“Bloombells?” she called again. “Mikael?”
She looked at her watch. It was later than she thought. He must have left a long time ago, was probably doing the interview by now. She did wonder why she had not woken up. But sometimes her sleep was strangely deep, and it was quiet outside, you could hardly hear the traffic. She lay there until her mobile rang.
“Catrin Lindås,” she said.
“My name is Rebecka Forsell,” a voice said. “We’re beginning to get a little worried.”
“Isn’t Mikael with you?”
“He’s half an hour late and his mobile is switched off.”
“That’s odd,” she said.
It was very odd. She didn’t know Blomkvist that well, but surely he wouldn’t turn up half an hour late for such a crucial meeting.
“You don’t know where he could be?” Rebecka Forsell said.
“He’d already left by the time I woke up.”
“Had he now?”
Lindås detected a note of fear in the woman’s voice.
“I’m beginning to get worried,” Catrin said. Or cold, is that what she should have said? Stone cold.
“Do you have any particular reason to worry? Apart from the fact that he’s late?” Rebecka Forsell said.
“Well…” Her thoughts were racing. “For the past few days he’s not wanted to stay in his own home. He thought he was being watched,” she said.
“Is it because of this business with Johannes?”
“No, I don’t think so.” Lindås was not sure how much she should say, but then decided to be completely open. “It’s to do with his friend, Lisbeth Salander. That’s all I know.”
“Oh, my God.”
“Why do you say that?”
“It’s a long story. But you know…” She sounded emotional. “I liked what you wrote about Johannes.”
“Thank you.”
“And I can see why Mikael trusts you.”
Lindås did not mention how many times that night she had sworn by all she held dear that she would not breathe a word about the story to anyone, and every time it had seemed that he did not believe her.
“Could you hang on a moment?”
Lindås waited, but regretted it at once. She couldn’t just sit around, she had to call the police and maybe also Erika Berger. By the time Rebecka Forsell was back on the line, she was about to hang up.
“We’re wondering if you couldn’t come over here yourself,” Rebecka said.
“I’m thinking I ought to call the police.”
“You probably should. But we…that is, our host here…we also have people who can investigate this matter.”
“I don’t know…” she said.
“In fact we think it would be safest if you came over here now. We’ll send a car, if you give us the address.”
Lindås bit her lip and remembered the man she had seen down in reception. She recalled the sensation of being followed on the way to the hotel.
“OK,” she said, and gave the address.
Moments later there was a knock at the door of her hotel room.
* * *
—
Bublanski had just called the TT news bureau, hoping that a bulletin would bring in some leads from the public. Although they had been hard at work since early that morning, they still had no idea where Blomkvist was. They knew he had spent the latter part of the evening at the Lydmar without anybody, including the receptionists, having seen him.
He had left the hotel just after 2:00 a.m. There was a short CCTV sequence which was anything but clear, but it did, beyond doubt, show Blomkvist in good shape—probably sober, a little excited, his hand drumming against his thigh. But then something ominous happened: The surveillance cameras stopped working. They simply died. Fortunately there were other witnesses—a young woman by the name of Agnes Sohlberg, for example, who was clearing up on the terrace.
Agnes had seen a middle-aged man come out of the hotel. She had not recognized him as Mikael Blomkvist, but then she had heard an older, slim gentleman in a light-coloured suit address him. The man had been sitting at the far end of the bar, with his back to her. Shortly afterwards she heard rapid footsteps, and maybe also the sound of someone crying out. When she turned she saw another man, a younger, sturdier fellow in a leather jacket and jeans.
At first she took him to be some kind person who had come rushing over to help. She had seen Blomkvist—or the man she later understood to be Blomkvist—collapse in the street, and she heard a voice refer to “an epileptic fit” in English. Since she did not have her mobile with her, she had run inside to call the emergency services.
After that they had to rely on other witnesses, including a married couple by the name of Kristofferson who reported having seen an ambulance coming out of Hovslagargatan. Blomkvist was lifted into the ambulance on a stretcher, and the couple would probably not have given it a second thought had they not been struck by the careless way in which his body was handled. And the way the men had jumped into the vehicle did not seem to them “natural.”
The ambulance, which turned out to have been stolen six days earlier in Norsborg, was later caught on camera on Klarabergsleden, heading north on the E4 motorway with sirens blaring. But then it disappeared from sight. Bublanski and his team were convinced the perpetrators had switched cars after that. Nothing was known for sure, however, except that Salander herself had alerted the emergency services. Bublanski was not happy with that.
How could Salander have known about the incident so soon? It made him suspicious that she was somehow connected with the assault, and he felt no better about it even after he’d spoken to her. He was glad, of course, that she had called; he was grateful for every piece of information. But he did not like what he heard in her voice—the rage, the pounding fury, and no matter how many times he said, “Keep out of this, let us handle it,” the words didn’t seem to get through. And he was certain she had not told him everything. He was convinced she was in the middle of an operation of her own, and he cursed when they hung up and cursed again now as he sat in the conference room with his colleagues Sonja Modig, Jerker Holmberg, Curt Svensson and Amanda Flod.
“What was that?” he said.
“I was wondering how Salander could have known so quickly about Blomkvist having been attacked,” Holmberg said.
“I thought I told you.”
“You said she’d done something to his mobile.”