The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

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 Östergården 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.”

Isabella’s neighbour was Cecilia Vanger, the daughter of Harald.

“She was married once and lived in Hedestad, but she and her husband separated some twenty years ago. I own the house and offered to let her move in. She is a teacher, and in many ways she’s the direct opposite of her father. I might add that she and her father speak to each other only when necessary.”

“How old is she?”

“Born in 1946. So she was twenty when Harriet disappeared. And yes, she was one of the guests on the island that day. Cecilia may seem flighty, but in fact she’s shrewder than most. Don’t underestimate her. If anyone’s going to ferret out what you’re up to, she’s the one. I might add that she’s one of my relatives for whom I have the highest regard.”

“Does that mean that you don’t suspect her?”

“I wouldn’t say that. I want you to ponder the matter without any constraints, regardless of what I think or believe.”

The house closest to Cecilia’s was also owned by Henrik Vanger, but it was leased to an elderly couple formerly part of the management team of the Vanger companies. They had moved to Hedeby Island in the eighties, so they had nothing to do with Harriet’s disappearance. The next house was owned by Birger Vanger, Cecilia’s brother. The house had been empty for many years since Birger moved to a modern house in Hedestad.

Most of the buildings lining the road were solid stone structures from the early twentieth century. The last house was of a different type, a modern, architect-designed home built of white brick with black window frames. It was in a beautiful situation, and Blomkvist could see that the view from the top floor must be magnificent, facing the sea to the east and Hedestad to the north.

“This is where Martin lives – Harriet’s brother and the Vanger Corporation CEO. The parsonage used to be here, but that building was destroyed by a fire in the seventies, and Martin built this house in 1978 when he took over as CEO.”

In the last building on the east side of the road lived Gerda Vanger, widow of Henrik’s brother Greger, and her son, Alexander.

“Gerda is sickly. She suffers from rheumatism. Alexander owns a small share of the Vanger Corporation, but he runs a number of his own businesses, including restaurants. He usually spends a few months each year in Barbados, where he has invested a considerable sum in the tourist trade.”

Between Gerda’s and Henrik’s houses was a plot of land with two smaller, empty buildings. They were used as guest houses for family members. On the other side of Henrik’s house stood a private dwelling where another retired employee lived with his wife, but it was empty in the winter when the couple repaired to Spain.

They returned to the crossroads, and with that the tour was over. Dusk was beginning to fall. Blomkvist took the initiative.

“Henrik, I’ll do what I’ve been hired to do. I’ll write your autobiography, and I’ll humour you by reading all the material about Harriet as carefully and critically as I can. I just want you to realise that I’m not a private detective.”

“I expect nothing.”

“Fine.”

“I’m a night owl,” Vanger said. “So I’m at your disposal any time after lunch. I’ll arrange for you to have an office up here, and you can make use of it whenever you like.”

“No, thank you. I have an office in the guest house, and that’s where I’ll do my work.”

“As you wish.”

“If I need to talk to you, we’ll do it in your office, but I’m not going to start throwing questions at you tonight.”

“I understand.” The old man seemed improbably timid.

“It’s going to take a couple of weeks to read through the papers. We’ll work on two fronts. We’ll meet for a few hours each day so that I can interview you and gather material for your biography. When I start having questions about Harriet which I need to discuss with you, I’ll let you know.”

“That sounds sensible.”

“I’m going to require a free hand to do my work, and I won’t have any set work hours.”

“You decide for yourself how the work should be done.”

“I suppose you’re aware that I have to spend a couple of months in prison. I don’t know exactly when, but I’m not going to appeal. It’ll probably be sometime this year.”

Vanger frowned. “That’s unfortunate. We’ll have to solve that problem when it comes up. You can always request a postponement.”

“If it’s permitted and I have enough material, I might be able to work on your book in prison. One more thing: I’m still part owner of Millennium and as of now it’s a magazine in crisis. If something happens that requires my presence in Stockholm, I would have to drop what I’m doing and go there.”

“I didn’t take you on as a serf. I want you to do a thorough job on the assignment I’ve given you, but, of course, you can set your own schedule and do the work as you see fit. If you need to take some time off, feel free to do it, but if I find out that you’re not doing the work, I’ll consider that a breach of contract.”

Vanger looked over towards the bridge. He was a gaunt man, and Blomkvist thought that he looked at that moment like a melancholy scarecrow.

“As far as Millennium is concerned, we ought to have a discussion about what kind of crisis it’s in and whether I can help in some way.”

“The best assistance you can offer is to give me Wennerström’s head on a platter right here and now.”

“Oh no, I’m not thinking of doing that.” The old man gave Blomkvist a hard look. “The only reason you took this job was because I promised to expose Wennerström. If I give you the information now, you could stop work on the job whenever you felt like it. I’ll give you the information a year from now.”

“Henrik, forgive me for saying this, but I can’t be sure that a year from now you’ll be alive.”

Vanger sighed and cast a thoughtful gaze over the fishing harbour.

“Fair enough. I’ll talk to Frode and see if we can work something out. But as far as Millennium is concerned, I might be able to help in another way. As I understand it, the advertisers have begun to pull out.”

“The advertisers are the immediate problem, but the crisis goes deeper than that. It’s a matter of trust. It doesn’t matter how many advertisers we have if no-one wants to buy the magazine.”

“I realise that. I’m still on the board of directors of quite a large corporation, albeit in a passive role. We have to place advertisements somewhere. Let’s discuss the matter at some stage. Would you like to have dinner…”

“No. I want to get settled, buy some groceries, and take a look around. Tomorrow I’ll go to Hedestad and shop for winter clothes.”

“Good idea.”

“I’d like the files about Harriet to be moved over to my place.”

“They need to be handled…”

“With great care – I understand.”

Blomkvist returned to the guest house. His teeth were chattering by the time he got indoors. The thermometer outside the window said 5°F, and he couldn’t remember ever feeling so cold as after that walk, which had lasted barely twenty minutes.

He spent an hour settling himself into what was to be his home for the coming year. He put his clothes in the wardrobe in the bedroom, his toiletries went in the bathroom cabinet. His second suitcase was actually a trunk on wheels. From it he took books, CDs and a CD player, notebooks, a Sanyo tape recorder, a Microtek scanner, a portable ink-jet printer, a Minolta digital camera, and a number of other items he regarded as essential kit for a year in exile.

He arranged the books and the CDs on the bookshelf in the office alongside two binders containing research material on Hans-Erik Wennerström. The material was useless, but he could not let it go. Somehow he had to turn those two folders into building blocks for his continuing career.

Finally he opened his shoulder bag and put his iBook on the desk in the office. Then he stopped and looked about him with a sheepish expression. The benefits of living in the countryside, forsooth. There was nowhere to plug in the broadband cable. He did not even have a telephone jack to connect an old dial-up modem.

Blomkvist called the Telia telephone company from his mobile. After a slight hassle, he managed to get someone to find the order that Vanger had placed for the guest house. He wanted to know whether the connection could handle ADSL and was told that it would be possible by way of a relay in Hedeby, and that it would take several days.

It was after 4:00 by the time Blomkvist was done. He put on a pair of thick socks and the borrowed boots and pulled on an extra sweater. At the front door he stopped short; he had been given no keys to the house, and his big-city instincts rebelled at the idea of leaving the front door unlocked. He went back to the kitchen and began opening drawers. Finally he found a key hanging from a nail in the pantry.

The temperature had dropped to -1°F. He walked briskly across the bridge and up the hill past the church. The Konsum store was conveniently located about three hundred yards away. He filled two paper bags to overflowing with supplies and then carried them home before returning across the bridge. This time he stopped at Susanne’s Bridge Café. The woman behind the counter was in her fifties. He asked whether she was Susanne and then introduced himself by saying that he was undoubtedly going to be a regular customer. He was for the time being the only customer, and Susanne offered him coffee when he ordered sandwiches and bought a loaf of bread. He picked up a copy of the Hedestad Courier from the newspaper rack and sat at a table with a view of the bridge and the church, its facade now lit up. It looked like a Christmas card. It took him about four minutes to read the newspaper. The only news of interest was a brief item explaining that a local politician by the name of Birger Vanger (Liberal) was going to invest in “IT TechCent” – a technology development centre in Hedestad. Mikael sat there until the café closed at 6:00.

At 7:30 he called Berger, but was advised that the party at that number was not available. He sat on the kitchen bench and tried to read a novel which, according to the back cover text, was the sensational debut of a teenage feminist. The novel was about the author’s attempt to get a handle on her sex life during a trip to Paris, and Blomkvist wondered whether he could be called a feminist if he wrote a novel about his own sex life in the voice of a high-school student. Probably not. He had bought the book because the publisher had hailed the first-time novelist as “a new Carina Rydberg.” He quickly ascertained that this was not the case in either style or content. He put the book aside for a while and instead read a Hopalong Cassidy story in an issue of Rekordmagasinet from the mid-fifties.

Every half hour he heard the curt, muted clang of the church bell. Lights were visible in the windows at the home of the caretaker across the road, but Blomkvist could not see anyone inside the house. Harald Vanger’s house was dark. Around 9:00 a car drove across the bridge and disappeared towards the point. At midnight the lights on the facade of the church were turned off. That was apparently the full extent of the entertainment in Hedeby on a Friday night in early January. It was eerily quiet.

He tried again to call Berger and got her voicemail, asking him to leave his name and a message. He did so and then turned off the light and went to bed. The last thing he thought about before he fell asleep was that he was going to run a high risk of going stir-crazy in Hedeby.

It was strange to awake to utter silence. Blomkvist passed from deep sleep to total alertness in a fraction of a second, and then lay still, listening. It was cold in the room. He turned his head and looked at his wristwatch on a stool next to the bed. It was 7:08 – he had never been much of a morning person, and it used to be hard for him to wake up without having at least two alarm clocks. Today he had woken all by himself, and he even felt rested.

He put some water on for coffee before getting into the shower. He was suddenly amused at his situation. Kalle Blomkvist – on a research trip in the back of beyond.

The shower head changed from scalding to ice-cold at the slightest touch. There was no morning paper on the kitchen table. The butter was frozen. There was no cheese slicer in the drawer of kitchen utensils. It was still pitch dark outside. The thermometer showed 6 below zero. It was Saturday.

The bus stop for Hedestad was over the road from Konsum, and Blomkvist started off his exile by carrying out his plan to go shopping in town. He got off the bus by the railway station and made a tour of the centre of town. Along the way he bought heavy winter boots, two pairs of long underwear, several flannel shirts, a proper thigh-length winter jacket, a warm cap, and lined gloves. At the electronics store he found a small portable TV with rabbit ears. The sales clerk assured him that he would at least be able to get SVT, the state TV channel, out at Hedeby, and Blomkvist promised to ask for his money back if that turned out not to be the case.

He stopped at the library to get himself a card and borrowed two mysteries by Elizabeth George. He bought pens and notebooks. He also bought a rucksack for carrying his new possessions.

Finally he bought a pack of cigarettes. He had stopped smoking ten years ago, but occasionally he would have a relapse. He stuck the pack in his jacket pocket without opening it. His last stop was the optician’s, and there he bought contact lens solution and ordered new lenses.

By 2:00 he was back in Hedeby, and he was just removing the price tags from his new clothes when he heard the front door open. A blonde woman – perhaps in her fifties – knocked on the open kitchen door as she stepped across the threshold. She was carrying a sponge cake on a platter.

“Hello. I just wanted to come over to introduce myself. My name is Helena Nilsson, and I live across the road. I hear we’re going to be neighbours.”

They shook hands and he introduced himself.

“Oh yes, I’ve seen you on TV. It’s going to be nice to see lights over here in the evening.”

Blomkvist put on some coffee. She began to object but then sat at the kitchen table, casting a furtive glance out the window.

“Here comes Henrik with my husband. It looks like some boxes for you.”

Vanger and Gunnar Nilsson drew up outside with a dolly, and Blomkvist rushed out to greet them and to help carry the four packing crates inside. They set the boxes on the floor next to the stove. Blomkvist got out the coffee cups and cut into Fröken Nilsson’s sponge cake.

The Nilssons were pleasant people. They did not seem curious about why Blomkvist was in Hedestad – the fact that he was working for Henrik Vanger was evidently enough of an explanation. Blomkvist observed the interaction between the Nilssons and Vanger, concluding that it was relaxed and lacking in any sort of gulf between master and servants. They talked about the village and the man who had built the guest house where Blomkvist was living. The Nilssons would prompt Vanger when his memory failed him. He, on the other hand, told a funny story about how Nilsson had come home one night to discover the village idiot from across the bridge trying to break a window at the guest house. Nilsson went over to ask the half-witted delinquent why he didn’t go in through the unlocked front door. Nilsson inspected Blomkvist’s little TV with misgiving and invited him to come across to their house if there was ever a programme he wanted to see.

Vanger stayed on briefly after the Nilssons left. He thought it best that Blomkvist sort through the files himself, and he could come to the house if he had any problems.

When he was alone once more, Blomkvist carried the boxes into his office and made an inventory of the contents.

Vanger’s investigation into the disappearance of his brother’s granddaughter had been going on for thirty-six years. Blomkvist wondered whether this was an unhealthy obsession or whether, over the years, it had developed into an intellectual game. What was clear was that the old patriarch had tackled the job with the systematic approach of an amateur archaeologist – the material was going to fill twenty feet of shelving.

The largest section of it consisted of twenty-six binders, which were the copies of the police investigation. Hard to believe an ordinary missing-person case would have produced such comprehensive material. Vanger no doubt had enough clout to keep the Hedestad police following up both plausible and implausible leads.

Then there were scrapbooks, photograph albums, maps, texts about Hedestad and the Vanger firm, Harriet’s diary (though it did not contain many pages), her schoolbooks, medical certificates. There were sixteen bound A4 volumes of one hundred or so pages each, which were Vanger’s logbook of the investigations. In these notebooks he had recorded in an impeccable hand his own speculations, theories, digressions. Blomkvist leafed through them. The text had a literary quality, and he had the feeling that these texts were fair copies of perhaps many more notebooks. There were ten binders containing material on members of the Vanger family; these pages were typed and had been compiled over the intervening years, Vanger’s investigations of his own family.

Around 7:00 he heard a loud meowing at the front door. A reddish-brown cat slipped swiftly past him into the warmth.

“Wise cat,” he said.

The cat sniffed around the guest house for a while. Mikael poured some milk into a dish, and his guest lapped it up. Then the cat hopped on to the kitchen bench and curled up. And there she stayed.

It was after 10:00 before Blomkvist had the scope of the material clear in his mind and had arranged it on the shelves. He put on a pot of coffee and made himself two sandwiches. He had not eaten a proper meal all day, but he was strangely uninterested in food. He offered the cat a piece of sausage and some liverwurst. After drinking his coffee, he took the cigarettes out of his jacket pocket and opened the pack.

He checked his mobile. Berger had not called. He tried her once more. Again only her voicemail.

One of the first steps Blomkvist had taken was to scan in the map of Hedeby Island that he had borrowed from Vanger. While all the names were still fresh in his mind, he wrote down who lived in each house. The Vanger clan consisted of such an extensive cast that it would take time to learn who was who.

Just before midnight he put on warm clothes and his new shoes and walked across the bridge. He turned off the road and along the sound below the church. Ice had formed on the sound and inside the old harbour, but farther out he could see a darker belt of open water. As he stood there, the lights on the facade of the church went out, and it was dark all around him. It was icy cold and stars filled the sky.

All of a sudden Blomkvist felt depressed. He could not for the life of him understand how he had allowed Vanger to talk him into taking on this assignment. Berger was right: he should be in Stockholm – in bed with her, for instance – and planning his campaigns against Wennerström. But he felt apathetic about that too, and he didn’t even have the faintest idea how to begin planning a counter-strategy.

Had it been daylight, he would have walked straight to Vanger’s house, cancelled his contract, and gone home. But from the rise beside the church he could make out all the houses on the island side. Harald Vanger’s house was dark, but there were lights on in Cecilia’s home, as well as in Martin’s villa out by the point and in the house that was leased. In the small-boat harbour there were lights on in the draughty cabin of the artist and little clouds of sparks were rising from his chimney. There were also lights on in the top floor of the café, and Blomkvist wondered whether Susanne lived there, and if so, whether she was alone.

On Sunday morning he awoke in panic at the incredible din that filled the guest house. It took him a second to get his bearings and realise that it was the church bells summoning parishioners to morning service. It was nearly 11:00. He stayed in bed until he heard an urgent meowing in the doorway and got up to let out the cat.

By noon he had showered and eaten breakfast. He went resolutely into his office and took down the first binder from the police investigation. Then he hesitated. From the gable window he could see Susanne’s Bridge Café. He stuffed the binder into his shoulder bag and put on his outdoor clothes. When he reached the café, he found it brimming with customers, and there he had the answer to a question that had been in the back of his mind: how could a café survive in a backwater like Hedeby? Susanne specialised in churchgoers and presumably did coffee and cakes for funerals and other functions.

He took a walk instead. Konsum was closed on Sundays, and he continued a few hundred yards towards Hedestad, where he bought newspapers at a petrol station. He spent an hour walking around Hedeby, familiarising himself with the town before the bridge. The area closest to the church and past Konsum was the centre, with older buildings – two-storey stone structures which Blomkvist guessed had been built in the 1910s or ’20s and which formed a short main street. North of the road into town were well-kept apartment buildings for families with children. Along the water and to the south of the church were mostly single-family homes. Hedeby looked to be a relatively well-to-do area for Hedestad’s decision-makers and civil servants.

When he returned to the bridge, the assault on the café had ebbed, but Susanne was still clearing dishes from the tables.

“The Sunday rush?” he said in greeting.

She nodded as she tucked a lock of hair behind one ear. “Hi, Mikael.”

“So you remember my name.”

“Hard to forget,” she said. “I followed your trial on TV.”

“They have to fill up the news with something,” he muttered, and drifted over to the corner table with a view of the bridge. When he met Susanne’s eyes, she smiled.

At 3:00 Susanne announced that she was closing the café for the day. After the church rush, only a few customers had come and gone. Blomkvist had read more than a fifth of the first binder of the police investigation. He stuck his notebook into his bag and walked briskly home across the bridge.

The cat was waiting on the steps. He looked around, wondering whose cat it was. He let it inside all the same, since the cat was at least some sort of company.

He made one more vain attempt to reach Berger. Obviously she was furious with him still. He could have tried calling her direct line at the office or her home number, but he had already left enough messages. Instead, he made himself coffee, moved the cat farther along the kitchen bench, and opened the binder on the table.

He read carefully and slowly, not wanting to miss any detail. By late evening, when he closed the binder, he had filled several pages of his own notebook – with reminders and questions to which he hoped to find answers in subsequent binders. The material was all arranged in chronological order. He could not tell whether Vanger had reorganised it that way or whether that was the system used by the police at the time.

The first page was a photocopy of a handwritten report form headed Hedestad Police Emergency Centre. The officer who had taken the call had signed his name D.O. Ryttinger, and Blomkvist assumed the “D.O.” stood for “duty officer.” The caller was Henrik Vanger. His address and telephone number had been noted. The report was dated Sunday, September 25, 1966, at 11:14 a.m. The text was laconic:

Call from Hrk. Vanger, stating that his brother’s daughter (?) Harriet Ulrika VANGER, born 15 Jan. 1950 (age 16) has been missing from her home on Hedeby Island since Saturday afternoon. The caller expressed great concern.

A note sent at 11:20 a.m. stated that P-014 (police car? patrol? pilot of a boat?) had been sent to the site.

Another at 11:35 a.m., in a less legible hand than Ryttinger’s, inserted that Off. Magnusson reports that bridge to Hedeby Island still blocked. Transp. by boat. In the margin an illegible signature.

At 12:14 p.m. Ryttinger is back: Telephone conversation Off. Magnusson in H-by confirms that 16-year-old Harriet Vanger missing since early Saturday afternoon. Family expressed great concern. Not believed to have slept in her bed last night. Could not have left island due to blocked bridge. None of family members has any knowledge as to HV’s whereabouts.

At 12:19 p.m.: G.M. informed by telephone about the situation.

The last note was recorded at 1:42 p.m.: G.M. on site at H-by; will take over the matter.

The next page revealed that the initials “G.M.” referred to Detective Inspector Gustaf Morell, who arrived at Hedeby Island by boat and there took over command, preparing a formal report on the disappearance of Harriet Vanger. Unlike the initial notations with their needless abbreviations, Morell’s reports were written on a typewriter and in very readable prose. The following pages recounted what measures had been taken, with an objectivity and wealth of detail that surprised Blomkvist.

Morell had first interviewed Henrik Vanger along with Isabella Vanger, Harriet’s mother. Then he talked in turn with Ulrika Vanger, Harald Vanger, Greger Vanger, Harriet’s brother Martin Vanger, and Anita Vanger. Blomkvist came to the conclusion that these interviews had been conducted according to a scale of decreasing importance.

Ulrika Vanger was Henrik Vanger’s mother, and evidently she held a status comparable to that of a dowager queen. Ulrika lived at the Vanger estate and was able to provide no information. She had gone to bed early on the previous night and had not seen Harriet for several days. She appeared to have insisted on meeting Detective Inspector Morell solely to give air to her opinion that the police had to act at once, immediately.

Harald Vanger ranked as number two on the list. He had seen Harriet only briefly when she returned from the festivities in Hedestad, but he had not seen her since the accident on the bridge occurred and he had no knowledge of where she might be at present.

Greger Vanger, brother of Henrik and Harald, stated that he had seen the missing sixteen-year-old in Henrik Vanger’s study, asking to speak with Henrik after her visit to Hedestad earlier in the day. Greger Vanger stated that he had not spoken with her himself, merely given her a greeting. He had no idea where she might be found, but he expressed the view that she had probably, thoughtlessly, gone to visit some friend without telling anyone and would reappear soon. When asked how she might in that case have left the island, he offered no answer.

Martin Vanger was interviewed in a cursory fashion. He was in his final year at the preparatory school in Uppsala, where he lived in the home of Harald Vanger. There was no room for him in Harald’s car, so he had taken the train home to Hedeby, arriving so late that he was stranded on the wrong side of the bridge accident and could not cross until late in the evening by boat. He was interviewed in the hope that his sister might have confided in him and perhaps given him some clue if she was thinking of running away. The question was met with protests from Harriet Vanger’s mother, but at that moment Inspector Morell was perhaps thinking that Harriet’s having run away would be the best they could hope for. But Martin had not spoken with his sister since the summer holiday and had no information of value.

