The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

CHAPTER 24 Friday, July 11 – Saturday, July 12

Martin Vanger bent down and went through Mikael’s pockets. He took the key.

“Smart of you to change the lock,” he said. “I’m going to take care of your girlfriend when she gets back.”

Blomkvist reminded himself that Martin was a negotiator experienced from many industrial battles. He had already seen through one bluff.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why all of this?” Blomkvist gestured vaguely at the space around him.

Martin bent down and put one hand under Blomkvist’s chin, lifting his head so their eyes met.

“Because it’s so easy,” he said. “Women disappear all the time. Nobody misses them. Immigrants. Whores from Russia. Thousands of people pass through Sweden every year.”

He let go of Blomkvist’s head and stood up.

Martin’s words hit Blomkvist like a punch in the face.

Christ Almighty. This is no historical mystery. Martin Vanger is murdering women today. And I wandered right into it…

“As it happens, I don’t have a guest right now. But it might amuse you to know that while you and Henrik sat around babbling this winter and spring, there was a girl down here. Irina from Belarus. While you sat and ate dinner with me, she was locked up in the cage down here. It was a pleasant evening as I remember, no?”

Martin perched on the table, letting his legs dangle. Blomkvist shut his eyes. He suddenly felt acid in his throat and he swallowed hard. The pain in his gut and in his ribs seemed to swell.

“What do you do with the bodies?”

“I have my boat at the dock right below here. I take them a long way out to sea. Unlike my father, I don’t leave traces. But he was smart too. He spread his victims out all over Sweden.”

The puzzle pieces were falling into place.

Gottfried Vanger. From 1949 until 1965. Then Martin Vanger, starting in 1966 in Uppsala.

“You admire your father.”

“He was the one who taught me. He initiated me when I was fourteen.”

“Uddevalla. Lea Persson.”

“Aren’t you clever? Yes, I was there. I only watched, but I was there.”

“1964. Sara Witt in Ronneby.”

“I was sixteen. It was the first time I had a woman. My father taught me. I was the one who strangled her.”

He’s bragging. Good Lord, what a revoltingly sick family.

“You can’t have any notion of how demented this is.”

“You are a very ordinary little person, Mikael. You would not be able to understand the godlike feeling of having absolute control over someone’s life and death.”

“You enjoy torturing and killing women, Martin.”

“I don’t think so really. If I do an intellectual analysis of my condition, I’m more of a serial rapist than a serial murderer. In fact, most of all I’m a serial kidnapper. The killing is a natural consequence, so to speak, because I have to hide my crime.

“Of course my actions aren’t socially acceptable, but my crime is first and foremost a crime against the conventions of society. Death doesn’t come until the end of my guests’ visits here, after I’ve grown weary of them. It’s always so fascinating to see their disappointment.”

“Disappointment?”

“Exactly. Disappointment. They imagine that if they please me, they’ll live. They adapt to my rules. They start to trust me and develop a certain camaraderie with me, hoping to the very end that this camaraderie means something. The disappointment comes when it finally dawns on them that they’ve been well and truly screwed.”

Martin walked around the table and leaned against the steel cage.

“You with your bourgeois conventions would never grasp this, but the excitement comes from planning a kidnapping. They’re not done on impulse – those kinds of kidnappers invariably get caught. It’s a science with thousands of details that I have to weigh. I have to identify my prey, map out her life, who is she, where does she come from, how can I make contact with her, what do I have to do to be alone with my prey without revealing my name or having it turn up in any future police investigation?”

Shut up, for God’s sake, Blomkvist thought.

“Are you really interested in all this, Mikael?”

He bent down and stroked Blomkvist’s cheek. The touch was almost tender.

“You realise that this can only end one way? Will it bother you if I smoke?”

“You could offer me a cigarette,” he said.

Martin lit two cigarettes and carefully placed one of them between Blomkvist’s lips, letting him take a long drag.

“Thanks,” Blomkvist said, automatically.

Martin Vanger laughed again.

“You see. You’ve already started to adapt to the submission principle. I hold your life in my hands, Mikael. You know that I can dispatch you at any second. You pleaded with me to improve your quality of life, and you did so by using reason and a little good manners. And you were rewarded.”

Blomkvist nodded. His heart was pounding so hard it was almost unbearable.

