The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

CHAPTER 15 Friday, May 16 – Saturday, May 31

Mikael Blomkvist was released from Rullåker Prison on Friday, May 16, two months after he was admitted. The same day he entered the facility, he had submitted an application for parole, with no great optimism. He never did quite understand the technical reasons behind his release, but it may have had something to do with the fact that he did not use any holiday leave and that the prison population was forty-two while the number of beds was thirty-one. In any case, the warden – Peter Sarowsky, a forty-year-old Polish exile – with whom Blomkvist got along well, wrote a recommendation that his sentence be reduced.

His time at Rullåker had been unstressful and pleasant enough. The prison had been designed, as Sarowsky expressed it, for hooligans and drunk drivers, not for hardened criminals. The daily routines reminded him of living in a youth hostel. His fellow prisoners, half of whom were second-generation immigrants, regarded Blomkvist as something of a rare bird in the group. He was the only inmate to appear on the TV news, which lent him a certain status.

On his first day, he was called in for a talk and offered therapy, training from Komvux, or the opportunity for other adult education, and occupational counselling. He did not feel any need at all for social rehabilitation, he had completed his studies, he thought, and he already had a job. On the other hand, he asked for permission to keep his iBook in his cell so that he could continue to work on the book he was commissioned to write. His request was granted without further ado, and Sarowsky arranged to bring him a lockable cabinet so that he could leave the computer in his cell. Not that any of the inmates would have stolen or vandalised it or anything like that. They rather kept a protective eye on him.

In this way Blomkvist spent two months working about six hours a day on the Vanger family chronicle, work that was interrupted only by a few hours of cleaning or recreation each day. Blomkvist and two others, one of whom came from Skövde and had his roots in Chile, were assigned to clean the prison gym each day. Recreation consisted of watching TV, playing cards, or weight training. Blomkvist discovered that he was a passable poker player, but he still lost a few fifty-öre coins every day. Regulations permitted playing for money if the total pot did not exceed five kronor.

He was told of his release only one day before. Sarowsky summoned him to his office and they shared a toast with aquavit.

Blomkvist went straight back to the cabin in Hedeby. When he walked up the front steps he heard a meow and found himself escorted by the reddish-brown cat.

“OK, you can come in,” he said. “But I have no milk yet.”

He unpacked his bags. It was as if he had been on holiday, and he realised that he actually missed the company of Sarowsky and his fellow prisoners. Absurd as it seemed, he had enjoyed his time at Rullåker, but his release had come so unexpectedly that he had had no time to let anyone know.

It was just after 6:00 in the evening. He hurried over to Konsum to buy groceries before they closed. When he got home he called Berger. A message said she was unavailable. He asked for her to call him the next day.

Then he walked up to his employer’s house. He found Vanger on the ground floor. The old man raised his eyebrows in surprise when he saw Mikael.

“Did you escape?”

“Released early.”

“That’s a surprise.”

“For me too. I found out last night.”

They looked at each other for a few seconds. Then the old man surprised Blomkvist by throwing his arms around him and giving him a bear hug.

“I was just about to eat. Join me.”

Anna produced a great quantity of bacon pancakes with lingonberries. They sat there in the dining room and talked for almost two hours. Blomkvist told him about how far he had got with the family chronicle, and where there were holes and gaps. They did not talk at all about Harriet, but Vanger told him all about Millennium.

“We had a board meeting. Fröken Berger and your partner Malm were kind enough to move two of the meetings up here, while Dirch stood in for me at a meeting in Stockholm. I really wish I were a few years younger, but the truth is that it’s too tiring for me to travel so far. I’ll try to get down there during the summer.”

“No reason not to hold the meetings up here,” Blomkvist said. “So how does it feel to be a part owner of the magazine?”

Vanger gave him a wry smile.

“It’s actually the most fun I’ve had in years. I’ve taken a look at the finances, and they look pretty fair. I won’t have to put up as much money as I thought – the gap between income and expenses is dwindling.”

“I talked with Erika this week. She says that advertising revenue has perked up.”

“It’s starting to turn around, yes, but it’ll take time. At first the companies in the Vanger Corporation went in and bought up a bunch of fullpage ads. But two former advertisers – mobile telephones and a travel bureau – have come back.” He smiled broadly. “We’re also doing a little more one-to-one hustling among Wennerström’s enemies. And, believe me, there’s a long list.”

“Have you heard directly from Wennerström?”

“Well, not really. But we leaked a story that Wennerström is organising the boycott of Millennium. That must have made him look petty. A reporter at DN is said to have reached him and got a surly reply.”

“You are enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“Enjoy isn’t the word. I should have devoted myself to this years ago.”

“What is it between you and Wennerström, anyway?”

“Don’t even try. You’ll find out at the end of your year.”

When Blomkvist left Vanger around 9:00 there was a distinct feeling of spring in the air. It was dark outside and he hesitated for a moment. Then he made his familiar circuit and knocked on the door of Cecilia Vanger’s house.

He wasn’t sure what he expected. Cecilia opened her eyes wide and instantly looked uncomfortable as she let him into the hall. They stood there, suddenly unsure of each other. She too asked if he had escaped, and he explained the situation.

“I just wanted to say hello. Am I interrupting something?”

She avoided his eyes. Mikael could sense at once that she wasn’t particularly glad to see him.

“No… no, come in. Would you like some coffee?”

“I would.”

He followed her into the kitchen. She stood with her back to him as she filled the coffeemaker with water. He put a hand on her shoulder, and she stiffened.

“Cecilia, you don’t look as if you want to give me coffee.”

“I wasn’t expecting you for another month,” she said. “You surprised me.”

He turned her around so that he could see her face. They stood in silence for a moment. She still would not look him in the eye.

“Cecilia. Forget about the coffee. What’s going on?”

She shook her head and took a deep breath.

“Mikael, I’d like you to leave. Don’t ask. Just leave.”

Mikael first walked back to the cottage, but paused at the gate, undecided. Instead of going in he went down to the water by the bridge and sat on a rock. He smoked a cigarette while he sorted out his thoughts and wondered what could have so dramatically changed Cecilia Vanger’s attitude towards him.

He suddenly heard the sound of an engine and saw a big white boat slip into the sound beneath the bridge. When it passed, Mikael saw that it was Martin Vanger standing at the wheel, with his gaze focused on avoiding sunken rocks in the water. The boat was a forty-foot motor cruiser – an impressive bundle of power. He stood up and took the beach path. He discovered that several boats were already in the water at various docks, a mixture of motorboats and sailing boats. There were several Pettersson boats, and at one dock an IF-class yacht was rocking in the wake. Other boats were larger and more expensive vessels. He noticed a Hallberg-Rassy. The boats also indicated the class distribution of Hedeby’s marina – Martin Vanger had without a doubt the largest and the plushest boat in view.

He stopped below Cecilia Vanger’s house and stole a glance at the lighted windows on the top floor. Then he went home and put on some coffee of his own. He went into his office while he waited for it to brew.

Before he presented himself at the prison he had returned the majority of Vanger’s documentation on Harriet. It had seemed wise not to leave it in an empty house. Now the shelves looked bare. He had, of the reports, only five of Vanger’s own notebooks, and these he had taken with him to Rullåker and now knew by heart. He noticed an album on the top shelf of the bookcase that he had forgotten.

He carried it to the kitchen table. He poured himself coffee and began going through it.

They were photographs that had been taken on the day Harriet disappeared. The first of them was the last photograph of Harriet, at the Children’s Day parade in Hedestad. Then there were some 180 crystal-clear pictures of the scene of the accident on the bridge. He had examined the images one by one with a magnifying glass on several occasions previously. Now he turned the pages almost absent-mindedly; he knew he was not going to find anything he had not seen before. In fact he felt all of a sudden fed up with the unexplainable disappearance of Harriet Vanger and slammed the album shut.

Restlessly he went to the kitchen window and peered out into the darkness.

Then he turned his gaze back to the album. He could not have explained the feeling, but a thought flitted through his head, as though he were reacting to something he had just seen. It was as though an invisible creature had whispered in his ear, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

He opened the album again. He went through it page by page, looking at all the pictures of the bridge. He looked at the younger version of an oil-soaked Henrik Vanger and a younger Harald, a man whom he had still not met. The broken railing, the buildings, the windows and the vehicles visible in the pictures. He could not fail to identify a twenty-year-old Cecilia in the midst of the onlookers. She had on a light-coloured dress and a dark jacket and was in at least twenty of the photographs.

He felt a fresh excitement, and over the years Blomkvist had learned to trust his instincts. These instincts were reacting to something in the album, but he could not yet say what it was.

He was still at the kitchen table at 11:00, staring one by one again at the photographs when he heard the door open.

“May I come in?” It was Cecilia Vanger. Without waiting for an answer she sat down across from him at the table. Blomkvist had a strange feeling of déjà vu. She was dressed in a thin, loose, light-coloured dress and a greyish-blue jacket, clothes almost identical to those she was wearing in the photographs from 1966.

“You’re the one who’s the problem,” she said.

Blomkvist raised his eyebrows.

“Forgive me, but you took me by surprise when you knocked on the door tonight. Now I’m so unhappy I can’t sleep.”

“Why are you unhappy?”

“Don’t you know?”

He shook his head.

“If I tell you, promise you won’t laugh.”

“Promise.”

“When I seduced you last winter it was an idiotic, impulsive act. I wanted to enjoy myself, that’s all. That first night I was quite drunk, and I had no intention of starting anything long-term with you. Then it turned into something else. I want you to know that those weeks with you as my occasional lover were some of the happiest in my life.”

“I thought it was lovely too.”

“Mikael, I’ve been lying to you and to myself the whole time. I’ve never been particularly relaxed about sex. I’ve had five sex partners in my entire life. Once when I was twenty-one and a debutante. Then with my husband, whom I met when I was twenty-five and who turned out to be a bastard. And then a few times with three guys I met several years apart. But you provoked something in me. I simply couldn’t get enough. It had something to do with the fact that you’re so undemanding.”

“Cecilia, you don’t have to…”

“Shh – don’t interrupt, or I’ll never be able to tell you this.”

Blomkvist sat in silence.

“The day you left for prison I was absolutely miserable. You were gone, as though you had never existed. It was dark here in the guest house. It was cold and empty in my bed. And there I was, an old maid of fifty-six again.”

She said nothing for a while and looked Blomkvist in the eyes.

“I fell in love with you last winter. I didn’t mean to, but it happened. And then I took stock and realised that you were only here temporarily; one day you’ll be gone for good, and I’ll stay here for the rest of my life. It hurt so damn much that I decided I wasn’t going to let you in again when you came back from prison.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. When you left tonight I sat and cried. I wish I had the chance to live my life over again. Then I would decide on one thing.”

“What’s that?”

She looked down at the table.

“That I would have to be totally insane to stop seeing you just because you’re going to leave one day. Mikael, can we start again? Can you forget what happened earlier this evening?”

“It’s forgotten,” he said. “But thank you for telling me.”

She was still looking down at the table.

“If you still want me, let’s do it.”

She looked at him again. Then she got up and went over to the bedroom door. She dropped her jacket on the floor and pulled her dress over her head as she went.

Blomkvist and Cecilia Vanger woke up when the front door opened and someone was walking through the kitchen. They heard the thud of something heavy being put down near the woodstove. Then Berger was standing in the bedroom doorway with a smile that rapidly changed to shock.

“Oh, good Lord.” She took a step back.

“Hi, Erika,” Blomkvist said.

“Hi. I’m so sorry. I apologise a thousand times for barging in like this. I should have knocked.”

“We should have locked the front door. Erika – this is Cecilia Vanger. Cecilia – Erika Berger is the editor in chief of Millennium.”

“Hi,” Cecilia said.

“Hi,” Berger said. She looked as though she could not decide whether to step forward and politely shake hands or just leave. “Uh, I… I can go for a walk…”

“What do you say to putting on some coffee instead?” Blomkvist looked at the alarm clock on the bedside table. Just past noon.

Berger nodded and pulled the bedroom door shut. Blomkvist and Cecilia looked at each other. Cecilia appeared embarrassed. They had made love and talked until 4:00 in the morning. Then Cecilia said she thought she’d sleep over and that in the future she wouldn’t give a tinker’s cuss who knew she was sleeping with Mikael Blomkvist. She had slept with her back to him and with his arm tucked around her breasts.

“Listen, it’s OK,” he said. “Erika’s married and she isn’t my girlfriend. We see each other now and then, but she doesn’t care at all if you and I have something… She’s probably pretty embarrassed herself right now.”

When they went into the kitchen a while later, Erika had set out coffee, juice, lemon marmalade, cheese, and toast. It smelled good. Cecilia went straight up to her and held out her hand.

“I was a little abrupt in there. Hi.”

“Dear Cecilia, I’m so sorry for stomping in like an elephant,” said a very embarrassed Erika Berger.

“Forget it, for God’s sake. And let’s have breakfast.”

After breakfast Berger excused herself and left them alone, saying that she had to go and say hello to Vanger. Cecilia cleared the table with her back to Mikael. He went up and put his arms around her.

“What’s going to happen now?” Cecilia said.

“Nothing. This is the way it is – Erika is my best friend. She and I have been together off and on for twenty years and will probably be, on and off, together for another twenty. I hope so. But we’ve never been a couple and we never get in the way of each other’s romances.”

“Is that what we have? A romance?”

“I don’t know what we have, but apparently we get along.”

“Where’s she going to sleep tonight?”

“We’ll find her a room somewhere. One of Henrik’s spare rooms. She won’t be sleeping in my bed, anyway.”

Cecilia thought about this for a moment.

“I don’t know if I can handle this. You and she might function that way, but I don’t know… I’ve never…” She shook her head. “I’m going back to my place. I have to think about this for a while.”

“Cecilia, you asked me earlier and I told you about my relationship with Erika. Her existence can’t be any great surprise to you.”

“That’s true. But as long as she was at a comfortable distance down in Stockholm I could ignore her.”

Cecilia put on her jacket.

“This situation is ludicrous,” she said with a smile. “Come over for dinner tonight. Bring Erika. I think I’m going to like her.”

Erika had already solved the problem of where to sleep. On previous occasions when she had been up to Hedeby to visit Vanger she had stayed in one of his spare rooms, and she asked him straight out if she could borrow the room again. Henrik could scarcely conceal his delight, and he assured her that she was welcome at any time.

With these formalities out of the way, Blomkvist and Berger went for a walk across the bridge and sat on the terrace of Susanne’s Bridge Café just before closing time.

“I’m really pissed off,” Berger said. “I drive all the way up here to welcome you back to freedom and find you in bed with the town femme fatale.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“How long have you and Miss Big Tits…” Berger waved her index finger.

“From about the time Vanger became part owner.”

“Aha.”

“What do you mean, aha?”

“Just curious.”

“Cecilia’s a good woman. I like her.”

“I’m not criticising. I’m just pissed off. Candy within reach and then I have to go on a diet. How was prison?”

“Like an uneventful holiday. How are things at the magazine?”

“Better. For the first time in a year the advertising revenue is on the rise. We’re way below this time last year, but we’ve turned the corner. Thanks to Henrik. But the weird thing is that subscriptions are going up too.”

“They tend to fluctuate.”

“By a couple of hundred one way or the other. But we’ve picked up three thousand in the past quarter. At first I thought it was just luck, but new subscribers keep coming in. It’s our biggest subscription jump ever. At the same time, our existing subscribers are renewing pretty consistently across the board. None of us can understand it. We haven’t run any ad campaigns. Christer spent a week doing spot checks on what sort of demographic is showing up. First, they’re all brand-new subscribers. Second, 70 percent of them are women. Normally it’s the other way around. Third, the subscribers can be described as middle-income white-collar workers from the suburbs: teachers, middle management, civil service workers.”

“Think it’s the middle-class revolt against big capital?”

“I don’t know. But if this keeps up, it’ll mean a significant shift in our subscriber profile. We had an editorial conference two weeks ago and decided to start running new types of material in the magazine. I want more articles on professional matters associated with TCO, the Swedish Confederation of Professional Employees, and also more investigative reporting on women’s issues, for instance.”

“Don’t change too much,” Blomkvist said. “If we’re getting new subscribers then it means that they like what we’re running already.”

Cecilia had also invited Vanger to dinner, possibly to reduce the risk of troublesome topics of conversation. She had made a venison stew. Berger and Vanger spent a good deal of the time discussing Millennium’s development and the new subscribers, but gradually the conversation moved on to other matters. Berger suddenly turned to Blomkvist at one point and asked him how his work was coming along.

“I’m counting on having a draft of the family chronicle complete in a month for Henrik to look at.”

“A chronicle in the spirit of the Addams family,” Cecilia said.

“It does have certain historical aspects,” Blomkvist conceded.

Cecilia glanced at Vanger.

“Mikael, Henrik isn’t really interested in a family chronicle. He wants you to solve the mystery of Harriet’s disappearance.”

Blomkvist did not say a word. Ever since he had begun his relationship with Cecilia he had talked fairly openly about Harriet with her. Cecilia had already deduced that this was his real assignment, even though he never formally admitted it. He had certainly never told Henrik that he and Cecilia had discussed the subject. Vanger’s bushy eyebrows drew together a bit. Erika was silent.

“My dear Henrik,” Cecilia said. “I’m not stupid. I don’t know what sort of agreement you and Mikael have, but his stay here in Hedeby is about Harriet. It is, isn’t it?”

Vanger nodded and glanced at Blomkvist.

“I told you she was sharp.” He turned to Berger. “I presume that Mikael has explained to you what he’s working on here in Hedeby.”

She nodded.

“And I presume you think it’s a senseless undertaking. No, you don’t have to answer that. It is an absurd and senseless task. But I have to find out.”

“I have no opinion on the matter,” Berger said diplomatically.

“Of course you do.” He turned to Blomkvist. “Tell me. Have you found anything at all that might take us forward?”

Blomkvist avoided meeting Vanger’s gaze. He thought instantly of the cold, unplaceable certainty he had had the night before. The feeling had been with him all day, but he had had no time to work his way through the album again. At last he looked up at Vanger and shook his head.

“I haven’t found a single thing.”

The old man scrutinised him with a penetrating look. He refrained from commenting.

“I don’t know about you young people,” he said, “but for me it’s time to go to bed. Thank you for dinner, Cecilia. Good night, Erika. Do see me before you leave tomorrow.”

When Vanger had closed the front door, silence settled over them. It was Cecilia who spoke first.

“Mikael, what was all that about?”

“It means that Henrik is as sensitive to people’s reactions as a seismograph. Last night when you came to the cottage I was looking through an album.”

“Yes?”

“I saw something. I don’t know what it was yet. It was something that almost became an idea, but I missed it.”

“So what were you thinking about?”

“I just can’t tell you. And then you arrived.”

Cecilia blushed. She avoided Berger’s gaze and went out to put on some coffee.

It was a warm and sunny day. New green shoots were appearing, and Blomkvist caught himself humming the old song of spring, “Blossom Time Is Coming.” It was Monday and Berger had left early.

When he had gone to prison in mid-March, snow still covered the land. Now the birches were turning green and the lawn around his cabin was lush. For the first time he had a chance to look around all of Hedeby Island. At 8:00 he went over and asked to borrow a thermos from Anna. He spoke briefly with Vanger, who was just up, and was given his map of the island. He wanted to get a closer look at Gottfried’s cabin. Vanger told him that the cabin was owned by Martin Vanger now but that it had stood mostly vacant over the years. Occasionally some relative would borrow it.

Blomkvist just managed to catch Martin before he left for work. He asked if he might borrow the key. Martin gave him an amused smile.

“I presume the family chronicle has now reached the chapter about Harriet.”

“I just want to take a look…”

Martin came back with the key in a minute.

“Is it OK then?”

“As far as I’m concerned, you can move in there if you want. Except for the fact that it’s stuck right at the other end of the island, it’s actually a nicer spot than the cottage you’re in.”

Blomkvist made coffee and sandwiches. He filled a bottle with water before he set off, stuffing his picnic lunch in a rucksack he slung over one shoulder. He followed a narrow, partially overgrown path that ran along the bay on the north side of Hedeby Island. Gottfried’s cabin was on a point about one and a half miles from the village, and it took him only half an hour to cover the distance at a leisurely pace.

Martin Vanger had been right. When Blomkvist came around the bend of the narrow path, a shaded area by the water opened up. There was a marvellous view of the inlet to the Hede River, Hedestad marina to the left, and the industrial harbour to the right.

He was surprised that no-one had wanted to move into Gottfried’s cabin. It was a rustic structure made of horizontal dark-stained timber with a tile roof and green frames, and with a small porch at the front door. The maintenance of the cabin had been neglected. The paint around the doors and windows was flaking off, and what should have been a lawn was scrub a yard high. Clearing it would take one whole day’s hard work with scythe and saw.

Blomkvist unlocked the door and unscrewed the shutters over the windows from the inside. The framework seemed to be an old barn of less than 1,300 square feet. The inside was finished with planks and consisted of one room with big windows facing the water on either side of the front door. A staircase led to an open sleeping loft at the rear of the cabin that covered half the space. Beneath the stairs was a niche with a propane gas stove, a counter, and a sink. The furnishings were basic; built into the wall to the left of the door there was bench, a rickety desk, and above it a bookcase with teak shelves. Farther down on the same side was a broad wardrobe. To the right of the door was a round table with five wooden chairs; a fireplace stood in the middle of the side wall.

The cabin had no electricity; instead there were several kerosene lamps. In one window was an old Grundig transistor radio. The antenna was broken off. Blomkvist pressed the power button but the batteries were dead.

He went up the narrow stairs and looked around the sleeping loft. There was a double bed with a bare mattress, a bedside table, and a chest of drawers.

Blomkvist spent a while searching through the cabin. The bureau was empty except for some hand towels and linen smelling faintly of mould. In the wardrobe there were some work clothes, a pair of overalls, rubber boots, a pair of worn tennis shoes, and a kerosene stove. In the desk drawers were writing paper, pencils, a blank sketchpad, a deck of cards, and some bookmarks. The kitchen cupboard contained plates, mugs, glasses, candles, and some packages of salt, tea bags, and the like. In a drawer in the table there were eating utensils.

He found the only traces of any intellectual interests on the bookcase above the desk. Mikael brought over a chair and got up on it to see what was on the shelves. On the lowest shelf lay issues of Se, Rekordmagasinet, Tidsfördriv, and Lektyr from the late fifties and early sixties. There were several Bildjournalen from 1965 and 1966, Matt Livs Novell, and a few comic books: The 91, Phantomen, and Romans. He opened a copy of Lektyr from 1964 and smiled to see how chaste the pin-up was.

Of the books, about half were mystery paperbacks from Wahlström’s Manhattan series: Mickey Spillane with titles like Kiss Me, Deadly with the classic covers by Bertil Hegland. He found half a dozen Kitty books, some Famous Five novels by Enid Blyton, and a Twin Mystery by Sivar Ahlrud – The Metro Mystery. He smiled in recognition. Three books by Astrid Lindgren: The Children of Noisy Village, Kalle Blomkvist and Rasmus, and Pippi Longstocking. The top shelf had a book about short-wave radio, two books on astronomy, a bird guidebook, a book called The Evil Empire on the Soviet Union, a book on the Finnish Winter War, Luther’s catechism, the Book of Hymns, and the Bible.

He opened the Bible and read on the inside cover: Harriet Vanger, May 12, 1963. It was her Confirmation Bible. He sadly put it back on the shelf.

Behind the cabin there were a wood and tool shed with a scythe, rake, hammer, and a big box with saws, planes, and other tools. He took a chair on to the porch and poured coffee from his thermos. He lit a cigarette and looked across Hedestad Bay through the veil of undergrowth.

Gottfried’s cabin was much more modest than he had expected. Here was the place to which Harriet and Martin’s father had retreated when his marriage to Isabella was going to the dogs in the late fifties. He had made this cabin his home and here he got drunk. And down there, near the wharf, he had drowned. Life at the cabin had probably been pleasant in the summer, but when the temperature dropped to freezing it must have been raw and wretched. According to what Vanger told him, Gottfried continued to work in the Vanger Corporation – interrupted by periods when he was on wild binges – until 1964. The fact that he was able to live in the cabin more or less permanently and still appear for work shaven, washed, and in a jacket and tie spoke of a surviving personal discipline.

And here was also the place that Harriet had been to so often that it was one of the first in which they looked for her. Vanger had told him that during her last year, Harriet had gone often to the cabin, apparently to be in peace on weekends or holidays. In her last summer she had lived here for three months, though she came into the village every day. Anita Vanger, Cecilia’s sister, spent six weeks with her here.

What had she done out here all alone? The magazines Mitt Livs Novell and Romans, as well as a number of books about Kitty, must have been hers. Perhaps the sketchpad had been hers. And her Bible was here.

She had wanted to be close to her lost father – was it a period of mourning she needed to get through? Or did it have to do with her religious brooding? The cabin was spartan – was she pretending to live in a convent?

Blomkvist followed the shoreline to the southeast, but the way was so interrupted by ravines and so grown over with juniper shrubs that it was all but impassable. He went back to the cabin and started back on the road to Hedeby. According to the map there was a path through the woods to something called the Fortress. It took him twenty minutes to find it in the overgrown scrub. The Fortress was what remained of the shoreline defence from the Second World War; concrete bunkers with trenches spread out around a command building. Everything was overrun with long grass and scrub.

He walked down a path to a boathouse. Next to the boathouse he found the wreck of a Pettersson boat. He returned to the Fortress and took a path up to a fence – he had come to Östergården from the other side.

He followed the meandering path through the woods, roughly parallel to the fields of Östergården. The path was difficult to negotiate – there were patches of marsh that he had to skirt. Finally he came to a swamp and beyond it a barn. As far as he could see the path ended there, a hundred yards from the road to Östergården.

Beyond the road lay the hill, Söderberget. Blomkvist walked up a steep slope and had to climb the last bit. Söderberget’s summit was an almost vertical cliff facing the water. He followed the ridge back towards Hedeby. He stopped above the summer cottages to enjoy the view of the old fishing harbour and the church and his own cottage. He sat on a flat rock and poured himself the last of the lukewarm coffee.

Cecilia Vanger kept her distance. Blomkvist did not want to be importunate, so he waited a week before he went to her house. She let him in.

“You must think I’m quite foolish, a fifty-six-year-old, respectable headmistress acting like a teenage girl.”

“Cecilia, you’re a grown woman. You have the right to do whatever you want.”

“I know and that’s why I’ve decided not to see you any more. I can’t stand…”

“Please, you don’t owe me an explanation. I hope we’re still friends.”

“I would like for us to remain friends. But I can’t deal with a relationship with you. I haven’t ever been good at relationships. I’d like it if you would leave me in peace for a while.”

CHAPTER 16 Sunday, June 1 – Tuesday, June 10

After six months of fruitless cogitation, the case of Harriet Vanger cracked open. In the first week of June, Blomkvist uncovered three totally new pieces of the puzzle. Two of them he found himself. The third he had help with.

After Berger’s visit in May, he had studied the album again, sitting for three hours, looking at one photograph after another, as he tried to rediscover what it was that he had reacted to. He failed again, so he put the album aside and went back to work on the family chronicle instead.

One day in June he was in Hedestad, thinking about something altogether different, when his bus turned on to Järnvägsgatan and it suddenly came to him what had been germinating in the back of his mind. The insight struck him like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky. He felt so confused that he stayed on the bus all the way to the last stop by the railway station. There he took the first bus back to Hedeby to check whether he had remembered correctly.

