The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest Read Online Free PDF

murderer and a chaos that seemed to have no end in sight.
That bitch Salander
.
    “Well, this is a fine mess we’ve landed in,” he said. “What have you come up with this morning?”
    “A nationwide APB has been sent out on this Ronald Niedermann, but there’s no sign of him. At present he’s being sought only for the murder of a police officer, but I anticipate we’ll have grounds for charging him with the three murders here in Stockholm. Maybe you should call a press conference.”
    Bublanski added the suggestion of a press conference out of sheer spite. Ekström hated press conferences.
    “I think we’ll hold off on the press conference for the time being,” he snapped.
    Bublanski had to stop himself from smiling.
    “In the first place, this is a matter for the Göteborg police,” Ekström said.
    “Well, we do have Modig and Holmberg on the scene in Göteborg, and we’ve begun to cooperate—”
    “We’ll hold off on the press conference until we know more,” Ekström repeated in a brittle tone. “What I want to know is: how certain are you that Niedermann really is involved in the murders in Stockholm?”
    “My gut feeling? I’m 100 percent convinced. On the other hand, the case isn’t exactly rock solid. We have no witnesses to the murders, and there is no satisfactory forensic evidence. Magge Lundin and Sonny Nieminen of the Svavelsjö MC are refusing to say anything—they’re claiming they’ve never heard of Niedermann. But he’s going to go to prison for the murder of a policeman.”
    “Precisely,” said Ekström. “The killing of the officer is the main thing right now. But tell me this: is there anything at all to even suggest thatSalander might be involved in some way in the murders? Could she and Niedermann have committed the murders together?”
    “I very much doubt it, and if I were you I wouldn’t voice that theory in public.”
    “So how is she involved?”
    “This is an intricate story, as Mikael Blomkvist claimed from the very beginning. It revolves around this Zala . . . Alexander Zalachenko.”
    Ekström flinched at the mention of the name Blomkvist.
    “Go on,” he said.
    “Zala is a Russian hit man—apparently without a grain of conscience—who defected in the seventies, and Lisbeth Salander was unlucky enough to have him as her father. He was sponsored or supported by a faction within Säpo that tidied up after any crimes he committed. A police officer attached to Säpo also saw to it that Salander was locked up in a children’s psychiatric clinic. She was twelve and had threatened to blow Zalachenko’s identity, his alias, his whole cover.”
    “This is a bit difficult to digest. It’s hardly a story we can make public. If I understand the matter correctly, all this stuff about Zalachenko is highly classified.”
    “Nevertheless, it’s the truth. I have documentation.”
    “May I see it?”
    Bublanski pushed across the desk a folder containing a police report dated 1991. Ekström surreptitiously scanned the stamp, which indicated that the document was top secret, and the registration number, which he at once identified as belonging to the Security Police. He leafed rapidly through the hundred or so pages, reading paragraphs here and there. Eventually he put the folder aside.
    “We have to try to tone this down, so that the situation doesn’t get completely out of our control. So Salander was locked up in an asylum because she tried to kill her father, this Zalachenko. And now she has attacked him with an axe. By any interpretation that would be attempted murder. And she has to be charged with shooting Magge Lundin in Stallarholmen.”
    “You can arrest whomever you want, but I would tread carefully if I were you.”
    “There’s going to be an enormous scandal if Säpo’s involvement gets leaked.”
    Bublanski shrugged. His job was to investigate crimes, not to clean up after scandals.
    “This bastard from Säpo, this Gunnar Björck. What do you