“I take it that you will be presenting this recommendation to the district court.”

“That’s exactly what I’ll be doing. It’s not my business to tell you how to conduct her defence. But if this is the line you seriously intend to take, then the situation is, quite frankly, absurd. This statement contains wild and unsubstantiated accusations against a number of people… in particular against her guardian, Advokat Bjurman, and Dr Peter Teleborian. I hope you do not in all seriousness believe that the court will accept an account that casts suspicion on Dr Teleborian without offering a single shred of evidence. This document is going to be the final nail in your client’s coffin, if you’ll pardon the metaphor.”

“I hear what you’re saying.”

“In the course of the trial you may claim that she is not ill and request a supplementary psychiatric assessment, and then the matter can be submitted to the medical board. But to be honest her statement leaves me in very little doubt that every other forensic psychiatrist will come to the same conclusion as Dr Teleborian. Its very existence confirms all documentary evidence that she is a paranoid schizophrenic.”

Giannini smiled politely. “There is an alternative view,” she said.

“What’s that?”

“That her account is in every detail true and that the court will elect to believe it.”

Ekström looked bewildered by the notion. Then he smiled and stroked his goatee.

Clinton was sitting at the little side table by the window in his office. He listened attentively to Nyström and Sandberg. His face was furrowed, but his peppercorn eyes were focused and alert.

“We’ve been monitoring the telephone and email traffic of Millennium’s key employees since April,” Clinton said. “We’ve confirmed that Blomkvist and Eriksson and this Cortez fellow are pretty downcast on the whole. We’ve read the outline version of the next issue. It seems that even Blomkvist has reversed his position and is now of the view that Salander is mentally unstable after all. There is a socially linked defence for her – he’s claiming that society let her down, and that as a result it’s somehow not her fault that she tried to murder her father. But that’s hardly an argument. There isn’t one word about the break-in at his apartment or the fact that his sister was attacked in Göteborg, and there’s no mention of the missing reports. He knows he can’t prove anything.”

“That is precisely the problem,” Sandberg said. “Blomkvist must know that someone has their eye on him. But he seems to be completely ignoring his suspicions. Forgive me, but that isn’t Millennium’s style. Besides, Erika Berger is back in editorial and yet this whole issue is so bland and devoid of substance that it seems like a joke.”

“What are you saying? That it’s a decoy?”

Sandberg nodded. “The summer issue should have come out in the last week of June. According to one of Malin Eriksson’s emails, it’s being printed by a company in Södertälje, but when I rang them this morning, they told me they hadn’t even got the C.R.C. All they’d had was a request for a quote about a month ago.”

“Where have they printed before?” Clinton said.

“At a place called Hallvigs in Morgongåva. I called to ask how far they had got with the printing – I said I was calling from Millennium. The manager wouldn’t tell me a thing. I thought I’d drive up there this evening and take a look.”

“Makes sense. Georg?”

“I’ve reviewed all the telephone traffic from the past week,” Nyström said. “It’s bizarre, but the Millennium staff never discuss anything to do with the trial or Zalachenko.”

“Nothing at all?”

“No. They mention it only when they’re talking with someone outside Millennium. Listen to this, for instance. Blomkvist gets a call from a reporter at Aftonbladet asking whether he has any comment to make on the upcoming trial.”

He put a tape recorder on the table.

“Sorry, but I have no comment.”

“You’ve been involved with the story from the start. You were the one who found Salander down in Gosseberga. And you haven’t published a single word since. When do you intend to publish?”

“When the time is right. Provided I have anything to say.”

“Do you?”

“Well, you can buy a copy of Millennium and see for yourself.”

He turned off the recorder.

“We didn’t think about this before, but I went back and listened to bits at random. It’s been like this the entire time. He hardly discusses the Zalachenko business except in the most general terms. He doesn’t even discuss it with his sister, and she’s Salander’s lawyer.”

“Maybe he really doesn’t have anything to say.”

“He consistently refuses to speculate about anything. He seems to live at the offices round the clock; he’s hardly ever at his apartment. If he’s working night and day, then he ought to have come up with something more substantial than whatever’s going to be in the next issue of Millennium.”

“And we still haven’t been able to tap the phones at their offices?”

“No,” Sandberg said. “There’s been somebody there twenty-four hours a day – and that’s significant – ever since we went into Blomkvist’s apartment the first time. The office lights are always on, and if it’s not Blomkvist it’s Cortez or Eriksson, or that faggot… er, Christer Malm.”

Clinton stroked his chin and thought for a moment.

“Conclusions?”

Nyström said: “If I didn’t know better, I’d think they were putting on an act for us.”

Clinton felt a cold shiver run down the back of his neck. “Why hasn’t this occurred to us before?”

“We’ve been listening to what they’ve been saying, not to what they haven’t been saying. We’ve been gratified when we’ve heard their confusion or noticed it in an email. Blomkvist knows damn well that someone stole copies of the 1991 Salander report from him and his sister. But what the hell is he doing about it?”

“And they didn’t report her mugging to the police?”

Nyström shook his head. “Giannini was present at the interviews with Salander. She’s polite, but she never says anything of any weight. And Salander herself never says anything at all.”

“But that will work in our favour. The more she keeps her mouth shut, the better. What does Ekström say?”

“I saw him a couple of hours ago. He’d just been given Salander’s statement.” He pointed to the pages in Clinton ’s lap.

“Ekström is confused. It’s fortunate that Salander is no good at expressing herself in writing. To an outsider this would look like a totally insane conspiracy theory with added pornographic elements. But she still shoots very close to the mark. She describes exactly how she came to be locked up at St Stefan’s, and she claims that Zalachenko worked for Säpo and so on. She says she thinks everything is connected with a little club inside Säpo, pointing to the existence of something corresponding to the Section. All in all it’s fairly accurate. But as I said, it’s not plausible. Ekström is in a dither because this also seems to be the line of defence Giannini is going to use at the trial.”

“Shit,” Clinton said. He bowed his head and thought intently for several minutes. Finally he looked up.

“Jonas, drive up to Morgongåva this evening and find out if anything is going on. If they’re printing Millennium, I want a copy.”

“I’ll take Falun with me.”

“Good. Georg, I want you to see Ekström this afternoon and take his pulse. Everything has gone smoothly until now, but I can’t ignore what you two are telling me.”

Clinton sat in silence for a moment more.

“The best thing would be if there wasn’t any trial…” he said at last.

He raised his eyes and looked at Nyström. Nyström nodded. Sandberg nodded.

“Nyström, can you investigate our options?”

Sandberg and the locksmith known as Falun parked a short distance from the railway tracks and walked through Morgongåva. It was 8.30 in the evening. It was too light and too early to do anything, but they wanted to reconnoitre and get a look at the place.