How could she have been so thoughtless? She might as well have beaten her up herself.

She felt so wretched that tears came to her eyes. But Salander never cried. She wiped them away.

At 10:30 she was so restless that she could not stay in the apartment. She put on her coat and boots and set off into the night. She walked down side streets until she reached Ringvägen and stood at the end of the driveway to Söder hospital. She wanted to go to Mimmi’s room and wake her up and tell her that everything was going to be all right. Then she saw blue lights from a police car near Zinken and stepped into an alleyway to avoid being seen.

She was home again just after midnight. She was freezing, so she undressed and crawled into bed. She could not sleep. At 1:00 a.m. she was up again, walking naked through the unlit apartment. She went into the guest bedroom, where there was a bed and a desk. She had never set foot in it before. She sat on the floor with her back to the wall and stared into the night.

Lisbeth Salander has a guest bedroom. What a joke.

She sat there until after 2:00, and by then she was so cold that she was shivering. Then she started to cry again.

Some time before dawn, Salander took a shower and dressed. She put on the coffeemaker and made breakfast and turned on her computer. She went into Blomkvist’s hard drive. She was surprised to discover that he had not updated his research journal, and instead she opened the folder. There was a new document titled [Lisbeth-IMPORTANT]. She looked at the document properties. It had been created at 12:52 a.m. She double-clicked.

Lisbeth, contact me right away. This story is worse than I could have dreamed. I know who Zalachenko is and I think I know what happened. I’ve talked to Holger Palmgren. I understand Teleborian’s role and why they locked you up at the clinic. I think I know who murdered Dag and Mia. I also think I know why, but I’m missing some crucial pieces of information. I don’t understand Bjurman’s role. CALL ME. CONTACT ME AT ONCE. WE CAN SOLVE THIS. Mikael

Salander read the document slowly again. Kalle Blomkvist had been busy. Practical Pig. Practical Fucking Pig. He still thought there was something to solve.

He meant well. He wanted to help.

He didn’t understand that whatever happened, her life was over.

It had ended before she even turned thirteen.

There was only one solution.

She created a new document and tried to write a reply, but the thoughts were whirling around in her head and there were so many things she wanted to say to him.

Salander in love. What a fucking joke.

He would never find out. She would never give him the satisfaction.

She deleted the document and stared at the empty screen. But no answer at all was less than he deserved. He had stood faithfully in her corner like a steadfast tin soldier. She created a new document and wrote:

Thanks for being my friend.

First she had a number of logistical decisions to take. She needed a means of transport. Using the burgundy Honda, still on Lundagatan, was tempting but out of the question. There was nothing in Prosecutor Ekström’s laptop to indicate that anyone in the police investigation had discovered that she had bought a car, which might be because she had not yet managed to send in the registration documents and insurance papers. But Mimmi might have talked about the car when she was questioned by the police, and obviously Lundagatan was under sporadic surveillance.

The police knew that she had a motorcycle, and it would be even more obtrusive to take it out of storage from the apartment building on Lundagatan. Besides, after a number of summer-like days, a change in the weather was forecast, and she had no great desire to venture out on a bike on rain-slick highways.

One alternative, of course, would be to rent a car in Irene Nesser’s name, but there were risks involved with that too. Someone might recognize her, and the fake identity would then be lost to her. That would be a catastrophe; it was her escape route out of the country.

Then she gave a lopsided smile. There was one other possibility. She booted up her computer, logged on to Milton Security’s network and navigated to the car pool, which was administered by a secretary in Milton ’s reception area. Milton Security had close to forty cars at its disposal, some of which carried the company logo and were used on business trips. The majority were unmarked surveillance cars, and these were kept in the garage at Milton ’s HQ near Slussen. Practically around the corner.

She studied the personnel files and chose employee Marcus Collander, who had just gone on vacation for two weeks. He had left the telephone number of a hotel in the Canary Islands. She changed the hotel name and scrambled the digits of the phone number where he could be reached. Then she entered a note that Collander’s last action while on duty had been to drop off one of the cars for servicing. She picked a Toyota Corolla automatic, which she had driven before, and recorded that it would be back a week later.

Finally she went into the surveillance system and reprogrammed the cameras she would have to walk past. Between 4:30 and 5:00 a.m. they would show a repeat of the previous half hour, but with an altered time code.

At 4:15 she packed her backpack. She had two changes of clothes, two Mace canisters, and the fully charged Taser. She looked at the two guns she had acquired. She rejected Sandström’s Colt 1911 Government and chose Nieminen’s Polish P-83 Wanad, which had one round missing from the magazine. It was slimmer and fit her hand better. She put it into her jacket pocket.

Salander closed the lid of her PowerBook but left the computer on the desk. She had transferred the contents of her hard drive to an encrypted backup on the Net and then erased her whole hard drive with a programme she had written herself, which guaranteed that not even she could reconstruct the contents. She did not want to rely on her Power-Book, which would just be cumbersome to drag around. Instead she took her Palm Tungsten PDA with her.

She looked around her office. She had a feeling that she would not be coming back to the apartment in Mosebacke and knew that she was leaving secrets behind that she should probably destroy. But glancing at her watch she realized that she did not have much time. She turned off the desk lamp.

She walked to Milton Security, went into the garage, and took the elevator up to the administrative offices. She met no-one in the empty corridors and taking the car keys out of the unlocked cabinet in reception presented no difficulty.

She was in the garage thirty seconds later, and blipped open the door lock on the Corolla. She dumped her backpack in the passenger seat and adjusted the driver’s seat and the rearview mirror. She used her old card key to open the garage door.

Just before 5:00 she turned up from Söder Mälarstrand at Västerbron. It was starting to get light.

Blomkvist woke up at 6:30. He had not set his alarm clock and had slept for only three hours. He got up and switched on his iBook and opened the folder to look for her reply.

Thanks for being my friend.

Blomkvist felt a chill run down his spine. Hardly the answer he had hoped for. It felt like a farewell letter. Salander alone against the world. He went to the kitchen and started the coffeemaker and then had a shower. He put on a pair of worn jeans and realized that he had not had time to do laundry for weeks. He had no clean shirts. He put on a wine-red sweatshirt under his grey jacket.

As he made breakfast in the kitchen, a glint of metal on the counter behind the microwave caught his eye. With a fork he fished out a key ring.

Salander’s keys. He had found them after the attack on Lundagatan and put them on top of the microwave with her shoulder bag. He had forgotten to give them to Inspector Modig with the bag, and they must have fallen down in back.