Anita Vanger, daughter of Harald Vanger, was erroneously listed as Harriet’s “first cousin.” She was in her first year at the university in Stockholm and had spent the summer in Hedeby. She was almost the same age as Harriet and they had become close friends. She stated that she had arrived at the island with her father on Saturday and was looking forward to seeing Harriet, but she had not had the opportunity to find her. Anita stated that she felt uneasy, and that it was not like Harriet to go off without telling the family. Henrik and Isabella Vanger confirmed that this was the case.

While Inspector Morell was interviewing family members, he had told Magnusson and Bergman – patrol 014 – to organise the first search party while there was still daylight. The bridge was still closed to traffic, so it was difficult to call in reinforcements. The group consisted of about thirty available individuals, men and women of varying ages. The areas they searched that afternoon included the unoccupied houses at the fishing harbour, the shoreline at the point and along the sound, the section of woods closest to the village, and the hill called Söderberget behind the fishing harbour. The latter was searched because someone had put forward the theory that Harriet might have gone up there to get a good view of the scene on the bridge. Patrols were also sent out to Östergården and to Gottfried’s cabin on the other side of the island, which Harriet occasionally visited.

But the search was fruitless; it was not called off until long after dark fell, at 10:00 at night. The temperature overnight dropped to freezing.

During the afternoon Inspector Morell set up his headquarters in a drawing room that Henrik Vanger had put at his disposal on the ground floor of the Vanger estate office. He had undertaken a number of measures.

In the company of Isabella Vanger, he had examined Harriet’s room and tried to ascertain whether anything was missing: clothes, a suitcase, or the like, which would indicate that Harriet had run away from home. Isabella, a note implied, had not been helpful and did not seem to be familiar with her daughter’s wardrobe. She often wore jeans, but they all look the same, don’t they? Harriet’s purse was on her desk. It contained ID, a wallet holding nine kronor and fifty öre, a comb, a mirror, and a handkerchief. After the inspection, Harriet’s room was locked.

Morell had summoned more people to be interviewed, family members and employees. All the interviews were meticulously reported.

When the participants in the first search party began returning with disheartening reports, the inspector decided that a more systematic search had to be made. That evening and night, reinforcements were called in. Morell contacted, among others, the chairman of Hedestad’s Orienteering Club and appealed for help in summoning volunteers for the search party. By midnight he was told that fifty-three members, mostly from the junior division, would be at the Vanger estate at 7:00 the next morning. Henrik Vanger called in part of the morning shift, numbering fifty men, from the paper mill. He also arranged for food and drink for them all.

Blomkvist could vividly imagine the scenes played out at the Vanger estate during those days. The accident on the bridge had certainly contributed to the confusion during the first hours – by making it difficult to bring in reinforcements, and also because people somehow thought that these two dramatic events happening at the same place and close to the same time must in some way have been connected. When the tanker truck was hoisted away, Inspector Morell went down to the bridge to be sure that Harriet Vanger had not, by some unlikely turn of events, ended up under the wreck. That was the only irrational action that Mikael could detect in the inspector’s conduct, since the missing girl had unquestionably been seen on the island after the accident had occurred.

During those first confused twenty-four hours, their hopes that the situation would come to a swift and happy resolution sank. Instead, they were gradually replaced by two theories. In spite of the obvious difficulties in leaving the island unnoticed, Morell refused to discount the possibility that she had run away. He decided that an all-points bulletin should be sent out for Harriet Vanger, and he gave instructions for the patrol officers in Hedestad to keep their eyes open for the missing girl. He also sent a colleague in the criminal division to interview bus drivers and staff at the railway station, to find out whether anyone might have seen her.

As the negative reports came in, it became increasingly likely that Harriet Vanger had fallen victim to some sort of misfortune. This theory ended up dominating the investigative work of the following days.

The big search party two days after her disappearance was apparently, as far as Blomkvist could tell, carried out effectively. Police and firefighters who had experience with similar operations had organised the search. Hedeby Island did have some parts that were almost inaccessible, but it was nevertheless a small area, and the island was searched with a fine-tooth comb in one day. A police boat and two volunteer Pettersson boats did what they could to search the waters around the island.

On the following day the search was continued with decreased manpower. Patrols were sent out to make a second sweep of the particularly rugged terrain, as well as an area known as “the fortress” – a now-abandoned bunker system that was built during the Second World War. That day they also searched cubbyholes, wells, vegetable cellars, outhouses, and attics in the village.

A certain frustration could be read in the official notes when the search was called off on the third day after the girl’s disappearance. Morell was, of course, not yet aware of it, but at that moment he had actually reached as far in the investigation as he would ever get. He was puzzled and struggled to identify the natural next step or any place where the search ought to be pursued. Harriet Vanger seemed to have dissolved into thin air, and Henrik Vanger’s years of torment had begun.

CHAPTER 9 Monday, January 6 – Wednesday, January 8

Blomkvist kept reading until the small hours and did not get up until late on Epiphany Day. A navy blue, late-model Volvo was parked outside Vanger’s house. Even as he reached for the door handle, the door was opened by a man on his way out. They almost collided. The man seemed to be in a hurry.

“Yes? Can I help you?”

“I’m here to see Henrik Vanger,” Blomkvist said.

The man’s eyes brightened. He smiled and stuck out his hand. “You must be Mikael Blomkvist, the one who’s going to help Henrik with the family chronicle, right?”

They shook hands. Vanger had apparently begun spreading Blomkvist’s cover story. The man was overweight – the result, no doubt, of too many years of negotiating in offices and conference rooms – but Blomkvist noticed at once the likeness, the similarity between his face and Harriet Vanger’s.

“I’m Martin Vanger,” the man said. “Welcome to Hedestad.”

“Thank you.”

“I saw you on TV a while ago.”

“Everybody seems to have seen me on TV.”

“Wennerström is… not very popular in this house.”

“Henrik mentioned that. I’m waiting to hear the rest of the story.”

“He told me a few days ago that he’d hired you.” Martin Vanger laughed. “He said it was probably because of Wennerström that you took the job up here.”

Blomkvist hesitated before deciding to tell the truth. “That was one important reason. But to be honest, I needed to get away from Stockholm, and Hedestad cropped up at the right moment. At least I think so. I can’t pretend that the court case never happened. And anyway, I’m going to have to go to prison.”

Martin Vanger nodded, suddenly serious. “Can you appeal?”

“It won’t do any good.”

Vanger glanced at his watch.

“I have to be in Stockholm tonight, so I must hurry away. I’ll be back in a few days. Come over and have dinner. I’d really like to hear what actually went on during that trial. Henrik is upstairs. Go right in.”

Vanger was sitting on a sofa in his office where he had the Hedestad Courier, Dagens Industri, Svenska Dagbladet, and both national evening papers on the coffee table.

“I ran into Martin outside.”

“Rushing off to save the empire,” Vanger said. “Coffee?”

“Yes, please.” Blomkvist sat down, wondering why Vanger looked so amused.

“You’re mentioned in the paper.”

Vanger shoved across one of the evening papers, open at a page with the headline “Media Short Circuit.” The article was written by a columnist who had previously worked for Monopoly Financial Magazine, making a name for himself as one who cheerfully ridiculed everyone who felt passionate about any issue or who stuck their neck out. Feminists, antiracists, and environmental activists could all reckon on receiving their share. The writer was not known for espousing a single conviction of his own. Now, several weeks after the trial in the Wennerström affair, he was bringing his fire to bear on Mikael Blomkvist, whom he described as a complete idiot. Erika Berger was portrayed as an incompetent media bimbo:

Blomkvist switched on his mobile and checked to see if he had any calls from Berger. There were no messages. Vanger waited without saying anything. Blomkvist realised that the old man was allowing him to break the silence.

“He’s a moron,” Blomkvist said.

Vanger laughed, but he said: “That may be. But he’s not the one who was sentenced by the court.”

“That’s true. And he never will be. He never says anything original; he always just jumps on the bandwagon and casts the final stone in the most damaging terms he can get away with.”

“I’ve had many enemies over the years. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s never engage in a fight you’re sure to lose. On the other hand, never let anyone who has insulted you get away with it. Bide your time and strike back when you’re in a position of strength – even if you no longer need to strike back.”

“Thank you for your wisdom, Henrik. Now I’d like you to tell me about your family.” He set the tape recorder between them on the table and pressed the record button.

“What do you want to know?”

“I’ve read through the first binder, about the disappearance and the searches, but there are so many Vangers mentioned that I need your help identifying them all.”

For nearly ten minutes Salander stood in the empty hall with her eyes fixed on the brass plaque that said “Advokat N. E. Bjurman” before she rang the bell. The lock on the entry door clicked.

It was Tuesday. It was their second meeting, and she had a bad feeling about it.

She was not afraid of Bjurman – Salander was rarely afraid of anyone or anything. On the other hand, she felt uncomfortable with this new guardian. His predecessor, Advokat Holger Palmgren, had been of an entirely different ilk: courteous and kind. But three months ago Palmgren had had a stroke, and Nils Erik Bjurman had inherited her in accordance with some bureaucratic pecking order.

In the twelve years that Salander had been under social and psychiatric guardianship, two of those years in a children’s clinic, she had never once given the same answer to the simple question: “So, how are you today?”

When she turned thirteen, the court had decided, under laws governing the guardianship of minors, that she should be entrusted to the locked ward at St. Stefan’s Psychiatric Clinic for Children in Uppsala. The decision was primarily based on the fact that she was deemed to be emotionally disturbed and dangerously violent towards her classmates and possibly towards herself.

All attempts by a teacher or any authority figure to initiate a conversation with the girl about her feelings, emotional life, or the state of her health were met, to their great frustration, with a sullen silence and a great deal of intense staring at the floor, ceiling, and walls. She would fold her arms and refuse to participate in any psychological tests. Her resistance to all attempts to measure, weigh, chart, analyse, or educate her applied also to her school work – the authorities could have her carried to a classroom and could chain her to the bench, but they could not stop her from closing her ears and refusing to lift a pen to write anything. She completed the nine years of compulsory schooling without a certificate.

This had consequently become associated with the great difficulty of even diagnosing her mental deficiencies. In short, Lisbeth Salander was anything but easy to handle.

By the time she was thirteen, it was also decided that a trustee should be assigned to take care of her interests and assets until she came of age. This trustee was Advokat Palmgren who, in spite of a rather difficult start, had succeeded where psychiatrists and doctors had failed. Gradually he won not only a certain amount of trust but also a modest amount of warmth from the girl.

When she turned fifteen, the doctors had more or less agreed that she was not, after all, dangerously violent, nor did she represent any immediate danger to herself. Her family had been categorised as dysfunctional, and she had no relatives who could look after her welfare, so it was decided that Lisbeth Salander should be released from the psychiatric clinic for children in Uppsala and eased back into society by way of a foster family.

That had not been an easy journey. She ran away from the first foster family after only two weeks. The second and third foster families fell by the wayside in quick succession. At that point Palmgren had a serious discussion with her, explaining bluntly that if she persisted on this path she would be institutionalised again. This threat had the effect that she accepted foster family number four – an elderly couple who lived in Midsommarkransen.

But it did not mean, however, that she behaved herself. At the age of seventeen, Salander was arrested by the police on four occasions; twice she was so intoxicated that she ended up in the emergency room, and once she was plainly under the influence of narcotics. On one of these occasions she was found dead drunk, with her clothes in disarray, in the back seat of a car parked at Söder Mälarstrand. She was with an equally drunk and much older man.

The last arrest occurred three weeks before her eighteenth birthday, when she, perfectly sober, kicked a male passenger in the head inside the gates of the Gamla Stan tunnelbana station. She was charged with assault and battery. Salander claimed that the man had groped her, and her testimony was supported by witnesses. The prosecutor dismissed the case. But her background was such that the district court ordered a psychiatric evaluation. Since she refused, as was her custom, to answer any questions or to participate in the examinations, the doctors consulted by the National Board of Health and Welfare handed down an opinion based on “observations of the patient.” It was unclear precisely what could be observed when it was a matter of a silent young woman sitting on a chair with her arms folded and her lower lip stuck out. The only determination made was that she must suffer from some kind of emotional disturbance, whose nature was of the sort that could not be left untreated. The medical/legal report recommended care in a closed psychiatric institution. An assistant head of the social welfare board wrote an opinion in support of the conclusions of the psychiatric experts.

With regard to her personal record, the opinion concluded that there was grave risk of alcohol and drug abuse, and that she lacked self-awareness. By then her casebook was filled with terms such as introverted, socially inhibited, lacking in empathy, ego-fixated, psychopathic and asocial behaviour, difficulty in cooperating, and incapable of assimilating learning. Anyone who read her casebook might be tempted to conclude that Salander was seriously retarded. Another mark against her was that the social services street patrol had on several occasions observed her “with various men” in the area around Mariatorget. She was once stopped and frisked in Tantolunden, again with a much older man. It was feared that Salander was possibly operating as, or ran the risk of becoming, a prostitute.

When the district court – the institution that would determine her future – met to decide on the matter, the outcome seemed a foregone conclusion. She was obviously a problem child, and it was unlikely that the court would come to any decision other than to accept the recommendations of both the psychiatric and the social inquiries.

On the morning the court hearing was to take place, Salander was brought from the psychiatric clinic for children where she had been confined since the incident in Gamla Stan. She felt like a prisoner from a concentration camp: she had no hope of surviving the day. The first person she saw in the courtroom was Palmgren, and it took a while for her to realise that he was not there in the role of a trustee but rather as her legal representative.

To her surprise, he was firmly in her corner, and he made a powerful appeal against institutionalisation. She did not betray with so much as a raised eyebrow that she was surprised, but she listened intently to every word that was said. Palmgren was brilliant during the two hours in which he cross-examined the physician, a Dr. Jesper H. Löderman, who had signed his name to the recommendation that Salander be locked away in an institution. Every detail of the opinion was scrutinised, and the doctor was required to explain the scientific basis for each statement. Eventually it became clear that since the patient had refused to complete a single test, the basis for the doctor’s conclusions was in fact nothing more than guesswork.

At the end of the hearing, Palmgren intimated that compulsory institutionalisation was in all probability not only contrary to Parliament’s decisions in similar situations, but in this particular case it might in addition be the subject of political and media reprisals. So it was in everyone’s interest to find an appropriate alternative solution. Such language was unusual for negotiations in this type of situation, and the members of the court had squirmed nervously.

The solution was also a compromise. The court concluded that Lisbeth Salander was indeed emotionally disturbed, but that her condition did not necessarily warrant internment. On the other hand, the social welfare director’s recommendation of guardianship was taken under consideration. The chairman of the court turned, with a venomous smile, to Holger Palmgren, who up until then had been her trustee, and inquired whether he might be willing to take on the guardianship. The chairman obviously thought that Palmgren would back away and try to push the responsibility on to someone else. On the contrary, Palmgren declared that he would be happy to take on the job of serving as Fröken Salander’s guardian – but on one condition: “that Fröken Salander must be willing to trust me and accept me as her guardian.”

He turned to face her. Lisbeth Salander was somewhat bewildered by the exchange that had gone back and forth over her head all day. Until now no-one had asked for her opinion. She looked at Holger Palmgren for a long time and then nodded once.

Palmgren was a peculiar mixture of jurist and social worker, of the old school. At first he had been a politically appointed member of the social welfare board, and he had spent nearly all his life dealing with problem youths. A reluctant sense of respect, almost bordering on friendship, had in time formed between Palmgren and his ward, who was unquestionably the most difficult he had ever had to deal with.

Their relationship had lasted eleven years, from her thirteenth birthday until the previous year, when a few weeks before Christmas she had gone to see Palmgren at home after he missed one of their scheduled monthly meetings.

When he did not open the door even though she could hear sounds coming from his apartment, she broke in by climbing up a drainpipe to the balcony on the fourth floor. She found him lying on the floor in the hall, conscious but unable to speak or move. She called for an ambulance and accompanied him to Söder Hospital with a growing feeling of panic in her stomach. For three days she hardly left the corridor outside the intensive care unit. Like a faithful watchdog, she kept an eye on every doctor and nurse who went in or out of the door. She wandered up and down the corridor like a lost soul, fixing her eyes on every doctor who came near. Finally a doctor whose name she never discovered took her into a room to explain the gravity of the situation. Herr Palmgren was in critical condition following a severe cerebral haemorrhage. He was not expected to regain consciousness. He was only sixty-four years old. She neither wept nor changed her expression. She stood up, left the hospital, and did not return.

Five weeks later the Guardianship Agency summoned Salander to the first meeting with her new guardian. Her initial impulse was to ignore the summons, but Palmgren had imprinted in her consciousness that every action has its consequences. She had learned to analyse the consequences and so she had come to the conclusion that the easiest way out of this present dilemma was to satisfy the Guardianship Agency by behaving as if she cared about what they had to say.

Thus, in December – taking a break from her research on Mikael Blomkvist – she arrived at Bjurman’s office on St. Eriksplan, where an elderly woman representing the board had handed over Salander’s extensive file to Advokat Bjurman. The woman had kindly asked Salander how things were going, and she seemed satisfied with the stifled silence she received in reply. After about half an hour she left Salander in the care of Advokat Bjurman.

Salander decided that she did not like Advokat Bjurman. She studied him furtively as he read through her casebook. Age: over fifty. Trim body. Tennis on Tuesdays and Fridays. Blond. Thinning hair. A slight cleft in his chin. Hugo Boss aftershave. Blue suit. Red tie with a gold tiepin and ostentatious cufflinks with the initials NEB. Steel-rimmed glasses. Grey eyes. To judge by the magazines on the side table, his interests were hunting and shooting.

During the years she had known Palmgren, he had always offered her coffee and chatted with her. Not even her worst escapes from foster homes or her regular truancy from school had ever ruffled his composure. The only time Palmgren had been really upset was when she had been charged with assault and battery after that scumbag had groped her in Gamla Stan. Do you understand what you’ve done? You have harmed another human being, Lisbeth. He had sounded like an old teacher, and she had patiently ignored every word of his scolding.

Bjurman did not have time for small talk. He had immediately concluded that there was a discrepancy between Palmgren’s obligations, according to the regulations of guardianship, and the fact that he had apparently allowed the Salander girl to take charge of her own household and finances. Bjurman started in on a sort of interrogation: How much do you earn? I want a copy of your financial records. Who do you spend time with? Do you pay your rent on time? Do you drink? Did Palmgren approve of those rings you have on your face? Are you careful about hygiene?

Fuck you.

Palmgren had become her trustee right after All The Evil had happened. He had insisted on meetings with her at least once a month, sometimes more often. After she moved back to Lundagatan, they were also practically neighbours. He lived on Hornsgatan, a couple of blocks away, and they would run into each other and go for coffee at Giffy’s or some other café nearby. Palmgren had never tried to impose, but a few times he had visited her, bringing some little gift for her birthday. She had a standing invitation to visit him whenever she liked, a privilege that she seldom took advantage of. But when she moved to Söder, she had started spending Christmas Eve with him after she went to see her mother. They would eat Christmas ham and play chess. She had no real interest in the game, but after she learned the rules, she never lost a match. He was a widower, and Salander had seen it as her duty to take pity on him on those lonely holidays.

She considered herself in his debt, and she always paid her debts.

It was Palmgren who had sublet her mother’s apartment on Lundagatan for her until Salander needed her own place to live. The apartment was about 500 square feet, shabby and unrenovated, but at least it was a roof over her head.

Now Palmgren was gone, and another tie to established society had been severed. Nils Bjurman was a wholly different sort of person. No way she would be spending Christmas Eve at his house. His first move had been to put in place new rules on the management of her account at Handelsbanken. Palmgren had never had any problems about bending the conditions of his guardianship so as to allow her to take care of her own finances. She paid her bills and could use her savings as she saw fit.

Prior to the meeting with Bjurman the week before Christmas she had prepared herself; once there, she had tried to explain that his predecessor had trusted her and had never been given occasion to do otherwise. Palmgren had let her take care of her own affairs and not interfered in her life.

“That’s one of the problems,” Bjurman said, tapping her casebook. He then made a long speech about the rules and government regulations on guardianship.

“He let you run free, is that it? I wonder how he got away with it.”

Because he was a crazy social democrat who had worked with troubled kids all his life.

“I’m not a child any more,” Salander said, as if that were explanation enough.

“No, you’re not a child. But I’ve been appointed your guardian, and as long as I have that role, I am legally and financially responsible for you.”

He opened a new account in her name, and she was supposed to report it to Milton’s personnel office and use it from now on. The good old days were over. In future Bjurman would pay her bills, and she would be given an allowance each month. He told her that he expected her to provide receipts for all her expenses. She would receive 1,400 kronor a week – “for food, clothing, film tickets, and such like.”

Salander earned more than 160,000 kronor a year. She could double that by working full-time and accepting all the assignments Armansky offered her. But she had few expenses and did not need much money. The cost of her apartment was about 2,000 kronor a month, and in spite of her modest income, she had 90,000 kronor in her savings account. But she no longer had access to it.

“This has to do with the fact that I’m responsible for your money,” he said. “You have to put money aside for the future. But don’t worry; I’ll take care of all that.”

I’ve taken care of myself since I was ten, you creep!

“You function well enough in social terms that you don’t need to be institutionalised, but this society is responsible for you.”

He questioned her closely about what kind of work assignments she was given at Milton Security. She had instinctively lied about her duties. The answer she gave him was a description of her very first weeks at Milton. Bjurman got the impression that she made coffee and sorted the post – suitable enough tasks for someone who was a little slow – and seemed satisfied.

She did not know why she had lied, but she was sure it was a wise decision.

Blomkvist had spent five hours with Vanger, and it took much of the night and all of Tuesday to type up his notes and piece together the genealogy into a comprehensible whole. The family history that emerged was a dramatically different version from the one presented as the official image of the family. Every family had a few skeletons in their cupboards, but the Vanger family had an entire gallimaufry of them.

Blomkvist had had to remind himself several times that his real assignment was not to write a biography of the Vanger family but to find out what had happened to Harriet Vanger. The Vanger biography would be no more than playing to the gallery. After a year he would receive his preposterous salary – the contract drawn up by Frode had been signed. His true reward, he hoped, would be the information about Wennerström that Vanger claimed to possess. But after listening to Vanger, he began to see that the year did not have to be a waste of time. A book about the Vanger family had significant value. It was, quite simply, a terrific story.

The idea that he might light upon Harriet Vanger’s killer never crossed his mind – assuming she had been murdered, that is, and did not just die in some freak accident. Blomkvist agreed with Vanger that the chances of a sixteen-year-old girl going off of her own accord and then staying hidden for thirty-six years, despite the oversight of all the government bureaucracy, were nonexistent. On the other hand, he did not exclude the possibility that Harriet Vanger had run away, maybe heading for Stockholm, and that something had befallen her subsequently – drugs, prostitution, an assault, or an accident pure and simple.

