Read The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye: Continuing Stieg Larsson's Millennium Series for Free Online

she could keep on with her quantum physics and her workouts, it made no difference whether she was in prison or anywhere else. Perhaps she even saw her time inside as an experience, an opportunity. She was funny that way. She took life as it came and often when he worried about her she just smiled at him, even when she was transferred to Flodberga.
    Blomkvist did not like Flodberga. Nobody did. It was the only maximum security women’s prison in Sweden, and Salander had ended up there because Ingemar Eneroth, the head of the national prison service, had insisted it was the safest place for her. Both Säpo and D.G.S.E., the French intelligence service, had picked up threats against her, said to come from her sister Camilla’s criminal network in Russia.
    It could well be true. It could also be bullshit. But since Salander had no objection to being transferred, that’s what happened, and in any case there was not much left of her sentence to run. Maybe it was fine after all. Salander had seemed in unusually good spirits the previous Friday. Prison meals could be classified as health-food compared to the junk she ordinarily stuffed herself with.
    Blomkvist was on the train to Örebro, going through the summer issue of
Millennium
on his laptop. It was due to go to the printers on Monday. The rain was pouring down outside. According to the forecasts, this would be the hottest summer in years. But the rain had been relentless, falling day after day, and Blomkvist longed to escape to his house in Sandhamn to find some peace. He had been working hard.
Millennium
’s finances were in good shape. After his revelations about senior figures within the U.S. National Security Agency colluding with organized crime syndicates in Russia to steal corporate secrets all over the world, the magazine’s star had risen again. But their success had also brought worries. Blomkvist and the editorial management were under pressure to bring the magazine more into the digital landscape. It was a positive development, inevitable in the new media climate, but incredibly time-consuming. Discussions about social media strategy interfered with his concentration. He had begun to dig into several good stories, but had not got to the bottom of any of them.
    It didn’t help that the person who had handed him the scoop about the N.S.A. – Salander – was behind bars. He was in her debt.
    He looked out of the train window, badly wanting to be left in peace. Wishful thinking. The elderly lady sitting next to him, who had been asking incessant questions, now wanted to know where he was going. He tried to be evasive. She meant well, like most people who bothered him these days, but he was relieved when he had to cut their conversation short to get off at Örebro. He ran through the rain to catch his connecting bus. It was ridiculous to have to travel for forty minutes in an old Scania bus without air conditioning, given that the prison was situated so close to the railway line, but there was no nearby train station. It was 5.40 p.m. by the time he began to make out the dull-grey concrete wall of the prison. At seven metres high, ribbed and curved, it looked like a gigantic wave frozen in the middle of a terrifying assault on the open plain. The pine forest was a mere line on the distant horizon and there was not a human dwelling in sight. The prison entrance gate was so close to the railway-crossing barriers that there was only room for one car at a time to pass in front of it.
    Blomkvist stepped off the bus and was let through the steel gates. He made his way to the guard post and put his telephone and keys in a grey locker. As he went through the security check it felt as though they were deliberately giving him a hard time, as so often happened. A man in his thirties with a tattoo and a crew cut even grabbed his crotch. Then a drug sniffer dog was led in, a black Labrador. Did they really imagine he would try to smuggle drugs into the prison?
    He chose to