How It All Goes Down
Monday, January 10 – Tuesday, January 11
- Salander arrives back in Stockholm around noon and takes a cab to her new apartment.
- It's a very expensive apartment, something she could never afford before she used the Internet to steal three billion kroner (about $75 million).
- She doesn't want to see Blomkvist. She fell in love with him, knowing he had lots of lady loves. He caused her pain, though he didn't mean to. She ignores his attempts to reach her.
- On Tuesday, Salander goes to her old apartment and checks her mail. She learns she's inherited a small amount of money from her late mother, and that there's a box of her mother's things waiting for her at Äppelviken nursing home. She doesn't open the letter from Blomkvist.
- As Irene Nesser (one of her identities), she goes on a shopping spree to furnish her apartment.
- At the Millennium offices, Blomkvist, Berger and the rest of the staff are in a meeting with Dag Svensson. Dag wants to publish an article and a book about "the sex trade" (4.89) in Sweden.
- Every year, poor, young European girls are brought to Sweden from Eastern Europe and forced into prostitution.
- Dag has identified three cops, five attorneys, a prosecutor, a judge, and three journalists involved in this sex trafficking and he plans to expose them.
- But, the actual "sex mafia" (4.125) is made up of "a sleazy bunch of nobodies" (4.125).
- It prospers because even though Sweden has tough laws against the sex trade, nobody really cares about the girls, because nobody really cares about prostitutes.
- Blomkvist and Berger agree to publish Dag's article, and his book, and they decide to devote the entire May issue to the theme of sex trafficking.