It was the first photograph in the album, the last picture taken of Harriet Vanger on that fateful day on Järnvägsgatan in Hedestad, while she had been watching the Children’s Day parade.

The photograph was an odd one to have included in the album. It was put there because it was taken the same day, but it was the only one of the photographs not of the accident on the bridge. Each time Blomkvist and (he supposed) everyone else had looked at the album, it was the people and the details in the pictures of the bridge that had captured their attention. There was no drama in the picture of a crowd at the Children’s Day parade, several hours earlier.

Vanger must have looked at the photograph a thousand times, a sorrowful reminder that he would never see her again.

But that was not what Blomkvist had reacted to.

It was taken from across the street, probably from a first-floor window. The wide-angle lens had caught the front of one of the floats. On the flatbed were women wearing glittering bathing suits and harem trousers, throwing sweets to the crowd. Some of them were dancing. Three clowns were jumping about in front of the float.

Harriet was in the front row of the crowd standing on the pavement. Next to her were three girls, clearly her classmates, and around and behind them were at least a hundred other spectators.

This is what Blomkvist had noticed subconsciously and which suddenly rose to the surface when the bus passed the exact same spot.

The crowd behaved as an audience should. Their eyes always follow the ball in a tennis match or the puck in an ice hockey rink. The ones standing at the far left of the photograph were looking at the clowns right in front of them. The ones closer to the float were all looking at the scantily clad girls. The expressions on their faces were calm. Children pointed. Some were laughing. Everyone looked happy.

All except one.

Harriet Vanger was looking off to the side. Her three friends and everyone else in her vicinity were looking at the clowns. Harriet’s face was turned almost 30° to 35° to her right. Her gaze seemed fixed on something across the street, but beyond the left-hand edge of the photograph.

Mikael took the magnifying glass and tried to make out the details. The photograph was taken from too great a distance for him to be entirely sure, but unlike all those around her, Harriet’s face lacked excitement. Her mouth was a thin line. Her eyes were wide open. Her hands hung limply at her sides. She looked frightened. Frightened or furious.

Mikael took the print out of the album, put it in a stiff plastic binder, and went to wait for the next bus back into Hedestad. He got off at Järnvägsgatan and stood under the window from which the picture must have been taken. It was at the edge of what constituted Hedestad’s town centre. It was a two-storey wooden building that housed a video store and Sundström’s Haberdashery, established in 1932 according to a plaque on the front door. He went in and saw that the shop was on two levels; a spiral staircase led to the upper floor.

At the top of the spiral staircase two windows faced the street.

“May I help you?” said an elderly salesman when Blomkvist took out the binder with the photograph. There were only a few people in the shop.

“Well, I just wanted to see where this picture was taken from. Would it be OK if I opened the window for a second?”

The man said yes. Blomkvist could see exactly the spot where Harriet had stood. One of the wooden buildings behind her in the photograph was gone, replaced by an angular brick building. The other wooden building had been a stationery store in 1966; now it was a health food store and tanning salon. Blomkvist closed the window, thanked the man, and apologised for taking up his time.

He crossed the street and stood where Harriet had stood. He had good landmarks between the window of the upper floor of the haberdashery and the door of the tanning salon. He turned his head and looked along Harriet’s line of sight. As far as he could tell, she had been looking towards the corner of the building that housed Sundström’s Haberdashery. It was a perfectly normal corner of a building, where a cross street vanished behind it. What did you see there, Harriet?

Blomkvist put the photograph in his shoulder bag and walked to the park by the station. There he sat in a pavement café and ordered a latte. He suddenly felt shaken.

In English they call it “new evidence,” which has a very different sound from the Swedish term, “new proof material.” He had seen something entirely new, something no-one else had noticed in an investigation that had been marking time for thirty-seven years.

The problem was that he wasn’t sure what value his new information had, if indeed it could have any at all. And yet he felt it was going to prove significant.

The September day when Harriet disappeared had been dramatic in a number of ways. It had been a day of celebration in Hedestad with crowds of several thousand in the streets, young and old. It had been the family’s annual assembly on Hedeby Island. These two events alone represented departures from the daily routine of the area. The crash on the bridge had overshadowed everything else.

Inspector Morell, Henrik Vanger, and everyone else who had brooded about Harriet’s disappearance had focused on the events at Hedeby Island. Morell had even written that he could not rid himself of the suspicion that the accident and Harriet’s disappearance were related. Blomkvist was now convinced that this notion was wrong.

The chain of events had started not on Hedeby Island but in Hedestad several hours earlier. Harriet Vanger had seen something or someone to frighten her and prompt her to go home, go straight to her uncle, who unhappily did not have time to listen to her. Then the accident on the bridge happened. Then the murderer struck.

Blomkvist paused. It was the first time he had consciously formulated the assumption that Harriet had been murdered. He accepted Vanger’s belief. Harriet was dead and he was hunting for a killer.

He went back to the police report. Among all the thousands of pages only a fraction dealt with the events in Hedestad. Harriet had been with three of her classmates, all of whom had been interviewed. They had met at the park by the station at 9:00. One of the girls was going to buy some jeans, and her friends went with her. They had coffee in the EPA department store cafeteria and then went up to the sports field and strolled around among the carnival booths and fishing ponds, where they ran into some other friends from school. At noon they wandered back into town to watch the parade. Just before 2:00 in the afternoon Harriet suddenly told them that she had to go home. They said goodbye at a bus stop near Järnvägsgatan.

None of her friends had noticed anything unusual. One of them was Inger Stenberg, the one who had described Harriet’s transformation over the past year by saying that she had become “impersonal.” She said that Harriet had been taciturn that day, which was usual, and mostly she just followed the others.

Inspector Morell had talked to all of the people who had encountered Harriet that day, even if they had only said hello in the grounds of the family party. A photograph of her was published in the local newspapers while the search was going on. After she went missing, several residents of Hedestad had contacted the police to say that they thought they had seen her during the day of the parade, but no-one had reported anything out of the ordinary.

The next morning Blomkvist found Vanger at his breakfast table.

“You said that the Vanger family still has an interest in the Hedestad Courier.”

“That’s right.”

“I’d like to have access to their photographic archive. From 1966.”

Vanger set down his glass of milk and wiped his upper lip.

“Mikael, what have you discovered?”

He looked the old man straight in the eye.

“Nothing solid. But I think we may have made a mistake about the chain of events.”

He showed Vanger the photograph and told him what he was thinking. Vanger sat saying nothing for a long time.

“If I’m right, we have to look as far as we still can at what happened in Hedestad that day, not just at what happened on Hedeby Island,” Blomkvist said. “I don’t know how to go about it after such a long time, but a lot of photographs must have been taken of the Children’s Day celebrations which were never published. Those are the ones I want to look at.”

Vanger used the telephone in the kitchen. He called Martin, explained what he wanted, and asked who the pictures editor was these days. Within ten minutes the right people had been located and access had been arranged.

The pictures editor of the Hedestad Courier was Madeleine Blomberg, called Maja. She was the first woman pictures editor Blomkvist had met in journalism, where photography was still primarily a male art form.

Since it was Saturday, the newsroom was empty, but Maja Blomberg turned out to live only five minutes away, and she met Blomkvist at the office entrance. She had worked at the Hedestad Courier for most of her life. She started as a proof-reader in 1964, changed to photo-finisher and spent a number of years in the darkroom, while occasionally being sent out as a photographer when the usual resources were insufficient. She had gained the position of editor, earned a full-time post on the picture desk, and ten years ago, when the old pictures editor retired, she took over as head of the department.

Blomkvist asked how the picture archive was arranged.

“To tell you the truth, the archive is rather a mess. Since we got computers and digital photographs, the current archive is on CDs. We’ve had an intern here who spent some time scanning in important older pictures, but only a small percentage of what’s in the stacks have been catalogued. Older pictures are arranged by date in negative folders. They’re either here in the newsroom or in the attic storeroom.”

“I’m interested in photographs taken of the Children’s Day parade in 1966, but also in any photographs that were taken that week.”

Fröken Blomberg gave him a quizzical look.

“You mean the week that Harriet Vanger disappeared?”

“You know the story?”

“You couldn’t work at the Courier your whole life without knowing about it, and when Martin Vanger calls me early in the morning on my day off, I draw my own conclusions. Has something new turned up?”

Blomberg had a nose for news. Blomkvist shook his head with a little smile and gave her his cover story.

“No, and I don’t suppose anyone will ever find the solution to that puzzle. It’s rather confidential, but the fact is that I’m ghostwriting Henrik Vanger’s autobiography. The story of the missing girl is an odd topic, but it’s also a chapter that can’t really be ignored. I’m looking for something that hasn’t been used before that might illustrate that day – of Harriet and her friends.”

Blomberg looked dubious, but the explanation was reasonable and she was not going to question his story, given his role.

A photographer at a newspaper takes between two and ten rolls of film a day. For big events, it can be double that. Each roll contains thirty-six negatives; so it’s not unusual for a local newspaper to accumulate over three hundred-plus images each day, of which only a very few are published. A well-organised department cuts up the rolls of film and places the negatives in six-frame sleeves. A roll takes up about one page in a negative binder. A binder holds about 110 rolls. In a year, about twenty-five binders are filled up. Over the years a huge number of binders is accumulated, which generally lack any commercial value and overflow the shelves in the photographic department. On the other hand, every photographer and pictures department is convinced that the pictures contain a historical documentation of incalculable value, so they never throw anything away.

The Hedestad Courier was founded in 1922, and the pictures department had existed since 1937. The Courier’s attic storeroom contained about 1,200 binders, arranged, as Blomberg said, by date. The negatives from September 1966 were kept in four cheap cardboard storage binders.

“How do we go about this?” Blomkvist said. “I really need to sit at a light table and be able to make copies of anything that might be of interest.”

“We don’t have a darkroom any more. Everything is scanned in. Do you know how to work a negative scanner?”

“Yes, I’ve worked with images and have an Agfa neg. scanner of my own. I work in PhotoShop.”

“Then you use the same equipment we do.”

Blomberg took him on a quick tour of the small office, gave him a chair at a light table, and switched on a computer and scanner. She showed him where the coffee machine was in the canteen area. They agreed that Blomkvist could work by himself, but that he had to call her when he wanted to leave the office so that she could come in and set the alarm system. Then she left him with a cheerful “Have fun.”

The Courier had had two photographers back then. The one who had been on duty that day was Kurt Nylund, whom Blomkvist actually knew. Nylund was in his twenties in 1966. Then he moved to Stockholm and became a famous photographer working both freelance and as an employee of Scanpix Sweden in Marieberg. Blomkvist had crossed paths with Kurt Nylund several times in the nineties, when Millennium had used images from Scanpix. He remembered him as an angular man with thinning hair. On the day of the parade Nylund had used a daylight film, not too fast, one which many news photographers used.

Blomkvist took out the negatives of the photographs by the young Nylund and put them on the light table. With a magnifying glass he studied them frame by frame. Reading negatives is an art form, requiring experience, which Blomkvist lacked. To determine whether the photograph contained information of value he was going to have to scan in each image and examine it on the computer screen. That would take hours. So first he did a quite general survey of the photographs he might be interested in.

He began by running through all the ones that had been taken of the accident. Vanger’s collection was incomplete. The person who had copied the collection – possibly Nylund himself – had left out about thirty photographs that were either blurred or of such poor quality that they were not considered publishable.

Blomkvist switched off the Courier’s computer and plugged the Agfa scanner into his own iBook. He spent two hours scanning in the rest of the images.

One caught his eye at once. Some time between 3:10 and 3:15 p.m., just at the time when Harriet vanished, someone had opened the window in her room. Vanger had tried in vain to find out who it was. Blomkvist had a photograph on his screen that must have been taken at exactly the moment the window was opened. There were a figure and a face, albeit out of focus. He decided that a detailed analysis could wait until he had first scanned all the images.

Then he examined the images of the Children’s Day celebrations. Nylund had put in six rolls, around two hundred shots. There was an endless stream of children with balloons, grown-ups, street life with hot dog vendors, the parade itself, an artist on a stage, and an award presentation of some sort.

Blomkvist decided to scan in the entire collection. Six hours later he had a portfolio of ninety images, but he was going to have to come back.

At 9:00 he called Blomberg, thanked her, and took the bus home to Hedeby Island.

He was back at 9:00 on Sunday morning. The offices were still empty when Blomberg let him in. He had not realised that it was the Whitsuntide holiday weekend, and that there would not be a newspaper until Tuesday. He spent the entire day scanning images. At 6:00 in the evening there were still forty shots left of Children’s Day. Blomkvist had inspected the negatives and decided that close-ups of cute children’s faces or pictures of a painter appearing on stage were simply not germane to his objective. What he had scanned in was the street life and crowds.

Blomkvist spent the Whitsuntide holiday going over the new material. He made two discoveries. The first filled him with dismay. The second made his pulse beat faster.

The first was the face in Harriet Vanger’s window. The photograph had a slight motion blur and was thus excluded from the original set. The photographer had stood on the church hill and sighted towards the bridge. The buildings were in the background. Mikael cropped the image to include the window alone, and then he experimented with adjusting the contrast and increasing the sharpness until he achieved what he thought was the best quality he could get.

The result was a grainy picture with a minimal greyscale that showed a curtain, part of an arm, and a diffuse half-moon-shaped face a little way inside the room.

The face was not Harriet Vanger’s, who had raven-black hair, but a person with lighter hair colour.

It was impossible to discern clear facial features, but he was certain it was a woman; the lighter part of the face continued down to shoulder level and indicated a woman’s flowing hair, and she was wearing light-coloured clothes.

He calculated her height in relation to the window: it was a woman about five foot seven.

He clicked on to other images from behind the accident and one person fitted the description – the twenty-year-old Cecilia Vanger.

Nylund had taken eighteen shots from the window of Sundström’s Haberdashery. Harriet was in seventeen of them.

She and her classmates had arrived at Järnvägsgatan at the same time Nylund had begun taking his pictures. Blomkvist reckoned that the photographs were shot over a period of five minutes. In the first pictures, Harriet and her friends were coming down the street into the frame. In photographs 2–7 they were standing still and watching the parade. Then they had moved about six yards down the street. In the last picture, which may have been taken after some time had passed, the girls had gone.

Blomkvist edited a series of pictures in which he cropped the top half of Harriet and processed them to achieve the best contrast. He put the pictures in a separate folder, opened the Graphic Converter programme, and started the slide show function. The effect was a jerky silent film in which each image was shown for two seconds.

Harriet arrives, image in profile. Harriet stops and looks down at the street. Harriet turns her face towards the street. Harriet opens her mouth to say something to her friend. Harriet laughs. Harriet touches her ear with her left hand. Harriet smiles. Harriet suddenly looks surprised, her face at a 20° angle to the left of the camera. Harriet’s eyes widen and she has stopped smiling. Harriet’s mouth becomes a thin line. Harriet focuses her gaze. In her face can be read… what? Sorrow, shock, fury? Harriet lowers her eyes. Harriet is gone.

Blomkvist played the sequence over and over.

It confirmed with some force the theory he had formulated. Something happened on Järnvägsgatan.

She sees something – someone – on the other side of the street. She reacts with shock. She contacts Vanger for a private conversation which never happens. She vanishes without a trace.

Something happened, but the photographs did not explain what.

At 2:00 on Tuesday morning Blomkvist had coffee and sandwiches at the kitchen bench. He was simultaneously downhearted and exhilarated. Against all expectations he had turned up new evidence. The only problem was that although it shed light on the chain of events it brought him not one iota closer to solving the mystery.

He thought long and hard about what role Cecilia Vanger might have played in the drama. Vanger had relentlessly charted the activities of all persons involved that day, and Cecilia had been no exception. She was living in Uppsala, but she arrived in Hedeby two days before that fateful Saturday. She stayed with Isabella Vanger. She had said that she might possibly have seen Harriet early that morning, but that she had not spoken to her. She had driven into Hedestad on some errand. She had not seen Harriet there, and she came back to Hedeby Island around 1:00, about the time Nylund was taking his pictures on Järnvägsgatan. She changed and at about 2:00 helped to set the table for the banquet that evening.

As an alibi – if that is what it was – it was rather feeble. The times were approximate, especially the matter of when she had got back to Hedeby Island, but Vanger had not found anything to indicate that she was lying. Cecilia Vanger was one of those people in the family that Vanger liked best. And she had been his lover. How could he be objective? He certainly could not imagine her as a murderer.

Now a hitherto unknown photograph was telling him that she had lied when she said that she had never been in Harriet’s room that day. Blomkvist wrestled with the possible significance of that.

And if you lied about that, what else did you lie about?

He went through in his mind what he knew about Cecilia. An introverted person obviously affected by her past. Lived alone, had no sex life, had difficulty getting close to people. Kept her distance, and when she let loose there was no restraint. She chose a stranger for a lover. Had said that she ended it because she was unable to live with the idea that he would go from her life as unexpectedly as he had appeared. Blomkvist supposed that the reason she had dared to start an affair with him was precisely that he was only there for a while. She did not have to be afraid he would change her life in any long-term way.

He sighed and pushed the amateur psychology aside.

He made the second discovery during the night. The key to the mystery was what it was that Harriet had seen in Hedestad. He would never find that out unless he could invent a time machine and stand behind her, looking over her shoulder.

And then he had a thought. He slapped his forehead and opened his iBook. He clicked on to the uncropped images in the series on Järnvägsgatan and… there!

Behind Harriet and about a yard to her right were a young couple, the man in a striped sweater and the woman in a pale jacket. She was holding a camera. When Blomkvist enlarged the image it looked to be a Kodak Instamatic with flash – a cheap holiday camera for people who know nothing about photography.

The woman was holding the camera at chin level. Then she raised it and took a picture of the clowns, just as Harriet’s expression changed.

Blomkvist compared the camera’s position with Harriet’s line of vision. The woman had taken a picture of exactly what Harriet was looking at.

His heart was beating hard. He leaned back and plucked his cigarettes out of his breast pocket. Someone had taken a picture. How would he identify and find the woman? Could he get hold of her snapshot? Had the roll ever been developed, and if so did the prints still exist?

He opened the folder with Nylund’s photographs from the crowd. For the next couple of hours he enlarged each one and scrutinised it one square inch at a time. He did not see the couple again until the very last pictures. Nylund had photographed another clown with balloons in his hand posing in front of his camera and laughing heartily. The photographs were taken in a car park by the entrance to the sports field where the celebration was being held. It must have been after 2:00 in the afternoon. Right after that Nylund had received the alarm about the crash on the bridge and brought his portraits of Children’s Day to a rapid close.

The woman was almost hidden, but the man in the striped sweater was clearly visible, in profile. He had keys in his hand and was bending to open a car door. The focus was on the clown in the foreground, and the car was a bit fuzzy. The number plate was partly hidden but he could see that it started with “AC3.”

Number plates in the sixties began with a code indicating the county, and as a child Blomkvist had memorised the county codes. “AC” was for Västerbotten.

Then he spotted something else. On the back window was a sticker of some sort. He zoomed in, but the text dissolved in a blur. He cropped out the sticker and adjusted the contrast and sharpness. It took him a while. He still could not read the words, but he attempted to figure out what the letters were, based on the fuzzy shapes. Many letters looked surprisingly similar. An “O” could be mistaken for a “D,” a “B” for an “E,” and so on. After working with a pen and paper and excluding certain letters, he was left with an unreadable text, in one line.

R JÖ NI K RIFA RIK

He stared at the image until his eyes began to water. Then he saw the text. “NORSJÖ SNICKERIFABRIK,” followed by figures in a smaller size that were utterly impossible to read, probably a telephone number.

CHAPTER 17 Wednesday, June 11 – Saturday, June 14

Blomkvist got help with the third jigsaw piece from an unexpected quarter.

After working on the images practically all night he slept heavily until well into the afternoon. He awoke with a headache, took a shower, and walked to Susanne’s for breakfast. He ought to have gone to see Vanger and report what he had discovered. Instead, when he came back, he went to Cecilia’s house and knocked on the door. He needed to ask her why she had lied to him about being in Harriet’s room. No-one came to the door.

He was just leaving when he heard: “Your whore isn’t home.”

Gollum had emerged from his cave. He was once tall, almost six foot six, but now so stooped with age that his eyes were level with Blomkvist’s. His face and neck were splotched with dark liver spots. He was in his pyjamas and a brown dressing gown, leaning on a cane. He looked like a Central Casting nasty old man.

“What did you say?”

“I said that your whore isn’t home.”

Blomkvist stepped so close that he was almost nose to nose with Harald Vanger.

“You’re talking about your own daughter, you fucking pig.”

“I’m not the one who comes sneaking over here in the night,” Harald said with a toothless smile. He smelled foul. Blomkvist sidestepped him and went down the road without looking back. He found Vanger in his office.

“I’ve just had the pleasure of meeting your brother,” Mikael said.

“Harald? Well, well, so, he’s ventured out. He does that a couple of times a year.”

“I was knocking on Cecilia’s door when this voice behind me said, quote, Your whore isn’t home, unquote.”

“That sounds like Harald,” Vanger said calmly.

“He called his own daughter a whore, for God’s sake.”

“He’s been doing that for years. That’s why they don’t talk much.”

“Why does he call her that?”

“Cecilia lost her virginity when she was twenty-one. It happened here in Hedestad after a summer romance, the year after Harriet disappeared.”

“And?”

“The man she fell in love with was called Peter Samuelsson. He was a financial assistant at the Vanger Corporation. A bright boy. Today he works for ABB. The kind of man I would have been proud to have as my son-in-law if she were my daughter. Harald measured his skull or checked his family tree or something and discovered that he was one-quarter Jewish.”

“Good Lord.”

“He’s called her a whore ever since.”

“He knew that Cecilia and I have…”

“Everybody in the village probably knows that with the possible exception of Isabella, because no-one in his right mind would tell her anything, and thank heavens she’s nice enough to go to bed at 8:00 every night. Harald on the other hand has presumably been following every step you take.”

Blomkvist sat down, looking foolish.

“You mean that everyone knows…”

“Of course.”

“And you don’t mind?”

“My dear Mikael, it’s really none of my business.”

“Where is Cecilia?”

“The school term is over. She went to London on Saturday to visit her sister, and after that she’s having a holiday in… hmmm, I think it was Florida. She’ll be back in about a month.”

Blomkvist felt even more foolish.

“We’ve sort of put our relationship on hold for a while.”

“So I understand, but it’s still none of my business. How’s your work coming along?”

Blomkvist poured himself a cup of coffee from Vanger’s thermos.

“I think I’ve found some new material.”

He took his iBook out of his shoulder bag and scrolled through the series of images showing how Harriet had reacted on Järnvägsgatan. He explained how he had found the other spectators with the camera and their car with the Norsjö Carpentry Shop sign. When he was finished Vanger wanted to see all the pictures again. When he looked up from the computer his face was grey. Blomkvist was suddenly alarmed and put a hand on Vanger’s shoulder. Vanger waved him away and sat in silence for a while.

“You’ve done what I thought was impossible. You’ve turned up something completely new. What are you going to do next?”

“I am going to look for that snapshot, if it still exists.”

He did not mention the face in the window.

Harald Vanger had gone back to his cave by the time Blomkvist came out. When he turned the corner he found someone quite different sitting on the porch of his cottage, reading a newspaper. For a fraction of a second he thought it was Cecilia, but the dark-haired girl on the porch was his daughter.

“Hi, Pappa,” Pernilla Abrahamsson said.

He gave his daughter a long hug.

“Where in the world did you spring from?”

“From home, of course. I’m on my way to Skellefteå. Can I stay the night?”

“Of course you can, but how did you get here?”

“Mamma knew where you were. And I asked at the café if they knew where you were staying. The woman told me exactly how to get here. Are you glad to see me?”

“Certainly I am. Come in. You should have given me some warning so I could buy some good food or something.”

“I stopped on impulse. I wanted to welcome you home from prison, but you never called.”

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s OK. Mamma told me how you’re always getting lost in your own thoughts.”

“Is that what she says about me?”

“More or less. But it doesn’t matter. I still love you.”

“I love you too, but you know…”

“I know. I’m pretty grown-up by now.”

He made tea and put out pastries.

What his daughter had said was true. She was most assuredly no longer a little girl; she was almost seventeen, practically a grown woman. He had to learn to stop treating her like a child.

“So, how was it?”

“How was what?”

“Prison.”

He laughed. “Would you believe me if I said that it was like having a paid holiday with all the time you wanted for thinking and writing?”

“I would. I don’t suppose there’s much difference between a prison and a cloister, and people have always gone to cloisters for self-reflection.”

“Well, there you go. I hope it hasn’t been a problem for you, your father being a gaolbird.”

“Not at all. I’m proud of you, and I never miss a chance to brag about the fact that you went to prison for what you believe in.”

“Believe in?”

“I saw Erika Berger on TV.”

“Pernilla, I’m not innocent. I’m sorry that I haven’t talked to you about what happened, but I wasn’t unfairly sentenced. The court made their decision based on what they were told during the trial.”

“But you never told your side of the story.”

“No, because it turned out that I didn’t have proof.”

“OK. Then answer me one question: is Wennerström a scoundrel or isn’t he?”

“He’s one of the blackest scoundrels I’ve ever dealt with.”

“That’s good enough for me. I’ve got a present for you.”

She took a package out of her bag. He opened it and found a CD, The Best of Eurythmics. She knew it was one of his favourite old bands. He put it in his iBook, and they listened to “Sweet Dreams” together.

“Why are you going to Skellefteå?”

“Bible school at a summer camp with a congregation called the Light of Life,” Pernilla said, as if it were the most obvious choice in the world.

Blomkvist felt a cold fire run down the back of his neck. He realised how alike his daughter and Harriet Vanger were. Pernilla was sixteen, exactly the age Harriet was when she disappeared. Both had absent fathers. Both were attracted to the religious fanaticism of strange sects – Harriet to the Pentecostals and Pernilla to an offshoot of something that was just about as crackpot as the Word of Life.

He did not know how he should handle his daughter’s new interest in religion. He was afraid of encroaching on her right to decide for herself. At the same time, the Light of Life was most definitely a sect of the type that he would not hesitate to lambast in Millennium. He would take the first opportunity to discuss this matter with her mother.

Pernilla slept in his bed while he wrapped himself in blankets on the bench in the kitchen. He woke with a crick in his neck and aching muscles. Pernilla was eager to get going, so he made breakfast and went with her to the station. They had a little time, so they bought coffee at the mini-mart and sat down on a bench at the end of the platform, chatting about all sorts of things. Until she said: “You don’t like the idea that I’m going to Skellefteå, do you?”

He was non-plussed.

“It’s not dangerous. But you’re not a Christian, are you?”

“Well, I’m not a good Christian, at any rate.”

“You don’t believe in God?”

“No, I don’t believe in God, but I respect the fact that you do. Everyone has to have something to believe in.”

When her train arrived, they gave each other a long hug until Pernilla had to get on board. With one foot on the step, she turned.

“Pappa, I’m not going to proselytise. It doesn’t matter to me what you believe, and I’ll always love you. But I think you should continue your Bible studies.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I saw the quotes you had on the wall,” she said. “But why so gloomy and neurotic? Kisses. See you later.”

