"I know," Wadensjoo said. "But he seemed the right choice at the time. I never would have dreamed that  - "

"Where's the sister today? Camilla Salander."

"We don't know. When she was nineteen she packed her bag and ran away from her foster family. We haven't found hide nor hair of her since."

"O.K., go on..."

"I have a man in the regular police who has spoken with Prosecutor Ekstrom," Sandberg said. "The officer running the investigation, Inspector Bublanski, thinks that Bjurman raped Salander."

Gullberg looked at Sandberg with blank astonishment.

"Raped?" he said.

"Bjurman had a tattoo across his belly which read I am a sadistic pig, a pervert, and a rapist."

Sandberg put a colour photograph from the autopsy on the table. Gullberg stared at it with distaste.

"Zalachenko's daughter is supposed to have given him that?"

"It's hard to find another explanation. And she's not known for being a shrinking violet. She spectacularly kicked the shit out of two complete thugs from Svavelsjo M.C."

"Zalachenko's daughter," Gullberg repeated. He turned to Wadensjoo. "You know what? I think you ought to recruit her for the Section."

Wadensjoo looked so startled that Gullberg quickly explained that he was joking.

"O.K. Let's take it as a working hypothesis that Bjurman raped her and that she somehow took her revenge. What else?"

"The only one who could tell us exactly what happened, of course, is Bjurman, and he's dead. But the thing is, he shouldn't have had a clue that she was Zalachenko's daughter; it's not in any public records. But somehow, somewhere along the way, Bjurman discovered the connection."

"But, Goddamnit Wadensjoo! She knew who her father was and could have told Bjurman at any time."

"I know. We... that is, I simply wasn't thinking straight."

"That is unforgivably incompetent," Gullberg said.

"I've kicked myself a hundred times about it. But Bjurman was one of the very few people who knew of Zalachenko's existence and my thought was that it would be better if he discovered that she was Zalachenko's daughter rather than some other unknown guardian. She could have told anyone at all."

Gullberg pulled on his earlobe. "Alright... go on."

"It's all hypothetical," Nystrom said. "But our supposition is that Bjurman assaulted Salander and that she struck back and did that..." He pointed at the tattoo in the autopsy photograph.

"Her father's daughter," Gullberg said. There was more than a trace of admiration in his voice.

"With the result that Bjurman made contact with Zalachenko, hoping to get rid of the daughter. As we know, Zalachenko had good reason to hate the girl. And he gave the contract to Svavelsjo M.C. and this Niedermann that he hangs out with."

"But how did Bjurman get in touch  - " Gullberg fell silent. The answer was obvious.

"Bjorck," Wadensjoo said. "Bjorck gave him the contact."

"Damn," Gullberg said.

In the morning two nurses had come to change her bedlinen. They had found the pencil.

"Oops. How did this get here?" one of them said, putting the pencil in her pocket. Salander looked at her with murder in her eyes.

She was once more without a weapon, but she was too weak to protest.

Her headache was unbearable and she was given strong painkillers. Her left shoulder stabbed like a knife if she moved carelessly or tried to shift her weight. She lay on her back with the brace around her neck. It was supposed to be left on for a few more days until the wound in her head began to heal. On Sunday she had a temperature of 102. Dr Endrin could tell that there was infection in her body. Salander did not need a thermometer to work that out.

She realized that once again she was confined to an institutional bed, even though this time there was no strap holding her down. That would have been unnecessary. She could not sit up even, let alone leave the room.

At lunchtime on Monday she had a visit from Dr Jonasson.

"Hello. Do you remember me?"

She shook her head.

"I was the one who woke you after surgery. I operated on you. I just wanted to hear how you're doing and if everything is going well."

Salander looked at him, her eyes wide. It should have been obvious that everything was not going well.

"I heard you took off your neck brace last night."

She acknowledged as much with her eyes.

"We put the neck brace on for a reason  -  you have to keep your head still for the healing process to get started." He looked at the silent girl. "O.K.," he said at last. "I just wanted to check on you."

He was at the door when he heard her voice.

"It's Jonasson, right?"

He turned and smiled at her in surprise. "That's right. If you remember my name then you must have been more alert than I thought."

"And you were the one who operated to remove the bullet?"

"That's right."

"Please tell me how I'm doing. I can't get a sensible answer from anyone."

He went back to her bedside and looked her in the eye.

"You were lucky. You were shot in the head, but the bullet did not, I believe, injure any vital areas. The risk you are running is that you could have bleeding in your brain. That's why we want you to stay still. You have an infection in your body. The wound in your shoulder seems to be the cause. It's possible that you'll need another operation  -  on your shoulder  -  if we can't arrest the infection with antibiotics. You are going to have some painful times ahead while your body heals. But as things look now, I'm optimistic that you'll make a full recovery."

"Can this cause brain damage?"

He hesitated before nodding. "Yes, there is that possibility. But all the signs indicate that you made it through fine. There's also a possibility that you'll develop scar tissue in your brain, and that might cause trouble... for instance, you might develop epilepsy or some other problem. But to be honest, it's all speculation. Right now, things look good. You're healing. And if problems crop up along the way, we'll deal with them. Is that a clear enough answer?"

She shut her eyes to say yes. "How long do I have to lie here like this?"

"You mean in the hospital? It will be at the least a couple of weeks before we can let you go."

"No, I mean how long before I can get up and start walking and moving around?"

"That depends on how the healing progresses. But count on two weeks before we can start you on some sort of physical therapy."

She gave him a long look. "You wouldn't happen to have a cigarette, would you?" she said.

