This last was directed at Armansky, who hastily pumped three cups of coffee from the thermos he had ordered for the meeting. He motioned for Salander to go on.
“So in 1966 the family lived in Lilla Essingen. Blomkvist went to school first in Blomma and then to prep school on Kungsholmen. He had decent graduating marks—there are copies in the folder. During his prep school days he studied music and played bass in a rock band named Bootstrap, which actually put out a single that was played on the radio in the summer of 1979. After prep school he worked as a ticket collector in the tunnelbana, saved some money, and travelled abroad. He was away for a year, mostly bumming around Asia—India, Thailand—and a swing down to Australia. He began studying to be a journalist in Stockholm when he was twenty-one, but interrupted his studies after the first year to do his military service as a rifleman in Kiruna in Lapland. It was some sort of macho unit, and he left with good marks. After military service he completed his journalism degree and has worked in the field ever since. How detailed do you want me to be?”
“Just tell what you think is important.”
“He comes off a little like Practical Pig in The Three Little Pigs. So far he has been an excellent journalist. In the eighties he had a lot of temporary jobs, first in the provincial press and then in Stockholm. There’s a list. His breakthrough came with the story about the Bear Gang—the bank robbers he identified.”
“Kalle Blomkvist.”
“He hates the nickname, which is understandable. Somebody’d get a fat lip if they ever called me Pippi Longstocking on a newspaper placard.”
She cast a dark look at Armansky, who swallowed hard. On more than one occasion he had thought of Salander as precisely Pippi Longstocking. He waved for her to get on with it.
“One source declares that up to then he wanted to be a crime reporter—and he interned as one at an evening paper. But he has become known for his work as a political and financial reporter. He has primarily been a freelancer, with one full-time position at an evening paper in the late eighties. He left in 1990 when he helped start the monthly magazine Millennium. The magazine began as a real outsider, without any big publishing company to hold its hand. Its circulation has grown and today is 21,000 copies monthly. The editorial office is on Götgatan only a few blocks from here.”
“A left-wing magazine.”
“That depends on how you define the concept ‘left-wing.’ Millennium is generally viewed as critical of society, but I’m guessing the anarchists think it’s a wimpy bourgeois crap magazine along the lines of Arena or Ordfront, while the Moderate Students Association probably thinks that the editors are all Bolsheviks. There is nothing to indicate that Blomkvist has ever been active politically, even during the left-wing wave when he was going to prep school. While he was plugging away at the School of Journalism he was living with a girl who at the time was active in the Syndicalists and today sits in Parliament as a representative of the Left party. He seems to have been given the left-wing stamp primarily because as a financial journalist he specialises in investigative reporting about corruption and shady transactions in the corporate world. He has done some devastating individual portraits of captains of industry and politicians—which were most likely well deserved—and caused a number of resignations and legal repercussions. The most well-known was the Arboga affair, which resulted in the forced resignation of a Conservative politician and the sentencing of a former councillor to a year in prison for embezzlement. Calling attention to crimes can hardly be considered an indication that someone is left-wing.”
“I understand what you mean. What else?”
“He has written two books. One about the Arboga affair and one about financial journalism entitled The Knights Templar, which came out three years ago. I haven’t read the book, but judging from the reviews it seems to have been controversial. It prompted a good deal of debate in the media.”
“Money?” Frode said.
“He’s not rich, but he’s not starving. Income tax returns are attached to the report. He has about 250,000 SEK in the bank, in both a retirement fund and a savings account. He has an account of around 100,000 kronor that he uses as cash for working expenses, travel and such. He owns a co-op apartment that’s paid off—700 square feet on Bellmansgatan—and he has no loans or debts. He has one other asset—some property in Sandhamn out in the archipelago. It’s a cottage of 270 square feet, furnished as a summer cabin and by the water, right in the most attractive part of the village. Apparently an uncle of his bought it in the forties, when such things were still possible for normal mortals, and the cabin ended up in Blomkvist’s hands. They divided things up so that his sister got the parents’ apartment in Lilla Essingen and Blomkvist got the cabin. I have no idea what it might be worth today—certainly a few million—but on the other hand he doesn’t seem to want to sell, and he goes out to Sandhamn fairly often.”