She waved and was gone. He stood on the platform, baffled, watching the train pull away. Not until it vanished around the bend did the meaning sink in.

Mikael hurried out of the station. It would be almost an hour before the next bus left. He was too much on edge to wait that long. He ran to the taxi stand and found Hussein with the Norrland accent.

Ten minutes later he was in his office. He had taped the note above his desk.

Magda – 32016

Sara – 32109

R.J. – 30112

R.L. – 32027

Mari – 32018

He looked around the room. Then he realised where he’d be able to find a Bible. He took the note with him, searched for the keys, which he had left in a bowl on the windowsill, and jogged the whole way to Gottfried’s cabin. His hands were practically shaking as he took Harriet’s Bible down from its shelf.

She had not written down telephone numbers. The figures indicated the chapter and verse in Leviticus, the third book of the Pentateuch.

He went out and sat on the porch. Each verse had been underlined in Harriet’s Bible. He lit a cigarette and listened to the singing of birds nearby.

He had the numbers. But he didn’t have the names. Magda, Sara, Mari, R.J., and R.L.

All of a sudden an abyss opened as Mikael’s brain made an intuitive leap. He remembered the fire victim in Hedestad that Inspector Morell had told him about. The Rebecka case, which occurred in the late forties. The girl was raped and then killed by having her head placed on smouldering coals. “And he shall cut it into pieces, with its head and its fat, and the priest shall lay them in order upon the wood that is on the fire upon the altar.” Rebecka. R.J. What was her last name?

What in God’s name had Harriet gotten herself mixed up in?

Vanger had been taken ill. He was in bed when Blomkvist knocked on his door. But Anna agreed to let him in, saying he could visit the old man for a few minutes.

“A summer cold,” Henrik explained, sniffling. “What did you want?”

“I have a question.”

“Yes?”

“Did you ever hear of a murder that took place in Hedestad sometime in the forties? A girl called Rebecka – her head was put on a fire.”

“Rebecka Jacobsson,” Henrik said without a second’s hesitation. “That’s a name I’ll never forget, although I haven’t heard it mentioned in years.”

“But you know about the murder?”

“Indeed I do. Rebecka Jacobsson was twenty-three or twenty-four when she died. That must have been in… It was in 1949. There was a tremendous hue and cry, I had a small part in it myself.”

“You did?”

“Oh yes. Rebecka was on our clerical staff, a popular girl and very attractive. But why are you asking?”

“I’m not sure, Henrik, but I may be on to something. I’m going to have to think this through.”

“Are you suggesting that there’s a connection between Harriet and Rebecka? There were… almost seventeen years separating the two.”

“Let me do my thinking and I’ll come back and see you tomorrow if you’re feeling better.”

Blomkvist did not see Vanger the following day. Just before 1:00 a.m. he was still at the kitchen table, reading Harriet’s Bible, when he heard the sound of a car making its way at high speed across the bridge. He looked out the window and saw the flashing blue lights of an ambulance.

Filled with foreboding, he ran outside. The ambulance parked by Vanger’s house. On the ground floor all the lights were on. He dashed up the porch steps in two bounds and found a shaken Anna in the hall.

“It’s his heart,” she said. “He woke me a little while ago, complaining of pains in his chest. Then he collapsed.”

Blomkvist put his arms around the housekeeper, and he was still there when the medics came out with an unconscious Vanger on a stretcher. Martin Vanger, looking decidedly stressed, walked behind. He had been in bed when Anna called. His bare feet were stuck in a pair of slippers, and he hadn’t zipped his fly. He gave Mikael a brief greeting and then turned to Anna.

“I’ll go with him to the hospital. Call Birger and see if you can reach Cecilia in London in the morning,” he said. “And tell Dirch.”

“I can go to Frode’s house,” Blomkvist said. Anna nodded gratefully.

It took several minutes before a sleepy Frode answered Blomkvist’s ring at his door.

“I have bad news, Dirch. Henrik has been taken to the hospital. It seems to be a heart attack. Martin wanted me to tell you.”

“Good Lord,” Frode said. He glanced at his watch. “It’s Friday the thirteenth,” he said.

Not until the next morning, after he’d had a brief talk with Dirch Frode on his mobile and been assured that Vanger was still alive, did he call Berger with the news that Millennium’s new partner had been taken to the hospital with a heart attack. Inevitably, the news was received with gloom and anxiety.

Late in the evening Frode came to see him and give him the details about Henrik Vanger’s condition.

“He’s alive, but he’s not doing well. He had a serious heart attack, and he’s also suffering from an infection.”

“Have you seen him?”

“No. He’s in intensive care. Martin and Birger are sitting with him.”

“What are his chances?”

Frode waved a hand back and forth.

“He survived the attack, and that’s a good sign. Henrik is in excellent condition, but he’s old. We’ll just have to wait.”

They sat in silence, deep in thought. Blomkvist made coffee. Frode looked wretchedly unhappy.

“I need to ask you about what’s going to happen now,” Blomkvist said.

Frode looked up.

“The conditions of your employment don’t change. They’re stipulated in a contract that runs until the end of this year, whether Henrik lives or dies. You don’t have to worry.”

“No, that’s not what I meant. I’m wondering who I report to in his absence.”

Frode sighed.

“Mikael, you know as well as I do that this whole story about Harriet is just a pastime for Henrik.”

“Don’t say that, Dirch.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve found new evidence,” Blomkvist said. “I told Henrik about some of it yesterday. I’m very much afraid that it may have helped to bring on his heart attack.”

Frode looked at him with a strange expression.

“You’re joking, you must be…”

Blomkvist shook his head.

“Over the past few days I’ve found significant material about Harriet’s disappearance. What I’m worried about is that we never discussed who I should report to if Henrik is no longer here.”

“You report to me.”

“OK. I have to go on with this. Can I put you in the picture right now?”

Blomkvist described what he had found as concisely as possible, and he showed Frode the series of pictures from Järnvägsgatan. Then he explained how his own daughter had unlocked the mystery of the names in the date book. Finally, he proposed the connection, as he had for Vanger the day before, with the murder of Rebecka Jacobsson in 1949, R.J.

The only thing he kept to himself was Cecilia Vanger’s face in Harriet’s window. He had to talk to her before he put her in a position where she might be suspected of something.

Frode’s brow was creased with concern.

“You really think that the murder of Rebecka has something to do with Harriet’s disappearance?”

“It seems unlikely, I agree, but the fact remains that Harriet wrote the initials R.J. in her date book next to the reference to the Old Testament law about burnt offerings. Rebecka Jacobsson was burned to death. One connection with the Vanger family is inescapable – she worked for the corporation.”

“But what is the connection with Harriet?”

“I don’t know yet. But I want to find out. I will tell you everything I would have told Henrik. You have to make the decisions for him.”

“Perhaps we ought to inform the police.”

“No. At least not without Henrik’s blessing. The statute of limitations has long since run out in the case of Rebecka, and the police investigation was closed. They’re not going to reopen an investigation fifty-four years later.”

“All right. What are you going to do?”

Blomkvist paced a lap around the kitchen.

“First, I want to follow up the photograph lead. If we could see what it was that Harriet saw… it might be the key. I need a car to go to Norsjö and follow that lead, wherever it takes me. And also, I want to research each of the Leviticus verses. We have one connection to one murder. We have four verses, possibly four other clues. To do this… I need some help.”

“What kind of help?”

“I really need a research assistant with the patience to go through old newspaper archives to find ‘Magda’ and ‘Sara’ and the other names. If I’m right in thinking that Rebecka wasn’t the only victim.”

“You mean you want to let someone else in on…”

“There’s a lot of work that has to be done and in a hurry. If I were a police officer involved in an active investigation, I could divide up the hours and resources and get people to dig for me. I need a professional who knows archive work and who can be trusted.”

“I understand… Actually I believe I know of an expert researcher,” said Frode, and before he could stop himself, he added, “She was the one who did the background investigation on you.”

“Who did what?” Blomkvist said.

“I was thinking out loud,” Frode said. “It’s nothing.” I’m getting old, he thought.

“You had someone do an investigation on me?”

“It’s nothing dramatic, Mikael. We wanted to hire you, and we just did a check on what sort of person you were.”

“So that’s why Henrik always seems to know exactly where he has me. How thorough was this investigation?”

“It was quite thorough.”

“Did it look into Millennium’s problems?”

Frode shrugged. “It had a bearing.”

Blomkvist lit a cigarette. It was his fifth of the day.

“A written report?”

“Mikael, it’s nothing to get worked up about.”

“I want to read the report,” he said.

“Oh come on, there’s nothing out of the ordinary about this. We wanted to check up on you before we hired you.”

“I want to read the report,” Mikael repeated.

“I couldn’t authorise that.”

“Really? Then here’s what I say to you: either I have that report in my hands within the hour, or I quit. I’ll take the evening train back to Stockholm. Where is the report?”

The two men eyed each other for several seconds. Then Frode sighed and looked away.

“In my office, at home.”

Frode had put up a terrible fuss. It was not until 6:00 that evening that Blomkvist had Lisbeth Salander’s report in his hand. It was almost eighty pages long, plus dozens of photocopied articles, certificates, and other records of the details of his life and career.

It was a strange experience to read about himself in what was part biography and part intelligence report. He was increasingly astonished at how detailed the report was. Salander had dug up facts that he thought had been long buried in the compost of history. She had dug up his youthful relationship with a woman who had been a flaming Syndicalist and who was now a politician. Who in the world had she talked to? She had found his rock band Bootstrap, which surely no-one today would remember. She had scrutinised his finances down to the last öre. How the hell had she done it?

As a journalist, Blomkvist had spent many years hunting down information about people, and he could judge the quality of the work from a purely professional standpoint. There was no doubt that this Salander was one hell of an investigator. He doubted that even he could have produced a comparable report on any individual completely unknown to him.

It also dawned on him that there had never been any reason for him and Berger to keep their distance in Vanger’s presence; he already knew of their long-standing relationship. The report came up with a disturbingly precise appraisal of Millennium’s financial position; Vanger knew just how shaky things were when he first contacted Berger. What sort of game was he playing?

The Wennerström affair was merely summarised, but whoever wrote the report had obviously been a spectator in court during part of the trial. The report questioned Blomkvist’s refusal to comment during the trial. Smart woman.

The next second Mikael straightened up, hardly able to believe his eyes. Salander had written a brief passage giving her assessment of what would happen after the trial. She had reproduced virtually word for word the press release that he and Berger had submitted after he resigned as publisher of Millennium.

But Salander had used his original wording. He glanced again at the cover of the report. It was dated three days before Blomkvist was sentenced. That was impossible. The press release existed then in only one place in the whole world. In Blomkvist’s computer. In his iBook, not on his computer at the office. The text was never printed out. Not even Berger had a copy, although they had talked about the subject.

Blomkvist put down Salander’s report. He put on his jacket and went out into the night, which was very bright one week before Midsummer. He walked along the shore of the sound, past Cecilia Vanger’s property and the luxurious motorboat below Martin Vanger’s villa. He walked slowly, pondering as he went. Finally he sat on a rock and looked at the flashing buoy lights in Hedestad Bay. There was only one conclusion.

“You’ve been in my computer, Fröken Salander,” he said aloud. “You’re a fucking hacker.”

CHAPTER 18 Wednesday, June 18

Salander awoke with a start from a dreamless slumber. She felt faintly sick. She did not have to turn her head to know that Mimmi had left already for work, but her scent still lingered in the stuffy air of the bedroom. Salander had drunk too many beers the night before with the Evil Fingers at the Mill. Mimmi had turned up not long before closing time and come home with her and into bed.

Salander – unlike Mimmi – had never thought of herself as a lesbian. She had never brooded over whether she was straight, gay, or even bisexual. She did not give a damn about labels, did not see that it was anyone else’s business whom she spent her nights with. If she had to choose, she preferred guys – and they were in the lead, statistically speaking. The only problem was finding a guy who was not a jerk and one who was also good in bed; Mimmi was a sweet compromise, and she turned Salander on. They had met in a beer tent at the Pride Festival a year ago, and Mimmi was the only person that Salander had introduced to the Evil Fingers. But it was still just a casual affair for both of them. It was nice lying close to Mimmi’s warm, soft body, and Salander did not mind waking up with her and their having breakfast together.

Her clock said it was 9:30, and she was wondering what could have woken her when the doorbell rang again. She sat up in surprise. No-one had ever rung her doorbell at this hour. Very few people rang her doorbell at all. She wrapped a sheet around her and walked unsteadily to the hall to open the door. She stared straight into the eyes of Mikael Blomkvist, felt panic race through her body, and took a step back.

“Good morning, Fröken Salander,” he greeted her cheerfully. “It was a late night, I see. Can I come in?”

Without waiting for an answer, he walked in, closing the door behind him. He regarded with curiosity the pile of clothes on the hall floor and the rampart of bags filled with newspapers; then he peered through the bedroom door while Salander’s world started spinning in the wrong direction. How? What? Who? Blomkvist looked at her bewilderment with amusement.

“I assumed that you would not have had breakfast yet, so I brought some filled bagels with me. I got one with roast beef, one with turkey and Dijon mustard, and one vegetarian with avocado, not knowing your preference.” He marched into her kitchen and started rinsing her coffeemaker. “Where do you keep coffee?” he said. Salander stood in the hall as if frozen until she heard the water running out of the tap. She took three quick strides.

“Stop! Stop at once!” She realised that she was shouting and lowered her voice. “Damn it all, you can’t come barging in here as if you owned the place. We don’t even know each other.”

Blomkvist paused, holding a jug and turned to look at her.

“Wrong! You know me better than almost anyone else does. Isn’t that so?”

He turned his back on her and poured the water into the machine. Then he started opening her cupboards in search of coffee. “Speaking of which, I know how you do it. I know your secrets.”

Salander shut her eyes, wishing that the floor would stop pitching under her feet. She was in a state of mental paralysis. She was hung over. This situation was unreal, and her brain was refusing to function. Never had she met one of her subjects face to face. He knows where I live! He was standing in her kitchen. This was impossible. It was outrageous. He knows who I am!

She felt the sheet slipping, and she pulled it tighter around her. He said something, but at first she didn’t understand him. “We have to talk,” he said again. “But I think you’d better take a shower first.”

She tried to speak sensibly. “You listen to me – if you’re thinking of making trouble, I’m not the one you should be talking to. I was just doing a job. You should talk to my boss.”

He held up his hands. A universal sign of peace, or I have no weapon.

“I’ve already talked to Armansky. By the way, he wants you to ring him – you didn’t answer his call last night.”

She did not sense any threat, but she still stepped back a pace when he came closer, took her arm and escorted her to the bathroom door. She disliked having anyone touch her without her leave.

“I don’t want to make trouble,” he said. “But I’m quite anxious to talk to you. After you’re awake, that is. The coffee will be ready by the time you put on some clothes. First, a shower. Vamoose!”

Passively she obeyed. Lisbeth Salander is never passive, she thought.

She leaned against the bathroom door and struggled to collect her thoughts. She was more shaken than she would have thought possible. Gradually she realised that a shower was not only good advice but a necessity after the tumult of the night. When she was done, she slipped into her bedroom and put on jeans, and a T-shirt with the slogan ARMAGEDDON WAS YESTERDAY – TODAY WE HAVE A SERIOUS PROBLEM.

After pausing for a second, she searched through her leather jacket that was slung over a chair. She took the taser out of the pocket, checked to see that it was loaded, and stuck it in the back pocket of her jeans. The smell of coffee was spreading through the apartment. She took a deep breath and went back to the kitchen.

“Do you never clean up?” he said.

He had filled the sink with dirty dishes and ashtrays; he had put the old milk cartons into a rubbish sack and cleared the table of five weeks of newspapers; he had washed the table clean and put out mugs and – he wasn’t joking after all – bagels. OK, let’s see where this is heading. She sat down opposite him.

“You didn’t answer my question. Roast beef, turkey, or vegetarian?”

“Roast beef.”

“Then I’ll take the turkey.”

They ate in silence, scrutinising each other. When she finished her bagel, she also ate half of the vegetarian one. She picked up a crumpled pack of cigarettes from the windowsill and dug one out.

He broke the silence. “I may not be as good as you at investigations, but at least I’ve found out that you’re not a vegetarian or – as Herr Frode thought – anorexic. I’ll include that information in my report.”

Salander stared at him, but he looked so amused that she gave him a crooked smile. The situation was beyond all rhyme or reason. She sipped her coffee. He had kind eyes. She decided that whatever else he might be, he did not seem to be a malicious person. And there was nothing in the PI she had done that would indicate he was a vicious bastard who abused his girlfriends or anything like that. She reminded herself that she was the one who knew everything. Knowledge is power.

“What are you grinning at?” she said.

“I’m sorry. I had not in fact planned to make my entrance in this way. I didn’t mean to alarm you. But you should have seen your face when you opened the door. It was priceless.”

Silence. To her surprise, Salander found his uninvited intrusion acceptable – well, at least not unpleasant.

“You’ll have to think of it as my revenge for your poking around in my personal life,” he said. “Are you frightened?”

“Not the least bit,” Salander said.

“Good. I’m not here to make trouble for you.”

“If you even try to hurt me I’ll have to do you an injury. You’ll be sorry.”

Blomkvist studied her. She was barely four foot eleven and did not look as though she could put up much resistance if he were an assailant who had forced his way into her apartment. But her eyes were expressionless and calm.

“Well, that won’t be necessary,” he said at last. “I only need to talk to you. If you want me to leave, all you have to do is say so. It’s funny but… oh, nothing…”

“What?”

“This may sound crazy, but four days ago I didn’t even know you existed. Then I read your analysis of me.” He searched through his shoulder bag and brought out the report. “It was not entertaining reading.”

He looked out of the kitchen window for a while. “Could I bum a cigarette?” She slid the pack across the table.

“You said before that we don’t know each other, and I said that yes, we do.” He pointed at the report. “I can’t compete with you. I’ve only done a rapid routine check, to get your address and date of birth, stuff like that. But you certainly know a great deal about me. Much of which is private, dammit, things that only my closest friends know. And now here I am, sitting in your kitchen and eating bagels with you. We have known each other half an hour, but I have the feeling that we’ve been friends for years. Does that make sense to you?”

She nodded.

“You have beautiful eyes,” he said.

“You have nice eyes yourself,” she said.

Long silence.

“Why are you here?” she said.

Kalle Blomkvist – she remembered his nickname and suppressed the impulse to say it out loud – suddenly looked serious. He also looked very tired. The self-confidence that he had shown when he first walked into her apartment was now gone. The clowning was over, or at least had been put aside. She felt him studying her closely.

Salander felt that her composure was barely skin-deep and that she really wasn’t in complete control of her nerves. This totally unlooked-for visit had shaken her in a way that she had never experienced in connection with her work. Her bread and butter was spying on people. In fact she had never thought of what she did for Armansky as a real job; she thought of it more as a complicated pastime, a sort of hobby.

The truth was that she enjoyed digging into the lives of other people and exposing the secrets they were trying to hide. She had been doing it, in one form or another, for as long as she could remember. And she was still doing it today, not only when Armansky gave her an assignment, but sometimes for the sheer fun of it. It gave her a kick. It was like a complicated computer game, except that it dealt with real live people. And now one of her hobbies was sitting right here in her kitchen, feeding her bagels. It was totally absurd.

“I have a fascinating problem,” Blomkvist said. “Tell me this, when you were doing your research on me for Herr Frode, did you have any idea what it was going to be used for?”

“No.”

“The purpose was to find out all that information about me because Frode, or rather his employer, wanted to give me a freelance job.”

“I see.”

He gave her a faint smile.

“One of these days you and I should have a discussion about the ethics of snooping into other people’s lives. But right now I have a different problem. The job I was offered, and which inexplicably I agreed to do, is without doubt the most bizarre assignment I’ve ever undertaken. Before I say more I need to be able to trust you, Lisbeth.”

“What do you mean?”

“Armansky tells me you’re 100 percent reliable. But I still want to ask you the question. Can I tell you confidential things without your telling them to anyone else, by any means, ever?”

“Wait a minute. You’ve talked to Dragan? Is he the one who sent you here?” I’m going to kill you, you fucking stupid Armenian.

“Not exactly. You’re not the only one who can find out someone’s address; I did that all on my own. I looked you up in the national registry. There are three Lisbeth Salanders, and the other two weren’t a good match. But I had a long talk with Armansky yesterday. He too thought that I wanted to make trouble over your ferreting around in my private life. In the end I convinced him that I had a legitimate purpose.”

“Which is what?”

“As I told you, Frode’s employer hired me to do a job. I’ve reached a point where I need a skilled researcher. Frode told me about you and said that you were pretty good. He hadn’t meant to identify you, it just slipped out. I explained to Armansky what I wanted. He OK’d the whole thing and tried to call you. And here I am. Call him if you want.”

It took Salander a minute to find her mobile among the clothes that Mimmi had pulled off her. Blomkvist watched her embarrassed search with interest as he patrolled the apartment. All her furniture seemed to be strays. She had a state-of-the-art PowerBook on an apology for a desk in the living room. She had a CD player on a shelf. Her CD collection was a pitiful total of ten CDs by groups he had never heard of, and the musicians on the covers looked like vampires from outer space. Music was probably not her big interest.

Salander saw that Armansky had called her seven times the night before and twice this morning. She punched in his number while Blomkvist leaned against the door frame and listened to the conversation.

“It’s me… sorry… yes… it was turned off… I know, he wants to hire me… no, he’s standing in the middle of my fucking living room, for Christ’s sake…” She raised her voice. “Dragan, I’m hung over and my head hurts, so please, no games, did you OK this job or not?… Thanks.”

Salander looked through the door to the living room at Blomkvist pulling out CDs and taking books off the bookshelf. He had just found a brown pill bottle that was missing its label, and he was holding it up to the light. He was about to unscrew the top, so she reached out and took the bottle from him. She went back to the kitchen and sat down on a chair, massaging her forehead until he joined her.

“The rules are simple,” she said. “Nothing that you discuss with me or with Armansky will be shared with anyone at all. There will be a contract which states that Milton Security pledges confidentiality. I want to know what the job is about before I decide whether I want to work for you or not. That also means that I agree to keep to myself everything you tell me, whether I take the job or not, provided that you’re not conducting any sort of serious criminal activity. In which case, I’ll report it to Dragan, who in turn will report it to the police.”

“Fine.” He hesitated. “Armansky may not be completely aware of what I want to hire you for…”

“Some historical research, he said.”

“Well, yes, that’s right. I want you to help me to identify a murderer.”

It took Blomkvist an hour to explain all the intricate details in the Harriet Vanger case. He left nothing out. He had Frode’s permission to hire her, and to do that he had to be able to trust her completely.

He told her everything about Cecilia Vanger and that he had found her face in Harriet’s window. He gave Salander as good a description of her character as he could. She had moved high up on the list of suspects, his list. But he was still far from believing that she could be in any way associated with a murderer who was active when she was still a young woman.

He gave Salander a copy of the list in the date book: “Magda – 32016; Sara – 32109; R.J. – 30112; R.L. – 32027; Mari – 32018.” And he gave her a copy of the verses from Leviticus.

“What do you want me to do?”

“I’ve identified the R.J., Rebecka Jacobsson.” He told her what the five-figure numbers stood for. “If I’m right, then we’re going to find four more victims – Magda, Sara, Mari, and R.L.”

“You think they’re all murdered?”

“What I think is that we are looking for someone who – if the other numbers and initials also prove to be shorthand for four more killings – is a murderer who was active in the fifties and maybe also in the sixties. And who is in some way linked to Harriet Vanger. I’ve gone through back issues of the Hedestad Courier. Rebecka’s murder is the only grotesque crime that I could find with a connection to Hedestad. I want you to keep digging, all over Sweden if necessary, until you make sense of the other names and verses.”

Salander thought in expressionless silence for such a long time that Blomkvist began to grow impatient. He was wondering whether he had chosen the wrong person when she at last raised her head.

“I’ll take the job. But first you have to sign a contract with Armansky.”

Armansky printed out the contract that Blomkvist would take back to Hedestad for Frode’s signature. When he returned to Salander’s office, he saw how she and Blomkvist were leaning over her PowerBook. He had his hand on her shoulder – he was touching her – and pointing. Armansky paused in the corridor.

Blomkvist said something that seemed to surprise Salander. Then she laughed out loud.

Armansky had never once heard her laugh before, and for years he had been trying to win her trust. Blomkvist had known her for five minutes and she was practically giggling with him. He felt such a loathing for Blomkvist at that moment that he surprised himself. He cleared his throat as he stood in the doorway and put down the folder with the contract.

Blomkvist paid a quick visit to the Millennium office in the afternoon. It was his first time back. It felt very odd to be running up those familiar stairs. They had not changed the code on the door, and he was able to slip in unnoticed and stand for a moment, looking around.

Millennium’s offices were arranged in an L shape. The entry was a hall that took up a lot of space without being able to be put to much use. There were two sofas there, so it was by way of being a reception area. Beyond was a lunchroom kitchenette, then cloakroom/toilets, and two storage rooms with bookshelves and filing cabinets. There was also a desk for an intern. To the right of the entry was the glass wall of Malm’s studio, which took up about 500 square feet, with its own entrance from the landing. To the left was the editorial office, encompassing about 350 square feet, with the windows facing Götgatan.

Berger had designed everything, putting in glass partitions to make separate quarters for three of the employees and an open plan for the others. She had taken the largest room at the very back for herself, and given Blomkvist his own room at the opposite end. It was the only room that you could look into from the entry. No-one had moved into it, it seemed.

The third room was slightly apart from the others, and it was occupied by Sonny Magnusson, who had been for several years Millennium’s most successful advertising salesman. Berger had handpicked him; she offered him a modest salary and a commission. Over the past year, it had not made any difference how energetic he was as a salesman, their advertising income had taken a beating and Magnusson’s income with it. But instead of looking elsewhere, he had tightened his belt and loyally stayed put. Unlike me, who caused the whole landslide, Blomkvist thought.

He gathered his courage and walked into the office. It was almost deserted. He could see Berger at her desk, telephone pressed to her ear. Monika Nilsson was at her desk, an experienced general reporter specialising in political coverage; she could be the most jaded cynic he had ever met. She’d been at Millennium for nine years and was thriving. Henry Cortez was the youngest employee on the editorial staff. He had come as an intern straight out of JMK two years ago, saying that he wanted to work at Millennium and nowhere else. Berger had no budget to hire him, but she offered him a desk in a corner and soon took him on as a permanent dogsbody, and anon as a staff reporter.

Both uttered cries of delight. He received kisses on the cheek and pats on the back. At once they asked him if he was returning to work. No, he had just stopped by to say hello and have a word with the boss.

Berger was glad to see him. She asked about Vanger’s condition. Blomkvist knew no more than what Frode could tell him: his condition was inescapably serious.

“So what are you doing in the city?”

Blomkvist was embarrassed. He had been at Milton Security, only a few streets away, and he had decided on sheer impulse to come in. It seemed too complicated to explain that he had been there to hire a research assistant who was a security consultant who had hacked into his computer. Instead he shrugged and said he had come to Stockholm on Vanger-related business, and he would have to go back north at once. He asked how things were going at the magazine.

“Apart from the good news on the advertising and the subscription fronts, there is one cloud on the horizon.”

“Which is?”

“Janne Dahlman.”

“Of course.”