Vanger was convinced, for his part, that Harriet had been murdered and that a family member was responsible – possibly in collaboration with someone else. His argument was based on the fact that Harriet had disappeared during the confusion in the hours when the island was cut off and all eyes were directed at the accident.

Berger had been right to say that his taking the assignment was beyond all common sense if the goal was to solve a murder mystery. But Blomkvist was beginning to see that Harriet’s fate had played a central role in the family, and especially for Henrik Vanger. No matter whether he was right or wrong, Vanger’s accusation against his relatives was of great significance in the family’s history. The accusation had been aired openly for more than thirty years, and it had coloured the family gatherings and given rise to poisonous animosities that had contributed to destabilising the corporation. A study of Harriet’s disappearance would consequently function as a chapter all on its own, as well as provide a red thread through the family history – and there was an abundance of source material. One starting point, whether Harriet Vanger was his primary assignment or whether he made do with writing a family chronicle, would be to map out the gallery of characters. That was the gist of his first long conversation that day with Vanger.

The family consisted of about a hundred individuals, counting all the children of cousins and second cousins. The family was so extensive that he was forced to create a database in his iBook. He used the NotePad programme (www.ibrium.se), one of those full-value products that two men at the Royal Technical College had created and distributed as shareware for a pittance on the Internet. Few programmes were as useful for an investigative journalist. Each family member was given his or her own document in the database.

The family tree could be traced back to the early sixteenth century, when the name was Vangeersad. According to Vanger the name may have originated from the Dutch van Geerstat; if that was the case, the lineage could be traced as far back as the twelfth century.

In modern times, the family came from northern France, arriving in Sweden with King Jean Baptiste Bernadotte in the early nineteenth century. Alexandre Vangeersad was a soldier and not personally acquainted with the king, but he had distinguished himself as the capable head of a garrison. In 1818 he was given the Hedeby estate as a reward for his service. Alexandre Vangeersad also had his own fortune, which he used to purchase considerable sections of forested land in Norrland. His son, Adrian, was born in France, but at his father’s request he moved to Hedeby in that remote area of Norrland, far from the salons of Paris, to take over the administration of the estate. He took up farming and forestry, using new methods imported from Europe, and he founded the pulp and paper mill around which Hedestad was built.

Alexandre’s grandson was named Henrik, and he shortened his surname to Vanger. He developed trade with Russia and created a small merchant fleet of schooners that served the Baltics and Germany, as well as England with its steel industry during the mid-1800s. The elder Henrik Vanger diversified the family enterprises and founded a modest mining business, as well as several of Norrland’s first metal industries. He left two sons, Birger and Gottfried, and they were the ones who laid the basis for the high-finance Vanger clan.

“Do you know anything about the old inheritance laws?” Vanger had asked. “No.”

“I’m confused about it too. According to family tradition, Birger and Gottfried fought like cats – they were legendary competitors for power and influence over the family business. In many respects the power struggle threatened the very survival of the company. For that reason their father decided – shortly before he died – to create a system whereby all members of the family would receive a portion of the inheritance – a share – in the business. It was no doubt well-intentioned, but it led to a situation in which instead of being able to bring in skilled people and possible partners from the outside, we had a board of directors consisting only of family members.”

“And that applies today?”

“Precisely. If a family member wishes to sell his shares, they have to stay within the family. Today the annual shareholders’ meeting consists of 50 percent family members. Martin holds more than 10 percent of the shares; I have 5 percent after selling some of my shares, to Martin among others. My brother Harald owns 7 percent, but most of the people who come to the shareholders’ meeting have only one or half a percent.”

“It sounds medieval in some ways.”

“It’s ludicrous. It means that today, if Martin wants to implement some policy, he has to waste time on a lobbying operation to ensure support from at least 20 percent to 25 percent of the shareholders. It’s a patchwork quilt of alliances, factions, and intrigues.”

Vanger resumed the history:

“Gottfried Vanger died childless in 1901. Or rather, may I be forgiven, he was the father of four daughters, but in those days women didn’t really count. They owned shares, but it was the men in the family who constituted the ownership interest. It wasn’t until women won the right to vote, well into the twentieth century, that they were even allowed to attend the shareholders’ meetings.”

“Very liberal.”

“No need to be sarcastic. Those were different times. At any rate – Gottfried’s brother, Birger Vanger, had three sons: Johan, Fredrik, and Gideon Vanger. They were all born towards the end of the nineteenth century. We can ignore Gideon; he sold his shares and emigrated to America. There is still a branch of the family over there. But Johan and Fredrik Vanger made the company the modern Vanger Corporation.”

Vanger took out a photograph album and showed Blomkvist pictures from the gallery of characters as he talked. The photographs from the early 1900s showed two men with sturdy chins and plastered-down hair who stared into the camera lens without a hint of a smile.

“Johan Vanger was the genius of the family. He trained as an engineer, and he developed the manufacturing industry with several new inventions, which he patented. Steel and iron became the basis of the firm, but the business also expanded into other areas, including textiles. Johan Vanger died in 1956 and had three daughters: Sofia, Märit, and Ingrid, who were the first women automatically to win admittance to the company’s shareholders’ meetings.

“The other brother, Fredrik Vanger, was my father. He was a businessman and industry leader who transformed Johan’s inventions into income. My father lived until 1964. He was active in company management right up until his death, although he had turned over daily operations to me in the fifties.

“It was exactly like the preceding generation – but in reverse. Johan had only daughters.” Vanger showed Blomkvist pictures of big-busted women with wide-brimmed hats and carrying parasols. “And Fredrik – my father – had only sons. We were five brothers: Richard, Harald, Greger, Gustav, and myself.”

Blomkvist had drawn up a family tree on several sheets of A4 paper taped together. He underlined the names of all those on Hedeby Island for the family meeting in 1966 and thus, at least theoretically, who could have had something to do with Harriet Vanger’s disappearance.

He left out children under the age of twelve – he had to draw the line somewhere. After some pondering, he also left out Henrik Vanger. If the patriarch had had anything to do with the disappearance of his brother’s granddaughter, his actions over the past thirty-six years would fall into the psychopathic arena. Vanger’s mother, who in 1966 was already eighty-one, could reasonably also be eliminated. Remaining were twenty-three family members who, according to Vanger, had to be included in the group of “suspects.” Seven of these were now dead, and several had now reached a respectable old age.

Blomkvist was not willing to share Vanger’s conviction that a family member was behind Harriet’s disappearance. A number of others had to be added to the list of suspects.

Dirch Frode began working for Vanger as his lawyer in the spring of 1962. And aside from the family, who were the servants when Harriet vanished? Gunnar Nilsson – alibi or not – was nineteen years old, and his father, Magnus, was in all likelihood present on Hedeby Island, as were the artist Norman and the pastor Falk. Was Falk married? The Östergården farmer Aronsson, as well as his son Jerker Aronsson, lived on the island, close enough to Harriet Vanger while she was growing up – what sort of relationship did they have? Was Aronsson still married? Did other people live at that time on the farm?

As Blomkvist wrote down all the names, the list had grown to forty people. It was 3:30 in the morning and the thermometer read -6°F. He longed for his own bed on Bellmansgatan.

He was awoken by the workman from Telia. By 11:00 he was hooked up and no longer felt quite as professionally handicapped. On the other hand, his own telephone remained stubbornly silent. He was starting to feel quite pig-headed and would not call the office.

He switched on his email programme and looked rapidly through the nearly 350 messages sent to him over the past week. He saved a dozen; the rest were spam or mailing lists that he subscribed to. The first email was from ‹demokrat88@yahoo.com›: I HOPE YOU SUCK COCK IN THE SLAMMER YOU FUCKING COMMIE PIG. He filed it in the “INTELLIGENT CRITICISM” folder.

He wrote to ‹erika.berger@millennium.se›:

When it felt like lunchtime he put his iBook in his bag and walked to Susanne’s Bridge Café. He parked himself at his usual corner table. Susanne brought him coffee and sandwiches, casting an inquisitive glance at his computer. She asked him what he was working on. For the first time Blomkvist used his cover story. They exchanged pleasantries. Susanne urged him to check with her when he was ready for the real revelations.

“I’ve been serving Vangers for thirty-five years, and I know most of the gossip about that family,” she said, and sashayed off to the kitchen. With children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren – whom he had not bothered to include – the brothers Fredrik and Johan Vanger had approximately fifty living offspring today. The family had a tendency to live to a ripe old age. Fredrik Vanger lived to be seventy-eight, and his brother Johan to seventy-two. Of Fredrik’s sons who were yet alive, Harald was ninety-two and Henrik was eighty-two.

The only exception was Gustav, who died of lung disease at the age of thirty-seven. Vanger had explained that Gustav had always been sickly and had gone his own way, never really fitting in with the rest of the family. He never married and had no children.

The others who had died young had succumbed to other factors than illness. Richard Vanger was killed in the Winter War, only thirty-three years old. Gottfried Vanger, Harriet’s father, had drowned the year before she disappeared. And Harriet herself was only sixteen. Mikael made note of the strange symmetry in that particular branch of the family – grandfather, father, and daughter had all been struck by misfortune. Richard’s only remaining descendant was Martin Vanger who, at fifty-four, was still unmarried. But Vanger had explained that his nephew was a veritable hermit with a woman who lived in Hedestad.

Blomkvist noted two factors in the family tree. The first was that no Vanger had ever divorced or remarried, even if their spouse had died young. He wondered how common that was, in terms of statistics. Cecilia Vanger had been separated from her husband for years, but apparently, they were still married.

The other peculiarity was that whereas Fredrik Vanger’s descendants, including Henrik, had played leading roles in the business and lived primarily in or near Hedestad, Johan Vanger’s branch of the family, which produced only daughters, had married and dispersed to Stockholm, Malmö, and Göteborg or abroad. And they only came to Hedestad for summer holidays or the more important meetings. The single exception was Ingrid Vanger, whose son, Gunnar Karlman, lived in Hedestad. He was the editor in chief of the Hedestad Courier.

Thinking as a private detective might, Vanger thought that the underlying motive for Harriet’s murder might be found in the structure of the company – the fact that early on he had made it known that Harriet was special to him; the motive might have been to harm Vanger himself, or perhaps Harriet had discovered some sensitive information concerning the company and thereby became a threat to someone. These were mere speculations; nevertheless, in this manner he had identified a circle consisting of thirteen individuals whom he considered to be of potential interest.

Blomkvist’s conversation with Vanger the day before had been illuminating on one other point. From the start the old man had talked to Blomkvist about so many members of his family in a contemptuous and denigrating manner. It struck him as odd. Blomkvist wondered whether the patriarch’s suspicions about his family had warped his judgement in the matter of Harriet’s disappearance, but now he was starting to realise that Vanger had made an amazingly sober assessment.

The image that was emerging revealed a family that was socially and financially successful, but in all the more ordinary aspects was quite clearly dysfunctional.

Henrik Vanger’s father had been a cold, insensitive man who sired his children and then let his wife look after their upbringing and welfare. Until the children reached the age of sixteen they barely saw their father except at special family gatherings when they were expected to be present but also invisible. Henrik could not remember his father ever expressing any form of love, even in the smallest way. On the contrary, the son was often told that he was incompetent and was the target of devastating criticism. Corporal punishment was seldom used; it wasn’t necessary. The only times he had won his father’s respect came later in life, through his accomplishments within the Vanger Corporation.

The oldest brother, Richard, had rebelled. After an argument – the reason for which was never discussed in the family – the boy had moved to Uppsala to study. There had been sown the seeds of the the Nazi career which Vanger had already mentioned, and which would eventually lead to the Finnish trenches. What the old man had not mentioned previously was that two other brothers had had similar careers.

In 1930 Harald and Greger had followed in Richard’s footsteps to Uppsala. The two had been close, but Vanger was not sure to what extent they had spent time with Richard. It was quite clear that the brothers all joined Per Engdahl’s fascist movement, The New Sweden. Harald had loyally followed Per Engdahl over the years, first to Sweden’s National Union, then to the Swedish Opposition group, and finally The New Swedish Movement after the war. Harald continued to be a member until Engdahl died in the nineties, and for certain periods he was one of the key contributors to the hibernating Swedish fascist movement.

Harald Vanger studied medicine in Uppsala and landed almost immediately in circles that were obsessed with race hygiene and race biology. For a time he worked at the Swedish Race Biology Institute, and as a physician he became a prominent campaigner for the sterilisation of undesirable elements in the population.

After the war Greger Vanger became a secondary-school teacher and eventually the headmaster of the Hedestad preparatory school. Vanger thought that he no longer belonged to any party after the war and had given up Nazism. He died in 1974, and it wasn’t until he went through his brother’s correspondence that he learned that in the fifties Greger had joined the politically ineffectual but totally crackpot sect called the Nordic National Party. He had remained a member until his death.

The only brother worthy of a measure of empathy in Vanger’s eyes was the sickly Gustav, who died of lung disease in 1955. Gustav had never been interested in politics, and he seemed to be some sort of misanthropic artistic soul, with absolutely no interest in business or working in the Vanger Corporation.

Blomkvist asked Vanger: “Now you and Harald are the only ones left. Why did he move back to Hedeby?”

“He moved home in 1979. He owns that house.”

“It must feel strange living so close to a brother that you hate.”

“I don’t hate my brother. If anything, I may pity him. He’s a complete idiot, and he’s the one who hates me.”

“He hates you?”

“Precisely. I think that’s why he came back here. So that he could spend his last years hating me at close quarters.”

“Why does he hate you?”

“Because I got married.”

“I think you’re going to have to explain that.”

Vanger had lost contact with his older brothers early on. He was the only brother to show an aptitude for business – he was his father’s last hope. He had no interest in politics and steered clear of Uppsala. Instead he studied economics in Stockholm. After he turned eighteen he spent every break and summer holiday working at one of the offices within the Vanger Corporation or working with the management of one of its companies. He became familiar with all the labyrinths of the family business.

On 10 June, 1941 – in the midst of an all-out war – Vanger was sent to Germany for a six-week visit at the Vanger Corporation business offices in Hamburg. He was only twenty-one and the Vanger’s German agent, a company veteran by the name of Hermann Lobach, was his chaperone and mentor.

“I won’t tire you with all the details, but when I went there, Hitler and Stalin were still good friends and there wasn’t yet an Eastern Front. Everyone still believed that Hitler was invincible. There was a feeling of… both optimism and desperation. I think those are the right words. More than half a century later, it’s still difficult to put words to the mood. Don’t get me wrong – I was not a Nazi, and in my eyes Hitler seemed like some absurd character in an operetta. But it would have been almost impossible not to be infected by the optimism about the future, which was rife among ordinary people in Hamburg. Despite the fact that the war was getting closer, and several bombing raids were carried out against Hamburg during the time I was there, the people seemed to think it was mostly a temporary annoyance – that soon there would be peace and Hitler would establish his Neuropa. People wanted to believe that Hitler was God. That’s what it sounded like in the propaganda.”

Vanger opened one of his many photograph albums.

“This is Lobach. He disappeared in 1944, presumably lost in some bombing raid. We never knew what his fate was. During my weeks in Hamburg I became close to him. I was staying with him and his family in an elegant apartment in a well-to-do neighbourhood of Hamburg. We spent time together every day. He was no more a Nazi than I was, but for convenience he was a member of the party. His membership card opened doors and facilitated opportunities for the Vanger Corporation – and business was precisely what we did. We built freight wagons for their trains – I’ve always wondered whether any of our wagons were destined for Poland. We sold fabric for their uniforms and tubes for their radio sets – although officially we didn’t know what they were using the goods for. And Lobach knew how to land a contract; he was entertaining and good-natured. The perfect Nazi. Gradually I began to see that he was also a man who was desperately trying to hide a secret.

“In the early hours of June 22 in 1941, Lobach knocked on the door of my bedroom. My room was next to his wife’s bedroom, and he signalled me to be quiet, get dressed, and come with him. We went downstairs and sat in the smoking salon. Lobach had been up all night. He had the radio on, and I realised that something serious had happened. Operation Barbarossa had begun. Germany had invaded the Soviet Union on Midsummer Eve.” Vanger gestured in resignation. “Lobach took out two glasses and poured a generous aquavit for each of us. He was obviously shaken. When I asked him what it all meant, he replied with foresight that it meant the end for Germany and Nazism. I only half believed him – Hitler seemed undefeatable, after all – but Lobach and I drank a toast to the fall of Germany. Then he turned his attention to practical matters.”

Blomkvist nodded to signal that he was still following the story.

“First, he had no possibility of contacting my father for instructions, but on his own initiative he had decided to cut short my visit to Germany and send me home. Second, he asked me to do something for him.”

Vanger pointed to a yellowed portrait of a dark-haired woman, in three-quarter view.

“Lobach had been married for forty years, but in 1919 he met a wildly beautiful woman half his age, and he fell hopelessly in love with her. She was a poor, simple seamstress. Lobach courted her, and like so many other wealthy men, he could afford to install her in an apartment a convenient distance from his office. She became his mistress. In 1921 she had a daughter, who was christened Edith.”

“Rich older man, poor young woman, and a love child – that can’t have caused much of a scandal in the forties,” Blomkvist said.

“Absolutely right. If it hadn’t been for one thing. The woman was Jewish, and consequently Lobach was the father of a Jew in the midst of Nazi Germany. He was what they called a ‘traitor to his race.’”

“Ah… That does change the situation. What happened?”

“Edith’s mother had been picked up in 1939. She disappeared, and we can only guess what her fate was. It was known, of course, that she had a daughter who was not yet included on any transport list, and who was now being sought by the department of the Gestapo whose job it was to track down fugitive Jews. In the summer of 1941, the week that I arrived in Hamburg, Edith’s mother was somehow linked to Lobach, and he was summoned for an interview. He acknowledged the relationship and his paternity, but he stated that he had no idea where his daughter might be, and he had not had any contact with her in ten years.”

“So where was the daughter?”

“I had seen her every day in the Lobachs’ home. A sweet and quiet twenty-year-old girl who cleaned my room and helped serve dinner. By 1937 the persecution of the Jews had been going on for several years, and Edith’s mother had begged Lobach for help. And he did help – Lobach loved his illegitimate child just as much as his legitimate children. He hid her in the most unlikely place he could think of – right in front of everyone’s nose. He had arranged for counterfeit documents, and he had taken her in as their housekeeper.”

“Did his wife know who she was?”

“No, it seemed she had no idea. It had worked for four years, but now Lobach felt the noose tightening. It was only a matter of time before the Gestapo would come knocking on the door. Then he went to get his daughter and introduced her to me as such. She was very shy and didn’t even dare look me in the eye. She must have been up half the night waiting to be called. Lobach begged me to save her life.”

“How?”

“He had arranged the whole thing. I was supposed to be staying another three weeks and then to take the night train to Copenhagen and continue by ferry across the sound – a relatively safe trip, even in wartime. But two days after our conversation a freighter owned by the Vanger Corporation was to leave Hamburg headed for Sweden. Lobach wanted to send me with the freighter instead, to leave Germany without delay. The change in my travel plans had to be approved by the security service; it was a formality, but not a problem. But Lobach wanted me on board that freighter.”

“Together with Edith, I presume.”

“Edith was smuggled on board, hidden inside one of three hundred crates containing machinery. My job was to protect her if she should be discovered while we were still in German territorial waters, and to prevent the captain of the ship from doing anything stupid. Otherwise I was supposed to wait until we were a good distance from Germany before I let her out.”

“It sounds terrifying.”

“It sounded simple to me, but it turned into a nightmare journey. The captain was called Oskar Granath, and he was far from pleased to be made responsible for his employer’s snotty little heir. We left Hamburg around 9:00 in the evening in late June. We were just making our way out of the inner harbour when the air-raid sirens went off. A British bombing raid – the heaviest I had then experienced, and the harbour was, of course, the main target. But somehow we got through, and after an engine breakdown and a miserably stormy night in mine-filled waters we arrived the following afternoon at Karlskrona. You’re probably going to ask me what happened to the girl.”

“I think I know.”

“My father was understandably furious. I had put everything at risk with my idiotic venture. And the girl could have been deported from Sweden at any time. But I was already just as hopelessly in love with her as Lobach had been with her mother. I proposed to her and gave my father an ultimatum – either he accepted our marriage or he’d have to look for another fatted calf for the family business. He gave in.”

“But she died?”

“Yes, far too young, in 1958. She had a congenital heart defect. And it turned out that I couldn’t have children. And that’s why my brother hates me.”

“Because you married her.”

“Because – to use his own words – I married a filthy Jewish whore.”

“But he’s insane.”

“I couldn’t have put it better myself.”

CHAPTER 10 Thursday, January 9 – Friday, January 31

According to the Hedestad Courier, Blomkvist’s first month out in the country was the coldest in recorded memory, or (as Vanger informed him) at least since the wartime winter of 1942. After only a week in Hedeby he had learned all about long underwear, woolly socks, and double undershirts.

He had several miserable days in the middle of the month when the temperature dropped to -35°F. He had experienced nothing like it, not even during the year he spent in Kiruna in Lapland doing his military service.

One morning the water pipes froze. Nilsson gave him two big plastic containers of water for cooking and washing, but the cold was paralysing. Ice flowers formed on the insides of the windows, and no matter how much wood he put in the stove, he was still cold. He spent a long time each day splitting wood in the shed next to the house.

At times he was on the brink of tears and toyed with taking the first train heading south. Instead he would put on one more sweater and wrap up in a blanket as he sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and reading old police reports.

Then the weather changed and the temperature rose steadily to a balmy 14°F.

Mikael was beginning to get to know people in Hedeby. Martin Vanger kept his promise and invited him for a meal of moose steak. His lady friend joined them for dinner. Eva was a warm, sociable, and entertaining woman. Blomkvist found her extraordinarily attractive. She was a dentist and lived in Hedestad, but she spent the weekends at Martin’s home. Blomkvist gradually learned that they had known each other for many years but that they had not started going out together until they were middle-aged. Evidently they saw no reason to marry.

“She’s actually my dentist,” said Martin with a laugh.

“And marrying into this crazy family isn’t really my thing,” Eva said, patting Martin affectionately on the knee.

Martin Vanger’s villa was furnished in black, white, and chrome. There were expensive designer pieces that would have delighted the connoisseur Christer Malm. The kitchen was equipped to a professional chef’s standard. In the living room there was a high-end stereo with an impressive collection of jazz records from Tommy Dorsey to John Coltrane. Martin Vanger had money, and his home was both luxurious and functional. It was also impersonal. The artwork on the walls was reproductions and posters, of the sort found in IKEA. The bookshelves, at least in the part of the house that Blomkvist saw, housed a Swedish encyclopedia and some coffee table books that people might have given him as Christmas presents, for want of a better idea. All in all, he could discern only two personal aspects of Martin Vanger’s life: music and cooking. His 3,000 or so LPs spoke for the one and the other could be deduced from the fact of Martin’s stomach bulging over his belt.