At 11:15 Lisbeth Salander drank the rest of the water from her PET bottle as she turned the pages. Unlike Blomkvist, who earlier in the day had choked on his coffee, she didn’t get the water down the wrong way. On the other hand, she did open her eyes wide when she made the connection.

Click!

For two hours she had been wading through the staff newsletters from all points of the compass. The main newsletter was Company Information. It bore the Vanger logo – a Swedish banner fluttering in the wind, with the point forming an arrow. The publication was presumably put together by the firm’s advertising department, and it was filled with propaganda that was supposed to make the employees feel that they were members of one big family.

In association with the winter sports holiday in February 1967, Henrik Vanger, in a magnanimous gesture, had invited fifty employees from the main office and their families to a week’s skiing holiday in Härjedalen. The company had made record profits during the previous year. The PR department went too and put together a picture report.

Many of the pictures with amusing captions were from the slopes. Some showed groups in the bar, with laughing employees hoisting beer mugs. Two photographs were of a small morning function when Henrik Vanger proclaimed Ulla-Britt Mogren to be the Best Office Worker of the Year. She was given a bonus of five hundred kronor and a glass bowl.

The ceremony was held on the terrace of the hotel, clearly right before people were thinking of heading back to the slopes. About twenty people were in the picture.

On the far right, just behind Henrik Vanger, stood a man with long blond hair. He was wearing a dark padded jacket with a distinctive patch at the shoulder. Since the publication was in black-and-white, the colour wasn’t identifiable, but Salander was willing to bet her life that the shoulder patch was red.

The caption explained the connection. …far right, Martin Vanger (19), who is studying in Uppsala. He is already being discussed as someone with a promising future in the company’s management.

“Gotcha,” Salander said in a low voice.

She switched off the desk lamp and left the newsletters in piles all over the desk – something for that slut Lindgren to take care of tomorrow.

She went out to the car park through a side door. As it closed behind her, she remembered that she had promised to tell the night watchman when she left. She stopped and let her eyes sweep over the car park. The watchman’s office was on the other side of the building. That meant that she would have to walk all the way round to the other side. Let sleeping dogs lie, she decided.

Before she put on her helmet, she turned on her mobile and called Blomkvist’s number. She got a message saying that the subscriber could not be reached. But she also saw that he had tried to call her no fewer than thirteen times between 3:30 and 9:00. In the last two hours, no call.

Salander tried the cottage number, but there was no answer. She frowned, strapped on her computer, put on her helmet, and kick-started the motorcycle. The ride from the main office at the entrance to Hedestad’s industrial district out to Hedeby Island took ten minutes. A light was on in the kitchen.

Salander looked around. Her first thought was that Blomkvist had gone to see Frode, but from the bridge she had already noticed that the lights were off in Frode’s house on the other side of the water. She looked at her watch: 11:40.

She went into the cottage, opened the wardrobe, and took out the two PCs that she was using to store the surveillance pictures from the cameras she had installed. It took her a while to run up the sequence of events.

At 15:32 Blomkvist entered the cabin.

At 16:03 he took his coffee cup out to the garden. He had a folder with him, which he studied. He made three brief telephone calls during the hour he spent out in the garden. The three calls corresponded exactly to calls she had not answered.

At 17:21 Blomkvist left the cottage. He was back less than fifteen minutes later.

At 18:20 he went to the gate and looked in the direction of the bridge.

At 21:03 he went out. He had not come back.

Salander fast-forwarded through the pictures from the other PC, which photographed the gate and the road outside the front door. She could see who had gone past during the day.

At 19:12 Nilsson came home.

At 19:42 the Saab that belonged to Östergården drove towards Hedestad.

At 20:02 the Saab was on its way back.

At 21:00 Martin Vanger’s car went by. Three minutes later Blomkvist left the house.

At 21:50, Martin Vanger appeared in the camera’s viewfinder. He stood at the gate for over a minute, looking at the house, then peering through the kitchen window. He went up to the porch and tried the door, taking out a key. He must have discovered that they had put in a new lock. He stood still for a moment before he turned on his heel and left the house.

Salander felt an ice-cold fear in her gut.

Martin Vanger once again left Blomkvist alone. He was still in his uncomfortable position with his hands behind his back and his neck fastened by a thin chain to an eyelet in the floor. He fiddled with the handcuffs, but he knew that he would not be able to get them off. The cuffs were so tight that his hands were numb.