“I had a talk with him in April, after we released the news that Henrik had become a partner. I don’t know if it’s just Janne’s nature to be negative or if there’s something more serious going on, if he’s playing some sort of game.”

“What happened?”

“It’s nothing I can put a finger on, rather that I no longer trust him. After we signed the agreement with Vanger, Christer and I had to decide whether to inform the whole staff that we were no longer at risk of going under this autumn, or…”

“Or to tell just a chosen few.”

“Exactly. I may be paranoid, but I didn’t want to risk having Dahlman leak the story. So we decided to inform the whole staff on the same day the agreement was made public. Which meant that we kept the lid on it for over a month.”

“And?”

“Well, that was the first piece of good news they’d had in a year. Everyone cheered except for Dahlman. I mean – we don’t have the world’s biggest editorial staff. There were three people cheering, plus the intern, and one person who got his nose out of joint because we hadn’t told everybody earlier.”

“He had a point…”

“I know. But the thing is, he kept on bitching about the issue day after day, and morale in the office was affected. After two weeks of this shit I called him into my office and told him to his face that my reason for not having informed the staff earlier was that I didn’t trust him to keep the news secret.”

“How did he take it?”

“He was terribly upset, of course. I stood my ground and gave him an ultimatum – either he had to pull himself together or start looking for another job.”

“And?”

“He pulled himself together. But he keeps to himself, and there’s a tension between him and the others. Christer can’t stand him, and he doesn’t hide it.”

“What do you suspect Dahlman of doing?”

“I don’t know. We hired him a year ago, when we were first talking about trouble with Wennerström. I can’t prove a thing, but I have a nasty feeling that he’s not working for us.”

“Trust your instincts.”

“Maybe he’s just a square peg in a round hole who just happens to be poisoning the atmosphere.”

“It’s possible. But I agree that we made a mistake when we hired him.”

Half an hour later he was on his way north across the locks at Slussen in the car he had borrowed from Frode’s wife. It was a ten-year-old Volvo she never used. Blomkvist had been given leave to borrow it whenever he liked.

It was the tiny details that he could easily have missed if he had not been alert: some papers not as evenly stacked as he remembered; a binder not quite flush on the shelf; his desk drawer closed all the way – he was positive that it was an inch open when he left.

Someone had been inside his cottage.

He had locked the door, but it was an ordinary old lock that almost anyone could pick with a screwdriver, and who knew how many keys were in circulation. He systematically searched his office, looking for what might be missing. After a while he decided that everything was still there.

Nevertheless someone had been in the cottage and gone through his papers and binders. He had taken his computer with him, so they had not been able to access that. Two questions arose: who was it? and how much had his visitor been able to find out?

The binders belonged to the part of Vanger’s collection that he brought back to the guest house after returning from prison. There was nothing of the new material in them. His notebooks in the desk would read like code to the uninitiated – but was the person who had searched his desk uninitiated?

In a plastic folder on the middle of the desk he had put a copy of the date book list and a copy of the verses. That was serious. It would tell whoever it was that the date book code was cracked.

So who was it?

Vanger was in the hospital. He did not suspect Anna. Frode? He had already told him all the details. Cecilia Vanger had cancelled her trip to Florida and was back from London – along with her sister. Blomkvist had only seen her once, driving her car across the bridge the day before. Martin Vanger. Harald Vanger. Birger Vanger – he had turned up for a family gathering to which Blomkvist had not been invited on the day after Vanger’s heart attack. Alexander Vanger. Isabella Vanger.

Whom had Frode talked to? What might he have let slip this time? How many of the anxious relatives had picked up on the fact that Blomkvist had made a breakthrough in his investigation?

It was after 8:00. He called the locksmith in Hedestad and ordered a new lock. The locksmith said that he could come out the following day. Blomkvist said he would pay double if he came at once. They agreed that he would come at around 10:30 that night and install a new deadbolt lock.

Blomkvist drove to Frode’s house. His wife showed him into the garden behind the house and offered him a cold Pilsner, which he gratefully accepted. He asked how Henrik Vanger was.

Frode shook his head.

“They operated on him. He had blockages in his coronary arteries. The doctors say that the next few days are critical.”

They thought about this for a while as they drank their Pilsners.

“You haven’t talked to him, I suppose?”

“No. He’s not well enough to talk. How did it go in Stockholm?”

“The Salander girl accepted the job. Here’s the contract from Milton Security. You have to sign it and put it in the post.”

Frode read through the document.

“She’s expensive,” he said.

“Henrik can afford it.”

Frode nodded. He took a pen out of his breast pocket and scrawled his name.

“It’s a good thing that I’m signing it while he’s still alive. Could you put it in the letter box at Konsum on your way home?”

Blomkvist was in bed by midnight, but he could not sleep. Until now his work on Hedeby Island had seemed like research on a historical curiosity. But if someone was sufficiently interested in what he was doing to break into his office, then the solution had to be closer to the present than he had thought.

Then it occurred to him that there were others who might be interested in what he was working on. Vanger’s sudden appearance on the board of Millennium had not gone unnoticed by Wennerström. Or was this paranoia?

Mikael got out of bed and went to stand naked at the kitchen window, gazing at the church on the other side of the bridge. He lit a cigarette.

He couldn’t figure out Lisbeth Salander. She was altogether odd. Long pauses in the middle of the conversation. Her apartment was messy, bordering on chaotic. Bags filled with newspapers in the hall. A kitchen that had not been cleaned or tidied in years. Clothes were scattered in heaps on the floor. She had obviously spent half the night in a bar. She had love bites on her neck and she had clearly had company overnight. She had heaven knows how many tattoos and two piercings on her face and maybe in other places. She was weird.

Armansky assured him that she was their very best researcher, and her report on him was excruciatingly thorough. A strange girl.

Salander was sitting at her PowerBook, but she was thinking about Mikael Blomkvist. She had never in her adult life allowed anyone to cross her threshold without an express invitation, and she could count those she had invited on one hand. Blomkvist had nonchalantly barged into her life, and she had uttered only a few lame protests.

Not only that, he had teased her.

Under normal circumstances that sort of behaviour would have made her mentally cock a pistol. But she had not felt an iota of threat or any sort of hostility from his side. He had good reason to read her the riot act, even report her to the police. Instead he had treated even her hacking into his computer as a joke.

That had been the most sensitive part of their conversation. Blomkvist seemed to be deliberately not broaching the subject, and finally she could not help asking the question.

“You said that you knew what I did.”

“You’ve been inside my computer. You’re a hacker.”

“How do you know that?” Salander was absolutely positive that she had left no traces and that her trespassing could not be discovered by anyone unless a top security consultant sat down and scanned the hard drive at the same time as she was accessing the computer.

“You made a mistake.”

She had quoted from a text that was only on his computer.

Salander sat in silence. Finally she looked up at him, her eyes expressionless.

“How did you do it?” he asked.

“My secret. What are you thinking of doing about it?”

Mikael shrugged.

“What can I do?”

“It’s exactly what you do as a journalist.”

“Of course. And that’s why we journalists have an ethics committee that keeps track of the moral issues. When I write an article about some bastard in the banking industry, I leave out, for instance, his or her private life. I don’t say that a forger is a lesbian or gets turned on by having sex with her dog or anything like that, even if it happens to be true. Bastards too have a right to their private lives. Does that make sense?”

“Yes.”

“So you encroached on my integrity. My employer doesn’t need to know who I have sex with. That’s my business.”

Salander’s face was creased by a crooked smile.

“You think I shouldn’t have mentioned that?”

“In my case it didn’t make a lot of difference. Half the city knows about my relationship with Erika. But it’s a matter of principle.”

“In that case, it might amuse you to know that I also have principles comparable to your ethics committee’s. I call them Salander’s Principles. One of them is that a bastard is always a bastard, and if I can hurt a bastard by digging up shit about him, then he deserves it.”

“OK,” Blomkvist said. “My reasoning isn’t too different from yours, but…”

“But the thing is that when I do a PI, I also look at what I think about the person. I’m not neutral. If the person seems like a good sort, I might tone down my report.”

“Really?”

“In your case I toned it down. I could have written a book about your sex life. I could have mentioned to Frode that Erika Berger has a past in Club Xtreme and played around with BDSM in the eighties – which would have prompted certain unavoidable notions about your sex life and hers.”

Blomkvist met Salander’s gaze. After a moment he laughed.

“You’re really meticulous, aren’t you? Why didn’t you put it in the report?”

“You are adults who obviously like each other. What you do in bed is nobody’s business, and the only thing I would have achieved by talking about her was to hurt both of you, or to provide someone with blackmail material. I don’t know Frode – the information could have ended up with Wennerström.”

“And you don’t want to provide Wennerström with information?”

“If I had to choose between you and him, I’d probably end up in your court.”

“Erika and I have a… our relationship is…”

“Please, I really don’t give a toss about what sort of relationship you have. But you haven’t answered my question: what do you plan to do about my hacking into your computer?”

“Lisbeth, I’m not here to blackmail you. I’m here to ask you to help me do some research. You can say yes or no. If you say no, fine, I’ll find someone else and you’ll never hear from me again.”

CHAPTER 19 Thursday, June 19 – Sunday, June 29

While he waited for word on whether Vanger was going to pull through or not, Blomkvist spent the days going over his materials. He kept in close touch with Frode. On Thursday evening Frode brought him the news that the immediate crisis seemed to be over.

“I was able to talk to him for a while today. He wants to see you as soon as possible.”

So it was that, around 1:00 on the afternoon of Midsummer Eve, Blomkvist drove to Hedestad Hospital and went in search of the ward. He encountered an angry Birger Vanger, who blocked his way. Henrik could not possibly receive visitors, he said.

“That’s odd,” Blomkvist said, “Henrik sent word saying that he expressly wanted to see me today.”

“You’re not a member of the family; you have no business here.”

“You’re right. I’m not a member of the family. But I’m working for Henrik Vanger, and I take orders only from him.”

This might have led to a heated exchange if Frode had not at that moment come out of Vanger’s room.

“Oh, there you are. Henrik has been asking after you.”

Frode held open the door and Blomkvist walked past Birger into the room.

Vanger looked to have aged ten years. He was lying with his eyes half closed, an oxygen tube in his nose, and his hair more dishevelled than ever. A nurse stopped Blomkvist, putting a hand firmly on his arm.

“Two minutes. No more. And don’t upset him.” Blomkvist sat on a visitor’s chair so that he could see Vanger’s face. He felt a tenderness that astonished him, and he stretched out his hand to gently squeeze the old man’s hand.

“Any news?” The voice was weak.

Blomkvist nodded.

“I’ll give you a report as soon as you’re better. I haven’t solved the mystery yet, but I’ve found more new stuff and I’m following up a number of leads. In a week, perhaps two, I’ll be able to tell the results.”

The most Vanger could manage was to blink, indicating that he understood.

“I have to be away for a few days.”

Henrik raised his eyebrows.

“I’m not jumping ship. I have some research to do. I’ve reached an agreement with Dirch that I should report to him. Is that OK with you?”

“Dirch is… my man… in all matters.”

Blomkvist squeezed Vanger’s hand again.

“Mikael… if I don’t… I want you to… finish the job.”

“I will finish the job.”

“Dirch has… full…”

“Henrik, I want you to get better. I’d be furious with you if you went and died after I’ve made such progress.”

“Two minutes,” the nurse said.

“Next time we’ll have a long talk.”

Birger Vanger was waiting for him when he came out. He stopped him by laying a hand on his shoulder.

“I don’t want you bothering Henrik any more. He’s very ill, and he’s not supposed to be upset or disturbed.”

“I understand your concern, and I sympathise. And I’m not going to upset him.”

“Everyone knows that Henrik hired you to poke around in his little hobby… Harriet. Dirch said that Henrik became very upset after a conversation you had with him before he had the heart attack. He even said that you thought you had caused the attack.”

“I don’t think so any more. Henrik had severe blockages in his arteries. He could have had a heart attack just by having a pee. I’m sure you know that by now.”

“I want full disclosure into this lunacy. This is my family you’re mucking around in.”

“I told you, I work for Henrik, not for the family.”

Birger Vanger was apparently not used to having anyone stand up to him. For a moment he stared at Blomkvist with an expression that was presumably meant to instil respect, but which made him look more like an inflated moose. Birger turned and went into Vanger’s room.

Blomkvist restrained the urge to laugh. This was no place for laughter, in the corridor outside Vanger’s sickbed, which might also turn out to be his deathbed. But he thought of a verse from Lennart Hyland’s rhyming alphabet. It was the letter M. And all alone the moose he stood, laughing in a shot-up wood.

In the hospital lobby he ran into Cecilia Vanger. He had tried calling her mobile a dozen times since she came back from her interrupted holiday, but she had never answered or returned his calls. And she was never home at her place on Hedeby Island whenever he walked past and knocked on the door.

“Hi, Cecilia,” he said. “I’m so sorry about all this with Henrik.”

“Thanks,” she said.

“We need to talk.”

“I’m sorry that I’ve shut you out like this. I can understand that you must be cross, but I’m not having an easy time of it these days.”

Mikael put his hand on her arm and smiled at her.

“Wait, you’ve got it wrong, Cecilia. I’m not cross at all. I am still hoping that we can be friends. Can we have a cup of coffee?” He nodded in the direction of the hospital cafeteria.

Cecilia Vanger hesitated. “Not today. I need to go and see Henrik.”

“OK, but I still need to talk to you. It’s purely professional.”

“What does that mean?” She was suddenly alert.

“Do you remember the first time we met, when you came to the cottage in January? I said that we were talking off the record, and that if I needed to ask you any real questions, I would tell you. It has to do with Harriet.”

Cecilia Vanger’s face was suddenly flushed with anger.

“You really are the fucking pits.”

“Cecilia, I’ve found some things that I really do have to talk to you about.”

She took a step away from him.

“Don’t you realise that this bloody hunt for that cursed Harriet is just occupational therapy for Henrik? Don’t you see that he might be up there dying, and that the very last thing he needs is to get upset again and be filled with false hopes and…”

“It may be a hobby for Henrik, but there is now more material to go on than anyone has had to work with in a very long time. There are questions that do now need to be answered.”

“If Henrik dies, that investigation is going to be over awfully damned fast. Then you’ll be out on your grubby, snivelling investigative backside,” Cecilia said, and she walked away.

Everything was closed. Hedestad was practically deserted, and the inhabitants seemed to have retreated to their Midsummer poles at their summer cottages. Blomkvist made for the Stadshotel terrace, which was actually open, and there he was able to order coffee and a sandwich and read the evening papers. Nothing of importance was happening in the world.

He put the paper down and thought about Cecilia Vanger. He had told no-one – apart from the Salander girl – that she was the one who had opened the window in Harriet’s room. He was afraid that it would make her a suspect, and the last thing he wanted to do was hurt her. But the question was going to have to be asked, sooner or later.

He sat on the terrace for an hour before he decided to set the whole problem aside and devote Midsummer Eve to something other than the Vanger family. His mobile was silent. Berger was away amusing herself somewhere with her husband, and he had no-one to talk to.

He went back to Hedeby Island at around 4:00 in the afternoon and made another decision – to stop smoking. He had been working out regularly ever since he did his military service, both at the gym and by running along Söder Mälarstrand, but had fallen out of the habit when the problems with Wennerström began. It was at Rullåker Prison that he had starting pumping iron again, mostly as therapy. But since his release he had taken almost no exercise. It was time to start again. He put on his tracksuit and set off at a lazy pace along the road to Gottfried’s cabin, turned off towards the Fortress, and took a rougher course cross country. He had done no orienteering since he was in the military, but he had always thought it was more fun to run through a wooded terrain than on a flat track. He followed the fence around Östergården back to the village. He was aching all over and out of breath by the time he took the last steps up to the guest house.

At 6:00 he took a shower. He boiled some potatoes and had open sandwiches of pickled herring in mustard sauce with chives and egg on a rickety table outside the cottage, facing the bridge. He poured himself a shot of aquavit and drank a toast to himself. After that he opened a crime novel by Val McDermid entitled The Mermaids Singing.

At around 7:00 Frode drove up and sat heavily in the chair across from him. Blomkvist poured him a shot of Skåne aquavit.

“You stirred up some rather lively emotions today,” Frode said.

“I could see that.”

“Birger is a conceited fool.”

“I know that.”

“But Cecilia is not a conceited fool, and she’s furious.”

Mikael nodded.

“She has instructed me to see that you stop poking around in the family’s affairs.”

“I see. And what did you say to her?”

Frode looked at his glass of Skåne and downed the liquor in one gulp.

“My response was that Henrik has given me clear instructions about what he wants you to do. As long as he doesn’t change those instructions, you will continue to be employed under the terms of your contract. I expect you to do your best to fulfil your part of the contract.”

Blomkvist looked up at the sky, where rain clouds had begun to gather.

“Looks like a storm is brewing,” Frode said. “If the winds get too strong, I’ll have to back you up.”

“Thank you.”

They sat in silence for a while.

“Could I have another drink?”

Only minutes after Frode had gone home, Martin Vanger drove up and parked his car by the road in front of the cottage. He came over and said hello. Mikael wished him a happy Midsummer and asked if he’d like a drink.

“No, it’s better if I don’t. I’m just here to change my clothes and then I’m going to drive back to town to spend the evening with Eva.”

Blomkvist waited.

“I’ve talked to Cecilia. She’s a little traumatised just now – she and Henrik have always been close. I hope you’ll forgive her if she says anything… unpleasant.”

“I’m very fond of Cecilia.”

“I know that. But she can be difficult. I just want you to know that she’s very much against your going on digging into our past.”

Blomkvist sighed. Everyone in Hedestad seemed to know why Vanger had hired him.

“What’s your feeling?”

“This thing with Harriet has been Henrik’s obsession for decades. I don’t know… Harriet was my sister, but somehow it feels all so far away. Dirch says that you have a contract that only Henrik can break, and I’m afraid that in his present condition it would do more harm than good.”

“So you want me to continue?”

“Have you made any progress?”

“I’m sorry, Martin, but it would be a breach of that contract if I told you anything without Henrik’s permission.”

“I understand.” Suddenly he smiled. “Henrik is a bit of a conspiracy fanatic. But above all, I don’t want you to get his hopes up unnecessarily.”

“I won’t do that.”

“Good… By the way, to change the subject, we now have another contract to consider as well. Given that Henrik is ill and can’t in the short term fulfil his obligations on the Millennium board, it’s my responsibility to take his place.”

Mikael waited.

“I suppose we should have a board meeting to look at the situation.”

“That’s a good idea. But as far as I know, it’s been decided that the next board meeting won’t be held until August.”

“I know that, but maybe we should hold it earlier.”

Blomkvist smiled politely.

“You’re really talking to the wrong person. At the moment I’m not on the board. I left in December. You should get in touch with Erika Berger. She knows that Henrik has been taken ill.”

Martin Vanger had not expected this response.

“You’re right, of course. I’ll talk to her.” He patted Blomkvist on the shoulder to say goodbye and was gone.

Nothing concrete had been said, but the threat hung in the air. Martin Vanger had set Millennium on the balance tray. After a moment Blomkvist poured himself another drink and picked up his Val McDermid.

The mottled brown cat came to say hello and rubbed on his leg. He lifted her up and scratched behind her ears.

“The two of us are having a very boring Midsummer Eve, aren’t we?” he said.

When it started to rain, he went inside and went to bed. The cat preferred to stay outdoors.

Salander got out her Kawasaki on Midsummer Eve and spent the day giving it a good overhaul. A lightweight 125cc might not be the toughest bike in the world, but it was hers, and she could handle it. She had restored it, one nut at a time, and she had souped it up just a bit over the legal limit.

In the afternoon she put on her helmet and leather suit and drove to Äppelviken Nursing Home, where she spent the evening in the park with her mother. She felt a pang of concern and guilt. Her mother seemed more remote than ever before. During three hours they exchanged only a few words, and when they did speak, her mother did not seem to know who she was talking to.

Blomkvist wasted several days trying to identify the car with the AC plates. After a lot of trouble and finally by consulting a retired mechanic in Hedestad, he came to the conclusion that the car was a Ford Anglia, a model that he had never heard of before. Then he contacted a clerk at the motor vehicle department and enquired about the possibility of getting a list of all the Ford Anglias in 1966 that had a licence plate beginning AC3. He was eventually told that such an archaeological excavation in the records presumably could be done, but that it would take time and it was beyond the boundaries of what could be considered public information.

Not until several days after Midsummer did Blomkvist get into his borrowed Volvo and drive north on the E4. He drove at a leisurely pace. Just short of the Härnösand Bridge he stopped to have coffee at the Vesterlund pastry shop.

The next stop was Umeå, where he pulled into an inn and had the daily special. He bought a road atlas and continued on to Skellefteå, where he turned towards Norsjö. He arrived around 6:00 in the evening and took a room in the Hotel Norsjö.

He began his search early the next morning. The Norsjö Carpentry Shop was not in the telephone book. The Polar Hotel desk clerk, a girl in her twenties, had never heard of the business.

“Who should I ask?”

The clerk looked puzzled for a few seconds until her face lit up and she said that she would call her father. Two minutes later she came back and explained that the Norsjö Carpentry Shop closed in the early eighties. If he needed to talk to someone who knew more about the business, he should go and see a certain Burman, who had been the foreman and who now lived on a street called Solvändan.

Norsjö was a small town with one main street, appropriately enough called Storgatan, that ran through the whole community. It was lined with shops with residential side streets off it. At the east end there was a small industrial area and a stable; at the western end stood an uncommonly beautiful wooden church. Blomkvist noted that the village also had a Missionary church and a Pentecostal church. A poster on a bulletin board at the bus station advertised a hunting museum and a skiing museum. A leftover flyer announced that Veronika would sing at the fair-grounds at Midsummer. He could walk from one end of the village to the other in less than twenty minutes.

The street called Solvändan consisted of single-family homes and was about five minutes from the hotel. There was no answer when Blomkvist rang the bell. It was 9:30, and he assumed that Burman had left for work or, if he was retired, was out on an errand.

His next stop was the hardware store on Storgatan. He reasoned that anyone living in Norsjö would sooner or later pay a visit to the hardware store. There were two sales clerks in the shop. Blomkvist chose the older one, maybe fifty or so.

“Hi. I’m looking for a couple who probably lived in Norsjö in the sixties. The man might have worked for the Norsjö Carpentry Shop. I don’t know their name, but I have two pictures that were taken in 1966.”

The clerk studied the photographs for a long time but finally shook his head, saying he could not recognise either the man or the woman.

At lunchtime he had a burger at a hot-dog stand near the bus station. He had given up on the shops and had made his way through the municipal office, the library, and the pharmacy. The police station was empty, and he had started approaching older people at random. Early in the afternoon he asked two young women: they did not recognise the couple in the photographs, but they did have a good idea.

“If the pictures were taken in 1966, the people would have to be in their sixties today. Why don’t you go over to the retirement home on Solbacka and ask there?”

Blomkvist introduced himself to a woman at the front desk of the retirement home, explaining what he wanted to know. She glared at him suspiciously but finally allowed herself to be persuaded. She led him to the day room, where he spent half an hour showing the pictures to a group of elderly people. They were very helpful, but none of them could identify the couple.

At 5:00 he went back to Solvändan and knocked on Burman’s door. This time he had better luck. The Burmans, both the man and the wife, were retired, and they had been out all day. They invited Blomkvist into their kitchen, where his wife promptly made coffee while Mikael explained his errand. As with all his other attempts that day, he again drew a blank. Burman scratched his head, lit a pipe, and then concluded after a moment that he did not recognise the couple in the photographs. The Burmans spoke in a distinct Norsjö dialect to each other, and Blomkvist occasionally had difficulty understanding what they were saying. The wife meant “curly hair” when she remarked that the woman in the picture had knövelhära.

“But you’re quite right that it’s a sticker from the carpentry shop,” her husband said. “That was clever of you to recognise it. But the problem was that we handed out those stickers left and right. To contractors, people who bought or delivered timber, joiners, machinists, all sorts.”

“It’s turning out to be harder to find this couple than I thought.”

“Why do you want to find them?”

Blomkvist had decided to tell the truth if anyone asked him. Any attempt to make up a story about the couple in the pictures would just sound false and create confusion.

“It’s a long story. I’m investigating a crime that occurred in Hedestad in 1966, and I think there’s a possibility, although a very small one, that the people in the photographs might have seen what happened. They’re not in any way under suspicion, and I don’t think they’re even aware that they might have information that could solve the crime.”

“A crime? What kind of crime?”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you any more than that. I know it sounds bizarre that someone would come here almost forty years later, trying to find this couple, but the crime is still unsolved, and it’s only lately that new facts have come to light.”

“I see. Yes, this is certainly an unusual assignment that you’re on.”

“How many people worked at the carpentry shop?”

“The normal work force was forty or so. I worked there from the age of seventeen in the mid-fifties until the shop closed. Then I became a contractor.” Burman thought for a moment. “This much I can tell you. The guy in your pictures never worked there. He might have been a contractor, but I think I’d recognise him if he was. But there is one other possibility. Maybe his father or some other relative worked at the shop and that’s not his car.”

Mikael nodded. “I realise there are lots of possibilities. Can you suggest anyone I could talk to?”

“Yes,” said Burman, nodding. “Come by tomorrow morning and we’ll go and have a talk with some of the old guys.”

Salander was facing a methodology problem of some significance. She was an expert at digging up information on just about anybody, but her starting point had always been a name and a social security number for a living person. If the individual was listed in a computer file, which everyone inevitably was, then the subject quickly landed in her spider’s web. If the individual owned a computer with an Internet connection, an email address, and maybe even a personal website, which nearly everyone did who came under her special type of research, she could sooner or later find out their innermost secrets.

The work she had agreed to do for Blomkvist was altogether different. This assignment, in simple terms, was to identify four social security numbers based on extremely vague data. In addition, these individuals most likely died several decades ago. So probably they would not be on any computer files.

Blomkvist’s theory, based on the Rebecka Jacobsson case, was that these individuals had fallen victim to a murderer. This meant that they should be found in various unsolved police investigations. There was no clue as to when or where these murders had taken place, except that it had to be before 1966. In terms of research, she was facing a whole new situation.

So, how do I go about this?

She pulled up the Google search engine, and typed in the keywords [Magda] + [murder]. That was the simplest form of research she could do. To her surprise, she made an instant breakthrough in the investigation. Her first hit was the programme listings for TV Värmland in Karlstad, advertising a segment in the series “Värmland Murders” that was broadcast in 1999. After that she found a brief mention in a TV listing in Värmlands Folkblad.

She found more substantial information in the article “The Lovisa Case Shook the Whole Countryside,” which was published in the magazine Värmlandskultur. All of the magazine’s texts had been loaded on to the Net. Written with obvious glee and in a chatty and titillating tone, the article described how Lovisa Sjöberg’s husband, the lumberjack Holger Sjöberg, had found his wife dead when he came home from work around 5:00. She had been subjected to gross sexual assault, stabbed, and finally murdered with the prongs of a pitchfork. The murder occurred in the family barn, but what aroused the most attention was the fact that the perpetrator, after committing the murder, had tied her up in a kneeling position inside a horse stall.

It was later discovered that one of the animals on the farm, a cow, had suffered a stab wound on the side of its neck.

