The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium #1)

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium #1) Page 15

Blomkvist reached across and stroked her hair.

"You're not alone. You've got Christer and the rest of the staff behind you."

"Not Janne Dahlman. By the way, I think you made a mistake hiring him. He's competent, but he does more harm than good. I don't trust him. He went around looking gleeful about your troubles all autumn. I don't know if he hopes he can take over your role or whether it's just personal chemistry between him and the rest of the staff."

"I'm afraid you're right," Blomkvist said.

"So what should I do? Fire him?"

"Erika, you're editor in chief and the senior shareholder of Millennium. If you have to, fire him."

"We've never fired anyone, Micke. And now you're dumping this decision on me too. It's no fun any more going to the office in the morning."

At that point Malm surprised them by standing up.

"If you're going to catch that train we've got to get moving." Berger began to protest, but he held up a hand. "Wait, Erika, you asked me what I thought. Well, I think the situation is shitty. But if things are the way Mikael says - that he's about to hit the wall - then he really does have to leave for his own sake. We owe him that much."

They stared at Malm in astonishment and he gave Blomkvist an embarrassed look.

"You both know that it's you two who are Millennium. I'm a partner and you've always been fair with me and I love the magazine and all that, but you could easily replace me with some other art director. But since you asked for my opinion, there you have it. As far as Dahlman is concerned, I agree with you. And if you want to fire him, Erika, then I'll do it for you. As long as we have a credible reason. Obviously it's extremely unfortunate that Mikael's leaving right now, but I don't think we have a choice. Mikael, I'll drive you to the station. Erika and I will hold the fort until you get back."

"What I'm afraid of is that Mikael won't ever come back," Berger said quietly.

Armansky woke up Salander when he called her at 1:30 in the afternoon.

"What's this about?" she said, drunk with sleep. Her mouth tasted like tar.

"Mikael Blomkvist. I just talked to our client, the lawyer, Frode."

"So?"

"He called to say that we can drop the investigation of Wennerstrom."

"Drop it? But I've just started working on it."

"Frode isn't interested any more."

"Just like that?"

"He's the one who decides."

"We agreed on a fee."

"How much time have you put in?"

Salander thought about it. "Three full days."

"We agreed on a ceiling of forty thousand kronor. I'll write an invoice for ten thousand; you'll get half, which is acceptable for three days of time wasted. He'll have to pay because he's the one who initiated the whole thing."

"What should I do with the material I've gathered?"

"Is there anything dramatic?"

"No."

"Frode didn't ask for a report. Put it on the shelf in case he comes back. Otherwise you can shred it. I'll have a new job for you next week."

Salander sat for a while holding the telephone after Armansky hung up. She went to her work corner in the living room and looked at the notes she had pinned up on the wall and the papers she had stacked on the desk. What she had managed to collect was mostly press cuttings and articles downloaded from the Internet. She took the papers and dropped them in a desk drawer.

She frowned. Blomkvist's strange behaviour in the courtroom had presented an interesting challenge, and Salander did not like aborting an assignment once she had started. People always have secrets. It's just a matter of finding out what they are.

PART 2. Consequence Analyses

JANUARY 3-MARCH 17

Forty-six percent of the women in Sweden have been subjected to violence by a man.

CHAPTER 8

Friday, January 3 - Sunday, January 5

When Blomkvist alighted from his train in Hedestad for the second time, the sky was a pastel blue and the air icy cold. The thermometer on the wall of the station said 0°F. He was wearing unsuitable walking shoes. Unlike on his previous visit, there was no Herr Frode waiting with a warm car. Blomkvist had told them which day he would arrive, but not on which train. He assumed there was a bus to Hedeby, but he did not feel like struggling with two heavy suitcases and a shoulder bag, so he crossed the square to the taxi stand.

It had snowed massively all along the Norrland coast between Christmas and New Year's, and judging by the ridges and piles of snow thrown up by the ploughs, the road teams had been out in full force in Hedestad. The taxi driver, whose name, according to his ID posted on the window, was Hussein, nodded when Blomkvist asked whether they had been having rough weather. In the broadest Norrland accent, he reported that it had been the worst snowstorm in decades, and he bitterly regretted not taking his holiday in Greece over the Christmas period.

Blomkvist directed him to Henrik Vanger's newly shovelled courtyard, where he lifted his suitcases on to the cobblestones and watched the taxi head back towards Hedestad. He suddenly felt lonely and uncertain.

He heard the door open behind him. Vanger was wrapped up in a heavy fur coat, thick boots, and a cap with earflaps. Blomkvist was in jeans and a thin leather jacket.

"If you're going to live up here, you need to learn to dress more warmly for this time of year." They shook hands. "Are you sure you don't want to stay in the main house? No? Then I think we'd better start getting you settled into your new lodgings."

One of the conditions in his negotiations with Vanger and Dirch Frode had been that he have living quarters where he could do his own housekeeping and come and go as he pleased. Vanger led Blomkvist back along the road towards the bridge and then turned to open the gate to another newly shovelled courtyard in front of a small timbered house close to the end of the bridge. The house was not locked. They stepped into a modest hallway where Blomkvist, with a sigh of relief, put down his suitcases.

"This is what we call our guest house. It's where we usually put people up who are going to stay for a longer period of time. This was where you and your parents lived in 1963. It's one of the oldest buildings in the village, but it's been modernised. I asked Nilsson, my caretaker, to light the fire this morning."

The house consisted of a large kitchen and two smaller rooms, totalling about 500 square feet. The kitchen took up half the space and was quite modern, with an electric stove and a small refrigerator. Against the wall facing the front door stood an old cast-iron stove in which a fire had indeed been lit earlier in the day.

