“Nieminen refuses to say anything about what happened,” the detective went on, “but he vehemently denies being involved in any crime.”

“You’d think he and Lundin were themselves the victims of a crime in Stallarholmen,” Fransson said, drumming her fingertips in annoyance. “Lisbeth Salander,” she added, her voice scored with scepticism. “We’re talking about a girl who looks as if she’s barely entered puberty and who’s only one metre fifty tall. She doesn’t look as though she has the tonnage to take on either Nieminen or Lundin, let alone both of them.”

“Unless she was armed. A pistol would compensate for her physique.”

“But that doesn’t quite fit with our reconstruction of what happened.”

“No. She used Mace and kicked Lundin in the balls and face with such aggression that she crushed one of his testicles and then broke his jaw. The shot in Lundin’s foot must have happened after she kicked him. But I can’t swallow the scenario that says she was the one who was armed.”

“The lab has identified the weapon used on Lundin. It’s a Polish P-83 Wanad using Makarova ammo. It was found in Gosseberga outside Göteborg and it has Salander’s prints on it. We can pretty much assume that she took the pistol with her to Gosseberga.”

“Sure. But the serial number shows that the pistol was stolen four years ago in the robbery of a gun shop in Örebro. The thieves were eventually caught, but they had ditched the gun. It was a local thug with a drug problem who hung out around Svavelsjö M.C. I’d much rather place the pistol with either Lundin or Nieminen.”

“It could be as simple as Lundin carrying the pistol and Salander disarming him. Then a shot was fired accidentally that hit him in the foot. I mean, it can’t have been her intention to kill him, since he’s still alive.”

“Or else she shot him in the foot out of sheer sadism. Who’s to know? But how did she deal with Nieminen? He has no visible injuries.”

“He does have one, or rather two, small burn marks on his chest.”

“What sort of burns?”

“I’m guessing a taser.”

“So Salander was supposedly armed with a taser, a Mace canister and a pistol. How much would all that stuff weigh? No, I’m quite sure that either Lundin or Nieminen was carrying the gun, and she took it from them. We’re not going to be sure how Lundin came to get himself shot until one or other of the parties involved starts talking.”

“Alright.”

“As things now stand, Lundin has been charged for the reasons I mentioned earlier. But we don’t have a damned thing on Nieminen. I’m thinking of turning him loose this afternoon.”

Nieminen was in a vile mood when he left the cells at Södertälje police station. His mouth was dry so his first stop was a corner shop where he bought a Pepsi. He guzzled it down on the spot. He bought a pack of Lucky Strike and a tin of Göteborg’s Rapé snuff. He flipped open his mobile and checked the battery, then dialled the number of Hans-Åke Waltari, thirty-three years old and number three in Svavelsjö M.C.’s hierarchy. It rang four times before Waltari picked up.

“Nieminen. I’m out.”

“Congrats.”

“Where are you?”

“Nyköping.”

“What the fuck are you doing in Nyköping?”

“We decided to lay low when you and Magge were busted – until we knew the lay of the land.”

“So now you know the lay of the land. Where is everybody?”

Waltari told him where the other five members of Svavelsjö M.C. were located. The news neither pleased Nieminen nor made him any calmer.

“So who the fuck is minding the store while all of you hide away like a bunch of girls?”

“That’s not fair. You and Magge take off on some fucking job we know nothing about, and all of a sudden you’re mixed up in a shootout with that slut the law are after, Magge gets shot and you’re busted. Then they start digging up bodies at our warehouse in Nykvarn.”

“So?”

“So? So we were starting to wonder if maybe you and Magge were hiding something from the rest of us.”

“And what the fuck would that be? We’re the ones who took the job for the sake of the club.”

“Well, no-one ever told me that the warehouse was doubling up as a woodland cemetery. Who were those dead bodies?”

Nieminen had a vicious retort on the tip of his tongue, but he stopped himself. Waltari may be an idiot, but this was no time to start an argument. The important thing right now was to consolidate their forces. After stonewalling his way through five police interrogations, it was not a good idea to start boasting that he actually knew something on a mobile less than two hundred metres from a police station.

“Forget the bodies,” he said. “I don’t know anything about that. But Magge is in deep shit. He’s going to be in the slammer for a while, and while he’s gone, I’m running the club.”

“O.K. What happens now?” Waltari said.

“Who’s keeping an eye on the property?”

“Benny stayed at the clubhouse to hold the fort. They searched the place the day you were arrested. They didn’t find anything.”

“Benny Karlsson?” Nieminen yelled. “Benny K.’s hardly dry behind the ears.”

“Take it easy. He’s with that blond fucker you and Magge always hang out with.”

Sonny froze. He glanced around and walked away from the door of the corner shop.

“What did you say?” he asked in a low voice.

“That blond monster you and Magge hang out with, he showed up and needed a place to hide.”

“Goddamnit, Waltari! They’re looking for him all over the country!”

“Yeah… that’s why he needed somewhere to hide. What were we supposed to do? He’s your and Magge’s pal.”

Nieminen shut his eyes for ten full seconds. Niedermann had brought Svavelsjö M.C. a lot of jobs and good money for several years. But he was absolutely not a friend. He was a dangerous bastard and a psychopath – a psychopath that the police were looking for with a vengeance. Nieminen did not trust Niedermann for one second. The best thing would be if he was found with a bullet in his head. Then the manhunt would at least ease up a bit.

“So what did you do with him?”

“Benny’s taking care of him. He took him out to Viktor’s.”

Viktor Göransson was the club’s treasurer and financial expert, who lived just outside Järna. He was trained in accounting and had begun his career as financial adviser to a Yugoslav who owned a string of bars, until the whole gang ended up in the slammer for fraud. He had met Lundin at Kumla prison in the early nineties. He was the only member of Svavelsjö M.C. who normally wore a jacket and tie.

“Waltari, get in your car and meet me in Södertälje. I’ll be outside the train station in forty-five minutes.”

“Alright. But what’s the rush?”

“I have to get a handle on the situation. Do you want me to take the bus?”

Waltari sneaked a look at Nieminen sitting quiet as a mouse as they drove out to Svavelsjö. Unlike Lundin, Nieminen was never very easy to deal with. He had the face of a model and looked weak, but he had a short fuse and was a dangerous man, especially when he had been drinking. Just then he was sober, but Waltari felt uneasy about having Nieminen as their leader in the future. Lundin had somehow always managed to keep Nieminen in line. He wondered how things would unfold now with Lundin out of the way.

At the clubhouse, Benny was nowhere to be seen. Nieminen called him twice on his mobile, but got no answer.

They drove to Nieminen’s place, about half a mile further down the road. The police had carried out a search, but they had evidently found nothing of value to the Nykvarn investigation. Which was why Nieminen had been released.

He took a shower and changed his clothes while Waltari waited patiently in the kitchen. Then they walked about a hundred and fifty metres into the woods behind Nieminen’s property and scraped away the thin layer of soil that concealed a chest containing six handguns, including an AK5, a stack of ammunition, and around two kilos of explosives. This was Nieminen’s arms cache. Two of the guns were Polish P-83 Wanads. They came from the same batch as the weapon that Salander had taken from him at Stallarholmen.