Initially the husband was suspected of the murder, but he had been in the company of his work colleagues from 6:00 in the morning at a clearing twenty-five miles from his home. It could be verified that Lovisa Sjöberg had been alive as late as 10:00 in the morning, when she had a visit from a woman friend. No-one had seen or heard anything; the farm was five hundred yards from its nearest neighbour.

After dropping the husband as a suspect, the police investigation focused on the victim’s twenty-three-year-old nephew. He had repeatedly fallen foul of the law, was extremely short of cash, and many times had borrowed small sums from his aunt. The nephew’s alibi was significantly weaker, and he was taken into custody for a while, but released for lack of evidence. Even so, many people in the village thought it highly probable that he was guilty.

The police followed another lead. A part of the investigation concerned the search for a pedlar who was seen in the area; there was also a rumour that a group of “thieving gypsies” had carried out a series of raids. Why they should have committed a savage, sexually related murder without stealing anything was never explained.

For a time suspicion was directed at a neighbour in the village, a bachelor who in his youth was suspected of an allegedly homosexual crime – this was back when homosexuality was still a punishable offence – and according to several statements, he had a reputation for being “odd.” Why someone who was supposedly homosexual would commit a sex crime against a woman was not explained either. None of these leads, or any others, led to a charge.

Salander thought there was a clear link to the list in Harriet Vanger’s date book. Leviticus 20:16 said: “If a woman approaches any beast and lies with it, you shall kill the woman and the beast; they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them.” It couldn’t be a coincidence that a farmer’s wife by the name of Magda had been found murdered in a barn, with her body so arranged and tied up in a horse stall.

The question was why had Harriet Vanger written down the name Magda instead of Lovisa, which was apparently the name the victim went under. If her full name had not been printed in the TV listing, Salander would have missed it.

And, of course, the more important question was: was there a link between Rebecka’s murder in 1949, the murder of Magda Lovisa in 1960, and Harriet Vanger’s disappearance in 1966?

On Saturday morning Burman took Blomkvist on an extensive tour of Norsjö. In the morning they called on five former employees who lived within walking distance of Burman’s house. Everyone offered them coffee. All of them studied the photographs and shook their heads.

After a simple lunch at the Burman home, they got in the car for a drive. They visited four villages near Norsjö, where former employees of the carpentry shop lived. At each stop Burman was greeted with warmth, but no-one was able to help them. Blomkvist was beginning to despair.

At 4:00 in the afternoon, Burman parked his car outside a typical red Västerbotten farm near Norsjövallen, just north of Norsjö, and introduced Mikael to Henning Forsman, a retired master carpenter.

“Yes, that’s Assar Brännlund’s lad,” Forsman said as soon as Blomkvist showed him the photographs. Bingo.

“Oh, so that’s Assar’s boy,” Burman said. “Assar was a buyer.”

“How can I find him?”

“The lad? Well, you’ll have to dig. His name was Gunnar, and he worked at the Boliden mine. He died in a blasting accident in the mid-seventies.”

Blomkvist’s heart sank.

“But his wife is still alive. The one in the picture here. Her name is Mildred, and she lives in Bjursele.”

“Bjursele?”

“It’s about six miles down the road to Bastuträsk. She lives in the long red house on the right-hand side as you’re coming into the village. It’s the third house. I know the family well.”

Bjursele was like a poster for the Västerbotten country village. It consisted of about twenty houses set relatively close together in a semicircle at one end of a lake. In the centre of the village was a crossroads with an arrow pointing towards Hemmingen, 10¹/2 miles, and another pointing towards Bastuträsk, 7 miles. Near the crossroads was a small bridge with a creek that Blomkvist assumed was the water, the sel. At the height of summer, it was as pretty as a postcard.

He parked in the courtyard in front of a Konsum that was no longer open, almost opposite the third house on the right-hand side. When he knocked on the door, no-one answered.

He took an hour-long walk along the road towards Hemmingen. He passed a spot where the stream became rushing rapids. He met two cats and saw a deer, but not a single person, before he turned around. Mildred Brännlund’s door was still shut.

On a post near the bridge he found a peeling flyer announcing the BTCC, something that could be deciphered as the Bjursele Tukting Car Championship 2002. “Tukting” a car was apparently a winter sport that involved smashing up a vehicle on the ice-covered lake.

He waited until 10:00 p.m. before he gave up and drove back to Norsjö, where he had a late dinner and then went to bed to read the denouement of Val McDermid’s novel.

It was grisly.

At 10:00 Salander added one more name to Harriet Vanger’s list. She did so with some hesitation.

She had discovered a shortcut. At quite regular intervals articles were published about unsolved murders, and in a Sunday supplement to the evening newspaper she had found an article from 1999 with the headline “Many Murderers of Women Go Free.” It was a short article, but it included the names and photographs of several noteworthy murder victims. There was the Solveig case in Norrtälje, the Anita murder in Norrköping, Margareta in Helsingborg, and a number of others.

The oldest case to be recounted was from the sixties, and none of the murders matched the list that Salander had been given by Blomkvist. But one case did attract her attention.

In June 1962 a prostitute by the name of Lea Persson from Göteborg had gone to Uddevalla to visit her mother and her nine-year-old son, whom her mother was taking care of. On a Sunday evening, after a visit of several days, Lea had hugged her mother, said goodbye, and caught the train back to Göteborg. She was found two days later behind a container on an industrial site no longer in use. She had been raped, and her body had been subjected to extraordinary violence.

The Lea murder aroused a great deal of attention as a summer serial story in the newspaper, but no killer had ever been identified. There was no Lea on Harriet Vanger’s list. Nor did the manner of her death fit with any of Harriet’s Bible quotes.

On the other hand, there was such a bizarre coincidence that Salander’s antennae instantly buzzed. About ten yards from where Lea’s body was found lay a flowerpot with a pigeon inside. Someone had tied a string round the pigeon’s neck and pulled it through the hole in the bottom of the pot. Then the pot was put on a little fire that had been laid between two bricks. There was no certainty that this cruelty had any connection with the Lea murder. It could have been a child playing a horrible game, but the press dubbed the murder the Pigeon Murder.

Salander was no Bible reader – she did not even own one – but that evening she went over to Högalid Church and with some difficulty she managed to borrow a Bible. She sat on a park bench outside the church and read Leviticus. When she reached Chapter 12, verse 8, her eyebrows went up. Chapter 12 dealt with the purification of women after childbirth.

And if she cannot afford a lamb, then she shall take two turtledoves or two young pigeons, one for a burnt offering and the other for a sin offering; and the priest shall make atonement for her, and she shall be clean.

Lea could very well have been included in Harriet’s date book as: Lea – 31208.

Salander thought that no research she had ever done before had contained even a fraction of the scope of this assignment.

Mildred Brännlund, remarried and now Mildred Berggren, opened the door when Blomkvist knocked around 10:00 on Sunday morning. The woman was much older, of course, and had by now filled out a good deal, but he recognised her at once.

“Hi, my name is Mikael Blomkvist. You must be Mildred Berggren.”

“That’s right.”

“I’m sorry for knocking on your door like this, but I’ve been trying to find you, and it’s rather complicated to explain.” He smiled at her. “I wonder if I could come in and take up a small amount of your time.”

Mildred’s husband and a son who was about thirty-five were home, and without much hesitation she invited Blomkvist to come and sit in their kitchen. He shook hands with each of them. He had drunk more coffee during the past twenty-four hours than at any time in his life, but by now he had learned that in Norrland it was rude to say no. When the coffee cups were on the table, Mildred sat down and asked with some curiosity how she could help him. It was obvious that he did not easily understand her Norsjö dialect, so she switched to standard Swedish.

Blomkvist took a deep breath. “This is a long and peculiar story,” he said. “In September 1966 you were in Hedestad with your then husband, Gunnar Brännlund.”

She looked surprised. He waited for her to nod before he laid the photograph from Järnvägsgatan on the table in front of her.

“When was this picture taken? Do you remember the occasion?”

“Oh, my goodness,” Mildred Berggren said. “That was a lifetime ago.”

Her present husband and son came to stand next to her to look at the picture.

“We were on our honeymoon. We had driven down to Stockholm and Sigtuna and were on our way home and happened to stop somewhere. Was it in Hedestad, you said?”

“Yes, Hedestad. This photograph was taken at about 1:00 in the afternoon. I’ve been trying to find you for some time now, and it hasn’t been a simple task.”

“You see an old photograph of me and then actually track me down. I can’t imagine how you did it.”

Blomkvist put the photograph from the car park on the table.

“I was able to find you thanks to this picture, which was taken a little later in the day.” He explained how, via the Norsjö Carpentry Shop, he had found Burman, who in turn had led him to Henning Forsman in Norsjövallen.

“You must have a good reason for this long search.”

“I do. This girl standing close to you in this photograph is called Harriet. That day she disappeared, and she was never seen or heard of again. The general assumption is that she fell prey to a murderer. Can I show you some more photographs?”

He took out his iBook and explained the circumstances while the computer booted up. Then he played her the series of images showing how Harriet’s facial expression changed.

“It was when I went through these old images that I found you, standing with a camera right behind Harriet, and you seem to be taking a picture in the direction of whatever it is she’s looking at, whatever caused her to react in that way. I know that this is a really long shot, but the reason I’ve been looking for you is to ask you if by any miracle you still have the pictures from that day.”

He was prepared for Mildred Berggren to dismiss the idea and tell him that the photographs had long since vanished. Instead she looked at him with her clear blue eyes and said, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, that of course she still had her old honeymoon pictures.

She went to another room and came back after several minutes with a box in which she had stored a quantity of pictures in various albums. It took a while to find the honeymoon ones. She had taken three photographs in Hedestad. One was blurry and showed the main street. Another showed her husband at the time. The third showed the clowns in the parade.

Blomkvist eagerly leaned forward. He could see a figure on the other side of the street behind a clown. But the photograph told him absolutely nothing.

CHAPTER 20 Tuesday, July 1 – Wednesday, July 2

The first thing Blomkvist did the morning he returned to Hedestad was to go to Frode’s house to ask about Vanger’s condition. He learned to his delight that the old man had improved quite a bit during the past week. He was weak still, and fragile, but now he could sit up in bed. His condition was no longer regarded as critical.

“Thank God,” he said. “I realised that I actually like him.”

Frode said: “I know that. And Henrik likes you too. How was Norrland?”

“Successful yet unsatisfying. I’ll explain a little later. Right now I have a question.”

“Go ahead.”

“What realistically will happen to your interest in Millennium if Henrik dies?”

“Nothing at all. Martin will take his place on the board.”

“Is there any risk, hypothetically speaking, that Martin might create problems for Millennium if I don’t put a stop to the investigation of Harriet’s disappearance?”

Frode gave him a sharp look.

“What’s happened?”

“Nothing, actually.” Mikael told him about the conversation he had had with Martin Vanger on Midsummer Eve. “When I was in Norsjö Erika told me that Martin had called her and said that he thought I was very much needed back at the office.”

“I understand. My guess is that Cecilia was after him. But I don’t think that Martin would put pressure on you like that on his own. He’s much too savvy. And remember, I’m also on the board of the little subsidiary we formed when we bought into Millennium.”

“But what if a ticklish situation came up – how would you act then?”

“Contracts exist to be honoured. I work for Henrik. Henrik and I have been friends for forty-five years, and we are in complete agreement in such matters. If Henrik should die it is in point of fact I – not Martin – who would inherit Henrik’s share in the subsidiary. We have a contract in which we have undertaken to back Millennium for three years. Should Martin wish to start any mischief – which I don’t believe he will – then theoretically he could put the brakes on a small number of new advertisers.”

“The lifeblood of Millennium’s existence.”

“Yes, but look at it this way – worrying about such trivia is a waste of time. Martin is presently fighting for his industrial survival and working fourteen hours a day. He doesn’t have time for anything else.”

“May I ask – I know it’s none of my business – what is the general condition of the corporation?”

Frode looked grave.

“We have problems.”

“Yes, even a common financial reporter like myself can see that. I mean, how serious is it?”

“Off the record?”

“Between us.”

“We’ve lost two large orders in the electronics industry in the past few weeks and are about to be ejected from the Russian market. In September we’re going to have to lay off 1,600 employees in Örebro and Trollhättan. Not much of a reward to give to people who’ve worked for the company for many years. Each time we shut down a factory, confidence in the company is further undermined.”

“Martin is under pressure.”

“He’s pulling the load of an ox and walking on eggshells.”

Blomkvist went back to his cottage and called Berger. She was not at the office, so he spoke to Malm.

“Here’s the deal: Erika called when I was in Norsjö. Martin Vanger has been after her and has, how shall I put it, encouraged her to propose that I start to take on editorial responsibility.”

“I think you should too,” Malm said.

“I know that. But the thing is, I have a contract with Henrik Vanger that I can’t break, and Martin is acting on behalf of someone up here who wants me to stop what I am doing and leave town. So his proposal amounts to an attempt to get rid of me.”

“I see.”

“Say hi to Erika and tell her I’ll come back to Stockholm when I’m finished here. Not before.”

“I understand. You’re stark raving mad, of course, but I’ll give her the message.”

“Christer. Something is going on up here, and I have no intention of backing out.”

Blomkvist knocked on Martin Vanger’s door. Eva Hassel opened it and greeted him warmly.

“Hi. Is Martin home?”

As if in reply to the question, Martin Vanger came walking out with a briefcase in his hand. He kissed Eva on the cheek and said hello to Mikael.

“I’m on my way to the office. Do you want to talk to me?”

“We can do it later if you’re in a hurry.”

“Let’s hear it.”

“I won’t be going back to Millennium’s editorial board before I’m finished with the assignment that Henrik gave me. I’m informing you of this now so that you won’t count on me being on the board before New Year’s.”

Martin Vanger teetered back and forth for a bit.

“I see. You think I want to get rid of you.” He paused. “Mikael, we’ll have to talk about this later. I don’t really have time to devote to my hobby on Millennium’s board, and I wish I’d never agreed to Henrik’s proposal. But believe me – I’m going to do my best to make sure that Millennium survives.”

“I’ve never had any doubt about that,” Blomkvist said.

“If we make an appointment for sometime next week we can go over the finances and I can give you my views on the matter. But my basic attitude is that Millennium cannot actually afford to have one of its key people sitting up here on Hedeby Island twiddling his thumbs. I like the magazine and I think we can make it stronger together, but you’re crucial to that task. I’ve wound up in a conflict of loyalties here. Either I follow Henrik’s wishes or carry out my job on Millennium’s board.”

Blomkvist changed into his tracksuit and went for a run out to the Fortress and down to Gottfried’s cabin before he headed home at a slower pace along the water. Frode was sitting at the garden table. He waited patiently as Mikael drank a bottle of water and towelled the sweat from his face.

“That doesn’t look so healthy in this heat.”

“Oh, come on,” Blomkvist said.

“I was wrong. Cecilia isn’t the main person who’s after Martin. It’s Isabella. She’s busy mobilising the Vanger clan to tar and feather you and possibly burn you at the stake too. She’s being backed up by Birger.”

“Isabella?”

“She’s a malicious, petty woman who doesn’t like other people in general. Right now it seems that she detests you in particular. She’s spreading stories that you’re a swindler who duped Henrik into hiring you, and that you got him so worked up that he had a heart attack.”

“I hope no-one believes that?”

“There’s always someone willing to believe malicious rumours.”

“I’m trying to work out what happened to her daughter – and she hates me. If Harriet were my daughter, I would have reacted a bit differently.”

At 2:00 in the afternoon, his mobile rang.

“Hello, my name is Conny Torsson and I work at the Hedestad Courier. Do you have time to answer a few questions? We got a tip that you’re living here in Hedeby.”

“Well, Herr Torsson, your tip machine is a little slow. I’ve been living here since the first of the year.”

“I didn’t know that. What are you doing in Hedestad?”

“Writing. And taking a sort of sabbatical.”

“What are you working on?”

“You’ll find out when I publish it.”

“You were just released from prison…”

“Yes?”

“Do you have a view on journalists who falsify material?”

“Journalists who falsify material are idiots.”

“So in your opinion you’re an idiot?”

“Why should I think that? I’ve never falsified material.”

“But you were convicted of libel.”

“So?”

Torsson hesitated long enough that Blomkvist had to give him a push.

“I was convicted of libel, not of falsifying material.”

“But you published the material.”

“If you’re calling to discuss the judgement against me, I have no comment.”

“I’d like to come out and do an interview with you.”

“I have nothing to say to you on this topic.”

“So you don’t want to discuss the trial?”

“That’s correct,” he said, and hung up. He sat thinking for a long time before he went back to his computer.

Salander followed the instructions she had received and drove her Kawasaki across the bridge to Hedeby Island. She stopped at the first little house on the left. She was really out in the sticks. But as long as her employer was paying, she did not mind if she went to the North Pole. Besides, it was great to give her bike its head on a long ride up the E4. She put the bike on its stand and loosened the strap that held her overnight duffel bag in place.

Blomkvist opened the door and waved to her. He came out and inspected her motorcycle with obvious astonishment.

He whistled. “You’re riding a motorbike!”

Salander said nothing, but she watched him intently as he touched the handlebars and tried the accelerator. She did not like anyone touching her stuff. Then she saw his childlike, boyish smile, which she took for a redeeming feature. Most people who were into motorcycles usually laughed at her lightweight bike.

“I had a motorbike when I was nineteen,” he said, turning to her. “Thanks for coming up. Come in and let’s get you settled.”

He had borrowed a camp bed from the Nilssons. Salander took a tour around the cabin, looking suspicious, but she seemed to relax when she could find no immediate signs of any insidious trap. He showed her where the bathroom was.

“In case you want to take a shower and freshen up.”

“I have to change. I am not going to wander around in my leathers.”

“OK, while you change I’ll make dinner.”

He sautéed lamb chops in red wine sauce and set the table outdoors in the afternoon sun while Salander showered and changed. She came out barefoot wearing a black camisole and a short, worn denim skirt. The food smelled good, and she put away two stout helpings. Fascinated, Blomkvist sneaked a look at the tattoos on her back.

“Five plus three,” Salander said. “Five cases from your Harriet’s list and three cases that I think should have been on the list.”

“Tell me.”

“I’ve only been on this for eleven days, and I haven’t had a chance to dig up all the reports. In some cases the police reports had been put in the national archive, and in others they’re still stored in the local police district. I made three day trips to different police districts, but I didn’t have time to get to all of them. The five are identified.”

Salander put a solid heap of paper on the kitchen table, around 500 pages. She quickly sorted the material into different stacks.

“Let’s take them in chronological order.” She handed Blomkvist a list.

1949 – REBECKA JACOBSSON, Hedestad (30112)

1954 – MARI HOLMBERG, Kalmar (32018)

1957 – RAKEL LUNDE, Landskrona (32027)

1960 – (MAGDA) LOVISA SJÖBERG, Karlstad (32016)

1960 – LIV GUSTAVSSON, Stockholm (32016)

1962 – LEA PERSSON, Uddevalla (31208)

1964 – SARA WITT, Ronneby (32109)

1966 – LENA ANDERSSON, Uppsala (30112)

“The first case in this series is Rebecka Jacobsson, 1949, the details of which you already know. The next case I found was Mari Holmberg, a thirty-two-year-old prostitute in Kalmar who was murdered in her apartment in October 1954. It’s not clear exactly when she was killed, since her body wasn’t found right away, probably nine or ten days later.”

“And how do you connect her to Harriet’s list?”

“She was tied up and badly abused, but the cause of death was strangulation. She had a sanitary towel down her throat.”

Blomkvist sat in silence for a moment before he looked up the verse that was Leviticus 20:18.

“If a man lies with a woman having her sickness, and uncovers her nakedness, he has made naked her fountain, and she has uncovered the fountain of her blood; both of them shall be cut off from among their people.”

Salander nodded.

“Harriet Vanger made the same connection. OK. Next?”

“May 1957, Rakel Lunde, forty-five. She worked as a cleaning woman and was a bit of a happy eccentric in the village. She was a fortune-teller and her hobby was doing Tarot readings, palms, et cetera. She lived outside Landskrona in a house a long way from anywhere, and she was murdered there some time early in the morning. She was found naked and tied to a laundry-drying frame in her back garden, with her mouth taped shut. Cause of death was a heavy rock being repeatedly thrown at her. She had countless contusions and fractures.”

“Jesus Christ. Lisbeth, this is fucking disgusting.”

“It gets worse. The initials R.L. are correct – you found the Bible quote?”

“Overly explicit. A man or a woman who is a medium or a wizard shall be put to death; they shall be stoned with stones, their blood shall be upon them.”

“Then there’s Sjöberg in Ranmo outside Karlstad. She’s the one Harriet listed as Magda. Her full name was Magda Lovisa, but people called her Lovisa.”

Blomkvist listened while Salander recounted the bizarre details of the Karlstad murder. When she lit a cigarette he pointed at the pack, and she pushed it over to him.

“So the killer attacked the animal too?”

“The Leviticus verse says that if a woman has sex with an animal, both must be killed.”

“The likelihood of this woman having sex with a cow must be… well, non-existent.”

“The verse can be read literally. It’s enough that she ‘approaches’ the animal, which a farmer’s wife would undeniably do every day.”

“Understood.”

“The next case on Harriet’s list is Sara. I’ve identified her as Sara Witt, thirty-seven, living in Ronneby. She was murdered in January 1964, found tied to her bed, subjected to aggravated sexual assault, but the cause of death was asphyxiation; she was strangled. The killer also started a fire, with the probable intention of burning the whole house down to the ground, but part of the fire went out by itself, and the rest was taken care of by the fire service, who were there in a very short time.”

“And the connection?”

“Listen to this. Sara Witt was both the daughter of a pastor and married to a pastor. Her husband was away that weekend.”

“And the daughter of any priest, if she profanes herself by playing the harlot, profanes her father; she shall be burned with fire. OK. That fits on the list. You said you’d found more cases.”

“I’ve found three other women who were murdered under such similarly strange circumstances and they could have been on Harriet’s list. The first is a young woman named Liv Gustavsson. She was twenty-two and lived in Farsta. She was a horse-loving girl – she rode in competitions and was quite a promising talent. She also owned a small pet shop with her sister. She was found in the shop. She had worked late on the bookkeeping and was there alone. She must have let the killer in voluntarily. She was raped and strangled to death.”

“That doesn’t sound quite like Harriet’s list, does it?”

“Not exactly, if it weren’t for one thing. The killer concluded his barbarities by shoving a parakeet up her vagina and then let all the animals out into the shop. Cats, turtles, white mice, rabbits, birds. Even the fish in the aquarium. So it was quite an appalling scene her sister encountered in the morning.”

Blomkvist made a note.

“She was murdered in August 1960, four months after the murder of the farmer’s wife Magda Lovisa in Karlstad. In both instances they were women who worked professionally with animals, and in both cases there was an animal sacrifice. The cow in Karlstad may have survived – but I can imagine it would be difficult to stab a cow to death with a knife. A parakeet is more straightforward. And besides, there was an additional animal sacrifice.”

“What?”

Salander told the story of the “pigeon murder” of Lea Persson. Blomkvist sat for so long in silence and in thought that even Salander grew impatient.

“I’ll buy your theory,” he said at last. “There’s one case left.”

“A case that I discovered by chance. I don’t know how many I may have missed.”

“Tell me about it.”

“February 1966 in Uppsala. The victim was a seventeen-year-old gymnast called Lena Andersson. She disappeared after a class party and was found three days later in a ditch on the Uppsala plain, quite a way out of town. She had been murdered somewhere else and her body dumped there. This murder got a lot of attention in the media, but the true circumstances surrounding her death were never reported. The girl had been grotesquely tortured. I read the pathologist’s report. She was tortured with fire. Her hands and breasts were atrociously burned, and she had been burned repeatedly at various spots all over her body. They found paraffin stains on her, which showed that candles had been used, but her hands were so charred that they must have been held over a more powerful fire. Finally, the killer sawed off her head and tossed it next to the body.”

Blomkvist blanched. “Good Lord,” he said.

“I can’t find any Bible quote that fits, but there are several passages that deal with a fire offering and a sin offering, and in some places it’s recommended that the sacrificial animal – most often a bull – be cut up in such a way that the head is severed from the fat. Fire also reminds me of the first murder, of Rebecka here in Hedestad.”

Towards evening when the mosquitoes began to swarm they cleared off the garden table and moved to the kitchen to go on with their talk.

“The fact that you didn’t find an exact Bible quotation doesn’t mean much. It’s not a matter of quotations. This is a grotesque parody of what is written in the Bible – it’s more like associations to quotations pulled out of context.”

“I agree. It isn’t even logical. Take for example the quote that both have to be cut off from their people if someone has sex with a girl who’s having her period. If that’s interpreted literally, the killer should have committed suicide.”

“So where does all this lead?” Blomkvist wondered aloud.

“Your Harriet either had quite a strange hobby or else she must have known that there was a connection between the murders.”

“Between 1949 and 1966, and maybe before and after as well. The idea that an insanely sick sadistic serial killer was slaughtering women for at least seventeen years without anyone seeing a connection sounds utterly unbelievable to me.”

Salander pushed back her chair and poured more coffee from the pot on the stove. She lit a cigarette. Mikael cursed himself and stole another from her.

“No, it’s not so unbelievable,” she said, holding up one finger. “We have several dozen unsolved murders of women in Sweden during the twentieth century. That professor of criminology, Persson, said once on TV that serial killers are very rare in Sweden, but that probably we have had some that were never caught.”

She held up another finger.

“These murders were committed over a very long period of time and all over the country. Two occurred close together in 1960, but the circumstances were quite different – a farmer’s wife in Karlstad and a twenty-two-year-old in Stockholm.”

Three fingers.

“There is no immediately apparent pattern. The murders were carried out at different places and there is no real signature, but there are certain things that do recur. Animals. Fire. Aggravated sexual assault. And, as you pointed out, a parody of Biblical quotations. But it seems that not one of the investigating detectives interpreted any of the murders in terms of the Bible.”

Blomkvist was watching her. With her slender body, her black camisole, the tattoos, and the rings piercing her face, Salander looked out of place, to say the least, in a guest cottage in Hedeby. When he tried to be sociable over dinner, she was taciturn to the point of rudeness. But when she was working she sounded like a professional to her fingertips. Her apartment in Stockholm might look as if a bomb had gone off in it, but mentally Salander was extremely well organised.

“It’s hard to see the connection between a prostitute in Uddevalla who’s killed in an industrial yard and a pastor’s wife who is strangled in Ronneby and has her house set on fire. If you don’t have the key that Harriet gave us, that is.”

“Which leads to the next question,” Salander said.

“How on earth did Harriet get mixed up in all this? A sixteen-year-old girl who lived in a really sheltered environment.”

“There’s only one answer,” Salander said. “There must be some connection to the Vanger family.”

By 11:00 that night they had gone over the series of murders and discussed the conceivable connections and the tiny details of similarity and difference so often that Blomkvist’s head was spinning. He rubbed his eyes and stretched and asked Salander if she felt like a walk. Her expression suggested that she thought such practices were a waste of time, but she agreed. Blomkvist advised her to change into long trousers because of the mosquitoes.

They strolled past the small-boat harbour and then under the bridge and out towards Martin Vanger’s point. Blomkvist pointed out the various houses and told her about the people who lived in them. He had some difficulty when they came to Cecilia Vanger’s house. Salander gave him a curious look.

They passed Martin Vanger’s motor yacht and reached the point, and there they sat on a rock and shared a cigarette.