The man himself was a mixture of simplicity, shrewdness, and amiability. It took no great analytical skill to conclude that the corporate CEO was a man with problems. As they listened to “Night in Tunisia,” the conversation was devoted to the Vanger Corporation, and Martin made no secret of the fact that the company was fighting for survival. He was certainly aware that his guest was a financial reporter whom he hardly knew, yet he discussed the internal problems of his company so openly that it seemed reckless. Perhaps he assumed that Blomkvist was one of the family since he was working for his great-uncle; and like the former CEO, Martin took the view that the family members only had themselves to blame for the situation in which the company found itself. On the other hand, he seemed almost amused by his family’s incorrigible folly. Eva nodded but passed no judgement of her own. They had obviously been over the same ground before.

Martin accepted the story that Blomkvist had been hired to write a family chronicle, and he inquired how the work was going. Blomkvist said with a smile that he was having the most trouble remembering the names of all the relatives. He asked if he might come back to do an interview in due course. Twice he considered turning the conversation to the old man’s obsession with Harriet’s disappearance. Vanger must have pestered her brother with his theories, and Martin must realise that if Blomkvist was going to write about the Vangers, he could not ignore the fact that one family member had vanished in dramatic circumstances. But Martin showed no sign of wanting to discuss the subject.

The evening ended, after several rounds of vodka, at 2:00 in the morning. Blomkvist was fairly drunk as he skidded the three hundred yards to the guest house. It had been a pleasant evening.

One afternoon during Blomkvist’s second week in Hedeby there was a knock on the door. He put aside the binder from the police report that he had just opened – the sixth in the series – and closed the door to his office before he opened the front door to a blonde woman well wrapped up against the cold.

“Hi. I just thought I’d come and say hello. I’m Cecilia Vanger.”

They shook hands and he got out the coffee cups. Cecilia, daughter of Harald Vanger, appeared to be an open and engaging woman. Blomkvist remembered that Vanger had spoken of her appreciatively; he had also said that she was not on speaking terms with her father, her next-door neighbour. They chatted for a while before she brought up the reason for her visit.

“I understand that you’re writing a book about the family,” she said. “I’m not sure that I care for the idea. I wanted to see what sort of person you are.”

“Well, Henrik Vanger hired me. It’s his story, so to speak.”

“And our good Henrik isn’t exactly neutral in his attitude towards the family.”

Blomkvist studied her, unsure what she was getting at. “You’re opposed to having a book written about the Vanger family?”

“I didn’t say that. And it doesn’t really matter what I think. But by now you must have realised that it hasn’t always been plain sailing to be part of this family.”

Blomkvist had no idea what Vanger had said or how much Cecilia knew about his assignment. He threw out his hands.

“I’m contracted by your uncle to write a family chronicle. He has some very colourful views about members of the family, but I’ll be sticking strictly to what can be documented.”

Cecilia Vanger smiled but without warmth. “What I want to know is: will I have to go into exile or emigrate when the book comes out?”

“I don’t expect so,” Blomkvist said. “People will be able to tell the sheep from the goats.”

“Like my father, for instance?”

“Your father the famous Nazi?” Blomkvist said.

Cecilia Vanger rolled her eyes. “My father is crazy. I only see him a few times a year.”

“Why don’t you want to see him?”

“Wait a minute – before you start in asking a lot of questions… Are you planning to quote anything I say? Or can I carry on a normal conversation with you?”

“My job is to write a book starting with Alexandre Vangeersad’s arrival in Sweden with Bernadotte and going up to the present. It’s to cover the business empire over many decades, but it will also discuss why the empire is in difficulty and it will touch on the animosity that exists within the family. In such a survey it’s impossible to avoid having some dirty linen float to the surface. But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to set out to present a malicious portrait of anyone. For example, I’ve met Martin Vanger; he seems to me a very sympathetic person, and that’s how I’m going to describe him.”

Cecilia Vanger did not reply.

“What I know about you is that you’re a teacher…”

“It’s actually worse than that – I’m the headmistress of Hedestad preparatory school.”

“I’m sorry. I know that your uncle is fond of you, that you’re married but separated… and that’s about all so far. So do please go ahead and talk to me without fear of being quoted. I’m sure I’ll come knocking on your door some day soon. Then it will be an official interview, and you can choose whether you want to answer my questions or not.”

“So I can talk to you then or now… off the record, as they say?”

“Of course.”

“And this is off the record?”

“Of course. This is a social visit after all.”

“OK. Then can I ask you something?”

“Please.”

“How much of this book is going to deal with Harriet?”

Blomkvist bit his lip and then said as casually as he could: “To be honest, I have no idea. It might fill a chapter. It was a dramatic event that has cast a shadow over your uncle, at the very least.”

“But you’re not here to look into her disappearance?”

“What makes you think that?”

“Well, the fact that Nilsson lugged four massive boxes over here. That could be Henrik’s private investigations over the years. I looked in Harriet’s old room, where Henrik keeps it, and it was gone.”

Cecilia Vanger was no fool.

“You’ll have to take the matter up with Henrik, not with me,” Blomkvist said. “But it won’t surprise you to know that Henrik has talked a lot about the girl’s disappearance, and I thought it would be interesting to read through what had been collected.”

Cecilia gave him another of her joyless smiles. “I wonder sometimes who’s crazier, my father or my uncle. I must have listened to him on Harriet’s disappearance a thousand times.”

“What do you think happened to her?”

“Is this an interview question?”

“No,” he said with a laugh. “I’m just curious.”

“What I’m curious about is whether you’re a nut case too. Whether you’ve swallowed Henrik’s conviction or whether in fact you’re the one who’s egging him on.”

“You think that Henrik’s a nut case?”

“Don’t get me wrong. He’s one of the warmest and most thoughtful people I know. I’m very fond of him. But on this particular topic, he’s obsessive.”

“But Harriet really did disappear.”

“I’m just so damn sick of the whole story. It’s poisoned our lives for decades, and it doesn’t stop doing so.” She got up abruptly and put on her fur coat. “I have to go. You seem like a pleasant sort. Martin thinks so too, but his judgement isn’t always reliable. You’re welcome to come for coffee at my house whenever you like. I’m almost always home in the evening.”

“Thank you,” Blomkvist said. “You didn’t answer the question that wasn’t an interview question.”

She paused at the door and replied without looking at him.

“I have no idea. I think it was an accident that has such a simple explanation that it will astonish us if we ever find out.”

She turned to smile at him – for the first time with warmth. Then she was gone.

If it had been an agreeable first meeting with Cecilia Vanger, the same could not be said of his first encounter with Isabella. Harriet’s mother was exactly as Henrik Vanger had warned: she proved to be an elegant woman who reminded him vaguely of Lauren Bacall. She was thin, dressed in a black Persian lamb coat with matching cap, and she was leaning on a black cane when Blomkvist ran into her one morning on his way to Susanne’s. She looked like an ageing vampire – still strikingly beautiful but as venomous as a snake. Isabella Vanger was apparently on her way home after taking a walk. She called to him from the crossroad.

“Hello there, young man. Come here.”

The commanding tone was hard to mistake. Blomkvist looked around and concluded that he was the one summoned. He did as instructed.

“I am Isabella Vanger,” the woman said.

“Hello. My name is Mikael Blomkvist.” He stuck out his hand, which she ignored.

“Are you that person who’s been snooping around in our family affairs?”

“Well, if you mean am I the person that Henrik Vanger has put under contract to help him with his book about the Vanger family, then yes.”

“That’s none of your business.”

“Which? The fact that Henrik Vanger offered me a contract or the fact that I accepted?”

“You know perfectly well what I mean. I don’t care for people poking around in my life.”

“I won’t poke around in your life. The rest you’ll have to discuss with Henrik.”

Isabella raised her cane and pressed the handle against Mikael’s chest. She did not use much force, but he took a step back in surprise.

“Just you keep away from me,” she said, and turned on her heel and walked unsteadily towards her house. Blomkvist went on standing where he was, looking like a man who has just met a real live comic-book character. When he looked up he saw Vanger in the window of his office. In his hand he was holding a cup, which he raised in an ironic salute.

The only travelling that Blomkvist did during that first month was a drive to a bay on Lake Siljan. He borrowed Frode’s Mercedes and drove through a snowy landscape to spend the afternoon with Detective Superintendent Morell. Blomkvist had tried to form an impression of Morell based on the way he came across in the police report. What he found was a wiry old man who moved softly and spoke even more slowly.

Blomkvist brought with him a notebook with ten questions, mainly ideas that had cropped up while he was reading the police report. Morell answered each question put to him in a schoolmasterly way. Finally Blomkvist put away his notes and explained that the questions were simply an excuse for a meeting. What he really wanted was to have a chat with him and ask one crucial question: was there any single thing in the investigation that had not been included in the written report? Any hunches, even, that the inspector might be willing to share with him?

Because Morell, like Vanger, had spent thirty-six years pondering the mystery, Blomkvist had expected a certain resistance – he was the new man who had come in and started tramping around in the thicket where Morell had gone astray. But there was not a hint of hostility. Morell methodically filled his pipe and lit it before he replied.

“Well yes, obviously I had my own ideas. But they’re so vague and fleeting that I can hardly put them into words.”

“What do you think happened?”

“I think Harriet was murdered. Henrik and I agree on that. It’s the only reasonable explanation. But we never discovered what the motive might have been. I think she was murdered for a very specific reason – it wasn’t some act of madness or a rape or anything like that. If we had known the motive, we’d have known who killed her.” Morell stopped to think for a moment. “The murder may have been committed spontaneously. By that I mean that someone seized an opportunity when it presented itself in the coming and going in the wake of the accident. The murderer hid the body and then at some later time removed it while we were searching for her.”

“We’re talking about someone who has nerves of ice.”

“There’s one detail… Harriet went to Henrik’s room wanting to speak to him. In hindsight, it seems to me a strange way to behave – she knew he had his hands full with all the relatives who were hanging around. I think Harriet alive represented a grave threat to someone, that she was going to tell Henrik something, and that the murderer knew she was about to… well, spill the beans.”

“And Henrik was busy with several family members?”

“There were four people in the room, besides Henrik. His brother Greger, a cousin named Magnus Sjögren, and two of Harald’s children, Birger and Cecilia. But that doesn’t tell us anything. Let’s suppose that Harriet had discovered that someone had embezzled money from the company – hypothetically, of course. She may have known about it for months, and at some point she may even have discussed it with the person in question. She may have tried to blackmail him, or she may have felt sorry for him and felt uneasy about exposing him. She may have decided all of a sudden and told the murderer so, and he in desperation killed her.”

“You’ve said ‘he’ and ‘him.’”

“The book says that most killers are men. But it’s also true that in the Vanger family are several women who are real firebrands.”

“I’ve met Isabella.”

“She’s one of them. But there are others. Cecilia Vanger can be extremely caustic. Have you met Sara Sjögren?”

Blomkvist shook his head.

“She’s the daughter of Sofia Vanger, one of Henrik’s cousins. In her case we’re talking about a truly unpleasant and inconsiderate lady. But she was living in Malmö, and as far as I could ascertain, she had no motive for killing the girl.”

“So she’s off the list.”

“The problem is that no matter how we twisted and turned things, we never came up with a motive. That’s the important thing.”

“You put a vast amount of work into this case. Was there any lead you remember not having followed up?”

Morell chuckled. “No. I’ve devoted an endless amount of time to this case, and I can’t think of anything that I didn’t follow up to the bitter, fruitless end. Even after I was promoted and moved away from Hedestad.”

“Moved away?”

“Yes, I’m not from Hedestad originally. I served there from 1963 until 1968. After that I was promoted to superintendent and moved to the Gävle police department for the rest of my career. But even in Gävle I went on digging into the case.”

“I don’t suppose that Henrik would ever let up.”

“That’s true, but that’s not the reason. The puzzle about Harriet still fascinates me to this day. I mean… it’s like this: every police officer has his own unsolved mystery. I remember from my days in Hedestad how older colleagues would talk in the canteen about the case of Rebecka. There was one officer in particular, a man named Torstensson – he’s been dead for years – who year after year kept returning to that case. In his free time and when he was on holiday. Whenever there was a period of calm among the local hooligans he would take out those folders and study them.”

“Was that also a case about a missing girl?”

Morell looked surprised. Then he smiled when he realised that Blomkvist was looking for some sort of connection.

“No, that’s not why I mentioned it. I’m talking about the soul of a policeman. The Rebecka case was something that happened before Harriet Vanger was even born, and the statute of limitations has long since run out. Sometime in the forties a woman was assaulted in Hedestad, raped, and murdered. That’s not altogether uncommon. Every officer, at some point in his career, has to investigate that kind of crime, but what I’m talking about are those cases that stay with you and get under your skin during the investigation. This girl was killed in the most brutal way. The killer tied her up and stuck her head into the smouldering embers of a fireplace. One can only guess how long it took for the poor girl to die, or what torment she must have endured.”

“Christ Almighty.”

“Exactly. It was so sadistic. Poor Torstensson was the first detective on the scene after she was found. And the murder remained unsolved, even though experts were called in from Stockholm. He could never let go of that case.”

“I can understand that.”

“My Rebecka case was Harriet. In this instance we don’t even know how she died. We can’t even prove that a murder was committed. But I have never been able to let it go.” He paused to think for a moment. “Being a homicide detective can be the loneliest job in the world. The friends of the victim are upset and in despair, but sooner or later – after weeks or months – they go back to their everyday lives. For the closest family it takes longer, but for the most part, to some degree, they too get over their grieving and despair. Life has to go on; it does go on. But the unsolved murders keep gnawing away and in the end there’s only one person left who thinks night and day about the victim: it’s the officer who’s left with the investigation.”

Three other people in the Vanger family lived on Hedeby Island. Alexander Vanger, son of Greger, born in 1946, lived in a renovated wooden house. Vanger told Blomkvist that Alexander was presently in the West Indies, where he gave himself over to his favourite pastimes: sailing and whiling away the time, not doing a scrap of work. Alexander had been twenty and he had been there on that day.

Alexander shared the house with his mother, Gerda, eighty years old and widow of Greger Vanger. Blomkvist had never seen her; she was mostly bedridden.

The third family member was Harald Vanger. During his first month Blomkvist had not managed even a glimpse of him. Harald’s house, the one closest to Blomkvist’s cabin, looked gloomy and ominous with its blackout curtains drawn across all the windows. Blomkvist sometimes thought he saw a ripple in the curtains as he passed, and once when he was about to go to bed late, he noticed a glimmer of light coming from a room upstairs. There was a gap in the curtains. For more than twenty minutes he stood in the dark at his own kitchen window and watched the light before he got fed up and, shivering, went to bed. In the morning the curtains were back in place.

Harald seemed to be an invisible but ever-present spirit who affected life in the village by his absence. In Blomkvist’s imagination, Harald increasingly took on the form of an evil Gollum who spied on his surroundings from behind the curtains and devoted himself to no-one-knew-what matters in his barricaded cavern.

Harald was visited once a day by the home-help service (usually an elderly woman) from the other side of the bridge. She would bring bags of groceries, trudging through the snowdrifts up to his door. Nilsson shook his head when Blomkvist asked about Harald. He had offered to do the shovelling, he said, but Harald did not want anyone to set foot on his property. Only once, during the first winter after Harald had returned to Hedeby Island, did Nilsson drive the tractor up there to clear the snow from the courtyard, just as he did for all the other driveways. Harald had come out of his house at a startling pace, yelling and gesticulating until Nilsson went away.

Unfortunately, Nilsson was unable to clear Blomkvist’s yard because the gate was too narrow for the tractor. A snow shovel and manual labour were still the only way to do it.

In the middle of January Blomkvist asked his lawyer to find out when he was going to be expected to serve his three months in prison. He was anxious to take care of the matter as quickly as possible. Getting into prison turned out to be easier than he had expected. After a very few weeks of discussion, it was decreed that Blomkvist present himself on March 17 at the Rullåker Prison outside Östersund, a minimum-security prison. The lawyer advised him that the sentence would very likely be shortened.

“Fine,” Blomkvist said, without much enthusiasm.

He sat at the kitchen table and petted the cat, who now arrived every few days to spend the night with Blomkvist. From the Nilssons he had learned that the cat’s name was Tjorven. It did not belong to anyone in particular, it just made the rounds of all the houses.

Blomkvist met his employer almost every afternoon. Sometimes they would have a brief conversation; sometimes they would sit together for hours.

The conversation often consisted of Blomkvist putting up a theory that Vanger would then shoot down. Blomkvist tried to maintain a certain distance from his assignment, but there were moments when he found himself hopelessly fascinated by the enigma of the girl’s disappearance.

Blomkvist had assured Berger that he would also formulate a strategy for taking up the battle with Wennerström, but after a month in Hedestad he had not yet opened the files which had brought him to the dock in the district court. On the contrary, he had deliberately pushed the matter aside because every time he thought about Wennerström and his own situation, he would sink into depression and listlessness. He wondered whether he was going crazy like the old man. His professional reputation had imploded, and his means of recovering was to hide himself away in a tiny town in the deep country, chasing ghosts.

Vanger could tell that Blomkvist was on some days a bit off balance. By the end of January, the old man made a decision that surprised even himself. He picked up the telephone and called Stockholm. The conversation lasted twenty minutes and dealt largely with Mikael Blomkvist.

It had taken almost that whole month for Berger’s fury to subside. At 9:30 in the evening, on one of the last days in January, she called him.

“Are you really intending to stay up there?” she began. The call was such a surprise that Blomkvist could not at first reply. Then he smiled and wrapped the blanket tighter around him.

“Hi, Ricky. You should try it yourself.”

“Why would I? What is so charming about living in the back of beyond?”

“I just brushed my teeth with ice water. It makes my fillings hurt.”

“You have only yourself to blame. But it’s cold as hell down here in Stockholm too.”

“Let’s hear the worst.”

“We’ve lost two-thirds of our regular advertisers. No-one wants to come right out and say it, but…”

“I know. Make a list of the ones that jump ship. Someday we’ll do a good story on them.”

“Micke… I’ve run the numbers, and if we don’t rope in some new advertisers, we’ll be bust by the autumn. It’s as simple as that.”

“Things will turn around.”

She laughed wearily on the other end of the line.

“That’s not something you can say, nestling up there in Laplander hell.”

“Erika, I’m…”

“I know. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, and all that crap. You don’t have to say anything. I’m sorry I was such a bitch and didn’t answer your messages. Can we start again? Do I dare come up there to see you?”

“Whenever you like.”

“Do I need to bring along a rifle with wolf-shot?”

“Not at all. We’ll have our own Lapps, dog teams and all the gear. When are you coming?”

“Friday evening, OK?”

Apart from the narrow shovelled path to the door, there was about three feet of snow covering the property. Blomkvist gave the shovel a long, critical look and then went over to Nilsson’s house to ask whether Berger could park her BMW there. That was no problem; they had room in the double garage, and they even had engine heaters.

Berger drove through the afternoon and arrived around 6:00. They stared at each other warily for several seconds and then hugged each other for much longer.

There was not much to see in the darkness except for the illuminated church, and both Konsum and Susanne’s Bridge Café were closing up. So they hurried home. Blomkvist cooked dinner while Berger poked around in his house, making remarks about the issues of Rekordmagasinet from the fifties that were still there, and getting engrossed in his files in the office.

They had lamb cutlets with potatoes in cream sauce and drank red wine. Blomkvist tried to take up the thread of their earlier conversation, but Berger was in no mood to discuss Millennium. Instead they talked for two hours about what Blomkvist was doing up there and how he and Vanger were getting on. Later they went to see if the bed was big enough to hold both of them.

Her third meeting with Advokat Nils Bjurman was rescheduled, and finally set for 5:00 on that same Friday afternoon. At the previous meetings, Salander was greeted by a middle-aged woman who smelled of musk and worked as his secretary. This time she had left for the day, and Bjurman smelled faintly of drink. He waved Salander to a visitor’s chair and leafed distractedly through the documents on his desk until he seemed suddenly to become aware of her presence.

It turned out to be another interrogation. This time he asked Salander about her sex life – which she had no intention of discussing with anyone.

After the meeting she knew that she had handled it badly. At first she refused to answer his questions. His interpretation of this was that she was shy, retarded, or had something to hide, and he pressed her for answers. Salander realised that he was not going to give up, so she started giving him brief, colourless answers of the sort she assumed would fit with her psychological profile. She mentioned “Magnus” – who, according to her description, was a nerdy computer programmer her own age who treated her like a gentleman should, took her to the cinema, and sometimes shared her bed. “Magnus” was fiction; she made him up as she went along, but Bjurman took her account as a pretext for meticulously mapping out her sex life. How often do you have sex? Occasionally. Who takes the initiative – you or him? I do. Do you use condoms? Of course – she knew about HIV. What’s your favourite position? Hmm, usually on my back. Do you enjoy oral sex? Er, wait a second… Have you ever had anal sex?

“No, it’s not particularly nice to be fucked in the arse – but what the hell business is it of yours?”

That was the only time she lost her temper. She had kept her eyes on the floor so they would not betray her exasperation. When she looked at him again, he was grinning at her from across the desk. She left his office with a feeling of disgust. Palmgren would never have dreamed of asking such questions. On the other hand, he had always been there if she had wanted to discuss anything. Not that she did.

Bjurman was on his way to being a Major Problem.

CHAPTER 11 Saturday, February 1 – Tuesday, February 18

During the brief hours of daylight on Saturday, Blomkvist and Berger took a walk past the small-boat harbour along the road to Östergården. He had been living on Hedeby Island for a month, but he had never taken a walk inland; the freezing temperatures and regular snowstorms had deterred him. But Saturday was sunny and pleasant. It was as if Berger had brought with her a hint of spring. The road was lined with snow, ploughed three feet high. As soon as they left the summer-cabin area they were walking in dense fir forest. Blomkvist was surprised by how much higher and more inaccessible Söderberget, the hill across from the cabins, was than it appeared from the village. He thought about how many times Harriet Vanger must have played here as a child, but then he pushed all thoughts of her out of his mind. After about a mile the woods ended at a fence where the Östergården farmland began. They could see a white wooden structure and red farm buildings arranged in a square. They turned to head back the same way.

As they passed the driveway to the estate house, Vanger knocked on the upstairs window and gestured firmly for them to come up. Blomkvist and Berger looked at each other.

“Would you like to meet a corporate legend?” Blomkvist said.

“Does he bite?”

“Not on Saturdays.”

Vanger received them at the door to his office.

