Illustration by Jack Dylan for The Globe and MailThe Globe and Mail
Salander was aware of the smell of almonds and ethanol. It felt as if she had alcohol in her mouth and she tried to swallow, but her tongue felt numb and paralyzed. She tried to open her eyes, but she could not. In the distance she heard a voice that seemed to be talking to her, but she could not understand the words. Then she heard the voice quite clearly.
"I think she's coming around."
She felt someone touch her forehead and tried to brush away the intrusive hand. At the same moment she felt intense pain in her left shoulder. She forced herself to relax.
"Can you hear me, Lisbeth?"
Go away.
"Can you open your eyes?"
Who was this fucking idiot harping on at her?
Finally she did open her eyes. At first she just saw strange lights, until a figure appeared in the centre of her field of vision. She tried to focus her gaze, but the figure kept slipping away. She felt as if she had a stupendous hangover, and the bed seemed to keep tilting backwards.
"Pnkllrs," she said.
"Say that again?"
" 'diot," she said.
"That sounds good. Can you open your eyes again?"
She opened her eyes to narrow slits. She saw the face of a complete stranger and memorized every detail. A blond man with intense blue eyes and a tilted, angular face about a foot from hers.
"Hello. My name is Anders Jonasson. I'm a doctor. You're in a hospital. You were injured and you're waking up after an operation. Can you tell me your name?"
"Pshalandr," Salander said.
"Good. Would you do me a favour and count to 10?"
"One, two, four … no … three, four, five, six..."
Then she passed out.
Dr. Jonasson was pleased with the response he had gotten. She had said her name and started to count. That meant that she still had her cognitive abilities somewhat intact and was not going to end up a vegetable. He wrote down her wake-up time as 9:06 p.m., about sixteen hours after he had finished the operation. He had slept most of the day and then drove back to the hospital at around 7 in the evening. He was actually off that day, but he had some paperwork to catch up on.
And he could not resist going to intensive care to look in on the patient whose brain he had rooted around in early that morning.
"Let her sleep a while, but check her EEG regularly. I'm worried there might be swelling or bleeding in the brain. She seemed to have sharp pain in her left shoulder when she tried to move her arm. If she wakes up again you can give her two milligrams of morphine per hour."
He felt oddly exhilarated as he left by the main entrance of Sahlgrenska.
* * * *
Anita Kaspersson, a dental hygienist who lived in Alingsas, was shaking all over as she stumbled through the woods. She had severe hypothermia. She wore only a pair of wet pants and a thin sweater. Her bare feet were bleeding. She had managed to free herself from the barn where the man had tied her up, but she could not untie the rope that bound her hands behind her back. Her fingers had no feeling in them at all.
She felt as if she were the last person on Earth, abandoned by everyone.
She had no idea where she was. It was dark, and she had no sense of how long she had been aimlessly walking. She was amazed to still be alive.
Then she saw a light through the trees and stopped.
For several minutes she did not dare to approach the light. She pushed through some bushes and stood in the yard of a one-storey house of grey brick. She looked around her in astonishment.
She staggered to the door and turned to kick it with her heel.
* * * *
Salander opened her eyes and saw a light in the ceiling. After a minute she turned her head and became aware that she had on a neck brace. She had a heavy, dull headache and acute pain in her left shoulder. She closed her eyes.
Hospital, she thought. What am I doing here?
She felt exhausted, could hardly get her thoughts in order. Then the memories came rushing back to her. For several seconds she was seized by panic as the fragmented images of how she had dug herself out of a grave came flooding over her. Then she clenched her teeth and concentrated on breathing.
She was alive, but she was not sure whether that was a good thing.
She could not piece together all that had happened, but she summoned up a foggy mosaic of images from the woodshed and how she had swung an axe in fury and struck her father in the face. Zalachenko. Was he alive or dead?
She could not clearly remember what had happened with Niedermann. She had a memory of being surprised that he had run away, and she did not know why.
Suddenly she remembered having seen Kalle Fucking Blomkvist. Perhaps she had dreamed the whole thing, but she remembered a kitchen - it must have been the kitchen in the Gosseberga farmhouse - and she thought she remembered seeing him coming towards her. I must have been hallucinating.
The events in Gosseberga already seemed like the distant past, or possibly a ridiculous dream. She concentrated on the present and opened her eyes again.
She was in a bad way. She did not need anyone to tell her that. She raised her right hand and felt her head. There were bandages. Then she remembered it all. Niedermann. Zalachenko. The old bastard had a pistol too. A .22-calibre Browning. Which, compared to all other handguns, had to be considered a toy. That was why she was still alive.
I was shot in the head. I could stick my finger in the entry wound and touch my brain.
She was surprised to be alive. Yet she felt indifferent. If death was the black emptiness from which she had just woken up, then death was nothing to worry about. She would hardly notice the difference. With this esoteric thought she closed her eyes and fell asleep again.
* * * *
Blomkvist was suddenly awake, and he did not know why. He did not know where he was, and then he remembered that he had booked himself a room in City Hotel. It was as dark as coal. He fumbled to turn on the bedside lamp and looked at the clock: 2 a.m. He had slept 15 hours straight.
He got up and went to the bathroom. He would not be able to get back to sleep. He took a long shower. Then he put on his jeans and sweatshirt. He called the front desk to ask if he could get coffee and a sandwich at this early hour. The night porter said that was possible.
He put on his sports jacket and went downstairs. He ordered a coffee and a cheese and liver pâté sandwich. He bought the Goteborgs-Posten. The arrest of Lisbeth Salander was front-page news. He took his breakfast back to his room and read the paper. The reports were somewhat confused, but they were on the right track. Ronald Niedermann, 35, was being sought for the killing of a policeman. The police wanted to question him also in connection with several murders in Stockholm. The police had released nothing about Salander's condition, and the name Zalachenko was not mentioned. He was referred to only as a 65-year-old landowner from Gosseberga, and apparently the media had taken him for an innocent victim.
When Blomkvist finished reading, he flipped open his mobile and saw that he had 20 new messages. Three were messages to call Berger. Two were from his sister, Annika. Fourteen were from reporters at various newspapers who wanted to talk to him. One was from Malm, who had sent him the brisk advice: It would be best if you took the first train home.
Blomkvist frowned. That was unusual, coming from Malm. The text had been sent at 7:06 the night before. He stifled the impulse to call and wake someone up at 3 in the morning. Instead he booted up his iBook and plugged the cable into the broadband jack. He found that the first train to Stockholm left at 5:20, and there was nothing new in Aftonbladet online.
He opened a new Word document, lit a cigarette, and sat for three minutes staring at the blank screen. Then he began to type.
Her name is Lisbeth Salander. Sweden has gotten to know her through police reports and press releases and the headlines in the evening papers. She is 26 years old and not even five feet tall. She has been called a psychopath, a murderer, and a lesbian Satanist. There has been almost no limit to the fantasies that have been circulated about her. In this issue, Millennium will tell the story of how government officials conspired against Salander in order to protect a pathological murderer. …
Excerpted from The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest , the final novel in Stieg Larsson's bestselling Millennium Trilogy , available in Canada May 25. Can't wait to read more? For an exclusive advance look at the entire first chapter, please visit globeandmail.com/books. Penguin Books offers Globe readers the chance to win 1 of 100 limited-edition advance reading copies of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest . Visit penguin.ca/globe to enter.