“There’s one more connection,” Blomkvist said suddenly. “Maybe you’ve already thought of it.”

“What?”

“Their names.”

Salander thought for a moment and shook her head.

“They’re all Biblical names.”

“Not true,” she said. “Where is there a Liv or Lena in the Bible?”

“They are there. Liv means to live, in other words Eva. And come on – what’s Lena short for?”

Salander grimaced in annoyance. He had been quicker than she was. She did not like that.

“Magdalena,” she said.

“The whore, the first woman, the Virgin Mary… they’re all there in this group. This is so freaky it’d make a psychologist’s head spin. But there’s something else I thought of with regard to the names.”

Salander waited patiently.

“They’re obviously all traditional Jewish names. The Vanger family has had more than its share of fanatical anti-Semites, Nazis, and conspiracy theorists. The only time I met Harald Vanger he was standing in the road snarling that his own daughter was a whore. He certainly has problems with women.”

When they got back to the cabin they made a midnight snack and heated up the coffee. Mikael took a look at the almost 500 pages that Dragan Armansky’s favourite researcher had produced for him.

“You’ve done a fantastic job of digging up these facts in such a short time,” he said. “Thanks. And thanks also for being nice enough to come up here and report on it.”

“What happens now?” Salander wanted to know.

“I’m going to talk to Dirch Frode tomorrow and arrange for your fee to be paid.”

“That wasn’t what I meant.”

Blomkvist looked at her.

“Well… I reckon the job I hired you for is done,” he said.

“I’m not done with this.”

Blomkvist leaned back against the kitchen wall and met her gaze. He couldn’t read anything at all in her eyes. For half a year he had been working alone on Harriet’s disappearance, and here was another person – an experienced researcher – who grasped the implications. He made the decision on impulse.

“I know. This story has got under my skin too. I’ll talk to Frode. We’ll hire you for a week or two more as… a research assistant. I don’t know if he’ll want to pay the same rate he pays to Armansky, but we should be able to arrange a basic living wage for you.”

Salander suddenly gave him a smile. She had no wish to be shut out and would have gladly done the job for free.

“I’m falling asleep,” she said, and without further ado she went to her room and closed the door.

Two minutes later she opened the door and put out her head.

“I think you’re wrong. It’s not an insane serial killer who read his Bible wrong. It’s just a common or garden bastard who hates women.”

CHAPTER 21 Thursday, July 3 – Thursday, July 10

Salander was up before Blomkvist, around 6:00. She put on some water for coffee and went to take a shower. When Blomkvist woke at 7:30, she was reading his summary of the Harriet Vanger case on his iBook. He came out to the kitchen with a towel round his waist, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes.

“There’s coffee on the stove,” she said.

He looked over her shoulder.

“That document was password protected, dammit,” he said.

She turned and peered up at him.

“It takes thirty seconds to download a programme from the Net that can crack Word’s encryption protection.”

“We need to have a talk on the subject of what’s yours and what’s mine,” he said, and went to take a shower.

When he came back, Salander had turned off his computer and put it back in its place in his office. She had booted up her own PowerBook. Blomkvist felt sure that she had already transferred the contents of his computer to her own.

Salander was an information junkie with a delinquent child’s take on morals and ethics.

He had just sat down to breakfast when there was a knock at the front door. Martin Vanger looked so solemn that for a second Blomkvist thought he had come to bring the news of his uncle’s death.

“No, Henrik’s condition is the same as yesterday. I’m here for a quite different reason. Could I come in for a moment?”

Blomkvist let him in, introducing him to “my research assistant” Lisbeth Salander. She gave the captain of industry barely a glance and a quick nod before she went back to her computer. Martin Vanger greeted her automatically but looked so distracted that he hardly seemed to notice her. Blomkvist poured him a cup of coffee and invited him to have a seat.

“What’s this all about?”

“You don’t subscribe to the Hedestad Courier?”

“No. But sometimes I see it at Susanne’s Bridge Café.”

“Then you haven’t read this morning’s paper.”

“You make it sound as if I ought to.”

Martin Vanger put the day’s paper on the table in front of him. He had been given two columns on the front page, continued on page four. “Convicted Libel Journalist Hiding Here.” A photograph taken with a telephoto lens from the church hill on the other side of the bridge showed Blomkvist coming out of the cottage.

The reporter, Torsson, had cobbled together a scurrilous piece. He recapitulated the Wennerström affair and explained that Blomkvist had left Millennium in disgrace and that he had recently served a prison term. The article ended with the usual line that Blomkvist had declined to comment to the Hedestad Courier. Every self-respecting resident of Hedestad was put on notice that an Olympic-class shit from Stockholm was skulking around the area. None of the claims in the article was libellous, but they were slanted to present Blomkvist in an unflattering light; the layout and type style was of the kind that such newspapers used to discuss political terrorists. Millennium was described as a magazine with low credibility “bent on agitation,” and Blomkvist’s book on financial journalism was presented as a collection of “controversial claims” about other more respected journalists.

“Mikael… I don’t have words to express what I felt when I read this article. It’s repulsive.”

“It’s a put-up job,” Blomkvist said calmly.

“I hope you understand that I didn’t have the slightest thing to do with this. I choked on my morning coffee when I read it.”

“Then who did?”

“I made some calls. This Torsson is a summer work experience kid. He did the piece on orders from Birger.”

“I thought Birger had no say in the newsroom. After all, he is a councillor and political figure.”

“Technically he has no influence. But the editor in chief of the Courier is Gunnar Karlman, Ingrid’s son, who’s part of the Johan Vanger branch of the family. Birger and Gunnar have been close for many years.”

“I see.”

“Torsson will be fired forthwith.”

“How old is he?”

“To tell you the truth, I don’t know. I’ve never met him.”

“Don’t fire him. When he called me he sounded like a very young and inexperienced reporter.”

“This can’t be allowed to pass without consequences.”

“If you want my opinion, the situation seems a bit absurd, when the editor in chief of a publication owned by the Vanger family goes on the attack against another publication in which Henrik Vanger is a part owner and on whose board you sit. Your editor, Karlman, is attacking you and Henrik.”

“I see what you mean, and I ought to lay the blame where it belongs. Karlman is a part owner in the corporation and has always taken pot-shots at me, but this seems more like Birger’s revenge because you had a run-in with him at the hospital. You’re a thorn in his side.”

“I believe it. That’s why I think Torsson is the last person to blame. It takes a lot for an intern to say no when the boss instructs him to write something in a certain way.”

“I could demand that you be given an apology tomorrow.”

“Better not. It would just turn into a long, drawn-out squabble that would make the situation worse.”

“So you don’t think I should do anything?”

“It wouldn’t be any use. Karlman would kick up a fuss and in the worst case you’d be painted as a villain who, in his capacity as owner, is trying to stamp on the freedom of expression.”

“Pardon me, Mikael, but I don’t agree with you. As a matter of fact, I also have the right to express my opinion. My view is that this article stinks – and I intend to make my own point of view clear. However reluctantly, I’m Henrik’s replacement on Millennium’s board, and in that role I am not going to let an offensive article like this one pass unchallenged.”

“Fair enough.”

“So I’m going to demand the right to respond. And if I make Karlman look like an idiot, he has only himself to blame.”

“You must do what you believe is right.”

“For me, it’s also important that you absolutely understand that I have nothing whatsoever to do with this vitriolic attack.”

“I believe you,” Blomkvist said.

“Besides – I didn’t really want to bring this up now, but this just serves to illustrate what we’ve already discussed. It’s important to re-install you on Millennium’s editorial board so that we can show a united front to the world. As long as you’re away, the gossip will continue. I believe in Millennium, and I’m convinced that we can win this fight together.”

“I see your point, but now it’s my turn to disagree with you. I can’t break my contract with Henrik, and the fact is that I wouldn’t want to break it. You see, I really like him. And this thing with Harriet…”

“Yes?”

“I know it’s a running sore for you and I realise that Henrik has been obsessed with it for many years.”

“Just between the two of us – I do love Henrik and he is my mentor – but when it comes to Harriet, he’s almost off his rocker.”

“When I started this job I couldn’t help thinking that it was a waste of time. But I think we’re on the verge of a breakthrough and that it might now be possible to know what really happened.”

Blomkvist read doubt in Martin Vanger’s eyes. At last he made a decision.

“OK, in that case the best thing we can do is to solve the mystery of Harriet as quickly as possible. I’ll give you all the support I can so that you finish the work to your satisfaction – and, of course, Henrik’s – and then return to Millennium.”

“Good. So I won’t have to fight with you too.”

“No, you won’t. You can ask for my help whenever you run into a problem. I’ll make damn sure that Birger won’t put any sort of obstacles in your way. And I’ll try to talk to Cecilia, to calm her down.”

“Thank you. I need to ask her some questions, and she’s been resisting my attempts at conversation for a month now.”

Martin Vanger laughed. “Perhaps you have other issues to iron out. But I won’t get involved in that.”

They shook hands.

Salander had listened to the conversation. When Martin Vanger left she reached for the Hedestad Courier and scanned the article. She put the paper down without making any comment.

Blomkvist sat in silence, thinking. Gunnar Karlman was born in 1948 and would have been eighteen in 1966. He was one of the people on the island when Harriet disappeared.

After breakfast he asked his research assistant to read through the police report. He gave her all the photographs of the accident, as well as the long summary of Vanger’s own investigations.

Blomkvist then drove to Frode’s house and asked him kindly to draw up an agreement for Salander as a research assistant for the next month.

By the time he returned to the cottage, Salander had decamped to the garden and was immersed in the police report. Blomkvist went in to heat up the coffee. He watched her through the kitchen window. She seemed to be skimming, spending no more than ten or fifteen seconds on each page. She turned the pages mechanically, and Blomkvist was amazed at her lack of concentration; it made no sense, since her own report was so meticulous. He took two cups of coffee and joined her at the garden table.

“Your notes were done before you knew we were looking for a serial killer.”

“That’s true. I simply wrote down questions I wanted to ask Henrik, and some other things. It was quite unstructured. Up until now I’ve really been struggling in the dark, trying to write a story – a chapter in the autobiography of Henrik Vanger.”

“And now?”

“In the past all the investigations focused on Hedeby Island. Now I’m sure that the story, the sequence of events that ended in her disappearance, started in Hedestad. That shifts the perspective.”

Salander said: “It was amazing what you discovered with the pictures.”

Blomkvist was surprised. Salander did not seem the type to throw compliments around, and he felt flattered. On the other hand – from a purely journalistic point of view – it was quite an achievement.

“It’s your turn to fill in the details. How did it go with that picture you were chasing up in Norsjö?”

“You mean you didn’t check the images in my computer?”

“There wasn’t time. I needed to read the résumés, your situation reports to yourself.”

Blomkvist started his iBook and clicked on the photograph folder.

“It’s fascinating. The visit to Norsjö was a sort of progress, but it was also a disappointment. I found the picture, but it doesn’t tell us much.

“That woman, Mildred Berggren, had saved all her holiday pictures in albums. The picture I was looking for was one of them. It was taken on cheap colour film and after thirty-seven years the print was incredibly faded – with a strong yellow tinge. But, would you believe, she still had the negative in a shoebox. She let me borrow all the negatives from Hedestad and I’ve scanned them in. This is what Harriet saw.”

He clicked on an image which now had the filename HARRIET/bd – 19.eps.

Salander immediately understood his dismay. She saw an unfocused image that showed clowns in the foreground of the Children’s Day parade. In the background could be seen the corner of Sundström’s Haberdashery. About ten people were standing on the pavement in front of Sundström’s.

“I think this is the person she saw. Partly because I tried to triangulate what she was looking at, judging by the angle that her face was turned – I made a drawing of the crossroads there – and partly because this is the only person who seems to be looking straight into the camera. Meaning that – perhaps – he was staring at Harriet.”

What Salander saw was a blurry figure standing a little bit behind the spectators, almost in the side street. He had on a dark padded jacket with a red patch on the shoulders and dark trousers, possibly jeans. Blomkvist zoomed in so that the figure from the waist up filled the screen. The photograph became instantly fuzzier still.

“It’s a man. He’s about five-foot eleven, normal build. He has dark-blond, semi-long hair and is clean-shaven. But it’s impossible to make out his facial features or even estimate his age. He could be anywhere between his teens and middle age.

“You could manipulate the image…”

“I have manipulated the image, dammit. I even sent a copy to the image processing wizard at Millennium.” Blomkvist clicked up a new shot. “This is the absolute best I can get out of it. The camera is simply too lousy and the distance too far.”

“Have you shown the picture to anyone? Someone might recognise the man’s bearing or…”

“I showed it to Frode. He has no idea who the man is.”

“Herr Frode probably isn’t the most observant person in Hedestad.”

“No, but I’m working for him and Henrik Vanger. I want to show the picture to Henrik before I cast the net wider.”

“Perhaps he’s nothing more than a spectator.”

“That’s possible. But he managed to trigger a strange response from Harriet.”

During the next several days Blomkvist and Salander worked on the Harriet case virtually every waking moment. Salander went on reading the police report, rattling off one question after another. There could only be one truth, and each vague answer or uncertainty led to more intense interrogation. They spent one whole day examining timetables for the cast of characters at the scene of the accident on the bridge.

Salander became more and more of an enigma to him. Despite the fact that she only skimmed the documents in the report, she always seemed to settle on the most obscure and contradictory details.

They took a break in the afternoons, when the heat made it unbearable out in the garden. They would swim in the channel or walk up to the terrace at Susanne’s Bridge Café. Susanne now treated Blomkvist with an undisguised coolness. He realised that Salander looked barely legal and she was obviously living at his cottage, and that – in Susanne’s eyes – made him a dirty old middle-aged man. It was not pleasant.

Blomkvist went out every evening for a run. Salander made no comment when he returned out of breath to the cottage. Running was obviously not her thing.

“I’m over forty,” he said. “I have to exercise to keep from getting too fat around the middle.”

“I see.”

“Don’t you ever exercise?”

“I box once in a while.”

“You box?”

“Yeah, you know, with gloves.”

“What weight do you box in?” he said, when he emerged from the shower.

“None at all. I spar a little now and then against the guys in a club in Söder.”

Why is that no surprise? he thought. But at least she had told him something about herself. He knew no basic facts about her. How did she come to be working for Armansky? What sort of education did she have? What did her parents do? As soon as Blomkvist tried to ask about her life she shut up like a clam, answered in single syllables or ignored him.

One afternoon Salander suddenly put down a binder, frowning.

“What do you know about Otto Falk? The pastor.”

“Not much. I met the present incumbent a few times earlier in the year, and she told me that Falk lives in some geriatric home in Hedestad. Alzheimer’s.”

“Where did he come from?”

“From Hedestad. He studied in Uppsala.”

“He was unmarried. And Harriet hung out with him.”

“Why do you ask?”

“I’m just saying that Morell went pretty easy on him in the interview.”

“In the sixties pastors enjoyed a considerably different status in society. It was natural for him to live out here on the island, close to the power brokers, so to speak.”

“I wonder how carefully the police searched the parsonage. In the photographs it looks like it was a big wooden house, and there must have been plenty of places to hide a body for a while.”

“That’s true, but there’s nothing in the material to indicate that he would have any connection to the serial murders or to Harriet’s disappearance.”

“Actually, there is,” Salander said, with a wry smile. “First of all he was a pastor, and pastors more than anyone else have a special relationship to the Bible. Second, he was the last person known to have seen and talked with Harriet.”

“But he went down to the scene of the accident and stayed there for several hours. He’s in lots of the pictures, especially during the time when Harriet must have vanished.”

“All right, I can’t crack his alibi. But I was actually thinking about something else. This story is about a sadistic killer of women.”

“So?”

“I was… I had a little time to myself this spring and read quite a bit about sadists in a rather different context. One of the things I read was an FBI manual. It claimed that a striking portion of convicted serial killers came from dysfunctional homes and tortured animals in their childhood. Some of the convicted American serial killers were also arrested for arson. Tortured animals and arson crop up in several of Harriet’s murder cases, but what I was really thinking about was the fact that the parsonage burned down in the late seventies.”

“It’s a long shot,” Blomkvist said.

Lisbeth nodded. “Agreed. But I find nothing in the police report about the cause of the fire, and it would be very interesting to know if there were other unexplained fires hereabouts in the sixties. It would also be worth checking to see if there were any cases of animal abuse or mutilation in the area back then.”

When Salander went to bed on her seventh night in Hedeby, she was mildly irritated with Blomkvist. For almost a week she had spent practically every waking minute with him. Normally seven minutes of another person’s company was enough to give her a headache, so she set things up to live as a recluse. She was perfectly content as long as people left her in peace. Unfortunately society was not very smart or understanding; she had to protect herself from social authorities, child welfare authorities, guardianship authorities, tax authorities, police, curators, psychologists, psychiatrists, teachers, and bouncers, who (apart from the guys watching the door at Kvarnen, who by this time knew who she was) would never let her into the bar even though she was twenty-five. There was a whole army of people who seemed not to have anything better to do than to try to disrupt her life, and, if they were given the opportunity, to correct the way she had chosen to live it.

It did no good to cry, she had learned that early on. She had also learned that every time she tried to make someone aware of something in her life, the situation just got worse. Consequently it was up to her to solve her problems by herself, using whatever methods she deemed necessary. Something that Advokat Bjurman had found out the hard way.

Blomkvist had the same tiresome habit as everyone else, poking around in her life and asking questions. On the other hand, he did not react at all like most other men she had met.

When she ignored his questions he simply shrugged and left her in peace. Astounding.

Her immediate move, when she got hold of his iBook that first morning, had naturally been to transfer all the information to her own computer. That way it was OK if he dumped her from the case; she would still have access to the material.

She had expected a furious outburst when he appeared for his breakfast. Instead he had looked almost resigned, muttered something sarcastic, and gone off to the shower. Then he began discussing what she had read. A strange guy. She might even be deluded into thinking that he trusted her.

That he knew about her propensities as a hacker was serious. Salander was aware that the legal description of the kind of hacking she did, both professionally and as a hobby, was “unlawful data trespassing” and could earn her two years in prison. She did not want to be locked up. In her case a prison sentence would mean that her computers would be taken from her, and with them the only occupation that she was really good at. She had never told Armansky how she gathered the information they were paying her to find.

With the exception of Plague and a few people on the Net who, like her, devoted themselves to hacking on a professional level – and most of them knew her only as “Wasp” and did not know who she was or where she lived – Kalle Blomkvist was the only one who had stumbled on to her secret. He had come to her because she made a blunder that not even a twelve-year-old would commit, which only proved that her brain was being eaten up by worms and that she deserved to be flogged. But instead of going crazy with rage he had hired her.

Consequently she was mildly irritated with him.

When they had a snack just before she went to bed, he had suddenly asked her if she was a good hacker.

To her own surprise she replied, “I’m probably the best in Sweden. There may be two or three others at about my level.”

She did not doubt the accuracy of her reply. Plague had once been better than she was, but she had passed him long ago.

On the other hand, it felt funny to say the words. She had never done it before. She had never had an outsider to have this sort of conversation with, and she enjoyed the fact that he seemed impressed by her talents. Then he had ruined the feeling by asking another question: how had she taught herself hacking?

What could she say? I’ve always been able to do it. Instead she went to bed without saying goodnight.

Irritating her yet further, he did not react when she left so abruptly. She lay listening to him moving about in the kitchen, clearing the table and washing the dishes. He had always stayed up later than she did, but now he was obviously on his way to bed too. She heard him in the bathroom, and then he went into his bedroom and shut the door. After a while she heard the bed creak when he got into it, not a yard away from her own but on the other side of the wall.

She had been sharing a house with him for a week, and he had not once flirted with her. He had worked with her, asked her opinion, slapped her on the knuckles figuratively speaking when she was on the wrong track, and acknowledged that she was right when she corrected him. Dammit, he had treated her like a human being.

She got out of bed and stood by the window, restlessly peering into the dark. The hardest thing for her was to show herself naked to another person for the first time. She was convinced that her skinny body was repulsive. Her breasts were pathetic. She had no hips to speak of. She did not have much to offer. Apart from that she was a quite normal woman, with the same desires and sex drive as every other woman. She stood there for the next twenty minutes before she made up her mind.

Blomkvist was reading a novel by Sara Paretsky when he heard the door handle turn and looked up to see Salander. She had a sheet wrapped round her body and stood in the doorway for a moment.

“You OK?” he said.

She shook her head.

“What is it?”

She went over to his bed, took the book, and put it on the bedside table. Then she bent down and kissed him on the mouth. She quickly got into his bed and sat looking at him, searching him. She put her hand on the sheet over his stomach. When he did not protest she leaned over and bit him on the nipple.

Blomkvist was flabbergasted. He took her shoulders and pushed her away a little so that he could see her face.

“Lisbeth… I don’t know if this is such a good idea. We have to work together.”

“I want to have sex with you. And I won’t have any problem working with you, but I will have a hell of a problem with you if you kick me out.”

“But we hardly know each other.”

She laughed, an abrupt laugh that sounded almost like a cough.

“You’ve never let anything like that stand in your way before. In fact, as I didn’t say in my background report, you’re one of these guys who can’t keep his hands off women. So what’s wrong? Aren’t I sexy enough for you?”

Blomkvist shook his head and tried to think of something clever to say. When he couldn’t she pulled the sheet off him and sat astride him.

“I don’t have any condoms,” he said.

“Screw it.”

When he woke up, he heard her in the kitchen. It was not yet 7:00. He may only have slept for two hours, and he stayed in bed, dozing.

This woman baffled him. At absolutely no point had she even with a glance indicated that she was the least bit interested in him.

“Good morning,” she said from the doorway. She even had the hint of a smile.

“Hi.”

“We are out of milk. I’ll go to the petrol station. They open at seven.” And she was gone.

He heard her go out of the front door. He shut his eyes. Then he heard the front door open again and seconds later she was back in the doorway. This time she was not smiling.

“You’d better come and look at this,” she said in a strange voice.

Blomkvist was on his feet at once and pulled on his jeans.

During the night someone had been to the cottage with an unwelcome present. On the porch lay the half-charred corpse of a cat. The cat’s legs and head had been cut off, then the body had been flayed and the guts and stomach removed, flung next to the corpse, which seemed to have been roasted over a fire. The cat’s head was intact, on the saddle of Salander’s motorcycle. He recognised the reddish-brown fur.

CHAPTER 22 Thursday, July 10

They ate breakfast in the garden in silence and without milk in their coffee. Salander had taken out a Canon digital camera and photographed the macabre tableau before Blomkvist got a rubbish sack and cleaned it away. He put the cat in the boot of the Volvo. He ought to file a police report for animal cruelty, possibly intimidation, but he did not think he would want to explain why the intimidation had taken place.

At 8:30 Isabella Vanger walked past and on to the bridge. She did not see them or at least pretended not to.

“How are you doing?” Blomkvist said.

“Oh, I’m fine.” Salander looked at him, perplexed. OK, then. He expects me to be upset. “When I find the motherfucker who tortured an innocent cat to death just to send us a warning, I’m going to clobber him with a baseball bat.”

“You think it’s a warning?”

“Have you got a better explanation? It definitely means something.”

“Whatever the truth is in this story, we’ve worried somebody enough for that person to do something really sick. But there’s another problem too.”

“I know. This is an animal sacrifice in the style of 1954 and 1960 and it doesn’t seem credible that someone active fifty years ago would be putting tortured animal corpses on your doorstep today.”

Blomkvist agreed.

“The only ones who could be suspected in that case are Harald Vanger and Isabella Vanger. There are a number of older relatives on Johan Vanger’s side, but none of them live in the area.”

Blomkvist sighed.

“Isabella is a repulsive bitch who could certainly kill a cat, but I doubt she was running around killing women in the fifties. Harald Vanger… I don’t know, he seems so decrepit he can hardly walk, and I can’t see him sneaking over here last night, catching a cat, and doing all this.”

“Unless it was two people. One older, one younger.”

Blomkvist heard a car go by and looked up and saw Cecilia driving away over the bridge. Harald and Cecilia, he thought, but they hardly spoke. Despite Martin Vanger’s promise to talk to her, Cecilia had still not answered any of his telephone messages.

“It must be somebody who knows we’re doing this work and that we’re making progress,” Salander said, getting up to go inside. When she came back out she had put on her leathers.

“I’m going to Stockholm. I’ll be back tonight.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Pick up some gadgets. If someone is crazy enough to kill a cat in that disgusting way, he or she could attack us next time. Or set the cottage on fire while we’re asleep. I want you to go into Hedestad and buy two fire extinguishers and two smoke alarms today. One of the fire extinguishers has to be halon.”

Without another word, she put on her helmet, kick-started the motorcycle, and roared off across the bridge.

Blomkvist hid the corpse and the head and guts in the rubbish bin beside the petrol station before he drove into Hedestad to do his errands. He drove to the hospital. He had made an appointment to meet Frode in the cafeteria, and he told him what had happened that morning. Frode blanched.

“Mikael, I never imagined that this story could take this turn.”

“Why not? The job was to find a murderer, after all.”

“But this is disgusting and inhuman. If there’s a danger to your life or to Fröken Salander’s life, we are going to call it off. Let me talk to Henrik.”

“No. Absolutely not. I don’t want to risk his having another attack.”

“He asks me all the time how things are going with you.”

“Say hello from me, please, and tell him I’m moving forward.”

“What is next, then?”

“I have a few questions. The first incident occurred just after Henrik had his heart attack and I was down in Stockholm for the day. Somebody went through my office. I had printed out the Bible verses, and the photographs from Järnvägsgatan were on my desk. You knew and Henrik knew. Martin knew a part of it since he organised for me to get into the Courier offices. How many other people knew?”

“Well, I don’t know who Martin talked to. But both Birger and Cecilia knew about it. They discussed your hunting in the pictures archive between themselves. Alexander knew about it too. And, by the way, Gunnar and Helena Nilsson did too. They were up to say hello to Henrik and got dragged into the conversation. And Anita Vanger.”

“Anita? The one in London?”

“Cecilia’s sister. She came back with Cecilia when Henrik had his heart attack but stayed at a hotel; as far as I know, she hasn’t been out to the island. Like Cecilia, she doesn’t want to see her father. But she flew back when Henrik came out of intensive care.”

“Where’s Cecilia living? I saw her this morning as she drove across the bridge, but her house is always dark.”

“She’s not capable of doing such a thing, is she?”

“No, I just wonder where she’s staying.”

“She’s staying with her brother, Birger. It’s within walking distance to visit Henrik.”

“Do you know where she is right now?”

“No. She’s not visiting Henrik, at any rate.”

“Thanks,” Blomkvist said, getting up.

The Vanger family was hovering around Hedestad Hospital. In the reception Birger Vanger passed on his way to the lifts. Blomkvist waited until he was gone before he went out to the reception. Instead he ran into Martin Vanger at the entrance, at exactly the same spot where he had run into Cecilia on his previous visit. They said hello and shook hands.

“Have you been up to see Henrik?”

“No, I just happened to meet Dirch Frode.”

Martin looked tired and hollow-eyed. It occurred to Mikael that he had aged appreciably during the six months since he had met him.

“How are things going with you, Mikael?” he said.

“More interesting with every day that passes. When Henrik is feeling better I hope to be able to satisfy his curiosity.”

