“Oh come on, there’s nothing out of the ordinary about this. We wanted to check
up on you before we hired you.”
“I want to read the report,” Mikael repeated.
“I couldn’t authorise that.”
“Really? Then here’s what I say to you: either I have that report in my hands within
the hour, or I quit. I’ll take the evening train back to Stockholm. Where is the
report?”
The two men eyed each other for several seconds. Then Frode sighed and looked
away.
“In my office, at home.”
Frode had put up a terrible fuss. It was not until 6:00 that evening that Blomkvist
had Lisbeth Salander’s report in his hand. It was almost eighty pages long, plus
dozens of photocopied articles, certificates, and other records of the details of his
life and career.
It was a strange experience to read about himself in what was part biography and
part intelligence report. He was increasingly astonished at how detailed the report
was. Salander had dug up facts that he thought had been long buried in the
compost of history. She had dug up his youthful relationship with a woman who
had been a flaming Syndicalist and who was now a politician. Who in the world had
she talked to? She had found his rock band Bootstrap, which surely no-one today
would remember. She had scrutinised his finances down to the last öre. How the
hell had she done it?
As a journalist, Blomkvist had spent many years hunting down information about
people, and he could judge the quality of the work from a purely professional
standpoint. There was no doubt that this Salander was one hell of an investigator.
He doubted that even he could have produced a comparable report on any
individual completely unknown to him.