“Please explain.”

“The appalling thing is that Björck has hanged himself. Presumably because of the threat of revelations about his sexual deviations. Blomkvist’s magazine was intending to expose him. That drove him to such depths of despair that he took his own life.”

“Well…”

“The original report is an account of Lisbeth Salander’s attempt to murder her father, Alexander Zalachenko, with a petrol bomb. The first thirty pages of the report that Blomkvist discovered agree with the original. These pages, frankly, contain nothing remarkable. It’s not until page thirty-three, where Björck draws conclusions and makes recommendations, that the discrepancy arises.”

“What discrepancy?”

“In the original version Björck presents five well-argued recommendations. We don’t need to hide the fact that they concern playing down the Zalachenko affair in the media and so forth. Björck proposes that Zalachenko’s rehabilitation – he suffered very severe burns – be carried out abroad. And things similar. He also recommends that Salander should be offered the best conceivable psychiatric care.”

“I see…”

“The problem is that a number of sentences were altered in a very subtle way. On page thirty-four there is a paragraph in which Björck appears to suggest that Salander be branded psychotic, so that she will not be believed if anyone should start asking questions about Zalachenko.”

“And this suggestion is not in the original report.”

“Precisely. Gunnar Björck’s own report never suggested anything of the kind. Quite apart from anything else, that would have been against the law. He warmly recommended that she be given the care she quite clearly needed. In Blomkvist’s copy, this was made out to be a conspiracy.”

“Could I read the original?”

“Certainly you can. I have to take the report with me when I go. And before you read it, let me direct your attention to the appendix containing the subsequent correspondence between Björck and Teleborian. It is almost entirely fabricated. Here it’s not a matter of subtle alterations, but of gross falsifications.”

“Falsifications?”

“I think that’s the only appropriate description. The original shows that Peter Teleborian was assigned by the district court to do a forensic psychiatric examination of Lisbeth Salander. Nothing out of the ordinary there. Salander was twelve years old and had tried to kill her father – it would have been very strange if that shocking event had not resulted in a psychiatric report.”

“That’s true.”

“If you had been the prosecutor, I assume that you would have insisted on both social and psychiatric investigations.”

“Of course.”

“Even then Teleborian was a well-respected child psychiatrist who had also worked in forensic medicine. He was given the assignment, conducted a normal investigation, and came to the conclusion that the girl was mentally ill. I don’t have to use their technical terms.”

“No, no…”

“Teleborian wrote this in a report that he sent to Björck. The report was then given to the district court, which decided that Salander should be cared for at St Stefan’s. Blomkvist’s version is missing the entire investigation conducted by Teleborian. In its place is an exchange between Björck and Teleborian, which has Björck instructing Teleborian to falsify a mental examination.”

“And you’re saying that it’s an invention, a forgery?”

“No question about it.”

“But who would be interested in creating such a thing?”

Nyström put down the report and frowned. “Now you’re getting to the heart of the problem.”

“And the answer is…?”

“We don’t know. That’s the question our analytical group is working very hard to answer.”

“Could it be that Blomkvist made some of it up?”

Nyström laughed. “That was one of our first thoughts too. But we don’t think so. We incline to the view that the falsification was done a long time ago, presumably more or less simultaneously with the writing of the original report. And that leads to one or two disagreeable conclusions. Whoever did the falsification was extremely well informed. In addition, whoever did it had access to the very typewriter that Björck used.”

“You mean…”

“We don’t know where Björck wrote the report. It could have been at his home or at his office or somewhere else altogether. We can imagine two alternatives. Either the person who did the falsification was someone in the psychiatric or forensic medicine departments, who for some reason wanted to involve Teleborian in a scandal. Or else the falsification was done for a completely different purpose by someone inside the Security Police.”

“For what possible reason?”

“This happened in 1991. There could have been a Russian agent inside S.I.S. who had picked up Zalachenko’s trail. Right now we’re examining a large number of old personnel files.”

“But if the K.G.B. had found out… then it should have leaked years ago.”

“You’re right. But don’t forget that this was during the period when the Soviet Union was collapsing and the K.G.B. was dissolved. We have no idea what went wrong. Maybe it was a planned operation that was shelved. The K.G.B. were masters of forgery and disinformation.”

“But why would the K.G.B. want to plant such a forgery?”

“We don’t know that either. But the most obvious purpose would have been to involve the Swedish government in a scandal.”

Ekström pinched his lip. “So what you’re saying is that the medical assessment of Salander is correct?”

“Oh yes. Salander is, to put it in colloquial terms, stark raving mad. No doubt about that. The decision to commit her to an institution was absolutely correct.”

“Toilets?” Eriksson sounded as if she thought Cortez was pulling her leg.

“Toilets,” Cortez repeated.

“You want to run a story on toilets? In Millennium?”

Eriksson could not help laughing. She had observed his ill-concealed enthusiasm when he sauntered into the Friday meeting, and she recognized all the signs of a reporter who had a story in the works.

“Explain.”

“It’s really quite simple,” Cortez said. “The biggest industry in Sweden by far is construction. It’s an industry that in practice cannot be outsourced overseas, even if Skanska Construction opens an office in London and stuff like that. No matter what, the houses have to be built in Sweden.”

“But that’s nothing new.”

“No, but what is new is that the construction industry is a couple of light-years ahead of all other Swedish industries when it comes to competition and efficiency. If Volvo built cars the same way, the latest model would cost about one, maybe even two million kronor. For most of industry, cutting prices is the constant challenge. For the construction industry it’s the opposite. The price per square metre keeps going up. The state subsidizes the cost with taxpayers’ money just so that the prices aren’t prohibitive.”

“Is there a story in that?”

“Wait. It’s complicated. Let’s say the price curve for hamburgers had been the same since the ’70s – so a Big Mac would cost about 150 kronor or more. I don’t want to guess what it would cost with fries and a Coke, but my salary at Millennium might not cover it. How many people around this table would go to McDonald’s and buy a burger for 100 kronor?”

Nobody said a word.

“Understandable. But when N.C.C. bangs together some sheet-metal cubes for exclusive rental at Gåshaga on Lidingö, they ask 10- 12,000 kronor a month for a three-cube apartment. How many of you are paying that much?”

“I couldn’t afford it,” Nilsson said.

“No, of course not. But you already live in a one-bedroom apartment by Danvikstull which your father bought for you twenty years ago, and if you were to sell it you’d probably get a million and a half for it. But what does a twenty-year-old do who wants to move out of the family home? They can’t afford to. So they sublet or sub-sublet or they live at home with their mothers until they retire.”