“Yeah, they sell handcuffs and whore outfits and stuff like that. Need a whip?”

“It’s not a sex shop. It’s a fashion boutique for people who like sexy underwear.”

“Same shit.”

“Go on,” Bublanski said angrily. “Is there any sign of Fröken Wu?”

“Not a trace.”

“She could have gone away for Easter,” Modig said.

“Or else Salander whacked her too,” Faste said. “Maybe she wants to make a clean sweep of all her acquaintances.”

“Wu is a lesbian. Should we conclude that she and Salander are a couple?”

“I think we can draw the conclusion that there’s a sexual relationship,” Andersson said. “First, we found Salander’s prints on and around the bed in the apartment. We also found her prints on a pair of handcuffs.”

“Then she’ll appreciate the cuffs I’ve got ready for her,” Faste said.

Modig groaned.

“Go on,” Bublanski said to Andersson.

“We got a tip that Miriam Wu was seen at Kvarnen kissing a girl who matched Salander’s description. That was about two weeks ago. The informant claimed that he knows who Salander is and has run into her there before, although he hadn’t seen her in the past year. I haven’t had time to double-check with the staff, but I’ll do it this afternoon.”

“In her casebook at social welfare it doesn’t mention a thing about her being a lesbian. A number of times in her teens she ran away from her foster families and picked up men in bars. She was noticed by the police several times in the company of older men.”

“Which doesn’t mean shit if she was a whore,” Faste said.

“What do we know about people she knows? Curt?”

“Hardly anything. She hasn’t had a run-in with the police since she was eighteen. She knows Dragan Armansky and Mikael Blomkvist, we know that much. And she knows Miriam Wu, of course. The same source that tipped us off about her and Wu at Kvarnen says that she used to hang out with a bunch of girls there a while back. Some kind of girl band called Evil Fingers.”

“Evil Fingers?” Bublanski repeated.

“Seems to be something occult.”

“Don’t tell me Salander is some damned Satanist too,” Bublanski said. “The media are going to go nuts.”

“Lesbian Satanists,” Faste said helpfully.

“Hans, you’ve got a view of women from the Middle Ages,” Modig said. “Even I’ve heard of Evil Fingers.”

“You have?” Bublanski said.

“It was a girl rock band in the late nineties. No superstars, but they were pretty famous for a while.”

“So, hard-rocking lesbian Satanists,” Faste said.

“OK, enough goofing around,” Bublanski said. “Hans, you and Curt check out who was in Evil Fingers and talk to them. Does Salander have any other friends?”

“Not many, other than her former guardian, Holger Palmgren. He’s in long-term care now after a stroke and is apparently unwell. To be honest, I can’t say that I found any circle of friends, though we haven’t seen her address book. For that matter, we still don’t know where she lives.”

“Nobody can go around without leaving traces, like some kind of ghost. What do we think about Mikael Blomkvist?”

“We haven’t had him under direct surveillance, but we’ve checked in with him off and on over the holiday,” Faste said. “On the chance that Salander might pop up, that is. He went home after work on Thursday and doesn’t seem to have left his apartment all weekend.”

“I can’t see him having anything to do with the murders,” Modig said. “His story holds up, and he can account for every minute of that night.”

“But he does know Salander. He’s the link between her and the couple in Enskede. And besides, we have his statement that a man attacked Salander a week before the murders took place. What are we supposed to make of that?” Bublanski said.

“Other than the fact that Blomkvist was the only witness to the attack?” Faste said.

“You think Blomkvist is imagining things or lying?”

“Don’t know. But it sounds to me like a bullshit story. How come a full-grown man couldn’t take care of a tiny girl who weighs less than ninety pounds?”

“Why would Blomkvist lie?”

“To muddle our thinking about Salander?”

“But none of this really adds up. Blomkvist’s hypothesis is that his friends were killed because of the book that Svensson was writing.”

“Bullshit,” Faste said. “It’s Salander. Why would anybody murder their guardian to shut Dag Svensson up? And who else could it be… a policeman?”

“If Blomkvist goes public with his hypothesis, we’re going to see a hell of a lot of police conspiracy theories,” said Andersson.

Everyone at the table murmured agreement.

“All right,” Modig said. “Why did she shoot Bjurman?”

“And what does the tattoo mean?” Bublanski said, pointing at a photograph of Bjurman’s lower abdomen.

I AM A SADISTIC PIG, A PERVERT, AND A RAPIST.

“What does the pathologist’s report say?” Bohman said.

“The tattoo is between one and three years old. That’s measured by the extent of bleed-through in the skin,” Modig said.

“I think we can rule out the likelihood of Bjurman actually having commissioned it.”

“There are plenty of crazies around, but it can hardly be a standard motif among tattoo enthusiasts.”

Modig waved her index finger. “The pathologist says that the tattoo has to have been done by a rank amateur. The needle penetrated to different depths, and it’s a very large tattoo on a sensitive part of the body. All in all, it must have been a very painful procedure, comparable to aggravated assault.”

“Except for the fact that Bjurman never filed a police report,” Faste said.

“I wouldn’t file a police report either, if somebody tattooed that on me,” Andersson said.

“One more thing,” Modig said. “And this might reinforce the confession, as it were, in the tattoo.” She opened a folder of photographic printouts and passed them around. “I printed out some samples from a folder on Bjurman’s hard drive. They’re downloaded from the Internet. His computer contains about two thousand images of a similar nature.”

Faste whistled and held up a photograph of a woman bound in a brutally uncomfortable position. “This may be something for Domino Fashion or Evil Fingers,” he said.

Bublanski gestured in annoyance for Faste to shut up.

“What are we supposed to make of this?” Bohman said.

“Suppose the tattoo is about two years old,” Bublanski said. “It would have been done around the time that Bjurman got sick. No medical records indicate that he had any illness, other than high blood pressure. So we can assume that there was a connection.”

“Salander changed during that year,” Bohman said. “She stopped working for Milton and without warning, I understand, went overseas.”

“Should we assume that there’s a connection there too? The message in the tattoo plainly says that Bjurman raped someone. Salander is a likely victim. And that would be a motive for murder.”

“There are other ways to interpret this, of course,” Faste said. “I can imagine a scenario where Salander and the Chinese girl are running some sort of escort service with S &M overtones. Bjurman could be one of those nuts who gets off on being whipped by small girls. He could have been in some sort of dependence relationship with Salander and things went wrong.”

“But that doesn’t explain what she was doing in Enskede.”

“If Svensson and Johansson were about to expose the sex trade, they may have stumbled on Salander and Wu. That may be your motive for Salander to commit murder.”

“So far this is mere speculation,” said Modig.

The meeting went on for another hour, and also dealt with the fact that Svensson’s laptop was missing. When they broke for lunch they were all frustrated. The investigation was fraught with more question marks than ever.

Berger called Magnus Borgsjö, CEO of Svenska Morgon-Posten, as soon as she reached the office on Tuesday morning.