"You don't need to use the woodstove unless it gets bitterly cold. The firewood bin is there in the hallway, and you'll find a woodshed at the back. The house has been unlived - in this autumn. The electric heaters are usually sufficient. Just make sure you don't hang any clothes on them, or it may start a fire."

Blomkvist looked around. Windows faced three different directions, and from the kitchen table he had a view of the bridge, about a hundred feet away. The furnishings in the kitchen included three big cupboards, some kitchen chairs, an old bench, and a shelf for newspapers. On top was an issue of See from 1967. In one corner was a smaller table that could be used as a desk.

Two narrow doors led to smaller rooms. The one on the right, closest to the outside wall, was hardly more than a cubbyhole with a desk, a chair, and some shelves along the wall. The other room, between the hallway and the little office, was a very small bedroom with a narrow double bed, a bedside table, and a wardrobe. On the walls hung landscape paintings. The furniture and wallpaper in the house were all old and faded, but the place smelled nice and clean. Someone had worked over the floor with a dose of soap. The bedroom had another door to the hallway, where a storeroom had been converted into a bathroom with a shower.

"You may have a problem with the water," Vanger said. "We checked it this morning, but the pipes aren't buried very deep, and if this cold hangs on for long they may freeze. There's a bucket in the hallway so come up and get water from us if you need to."

"I'll need a telephone," Blomkvist said.

"I've already ordered one. They'll be here to install it the day after tomorrow. So, what do you think? If you change your mind, you would be welcome in the main house at any time."

"This will be just fine," Blomkvist said.

"Excellent. We have another hour or so of daylight left. Shall we take a walk so you can familiarise yourself with the village? Might I suggest that you put on some heavy socks and a pair of boots? You'll find them by the front door." Blomkvist did as he suggested and decided that the very next day he would go shopping for long underwear and a pair of good winter shoes.

The old man started the tour by explaining that Blomkvist's neighbour across the road was Gunnar Nilsson, the assistant whom Vanger insisted on calling "the caretaker." But Blomkvist soon realised that he was more of a superintendent for all the buildings on Hedeby Island, and he also had responsibility for several buildings in Hedestad.

"His father was Magnus Nilsson, who was my caretaker in the sixties, one of the men who helped out at the accident on the bridge. Magnus is retired and lives in Hedestad. Gunnar lives here with his wife, whose name is Helena. Their children have moved out."

Vanger paused for a moment to shape what he would say next, which was: "Mikael, the official explanation for your presence here is that you're going to help me write my autobiography. That will give you an excuse for poking around in all the dark corners and asking questions. The real assignment is strictly between you and me and Dirch Frode."

"I understand. And I'll repeat what I said before: I don't think I'm going to be able to solve the mystery."

"All I ask is that you do your best. But we must be careful what we say in front of anyone else. Gunnar is fifty-six, which means that he was nineteen when Harriet disappeared. There's one question that I never got answered - Harriet and Gunnar were good friends, and I think some sort of childish romance went on between them. He was pretty interested in her, at any rate. But on the day she disappeared, he was in Hedestad; he was one of those stranded on the mainland. Because of their relationship, he came under close scrutiny. It was quite unpleasant for him. He was with some friends all day, and he didn't get back here until evening. The police checked his alibi and it was airtight."

"I assume that you have a list of everyone who was on the island and what everybody was doing that day."

"That's correct. Shall we go on?"

They stopped at the crossroads on the hill, and Vanger pointed down towards the old fishing harbour, now used for small boats.

"All the land on Hedeby Island is owned by the Vanger family - or by me, to be more precise. The one exception is the farmland at ostergarden and a few houses here in the village. The cabins down there at the fishing harbour are privately owned, but they're summer cottages and are mostly vacant during the winter. Except for that house farthest away - you can see smoke coming from the chimney."

Blomkvist saw the smoke rising. He was frozen to the bone.

"It's a miserably draughty hovel that functions as living quarters year-round. That's where Eugen Norman lives. He's in his late seventies and is a painter of sorts. I think his work is kitsch, but he's rather well known as a landscape painter. You might call him the obligatory eccentric in the village."

Vanger guided Blomkvist out towards the point, identifying one house after the other. The village consisted of six buildings on the west side of the road and four on the east. The first house, closest to Blomkvist's guest house and the Vanger estate, belonged to Henrik Vanger's brother Harald. It was a rectangular, two-storey stone building which at first glance seemed unoccupied. The curtains were drawn and the path to the front door had not been cleared; it was covered with a foot and a half of snow. On second glance, they could see the footprints of someone who had trudged through the snow from the road up to the door.

"Harald is a recluse. He and I have never seen eye to eye. Apart from our disagreements over the firm - he's a shareholder - we've barely spoken to each other in nearly 60 years. He's ninety-two now, and the only one of my four brothers still alive. I'll tell you the details later, but he trained to be a doctor and spent most of his professional life in Uppsala. He moved back to Hedeby when he turned seventy."

"You don't care much for each other, and yet you're neighbours."

"I find him detestable, and I would have rather he'd stayed in Uppsala, but he owns this house. Do I sound like a scoundrel?"

"You sound like someone who doesn't much like his brother."

"I spent the first twenty-five years of my life apologising for people like Harald because we're family. Then I discovered that being related is no guarantee of love and I had few reasons to defend Harald."

The next house belonged to Isabella, Harriet Vanger's mother.

"She'll be seventy-five this year, and she's still as stylish and vain as ever. She's also the only one in the village who talks to Harald, and occasionally visits him, but they don't have much in common."

"How was her relationship with Harriet?"

"Good question. The women have to be included among the suspects. I told you that she mostly left the children to their own devices. I can't be sure, but I think her heart was in the right place; she just wasn't capable of taking responsibility. She and Harriet were never close, but they weren't enemies either. Isabella can be tough, but sometimes she's not all there. You'll see what I mean when you meet her."