“This is Constable Ferguson. He’d like to ask you some questions.”

Salander greeted him politely. Constable Ferguson had obviously had a long night, too. He took out a notebook and pen and wrote down Salander’s name.

“Ms. Salander, I understand that you and a friend discovered Mrs. Richard Forbes during the hurricane last night.”

Salander nodded.

“Where did you find her?”

“On the beach just below the gate,” Salander said. “We almost tripped over her.”

Ferguson wrote that down.

“Did she say anything?”

Salander shook her head.

“She was unconscious?”

Salander nodded sensibly.

“She had a nasty wound on her head.”

Salander nodded again.

“You don’t know how she was injured?”

Salander shook her head. Ferguson muttered in irritation at her lack of response.

“There was a lot of stuff flying through the air,” she said helpfully. “I was almost hit in the head by a plank.”

“You injured your leg?” Ferguson pointed at her bandage. “What happened?”

“I didn’t notice it until I got down to the cellar.”

“You were with a young man.”

“George Bland.”

“Where does he live?”

“In a shack behind the Coconut, on the road to the airport. If the shack is still standing, that is.”

Salander did not add that Bland was at that moment asleep in her bed three floors above them.

“Did either of you see her husband, Richard Forbes?”

Salander shook her head.

Constable Ferguson could not, it seemed, think of any other questions to ask, and he closed his notebook.

“Thank you, Ms. Salander. I’ll have to write up a report on the death.”

“Did she die?”

“Mrs. Forbes? No, she’s in hospital in St. George’s. Apparently she has you and your friend to thank for the fact that she’s alive. But her husband is dead. His body was found in a parking lot at the airport two hours ago.”

Six hundred yards further south.

“He was pretty badly knocked about,” Ferguson said.

“How unfortunate,” Salander said without any great sign of shock.

When McBain and Constable Ferguson had gone, Ella came and sat at Salander’s table. She set down two shot glasses of rum. Salander gave her a quizzical look.

“After a night like that you need something to rebuild your strength. I’m buying. I’m buying the whole breakfast.”

The two women looked at each other. Then they clinked glasses and said, “Cheers.”

For a long time to come, Matilda would be the object of scientific studies and discussions at meteorological institutes in the Caribbean and across the United States. Tornadoes of Matilda’s scale were almost unknown in the region. Gradually the experts agreed that a particularly rare constellation of weather fronts had combined to create a “pseudo-tornado”-something that was not actually a tornado but looked like one.

Salander did not care about the theoretical discussion. She knew what she had seen, and she decided to try to avoid getting in the way of any of Matilda’s siblings in the future.

Many people on the island had been injured during the night. Only one person died.

No-one would ever know what had induced Richard Forbes to go out in the midst of a full-fledged hurricane, save possibly that sheer ignorance which seemed common to American tourists. Geraldine Forbes was not able to offer any explanation. She had suffered a severe concussion and had only incoherent memories of the events of that night.

On the other hand, she was inconsolable to have been left a widow.

Salander landed at Stockholm ’s Arlanda Airport at noon. In addition to the flying time, she had spent nine hours at Grantley Adams Airport on Barbados. British Airways had refused to let the aircraft take off until a passenger who looked vaguely Arabic had been taken away for questioning and a possible terrorist threat had been snuffed out. By the time she landed at Gatwick in London, she had missed her connecting flight to Sweden and had had to wait overnight before she could be rebooked.

Salander felt like a bag of bananas that had been left too long in the sun. All she had with her was a carry-on bag containing her PowerBook, Dimensions, and a change of clothes. She passed unchecked through the green gate at Customs. When she got outside to the airport shuttle buses she was welcomed home by a blast of freezing sleet.

She hesitated. All her life she had had to choose the cheapest option, and she was not yet used to the idea that she had more than three billion kronor, which she had stolen by means of an Internet coup combined with good old-fashioned fraud. After a few moments of getting cold and wet, she said to hell with the rule book and waved for a taxi. She gave the driver her address on Lundagatan and fell asleep in the backseat.

It was not until the taxi drew up on Lundagatan and the driver shook her awake that she realized she had given him her old address. She told him she had changed her mind and asked him to continue on to Götgatsbacken. She gave him a big tip in dollars and swore as she stepped into a puddle in the gutter. She was dressed in jeans, T-shirt, and a thin cloth jacket. She wore sandals and short cotton socks. She walked gingerly over to the 7-Eleven, where she bought some shampoo, toothpaste, soap, kefir, milk, cheese, eggs, bread, frozen cinnamon rolls, coffee, Lipton’s tea bags, a jar of pickles, apples, a large package of Billy’s Pan Pizza, and a pack of Marlboro Lights. She paid with a Visa card.

When she came back out on the street she hesitated about which way to go. She could walk up Svartensgatan or down Hökens Gata towards Slussen. The drawback with Hökens Gata was that then she would have to walk right past the door of the Millennium offices, running the risk of bumping into Blomkvist. In the end she decided not to go out of her way to avoid him. She walked towards Slussen, although it was a bit longer that way, and turned off to the right by way of Hökens Gata up to Mosebacke Torg. She cut across the square past the statue of the Sisters in front of Södra Theatre and took the steps up the hill to Fiskargatan. She stopped and looked up at the apartment building pensively. It did not really feel like “home.”

She looked around. It was an out-of-the-way spot in the middle of Södermalm Island. There was no through traffic, which was fine with her. It was easy to observe who was moving about the area. It was apparently popular with walkers in the summertime, but in the winter the only ones there were those who had business in the neighbourhood. There was hardly a soul to be seen now-certainly not anyone she recognized, or who might reasonably be expected to recognize her. Salander set down her shopping bag in the slush to dig out her keys. She took the elevator to the top floor and unlocked the door with the nameplate V. KULLA.

One of the first things Salander had done after she came into a very large sum of money and thereby became financially independent for the rest of her life (or for as long as three billion kronor could be expected to last) was to look around for an apartment. The property market had been a new experience for her. She had never before invested money in anything more substantial than occasional useful items which she could either pay for with cash or buy on a reasonable payment plan. The biggest outlays had previously been various computers and her lightweight Kawasaki motorcycle. She had bought the bike for 7,000 kronor-a real bargain. She had spent about as much on spare parts and devoted several months to taking the motorcycle apart and overhauling it. She had wanted a car, but she had been wary of buying one, since she did not know how she would have fit it into her budget.