“Income?”
“He’s part owner of Millennium, but he only takes out about 12,000 in salary each month. The rest he earns from his freelance jobs—the total varies. He had a big year three years ago when he took in around 450,000. Last year he only made 120,000 from freelance jobs.”
“He has to pay 150,000 in taxes in addition to lawyer’s fees, et cetera,” Frode said. “Let’s assume that the total is rather high. He’ll also be losing money while serving his gaol term.”
“Which means that he’s going to be cleaned out,” Salander said.
“Is he honest?”
“That’s his trust capital, so to speak. His image is to appear as the guardian of robust morality as opposed to the business world, and he is invited pretty regularly to pontificate on television.”
“There probably isn’t much left of that capital after his conviction today,” Frode said.
“I don’t want to claim that I know exactly what demands are made on a journalist, but after this setback it will probably be a long time before Master Detective Blomkvist wins the Grand Prize for Journalism. He’s really made a fool of himself this time,” Salander said. “If I may make a personal comment…”
Armansky opened his eyes wide. In the years Salander had worked for him, she had never made a single personal comment in an investigation of an individual. Bone-dry facts were all that mattered to her.
“It wasn’t part of my assignment to look at the question of fact in the Wennerström affair, but I did follow the trial and have to admit that I was actually flabbergasted. The thing felt wrong, and it’s totally…out of character for Mikael Blomkvist to publish something that seems to be so off the wall.”
Salander scratched her neck. Frode looked patient. Armansky wondered whether he might be mistaken or whether Salander really was unsure how to continue. The Salander he knew was never unsure or hesitant. Finally she seemed to make up her mind.
“Quite off the record, so to speak…I haven’t studied the Wennerström affair properly, but I really think that Mikael Blomkvist was set up. I think there’s something totally different in this story than what the court’s verdict is indicating.”
The lawyer scrutinised Salander with searching eyes, and Armansky noticed that for the first time since she began her report, the client was showing more than a polite interest. He made a mental note that the Wennerström affair held a certain interest for Frode. Correction, Armansky thought at once, Frode was not interested in the Wennerström affair—it was when Salander hinted that Blomkvist was set up that Frode reacted.
“How do you mean, exactly?” Frode said.
“It’s speculation on my part, but I’m convinced that someone tricked him.”
“And what makes you think so?”
“Everything in Blomkvist’s background shows that he’s a very careful reporter. Every controversial revelation he published before was always well documented. I went to court one day and listened. He seemed to have given up without a fight. That doesn’t accord with his character at all. If we are to believe the court, he made up a story about Wennerström without a shred of evidence and published it like some sort of journalistic suicide bomber. That’s simply not Blomkvist’s style.”
“So what do you think happened?”
“I can only guess. Blomkvist believed in his story, but something happened along the way and the information turned out to be false. This in turn means that the source was someone he trusted or that someone deliberately fed him false information—which sounds improbably complicated. The alternative is that he was subjected to such a serious threat that he threw in the towel and would rather be seen as an incompetent idiot than fight back. But I’m just speculating, as I said.”
When Salander made an attempt to continue her account, Frode held up his hand. He sat for a moment, drumming his fingers on the armrest of his chair before he hesitantly turned to her again.
“If we should decide to engage you to unravel the truth in the Wennerström affair…how much chance is there that you’d find out anything?”
“I can’t answer that. There may not be anything to find.”
“But would you be willing to make an attempt?”
She shrugged. “It’s not my place to decide. I work for Herr Armansky, and he decides what jobs he wants to assign to me. And then it depends what sort of information you’re looking for.”
“Let me put it this way…and I take it that we’re speaking in confidence?” Armansky nodded. “I don’t know anything about this particular matter, but I do know beyond any doubt that in other situations Wennerström has acted dishonestly. The Wennerström case has seriously affected Mikael Blomkvist’s life, and I have an interest in discerning whether there’s anything in your speculations.”
The conversation had taken an unexpected turn, and Armansky was instantly on the alert. What Frode was asking was for Milton Security to poke around in a case that had already been concluded. A case in which there may have been some sort of threat to the man Blomkvist, and if they took this on, Milton would risk colliding with Wennerström’s regiment of lawyers. Armansky was not in the least comforted by the thought of turning Salander loose in such a situation, like a cruise missile out of control.