“You must be Fröken Berger, I recognise you.” he said. “Mikael didn’t say a word about your coming to Hedeby.”

One of Berger’s outstanding talents was her ability to instantly get on friendly terms with the most unlikely individuals. Blomkvist had seen her turn on the charm for five-year-old boys, who within ten minutes were fully prepared to abandon their mothers. Men over eighty seemed not to be an exception. After two minutes Berger and Henrik Vanger were ignoring Blomkvist as they chattered on. It was as if they had known each other since childhood – well, since Erika’s childhood, at any rate.

Berger started off quite boldly by scolding Vanger for luring her publisher away into the sticks. The old man replied that as far as he could tell – from assorted press reports – she had in fact fired him. And had she not done so, then now might be high time to get rid of excess ballast in the editorial offices. And in that case, Vanger said, a period of rustic life would do young Blomkvist some good.

For five minutes they discussed Blomkvist’s shortcomings in the most irritating terms. Blomkvist leaned back and pretended to be insulted, but he frowned when Berger made some cryptic remarks that might allude to his failings as a journalist but might also have applied to sexual prowess. Vanger tilted his head back and roared with laughter.

Blomkvist was astonished. He had never seen Vanger so natural and relaxed. He could suddenly see that Vanger, fifty years younger – or even thirty years – must have been quite a charming, attractive ladies’ man. He had never remarried. There must have been women who crossed his path, yet for nearly half a century he had remained a bachelor.

Blomkvist took a sip of coffee and pricked up his ears again when he realised that the conversation had suddenly turned serious and had to do with Millennium.

“Mikael has told me that you’re having problems at the magazine.” Berger glanced at Blomkvist. “No, he hasn’t discussed your internal operations, but a person would have to be deaf and blind not to see that your magazine, just like the Vanger Corporation, is in difficulties.”

“I’m confident that we can repair the situation,” Berger said.

“I doubt it,” Vanger said.

“Why is that?”

“Let’s see – how many employees do you have? Six? A monthly magazine with a print run of 21,000, manufacturing costs, salaries, distribution, offices… You need revenues of about 10 million. I think we know what percentage of that amount has to come from advertising revenue.”

“So?”

“So friend Wennerström is a vengeful and narrow-minded bastard who isn’t going to forget his recent contretemps in a hurry. How many advertisers have you lost in the past six months?”

Berger regarded Vanger with a wary expression. Blomkvist caught himself holding his breath. On those occasions when he and the old man had touched on the future of Millennium, it had always concerned annoying remarks or the magazine’s situation in relation to Blomkvist’s ability to finish his work in Hedestad. But Vanger was now addressing Erika alone, one boss to another. Signals passed between them that Blomkvist could not interpret, which might have had to do with the fact that he was basically a poor working-class boy from Norrland and she was an upper-class girl with a distinguished, international family tree.

“Could I have a little more coffee?” Berger asked. Vanger poured her a cup at once. “OK, you’ve done your homework. We’re bleeding.”

“How long?”

“We’ve got six months to turn ourselves around. Eight months, max. We don’t have enough capital to keep ourselves afloat longer than that.”

The old man’s expression was inscrutable as he stared out of the window. The church was still standing there.

“Did you know that I was once in the newspaper business?” he said, once more addressing them both.

Blomkvist and Berger both shook their heads. Vanger laughed again, ruefully.

“We owned six daily newspapers in Norrland. That was back in the fifties and sixties. It was my father’s idea – he thought it might be politically advantageous to have a section of the media behind us. We’re actually still one of the owners of the Hedestad Courier. Birger is the chairman of the board for the group of owners. Harald’s son,” he added, for Blomkvist’s benefit.

“And also a local politician,” Blomkvist said.

“Martin is on the board too. He keeps Birger in line.”

“Why did you let go of the newspapers you owned?” Blomkvist asked.

“Corporate restructuring in the sixties. Publishing newspapers was in some ways more a hobby than an interest. When we needed to tighten the budget, it was one of the first assets that we sold. But I know what it takes to run a publication… May I ask you a personal question?”

This was directed at Erika.

“I haven’t asked Mikael about this, and if you don’t want to answer, you don’t have to. I’d like to know how you ended up in this quagmire. Did you have a story or didn’t you?”

Now it was Blomkvist’s turn to look inscrutable. Berger hesitated only a second before she said: “We had a story. But it was a very different story.”

Vanger nodded, as if he understood precisely what Berger was saying. Blomkvist did not.

“I don’t want to discuss the matter.” Blomkvist cut the discussion short. “I did the research and wrote the article. I had all the sources I needed. But then it all went to hell.”

“You had sources for every last thing you wrote?”

“I did.”

Vanger’s voice was suddenly sharp. “I won’t pretend to understand how the hell you could walk into such a minefield. I can’t recall a similar story except perhaps the Lundahl affair in Expressen in the sixties, if you youngsters have ever heard of it. Was your source also a mythomaniac?” He shook his head and turned to Berger and said quietly, “I’ve been a newspaper publisher in the past, and I can be one again. What would you say to taking on another partner?”

The question came like a bolt out of the blue, but Berger did not seem the least bit surprised.

“Tell me more,” she said.

Vanger said: “How long are you staying in Hedestad?”

“I’m going home tomorrow.”

“Would you consider – you and Mikael, of course – humouring an old man by joining me for dinner tonight? Would 7:00 suit?”

“That would suit us fine. We’d love it. But you’re not answering the question I asked. Why would you want to be a partner in Millennium?”

“I’m not avoiding the question. I just thought we could discuss it over dinner. I have to talk with my lawyer before I can put together a concrete offer. But in all simplicity I can say that I have money to invest. If the magazine survives and starts making a profit again, then I’ll come out ahead. If not – well, I’ve had significantly bigger losses in my day.”

Blomkvist was about to open his mouth when Berger put her hand on his knee.

“Mikael and I have fought hard so that we could be completely independent.”

“Nonsense. No-one is completely independent. But I’m not out to take over the magazine, and I don’t give a damn about the contents. That bastard Stenbeck got all sorts of points for publishing Modern Times, so why can’t I back Millennium? Which happens to be an excellent magazine, by the way.”

“Does this have anything to do with Wennerström?” Blomkvist said.

Vanger smiled. “Mikael, I’m eighty years plus. There are things I regret not doing and people I regret not fighting more. But, apropos this topic –” He turned to Berger again. “This type of investment would have at least one condition.”

“Let’s hear it,” Berger said.

“Mikael Blomkvist must resume his position as publisher.”

“No,” Blomkvist snapped.

“But yes,” Vanger said, equally curt. “Wennerström will have a stroke if we send out a press release saying that the Vanger Corporation is backing Millennium, and at the same time you’re returning as publisher. That’s absolutely the clearest signal we could send – everyone will understand that it’s not a takeover and that the editorial policies won’t change. And that alone will give the advertisers who are thinking of pulling out reason to reconsider. Wennerström isn’t omnipotent. He has enemies too, and there are companies new to you that will consider taking space.”

“What the hell was that all about?” Blomkvist said as soon as Berger pulled the front door shut.

“I think it’s what you call advance probes for a business deal,” she said. “You didn’t tell me that Henrik Vanger is such a sweetie.”

Blomkvist planted himself in front of her. “Ricky, you knew exactly what this conversation was going to be about.”

“Hey, toy boy. It’s only 3:00, and I want to be properly entertained before dinner.”

Blomkvist was enraged. But he had never managed to be enraged at Erika Berger for very long.

She wore a black dress, a waist-length jacket, and pumps, which she just happened to have brought along in her little suitcase. She insisted that Blomkvist wear a jacket and tie. He put on his black trousers, a grey shirt, dark tie, and grey sports coat. When they knocked punctually on the door of Vanger’s home, it turned out that Dirch Frode and Martin Vanger were also among the guests. Everyone was wearing a jacket and tie except for Vanger.

“The advantage of being over eighty is that no-one can criticise what you wear,” he declared. He wore a bow tie and a brown cardigan.

Berger was in high spirits throughout the dinner.

It was not until they moved to the drawing room with the fireplace and cognac was poured that the discussion took on a serious tone. They talked for almost two hours before they had the outline for a deal on the table.

Frode would set up a company to be wholly owned by Henrik Vanger; the board would consist of Henrik and Martin Vanger and Frode. Over a four-year period, this company would invest a sum of money that would cover the gap between income and expenses for Millennium. The money would come from Vanger’s personal assets. In return, Vanger would have a conspicuous position on the magazine’s board. The agreement would be valid for four years, but it could be terminated by Millennium after two years. But this type of premature termination would be costly, since Vanger could only be bought out by repayment of the sum he had invested.

In the event of Vanger’s death, Martin Vanger would replace him on the Millennium board for the remainder of the period during which the agreement was valid. If Martin wished to continue his involvement beyond this period, he could make that decision himself when the time came. He seemed amused by the prospect of getting even with Wennerström, and Blomkvist wondered again what the origin was of the animosity between those two.

Martin refilled their glasses. Vanger made a point of leaning towards Blomkvist, and in a low voice told him that this new arrangement had no effect whatsoever on the agreement that existed between them. Blomkvist could resume his duties as publisher full-time at the end of the year.

It was also decided that the reorganisation, in order to have the greatest impact in the media, should be presented on the same day that Blomkvist began his prison sentence in mid-March. Combining a strongly negative event with a reorganisation was, in PR terms, such a clumsy error that it could not but astonish Blomkvist’s detractors and garner optimum attention for Henrik Vanger’s new role. But everyone also saw the logic in it – it was a way of indicating that the yellow plague flag fluttering over Millennium’s editorial offices was about to be hauled down; the magazine had backers who were willing to be ruthless. The Vanger Corporation might be in a crisis, but it was still a prominent industrial firm which could go on the offence if the need arose.

The whole conversation was a discussion between Berger, on one side, and Henrik and Martin Vanger on the other. No-one asked Blomkvist what he thought.

Late that night Blomkvist lay with his head resting on Erika’s breasts, looking into her eyes.

“How long have you and Henrik Vanger been discussing this arrangement?”

“About a week,” she said, smiling.

“Is Christer in agreement?”

“Of course.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Why in the world should I discuss it with you? You resigned as publisher, you left the editorial staff and the board, and you went to live in the woods.”

“So I deserve to be treated like an idiot.”

“Oh yes,” she said. “Decidedly you do.”

“You really have been mad at me.”

“Mikael, I’ve never felt so furious, so abandoned, and so betrayed as when you left. I’ve never been this upset with you before.” She took a firm grip on his hair and then shoved him farther down in the bed.

By the time Berger left Hedeby on Sunday, Blomkvist was still so annoyed with Vanger that he did not want to risk running into either him or any other member of his clan. Instead, on Monday he took the bus into Hedestad and spent the afternoon walking in the town, visiting the library, and drinking coffee in a bakery. In the evening he went to the cinema to see The Lord of the Rings, which he had never before had time to see. He thought that orcs, unlike human beings, were simple and uncomplicated creatures.

He ended his outing at McDonald’s in Hedestad and caught the last bus to Hedeby. He made coffee, took out a binder, and sat at the kitchen table. He read until 4:00 in the morning.

There were a number of questions regarding the investigation that seemed increasingly odd the further Blomkvist went through the documents. They were not revolutionary discoveries that he made all on his own; they were problems that had preoccupied Inspector Morell for long periods, especially in his free time.

During the last year of her life, Harriet had changed. In some ways this change could be explained as the change that everyone goes through in one form or another during their teenage years. Harriet was growing up. Classmates, teachers, and several members of the family, however, all testified that she had turned in on herself and become uncommunicative.

The girl who, two years earlier, was a lively teenager had begun to distance herself from everyone around her. In school she still spent time with her friends, but now she behaved in an “impersonal” manner, as one of her friends described it. This word was unusual enough for Morell to have made a note of it and then ask more questions. The explanation he got was that Harriet had stopped talking about herself, stopped gossiping, and stopped confiding in her friends.

Harriet Vanger had been a Christian, in a child’s sense of the word – attending Sunday school, saying evening prayers, and becoming confirmed. In her last year she seemed to have become yet more religious. She read the Bible and went regularly to church. But she had not turned to Hedeby Island’s pastor, Otto Falk, who was a friend of the Vanger family. Instead, during the spring she had sought out a Pentecostal congregation in Hedestad. Yet her involvement in the Pentecostal church did not last long. After only two months she left the congregation and instead began reading books about the Catholic faith.

The religious infatuation of a teenager? Perhaps, but no-one else in the Vanger family had ever been noticeably religious, and it was difficult to discern what impulses may have guided her. One explanation for her interest in God could, of course, have been that her father had drowned the previous year. Morell came to the conclusion that something had happened in Harriet’s life that was troubling her or affecting her. Morell, like Vanger, had devoted a great deal of time to talking to Harriet’s friends, trying to find someone in whom she might have confided.

Some measure of hope was pinned on Anita Vanger, two years older than Harriet and the daughter of Harald. She had spent the summer of 1966 on Hedeby Island and they were thought to be close friends. But Anita had no solid information to offer. They had hung out together that summer, swimming, taking walks, talking about movies, pop bands, and books. Harriet had sometimes gone with Anita when she took driving lessons. Once they had got happily drunk on a bottle of wine they stole from the house. For several weeks the two of them had also stayed at Gottfried’s cabin on the very tip of the island.

The questions about Harriet’s private thoughts and feelings remained unanswered. But Blomkvist did make a note of a discrepancy in the report: the information about her uncommunicative frame of mind came chiefly from her classmates, and to a certain extent from the family. Anita Vanger had not thought of her as being introverted at all. He made a note to discuss this matter with Vanger at some point.

A more concrete question, to which Morell had devoted much more attention, was a surprising page in Harriet’s date book, a beautiful bound book she had been given as a Christmas present the year before she disappeared. The first half of the date book was a day-by-day calendar in which Harriet had listed meetings, the dates of exams at school, her homework, and so on. The date book also had a large section for a diary, but Harriet used the diary only sporadically. She began ambitiously enough in January with many brief entries about people she had met over the Christmas holidays and several about films she had seen. After that she wrote nothing personal until the end of the school year when she apparently – depending on how the entries were interpreted – became interested from a distance in some never-named boy.

The pages that listed telephone numbers were the ones that held the real mystery. Neatly, in alphabetical order, were the names and numbers of family members, classmates, certain teachers, several members of the Pentecostal congregation, and other easily identifiable individuals in her circle of acquaintances. On the very last page of the address book, which was blank and not really part of the alphabetical section, there were five names and telephone numbers. Three female names and two sets of initials:

Magda – 32016

Sara – 32109

R.J. – 30112

R.L. – 32027

Mari – 32018

The telephone numbers that began with 32 were Hedestad numbers in the sixties. The one beginning with 30 was a Norrbyn number, not far from Hedestad. The problem was that when Morell contacted every one of Harriet’s friends and acquaintances, no-one had any idea whose numbers they were.

The first number belonging to “Magda” initially seemed promising. It led to a haberdashery at Parkgatan 12. The telephone was in the name of one Margot Lundmark, whose mother’s name was actually Magda; she sometimes helped out in the store. But Magda was sixty-nine years old and had no idea who Harriet Vanger was. Nor was there any evidence that Harriet had ever visited the shop or bought anything there. She wasn’t interested in sewing.

The second number for “Sara” belonged to a family by the name of Toresson, who lived in Väststan, on the other side of the tracks. The family included Anders and Monica and their children, Jonas and Peter, who at the time were pre-school age. There was no Sara in the family, nor did they know of Harriet Vanger, other than that she had been reported in the media as missing. The only vague connection between Harriet and the Toresson family was that Anders, who was a roofer, had several weeks earlier put a tiled roof on the school which Harriet attended. So theoretically there was a chance that they had met, although it might be considered extremely unlikely.

The remaining three numbers led to similar dead ends. The number 32027 for “R.L.” had actually belonged to one Rosmarie Larsson. Unfortunately, she had died several years earlier.

Inspector Morell concentrated a great deal of his attention during the winter of 1966-67 on trying to explain why Harriet had written down these names and numbers.

One possibility was that the telephone numbers were written in some personal code – so Morell tried to guess how a teenage girl would think. Since the thirty-two series obviously pointed to Hedestad, he set about rearranging the remaining three digits. Neither 32601 or 32160 led to a Magda. As Morell continued his numerology, he realised that if he played around with enough of the numbers, sooner or later he would find some link to Harriet. For example, if he added one to each of the three remaining digits in 32016, he got 32127 – which was the number to Frode’s office in Hedestad. But one link like that meant nothing. Besides, he never discovered a code that made sense of all five of the numbers.

Morell broadened his inquiry. Could the digits mean, for example, car number plates, which in the sixties contained the two-letter county registration code and five digits? Another dead end.

The inspector then concentrated on the names. He obtained a list of everyone in Hedestad named Mari, Magda, or Sara or who had the initials R.L. or R.J. He had a list of 307 people. Among these, 29 actually had some connection to Harriet. For instance, a boy from her class was named Roland Jacobsson – R.J. They scarcely knew each other and had had no contact since Harriet started preparatory school. And there was no link to the telephone number.

The mystery of the numbers in the date book remained unsolved.

Her fourth encounter with Advokat Bjurman was not one of their scheduled meetings. She was forced to make contact with him.

In the second week of February Salander’s laptop fell victim to an accident that was so uncalled for that she felt an urgent desire to kill someone. She had ridden her bike to a meeting at Milton Security and parked it behind a pillar in the garage. As she set her rucksack on the ground to put on the bike lock, a dark red Saab began reversing out. She had her back turned but heard the cracking sound from her rucksack. The driver didn’t notice a thing and, unwitting, drove off up the exit ramp.

The rucksack contained her white Apple iBook 600 with a 25-gig hard drive and 420 megs of RAM, manufactured in January 2002 and equipped with a 14-inch screen. At the time she bought it, it was Apple’s state-of-the-art laptop. Salander’s computers were upgraded with the very latest and sometimes most expensive configurations – computer equipment was the only extravagant entry on her list of expenses.

When she opened the rucksack, she could see that the lid of her computer was cracked. She plugged in the power adapter and tried to boot up the computer; not even a death rattle. She took it over to Timmy’s MacJesus Shop on Brännkyrkagatan, hoping that at least something on the hard drive could be saved. After fiddling with it for a short time, Timmy shook his head.

“Sorry. No hope,” he said. “You’ll have to arrange a nice funeral.”

The loss of her computer was depressing but not disastrous. Salander had had an excellent relationship with it during the year she had owned it. She had backed up all her documents, and she had an older desktop Mac G3 at home, as well as a five-year-old Toshiba PC laptop that she could use. But she needed a fast, modern machine.

Unsurprisingly she set her sights on the best available alternative: the new Apple PowerBook G4/1.0 GHz in an aluminium case with a PowerPC 7451 processor with an AltiVec Velocity Engine, 960 MB RAM and a 60 GB hard drive. It had BlueTooth and built-in CD and DVD burners.

Best of all, it had the first 17-inch screen in the laptop world with NVIDIA graphics and a resolution of 1440 x 900 pixels, which shook the PC advocates and outranked everything else on the market.

In terms of hardware, it was the Rolls-Royce of portable computers, but what really triggered Salander’s need to have it was the simple feature that the keyboard was equipped with backlighting, so that she could see the letters even if it was pitch dark. So simple. Why had no-one thought of that before?

It was love at first sight.

It cost 38,000 kronor, plus tax.

That was the problem.

Come what may, she put in her order at MacJesus. She bought all her computer accessories there, so they gave her a reasonable discount. She tallied up her expenses. The insurance on her ruined computer would cover a good part of the price, but with the warranty and the higher price of her new acquisition, she was still 18,000 kronor short. She had 10,000 kronor hidden in a coffee tin at home but that was all. She sent evil thoughts to Herr Bjurman, but then she bit the bullet and called her guardian to explain that she needed money for an unexpected expense. Bjurman’s secretary said that he had no time to see her that day. Salander replied that it would take the man twenty seconds to write out a cheque for 10,000 kronor. She was told to be at his office at 7:30 that evening.

Blomkvist might have no experience of evaluating criminal investigations, but he reckoned that Inspector Morell had been exceptionally conscientious. When Blomkvist had finished with the police investigation, Morell still kept turning up as a player in Vanger’s own notes. They had become friends, and Blomkvist wondered whether Morell had been as obsessed as the captain of industry became.

It was unlikely, in his view, that Morell had missed anything. The solution to the mystery was not going to be found in the police records. Every imaginable question had been asked, and all leads followed up, even some that seemed absurdly far-fetched. He had not read every word of the report, but the further into the investigation he got, the more obscure the subsequent leads and tips became. He was not going to find anything that his professional predecessor and his experienced team had missed, and he was undecided what approach he should adopt to the problem. Eventually it came to him that the only reasonably practical route for him to take was to try to find out the psychological motives of the individuals involved.

The first question had to do with Harriet herself. Who was she?

From his kitchen window Blomkvist had noticed a light go on upstairs in Cecilia Vanger’s house at a little after 5:00 in the afternoon. He knocked on her door at 7:30, just as the news broadcast was starting on TV. She opened the door dressed in her bathrobe, her hair wet under a yellow towel. Blomkvist apologised at once for disturbing her and made to retreat, but she waved him into the living room. She turned on the coffeemaker and vanished upstairs for a few minutes. When she came back down, she had put on jeans and a check flannel shirt.

“I was starting to think you were never going to call.”

“I should have rung first, but I saw your light was on and came over on impulse.”

“I’ve seen the lights on all night at your place. And you’re often out walking after midnight. You’re a night owl?”

Blomkvist shrugged. “It’s turned out that way.” He looked at several textbooks stacked on the edge of the kitchen table. “Do you still teach?”

“No, as headmistress I don’t have time. But I used to teach history, religion, and social studies. And I have a few years left.”

“Left?”

She smiled. “I’m fifty-six. I’ll be retiring soon.”

“You don’t look a day over fifty, more like in your forties.”

“Very flattering. How old are you?”

“Well, over forty,” Blomkvist said with a smile.

“And you were just twenty the other day. How fast it all goes. Life, that is.”

Cecilia Vanger served the coffee and asked if he was hungry. He said that he had already eaten, which was partly true. He did not bother with cooking and ate only sandwiches. But he was not hungry.

“Then why did you come over? Is it time to ask me those questions?”

“To be honest… I didn’t come over to ask questions. I think I just wanted to say hello.”

She smiled. “You’re sentenced to prison, you move to Hedeby, clamber through all the material of Henrik’s favourite hobby, you don’t sleep at night and take long nighttime walks when it’s freezing cold… Have I left anything out?”

“My life is going to the dogs.”

“Who was that woman visiting you over the weekend?”

“Erika… She’s the editor in chief of Millennium.”

