“That’s right, she’d messed about with it—with his consent. So she could eavesdrop on him and see where he was, at least until they shut his mobile down.”
“What I really meant was, how was she able to react so fast,” Holmberg said. “It sounds…I don’t know, as if she’d just been hanging about, waiting for something like this to happen.”
“She said she’d been afraid it would,” Bublanski said. “Like a worst-case scenario. Svavelsjö M.C. had been keeping Blomkvist under observation, both at Bellmansgatan and out at Sandhamn.”
“And we still don’t have anything on the club?”
“We woke up the president, Marko Sandström, this morning. But he just laughed at us. Said that you needed to be suicidal to go after Blomkvist. We’re trying to track down the other members and we’ll watch them. So far, we’ve not been able to link any of them to the incident, other than to note that several of them have been impossible to reach.”
“And we don’t know why Blomkvist was at the Lydmar in the first place?” Flod said.
“No, we’ve no idea. We’ve got people there now. But Blomkvist appears to have been very cagey of late. Even his colleagues at Millennium had no idea what he was up to. Erika Berger says he’s taking some sort of holiday. Apparently he’s mainly been working on his story about the Sherpa.”
“Which may have something to do with Forsell.”
“It may indeed, and that’s given Must the jitters, and Säpo too.”
“Could it be a foreign operation?” Svensson said.
“The fact that the surveillance cameras were hacked would suggest it. And I don’t like the way they used a stolen ambulance, that really feels like a provocation, but in all likelihood—”
“—there’s a link to Salander,” Modig concluded.
“That’s what we all think,” Holmberg said.
“Perhaps we do,” Bublanski said, and he sank deep in thought. What was Salander hiding from him?
* * *
—
Salander had not told Bublanski about the Strandvägen apartment. She was hoping Camilla would lead her to Blomkvist, and she did not want the police to mess that up for her. But for now, Camilla was staying put. Maybe she was waiting for the same thing as Salander, the thing that Salander dreaded: images of Blomkvist being tortured and a demand for an exchange, her for him, or, worse, pictures of Blomkvist dead and threats to kill others close to her unless she gave herself up to them.
During the night, Salander had been in touch with Annika Giannini, Dragan Armansky, Miriam Wu and a couple of others—even Paulina, who presumably nobody knew about—and had told them to go somewhere they would be safe. It hadn’t been pleasant, but she had done what she had to do.
She did not have a clue where they had taken Blomkvist, except that it appeared to be northwards, which is why she was staying at the Clarion Hotel at Arlanda airport, in the same direction at least. But she was as unaware of the room she was in or of the hotel as she was of everything else, and she had not slept a wink.
She had spent hours at the desk trying to find some trace, some opening, and it was not until now, when finally she got a signal, that she sat up in her chair. Camilla was leaving the apartment at Strandvägen. That’s my girl, she thought. Please be a little careless now, and take me to him. But that was hoping for too much. Camilla had Bogdanov, and Bogdanov was in the same league as Plague.
So even if her sister did show her the way to some place, it wouldn’t necessarily be a breakthrough. It could equally well be a trap. An attempt to draw her off. She had to be prepared for everything, but now…her eyes were fixed on the map. The car carrying Camilla was taking the same route as the ambulance had yesterday, heading north on the E4 motorway. That was promising. It had to be. Salander packed her things and went down to check out, before tearing off on her Kawasaki.
* * *
—
Catrin Lindås wrapped herself in a bathrobe and went to open the door. She found a uniformed policeman standing outside, a young man with blond, neatly parted hair, and she stammered a nervous “Good morning.”
“We want to speak to people in this hotel who may have seen or been in contact with the journalist Mikael Blomkvist,” the police officer said, and immediately she felt that he was suspicious, maybe even hostile.
His eyes beamed with confidence and he stood very straight, as if to show how tall and powerful he was.
“What’s happened?” she said, and the fear was plain in her voice.
The policeman came closer and looked her up and down in a way she recognized only too well. She had encountered it so many times when walking around town, the look that wanted both to undress her and do her harm.
“What is your name?”
That was part of the provocation. She could see that he knew perfectly well who she was.
“Catrin Lindås,” she said.
He wrote it down in a notebook. “You’ve been with him here, haven’t you? Did you spend the night together?”
What’s that got to do with it? she wanted to shout. But she was frightened, and she stepped back into the room and explained that Blomkvist had already left by the time she woke that morning.
“Did you check in using a false name?”
She tried to breathe calmly and wondered if it would even be possible to have a rational conversation with him, especially now that he had high-handedly marched into the room.
“And do you have a name?” she said.
“What?”
“I don’t seem to remember you introducing yourself.”
“Inspector Carl Wernersson, from Norrmalm police.”
“Good, Carl,” she said. “In that case you can perhaps begin by telling me what’s going on?”
“Mikael Blomkvist was attacked outside this hotel during the night and abducted, so you’ll appreciate that we’re taking this very seriously indeed.”
She felt as if the walls were closing in on her. “My God,” she said.
“So it’s of the utmost importance that you give us a truthful account of what happened before that.”
She sat down on the bed. “Is he hurt?”
“We don’t know. You haven’t answered my question,” he said.
Her heart was pounding and she fumbled for words. “He was going to an important meeting this morning, but I’ve just found out that he never showed up.”