In March 1989, one of Ghidi’s uncles paid the equivalent of 50,000 Swedish kronor, to the local leader of the Ba’ath Party, as compensation for the injury Ghidi had caused the Iraqi state. Two days later he was released into his uncle’s custody. He weighed thirty-nine kilos and was unable to walk. Before his release, his left hip was smashed with a sledgehammer to discourage any mischief in the future.

He hovered between life and death for several weeks. When, slowly, he began to recover, his uncle took him to a farm well away from Mosul and there, over the summer, he regained his strength and was eventually able to walk again with crutches. He would never regain full health. The question was: what was he going to do in the future? In August he learned that his two brothers had been arrested. He would never see them again. When his uncle heard that Saddam Hussein’s police were looking once more for Ghidi, he arranged, for a fee of 30,000 kronor, to get him across the border into Turkey and thence with a false passport to Europe.

Idris Ghidi landed at Arlanda airport in Sweden on 19 October, 1989. He did not know a word of Swedish, but he had been told to go to the passport police and immediately to ask for political asylum, which he did in broken English. He was sent to a refugee camp in Upplands Väsby. There he would spend almost two years, until the immigration authorities decided that Ghidi did not have sufficient grounds for a residency permit.

By this time Ghidi had learned Swedish and obtained treatment for his shattered hip. He had two operations and could now walk without crutches. During that period the Sjöbo debate* had been conducted in Sweden, refugee camps had been attacked, and Bert Karlsson had formed the New Democracy Party.

The reason why Ghidi had appeared so frequently in the press archives was that at the eleventh hour he came by a new lawyer who went directly to the press, and they published reports on his case. Other Kurds in Sweden got involved, including members of the prominent Baksi family. Protest meetings were held and petitions were sent to Minister of Immigration Birgit Friggebo, with the result that Ghidi was granted both a residency permit and a work visa in the kingdom of Sweden. In January 1992 he left Upplands Väsby a free man.

Ghidi soon discovered that being a well-educated and experienced construction engineer counted for nothing. He worked as a newspaper boy, a dish-washer, a doorman, and a taxi driver. He liked being a taxi driver except for two things. He had no local knowledge of the streets in Stockholm county, and he could not sit still for more than an hour before the pain in his hip became unbearable.

In May 1998 he moved to Göteborg after a distant relative took pity on him and offered him a steady job at an office-cleaning firm. He was given a part-time job managing a cleaning crew at Sahlgrenska hospital, with which the company had a contract. The work was routine. He swabbed floors six days a week including, as Olsson’s ferreting had revealed, in corridor 11C.

Blomkvist studied the photograph of Idris Ghidi from the passport application. Then he logged on to the media archive and picked out several of the articles on which Olsson’s report was based. He read attentively. He lit a cigarette. The smoking ban at Millennium had soon been relaxed after Berger left. Cortez now kept an ashtray on his desk.

Finally Blomkvist read what Olsson had produced about Dr Anders Jonasson.

Blomkvist did not see the grey Volvo on Monday, nor did he have the feeling that he was being watched or followed, but he walked briskly from the Academic bookshop to the side entrance of N.K. department store, and then straight through and out of the main entrance. Anybody who could keep up surveillance inside the bustling N.K. would have to be superhuman. He turned off both his mobiles and walked through the Galleria to Gustav Adolfs Torg, past the parliament building, and into Gamla Stan. Just in case anyone was still following him, he took a zigzag route through the narrow streets of the old city until he reached the right address and knocked at the door of Black/White Publishing.

It was 2.30 in the afternoon. He was there without warning, but the editor, Kurdo Baksi, was in and delighted to see him.

“Hello there,” he said heartily. “Why don’t you ever come and visit me any more?”

“I’m here to see you right now,” Blomkvist said.

“Sure, but it’s been three years since the last time.”

They shook hands.

Blomkvist had known Baksi since the ’80s. Actually, Blomkvist had been one of the people who gave Baksi practical help when he started the magazine Black/White with an issue that he produced secretly at night at the Trades Union Federation offices. Baksi had been caught in the act by Per-Erik Åström – the same man who went on to be the paedophile hunter at Save the Children – who in the ’80s was the research secretary at the Trades Union Federation. He had discovered stacks of pages from Black/White’s first issue along with an oddly subdued Baksi in one of the copy rooms. Åström had looked at the front page and said: “God Almighty, that’s not how a magazine is supposed to look.” After that Åström had designed the logo that was on Black/White’s masthead for fifteen years before Black/White magazine went to its grave and became the book publishing house Black/White. At the same time Blomkvist had been suffering through an appalling period as I.T. consultant at the Trades Union Federation – his only venture into the I.T. field. Åström had enlisted him to proofread and give Black/White some editorial support. Baksi and Blomkvist had been friends ever since.

Blomkvist sat on a sofa while Baksi got coffee from a machine in the hallway. They chatted for a while, the way you do when you haven’t seen someone for some time, but they were constantly being interrupted by Baksi’s mobile. He would have urgent-sounding conversations in Kurdish or possibly Turkish or Arabic or some other language that Blomkvist did not understand. It had always been this way on his other visits to Black/White Publishing. People called from all over the world to talk to Baksi.

“My dear Mikael, you look worried. What’s on your mind?” he said at last.

“Could you turn off your telephone for a few minutes?”

Baksi turned off his telephone.

“I need a favour. A really important favour, and it has to be done immediately and cannot be mentioned outside this room.”

“Tell me.”

“In 1989 a refugee by the name of Idris Ghidi came to Sweden from Iraq. When he was faced with the prospect of deportation, he received help from your family until he was granted a residency permit. I don’t know if it was your father or somebody else in the family who helped him.”

“It was my uncle Mahmut. I know Ghidi. What’s going on?”

“He’s working in Göteborg. I need his help to do a simple job. I’m willing to pay him.”

“What kind of job?”

“Do you trust me, Kurdo?”

“Of course. We’ve always been friends.”

“The job I need done is very odd. I don’t want to say what it entails right now, but I assure you it’s in no way illegal, nor will it cause any problems for you or for Ghidi.”

Baksi gave Blomkvist a searching look. “You don’t want to tell me what it’s about?”

“The fewer people who know, the better. But I need your help for an introduction – so that Idris will listen to me.”

Baksi went to his desk and opened an address book. He looked through it for a minute before he found the number. Then he picked up the telephone. The conversation was in Kurdish. Blomkvist could see from Baksi’s expression that he started out with words of greeting and small talk before he got serious and explained why he was calling. After a while he said to Blomkvist:

“When do you want to meet him?”