Suddenly she realized that her briefcase was gone. She had been robbed. It took a few seconds before the horror of it sank in. Oh no. The Zalachenko folder. She felt the alarm spreading up from her diaphragm.

Slowly she sat down on the staircase.

Then she jumped up and dug into her jacket pocket. The Filofax. Thank God. Leaving the restaurant she had stuffed it into her pocket instead of putting it back in her briefcase. It contained the draft of her strategy in the Salander case, point by detailed point.

Then she stumbled up the stairs to the fifth floor and pounded on her friend’s door.

Half an hour had passed before she had recovered enough to call her brother. She had a black eye and a gash above her eyebrow that was still bleeding. Lillian had cleaned it with alcohol and put a bandage on it. No, she did not want to go to hospital. Yes, she would like a cup of tea. Only then did she begin to think rationally again. The first thing she did was to call Blomkvist.

He was still at Millennium, where he was searching for information about Zalachenko’s murderer with Cortez and Eriksson. He listened with increasing dismay to Giannini’s account of what had happened.

“No bones broken?” he said.

“Black eye. I’ll be O.K. after I’ve had a chance to calm down.”

“Did you disturb a robbery, was that it?”

“Mikael, my briefcase was stolen, with the Zalachenko report you gave me.”

“Not a problem. I can make another copy-”

He broke off as he felt the hair rise on the back of his neck. First Zalachenko. Now Annika.

He closed his iBook, stuffed it into his shoulder bag and left the office without a word, moving fast. He jogged home to Bellmansgatan and up the stairs.

The door was locked.

As soon as he entered the apartment he saw that the folder he had left on the kitchen table was gone. He did not even bother to look for it. He knew exactly where it had been. He sank on to a chair at the kitchen table as thoughts whirled through his head.

Someone had been in his apartment. Someone who was trying to cover Zalachenko’s tracks.

His own copy and his sister’s copy were gone.

Bublanski still had the report.

Or did he?

Blomkvist got up and went to the telephone, but stopped with his hand on the receiver. Someone had been in his apartment. He looked at his telephone with the utmost suspicion and took out his mobile.

But how easy is it to eavesdrop on a mobile conversation?

He slowly put the mobile down next to his landline and looked around.

I’m dealing with pros here, obviously. People who could bug an apartment as easily as get into one without breaking a lock.

He sat down again.

He looked at his laptop case.

How hard is it to hack into my email? Salander can do it in five minutes.

He thought for a long time before he went back to the landline and called his sister. He chose his words with care.

“How are you doing?”

“I’m fine, Micke.”

“Tell me what happened from the moment you arrived at Sahlgrenska until you were attacked.”

It took ten minutes for Giannini to give him her account. Blomkvist did not say anything about the implications of what she told him, but asked questions until he was satisfied. He sounded like an anxious brother, but his mind was working on a completely different level as he reconstructed the key points.

She had decided to stay in Göteborg at 4.30 that afternoon. She called her friend on her mobile, got the address and door code. The robber was waiting for her inside the stairwell at 6.00 on the dot.

Her mobile was being monitored. It was the only possible explanation.

Which meant that his was being monitored too.

Foolish to think otherwise.

“And the Zalachenko report is gone,” Giannini repeated.

Blomkvist hesitated. Whoever had stolen the report already knew that his copy too had been stolen. It would only be natural to mention that.

“Mine too,” he said.

“What?”

He explained that he had come home to find that the blue folder on his kitchen table was gone.

“It’s a disaster,” he said in a gloomy voice. “That was the crucial part of the evidence.”

“Micke… I’m so sorry.”

“Me too,” Blomkvist said. “Damn it! But it’s not your fault. I should have published the report the day I got it.”

“What do we do now?”

“I have no idea. This is the worst thing that could have happened. It will turn our whole plan upside down. We don’t have a shred of evidence left against Björck or Teleborian.”

They talked for another two minutes before Blomkvist ended the conversation.

“I want you to come back to Stockholm tomorrow,” he said.

“I have to see Salander.”

“Go and see her in the morning. We have to sit down and think about where we go from here.”

When Blomkvist hung up he sat on the sofa staring into space. Whoever was listening to their conversation knew now that Millennium had lost Björck’s report along with the correspondence between Björck and Dr Teleborian. They could be satisfied that Blomkvist and Giannini were in despair.

If nothing else, Blomkvist had learned from the preceding night’s study of the history of the Security Police that disinformation was the basis of all espionage activity. And he had just planted disinformation that in the long run might prove invaluable.

He opened his laptop case and took out the copy made for Armansky which he had not yet managed to deliver. The only remaining copy, and he did not intend to waste it. On the contrary, he would make five more copies and put them in safe places.

Then he called Eriksson. She was about to lock up for the day.

“Where did you disappear to in such a hurry?” she said.

“Could you hang on there a few minutes please? There’s something I have to discuss with you before you leave.”

He had not had time to do his laundry for several weeks. All his shirts were in the basket. He packed a razor and Power Struggle for Säpo along with the last remaining copy of Björck’s report. He went to Dressman and bought four shirts, two pairs of trousers and some underwear and took the clothes with him to the office. Eriksson waited while he took a quick shower, wondering what was going on.

“Someone broke into my apartment and stole the Zalachenko report. Someone mugged Annika in Göteborg and stole her copy. I have proof that her phone is tapped, which may well mean that mine is too. Maybe yours at home and all the Millennium phones have been bugged. And if someone took the trouble to break into my apartment, they’d be pretty dim if they didn’t bug it as well.”

“I see,” said Eriksson in a flat voice. She glanced at the mobile on the desk in front of her.

“Keep working as usual. Use the mobile, but don’t give away any information. Tomorrow, tell Henry.”

“He went home an hour ago. He left a stack of public reports on your desk. But what are you doing here?”

“I plan to sleep here tonight. If they shot Zalachenko, stole the reports, and bugged my apartment today, there’s a good chance they’ve just got started and haven’t done the office yet. People have been here all day. I don’t want the office to be empty tonight.”

“You think that the murder of Zalachenko… but the murderer was a geriatric psycho.”

“Malin, I don’t believe in coincidence. Somebody is covering Zalachenko’s tracks. I don’t care who people think that old lunatic was or how many crazy letters he wrote to government ministers. He was a hired killer of some sort. He went there to kill Zalachenko… and maybe Lisbeth too.”

“But he committed suicide, or tried to. What hired killer would do that?”

Blomkvist thought for a moment. He met the editor-in-chief’s gaze.

“Maybe someone who’s seventy-eight and hasn’t much to lose. He’s mixed up in all this, and when we finish digging we’ll prove it.”