The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest - Страница 3

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While he waited for the helicopter, he did what he could for Salander. He took a clean sheet from a linen cupboard and cut it up to make bandages. The blood had coagulated at the entry wound in her head, and he did not know whether he dared to put a bandage on it or not. In the end he fixed the fabric very loosely round her head, mostly so that the wound would not be exposed to bacteria or dirt. But he had stopped the bleeding from the wounds in her hip and shoulder in the simplest possible way. He had found a roll of duct tape and this he had used to close the wounds. The medics remarked that this, in their experience, was a brand-new form of bandage. He had also bathed Salander’s face with a wet towel and done his best to wipe off the dirt.

He had not gone back to the woodshed to tend to Zalachenko. He honestly did not give a damn about the man. But he did call Erika Berger on his mobile and told her the situation.

“Are you alright?” Berger asked him.

“I’m O.K.,” Blomkvist said. “Lisbeth is the one who’s in real danger.”

“That poor girl,” Berger said. “I read Björck’s Säpo report this evening. How should I deal with it?”

“I don’t have the energy to think that through right now,” Blomkvist said. Security Police matters were going to have to wait until the next day.

As he talked to Berger, he sat on the floor next to the bench and kept a watchful eye on Salander. He had taken off her shoes and her trousers so that he could bandage the wound to her hip, and now his hand rested on the trousers that he had dropped on the floor next to the bench. There was something in one of the pockets. He pulled out a Palm Tungsten T3.

He frowned and looked long and hard at the hand-held computer. When he heard the approaching helicopter he stuffed it into the inside pocket of his jacket and then went through all her other pockets. He found another set of keys to the apartment in Mosebacke and a passport in the name of Irene Nesser. He put these swiftly into a side pocket of his laptop case.

The first patrol car with Torstensson and Ingemarsson from the station in Trollhättan arrived a few minutes after the helicopter landed. Next to arrive was Inspector Paulsson, who took charge immediately. Blomkvist began to explain what had happened. He very soon realized that Paulsson was a pompous, rigid drill sergeant type. He did not seem to take in anything that Blomkvist said. It was when Paulsson arrived that things really started to go awry.

The only thing he seemed capable of grasping was that the badly damaged girl being cared for by the medics on the floor next to the kitchen bench was the triple murderer Lisbeth Salander. And above all it was important that he make the arrest. Three times Paulsson had asked the urgently occupied medical orderly whether the girl could be arrested on the spot. In the end the medic stood up and shouted at Paulsson to keep the bloody hell out of his way.

Paulsson had then turned his attention to the wounded man in the woodshed, and Blomkvist heard the inspector report over his radio that Salander had evidently attempted to kill yet another person.

By now Blomkvist was so infuriated with Paulsson, who had obviously not paid attention to a word he had said, that he yelled at him to call Inspector Bublanski in Stockholm without delay. Blomkvist had even taken out his mobile and offered to dial the number for him, but Paulsson was not interested.

Blomkvist then made two mistakes.

First, he patiently but firmly explained that the man who had committed the murders in Stockholm was Ronald Niedermann, who was built like a heavily armoured robot and suffered from a disease called congenital analgesia, and who at that moment was sitting in a ditch on the road to Nossebro tied to a traffic sign. Blomkvist told Paulsson exactly where Niedermann was to be found, and urged him to send a platoon armed with automatic weapons to pick him up. Paulsson finally asked how Niedermann had come to be in that ditch, and Blomkvist freely admitted that he himself had put him there, and had managed only by holding a gun on him the whole time.

“Assault with a deadly weapon,” was Paulsson’s immediate response.

At this point Blomkvist should have realized that Paulsson was dangerously stupid. He should have called Bublanski himself and asked him to intervene, to bring some clarity to the fog in which Paulsson was apparently enveloped. Instead he made his second mistake: he offered to hand over the weapon he had in his jacket pocket – the Colt.45 1911 Government model that he had found earlier that day at Salander’s apartment in Stockholm. It was the weapon he had used to disarm and disable Niedermann – not a straightforward matter with that giant of a man.

