the TT news bureau, the evening papers, and Eko on the radio. But he apparently did not like sailing against the wind. During the past year Blomkvist had often regretted that they had hired Dahlman, who had an enervating habit of looking at everything in as negative a light as possible.

“Have you heard from Christer?” Blomkvist asked without taking his eyes off the street.

Christer Malm was the art director and designer of
Millennium
. He was also part owner of the magazine together with Berger and Blomkvist, but he was on a trip abroad with his boyfriend.

“He called to say hello.”

“He’ll have to be the one who takes over as publisher.”

“Lay off, Micke. As publisher you have to count on being punched in the nose every so often. It’s part of the job description.”

“You’re right about that. But I was the one who wrote the article that was published in a magazine of which I also happen to be the publisher. That makes everything look different all of a sudden. Then it’s a matter of bad judgement.”

Berger felt that the disquiet she had been carrying with her all day was about to explode. In the weeks before the trial started, Blomkvist had been walking around under a black cloud. But she had never seen him as gloomy and dejected as he seemed to be now in the hour of his defeat. She walked to his side of the desk and sat on his lap, straddling him, and put her arms round his neck.

“Mikael, listen to me. We both know exactly how it happened. I’m as much to blame as you are. We simply have to ride out the storm.”

“There isn’t any storm to ride out. As far as the media are concerned, the verdict means that I’ve been shot in the back of the head. I can’t stay on as the publisher of
Millennium
. The vital thing is to maintain the magazine’s credibility, to stop the bleeding. You know that as well as I do.”

“If you think I intend to let you take the rap all by yourself, then you haven’t learned a damn thing about me in the years we’ve worked together.”

“I know how you operate, Ricky. You’re 100 percent loyal to your colleagues. If you had to choose, you’d keep fighting against Wennerström’s lawyers until your credibility was gone too. We have to be smarter than that.”

“And you think it’s smart to jump ship and make it look as if I sacked you?”

“If
Millennium
is going to survive, it depends on you now. Christer is great, but he’s just a nice guy who knows about images and layout and doesn’t have a clue about street fighting with billionaires. It’s just not his thing. I’m going to have to disappear for a while, as publisher, reporter, and board member. Wennerström knows that I know what he did, and I’m absolutely sure that as long as I’m anywhere near
Millennium
he’s going to try to ruin us.”

“So why not publish everything we know? Sink or swim?”

“Because we can’t prove a damn thing, and right now I have no credibility at all. Let’s accept that Wennerström won this round.”

“OK, I’ll fire you. What are you going to do?”

“I need a break, to be honest. I’m burned right out. I’m going to take some time for myself for a while, some of it in prison. Then we’ll see.”

Berger put her arms around him and pulled his head down to her breasts. She hugged him hard.

“Want some company tonight?” she said.

Blomkvist nodded.

“Good. I’ve already told Greger I’m at your place tonight.”