“Your girlfriend?”

“Not exactly. She’s married. I’m more a friend and occasional lover.”

Cecilia Vanger hooted with laughter.

“What’s so funny?”

“The way you said that. Occasional lover. I like the expression.”

Blomkvist took a liking to Cecilia Vanger.

“I could use an occasional lover myself,” she said.

She kicked off her slippers and propped one foot on his knee. Blomkvist automatically put his hand on her foot and stroked the ankle. He hesitated for a second – he could sense he was getting into unexpected waters. But tentatively he started massaging the sole of her foot with his thumb.

“I’m married too,” she said.

“I know. No-one gets divorced in the Vanger clan.”

“I haven’t seen my husband in getting on for twenty years.”

“What happened?”

“That’s none of your business. I haven’t had sex in… hmmm, it must be three years now.”

“That surprises me.”

“Why? It’s a matter of supply and demand. I have no interest in a boyfriend or a married man or someone living with me. I do best on my own. Who should I have sex with? One of the teachers at school? I don’t think so. One of the students? A delicious story for the gossiping old ladies. And they keep a close watch on people called Vanger. And here on Hedeby Island there are only relatives and people already married.”

She leaned forward and kissed him on the neck.

“Do I shock you?”

“No. But I don’t know whether this is a good idea. I work for your uncle.”

“And I’m the last one who’s going to tell. But to be honest, Henrik probably wouldn’t have anything against it.”

She sat astride him and kissed him on the mouth. Her hair was still wet and fragrant with shampoo. He fumbled with the buttons on her flannel shirt and pulled it down around her shoulders. She had no bra. She pressed against him when he kissed her breasts.

Bjurman came round the desk to show her the statement of her bank account – which she knew down to the last öre, although it was no longer at her disposal. He stood behind her. Suddenly he was massaging the back of her neck, and he let one hand slide from her left shoulder across her breasts. He put his hand over her right breast and left it there. When she did not seem to object, he squeezed her breast. Salander did not move. She could feel his breath on her neck as she studied the letter opener on his desk; she could reach it with her free hand.

But she did nothing. If there was one lesson Holger Palmgren had taught her over the years, it was that impulsive actions led to trouble, and trouble could have unpleasant consequences. She never did anything without first weighing the consequences.

The initial sexual assault – which in legal terms would be defined as sexual molestation and the exploitation of an individual in a position of dependence, and could in theory get Bjurman up to two years in prison – lasted only a few seconds. But it was enough to irrevocably cross a boundary. For Salander it was a display of strength by an enemy force – an indication that aside from their carefully defined legal relationship, she was at the mercy of his discretion and defenceless. When their eyes met a few seconds later, his lips were slightly parted and she could read the lust on his face. Salander’s own face betrayed no emotions at all.

Bjurman moved back to his side of the desk and sat on his comfortable leather chair.

“I can’t hand out money to you whenever you like,” he said. “Why do you need such an expensive computer? There are plenty of cheaper models that you can use for playing computer games.”

“I want to have control of my own money like before.”

Bjurman gave her a pitying look.

“We’ll have to see how things go. First you need to learn to be more sociable and get along with people.”

Bjurman’s smile might have been more subdued if he could have read her thoughts behind the expressionless eyes.

“I think you and I are going to be good friends,” he said. “We have to be able to trust each other.”

When she did not reply he said: “You’re a grown woman now, Lisbeth.”

She nodded.

“Come here,” he said and held out his hand.

Salander fixed her gaze on the letter opener for several seconds before she stood up and went over to him. Consequences. He took her hand and pressed it to his crotch. She could feel his genitals through the dark gabardine trousers.

“If you’re nice to me, I’ll be nice to you.”

He put his other hand around her neck and pulled her down to her knees with her face in front of his crotch.

“You’ve done this before, haven’t you?” he said as he lowered his zip. He smelled as if he had just washed himself with soap and water.

Salander turned her face away and tried to get up, but he held her in a tight grip. In terms of physical strength, she was no match for him; she weighed 90 pounds to his 210. He held her head with both hands and turned her face so their eyes met.

“If you’re nice to me, I’ll be nice to you,” he repeated. “If you make trouble, I can put you away in an institution for the rest of your life. Would you like that?”

She said nothing.

“Would you like that?” he said again.

She shook her head.

He waited until she lowered her eyes, in what he regarded as submission. Then he pulled her closer. Salander opened her lips and took him in her mouth. He kept his grip on her neck and pulled her fiercely towards him. She felt like gagging the whole ten minutes he took to bump and grind; when finally he came, he was holding her so tight she could hardly breathe.

He showed her the bathroom in his office. Salander was shaking all over as she wiped her face and tried to rub off the spots on her sweater. She chewed some of his toothpaste to get rid of the taste. When she went back to his office, he was sitting impassively behind his desk, studying some papers.

“Sit down, Lisbeth,” he told her without looking up. She sat down. Finally he looked at her and smiled.

“You’re grown-up now, aren’t you, Lisbeth?”

She nodded.

“Then you also need to be able to play grown-up games,” he said. He used a tone of voice as if he were speaking to a child. She did not reply. A small frown appeared on his brow.

“I don’t think it would be a good idea for you to tell anyone about our games. Think about it – who would believe you? There are documents stating that you’re non compos mentis. It would be your word against mine. Whose word do you think would carry more weight?”

He sighed when still she did not speak. He was annoyed at the way she just sat there in silence, looking at him – but he controlled himself.

“We’re going to be good friends, you and I,” he said. “I think you were smart to come and see me today. You can always come to me.”

“I need 10,000 kronor for my computer,” she said, precisely, as if she were continuing the conversation they were having before the interruption.

Bjurman raised his eyebrows. Hard-nosed bitch. She really is fucking retarded. He handed her the cheque he had written when she was in the bathroom. This is better than a whore. She gets paid with her own money. He gave her an arrogant smile. Salander took the cheque and left.

CHAPTER 12 Wednesday, February 19

If Salander had been an ordinary citizen, she would most likely have called the police and reported the rape as soon as she left Advokat Bjurman’s office. The bruises on her neck, as well as the DNA signature of his semen staining her body and clothing, would have nailed him. Even if the lawyer had claimed that she wanted to do it or she seduced me or any other excuse that rapists routinely used, he would have been guilty of so many breaches of the guardianship regulations that he would instantly have been stripped of his control over her. A report would have presumably resulted in Salander being given a proper lawyer, someone well-versed in assaults on women, which in turn might have led to a discussion of the very heart of the problem – meaning the reason she had been declared legally incompetent.

Since 1989, the term “legally incompetent” has no longer been applied to adults.

There are two levels of social welfare protection – trusteeship and guardianship.

A trustee steps in to offer voluntary help for individuals who, for various reasons, have problems managing their daily lives, paying their bills, or taking proper care of their hygiene. The person who is appointed as a trustee is often a relative or close friend. If there is no-one close to the person in question, the welfare authorities can appoint a trustee. Trusteeship is a mild form of guardianship, in which the client – the person declared incompetent – still has control over his or her assets and decisions are made in consultation with the trustee.

Guardianship is a stricter form of control, in which the client is relieved of the authority to handle his or her own money or to make decisions regarding various matters. The exact wording states that the guardian shall take over all of the client’s legal powers. In Sweden approximately 4,000 people are under guardianship. The most common reason for a guardianship is mental illness or mental illness in conjunction with heavy abuse of alcohol or drugs. A smaller group includes those suffering from dementia. Many of the individuals under guardianship are relatively young – thirty-five or less. One of them was Lisbeth Salander.

Taking away a person’s control of her own life – meaning her bank account – is one of the greatest infringements a democracy can impose, especially when it applies to young people. It is an infringement even if the intent may be perceived as benign and socially valid. Questions of guardianship are therefore potentially sensitive political issues, and are protected by rigorous regulations and controlled by the Guardianship Agency. This agency comes under the county administrative board and is controlled, in turn, by the Parliamentary Ombudsman.

For the most part the Guardianship Agency carries out its activities under difficult conditions. But considering the sensitive issues handled by the authorities, remarkably few complaints or scandals are ever reported in the media.

Occasionally there are reports that charges have been brought against some trustee or guardian who has misappropriated funds or sold his client’s co-op apartment and stuffed the proceeds into his own pockets. That those cases are relatively rare may be the result of two things: the authorities are carrying out their jobs in a satisfactory manner, or the clients have no opportunity to complain and in a credible way make themselves heard by the media or by the authorities.

The Guardianship Agency is bound to conduct an annual review to see whether any cause exists for revoking a guardianship. Since Salander persisted in her refusal to submit to psychiatric examination – she would not even exchange a polite “good morning” with her teachers – the authorities had never found any reason to alter their decision. Consequently, a situation of status quo had resulted, and so year after year she was retained under guardianship.

The wording of the law states, however, that the conditions of a guardianship “shall be adapted to each individual case.” Palmgren had interpreted this to mean that Salander could take charge of her own money and her own life. He had meticulously fulfilled the requirements of the authorities and submitted a monthly report as well as an annual review. In all other respects he had treated Salander like any other normal being, and he had not interfered with her choice of lifestyle or friends. He did not think it was either his business or that of society to decide whether the young lady should have a ring in her nose or a tattoo on her neck. This rather stubborn attitude vis-à-vis the district court was one of the reasons why they had got along so well.

As long as Palmgren was her guardian, Salander had not paid much attention to her legal status.

Salander was not like any normal person. She had a rudimentary knowledge of the law – it was a subject she had never had occasion to explore – and her faith in the police was generally exiguous. For her the police were a hostile force who over the years had put her under arrest or humiliated her. The last dealing she had had with the police was in May of the previous year when she was walking past Götgatan on her way to Milton Security. She suddenly found herself facing a visor-clad riot police officer. Without the slightest provocation on her part, he had struck her on the shoulders with his baton. Her spontaneous reaction was to launch a fierce counterattack, using a Coca-Cola bottle that she had in her hand. The officer turned on his heel and ran off before she could injure him. Only later did she find out that “Reclaim the Streets” was holding a demonstration farther down the road.

Visiting the offices of those visor-clad brutes to file a report against Nils Bjurman for sexual assault did not even cross her mind. And besides – what was she supposed to report? Bjurman had touched her breasts. Any officer would take one look at her and conclude that with her miniature boobs, that was highly unlikely. And if it had actually happened, she should be proud that someone had even bothered. And the part about sucking his dick – it was, as he had warned her, her word against his, and generally in her experience the words of other people weighed more heavily than hers. The police were not an option.

She left Bjurman’s office and went home, took a shower, ate two sandwiches with cheese and pickles, and then sat on the worn-out sofa in the living room to think.

An ordinary person might have felt that her lack of reaction had shifted the blame to her – it might have been another sign that she was so abnormal that even rape could evoke no adequate emotional response.

Her circle of acquaintances was not large, nor did it contain any members of the sheltered middle class from the suburbs. By the time she was eighteen, Salander did not know a single girl who at some point had not been forced to perform some sort of sexual act against her will. Most of these assaults involved slightly older boyfriends who, using a certain amount of force, made sure that they had their way. As far as Salander knew, these incidents had led to crying and angry outbursts, but never to a police report.

In her world, this was the natural order of things. As a girl she was legal prey, especially if she was dressed in a worn black leather jacket and had pierced eyebrows, tattoos, and zero social status.

There was no point whimpering about it.

On the other hand, there was no question of Advokat Bjurman going unpunished. Salander never forgot an injustice, and by nature she was anything but forgiving.

But her legal status was difficult. For as long as she could remember, she was regarded as cunning and unjustifiably violent. The first reports in her casebook came from the files of the school nurse from elementary school. Salander had been sent home because she hit a classmate and shoved him against a coat peg and drew blood. She still remembered her victim with annoyance – an overweight boy by the name of David Gustavsson who used to tease her and throw things at her; he would grow up to be an arch bully. In those days she did not know what the word “harassment” meant, but when she came to school the next day, the boy had threatened revenge. So she had decked him with a right jab fortified with a golf ball – which led to more bloodshed and a new entry in her casebook.

The rules for social interaction in school had always baffled her. She minded her own business and did not interfere with what anyone around her did. Yet there was always someone who absolutely would not leave her in peace.

In middle school she had several times been sent home after getting into violent fights with classmates. Much stronger boys in her class soon learned that it could be quite unpleasant to fight with that skinny girl. Unlike the other girls in the class, she never backed down, and she would not for a second hesitate to use her fists or any weapon at hand to protect herself. She went around with the attitude that she would rather be beaten to death than take any shit.

And she always got revenge.

Salander once found herself in a fight with a much bigger and stronger boy. She was no match for him physically. At first he amused himself shoving her to the ground several times, then he slapped her when she tried to fight back. But nothing did any good; no matter how much stronger he was, the stupid girl kept attacking him, and after a while even his classmates began to realise that things had gone too far. She was so obviously defenceless it was painful to watch. Finally the boy punched her in the face; it split open her lip and made her see stars. They left her on the ground behind the gym. She stayed at home for two days. On the morning of the third day she waited for her tormentor with a baseball bat, and she whacked him over the ear with it. For that prank she was sent to see the head teacher, who decided to report her to the police for assault, which resulted in a special welfare investigation.

Her classmates thought she was crazy and treated her accordingly. She also aroused very little sympathy among the teachers. She had never been particularly talkative, and she became known as the pupil who never raised her hand and often did not answer when a teacher asked her a direct question. No-one was sure whether this was because she did not know the answer or if there was some other reason, which was reflected in her grades. No doubt that she had problems, but no-one wanted to take responsibility for the difficult girl, even though she was frequently discussed at various teachers’ meetings. That was why she ended up in the situation where the teachers ignored her and allowed her to sit in sullen silence.

She left middle school and moved to another, without having a single friend to say goodbye to. An unloved girl with odd behaviour.

Then, as she was on the threshold of her teenage years, All The Evil happened, which she did not want to think about. The last outburst set the pattern and prompted a review of the casebook entries from elementary school. After that she was considered to be legally… well, crazy. A freak. Salander had never needed any documents to know that she was different. But it was not something that bothered her for as long as her guardian was Holger Palmgren; if the need arose, she could wrap him around her little finger.

With the appearance of Nils Bjurman, the declaration of incompetence threatened to become a troublesome burden in her life. No matter who she turned to, pitfalls would open up; and what would happen if she lost the battle? Would she be institutionalised? Locked up? There was really no option.

Later that night, when Cecilia Vanger and Blomkvist were lying peacefully with their legs intertwined and Cecilia’s breasts resting against his side, she looked up at him.

“Thank you. It’s been a long time. And you’re not bad.”

He smiled. That sort of flattery was always childishly satisfying.

“It was unexpected, but I had fun.”

“I’d be happy to do it again,” Cecilia said. “If you feel like it.”

He looked at her.

“You don’t mean that you’d like to have a lover, do you?”

“An occasional lover,” Cecilia said. “But I’d like you to go home before you fall asleep. I don’t want to wake up tomorrow morning and find you here before I manage to do my exercises and fix my face. And it would be good if you didn’t tell the whole village what we’ve been up to.”

“Wouldn’t think of it,” Blomkvist said.

“Most of all I don’t want Isabella to know. She’s such a bitch.”

“And your closest neighbour… I’ve met her.”

“Yes, but luckily she can’t see my front door from her house. Mikael, please be discreet.”

“I’ll be discreet.”

“Thank you. Do you drink?”

“Sometimes.”

“I’ve got a craving for something fruity with gin in it. Want some?”

“Sure.”

She wrapped a sheet around herself and went downstairs. Blomkvist was standing naked, looking at her bookshelves when she returned with a carafe of iced water and two glasses of gin and lime. They drank a toast.

“Why did you come over here?” she asked.

“No special reason. I just…”

“You were sitting at home, reading through Henrik’s investigation. And then you came over here. A person doesn’t need to be super intelligent to know what you’re brooding about.”

“Have you read the investigation?”

“Parts of it. I’ve lived my entire adult life with it. You can’t spend time with Henrik without being affected by the mystery of Harriet.”

“It’s actually a fascinating case. What I believe is known in the trade as a locked-room mystery, on an island. And nothing in the investigation seems to follow normal logic. Every question remains unanswered, every clue leads to a dead end.”

“It’s the kind of thing people can get obsessed about.”

“You were on the island that day.”

“Yes. I was here, and I witnessed the whole commotion. I was living in Stockholm at the time, studying. I wish I had stayed at home that weekend.”

“What was she really like? People seem to have completely different views of her.”

“Is this off the record or…?”

“It’s off the record.”

“I haven’t the least idea what was going on inside Harriet’s head. You’re thinking of her last year, of course. One day she was a religious crackpot. The next day she put on make-up like a whore and went to school wearing the tightest sweater she possessed. Obviously she was seriously unhappy. But, as I said, I wasn’t here and just picked up the gossip.”

“What triggered the problems?”

“Gottfried and Isabella, obviously. Their marriage was totally haywire. They either partied or they fought. Nothing physical – Gottfried wasn’t the type to hit anyone, and he was almost afraid of Isabella. She had a horrendous temper. Sometime in the early sixties he moved more or less permanently to his cabin, where Isabella never set foot. There were periods when he would turn up in the village, looking like a vagrant. And then he’d sober up and dress neatly again and try to tend to his job.”

“Wasn’t there anyone who wanted to help Harriet?”

“Henrik, of course. In the end she moved into his house. But don’t forget that he was preoccupied playing the role of the big industrialist. He was usually off travelling somewhere and didn’t have a lot of time to spend with Harriet and Martin. I missed a lot of this because I was in Uppsala and then in Stockholm – and let me tell you, I didn’t have an easy childhood myself with Harald as my father. In hindsight I’ve realised that the problem was that Harriet never confided in anyone. She tried hard to keep up appearances and pretend that they were one big happy family.”

“Denial.”

“Yes. But she changed when her father drowned. She could no longer pretend that everything was OK. Up until then she was… I don’t know how to explain it: extremely gifted and precocious, but on the whole a rather ordinary teenager. During the last year she was still brilliant, getting top marks in every exam and so on, but it seemed as if she didn’t have any soul.”

“How did her father drown?”

“In the most prosaic way possible. He fell out of a rowing boat right below his cabin. He had his trousers open and an extremely high alcohol content in his blood, so you can just imagine how it happened. Martin was the one who found him.”

“I didn’t know that.”

“It’s funny. Martin has turned out to be a really fine person. If you had asked me thirty-five years ago, I would have said that he was the one in the family who needed psychiatric care.”

“Why so?”

“Harriet wasn’t the only one who suffered ill effects from the situation. For many years Martin was so quiet and introverted that he was effectively antisocial. Both children had a rough time of it. I mean, we all did. I had my own problems with my father – I assume you realise that he’s stark raving mad. My sister, Anita, had the same problem, as did Alexander, my cousin. It was tough being young in the Vanger family.”

“What happened to your sister?”

“She lives in London. She went there in the seventies to work in a Swedish travel agency, and she stayed. She married someone, never even introduced him to the family, and anon they separated. Today she’s a senior manager of British Airways. She and I get along fine, but we are not much in contact and only see each other every other year or so. She never comes to Hedestad.”

“Why not?”

“An insane father. Isn’t that explanation enough?”

“But you stayed.”

“I did. Along with Birger, my brother.”

“The politician.”

“Are you making fun of me? Birger is older than Anita and me. We’ve never been very close. In his own eyes he’s a fantastically important politician with a future in Parliament and maybe ministerial rank, if the conservatives should win. In point of fact he’s a moderately talented local councillor in a remote corner of Sweden, which will probably be both the high point and the whole extent of his career.”

“One thing that tickles me about the Vanger family is that you all have such low opinions of each other.”

“That’s not really true. I’m very fond of Martin and Henrik. And I always got on well with my sister, for all that we seldom see each other. I detest Isabella and can’t abide Alexander. And I never speak to my father. So that’s about fifty-fifty in the family. Birger is… well, more of a pompous fathead than a bad person. But I see what you mean. Look at it this way: if you’re a member of the Vanger family, you learn early on to speak your mind. We do say what we think.”

“Oh yes, I’ve noticed that you all get straight to the point.” Blomkvist stretched out his hand to touch her breast. “I wasn’t here fifteen minutes before you attacked me.”

“To be honest, I’ve been wondering how you would be in bed ever since I first saw you. And it felt right to try it out.”

For the first time in her life Salander felt a strong need to ask someone for advice. The problem was that asking for advice meant that she would have to confide in someone, which in turn would mean revealing her secrets. Who should she tell? She was simply not very good at establishing contact with other people.

After going through her address book in her mind, she had, strictly speaking, ten people who might be considered her circle of acquaintances.

She could talk to Plague, who was more or less a steady presence in her life. But he was definitely not a friend, and he was the last person on earth who would be able to help solve her problem. Not an option.

Salander’s sex life wasn’t quite as modest as she had led Advokat Bjurman to believe. On the other hand, sex had always (or at least most often) occurred on her conditions and at her initiative. She had had over fifty partners since the age of fifteen. That translated into approximately five partners per year, which was OK for a single girl who had come to regard sex as an enjoyable pastime. But she had had most of these casual partners during a two-year period. Those were the tumultuous years in her late teens when she should have come of age.

There was a time when Salander had stood at a crossroads and did not really have control over her own life – when her future could have taken the form of another series of casebook entries about drugs, alcohol, and custody in various institutions. After she turned twenty and started working at Milton Security, she had calmed down appreciably and – she thought – had got a grip on her life.

She no longer felt the need to please anyone who bought her three beers in a pub, and she did not experience the slightest degree of self-fulfilment by going home with some drunk whose name she could not remember. During the past year she had had only one regular sex partner – hardly promiscuous, as her casebook entries during her late teens had designated her.

For her, sex had most often been with one of a loose group of friends; she was not really a member, but she was accepted because she knew Cilla Norén. She met Cilla in her late teens when, at Palmgren’s insistence, she was trying to get the school certificate she had failed to complete at Komvux. Cilla had plum-red hair streaked with black, black leather trousers, a ring in her nose, and as many rivets on her belt as Salander. They had glared suspiciously at each other during the first class.

For some reason Salander did not understand, they had started hanging out together. Salander was not the easiest person to be friends with, and especially not during those years, but Cilla ignored her silences and took her along to the bar. Through Cilla, she had become a member of “Evil Fingers,” which had started as a suburban band consisting of four teenage girls in Enskede who were into hard rock. Ten years later, they were a group of friends who met at Kvarnen on Tuesday nights to talk trash about boys and discuss feminism, the pentagram, music, and politics while they drank large quantities of beer. They also lived up to their name.

Salander found herself on the fringe of the group and rarely contributed to the talk, but she was accepted for who she was. She could come and go as she pleased and was allowed to sit in silence over her beer all evening. She was also invited to birthday parties and Christmas glögg celebrations, though she usually didn’t go.