It was not merely a matter of concern for the company. Salander had made plain that she did not want Armansky to act as some sort of worried stepfather, and since their agreement he had been careful never to behave like one, but in reality he would never stop worrying about her. He sometimes caught himself comparing Salander to his daughters. He considered himself a good father who did not interfere unnecessarily in their lives. But he knew that he would not tolerate it if his daughters behaved like Salander or lived the life she led.
In the depths of his Croatian—or possibly Bosnian or Armenian—heart he had never been able to shed the conviction that Salander’s life was heading for disaster. She seemed the perfect victim for anyone who wished her ill, and he dreaded the morning he would be awakened by the news that someone had done her harm.
“An investigation of this kind could get expensive,” Armansky said, issuing a warning so as to gauge the seriousness of Frode’s inquiry.
“Then we’ll set a ceiling,” Frode said. “I don’t demand the impossible, but it’s obvious that your colleague, just as you assured me, is exceedingly competent.”
“Salander?” Armansky said, turning to her with a raised eyebrow.
“I’m not working on anything else right now.”
“OK. But I want us to be in agreement about the constraints of the job. Let’s hear the rest of your report.”
“There isn’t much more apart from his private life. In 1986 he married Monica Abrahamsson and the same year they had a daughter, Pernilla. The marriage didn’t last; they were divorced in 1991. Abrahamsson has remarried, but they seem to be friends still. The daughter lives with her mother and doesn’t see Blomkvist often.”
Frode asked for more coffee and then turned to Salander.
“You said that everyone has secrets. Did you find any?”
“I meant that all people have things they consider to be private and that they don’t go around airing in public. Blomkvist is obviously a big hit with women. He’s had several love affairs and a great many casual flings. But one person has kept turning up in his life over the years, and it’s an unusual relationship.”
“In what way?”
“Erika Berger, editor in chief of Millennium: upper-class girl, Swedish mother, Belgian father resident in Sweden. Berger and Blomkvist met in journalism school and have had an on-and-off relationship ever since.”
“That may not be so unusual,” Frode said.
“No, possibly not. But Berger happens to be married to the artist Greger Beckman, a minor celebrity who has done a lot of terrible things in public venues.”
“So she’s unfaithful.”
“Beckman knows about their relationship. It’s a situation apparently accepted by all parties concerned. Sometimes she sleeps at Blomkvist’s and sometimes at home. I don’t know exactly how it works, but it was probably a contributing factor to the breakup of Blomkvist’s marriage to Abrahamsson.”
CHAPTER 3
Friday, December 20–Saturday, December 21
Erika Berger looked up quizzically when an apparently freezing Blomkvist came into the editorial office. Millennium’s offices were in the centre of the trendy section of Götgatan, above the offices of Greenpeace. The rent was actually a bit too steep for the magazine, but they had all agreed to keep the space.
She glanced at the clock. It was 5:10, and darkness had fallen over Stockholm long before. She had been expecting him around lunchtime.
“I’m sorry,” he said before she managed to say anything. “But I was feeling the weight of the verdict and didn’t feel like talking. I went for a long walk to think things over.”
“I heard the verdict on the radio. She from TV4 called and wanted a comment.”
“What’d you say?”
“Something to the effect that we were going to read the judgement carefully before we make any statements. So I said nothing. And my opinion still holds: it’s the wrong strategy. We come off looking weak with the media. They will run something on TV this evening.”
Blomkvist looked glum.
“How are you doing?”
Blomkvist shrugged and plopped down in his favourite armchair next to the window in Erika’s office. The decor was spartan, with a desk and functional bookcases and cheap office furniture. All of it was from IKEA apart from the two comfortable and extravagant armchairs and a small end table—a concession to my upbringing, she liked to say. She would sit reading in one of the armchairs with her feet tucked underneath her when she wanted to get away from the desk. Blomkvist looked down on Götgatan, where people were hurrying by in the dark. Christmas shopping was in full swing.
“I suppose it’ll pass,” he said. “But right now it feels as if I’ve got myself a very raw deal.”