He had no chance. He shut his eyes.

He did not know how much time had passed when he heard Martin’s footsteps again. He appeared in Blomkvist’s field of vision. He looked worried.

“Uncomfortable?” he said.

“Very,” said Blomkvist.

“You’ve only got yourself to blame. You should have gone back to Stockholm.”

“Why do you kill, Martin?”

“It’s a choice that I made. I could discuss the moral and intellectual aspects of what I do; we could talk all night, but it wouldn’t change anything. Try to look at it this way: a human being is a shell made of skin keeping the cells, blood, and chemical components in place. Very few end up in the history books. Most people succumb and disappear without a trace.”

“You kill women.”

“Those of us who murder for pleasure – I’m not the only one with this hobby – we live a complete life.”

“But why Harriet? Your own sister?”

In a second Martin grabbed him by the hair.

“What happened to her, you little bastard? Tell me.”

“What do you mean?” Blomkvist gasped. He tried to turn his head to lessen the pain in his scalp. The chain tightened round his neck.

“You and Salander. What have you come up with?”

“Let go, for heaven’s sake. We’re talking.”

Martin Vanger let go of his hair and sat cross-legged in front of Blomkvist. He took a knife from his jacket and opened it. He set the point against the skin just below Blomkvist’s eye. Blomkvist forced himself to meet Martin’s gaze.

“What the hell happened to her, bastard?”

“I don’t understand. I thought you killed her.”

Martin Vanger stared at Blomkvist for a long moment. Then he relaxed. He got up and wandered around the room, thinking. He threw the knife on the floor and laughed before he came back to face Blomkvist.

“Harriet, Harriet, always Harriet. We tried… to talk to her. Gottfried tried to teach her. We thought that she was one of us and that she would accept her duty, but she was just an ordinary… cunt. I had her under control, or so I thought, but she was planning to tell Henrik, and I realised that I couldn’t trust her. Sooner or later she was going to tell someone about me.”

“You killed her.”

“I wanted to kill her. I thought about it, but I arrived too late. I couldn’t get over to the island.”

Blomkvist’s brain was with difficulty trying to absorb this information, but it felt as if a message had popped up with the words INFORMATION OVERLOAD. Martin Vanger did not know what had happened to his sister.

All of a sudden Martin pulled his mobile telephone out of his pocket, glanced at the display, and put it on the chair next to the pistol.

“It’s time to stop all this. I have to dispose of your anorexic bitch tonight too.”

He took out a narrow leather strap from a cupboard and slipped it around Blomkvist’s neck, like a noose. He loosened the chain that held him shackled to the floor, hauled him to his feet, and shoved him towards the wall. He slipped the leather strap through a loop above Blomkvist’s head and then tightened it so that he was forced to stand on tiptoes.

“Is that too tight? Can you breathe?” He loosened it a notch and locked the other end of the strap in place, further down the wall. “I don’t want you to suffocate all at once.”

The noose was cutting so hard into Blomkvist’s throat that he was incapable of uttering a word. Martin looked at him attentively.

Abruptly he unzipped Blomkvist’s trousers and tugged them down, along with his boxer shorts. As he pulled them off, Blomkvist lost his foothold and dangled for a second from the noose before his toes again made contact with the floor. Martin went over to a cupboard and took out a pair of scissors. He cut off Blomkvist’s T-shirt and tossed the bits on the floor. Then he took up a position some distance away from Mikael and regarded his victim.

“I’ve never had a boy in here,” Martin said in a serious voice. “I’ve never touched another man, as a matter of fact… except for my father. That was my duty.”

Blomkvist’s temples were pounding. He could not put his weight on his feet without being strangled. He tried to use his fingers to get a grip on the concrete wall behind him, but there was nothing to hold on to.

“It’s time,” Martin Vanger said.

He put his hand on the strap and pulled down. Blomkvist instantly felt the noose cutting into his neck.

“I’ve always wondered how a man tastes.”

He increased the pressure on the noose and leaned forward to kiss Blomkvist on the lips at the same time that a cold voice cut through the room.

“Hey, you fucking creep, in this shithole I’ve got a monopoly on that one.”

Blomkvist heard Salander’s voice through a red fog. He managed to focus his eyes enough to see her standing in the doorway. She was looking at Martin Vanger without expression.