During the five years she hung out with “Evil Fingers,” the girls began to change. Their hair colour became less extreme, and the clothing came more often from the H&M boutiques rather than from funky Myrorna. They studied or worked, and one of the girls became a mother. Salander felt as if she were the only one who had not changed a bit, which could also be interpreted as that she was simply marking time and going nowhere.

But they still had fun. If there was one place where she felt any sort of group solidarity, it was in the company of the “Evil Fingers” and, by extension, with the guys who were friends with the girls.

“Evil Fingers” would listen. They would also stand up for her. But they had no clue that Salander had a district court order declaring her non compos mentis. She didn’t want them to be eyeing her the wrong way, too. Not an option.

Apart from that, she did not have a single ex-classmate in her address book. She had no network or support group or political contacts of any kind. So who could she turn to and tell about her problems?

There might be one person. She deliberated for a long time about whether she should confide in Dragan Armansky. He had told her that if she needed help with anything, she should not hesitate to come to him. And she was sure that he meant it.

Armansky had groped her one time too, but it had been a friendly groping, no ill intentions, and not a demonstration of power. But to ask him for help went against the grain. He was her boss, and it would put her in his debt. Salander toyed with the idea of how her life would take shape if Armansky were her guardian instead of Bjurman. She smiled. The idea was not unpleasant, but Armansky might take the assignment so seriously that he would smother her with attention. That was… well, possibly an option.

Even though she was well aware of what a women’s crisis centre was for, it never occurred to her to turn to one herself. Crisis centres existed, in her eyes, for victims, and she had never regarded herself as a victim. Consequently, her only remaining option was to do what she had always done – take matters in her own hands and solve her problems on her own. That was definitely an option.

And it did not bode well for Herr Advokat Nils Bjurman.

CHAPTER 13 Thursday, February 20 – Friday, March 7

During the last week of February Salander acted as her own client, with Bjurman, N., born 1950, as a high-priority special project. She worked almost sixteen hours every day doing a more thorough personal investigation than she had ever done before. She made use of all the archives and public documents she could lay her hands on. She investigated his circle of relatives and friends. She looked at his finances and mapped out every detail of his upbringing and career.

The results were discouraging.

He was a lawyer, member of the Bar Association, and author of a respectably long-winded but exceptionally tedious dissertation on finance law. His reputation was spotless. Advokat Bjurman had never been censured. On only one occasion was he reported to the Bar Association – he was accused nearly ten years ago of being the middleman in an under-the-table property deal, but he had been able to prove his innocence. His finances were in good order; Bjurman was well-to-do, with at least 10 million kronor in assets. He paid more taxes than he owed, was a member of Greenpeace and Amnesty International, and he donated money to the Heart and Lung Association. He had rarely appeared in the mass media, although on several occasions he had signed his name to public appeals for political prisoners in the third world. He lived in a five-room apartment on Upplandsgatan near Odenplan, and he was the secretary of his co-op apartment association. He was divorced and had no children.

Salander focused on his ex-wife, whose name was Elena. She was born in Poland but had lived all her life in Sweden. She worked at a rehabilitation centre and was apparently happily remarried to one of Bjurman’s former colleagues. Nothing useful there. The Bjurman marriage had lasted fourteen years, and the divorce went through without disputes.

Advokat Bjurman regularly acted as a supervisor for youths who got into trouble with the law. He had been trustee for four youths before he became Salander’s guardian. All of these cases involved minors, and the assignments came to an end with a court decision when they came of age. One of these clients still consulted Bjurman in his role as advokat, so there did not seem to be any animosity there either. If Bjurman had been systematically exploiting his wards, there was no sign of it, and no matter how deeply Salander probed, she could find no trace of wrongdoing. All four had established lives for themselves with a boyfriend or girlfriend; they all had jobs, places to live, and Co-op debit cards.

She called each of the four clients, introducing herself as a social welfare secretary working on a study about how children hitherto under the care of a trustee fared later in life compared to other children. Yes, naturally, everyone will be anonymous. She had put together a questionnaire with ten questions, which she asked on the telephone. Several of the questions were designed to get the respondents to give their views on how well the trusteeship had functioned – if they had any opinions about their own trustee, Advokat Bjurman wasn’t it? No-one had anything bad to say about him.

When Salander completed her ferreting, she gathered up the documents in a bag from Ica and put it out with the twenty bags of old newspapers out the hall. Bjurman was apparently beyond reproach. There was nothing in his past that she could use. She knew beyond a doubt that he was a creep and a pig, but she could find nothing to prove it.

It was time to consider another option. After all the analyses were done, one possibility remained that started to look more and more attractive – or at least seemed to be a truly realistic alternative. The easiest thing would be for Bjurman simply to disappear from her life. A quick heart attack. End of problem. The catch was that not even disgusting fifty-three-year-old men had heart attacks at her beck and call.

But that sort of thing could be arranged.

Blomkvist carried on his affair with Headmistress Cecilia Vanger with the greatest discretion. She had three rules: she didn’t want anyone to know they were meeting; she wanted him to come over only when she called and was in the mood; and she didn’t want him to stay all night.

Her passion surprised and astonished him. When he ran into her at Susanne’s, she was friendly but cool and distant. When they met in her bedroom, she was wildly passionate.

Blomkvist did not want to pry into her personal life, but he had been hired to pry into the personal lives of everyone in the Vanger family. He felt torn and at the same time curious. One day he asked Vanger whom she had been married to and what had happened. He asked the question while they were discussing the background of Alexander and Birger.

“Cecilia? I don’t think she had anything to do with Harriet.”

“Tell me about her background.”

“She moved back here after graduating and started working as a teacher. She met a man by the name of Jerry Karlsson, who unfortunately worked for the Vanger Corporation. They married. I thought the marriage was a happy one – anyway in the beginning. But after a couple of years I began to see that things were not as they should be. He mistreated her. It was the usual story – he beat her and she loyally defended him. Finally he hit her one time too many. She was seriously hurt and ended up in the hospital. I offered my help. She moved out here to Hedeby Island and has refused to see her husband since. I made sure he was fired.”

“But they are still married?”

“It’s a question of how you define it. I don’t know why she hasn’t filed for divorce. But she has never wanted to remarry, so I suppose it hasn’t made any difference.”

“This Karlsson, did he have anything to do with…”

“… with Harriet? No, he wasn’t in Hedestad in 1966, and he wasn’t yet working for the firm.”

“OK.”

“Mikael, I’m fond of Cecilia. She can be tricky to deal with, but she’s one of the good people in my family.”

Salander devoted a week to planning Nils Bjurman’s demise. She considered – and rejected – various methods until she had narrowed it down to a few realistic scenarios from which to choose. No acting on impulse.

Only one condition had to be fulfilled. Bjurman had to die in such a way that she herself could never be linked to the crime. The fact that she would be included in any eventual police investigation she took for granted; sooner or later her name would show up when Bjurman’s responsibilities were examined. But she was only one person in a whole universe of present and former clients, she had met him only four times, and there would not be any indication that his death even had a connection with any of his clients. There were former girlfriends, relatives, casual acquaintances, colleagues, and others. There was also what was usually defined as “random violence,” when the perpetrator and victim did not know each other.

If her name came up, she would be a helpless, incompetent girl with documents showing her to be mentally deficient. So it would be an advantage if Bjurman’s death occurred in such a complicated manner that it would be highly unlikely that a mentally handicapped girl could be the perpetrator.

She rejected the option of using a gun. Acquiring a gun would be no great problem, but the police were awfully good at tracking down firearms.

She considered a knife, which could be purchased at any hardware store, but decided against that too. Even if she turned up without warning and drove the knife into his back, there was no guarantee that he would die instantly and without making a sound, or that he would die at all. Worse, it might provoke a struggle, which could attract attention, and blood could stain her clothes, be evidence against her.

She thought about using a bomb of some sort, but it would be much too complicated. Building the bomb itself would not be a problem – the Internet was full of manuals on how to make the deadliest devices. It would be difficult, on the other hand, to find a place to put the bomb so that innocent passersby would not be hurt. Besides, there was again no guarantee that he would actually die.

The telephone rang.

“Hi, Lisbeth. Dragan. I’ve got a job for you.”

“I don’t have time.”

“This is important.”

“I’m busy.”

She put down the receiver.

Finally she settled on poison. The choice surprised her, but on closer consideration it was perfect.

Salander spent several days combing the Internet. There were plenty to choose from. One of them was among the most deadly poisons known to science – hydrocyanic acid, commonly known as prussic acid.

Prussic acid was used as a component in certain chemical industries, including the manufacture of dyes. A few milligrams were enough to kill a person; one litre in a reservoir could wipe out a medium-sized city.

Obviously such a lethal substance was kept under strict control. But it could be produced in almost unlimited quantities in an ordinary kitchen. All that was needed was a modest amount of laboratory equipment, and that could be found in a chemistry set for children for a few hundred kronor, along with several ingredients that could be extracted from ordinary household products. The manual for the process was on the Internet.

Another option was nicotine. From a carton of cigarettes she could extract enough milligrams of the substance and heat it to make a viscous syrup. An even better substance, although slightly more complex to produce, was nicotine sulphate, which had the property that it could be absorbed through the skin. All she would have to do was put on rubber gloves, fill a water pistol, and spray Bjurman in the face. Within twenty seconds he should be unconscious, and within a few minutes he would be dead as a door-nail.

Salander had had no idea that so many household products could be transformed into deadly weapons. After studying the subject for several days, she was persuaded that there were no technical impediments to making short work of her guardian.

There were two problems: Bjurman’s death would not of itself give her back control of her own life, and there was no guarantee that Bjurman’s successor would be an improvement. Analysis of the consequences.

What she needed was a way to control her guardian and thus her own situation. She sat on the worn sofa in her living room for one whole evening running through the situation in her mind. By the end of the night, she had scrapped the idea of murder by poison and put together a new plan.

It was not an appealing option, and it required her to allow Bjurman to attack her again. But if she carried it off, she would have won.

At least, so she thought.

By the end of February Blomkvist fell into a daily routine that transformed his stay in Hedeby. He got up at 9:00 every morning, ate breakfast, and worked until noon. During this time he would cram new material into his head. Then he would take an hour-long walk, no matter what the weather was like. In the afternoon he would go on working, either at home or at Susanne’s Bridge Café, processing what he had read in the morning or writing sections of what would be Vanger’s auto-biography. Between 3:00 and 6:00 he was always free. He would shop for groceries, do his laundry, go into Hedestad. Around 7:00 he would go over to see Vanger to ask him questions that had arisen during the day. By 10:00 he was home, and he would read until 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning. He was working systematically through Vanger’s documents.

The work of shaping the autobiography was moving smoothly. He had written 120 pages of the family chronicle in rough draft. He had reached the 1920s. Beyond this point he would have to move more slowly and start weighing his words.

Through the library in Hedestad he had ordered books dealing with Nazism during that time, including Helene Lööw’s doctoral dissertation, The Swastika and the Wasa Sheaf, which dealt with the symbols adopted by the German and Swedish Nazis. He had drafted another forty pages about Vanger and his brothers, focusing on Vanger as the person holding the story together. He had a list of subjects he needed to research on the way the company operated during that time. And he had discovered that the Vanger family was also heavily involved in Ivar Kreuger’s empire – another side story he had to explore. He estimated that he had about 300 pages left to write. According to the schedule he had devised, he wanted to have a final draft for Henrik Vanger to look at by the first of September, so that he could spend the autumn revising the text.

For all his reading and listening, Blomkvist had made not an inch of progress in the Harriet Vanger case. No matter how much he brooded over the details in the files, he could find not a single piece of information that contradicted the investigative report.

One Saturday evening in late February he had a conversation with Vanger in which he reported on his lack of progress. The old man listened patiently as Blomkvist listed all the dead ends he had run into.

“No crime is perfect,” Vanger said. “I’m sure we must have missed something.”

“We still can’t say whether a crime was committed.”

“Keep at it,” Vanger said. “Finish the job.”

“It’s pointless.”

“Maybe so. But don’t give up.”

Blomkvist sighed.

“The telephone numbers,” he said at last.

“Yes.”

“They have to mean something.”

“I agree.”

“They were written down for some purpose.”

“Yes.”

“But we can’t interpret them.”

“No.”

“Or else we’re interpreting them wrong.”

“Precisely.”

“They’re not telephone numbers. They mean something.”

“Maybe so.”

Mikael sighed again and went home to continue reading.

Advokat Bjurman was relieved when Salander called again and explained that she needed more money. She had postponed their most recent scheduled meeting with the excuse that she had to work, and a vague sense of uneasiness gnawed at him. Was she going to turn into an unmanageable problem child? But since she had missed the meeting, she had no allowance, and sooner or later she would be bound to come and see him. He could not help but be concerned that she might have discussed what had happened with some outsider.

She was going to have to be kept in check. She had to understand who was in charge. So he told her that this time the meeting would be at his home near Odenplan, not at the office. Upon hearing this news, Salander was silent for a long time on the other end of the telephone before she finally agreed.

She had planned to meet him at his office, exactly like last time. Now she was forced to see him in unfamiliar territory. The meeting was set for Friday evening. She had been given the building code, and she rang his doorbell at 8:30, half an hour later than agreed. That was how much time she had needed in the darkness of the building’s stairwell to run through her plan one last time, consider alternatives, steel herself, and mobilise the courage she would need.

At 8:00 Blomkvist switched off his computer and put on his outdoor clothing. He left the lights on in his office. Outside the sky was bright with stars and the night was freezing. He walked briskly up the hill, past Vanger’s house, taking the road to Östergården. Beyond Vanger’s house he turned off to the left, following an uglier path along the shore. The lighted buoys flickered out on the water, and the lights from Hedestad gleamed prettily in the dark. He needed fresh air, but above all he wanted to avoid the spying eyes of Isabella Vanger. Not far from Martin Vanger’s house he rejoined the road and arrived at Cecilia Vanger’s door just after 8:30. They went straight to her bedroom.

They met once or twice a week. Cecilia had not only become his lover out here in his place of exile, she had also become the person he had begun to confide in. It was significantly more rewarding discussing Harriet Vanger with her than with her uncle.

The plan began to go wrong almost from the start.

Bjurman was wearing a bathrobe when he opened the door to his apartment. He was cross at her arriving late and motioned her brusquely inside. She was wearing black jeans, a black T-shirt, and the obligatory leather jacket. She wore black boots and a small rucksack with a strap across her chest.

“Haven’t you even learned to tell the time?” Bjurman said. Salander did not reply. She looked around. The apartment looked much as she had expected after studying the building plans in the archives of the City Zoning Office. The light-coloured furniture was birch and beech-wood.

“Come on,” Bjurman said in a friendlier tone. He put his arm around her shoulders and led her down a hall into the apartment’s interior. No small talk. He opened the door to the bedroom. There was no doubt as to what services Salander was expected to perform.

She took a quick look around. Bachelor furnishings. A double bed with a high bedstead of stainless steel. A low chest of drawers that also functioned as a bedside table. Bedside lamps with muted lighting. A wardrobe with a mirror along one side. A cane chair and a small desk in the corner next to the door. He took her by the hand and led her to the bed.

“Tell me what you need money for this time. More computer accessories?”

“Food,” she said.

“Of course. How stupid of me. You missed our last meeting.” He placed his hand under her chin and lifted her face so their eyes met. “How are you?”

She shrugged.

“Have you thought about what I said last time?”

“About what?”

“Lisbeth, don’t act any more stupid than you are. I want us to be good friends and to help each other out.”

She said nothing. Advokat Bjurman resisted an impulse to give her a slap – to put some life into her.

“Did you like our grown-up game from last time?”

“No.”

He raised his eyebrows.

“Lisbeth, don’t be foolish.”

“I need money to buy food.”

“But that’s what we talked about last time. If you’re nice to me, I’ll be nice to you. But if you’re just going to cause trouble…” His grip on her chin tightened and she twisted away.

“I want my money. What do you want me to do?”

“You know what I want.” He grabbed her shoulder and pulled her towards the bed.

“Wait,” Salander said hastily. She gave him a resigned look and then nodded curtly. She took off her rucksack and leather jacket with the rivets and looked around. She put her jacket on the chair, set her rucksack on the round table, and took several hesitant steps to the bed. Then she stopped, as if she had cold feet. Bjurman came closer.

“Wait,” she said once more, in a tone as if to say that she was trying to talk sense into him. “I don’t want to have to suck your dick every time I need money.”

The expression on Bjurman’s face suddenly changed. He slapped her hard. Salander opened her eyes wide, but before she could react, he grabbed her by the shoulder and threw her on to the bed. The violence caught her by surprise. When she tried to turn over, he pressed her down on the bed and straddled her.

Like the time before, she was no match for him in terms of physical strength. Her only chance of fighting back was if she could hurt him by scratching his eyes or using some sort of weapon. But her planned scenario had already gone to hell. Shit, she thought when he ripped off her T-shirt. She realised with terrifying clarity that she was out of her depth.

She heard him open the dresser drawer next to the bed and caught the clanking sound of metal. At first she did not understand what was happening; then she saw the handcuffs close around her wrist. He pulled up her arm, placed the handcuffs around one of the bedposts, and locked her other hand. It did not take him long to pull off her boots and jeans. Then he took off her knickers and held them in his hand.

“You have to learn to trust me, Lisbeth,” he said. “I’m going to teach you how this grown-up game is played. If you don’t treat me well, you have to be punished. When you’re nice to me, we’ll be friends.”

He sat astride her again.

“So you don’t like anal sex,” he said.

Salander opened her mouth to scream. He grabbed her hair and stuffed the knickers in her mouth. She felt him putting something around her ankles, spread her legs apart and tie them so that she was lying there completely vulnerable. She heard him moving around the room but she could not see through the T-shirt around her face. It took him several minutes. She could hardly breathe. Then she felt an excruciating pain as he forced something up her anus.

Cecilia Vanger still had a rule that Blomkvist was not to stay all night. Some time after 2:00 in the morning he began to dress while she lay naked on the bed, smiling at him.

“I like you, Mikael. I like your company.”

“I like you too.”

She pulled him back to the bed and took off the shirt he had just put on. He stayed for one more hour.

When later he passed by Vanger’s house, he was sure he saw one of the curtains shift upstairs.

Salander was allowed to put on her clothes. It was 4:00 on Saturday morning. She picked up her leather jacket and rucksack and hobbled to the front door, where he was waiting for her, showered and neatly dressed. He gave her a cheque for 2,500 kronor.

“I’ll drive you home,” he said, and opened the door.

She crossed the threshold, out of the apartment, and turned to face him. Her body looked fragile and her face was swollen from crying, and he almost recoiled when he met her eyes. Never in his life had he seen such naked, smouldering hatred. Salander looked just as deranged as her casebook indicated.

“No,” she said, so quietly that he barely heard the word. “I can get home on my own.”

He put a hand on her shoulder.

“Are you sure?”

She nodded. His grip on her shoulder tightened.

“Remember what we agreed. You’ll come back here next Saturday.”

She nodded again. Cowed. He let her go.

CHAPTER 14 Saturday, March 8 – Monday, March 17

Salander spent the week in bed with pain in her abdomen, bleeding from her rectum, and less visible wounds that would take longer to heal. What she had gone through was very different from the first rape in his office; it was no longer a matter of coercion and degradation. This was systematic brutality.

She realised much too late that she had utterly misjudged Bjurman.

She had assumed he was on a power trip and liked to dominate, not that he was an all-out sadist. He had kept her in handcuffs half the night. Several times she believed he meant to kill her, and at one point he had pressed a pillow over her face until she thought she was going to pass out.

She did not cry.

Apart from the tears of pure physical pain she shed not a single tear. When she left the apartment she made her way with difficulty to the taxi stand at Odenplan. With difficulty she climbed the stairs to her own apartment. She showered and wiped the blood from her genitals. Then she drank a pint of water with two Rohypnol and stumbled to her bed and pulled the duvet over her head.

She woke up at midday on Sunday, empty of thoughts and with constant pain in her head, muscles and abdomen. She got up, drank two glasses of kefir, and ate an apple. Then she took two more sleeping pills and went back to bed.

She did not feel like getting up until Tuesday. She went out and bought a big box of Billy’s Pan Pizza, stuck two of them in the microwave, and filled a thermos with coffee. She spent that night on the Internet, reading articles and theses on the psychopathology of sadism.

She found one article published by a women’s group in the United States in which the author claimed that the sadist chose his “relationships” with almost intuitive precision; the sadist’s best victim was the one who voluntarily went to him because she did not think she had any choice. The sadist specialised in people who were in a position of dependence.

Advokat Bjurman had chosen her as a victim.

That told her something about the way she was viewed by other people.

On Friday, a week after the second rape, she walked from her apartment to a tattoo parlour in the Hornstull district. She had made an appointment, and there were no other customers in the shop. The owner nodded, recognising her.

She chose a simple little tattoo depicting a narrow band and asked to have it put on her ankle. She pointed.

“The skin is very thin there. It’s going to hurt a lot,” said the tattoo artist.

“That’s OK,” Salander said, taking off her jeans and putting her leg up.

“OK, a band. You already have loads of tattoos. Are you sure you want another one?”

“It’s a reminder.”

Blomkvist left the café when Susanne closed at 2:00 on Saturday afternoon. He had spent the morning typing up his notes in his iBook. He walked to Konsum and bought some food and cigarettes before he went home. He had discovered fried sausage with potatoes and beets – a dish he had never been fond of but for some reason it seemed perfectly suited to a cabin in the country.

At around 7:00 in the evening he stood by the kitchen window, thinking. Cecilia Vanger had not called. He had run into her that afternoon when she was buying bread at the café, but she had been lost in her own thoughts. It did not seem likely that she would call this evening. He glanced at the little TV that he almost never used. Instead he sat at the kitchen bench and opened a mystery by Sue Grafton.

Salander returned at the agreed-upon time to Bjurman’s apartment near Odenplan. He let her in with a polite, welcoming smile.

“And how are you doing today, dear Lisbeth?”

She did not reply. He put an arm around her shoulder.

“I suppose it was a bit rough last time,” he said. “You looked a little subdued.”

She gave him a crooked smile and he felt a sudden pang of uncertainty. This girl is not all there. I have to remember that. He wondered if she would come around.

“Shall we go into the bedroom?” Salander said.

On the other hand, she may be with it… Today I’ll take it easy on her. Build up her trust. He had already put out the handcuffs on the chest of drawers. It was not until they reached the bed that Bjurman realised that something was amiss.

She was the one leading him to the bed, not the other way around. He stopped and gave her a puzzled look when she pulled something out of her jacket pocket which he thought was a mobile telephone. Then he saw her eyes.

