“That is under investigation, but there are strong indications that he did indeed attempt to kill her. As far as we can determine at the moment, it was a case of deep antagonism in a tragically dysfunctional family.”

Cortez scratched his ear. He noticed that the other reporters were taking notes as feverishly as he was.

Gunnar Björck felt an almost unquenchable panic when he heard the news about the shooting at Sahlgrenska hospital. He had terrible pain in his back.

It took him an hour to make up his mind. Then he picked up the telephone and tried to call his old protector in Laholm. There was no answer.

He listened to the news and heard a summary of what had been said at the press conference. Zalachenko had been shot by a 78-year-old tax specialist.

Good Lord, seventy-eight years old.

He tried again to call Gullberg, but again in vain.

Finally his uneasiness took the upper hand. He could not stay in the borrowed summer cabin in Smådalarö. He felt vulnerable and exposed. He needed time and space to think. He packed clothes, painkillers, and his wash bag. He did not want to use his own telephone, so he limped to the telephone booth at the grocer’s to call Landsort and book himself a room in the old ships’ pilot lookout. Landsort was the end of the world, and few people would look for him there. He booked the room for two weeks.

He glanced at his watch. He would have to hurry to make the last ferry. He went back to the cabin as fast as his aching back would permit. He made straight for the kitchen and checked that the coffee machine was turned off. Then he went to the hall to get his bag. He happened to look into the living room and stopped short in surprise.

At first he could not grasp what he was seeing.

In some mysterious way the ceiling lamp had been taken down and placed on the coffee table. In its place hung a rope from a hook, right above a stool that was usually in the kitchen.

Björck looked at the noose, failing to understand.

Then he heard movement behind him and felt his knees buckle.

Slowly he turned to look.

Two men stood there. They were southern European, by the look of them. He had no will to react when calmly they took him in a firm grip under both arms, lifted him off the ground, and carried him to the stool. When he tried to resist, pain shot like a knife through his back. He was almost paralysed as he felt himself being lifted on to the stool.

Sandberg was accompanied by a man who went by the nickname of Falun and who in his youth had been a professional burglar. He had, in time, retrained as a locksmith. Hans von Rottinger had first hired Falun for the Section in 1986 for an operation that involved forcing entry into the home of the leader of an anarchist group. After that, Falun had been hired from time to time until the mid-’90s, when there was less demand for this type of operation. Early that morning Clinton had revived the contact and given Falun an assignment. Falun would make 10,000 kronor tax-free for a job that would take about ten minutes. In return he had pledged not to steal anything from the apartment that was the target of the operation. The Section was not a criminal enterprise, after all.

Falun did not know exactly what interests Clinton represented, but he assumed it had something to do with the military. He had read Jan Guillou’s books, and he did not ask any questions. But it felt good to be back in the saddle again after so many years of silence from his former employer.

His job was to open the door. He was expert at breaking and entering. Even so, it still took five minutes to force the lock to Blomkvist’s apartment. Then Falun waited on the landing as Sandberg went in.

“I’m in,” Sandberg said into a handsfree mobile.

“Good,” Clinton said into his earpiece. “Take your time. Tell me what you see.”

“I’m in the hall with a wardrobe and hat-rack on my right. Bathroom on the left. Otherwise there’s one very large room, about fifty square metres. There’s a small kitchen alcove at the far end on the right.”

“Is there any desk or…”

“He seems to work at the kitchen table or sitting on the living-room sofa… wait.”

Clinton waited.

“Yes. Here we are, a folder on the kitchen table. And Björck’s report is in it. It looks like the original.”

“Very good. Anything else of interest on the table?”

“Books. P.G. Vinge’s memoirs. Power Struggle for Säpo by Erik Magnusson. Four or five more of the same.”

“Is there a computer?”

“No.”

“Any safe?”

“No… not that I can see.”

“Take your time. Go through the apartment centimetre by centimetre. Mårtensson reports that Blomkvist is still at the office. You’re wearing gloves, right?”

“Of course.”

Erlander had a chat with Giannini in a brief interlude between one or other or both of them talking on their mobiles. He went into Salander’s room and held out his hand to introduce himself. Then he said hello to Salander and asked her how she was feeling. Salander looked at him, expressionless. He turned to Giannini.

“I need to ask some questions.”

“Alright.”

“Can you tell me what happened this morning?”

Giannini related what she had seen and heard and how she had reacted up until the moment she had barricaded herself with Salander in the bathroom. Erlander glanced at Salander and then back to her lawyer.

“So you’re sure that he came to the door of this room?”

“I heard him trying to push down the door handle.”

“And you’re perfectly sure about that? It’s not difficult to imagine things when you’re scared or excited.”

“I definitely heard him at the door. He had seen me and pointed his pistol at me, he knew that this was the room I was in.”

“Do you have any reason to believe that he had planned, beforehand that is, to shoot you too?”

“I have no way of knowing. When he took aim at me I pulled my head back in and blockaded the door.”

“Which was the sensible thing to do. And it was even more sensible of you to carry your client to the bathroom. These doors are so thin that the bullets would have gone clean through them if he had fired. What I’m trying to figure out is whether he wanted to attack you personally or whether he was just reacting to the fact that you were looking at him. You were the person nearest to him in the corridor.”

“Apart from the two nurses.”

“Did you get the sense that he knew you or perhaps recognized you?”

“No, not really.”

“Could he have recognized you from the papers? You’ve had a lot of publicity over several widely reported cases.”

“It’s possible. I can’t say.”

“And you’d never seen him before?”

“I’d seen him in the lift, that’s the first time I set eyes on him.”

“I didn’t know that. Did you talk?”

“No. I got in at the same time he did. I was vaguely aware of him for just a few seconds. He had flowers in one hand and a briefcase in the other.”

“Did you make eye contact?”

“No. He was looking straight ahead.”

“Who got in first?”

“We got in more or less at the same time.”

“Did he look confused or-”

“I couldn’t say one way or the other. He got into the lift and stood perfectly still, holding the flowers.”

“What happened then?”

“We got out of the lift on the same floor, and I went to visit my client.”

“Did you come straight here?”

“Yes… no. That is, I went to the reception desk and showed my I.D. The prosecutor has forbidden my client to have visitors.”

“Where was this man then?”

Giannini hesitated. “I’m not quite sure. He was behind me, I think. No, wait… he got out of the lift first, but stopped and held the door for me. I couldn’t swear to it, but I think he went to the reception desk too. I was just quicker on my feet than he was. But the nurses would know.”