Birger Vanger’s was a white-brick terrace house a five-minute walk from the hospital. He had a view of the sea and the Hedestad marina. No-one answered when Blomkvist rang the doorbell. He called Cecilia’s mobile number but got no answer there either. He sat in the car for a while, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. Birger Vanger was the wild card in the deck; born in 1939 and so ten years old when Rebecka Jacobsson was murdered; twenty-seven when Harriet disappeared.

According to Henrik, Birger and Harriet hardly ever saw each other. He had grown up with his family in Uppsala and only moved to Hedestad to work for the firm. He jumped ship after a couple of years and devoted himself to politics. But he had been in Uppsala at the time Lena Andersson was murdered.

The incident with the cat gave him an ominous feeling, as if he were about to run out of time.

Otto Falk was thirty-six when Harriet vanished. He was now seventy-two, younger than Henrik Vanger but in a considerably worse mental state. Blomkvist sought him out at the Svalan convalescent home, a yellow-brick building a short distance from the Hede River at the other end of the town. Blomkvist introduced himself to the receptionist and asked to be allowed to speak with Pastor Falk. He knew, he explained, that the pastor suffered from Alzheimer’s and enquired how lucid he was now. A nurse replied that Pastor Falk had first been diagnosed three years earlier and that alas the disease had taken an aggressive course. Falk could communicate, but he had a very feeble short-term memory, and did not recognise all of his relatives. He was on the whole slipping into the shadows. He was also prone to anxiety attacks if he was confronted with questions he could not answer.

Falk was sitting on a bench in the garden with three other patients and a male nurse. Blomkvist spent an hour trying to engage him in conversation.

He remembered Harriet Vanger quite well. His face lit up, and he described her as a charming girl. But Blomkvist was soon aware that the pastor had forgotten that she had been missing these last thirty-seven years. He talked about her as if he had seen her recently and asked Blomkvist to say hello to her and urge her to come and see him. Blomkvist promised to do so.

He obviously did not remember the accident on the bridge. It was not until the end of their conversation that he said something which made Blomkvist prick up his ears.

It was when Blomkvist steered the talk to Harriet’s interest in religion that Falk suddenly seemed hesitant. It was as though a cloud passed over his face. Falk sat rocking back and forth for a while and then looked up at Blomkvist and asked who he was. Blomkvist introduced himself again and the old man thought for a while. At length he said: “She’s still a seeker. She has to take care of herself and you have to warn her.”

“What should I warn her about?”

Falk grew suddenly agitated. He shook his head with a frown.

“She has to read sola scriptura and understand sufficientia scripturae. That’s the only way that she can maintain sola fide. Josef will certainly exclude them. They were never accepted into the canon.”

Blomkvist understood nothing of this, but took assiduous notes. Then Pastor Falk leaned towards him and whispered, “I think she’s a Catholic. She loves magic and has not yet found her God. She needs guidance.”

The word “Catholic” obviously had a negative connotation for Pastor Falk.

“I thought she was interested in the Pentecostal movement?”

“No, no, no, not the Pentecostals. She’s looking for the forbidden truth. She is not a good Christian.”

Then Pastor Falk seemed to forget all about Blomkvist and started talking with the other patients.

He got back to Hedeby Island just after 2:00. He walked over to Cecilia Vanger’s and knocked on the door, but without success. He tried her mobile number again but no answer.

He attached one smoke alarm to a wall in the kitchen and one next to the front door. He put one fire extinguisher next to the woodstove beside the bedroom door and another one beside the bathroom door. Then he made himself lunch, which consisted of coffee and open sandwiches, and sat in the garden, where he was typing up the notes of his conversation with Pastor Falk. When that was done, he raised his eyes to the church.

Hedeby’s new parsonage was quite an ordinary modern dwelling a few minutes’ walk from the church. Blomkvist knocked on the door at 4:00 and explained to Pastor Margareta Strandh that he had come to seek advice on a theological matter. Margareta Strandh was a dark-haired woman of about his own age, dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt. She was barefoot and had painted toenails. He had run into her before at Susanne’s Bridge Café on a couple of occasions and talked to her about Pastor Falk. He was given a friendly reception and invited to come and sit in her courtyard.

Blomkvist told her that he had interviewed Otto Falk and what the old man had said. Pastor Strandh listened and then asked him to repeat it word for word.

“I was sent to serve here in Hedeby only three years ago, and I’ve never actually met Pastor Falk. He retired several years before that, but I believe that he was fairly high-church. What he said to you meant something on the lines of ‘keep to Scripture alone’ – sola scriptura – and that it is sufficientia scripturae. This latter is an expression that establishes the sufficiency of Scripture among literal believers. Sola fide means faith alone or the true faith.”

“I see.”

“All this is basic dogma, so to speak. In general it’s the platform of the church and nothing unusual at all. He was saying quite simply: ‘Read the Bible – it will provide sufficient knowledge and vouches for the true faith.’”

Mikael felt a bit embarrassed.

“Now I have to ask you in what connection this conversation occurred,” she said.

“I was asking him about a person he had met many years ago, someone I’m writing about.”

“A religious seeker?”

“Something along that line.”

“OK. I think I understand the context. You told me that Pastor Falk said two other things – that ‘Josef will certainly exclude them’ and that‘ they were never accepted into the canon.’ Is it possible that you misunderstood and that he said Josefus instead of Josef? It’s actually the same name.”

“That’s possible,” Blomkvist said. “I taped the conversation if you want to listen to it.”

“No, I don’t think that’s necessary. These two sentences establish fairly unequivocally what he was alluding to. Josefus was a Jewish historian, and the sentence ‘they were never accepted into the canon’ may have meant that they were never in the Hebrew canon.”

“And that means?”

She laughed.

“Pastor Falk was saying that this person was enthralled by esoteric sources, specifically the Apocrypha. The Greek word apokryphos means ‘hidden,’ and the Apocrypha are therefore the hidden books which some consider highly controversial and others think should be included in the Old Testament. They are Tobias, Judith, Esther, Baruch, Sirach, the books of the Maccabees, and some others.”

“Forgive my ignorance. I’ve heard about the books of the Apocrypha but have never read them. What’s special about them?”

“There’s really nothing special about them at all, except that they came into existence somewhat later than the rest of the Old Testament. The Apocrypha were deleted from the Hebrew Bible – not because Jewish scholars mistrusted their content but simply because they were written after the time when God’s revelatory work was concluded. On the other hand, the Apocrypha are included in the old Greek translation of the Bible. They’re not considered controversial in, for example, the Roman Catholic Church.”

“I see.”

“However, they are controversial in the Protestant Church. During the Reformation, theologians looked to the old Hebrew Bible. Martin Luther deleted the Apocrypha from the Reformation’s Bible and later Calvin declared that the Apocrypha absolutely must not serve as the basis for convictions in matters of faith. Thus their contents contradict or in some way conflict with claritas scripturae – the clarity of Scripture.”

“In other words, censored books.”

“Quite right. For example, the Apocrypha claim that magic can be practised and that lies in certain cases may be permissible, and such statements, of course, upset dogmatic interpreters of Scripture.”

“So if someone has a passion for religion, it’s not unthinkable that the Apocrypha will pop up on their reading list, or that someone like Pastor Falk would be upset by this.”

“Exactly. Encountering the Apocrypha is almost unavoidable if you’re studying the Bible or the Catholic faith, and it’s equally probable that someone who is interested in esoterica in general might read them.”

“You don’t happen to have a copy of the Apocrypha, do you?”

She laughed again. A bright, friendly laugh.

“Of course I do. The Apocrypha were actually published as a state report from the Bible Commission in the eighties.”

Armansky wondered what was going on when Salander asked to speak to him in private. He shut the door behind her and motioned her to the visitor’s chair. She told him that her work for Mikael Blomkvist was done – the lawyer would be paying her before the end of the month – but that she had decided to keep on with this particular investigation. Blomkvist had offered her a considerably higher salary for a month.

“I am self-employed,” Salander said. “Until now I’ve never taken a job that you haven’t given me, in keeping with our agreement. What I want to know is what will happen to our relationship if I take a job on my own?”

Armansky shrugged.

“You’re a freelancer, you can take any job you want and charge what you think it’s worth. I’m just glad you’re making your own money. It would, however, be disloyal of you to take on clients you find through us.”

“I have no plans to do that. I’ve finished the job according to the contract we signed with Blomkvist. What this is about is that I want to stay on the case. I’d even do it for nothing.”

“Don’t ever do anything for nothing.”

“You know what I mean. I want to know where this story is going. I’ve convinced Blomkvist to ask the lawyer to keep me on as a research assistant.”

She passed the agreement over to Armansky, who read rapidly through it.

“With this salary you might as well be working for free. Lisbeth, you’ve got talent. You don’t have to work for small change. You know you can make a hell of a lot more with me if you come on board full-time.”

“I don’t want to work full-time. But, Dragan, my loyalty is to you. You’ve been great to me since I started here. I want to know if a contract like this is OK with you, that there won’t be any friction between us.”

“I see.” He thought for a moment. “It’s 100 percent OK. Thanks for asking. If any more situations like this crop up in the future I’d appreciate it if you asked me so there won’t be any misunderstandings.”

Salander thought over whether she had anything to add. She fixed her gaze on Armansky, saying not a word. Instead she just nodded and then stood up and left, as usual with no farewell greeting.

She got the answer she wanted and instantly lost interest in Armansky. He smiled to himself. That she had even asked him for advice marked a new high point in her socialisation process.

He opened a folder with a report on security at a museum where a big exhibition of French Impressionists was opening soon. Then he put down the folder and looked at the door through which Salander had just gone. He thought about how she had laughed with Blomkvist in her office and wondered if she was finally growing up or whether it was Blomkvist who was the attraction. He also felt a strange uneasiness. He had never been able to shake off the feeling that Lisbeth Salander was a perfect victim. And here she was, hunting a madman out in the back of beyond.

On the way north again, Salander took on impulse a detour by way of Äppelviken Nursing Home to see her mother. Except for the visit on Midsummer Eve, she had not seen her mother since Christmas, and she felt bad for so seldom taking the time. A second visit within the course of a few weeks was quite unusual.

Her mother was in the day room. Salander stayed a good hour and took her mother for a walk down to the duck pond in the grounds of the hospital. Her mother was still muddling Lisbeth with her sister. As usual, she was hardly present, but she seemed troubled by the visit.

When Salander said goodbye, her mother did not want to let go of her hand. Salander promised to visit her again soon, but her mother gazed after her sadly and anxiously.

It was as if she had a premonition of some approaching disaster.

Blomkvist spent two hours in the garden behind his cabin going through the Apocrypha without gaining a single insight. But a thought had occurred to him. How religious had Harriet Vanger actually been? Her interest in Bible studies had started the last year before she vanished. She had linked a number of Bible quotes to a series of murders and then had methodically read not only her Bible but also the Apocrypha, and she had developed an interest in Catholicism.

Had she really done the same investigation that Blomkvist and Salander were doing thirty-seven years later? Was it the hunt for a murderer that had spurred her interest rather than religiosity? Pastor Falk had indicated that in his eyes she was more of a seeker, less a good Christian.

He was interrupted by Berger calling him on his mobile.

“I just wanted to tell you that Greger and I are leaving on holiday next week. I’ll be gone for four weeks.”

“Where are you going?”

“New York. Greger has an exhibition, and then we thought we’d go to the Caribbean. We have a chance to borrow a house on Antigua from a friend of Greger’s and we’re staying there two weeks.”

“That sounds wonderful. Have a great time. And say hi to Greger.”

“The new issue is finished and we’ve almost wrapped up the next one. I wish you could take over as editor, but Christer has said he will do it.”

“He can call me if he needs any help. How’s it going with Janne Dahlman?”

She hesitated.

“He’s also going on holiday. I’ve pushed Henry into being the acting managing editor. He and Christer are minding the store.”

“OK.”

“I’ll be back on August seventh.”

In the early evening Blomkvist tried five times to telephone Cecilia Vanger. He sent her a text asking her to call him. But he received no answer.

He put away the Apocrypha and got into his tracksuit, locking the door before he set off.

He followed the narrow path along the shore and then turned into the woods. He ground his way through thickets and around uprooted trees as fast as he could go, emerging exhausted at the Fortress with his pulse racing. He stopped by one of the old artillery batteries and stretched for several minutes.

Suddenly he heard a sharp crack and the grey concrete wall next to his head exploded. Then he felt the pain as fragments of concrete and shrapnel tore a deep gash in his scalp.

For what seemed an eternity Blomkvist stood paralysed. Then he threw himself into the artillery trench, landing hard on his shoulder and knocking the wind out of himself. A second round came at the instant he dived. The bullet smacked into the concrete foundation.

He got to his feet and looked all around. He was in the middle of the Fortress. To the right and left narrow, overgrown passages a yard deep ran to the batteries that were spread along a line of 250 yards. In a crouch, he started running south through the labyrinth.

He suddenly heard an echo of Captain Adolfsson’s inimitable voice from winter manoeuvres at the infantry school in Kiruna. Blomkvist, keep your fucking head down if you don’t want to get your arse shot off. Years later he still remembered the extra practise drills that Captain Adolfsson used to devise.

He stopped to catch his breath, his heart pounding. He could hear nothing but his own breathing. The human eye perceives motion much quicker than shapes and figures. Move slowly when you’re scouting. Blomkvist slowly peeked an inch over the top edge of the battery. The sun was straight ahead and made it impossible to make out details, but he could see no movement.

He pulled his head back down and ran on to the next battery. It doesn’t matter how good the enemy’s weapons are. If he can’t see you, he can’t hit you. Cover, cover, cover. Make sure you’re never exposed.

He was 300 yards from the edge of Östergården farm. Some 40 yards from where he knelt there was an almost impenetrable thicket of low brush. But to reach the thicket he would have to sprint down a grass slope from the artillery battery, and he would be completely exposed. It was the only way. At his back was the sea.

He was suddenly aware of pain in his temple and discovered that he was bleeding and that his T-shirt was drenched with blood. Scalp wounds never stop bleeding, he thought before he again concentrated on his position. One shot could just have been an accident, but two meant that somebody was trying to kill him. He had no way of knowing if the marksman was waiting for him to reappear.

He tried to be calm, think rationally. The choice was to wait or to get the hell out. If the marksman was still there, the latter alternative was assuredly not a good idea. If he waited where he was, the marksman would calmly walk up to the Fortress, find him, and shoot him at close range.

He (or she?) can’t know if I’ve gone to the right or left. Rifle, maybe a moose rifle. Probably with telescopic sights. Which would mean that the marksman would have a limited field of vision if he was looking for Mikael through the sights.

If you’re in a tight spot – take the initiative. Better than waiting. He watched and listened for sounds for two minutes; then he clambered out of the battery and raced down the slope as fast as he could.

He was halfway down the slope as a third shot was fired, but he only heard a vague smack behind him. He threw himself flat through the curtain of brush and rolled through a sea of stinging nettles. Then he was on his feet and moving away from the direction of the fire, crouching, running, stopping every fifty yards, listening. He heard a branch crack somewhere between him and the Fortress. He dropped to his stomach.

Crawl using your elbows was another of Captain Adolfsson’s favourite expressions. Blomkvist covered the next 150 yards on his knees and toes and elbows through the undergrowth. He pushed aside twigs and branches. Twice he heard sudden cracks in the thicket behind him. The first seemed to be very close, maybe twenty paces to the right. He froze, lay perfectly still. After a while he cautiously raised his head and looked around, but he could see no-one. He lay still for a long time, his nerves on full alert, ready to flee or possibly make a desperate counterattack if the enemy came at him. The next crack was from farther away. Then silence.

He knows I’m here. Has he taken up a position somewhere, waiting for me to start moving, or has he retreated?

Blomkvist kept crawling through the undergrowth until he reached the Östergården’s fence.

This was the next critical moment. A path ran inside the fence. He lay stretched out on the ground, watching. The farmhouse was 400 yards down a gentle slope. To the right of the house he saw cows grazing. Why hadn’t anyone heard the shots and come to investigate? Summer. Maybe nobody is at home right now.

There was no question of crossing the pasture – there he would have no cover at all. The straight path beside the fence was the place he himself would have picked for a clear field of fire. He retreated into the brush until he came out on the other side into a sparse pine wood.

He took the long way around Östergården’s fields and Söderberget to reach home. When he passed Östergården he could see that their car was gone. At the top of Söderberget he stopped and looked down on Hedeby. In the old fishing cabins by the marina there were summer visitors; women in bathing suits were sitting talking on a dock. He smelled something cooking on an outdoor grill. Children were splashing in the water near the docks in the marina.

Just after 8:00. It was fifty minutes since the shots had been fired. Nilsson was watering his lawn, wearing shorts and no shirt. How long have you been there? Vanger’s house was empty but for Anna. Harald Vanger’s house looked deserted as always. Then he saw Isabella Vanger in her back garden. She was sitting there, obviously talking to someone. It took a second for Blomkvist to realise it was the sickly Gerda Vanger, born in 1922 and living with her son, Alexander, in one of the houses beyond Henrik’s. He had never met her, but he had seen her a few times. Cecilia Vanger’s house looked empty, but then Mikael saw a movement in her kitchen. She’s home. Was the marksman a woman? He knew that Cecilia could handle a gun. He could see Martin Vanger’s car in the drive in front of his house. How long have you been home?

Or was it someone else that he had not thought of yet? Frode? Alexander? Too many possibilities.

He climbed down from Söderberget and followed the road into the village; he got home without encountering anyone. The first thing he saw was that the door of the cottage was ajar. He went into a crouch almost instinctively. Then he smelled coffee and saw Salander through the kitchen window.

She heard him come in the front door and turned towards him. She stiffened. His face looked terrible, smeared with blood that had begun to congeal. The left side of his white T-shirt was crimson. He was holding a sodden red handkerchief to his head.

“It’s bleeding like hell, but it’s not dangerous,” Blomkvist said before she could ask.

She turned and got the first-aid kit from the cupboard; it contained two packets of elastic bandages, a mosquito stick, and a little roll of surgical tape. He pulled off his clothes and dropped them on the floor; then he went to the bathroom.

The wound on his temple was a gash so deep that he could lift up a big flap of flesh. It was still bleeding and it needed stitches, but he thought it would probably heal if he taped it closed. He ran a towel under the cold tap and wiped his face.

He held the towel against his temple while he stood under the shower and closed his eyes. Then he slammed his fist against the tile so hard that he scraped his knuckles. Fuck you, whoever you are, he thought. I’m going to find you, and I will get you.

When Salander touched his arm he jumped as if he had had an electric shock and stared at her with such anger in his eyes that she took a step back. She handed him the soap and went back to the kitchen without a word.

He put on three strips of surgical tape. He went into the bedroom, pulled on a clean pair of jeans and a new T-shirt, taking the folder of printed-out photographs with him. He was so furious he was almost shaking.

“Stay here, Lisbeth,” he shouted.

He walked over to Cecilia Vanger’s house and rang the doorbell. It was half a minute before she opened the door.

“I don’t want to see you,” she said. Then she saw his face, where blood was already seeping through the tape.

“Let me in. We have to talk.”

She hesitated. “We have nothing to talk about.”

“We do now, and you can discuss it here on the steps or in the kitchen.”

Blomkvist’s tone was so determined that Cecilia stepped back and let him in. He sat at her kitchen table.

“What have you done?” she said.

“You claim that my digging for the truth about Harriet Vanger is some futile form of occupational therapy for Henrik. That’s possible, but an hour ago someone bloody nearly shot my head off, and last night someone – maybe the same humourist – left a horribly dead cat on my porch.”

Cecilia opened her mouth, but Blomkvist cut her off.

“Cecilia, I don’t give a shit about your hang-ups or what you worry about or the fact that you suddenly hate the sight of me. I’ll never come near you again, and you don’t have to worry that I’m going to bother you or run after you. Right this minute I wish I’d never heard of you or anyone else in the Vanger family. But I require answers to my questions. The sooner you answer them, the sooner you’ll be rid of me.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Number one: where were you an hour ago?”

Cecilia’s face clouded over.

“An hour ago I was in Hedestad.”

“Can anyone confirm where you were?”

“Not that I can think of, and I don’t have to account to you.”

“Number two: why did you open the window in Harriet’s room the day she disappeared?”

“What?”

“You heard me. For all these years Henrik has tried to work out who opened the window in Harriet’s room during those critical minutes. Everybody has denied doing it. Someone is lying.”

“And what in hell makes you think it was me?”

“This picture,” Blomkvist said, and flung the blurry photograph onto her kitchen table.

Cecilia walked over to the table and studied the picture. Blomkvist thought he could read shock on her face. She looked up at him. He felt a trickle of blood run down his cheek and drop onto his shirt.

“There were sixty people on the island that day,” he said. “And twenty-eight of them were women. Five or six of them had shoulder-length blonde hair. Only one of those was wearing a light-coloured dress.”

She stared intently at the photograph.

“And you think that’s supposed to be me?”

“If it isn’t you, I’d like you to tell me who you think it is. Nobody knew about this picture before. I’ve had it for weeks and tried to talk to you about it. I may be an idiot, but I haven’t showed it to Henrik or anyone else because I’m deathly afraid of casting suspicion on you or doing you wrong. But I do have to have an answer.”

“You’ll get your answer.” She held out the photograph to him. “I didn’t go into Harriet’s room that day. It’s not me in the picture. I didn’t have the slightest thing to do with her disappearance.”

She went to the front door.

“You have your answer. Now please go. But I think you should have a doctor look at that wound.”

Salander drove him to Hedestad Hospital. It took only two stitches and a good dressing to close the wound. He was given cortisone salve for the rash from the stinging nettles on his neck and hands.

After they left the hospital Blomkvist sat for a long time wondering whether he ought to go to the police. He could see the headlines now. “Libel Journalist in Shooting Drama.” He shook his head. “Let’s go home,” he said.

It was dark when they arrived back at Hedeby Island, and that suited Salander fine. She lifted a sports bag on to the kitchen table.

“I borrowed this stuff from Milton Security, and it’s time we made use of it.”

She planted four battery-operated motion detectors around the house and explained that if anyone came closer than twenty feet, a radio signal would trigger a small chirping alarm that she set up in Blomkvist’s bedroom. At the same time, two light-sensitive video cameras that she had put in trees at the front and back of the cabin would send signals to a PC laptop that she set in the cupboard by the front door. She camouflaged the cameras with dark cloth.

She put a third camera in a birdhouse above the door. She drilled a hole right through the wall for the cable. The lens was aimed at the road and the path from the gate to the front door. It took a low-resolution image every second and stored them all on the hard drive of another PC laptop in the wardrobe.

Then she put a pressure-sensitive doormat in the entrance. If someone managed to evade the infrared detectors and got into the house, a 115-decibel siren would go off. Salander demonstrated for him how to shut off the detectors with a key to a box in the wardrobe. She had also borrowed a night-vision scope.

“You don’t leave a lot to chance,” Blomkvist said, pouring coffee for her.

“One more thing. No more jogging until we crack this.”

“Believe me, I’ve lost all interest in exercise.”

“I’m not joking. This may have started out as a historical mystery, but what with dead cats and people trying to blow your head off we can be sure we’re on somebody’s trail.”

They ate dinner late. Blomkvist was suddenly dead tired and had a splitting headache. He could hardly talk any more, so he went to bed.

Salander stayed up reading the report until 2:00.

CHAPTER 23 Friday, July 11

He awoke at 6:00 with the sun shining through a gap in the curtains right in his face. He had a vague headache, and it hurt when he touched the bandage. Salander was asleep on her stomach with one arm flung over him. He looked down at the dragon on her shoulder blade.

He counted her tattoos. As well as a wasp on her neck, she had a loop around one ankle, another loop around the biceps of her left arm, a Chinese symbol on her hip, and a rose on one calf.

He got out of bed and pulled the curtains tight. He went to the bathroom and then padded back to bed, trying to get in without waking her.

A couple of hours later over breakfast Blomkvist said, “How are we going to solve this puzzle?”

“We sum up the facts we have. We try to find more.”

“For me, the only question is: why? Is it because we’re trying to solve the mystery about Harriet, or because we’ve uncovered a hitherto unknown serial killer?”

“There must be a connection,” Salander said. “If Harriet realised that there was a serial killer, it can only have been someone she knew. If we look at the cast of characters in the sixties, there were at least two dozen possible candidates. Today hardly any of them are left except Harald Vanger, who is not running around in the woods of Fröskogen at almost ninety-three with a gun. Everybody is either too old to be of any danger today, or too young to have been around in the fifties. So we’re back to square one.”

“Unless there are two people who are collaborating. One older and one younger.”

“Harald and Cecilia? I don’t think so. I think she was telling the truth when she said that she wasn’t the person in the window.”

“Then who was that?”

They turned on Blomkvist’s iBook and spent the next hour studying in detail once again all the people visible in the photographs of the accident on the bridge.

“I can only assume that everyone in the village must have been down there, watching all the excitement. It was September. Most of them are wearing jackets or sweaters. Only one person has long blonde hair and a light-coloured dress.”

“Cecilia Vanger is in a lot of the pictures. She seems to be everywhere. Between the buildings and the people who are looking at the accident. Here she’s talking to Isabella. Here she’s standing next to Pastor Falk. Here she’s with Greger Vanger, the middle brother.”

“Wait a minute,” Blomkvist said. “What does Greger have in his hand?”

“Something square-shaped. It looks like a box of some kind.”

“It’s a Hasselblad. So he too had a camera.”

They scrolled through the photographs one more time. Greger was in more of them, though often blurry. In one it could be clearly seen that he was holding a square-shaped box.

“I think you’re right. It’s definitely a camera.”

“Which means that we go on another hunt for photographs.”

“OK, but let’s leave that for a moment,” Salander said. “Let me propose a theory.”

“Go ahead.”

“What if someone of the younger generation knows that someone of the older generation is a serial killer, but they don’t want it acknowledged. The family’s honour and all that crap. That would mean that there are two people involved, but not that they’re in it together. The murderer could have died years ago, while our nemesis just wants us to drop the whole thing and go home.”

“But why, in that case, put a mutilated cat on our porch? It’s an unmistakable reference to the murders.” Blomkvist tapped Harriet’s Bible. “Again a parody of the laws regarding burnt offerings.”

Salander leaned back and looked up at the church as she quoted from the Bible. It was as if she were talking to herself.

“Then he shall kill the bull before the Lord; and Aaron’s sons the priests shall present the blood, and they shall throw the blood round about against the altar that is the door of the tent of meeting. And he shall flay the burnt offering and cut it into pieces.”

She fell silent, aware that Blomkvist was watching her with a tense expression. He opened the Bible to the first chapter of Leviticus.

“Do you know verse twelve too?”

Salander did not reply.

“And he shall…” he began, nodding at her.

“And he shall cut it into pieces, with its head and its fat, and the priest shall lay them in order upon the wood that is on the fire upon the altar.” Her voice was ice.

“And the next verse?”

Abruptly she stood up.

“Lisbeth, you have a photographic memory,” Mikael exclaimed in surprise. “That’s why you can read a page of the investigation in ten seconds.”

Her reaction was almost explosive. She fixed her eyes on Blomkvist with such fury that he was astounded. Then her expression changed to despair, and she turned on her heel and ran for the gate.

“Lisbeth,” he shouted after her.

She disappeared up the road.