“Say goodnight,” she said.

She shoved the taser into his left armpit and fired off 75,000 volts. When his legs began to give way she put her shoulder against him and used all her strength to push him down on to the bed.

Cecilia Vanger felt a little tipsy. She had decided not to telephone Blomkvist. Their relationship had developed into a ridiculous bedroom farce, in which Blomkvist had to tiptoe around trying to get to her house unnoticed. She in turn played a lovesick teenage girl who could not control herself. Her behaviour the past few weeks had been reckless.

The problem is that I like him too much, she thought. He’s going to end up hurting me. She sat for a long time wishing that Mikael Blomkvist had never come to Hedeby.

She had opened a bottle of wine and drunk two glasses in her loneliness. She turned on the TV to watch Rapport and tried to follow the world situation but very soon tired of the reasoned commentary on why President Bush had to bomb Iraq to smithereens. Instead she sat on the living-room sofa and picked up Gellert Tamas’ book The Laser Man. She read only a few pages before she had to put the book down. That made her instantly think of her father. What kind of fantasies did he have?

The last time they really saw each other was in 1984, when she went with him and Birger, hare-hunting north of Hedestad. Birger was trying out a new hunting dog – a Swedish foxhound which he had just acquired. Harald Vanger was seventy-three at the time, and she had done her very best to accept his lunacy, which had made her childhood a nightmare and affected her entire adult life.

Cecilia had never before been as fragile as she was then. Her marriage had ended three months earlier. Domestic violence… the term was so banal. For her it had taken the form of unceasing abuse. Blows to the head, violent shoving, moody threats, and being knocked to the kitchen floor. Her husband’s outbursts were inexplicable and the attacks were not often so severe that she was actually injured. She had become used to it.

Until the day when she struck back and he completely lost control. It ended with him flinging some scissors at her which lodged in her shoulder blade.

He had been remorseful and panicky and drove her to the hospital, making up a story about a bizarre accident which all the staff in the emergency room saw through at once. She had felt ashamed. They gave her twelve stitches and kept her in the hospital for two days. Then her uncle picked her up and drove her to his house. She never spoke to her husband again.

On that sunny autumn day Harald Vanger had been in a good mood, almost friendly. But without warning, a long way into the woods, he began to berate her with humiliating invective and revolting remarks about her morals and sexual predilections. He snarled that no wonder such a whore could never keep a man.

Her brother apparently did not notice that every word from their father struck her like a whiplash. Instead, Birger suddenly laughed and put his arm around his father and in his own way made light of the situation by making some comment to the effect that you know full well what women are like. He gave Cecilia a cheerful wink and suggested that Harald Vanger take up a position on a little ridge.

For a second, a frozen instant, Cecilia Vanger looked at her father and brother and realised that she was holding a loaded shotgun in her hand. She closed her eyes. Her only option at that moment seemed to be to raise the gun and fire both barrels. She wanted to kill them both. Instead she laid down the weapon at her feet, turned on her heel, and went back to where they had parked the car. She left them high and dry, driving home alone. Since that day she refused to let her father into her house and had never been in his.

You ruined my life, Cecilia Vanger thought. You ruined my life when I was just a child.

At 8:30 she called Blomkvist.

Bjurman was in pain. His muscles were no use to him. His body seemed to be paralysed. He could not remember if he had lost consciousness, but he was disoriented. When he slowly regained control over his body he discovered that he was lying naked on his bed, his wrists in handcuffs and his legs spread painfully apart. He had stinging burn marks where electrodes had touched his body.

Salander had pulled the cane chair over and was patiently waiting, her boots resting on the bed as she smoked a cigarette. When Bjurman began to speak to her he found that his mouth was sealed. He turned his head. She had pulled out all his drawers and dumped them and the contents on the floor.

“I found your toys,” Salander said. She held up a riding whip and poked around in the heap of dildos, harness bits, and rubber masks on the floor. “What’s this one for?” She held up a huge anal plug. “No, don’t try to speak – I won’t hear what you say. Was this what you used on me last week? All you have to do is nod.” She leaned towards him expectantly.

Bjurman felt cold terror piercing his chest and lost his composure. He tugged at his handcuffs. She had taken control. Impossible. He could do nothing to resist when Salander bent over and placed the anal plug between his buttocks. “So you’re a sadist,” she said matter-of-factly. “You enjoy shoving things inside people, is that it?” She looked him in the eyes. Her face was expressionless. “Without a lubricant, right?”

Bjurman howled into the adhesive tape when Salander roughly spread his cheeks and rammed the plug into its proper place.

“Stop whimpering,” Salander said, imitating his voice. “If you complain, I’ll have to punish you.”

She stood up and went to the other side of the bed. He followed her helplessly with his eyes… What the hell was this? Salander had rolled in his thirty-two-inch TV from the living room. She had placed his DVD player on the floor. She looked at him, still holding the whip in her hand.

“Do I have your undivided attention? Don’t try to talk – just nod. Did you hear what I said?” He nodded.

“Good.” She bent down and picked up her rucksack. “Do you recognise this?” He nodded. “It’s the rucksack I had when I visited you last week. A practical item. I borrowed it from Milton Security.” She unzipped the bottom pocket. “This is a digital video camera. Do you ever watch Insider on TV3? This is the gear that those nasty reporters use when they have to record something with a hidden camera.” She zipped the pocket back up.

“Where’s the lens, you’re wondering. That’s the great thing about it. Wide angle fibre optics. The lens looks like a button and sits hidden in the buckle on a shoulder strap. Maybe you remember that I put the rucksack here on the table before you started to grope me. I made sure that the lens was directed straight at the bed.”

She held up a DVD and slipped it into the player. Then she turned the cane chair so that she could sit and watch the screen. She lit another cigarette and pressed the remote. Advokat Bjurman saw himself open the door for Salander.

Haven’t you even learned to tell the time?

She played the whole disc for him. The video ended after ninety minutes, in the middle of a scene where a naked Advokat Bjurman sat leaning against the bedstead drinking a glass of wine as he looked at Salander, curled up with her hands fettered behind her.

She turned off the TV and sat in the chair for a good ten minutes without looking at him. Bjurman did not dare move a muscle. Then she got up and went into the bathroom. When she came back she sat again in the chair. Her voice was like sandpaper.

“I made a mistake last week,” she said. “I thought you were going to make me give you a blow job again, which is disgusting enough in your case, but not so disgusting that I couldn’t do it. I thought I could easily acquire good documentation to prove you’re a filthy old prick. I misjudged you. I didn’t understand how fucking sick you were.

“I’m going to speak plainly,” she said. “This video shows you raping a mentally handicapped twenty-four-year-old girl for whom you were appointed guardian. And you have no idea how mentally handicapped I can be if push comes to shove. Anyone who sees this video will discover that you’re not merely a pervert but an insane sadist. This is the second and I hope the last time I’ll ever have to watch this video. It’s quite instructive, don’t you think? My guess is that you’re the one who’s going to be institutionalised, not me. Are you following me so far?”

She waited. He did not react, but she could see him quivering. She grabbed the whip and flicked it right over his genitals.

“Are you following me?” she said more loudly. He nodded.

“Good. So we’re singing from the same song sheet.”

She pulled the chair up close so she could look into his eyes.

“What do you think we should do about this problem?” He could not give her an answer. “Have you any good ideas?” When he did not react she reached out and grabbed his scrotum and pulled until his face contorted in pain. “Have you got any good ideas?” she repeated. He shook his head.

“Good. I’m going to be pretty fucking mad at you if you ever have any ideas in the future.”

She leaned back and stubbed her cigarette out on the carpet. “This is what’s going to happen. Next week, as soon as you manage to shit out that oversized rubber plug in your arse, you’re going to inform my bank that I – and I alone – have access to my account. Do you understand what I’m saying?” Bjurman nodded.

“Good boy. You will never ever contact me again. In the future we will meet only if I decide it’s necessary. You’re under a restraining order to stay away from me.” He nodded repeatedly. She doesn’t intend to kill me.

“If you ever try to contact me again, copies of this DVD will wind up in every newsroom in Stockholm. Do you understand?”

He nodded. I have to get hold of that video.

“Once a year you will turn in your report on my welfare to the Guardianship Agency. You will report that my life is completely normal, that I have a steady job, that I’m supporting myself, and that you don’t think there is anything abnormal about my behaviour. OK?”

He nodded.

“Each month you will prepare a report about your non-existent meetings with me. You will describe in detail how positive I am and how well things are going for me. You will post a copy to me. Do you understand?” He nodded again. Salander noticed absent-mindedly the beads of sweat forming on his forehead.

“In a year or so, let’s say two, you will initiate negotiations in the district court to have my declaration of incompetence rescinded. You will use your faked reports from our meetings as the basis for your proposal. You will find a shrink who will swear under oath that I am completely normal. You’re going to have to make an effort. You will do precisely everything in your power to ensure that I am declared competent.”

He nodded.

“Do you know why you’re going to do your very best? Because you have a fucking good reason. If you fail I’m going to make this video extremely public.”

He listened to every syllable Salander was saying. His eyes were burning with hatred. He decided she had made a mistake by letting him live. You’re going to wind up eating this, you fucking cunt. Sooner or later I’m going to crush you. But he continued nodding as vigorously as he could in reply to every question.

“The same applies if you try to contact me.” She mimed a throat-slitting motion. “Goodbye to this elegant lifestyle and your fine reputation and your millions in that offshore account.”

His eyes widened involuntarily when she mentioned the money. How the fucking hell did she know that…

She smiled and took out another cigarette.

“I want your spare set of keys to this apartment and your office.” He frowned. She leaned forward and smiled sweetly.

“In the future I’m going to have control over your life. When you least expect it, when you’re in bed asleep probably, I’m going to appear in the bedroom with this in my hand.” She held up the taser. “I’ll be checking up on you. If I ever find out you have been with a girl again – and it doesn’t matter if she’s here of her own free will – if I ever find you with any woman at all…” Salander made the throat-slitting motion again.

“If I should die… if I should fall victim to an accident and be run over by a car or something… then copies of the video will automatically be posted to the newspapers. Plus a report in which I describe what it’s like to have you as a guardian.

“One more thing.” She leaned forward again so that her face was only a couple of inches from his. “If you ever touch me again I will kill you. And that’s a promise.”

Bjurman absolutely believed her. There was not a vestige of bluff in her eyes.

“Keep it in mind that I’m crazy, won’t you?”

He nodded.

She gave him a thoughtful look. “I don’t think you and I are going to be good friends,” Salander said. “Right now you’re lying there congratulating yourself that I’m dim enough to let you live. You think you have control even though you’re my prisoner, since you think the only thing I can do if I don’t kill you is to let you go. So you’re full of hope that you can somehow recover your power over me right away. Am I right?”

He shook his head. He was beginning to feel very ill indeed.

“You’re going to get a present from me so you’ll always remember our agreement.”

She gave him a crooked smile and climbed on to the bed and knelt between his legs. Bjurman had no idea what she intended to do, but he felt a sudden terror.

Then he saw the needle in her hand.

He flopped his head back and forth and tried to twist his body away until she put a knee on his crotch and pressed down in warning.

“Lie rather still because this is the first time I’ve used this equipment.”

She worked steadily for two hours. When she was finished he had stopped whimpering. He seemed to be almost in a state of apathy.

She got down from the bed, cocked her head to one side, and regarded her handiwork with a critical eye. Her artistic talents were limited. The letters looked at best impressionistic. She had used red and blue ink. The message was written in caps over five lines that covered his belly, from his nipples to just above his genitals: I AM A SADISTIC PIG, A PERVERT, AND A RAPIST.

She gathered up the needles and placed the ink cartridges in her rucksack. Then she went to the bathroom and washed. She felt a lot better when she came back in the bedroom.

“Goodnight,” she said.

She unlocked one of the handcuffs and put the key on his stomach before she left. She took her DVD and his bundle of keys with her.

It was as they shared a cigarette some time after midnight that he told her they could not see each other for a while. Cecilia turned her face to him in surprise.

“What do you mean?”

He looked ashamed. “On Monday I have to go to prison for up to three months.”

No other explanation was necessary. Cecilia lay in silence for a long time. She felt like crying.

Dragan Armansky was suspicious when Salander knocked at his door on Monday afternoon. He had seen no sign of her since he called off the investigation of the Wennerström affair in early January, and every time he tried to reach her she either did not answer or hung up saying she was busy.

“Have you got a job for me?” she asked without any greeting.

“Hi. Great to see you. I thought you died or something.”

“There were things I had to straighten out.”

“You often seem to have things to straighten out.”

“This time it was urgent. I’m back now. Have you got a job for me?”

Armansky shook his head. “Sorry. Not at the moment.”

Salander looked at him calmly. After a while he started talking.

“Lisbeth, you know I like you and I like to give you jobs. But you’ve been gone for two months and I’ve had tons of jobs. You’re simply not reliable. I’ve had to pay other people to cover for you, and right now I actually don’t have a thing.”

“Could you turn up the volume?”

“What?”

“On the radio.”

… the magazine Millennium. The news that veteran industrialist Henrik Vanger will be part owner and will have a seat on the board of directors of Millennium comes the same day that the former CEO and publisher Mikael Blomkvist begins serving his three-month sentence for the libel of businessman Hans-Erik Wennerström. Millennium’s editor in chief Erika Berger announced at a press conference that Blomkvist will resume his role as publisher when his sentence is completed.

“Well, isn’t that something,” Salander said so quietly that Armansky only saw her lips move. She stood up and headed for the door.

“Wait. Where are you going?”

“Home. I want to check some stuff. Call me when you’ve got something.”

The news that Millennium had acquired reinforcements in the form of Henrik Vanger was a considerably bigger event than Lisbeth Salander had expected. Aftonbladet’s evening edition was already out, with a story from the TT wire service summing up Vanger’s career and stating that it was the first time in almost twenty years that the old industrial magnate had made a public appearance. The news that he was becoming part owner of Millennium was viewed as just as improbable as Peter Wallenberg or Erik Penser popping up as part owners of ETC or sponsors of Ordfront magazine.

The story was so big that the 7:30 edition of Rapport ran it as its third lead and gave it a three-minute slot. Erika Berger was interviewed at a conference table in Millennium’s office. All of a sudden the Wennerström affair was news again.

“We made a serious mistake last year which resulted in the magazine being prosecuted for libel. This is something we regret… and we will be following up this story at a suitable occasion.”

“What do you mean by ‘following up the story’?” the reporter said.

“I mean that we will eventually be telling our version of events, which we have not done thus far.”

“You could have done that at the trial.”

“We chose not to do so. But our investigative journalism will continue as before.”

“Does that mean you’re holding to the story that prompted the indictment?”

“I have nothing more to say on that subject.”

“You sacked Mikael Blomkvist after the verdict was delivered.”

“That is inaccurate. Read our press release. He needed a break. He’ll be back as CEO and publisher later this year.”

The camera panned through the newsroom while the reporter quickly recounted background information on Millennium’s stormy history as an original and outspoken magazine. Blomkvist was not available for comment. He had just been shut up in Rullåker Prison, about an hour from Östersund in Jämtland.

Salander noticed Dirch Frode at the edge of the TV screen passing a doorway in the editorial offices. She frowned and bit her lower lip in thought.

That Monday had been a slow news day, and Vanger got a whole four minutes on the 9:00 news. He was interviewed in a TV studio in Hedestad. The reporter began by stating that after two decades of having stood back from the spotlight the industrialist Henrik Vanger was back. The segment began with a snappy biography in black-and-white TV images, showing him with Prime Minister Erlander and opening factories in the sixties. The camera then focused on a studio sofa where Vanger was sitting perfectly relaxed. He wore a yellow shirt, narrow green tie, and comfortable dark-brown suit. He was gaunt, but he spoke in a clear, firm voice. And he was also quite candid. The reporter asked Vanger what had prompted him to become a part owner of Millennium.

“It’s an excellent magazine which I have followed with great interest for several years. Today the publication is under attack. It has enemies who are organising an advertising boycott, trying to run it into the ground.”

The reporter was not prepared for this, but guessed at once that the already unusual story had yet more unexpected aspects.

“What’s behind this boycott?”

“That’s one of the things that Millennium will be examining closely. But I’ll make it clear now that Millennium will not be sunk with the first salvo.”

“Is this why you bought into the magazine?”

“It would be deplorable if the special interests had the power to silence those voices in the media that they find uncomfortable.”

Vanger acted as though he had been a cultural radical espousing freedom of speech all his life. Blomkvist burst out laughing as he spent his first evening in the TV room at Rullåker Prison. His fellow inmates glanced at him uneasily.

Later that evening, when he was lying on the bunk in his cell – which reminded him of a cramped motel room with its tiny table, its one chair, and one shelf on the wall, he admitted that Vanger and Berger had been right about how the news would be marketed. He just knew that something had changed in people’s attitude towards Millennium.

Vanger’s support was no more or less than a declaration of war against Wennerström. The message was clear: in the future you will not be fighting with a magazine with a staff of six and an annual budget corresponding to the cost of a luncheon meeting of the Wennerström Group. You will now be up against the Vanger Corporation, which may be a shadow of its former greatness but still presents a considerably tougher challenge.

The message that Vanger had delivered on TV was that he was prepared to fight, and for Wennerström, that war would be costly.

Berger had chosen her words with care. She had not said much, but her saying that the magazine had not told its version created the impression that there was something to tell. Despite the fact that Blomkvist had been indicted, convicted, and was now imprisoned, she had come out and said – if not in so many words – that he was innocent of libel and that another truth existed. Precisely because she had not used the word “innocent,” his innocence seemed more apparent than ever. The fact that he was going to be reinstated as publisher emphasised that Millennium felt it had nothing to be ashamed of. In the eyes of the public, credibility was no problem – everyone loves a conspiracy theory, and in the choice between a filthy rich businessman and an outspoken and charming editor in chief, it was not hard to guess where the public’s sympathies would lie. The media, however, were not going to buy the story so easily – but Berger may have disarmed a number of critics.

None of the day’s events had changed the situation fundamentally, but they had bought time and they had shifted the balance of power a little. Blomkvist imagined that Wennerström had probably had an unpleasant evening. Wennerström could not know how much, or how little, they knew, and before he made his next move he was going to have to find out.

With a grim expression, Berger turned off the TV and the VCR after having watched first her own and then Vanger’s interview. It was 2:45 in the morning, and she had to stifle the impulse to call Blomkvist. He was locked up, and it was unlikely that he was allowed to keep his mobile. She had arrived home so late that her husband was already asleep. She went over to the bar and poured herself a healthy measure of Aberlour single malt – she drank alcohol about once a year – and sat at the window, looking out across Saltsjön to the lighthouse at the entrance to Skuru Sound.

She and Blomkvist had argued heatedly when they were alone after she concluded the agreement with Vanger. They had weathered many full-blooded arguments about what angle to use for a specific article, the design of the magazine, the evaluation of their sources’ credibility, and a thousand other things involved in putting out a magazine. But the argument in Vanger’s guest house had touched on principles that made her aware she was on shaky ground.

“I don’t know what to do now,” Blomkvist had said. “This man has hired me to ghostwrite his autobiography. Up until now I’ve been free to get up and leave the moment he tries to force me to write something that isn’t true, or tries to persuade me to slant the story in a way I don’t hold with. Now he’s a part owner of our magazine – and the only one with the resources to save Millennium. All of a sudden I’m sitting on the fence, in a position that a board of professional ethics would never approve.”

“Have you got a better idea?” Berger asked him. “Because if you have, spit it out, before we type up the contract and sign it.”

“Ricky, Vanger is exploiting us in some sort of private vendetta against Wennerström.”

“So what? We have a vendetta against Wennerström ourselves.”

Blomkvist turned away from her and lit a cigarette.

Their conversation had gone on for quite a while, until Berger went into the bedroom, undressed, and climbed into bed. She pretended to be asleep when he got in beside her two hours later.

This evening a reporter from Dagens Nyheter had asked her the same question: “How is Millennium going to be able credibly to assert its independence?”

“What do you mean?”

The reporter thought the question had been clear enough, but he spelled it out anyway.

“One of Millennium’s objectives is to investigate corporations. How will the magazine be able to claim in a credible way that it’s investigating the Vanger Corporation?”

Berger gave him a surprised look, as if the question were completely unexpected.

“Are you insinuating that Millennium’s credibility is diminished because a well-known financier with significant resources has entered the picture?”

“You could not now credibly investigate the Vanger Corporation.”

“Is that a rule that applies specifically to Millennium?”

“Excuse me?”

“I mean, you work for a publication that is for the most part owned by major corporate entities. Does that mean that none of the newspapers published by the Bonnier Group is credible? Aftonbladet is owned by a huge Norwegian corporation, which in turn is a major player in IT and communications – does that mean that anything Aftonbladet publishes about the electronics industry is not credible? Metro is owned by the Stenbeck Group. Are you saying that no publication in Sweden that has significant economic interests behind it is credible?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then why are you insinuating that Millennium’s credibility would be diminished because we also have backers?”

The reporter held up his hand.

“OK, I’ll retract that question.”

“No. Don’t do that. I want you to print exactly what I said. And you can add that if DN promises to focus a little extra on the Vanger Corporation, then we’ll focus a little more on the Bonnier Group.”

But it was an ethical dilemma.

Blomkvist was working for Henrik Vanger, who was in a position to sink Millennium with the stroke of a pen. What would happen if Blomkvist and Vanger became enemies?

And above all – what price did she put on her own credibility, and when had she been transformed from an independent editor into a corrupted one?

Salander closed her browser and shut down her PowerBook. She was out of work and hungry. The first condition did not worry her so much, since she had regained control over her bank account and Bjurman had already taken on the status of a vague unpleasantness in her past. The hunger she dealt with by switching on the coffeemaker. She made three big open rye-bread sandwiches with cheese, caviar, and a hard-boiled egg. She ate her nighttime snacks on the sofa in the living room while she worked on the information she had gathered.

The lawyer Frode from Hedestad had hired her to do an investigation of Mikael Blomkvist, the journalist who was given a prison sentence for libelling financier Hans-Erik Wennerström. A few months later Henrik Vanger, also from Hedestad, joins Blomkvist’s magazine’s board of directors and claims that there is a conspiracy to crush the magazine. All this on the same day that the former goes to prison. Most fascinating of all: a two-year-old background article – “With two empty hands” – about Hans-Erik Wennerström, which she found in the online edition of Monopoly Financial Magazine. It seemed that he began his career in the very same Vanger Corporation in the late sixties.

You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to see that these events were somehow related. There had to be a skeleton in one of their cupboards, and Salander loved hunting skeletons. Besides, she had nothing else on at the moment.