At which Paulsson swiftly arrested Blomkvist for possession of an illegal weapon. He then ordered his two officers, Torstensson and Ingemarsson, to drive over to the Nossebro road. They were to find out if there was any truth to Blomkvist’s story that a man was sitting in a ditch there, tied to a MOOSE CROSSING sign. If this was the case, the officers were to handcuff the person in question and bring him to the farm at Gosseberga.

Blomkvist had objected at once, pointing out that Niedermann was not a man who could be arrested and handcuffed just like that: he was a maniacal killer, for God’s sake. When Blomkvist’s objections were ignored by Paulsson, the exhaustion of the day made him reckless. He told Paulsson he was an incompetent fool and yelled at him that Torstensson and Ingemarsson should fucking forget about untying Niedermann until they had called for back-up. As a result of this outburst, he was handcuffed and pushed into the back seat of Paulsson’s car. Cursing, he watched as Torstensson and Ingemarsson drove off in their patrol car. The only glimmer of light in the darkness was that Salander had been carried to the helicopter, which was even now disappearing over the treetops in the direction of Göteborg. Blomkvist felt utterly helpless: he could only hope that she would be given the very best care. She was going to need it, or die.

Jonasson made two deep incisions all the way down to the cranium and peeled back the skin round the entry wound. He used clamps to secure the opening. A theatre nurse inserted a suction tube to remove any blood. Then came the awkward part, when he had to use a drill to enlarge the hole in the skull. The procedure was excruciatingly slow.

Finally he had a hole big enough to give access to Salander’s brain. With infinite care he inserted a probe into the brain and enlarged the wound channel by a few millimetres. Then he inserted a thinner probe and located the bullet. From the X-ray he could see that the bullet had turned and was lying at an angle of forty-five degrees to the entry channel. He used the probe cautiously to prise at the edge of the bullet, and after a few unsuccessful attempts he managed to lift it very slightly so that he could turn it in the right direction.

Finally he inserted narrow forceps with serrated jaws. He gripped the base of the bullet, got a good hold on it, then pulled the forceps straight out. The bullet emerged with almost no resistance. He held it up to the light for a few seconds and saw that it appeared intact; then he dropped it into a bowl.

“Swab,” he said, and his request was instantly met.

He glanced at the E.C.G., which showed that his patient still had regular heart activity.

“Forceps.”

He pulled down the powerful magnifying glass hanging overhead and focused on the exposed area.

“Careful,” Ellis said.

Over the next forty-five minutes Jonasson picked out no fewer than thirty-two tiny bone chips from round the entry wound. The smallest of these chips could scarcely be seen with the naked eye.

As Blomkvist tried in frustration to manoeuvre his mobile out of the breast pocket of his jacket – it proved to be an impossible task with his hands cuffed behind his back, nor was it clear to him how he was going to be able to use it – several more vehicles containing both uniformed officers and technical personnel arrived at the Gosseberga farm. They were detailed by Paulsson to secure forensic evidence in the woodshed and to do a thorough examination of the farmhouse, from which several weapons had already been confiscated. By now resigned to his futility, Blomkvist had observed their comings and goings from his vantage point in Paulsson’s vehicle.

An hour passed before it dawned on Paulsson that Torstensson and Ingemarsson had not yet returned from their mission to retrieve Niedermann. He had Blomkvist brought into the kitchen, where he was required once more to provide precise directions to the spot.

Blomkvist closed his eyes.

He was still in the kitchen with Paulsson when the armed response team sent to relieve Torstensson and Ingemarsson reported back. Ingemarsson had been found dead with a broken neck. Torstensson was still alive, but he had been savagely beaten. The men had been discovered near a MOOSE CROSSING sign by the side of the road. Their service weapons and the marked police car were gone.

Inspector Paulsson had started out with a relatively manageable situation: now he had a murdered policeman and an armed killer on the run.

“Imbecile,” Blomkvist said again.

“It won’t help to insult the police.”

“That certainly seems to be true in your case. But I’m going to report you for dereliction of duty and you won’t even know what hit you. Before I’m through with you, you’re going to be celebrated as the dumbest policeman in Sweden on every newspaper billboard in the country.”

The notion of being the object of public ridicule appeared at last to have an effect on Inspector Paulsson. His face was lined with anxiety.