Mikael carried her computer inside, set the alarm, and locked the front door before he set out to look for her. He found her twenty minutes later on a jetty at the marina. She was sitting there, dipping her feet in the water and smoking. She heard him coming along the jetty, and he saw her shoulders stiffen. He stopped a couple of paces away.

“I don’t know what I did, but I didn’t mean to upset you.”

He sat down next to her, tentatively placing a hand on her shoulder.

“Please, Lisbeth. Talk to me.”

She turned her head and looked at him.

“There’s nothing to talk about,” she said. “I’m just a freak, that’s all.”

“I’d be overjoyed if my memory was what yours is.”

She tossed the cigarette end into the water.

Mikael sat in silence for a long time. What am I supposed to say? You’re a perfectly ordinary girl. What does it matter if you’re a little different? What kind of self-image do you have, anyway?

“I thought there was something different about you the instant I saw you,” he said. “And you know what? It’s been a really long time since I’ve had such a spontaneous good impression of anyone from the very beginning.”

Some children came out of a cabin on the other side of the harbour and jumped into the water. The painter, Eugen Norman, with whom Blomkvist still had not exchanged a single word, was sitting in a chair outside his house, sucking on his pipe as he regarded Blomkvist and Salander.

“I really want to be your friend, if you’ll let me,” he said. “But it’s up to you. I’m going back to the house to put on some more coffee. Come home when you feel like it.”

He got up and left her in peace. He was only halfway up the hill when he heard her footsteps behind him. They walked home together without exchanging a word.

She stopped him just as they reached the house.

“I was in the process of formulating a theory… We talked about the fact that all this is a parody of the Bible. It’s true that he took a cat apart, but I suppose it would be hard to get hold of an ox. But he’s following the basic story. I wonder…” She looked up at the church again. “And they shall throw the blood round about against the altar that is the door of the tent of meeting…”

They walked over the bridge to the church. Blomkvist tried the door, but it was locked. They wandered around for a while, looking at head-stones until they came to the chapel, which stood a short distance away, down by the water. All of a sudden Blomkvist opened his eyes wide. It was not a chapel, it was a crypt. Above the door he could read the name Vanger chiselled into the stone, along with a verse in Latin, but he could not decipher it.

“‘Slumber to the end of time,’” Salander said behind him.

Blomkvist turned to look at her. She shrugged.

“I happened to see that verse somewhere.”

Blomkvist roared with laughter. She stiffened and at first she looked furious, but then she relaxed when she realised that he was laughing at the comedy of the situation.

Blomkvist tried the door. It was locked. He thought for a moment, then told Salander to sit down and wait for him. He walked over to see Anna Nygren and knocked. He explained that he wanted to have a closer look at the family crypt, and he wondered where Henrik might keep the key. Anna looked doubtful, but she collected the key from his desk.

As soon as they opened the door, they knew that they had been right. The stench of burned cadaver and charred remains hung heavy in the air. But the cat torturer had not made a fire. In one corner stood a blowtorch, the kind used by skiers to melt the wax on their skis. Salander got the camera out of the pocket of her jeans skirt and took some pictures. Then, gingerly, she picked up the blowtorch.

“This could be evidence. He might have left fingerprints,” she said.

“Oh sure, we can ask the Vanger family to line up and give us their fingerprints.” Blomkvist smiled. “I would love to watch you get Isabella’s.”

“There are ways,” Salander said.

There was a great deal of blood on the floor, not all of it dry, as well as a bolt cutter, which they reckoned had been used to cut off the cat’s head.

Blomkvist looked around. A raised sarcophagus belonged to Alexandre Vangeersad, and four graves in the floor housed the remains of the earliest family members. More recently the Vangers had apparently settled for cremation. About thirty niches on the wall had the names of the clan ancestors. Blomkvist traced the family chronicle forward in time, wondering where they buried family members who were not given space inside the crypt – those not deemed important enough.

“Now we know,” Blomkvist said as they were re-crossing the bridge. “We’re hunting for the complete lunatic.”

“What do you mean?”

Blomkvist paused in the middle of the bridge and leaned on the rail.

“If this was some run-of-the-mill crackpot who was trying to frighten us, he would have taken the cat down to the garage or even out into the woods. But he went to the crypt. There’s something compulsive about that. Just think of the risk. It’s summer and people are out and about at night, going for walks. The road through the cemetery is a main road between the north and south of Hedeby. Even if he shut the door behind him, the cat must have raised Cain, and there must have been a burning smell.”

“He?”

“I don’t think that Cecilia Vanger would be creeping around here in the night with a blowtorch.”

Salander shrugged.

“I don’t trust any last one of them, including Frode or your friend Henrik. They’re all part of a family that would swindle you if they had the chance. So what do we do now?”

Blomkvist said, “I’ve discovered a lot of secrets about you. How many people, for example, know that you’re a hacker?”

“No-one.”

“No-one except me, you mean.”

“What are you getting at?”

“I want to know if you’re OK with me. If you trust me.”

She looked at him for a long moment. Finally, for an answer, she only shrugged.

“There’s nothing I can do about it.”

“Do you trust me?” Blomkvist persisted.

“For the time being,” she said.

“Good. Let’s go over to see Frode.”

This was the first time Advokat Frode’s wife had met Salander. She gave her a wide-eyed look at the same time as she smiled politely. Frode’s face lit up when he saw Salander. He stood to welcome them.

“How nice to see you,” he said. “I’ve been feeling guilty that I never properly expressed my gratitude for the extraordinary work you did for us. Both last winter and now, this summer.”

Salander gave him a suspicious glare.

“I was paid,” she said.

“That’s not it. I made some assumptions about you when I first saw you. You would be kind to pardon me in retrospect.”

Blomkvist was surprised. Frode was capable of asking a twenty-five-year-old pierced and tattooed girl to forgive him for something for which he had no need to apologise! The lawyer climbed a few notches in Blomkvist’s eyes. Salander stared straight ahead, ignoring him.

Frode looked at Blomkvist.

“What did you do to your head?”

They sat down. Blomkvist summed up the developments of the past twenty-four hours. As he described how someone had shot at him out near the Fortress, Frode leaped to his feet.

“This is barking mad.” He paused and fixed his eyes on Blomkvist. “I’m sorry, but this has to stop. I can’t have it. I am going to talk to Henrik and break the contract.”

“Sit down,” said Blomkvist.

“You don’t understand…”

“What I understand is that Lisbeth and I have got so close that whoever is behind all of this is reacting in a deranged manner, in panic. We’ve got some questions. First of all: how many keys are there to the Vanger family crypt and who has one?”

“It’s not my province, and I have no idea,” Frode said. “I would suppose that several family members would have access to the crypt. I know that Henrik has a key, and that Isabella sometimes goes there, but I can’t tell you whether she has her own key or whether she borrows Henrik’s.”

“OK. You’re still on the main board. Are there any corporate archives? A library or something like that, where they’ve collected press clippings and information about the firm over the years?”

“Yes, there is. At the Hedestad main office.”

“We need access to it. Are there any old staff newsletters or anything like that?”

“Again I have to concede that I don’t know. I haven’t been to the archives myself in thirty years. You need to talk to a woman named Bodil Lindgren.”

“Could you call her and arrange that Lisbeth has access to the archives this afternoon? She needs all the old press clippings about the Vanger Corporation.”

“That’s no problem. Anything else?”

“Yes. Greger Vanger was holding a Hasselblad in his hand on the day the bridge accident occurred. That means that he also might have taken some pictures. Where would the pictures have ended up after his death?”

“With his widow or his son, logically. Let me call Alexander and ask him.”

“What am I looking for?” Salander said when they were on their way back to the island.

“Press clippings and staff newsletters. I want you to read through everything around the dates when the murders in the fifties and sixties were committed. Make a note of anything that strikes you. Better if you do this part of the job. It seems that your memory…”

She punched him in the side.

Five minutes later her Kawasaki was clattering across the bridge.

Blomkvist shook hands with Alexander Vanger. He had been away for most of the time that Blomkvist had been in Hedeby. He was twenty when Harriet disappeared.

“Dirch said that you wanted to look at old photographs.”

“Your father had a Hasselblad, I believe.”

“That’s right. It’s still here, but no-one uses it.”

“I expect you know that Henrik has asked me to study again what happened to Harriet.”

“That’s what I understand. And there are plenty of people who aren’t happy about that.”

“Apparently so, and of course you don’t have to show me anything.”

“Please… What would you like to see?”

“If your father took any pictures on the day of the accident, the day that Harriet disappeared.”

They went up to the attic. It took several minutes before Alexander was able to identify a box of unsorted photographs.

“Take home the whole box,” he said. “If there are any at all, they’ll be in there.”

As illustrations for the family chronicle, Greger Vanger’s box held some real gems, including a number of Greger together with Sven Olof Lindholm, the big Swedish Nazi leader in the forties. Those he set aside.

He found envelopes of pictures that Greger had taken of family gatherings as well as many typical holiday photographs – fishing in the mountains and a journey in Italy.

He found four pictures of the bridge accident. In spite of his exceptional camera, Greger was a wretched photographer. Two pictures were close-ups of the tanker truck itself, two were of spectators, taken from behind. He found only one in which Cecilia Vanger was visible in semi-profile.

He scanned in the pictures, even though he knew that they would tell him nothing new. He put everything back in the box and had a sandwich lunch as he thought things over. Then he went to see Anna.

“Do you think Henrik had any photograph albums other than the ones he assembled for his investigation about Harriet?”

“Yes, Henrik has always been interested in photography – ever since he was young, I’ve been told. He has lots of albums in his office.”

“Could you show me?”

Her reluctance was plain to see. It was one thing to lend Blomkvist the key to the family crypt – God was in charge there, after all – but it was another matter to let him into Henrik Vanger’s office. God’s writ did not extend there. Blomkvist suggested that Anna should call Frode. Finally she agreed to allow him in. Almost three feet of the very bottom shelf was taken up with photograph albums. He sat at the desk and opened the first album.

Vanger had saved every last family photograph. Many were obviously from long before his time. The oldest pictures dated back to the 1870s, showing gruff men and stern women. There were pictures of Vanger’s parents. One showed his father celebrating Midsummer with a large and cheerful group in Sandhamn in 1906. Another Sandhamn photograph showed Fredrik Vanger and his wife, Ulrika, with Anders Zorn and Albert Engström sitting at a table. Other photographs showed workers on the factory floor and in offices. He found Captain Oskar Granath who had transported Vanger and his beloved Edith Lobach to safety in Karlskrona.

Anna came upstairs with a cup of coffee. He thanked her. By then he had reached modern times and was paging through images of Vanger in his prime, opening factories, shaking hands with Tage Erlander, one of Vanger and Marcus Wallenberg – the two capitalists staring grimly at each other.

In the same album he found a spread on which Vanger had written in pencil “Family Council 1966.” Two colour photographs showed men talking and smoking cigars. He recognised Henrik, Harald, Greger, and several of the male in-laws in Johan Vanger’s branch of the family. Two photographs showed the formal dinner, forty men and women seated at the table, all looking into the camera. The pictures were taken after the drama at the bridge was over but before anyone was aware that Harriet had disappeared. He studied their faces. This was the dinner she should have attended. Did any of the men know that she was gone? The photographs provided no answer.

Then suddenly he choked on his coffee. He started coughing and sat up straight in his chair.

At the far end of the table sat Cecilia Vanger in her light-coloured dress, smiling into the camera. Next to her sat another blonde woman with long hair and an identical light-coloured dress. They were so alike that they could have been twins. And suddenly the puzzle piece fell into place. Cecilia wasn’t the one in Harriet’s window – it was her sister, Anita, two years her junior and now living in London.

What was it Salander had said? Cecilia Vanger is in a lot of the pictures. Not at all. There were two girls, and as chance would have it – until now – they had never been seen in the same frame. In the black-and-white photographs, from a distance, they looked identical. Vanger had presumably always been able to tell the sisters apart, but for Blomkvist and Salander the girls looked so alike that they had assumed it was one person. And no-one had ever pointed out their mistake because they had never thought to ask.

Blomkvist turned the page and felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. It was as if a cold gust of wind passed through the room.

There were pictures taken the next day, when the search for Harriet had begun. A young Inspector Morell was giving instructions to a search party consisting of two uniformed police officers and ten men wearing boots who were about to set out. Vanger was wearing a knee-length raincoat and a narrow-brimmed English hat.

On the left of the photograph stood a young, slightly stout young man with light, longish hair. He had on a dark padded jacket with a red patch at the shoulder. The image was very clear. Blomkvist recognised him at once – and the jacket – but, just to make sure, he removed the photograph and went down to ask Anna if she recognised the man.

“Yes, of course, that’s Martin.”

Salander ploughed through year after year of press cuttings, moving in chronological order. She began in 1949 and worked her way forward. The archive was huge. The company was mentioned in the media nearly every day during the relevant time period – not only in the local press but also in the national media. There were financial analyses, trade union negotiations, the threat of strikes, factory openings and factory closings, annual reports, changes in managers, new products that were launched… There was a flood of news. Click. Click. Click. Her brain was working at high speed as she focused and absorbed the information from the yellowing pages.

After several hours she had an idea. She asked the archives manager if there was a chart showing where the Vanger Corporation had factories or companies during the fifties and sixties.

Bodil Lindgren looked at Salander with undisguised coldness. She was not at all happy giving a total stranger permission to enter the inner sanctum of the firm’s archives, being obliged to allow her to look through whatever documents she liked. And besides, this girl looked like some sort of half-witted fifteen-year-old anarchist. But Herr Frode had given her instructions that could not be misinterpreted. This slip of a girl was to be free to look at anything she pleased. And it was urgent. She brought out the printed annual reports for the years that Salander wanted to see; each report contained a chart of the firm’s divisions throughout Sweden.

Salander looked at the charts and saw that the firm had many factories, offices, and sales outlets. At every site where a murder was committed, there was also a red dot, sometimes several, indicating the Vanger Corporation.

She found the first connection in 1957. Rakel Lunde, Landskrona, was found dead the day after the V&C. Construction Company clinched an order worth several million to build a galleria in the town. V&C. stood for Vanger and Carlén Construction. The local paper had interviewed Gottfried Vanger, who had come to town to sign the contract.

Salander recalled something she had read in the police investigation in the provincial record office in Landskrona. Rakel Lunde, fortune-teller in her free time, was an office cleaner. She had worked for V&C. Construction.

At 7:00 in the evening Blomkvist called Salander a dozen times and each time her mobile was turned off. She did not want to be disturbed.

He wandered restlessly through the house. He had pulled out Vanger’s notes on Martin’s activities at the time of Harriet’s disappearance.

Martin Vanger was in his last year at the preparatory school in Uppsala in 1966. Uppsala. Lena Andersson, seventeen-year-old preparatory school pupil. Head separated from the fat.

Vanger had mentioned this at one point, but Blomkvist had to consult his notes to find the passage. Martin had been an introverted boy. They had been worried about him. After his father drowned, Isabella had decided to send him to Uppsala – a change of scene where he was given room and board with Harald Vanger. Harald and Martin? It hardly felt right.

Martin Vanger was not with Harald in the car going to the gathering in Hedestad, and he had missed a train. He arrived late in the afternoon and so was among those stranded on the wrong side of the bridge. He only arrived on the island by boat some time after 6:00. He was received by Vanger himself, among others. Vanger had put Martin far down the list of people who might have had anything to do with Harriet’s disappearance.

Martin said that he had not seen Harriet on that day. He was lying. He had arrived in Hedestad earlier in the day and he was on Järnvägsgatan, face to face with his sister. Blomkvist could prove the lie with photographs that had been buried for almost forty years.

Harriet Vanger had seen her brother and reacted with shock. She had gone out to Hedeby Island and tried to talk to Henrik, but she was gone before any conversation could take place. What were you thinking of telling him? Uppsala? But Lena Andersson, Uppsala, was not on the list. You could not have known about it.

The story still did not make sense to Blomkvist. Harriet had disappeared around 3:00 in the afternoon. Martin was unquestionably on the other side of the water at that time. He could be seen in the photograph from the church hill. He could not possibly have hurt Harriet on the island. One puzzle piece was still missing. An accomplice? Anita Vanger?

From the archives Salander could see that Gottfried Vanger’s position within the firm had changed over the years. At the age of twenty in 1947, he met Isabella and immediately got her pregnant; Martin Vanger was born in 1948, and with that there was no question but that the young people would marry.

When Gottfried was twenty-two, he was brought into the main office of the Vanger Corporation by Henrik Vanger. He was obviously talented and they may have been grooming him to take over. He was promoted to the board at the age of twenty-five, as the assistant head of the company’s development division. A rising star.

Sometime in the mid-fifties his star began to plummet. He drank. His marriage to Isabella was on the rocks. The children, Harriet and Martin, were not doing well. Henrik drew the line. Gottfried’s career had reached its zenith. In 1956 another appointment was made, another assistant head of development. Two assistant heads: one who did the work while Gottfried drank and was absent for long periods of time.

But Gottfried was still a Vanger, as well as charming and eloquent. From 1957 on, his work seemed to consist of travelling around the country to open factories, resolve local conflicts, and spread an image that company management really did care. We’re sending out one of our own sons to listen to your problems. We do take you seriously.

Salander found a second connection. Gottfried Vanger had participated in a negotiation in Karlstad, where the Vanger Corporation had bought a timber company. On the following day a farmer’s wife, Magda Lovisa Sjöberg, was found murdered.

Salander discovered the third connection just fifteen minutes later. Uddevalla, 1962. The same day that Lea Persson disappeared, the local paper had interviewed Gottfried Vanger about a possible expansion of the harbour.

When Fru Lindgren had wanted to close up and go home at 5:30, Salander had snapped at her that she was a long way from finished yet. She could go home as long as she left the key, and Salander would lock up. By that time the archives manager was so infuriated that a girl like this one could boss her around that she called Herr Frode. Frode told her that Salander could stay all night if she wanted to. Would Fru Lindgren please notify security at the office so that they could let Salander out when she wanted to leave?

Three hours later, getting on for 8:30, Salander had concluded that Gottfried Vanger had been close to where at least five of the eight murders were committed, either during the days before or after the event. She was still missing information about the murders in 1949 and 1954. She studied a newspaper photograph of him. A slim, handsome man with dark blond hair; he looked rather like Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind.

In 1949 Gottfried was twenty-two years old. The first murder took place in his home territory. Hedestad. Rebecka Jacobsson, who worked at the Vanger Corporation. Where did the two of you meet? What did you promise her?

Salander bit her lip. The problem was that Gottfried Vanger had drowned when he was drunk in 1965, while the last murder was committed in Uppsala in February 1966. She wondered if she was mistaken when she had added Lena Andersson, the seventeen-year-old schoolgirl, to the list. No. It might not be the same signature, but it was the same Bible parody. They must be connected.

By 9:00 it was getting dark. The air was cool and it was drizzling. Mikael was sitting in the kitchen, drumming his fingers on the table, when Martin Vanger’s Volvo crossed the bridge and turned out towards the point. That somehow brought matters to a head.

He did not know what he should do. His whole being was burning with a desire to ask questions – to initiate a confrontation. It was certainly not a sensible attitude to have if he suspected Martin Vanger of being an insane murderer who had killed his sister and a girl in Uppsala, and who had also very nearly succeeded in killing him too. But Martin was also a magnet. And he did not know that Blomkvist knew; he could go and see him with the pretext that… well, he wanted to return the key to Gottfried Vanger’s cabin. Blomkvist locked the door behind him and strolled out to the point.

Harald Vanger’s house was pitch dark, as usual. In Henrik’s house the lights were off except in one room facing the courtyard. Anna had gone to bed. Isabella’s house was dark. Cecilia wasn’t at home. The lights were on upstairs in Alexander’s house, but they were off in the two houses occupied by people who were not members of the Vanger family. He did not see a soul.

He paused irresolutely outside Martin Vanger’s house, took out his mobile, and punched in Salander’s number. Still no answer. He turned off his mobile so that it would not start ringing.

There were lights on downstairs. Blomkvist walked across the lawn and stopped a few yards from the kitchen window, but he could see no-one. He continued on around the house, pausing at each window, but there was no sign of Martin. On the other hand, he did discover that the small side door into the garage was slightly open. Don’t be a damn fool. But he could not resist the temptation to look.

The first thing he saw on the carpenter’s bench was an open box of ammunition for a moose rifle. Then he saw two gasoline cans on the floor under the bench. Preparations for another nocturnal visit, Martin?

“Come in, Mikael. I saw you on the road.”

Blomkvist’s heart skipped a beat. Slowly he turned his head and saw Martin Vanger standing in the dark by a door leading into the house.

“You simply couldn’t stay away, could you?”

His voice was calm, almost friendly.

“Hi, Martin,” Blomkvist said.

“Come in,” Martin repeated. “This way.”

He took a step forward and to the side, holding out his left hand in an inviting gesture. He raised his right hand, and Blomkvist saw the reflection of dull metal.

“I have a Glock in my hand. Don’t do anything stupid. At this distance I won’t miss.”

Blomkvist slowly moved closer. When he reached Martin, he stopped and looked him in the eye.

“I had to come here. There are so many questions.”

“I understand. Through the door.”

Blomkvist entered the house. The passage led to the hall near the kitchen, but before he got that far, Martin Vanger stopped him by putting a hand lightly on Blomkvist’s shoulder.

“No, not that way. To your right. Open the door.”

The basement. When Blomkvist was halfway down the steps, Martin Vanger turned a switch and the lights went on. To the right of him was the boiler room. Ahead he could smell the scents of laundry. Martin guided him to the left, into a storage room with old furniture and boxes, at the back of which was a steel security door with a deadbolt lock.

“Here,” Martin said, tossing a key ring to Blomkvist. “Open it.”

He opened the door.

“The switch is on the left.”

Blomkvist had opened the door to hell.

Around 9:00 Salander went to get some coffee and a plastic-wrapped sandwich from the vending machine in the corridor outside the archives. She kept on paging through old documents, looking for any trace of Gottfried Vanger in Kalmar in 1954. She found nothing.

She thought about calling Blomkvist, but decided to go through the staff newsletters before she called it a day.

The space was approximately ten by twenty feet. Blomkvist assumed that it was situated along the north side of the house.

Martin Vanger had contrived his private torture chamber with great care. On the left were chains, metal eyelets in the ceiling and floor, a table with leather straps where he could restrain his victims. And then the video equipment. A taping studio. In the back of the room was a steel cage for his guests. To the right of the door was a bench, a bed, and a TV corner with videos on a shelf.

As soon as they entered the room, Martin Vanger aimed the pistol at Blomkvist and told him to lie on his stomach on the floor. Blomkvist refused.

“Very well,” Martin said. “Then I’ll shoot you in the kneecap.”

He took aim. Blomkvist capitulated. He had no choice.

He had hoped that Martin would relax his guard just a tenth of a second – he knew he would win any sort of fight with him. He had had half a chance in the passage upstairs when Martin put his hand on his shoulder, but he had hesitated. After that Martin had not come close. With a bullet in his kneecap he would have lost his chance. He lay down on the floor.

Martin approached from behind and told him to put his hands on his back. He handcuffed him. Then he kicked Mikael in the crotch and punched him viciously and repeatedly.

What happened after that seemed like a nightmare. Martin swung between rationality and pure lunacy. For a time quite calm, the next instant he would be pacing back and forth like an animal in a cage. He kicked Blomkvist several times. All Blomkvist could do was try to protect his head and take the blows in the soft parts of his body.

For the first half hour Martin did not say a word, and he appeared to be incapable of any sort of communication. After that he seemed to recover control. He put a chain round Blomkvist’s neck, fastening it with a padlock to a metal eyelet on the floor. He left Blomkvist alone for about fifteen minutes. When he returned, he was carrying a litre bottle of water. He sat on a chair and looked at Blomkvist as he drank.

“Could I have some water?” Blomkvist said.

Martin leaned down and let him take a good long drink from the bottle. Blomkvist swallowed greedily.

“Thanks.”

“Still so polite, Kalle Blomkvist.”

“Why all the punching and kicking?” Blomkvist said.

“Because you make me very angry indeed. You deserve to be punished. Why didn’t you just go home? You were needed at Millennium. I was serious – we could have made it into a great magazine. We could have worked together for years.”

Blomkvist grimaced and tried to shift his body into a more comfortable position. He was defenceless. All he had was his voice.

“I assume you mean that the opportunity has passed,” Blomkvist said.

Martin Vanger laughed.

“I’m sorry, Mikael. But, of course, you know perfectly well that you’re going to die down here.”

Blomkvist nodded.

“How the hell did you find me, you and that anorexic spook that you dragged into this?”

“You lied about what you were doing on the day that Harriet disappeared. You were in Hedestad at the Children’s Day parade. You were photographed there, looking at Harriet.”

“Was that why you went to Norsjö?”

“To get the picture, yes. It was taken by a honeymoon couple who happened to be in Hedestad.”

He shook his head.

“That’s a crass lie,” Martin said.

Blomkvist thought hard: what to say to prevent or postpone his execution.

“Where’s the picture now?”

“The negative? It’s in a safe-deposit box at Handelsbanken here in Hedestad… You didn’t know that I have a safe-deposit box?” He lied easily. “There are copies in various places. In my computer and in the girl’s, on the server at Millennium, and on the server at Milton Security, where the girl works.”

Martin waited, trying to work out whether or not Blomkvist was bluffing.

“How much does the girl know?”

Blomkvist hesitated. Salander was right now his only hope of rescue. What would she think when she came home and found him not there? He had put the photograph of Martin Vanger wearing the padded jacket on the kitchen table. Would she make the connection? Would she sound the alarm? She is not going to call the police. The nightmare was that she would come to Martin Vanger’s house and ring the bell, demanding to know where Blomkvist was.

“Answer me,” Martin said, his voice ice-cold.

“I’m thinking. She knows almost as much as I do, maybe even a little more. Yes, I would reckon she knows more than I do. She’s bright. She’s the one who made the link to Lena Andersson.”

“Lena Andersson?” Martin sounded perplexed.

“The girl you tortured and killed in Uppsala in 1966. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” But for the first time he sounded shaken. It was the first time that anyone had made that connection – Lena Andersson was not included in Harriet’s date book.

“Martin,” Blomkvist said, making his voice as steady as he could. “It’s over. You can kill me, but it’s finished. Too many people know.”

Martin started pacing back and forth again.

I have to remember that he’s irrational. The cat. He could have brought the cat down here, but he went to the family crypt. Martin stopped.

“I think you’re lying. You and Salander are the only ones who know anything. You obviously haven’t talked to anyone, or the police would have been here by now. A nice little blaze in the guest cottage and the proof will be gone.”

“And if you’re wrong?”

“If I’m wrong, then it really is over. But I don’t think it is. I’ll bet that you’re bluffing. And what other choice do I have? I’ll give that some thought. It’s that anorexic little cunt who’s the weak link.”

“She went to Stockholm at lunchtime.”

Martin laughed.

“Bluff away, Mikael. She has been sitting in the archives at the Vanger Corporation offices all evening.”

Blomkvist’s heart skipped a beat. He knew. He’s known all along.

“That’s right. The plan was to visit the archive and then go to Stockholm,” Blomkvist said. “I didn’t know she stayed there so long.”

“Stop all this crap, Mikael. The archives manager rang to tell me that Dirch had let the girl stay there as late as she liked. Which means she’ll certainly be home. The night watchman is going to call me when she leaves.”