The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson

behind the Coconut, on the road to the airport. If the shack is still standing, that is.”
    Salander did not add that Bland was at that moment asleep in her bed three floors above them.
    “Did either of you see her husband, Richard Forbes?”
    Salander shook her head.
    Constable Ferguson could not, it seemed, think of any other questions to ask, and he closed his notebook.
    “Thank you, Ms. Salander. I’ll have to write up a report on the death.”
    “Did she
die?”
    “Mrs. Forbes? No, she’s in hospital in St. George’s. Apparently she has you and your friend to thank for the fact that she’s alive. But her husband is dead. His body was found in a parking lot at the airport two hours ago.”
    Six hundred yards further south.
    “He was pretty badly knocked about,” Ferguson said.
    “How unfortunate,” Salander said without any great sign of shock.
    When McBain and Constable Ferguson had gone, Ella came and sat at Salander’s table. She set down two shot glasses of rum. Salander gave her a quizzical look.
    “After a night like that you need something to rebuild your strength. I’m buying. I’m buying the whole breakfast.”
    The two women looked at each other. Then they clinked glasses and said, “Cheers.”
    For a long time to come, Matilda would be the object of scientific studies and discussions at meteorological institutes in the Caribbean and across the United States. Tornadoes of Matilda’s scale were almost unknown in the region. Gradually the experts agreed that a particularly rare constellation of weather fronts had combined to create a “pseudo-tornado”—something that was not actually a tornado but looked like one.
    Salander did not care about the theoretical discussion. She knew what she had seen, and she decided to try to avoid getting in the way of any of Matilda’s siblings in the future.
    Many people on the island had been injured during the night. Only one person died.
    No-one would ever know what had induced Richard Forbes to go out in the midst of a full-fledged hurricane, save possibly that sheer ignorance which seemed common to American tourists. Geraldine Forbes was not able to offer any explanation. She had suffered a severe concussion and had only incoherent memories of the events of that night.
    On the other hand, she was inconsolable to have been left a widow.

PART 2

From Russia with Love
JANUARY 10–MARCH 23

    An equation commonly contains one or more so-called unknowns, often represented by
x, y, z
, etc. Values given to the unknowns which yield equality between both sides of the equation are said to satisfy the equation and constitute a solution.
    Example: 3
x
+ 4 =
6x −
2
(x =
2)

CHAPTER 4

Monday, January 10–Tuesday, January 11

    Salander landed at Stockholm’s Arlanda Airport at noon. In addition to the flying time, she had spent nine hours at Grantley Adams Airport on Barbados. British Airways had refused to let the aircraft take off until a passenger who looked vaguely Arabic had been taken away for questioning and a possible terrorist threat had been snuffed out. By the time she landed at Gatwick in London, she had missed her connecting flight to Sweden and had had to wait overnight before she could be rebooked.
    Salander felt like a bag of bananas that had been left too long in the sun. All she had with her was a carry-on bag containing her PowerBook,
Dimensions
, and a change of clothes. She passed unchecked through the green gate at Customs. When she got outside to the airport shuttle buses she was welcomed home by a blast of freezing sleet.
    She hesitated. All her life she had had to choose the cheapest option, and she was not yet used to the idea that she had more than three billion kronor, which she had stolen by means of an Internet coup combined with good old-fashioned fraud. After a few moments of getting cold and wet, she said to hell with the rule book and waved for a taxi. She gave the driver her address on Lundagatan and fell asleep in the