“No… run,” he croaked.

He could not see the look on Martin’s face, but he could almost physically feel the shock when he turned around. For a second, time stood still. Then Martin reached for the pistol he had left on the chair.

Salander took three swift strides forward and swung a golf club she had hidden at her side. The iron flew in a wide arc and hit Martin on the collarbone near his shoulder. The blow had a terrible force, and Blomkvist heard something snap. Martin howled.

“Do you like pain, creep?” Salander said.

Her voice was as rough as sandpaper. As long as Blomkvist lived, he would never forget her face as she went on the attack. Her teeth were bared like a beast of prey. Her eyes were glittering, black as coal. She moved with the lightning speed of a tarantula and seemed totally focused on her prey as she swung the club again, striking Martin in the ribs.

He stumbled over the chair and fell. The pistol tumbled to the floor at Salander’s feet. She kicked it away.

Then she struck for the third time, just as Martin Vanger was trying to get to his feet. She hit him with a loud smack on the hip. A horrible cry issued from Martin’s throat. The fourth blow struck him from behind, between the shoulder blades.

“Lis… uuth…” Blomkvist gasped.

He was about to pass out, and the pain in his temples was almost unbearable.

She turned to him and saw that his face was the colour of a tomato, his eyes were open wide, and his tongue was popping out of his mouth.

She looked about her and saw the knife on the floor. Then she spared a glance at Martin Vanger, who was trying to crawl away from her, one arm hanging. He would not be making any trouble for the next few seconds. She let go of the golf club and picked up the knife. It had a sharp point but a dull edge. She stood on her toes and frantically sawed at the leather strap to get it off. It took several seconds before Blomkvist sank to the floor. But the noose was pulled tighter round his neck.

Salander looked again at Martin Vanger. He was on his feet but doubled over. She tried to dig her fingers under the noose. At first she did not dare cut it, but finally she slipped the point of the knife underneath, scoring Blomkvist’s neck as she tried to expand the noose. At last it loosened and Blomkvist took several shaky, wheezing breaths.

For a moment Blomkvist had a sensation of his body and soul uniting. He had perfect vision and could make out every speck of dust in the room. He had perfect hearing and registered every breath, every rustle of clothing, as if they were entering his ears through a headset, and he was aware of the odour of Salander’s sweat and the smell of leather from her jacket. Then the illusion burst as blood began streaming to his head.

Salander turned her head just as Martin Vanger disappeared out the door. She got up, grabbed the pistol, checked the magazine and flicked off the safety. She looked around and focused on the keys to the handcuffs, which lay in plain sight on the table.

“I’m going to take him,” she said, running for the door. She grabbed the keys as she passed the table and tossed them backhanded to the floor next to Blomkvist.

He tried to shout to her to wait, but he managed only a rasping sound and by then she had vanished.

Salander had not forgotten that Martin Vanger had a rifle somewhere, and she stopped, holding the pistol ready to fire in front of her, as she came upstairs to the passageway between the garage and the kitchen. She listened, but she could hear no sound telling her where her prey was. She moved stealthily towards the kitchen, and she was almost there when she heard a car starting up in the courtyard.

From the drive she saw a pair of tail lights passing Henrik Vanger’s house and turning down to the bridge, and she ran as fast as her legs could carry her. She stuffed the pistol in her jacket pocket and did not bother with the helmet as she started her motorcycle. Seconds later she was crossing the bridge.

He had maybe a ninety-second start when she came into the roundabout at the entrance to the E4. She could not see his car. She braked and turned off the motor to listen.

The sky was filled with heavy clouds. On the horizon she saw a hint of the dawn. Then she heard the sound of an engine and caught a glimpse of tail lights on the E4, going south. Salander kicked the motorcycle, put it into gear, and raced under the viaduct. She was doing 40 miles per hour as she took the curve of the entrance ramp. She saw no traffic and accelerated to full speed and flew forward. When the road began to curve along a ridge, she was doing 90 mph, which was about the fastest her souped-up lightweight bike could manage going downhill. After two minutes she saw the lights about 650 yards ahead.

Analyse consequences. What do I do now?

She decelerated to a more reasonable seventy-five and kept pace with him. She lost sight of him for several seconds when they took several bends. Then they came on to a long straight; she was only two hundred yards behind him.

