death meant that the wound would never heal, since she would never now get an
answer to the questions she had wanted to ask.
She thought about Armansky standing behind her at the crematorium. She should
have said something to him. At least given him some sign that she knew he was
there. But if she did that, he would have taken it as a pretext for trying to structure
her life. If she gave him her little finger he’d take her whole arm. And he would
never understand.
She thought about the lawyer, Bjurman, who was still her guardian and who, at
least for the time being, had been neutralised and was doing as he was told.
She felt an implacable hatred and clenched her teeth.
And she thought about Mikael Blomkvist and wondered what he would say when
he found out that she was a ward of the court and that her entire life was a fucking
rats’ nest.
It came to her that she really was not angry with him. He was just the person on
whom she had vented her anger when what she had wanted most of all was to
murder somebody, several people. Being angry with him was pointless.
She felt strangely ambivalent towards him.
He stuck his nose in other people’s business and poked around in her life
and...but...she had also enjoyed working with him. Even that was an odd
feeling—to work with somebody. She wasn’t used to that, but it had been
unexpectedly painless. He did not mess with her. He did not try to tell her how to
live her life.
She was the one who had seduced him, not vice versa.
And besides, it had been satisfying.
So why did she feel as if she wanted to kick him in the face?
She sighed and unhappily raised her eyes to see an inter-continental roar past on
the E4.