At 10.00 in the evening she took a break and went into [Idiotic_Table]. She saw that Blomkvist had not come back yet. She felt slightly peeved and wondered what he was up to, and whether he had made it in time to Teleborian’s meeting.

Then she went back into S.M.P.’s server.

She moved to the next name on the list, assistant sports editor Claes Lundin, twenty-nine. She had just opened his email when she stopped and bit her lip. She closed it again and went instead to Berger’s.

She scrolled back in time. There was relatively little in her inbox, since her email account had been opened only on May 2. The very first message was a midday memo from Peter Fredriksson. In the course of Berger’s first day several people had emailed her to welcome her to S.M.P.

Salander carefully read each message in Berger’s inbox. She could see how even from day one there had been a hostile undertone in her correspondence with Holm. They seemed unable to agree on anything, and Salander saw that Holm was already trying to exasperate Berger by sending several emails about complete trivialities.

She skipped over ads, spam and news memos. She focused on any kind of personal correspondence. She read budget calculations, advertising and marketing projections, an exchange with C.F.O. Sellberg that went on for a week and was virtually a brawl over staff layoffs. Berger had received irritated messages from the head of the legal department about some temp. by the name of Johannes Frisk. She had apparently detailed him to work on some story and this had not been appreciated. Apart from the first welcome emails, it seemed as if no-one at management level could see anything positive in any of Berger’s arguments or proposals.

After a while Salander scrolled back to the beginning and did a statistical calculation in her head. Of all the upper-level managers at S.M.P., only four did not engage in sniping. They were the chairman of the board Magnus Borgsjö, assistant editor Fredriksson, front-page editor Magnusson, and culture editor Sebastian Strandlund.

Had they never heard of women at S.M.P.? All the heads of department were men.

Of these, the one that Berger had least to do with was Strandlund. She had exchanged only two emails with the culture editor. The friendliest and most engaging messages came from front-page editor Gunnar Magnusson. Borgsjö’s were terse and to the point.

Why the hell had this group of boys hired Berger at all, if all they did was tear her limb from limb?

The colleague Berger seemed to have the most to do with was Fredriksson. His role was to act as a kind of shadow, to sit in on her meetings as an observer. He prepared memos, briefed Berger on various articles and issues, and got the jobs moving.

He emailed Berger a dozen times a day.

Salander sorted all of Fredriksson’s emails to Berger and read them through. In a number of instances he had objected to some decision Berger had made and presented counter-proposals. Berger seemed to have confidence in him since she would then often change her decision or accept his argument. He was never hostile. But there was not a hint of any personal relationship to her.

Salander closed Berger’s email and thought for a moment.

She opened Fredriksson’s account.

Plague had been fooling around with the home computers of various employees of S.M.P. all evening without much success. He had managed to get into Holm’s machine because it had an open line to his desk at work; any time of the day or night he could go in and access whatever he was working on. Holm’s P.C. was one of the most boring Plague had ever hacked. He had no luck with the other eighteen names on Salander’s list. One reason was that none of the people he tried to hack was online on a Saturday night. He was beginning to tire of this impossible task when Salander pinged him at 10.30.

Plague sighed. This girl who had once been his student now had a better handle on things than he did.

Blomkvist was back at Salander’s apartment on Mosebacke just before midnight. He was tired. He took a shower and put on some coffee, and then he booted up Salander’s computer and pinged her I.C.Q.

Linder woke with a start when her earpiece beeped. Someone had just tripped the motion detector she had placed in the hall on the ground floor. She propped herself up on her elbow. It was 5.23 on Sunday morning. She slipped silently out of bed and pulled on her jeans, a T-shirt and trainers. She stuffed the Mace in her back pocket and picked up her spring-loaded baton.

She passed the door to Berger’s bedroom without a sound, noticing that it was closed and therefore locked.

She stopped at the top of the stairs and listened. She heard a faint clinking sound and movement from the ground floor. Slowly she went down the stairs and paused in the hall to listen again.

A chair scraped in the kitchen. She held the baton in a firm grip and crept to the kitchen door. She saw a bald, unshaven man sitting at the kitchen table with a glass of orange juice, reading S.M.P. He sensed her presence and looked up.

“And who the hell are you?”

Linder relaxed and leaned against the door jamb. “Greger Beckman, I presume. Hello. I’m Susanne Linder.”

“I see. Are you going to hit me over the head or would you like a glass of juice?”

“Yes, please,” Linder said, putting down her baton. “Juice, that is.”

Beckman reached for a glass from the draining board and poured some for her.

“I work for Milton Security,” Linder said. “I think it’s probably best if your wife explains what I’m doing here.”

Beckman stood up. “Has something happened to Erika?”

“Your wife is fine. But there’s been some trouble. We tried to get hold of you in Paris.”

“ Paris? Why Paris? I’ve been in Helsinki, for God’s sake.”

“Alright. I’m sorry, but your wife thought you were in Paris.”

“That’s next month,” said Beckman on his way out of the door.

“The bedroom is locked. You need a code to open the door,” Linder said.

“I beg your pardon… what code?”

She told him the three numbers he had to punch in to open the bedroom door. He ran up the stairs.

At 10.00 on Sunday morning Jonasson came into Salander’s room.

“Hello, Lisbeth.”

“Hello.”

“Just thought I’d warn you: the police are coming at lunchtime.”

“Fine.”

“You don’t seem worried.”

“I’m not.”

“I have a present for you.”

“A present? What for?”

“You’ve been one of my most interesting patients in a long time.”

“You don’t say,” Salander said sceptically.

“I heard that you’re fascinated by D.N.A. and genetics.”

“Who’s been gossiping? That psychologist lady, I bet.”

Jonasson nodded. “If you get bored in prison… this is the latest thing on D.N.A. research.”

He handed her a brick of a book entitled Spirals – Mysteries of DNA, by Professor Yoshito Takamura of Tokyo University. Salander opened it and studied the table of contents.

“Beautiful,” she said.

“Someday I’d be interested to hear how it is that you can read academic texts that even I can’t understand.”

As soon as Jonasson had left the room, she took out her Palm. Last chance. From S.M.P.’s personnel department Salander had learned that Fredriksson had worked at the paper for six years. During that time he had been off sick for two extended periods: two months in 2003 and three months in 2004. From the personnel files she concluded that the reason in both instances was burnout. Berger’s predecessor Morander had on one occasion questioned whether Fredriksson should indeed stay on as assistant editor.

Yak, yak, yak. Nothing concrete to go on.

At 11.45 Plague pinged her.

Salander logged off from I.C.Q. She glanced at the clock and realized that it would soon be lunchtime. She rapidly composed a message that she addressed to the Yahoo group [Idiotic_Table]: