Blomkvist paused, holding a jug and turned to look at her.

“Wrong! You know me better than almost anyone else does. Isn’t that so?”

He turned his back on her and poured the water into the machine. Then he started opening her cupboards in search of coffee. “Speaking of which, I know how you do it. I know your secrets.”

Salander shut her eyes, wishing that the floor would stop pitching under her feet. She was in a state of mental paralysis. She was hung over. This situation was unreal, and her brain was refusing to function. Never had she met one of her subjects face to face. He knows where I live! He was standing in her kitchen. This was impossible. It was outrageous. He knows who I am!

She felt the sheet slipping, and she pulled it tighter around her. He said something, but at first she didn’t understand him. “We have to talk,” he said again. “But I think you’d better take a shower first.”

She tried to speak sensibly. “You listen to me-if you’re thinking of making trouble, I’m not the one you should be talking to. I was just doing a job. You should talk to my boss.”

He held up his hands. A universal sign of peace, or I have no weapon.

“I’ve already talked to Armansky. By the way, he wants you to ring him-you didn’t answer his call last night.”

She did not sense any threat, but she still stepped back a pace when he came closer, took her arm and escorted her to the bathroom door. She disliked having anyone touch her without her leave.

“I don’t want to make trouble,” he said. “But I’m quite anxious to talk to you. After you’re awake, that is. The coffee will be ready by the time you put on some clothes. First, a shower. Vamoose!”

Passively she obeyed. Lisbeth Salander is never passive, she thought.

She leaned against the bathroom door and struggled to collect her thoughts. She was more shaken than she would have thought possible. Gradually she realised that a shower was not only good advice but a necessity after the tumult of the night. When she was done, she slipped into her bedroom and put on jeans, and a T-shirt with the slogan ARMAGEDDON WAS YESTERDAY-TODAY WE HAVE A SERIOUS PROBLEM.

After pausing for a second, she searched through her leather jacket that was slung over a chair. She took the taser out of the pocket, checked to see that it was loaded, and stuck it in the back pocket of her jeans. The smell of coffee was spreading through the apartment. She took a deep breath and went back to the kitchen.

“Do you never clean up?” he said.

He had filled the sink with dirty dishes and ashtrays; he had put the old milk cartons into a rubbish sack and cleared the table of five weeks of newspapers; he had washed the table clean and put out mugs and-he wasn’t joking after all-bagels. OK, let’s see where this is heading. She sat down opposite him.

“You didn’t answer my question. Roast beef, turkey, or vegetarian?”

“Roast beef.”

“Then I’ll take the turkey.”

They ate in silence, scrutinising each other. When she finished her bagel, she also ate half of the vegetarian one. She picked up a crumpled pack of cigarettes from the windowsill and dug one out.

He broke the silence. “I may not be as good as you at investigations, but at least I’ve found out that you’re not a vegetarian or-as Herr Frode thought-anorexic. I’ll include that information in my report.”

Salander stared at him, but he looked so amused that she gave him a crooked smile. The situation was beyond all rhyme or reason. She sipped her coffee. He had kind eyes. She decided that whatever else he might be, he did not seem to be a malicious person. And there was nothing in the PI she had done that would indicate he was a vicious bastard who abused his girlfriends or anything like that. She reminded herself that she was the one who knew everything. Knowledge is power.

“What are you grinning at?” she said.

“I’m sorry. I had not in fact planned to make my entrance in this way. I didn’t mean to alarm you. But you should have seen your face when you opened the door. It was priceless.”

Silence. To her surprise, Salander found his uninvited intrusion acceptable-well, at least not unpleasant.

“You’ll have to think of it as my revenge for your poking around in my personal life,” he said. “Are you frightened?”

“Not the least bit,” Salander said.

“Good. I’m not here to make trouble for you.”

“If you even try to hurt me I’ll have to do you an injury. You’ll be sorry.”

Blomkvist studied her. She was barely four foot eleven and did not look as though she could put up much resistance if he were an assailant who had forced his way into her apartment. But her eyes were expressionless and calm.

“Well, that won’t be necessary,” he said at last. “I only need to talk to you. If you want me to leave, all you have to do is say so. It’s funny but…oh, nothing…”

“What?”

“This may sound crazy, but four days ago I didn’t even know you existed. Then I read your analysis of me.” He searched through his shoulder bag and brought out the report. “It was not entertaining reading.”

He looked out of the kitchen window for a while. “Could I bum a cigarette?” She slid the pack across the table.

“You said before that we don’t know each other, and I said that yes, we do.” He pointed at the report. “I can’t compete with you. I’ve only done a rapid routine check, to get your address and date of birth, stuff like that. But you certainly know a great deal about me. Much of which is private, dammit, things that only my closest friends know. And now here I am, sitting in your kitchen and eating bagels with you. We have known each other half an hour, but I have the feeling that we’ve been friends for years. Does that make sense to you?”

She nodded.

“You have beautiful eyes,” he said.

“You have nice eyes yourself,” she said.

Long silence.

“Why are you here?” she said.

Kalle Blomkvist-she remembered his nickname and suppressed the impulse to say it out loud-suddenly looked serious. He also looked very tired. The self-confidence that he had shown when he first walked into her apartment was now gone. The clowning was over, or at least had been put aside. She felt him studying her closely.

Salander felt that her composure was barely skin-deep and that she really wasn’t in complete control of her nerves. This totally unlooked-for visit had shaken her in a way that she had never experienced in connection with her work. Her bread and butter was spying on people. In fact she had never thought of what she did for Armansky as a real job; she thought of it more as a complicated pastime, a sort of hobby.

The truth was that she enjoyed digging into the lives of other people and exposing the secrets they were trying to hide. She had been doing it, in one form or another, for as long as she could remember. And she was still doing it today, not only when Armansky gave her an assignment, but sometimes for the sheer fun of it. It gave her a kick. It was like a complicated computer game, except that it dealt with real live people. And now one of her hobbies was sitting right here in her kitchen, feeding her bagels. It was totally absurd.

“I have a fascinating problem,” Blomkvist said. “Tell me this, when you were doing your research on me for Herr Frode, did you have any idea what it was going to be used for?”

“No.”

“The purpose was to find out all that information about me because Frode, or rather his employer, wanted to give me a freelance job.”

“I see.”

He gave her a faint smile.

“One of these days you and I should have a discussion about the ethics of snooping into other people’s lives. But right now I have a different problem. The job I was offered, and which inexplicably I agreed to do, is without doubt the most bizarre assignment I’ve ever undertaken. Before I say more I need to be able to trust you, Lisbeth.”