Dr Jonasson burst out laughing and shook his head. "Sorry. There's no smoking allowed in the hospital. But I can see to it that you get a nicotine patch or some gum."

She thought for a moment before she looked at him again. "How's the old bastard doing?"

"Who? You mean  - "

"The one who came in the same time as I did."

"No friend of yours, I presume. Well, he's going to survive and he's been up walking around on crutches. He's actually in worse shape than you are, and he has a very painful facial wound. As I understood it, you slammed an axe into his head."

"He tried to kill me," Salander said in a low voice.

"That doesn't sound good. I have to go. Do you want me to come back and look in on you again?"

Salander thought for a moment, then she signalled yes. When he was gone she stared at the ceiling. Zalachenko has been given crutches. That was the sound I heard last night.

Sandberg, the youngest person at the meeting, was sent out to get some food. He came back with sushi and light beer and passed the food around the conference table. Gullberg felt a thrill of nostalgia. This is just the way it was in his day, when some operation went into a critical phase and they had to work around the clock.

The difference, he observed, was possibly that in his day there was nobody who would have come up with the wild idea of ordering raw fish. He wished Sandberg had ordered Swedish meatballs with mashed potatoes and lingonberries. On the other hand he was not really hungry, so he pushed the sushi aside. He ate a piece of bread and drank some mineral water.

They continued the discussion over their meal. They had to decide what to do. The situation was urgent.

"I never knew Zalachenko," Wadensjoo said. "What was he like?"

"Much as he is today, I assume," Gullberg said. "Phenomenally intelligent, with a damn near photographic memory. But in my opinion he's a pig. And not quite right in the head, I should think."

"Jonas, you talked to him yesterday. What's your take on this?" Wadensjoo said.

Sandberg put down his chopsticks.

"He's got us over a barrel. I've already told you about his ultimatum. Either we make the whole thing disappear, or he cracks the Section wide open."

"How the hell do we make something disappear that's been plastered all over the media?" Nystrom said.

"It's not a question of what we can or can't do. It's a question of his need to control us," Gullberg said.

"Would he, in your opinion, talk to the press?" Wadensjoo said.

Gullberg hesitated. "It's almost impossible to answer that question. Zalachenko doesn't make empty threats, and he's going to do what's best for him. In that respect he's predictable. If it benefits him to talk to the media... if he thought he could get an amnesty or a reduced sentence, then he'd do it. Or if he felt betrayed and wanted to get even."

"Regardless of the consequences?"

"Especially regardless of the consequences. For him the point is to be seen to be tougher than all of us."

"If Zalachenko were to talk, it's not certain that anyone would believe him. And to prove anything they'd have to get hold of our archives."

"Do you want to take the chance? Let's say Zalachenko talks. Who's going to talk next? What do we do if Bjorck signs an affidavit confirming his story? And Clinton, sitting at his dialysis machine... what would happen if he turned religious and felt bitter about everything and everyone? What if he wanted to make a confession? Believe me, if anyone starts talking, it's the end of the Section."

"So... what should we do?"

Silence settled over the table. It was Gullberg who took up the thread.

"There are several parts to this problem. First of all, we can agree on what the consequences would be if Zalachenko talked. The entire legal system would come crashing down on our heads. We would be demolished. My guess is that several employees of the Section would go to prison."

"Our activity is completely legal... we're actually working under the auspices of the government."

"Spare me the bullshit," Gullberg said. "You know as well as I do that a loosely formulated document that was written in the mid-'60s isn't worth a damn today. I don't think any one of us could even imagine what would happen if Zalachenko talked."

Silence descended once again.

"So our starting point has to be to persuade Zalachenko to keep his mouth shut," Nystrom said at last.

"And to be able to persuade him to keep his mouth shut, we have to be able to offer him something substantial. The problem is that he's unpredictable. He would scorch us out of sheer malice. We have to think about how we can keep him in check."

"And what about his demand...," Sandberg said, "that we make the whole thing disappear and put Salander back in an asylum?"

"Salander we can handle. It's Zalachenko who's the problem. But that leads us to the second part  -  damage control. Teleborian's report from 1991 has been leaked, and it's potentially as serious a threat as Zalachenko."

Nystrom cleared his throat. "As soon as we realized that the report was out and in the hands of the police, I took certain measures. I went through Forelius, our lawyer in S.I.S., and he got hold of the Prosecutor General. The P.G. ordered the report confiscated from the police  -  it's not to be disseminated or copied."

"How much does the P.G. know?" Gullberg said.

"Not a thing. He's acting on an official request from S.I.S. It's classified material and the P.G. has no alternative."

"Who in the police has read the report?"

"There were two copies which were read by Bublanski, his colleague Inspector Modig, and finally the preliminary investigation leader, Richard Ekstrom. We can assume that another two police officers...," Nystrom leafed through his notes, "... that Curt Andersson and Jerker Holmberg at least, are aware of the contents."

"So, four police officers and one prosecutor. What do we know about them?"

"Prosecutor Ekstrom, forty-two, regarded as a rising star. He's been an investigator at Justice and has handled a number of cases that got a fair bit of attention. Zealous. P.R.-savvy. Careerist."

"Social Democrat?" Gullberg said.

"Probably. But not active."

"So Bublanski is leading the investigation. I saw him in a press conference on T.V. He didn't seem comfortable in front of the cameras."

"He's older and has an exceptional record, but he also has a reputation for being crusty and obstinate. He's Jewish and quite conservative."

"And the woman... who's she?"

"Sonja Modig. Married, thirty-nine, two kids. Has advanced rather quickly in her career. I talked to Teleborian, who described her as emotional. She asks questions non-stop."