“Screw it.”
When he woke up, he heard her in the kitchen. It was not yet 7:00. He may only
have slept for two hours, and he stayed in bed, dozing.
This woman baffled him. At absolutely no point had she even with a glance
indicated that she was the least bit interested in him.
“Good morning,” she said from the doorway. She even had the hint of a smile.
“Hi.”
“We are out of milk. I’ll go to the petrol station. They open at seven.” And she was
gone.
He heard her go out of the front door. He shut his eyes. Then he heard the front
door open again and seconds later she was back in the doorway. This time she was
not smiling.
“You’d better come and look at this,” she said in a strange voice.
Blomkvist was on his feet at once and pulled on his jeans.
During the night someone had been to the cottage with an unwelcome present.
On the porch lay the half-charred corpse of a cat. The cat’s legs and head had been
cut off, then the body had been flayed and the guts and stomach removed, flung
next to the corpse, which seemed to have been roasted over a fire. The cat’s head
was intact, on the saddle of Salander’s motorcycle. He recognised the reddish-
brown fur.
CHAPTER 22
Thursday, July 10
They ate breakfast in the garden in silence and without milk in their coffee.
Salander had taken out a Canon digital camera and photographed the macabre