He must have seen the headlight from her motorcycle, and he sped up when they took a long curve. She accelerated again but lost ground on the bends.

She saw the headlights of a truck approaching. Martin Vanger did too. He increased his speed again and drove straight into the oncoming lane. Salander saw the truck swerve and flash its lights, but the collision was unavoidable. Martin Vanger drove straight into the truck and the sound of the crash was terrible.

Salander braked. She saw the trailer start to jackknife across her lane. At the speed she was going, it took two seconds for her to cover the distance up to the accident site. She accelerated and steered on to the hard shoulder, avoiding the hurtling back of the truck by two yards as she flew past. Out of the corner of her eye she saw flames coming from the front of the truck.

She rode on, braking and thinking, for another 150 yards before she stopped and turned around. She saw the driver of the truck climb out of his cab on the passenger side. Then she accelerated again. At Åkerby, about a mile south, she turned left and took the old road back north, parallel to the E4. She went up a hill past the scene of the crash. Two cars had stopped. Big flames were boiling out of the wreckage of Martin’s car, which was wedged underneath the truck. A man was spraying the flames with a small fire extinguisher.

She was soon rolling across the bridge at a low speed. She parked outside the cottage and walked back to Martin Vanger’s house.

Mikael was still fumbling with the handcuffs. His hands were so numb that he could not get a grip on the key. Salander unlocked the cuffs for him and held him tight as the blood began to circulate in his hands again.

“Martin?” he said in a hoarse voice.

“Dead. He drove slap into the front of a truck a couple of miles south on the E4.”

Blomkvist stared at her. She had only been gone a few minutes.

“We have to… call the police,” he whispered. He began coughing hard.

“Why?” Salander said.

For ten minutes Blomkvist was incapable of standing up. He was still on the floor, naked, leaning against the wall. He massaged his neck and lifted the water bottle with clumsy fingers. Salander waited patiently until his sense of touch started to return. She spent the time thinking.

“Put your trousers on.”

She used Blomkvist’s cut-up T-shirt to wipe fingerprints from the handcuffs, the knife, and the golf club. She picked up her PET bottle.

“What are you doing?”

“Get dressed and hurry up. It’s getting light outside.”

Blomkvist stood on shaky legs and managed to pull on his boxers and jeans. He slipped on his trainers. Salander stuffed his socks into her jacket pocket and then stopped him.

“What exactly did you touch down here?”

Blomkvist looked around. He tried to remember. At last he said that he had touched nothing except the door and the keys. Salander found the keys in Martin Vanger’s jacket, which he had hung over the chair. She wiped the door handle and the switch and turned off the light. She helped Blomkvist up the basement stairs and told him to wait in the passageway while she put the golf club back in its proper place. When she came back she was carrying a dark T-shirt that belonged to Martin Vanger.

“Put this on. I don’t want anyone to see you scampering about with a bare chest tonight.”

Blomkvist realised that he was in a state of shock. Salander had taken charge, and passively he obeyed her instructions. She led him out of Martin’s house. She held on to him the whole time. As soon as they stepped inside the cottage, she stopped him.

“If anyone sees us and asks what we were doing outside tonight, you and I went out to the point for a nighttime walk, and we had sex out there.”

“Lisbeth, I can’t…”

“Get in the shower. Now.”

She helped him off with his clothes and propelled him to the bathroom. Then she put on water for coffee and made half a dozen thick sandwiches on rye bread with cheese and liver sausage and dill pickles. She sat down at the kitchen table and was thinking hard when he came limping back into the room. She studied the bruises and scrapes on his body. The noose had been so tight that he had a dark red mark around his neck, and the knife had made a bloody gash in his skin on the left side.

“Get into bed,” she said.

She improvised bandages and covered the wound with a makeshift compress. Then she poured the coffee and handed him a sandwich.

“I’m really not hungry,” he said.

“I don’t give a damn if you’re hungry. Just eat,” Salander commanded, taking a big bite of her own cheese sandwich.

Blomkvist closed his eyes for a moment, then he sat up and took a bite. His throat hurt so much that he could scarcely swallow.

Salander took off her leather jacket and from the bathroom brought a jar of Tiger Balm from her sponge bag.

“Let the coffee cool for a while. Lie face down.”

She spent five minutes massaging his back and rubbing him with the liniment. Then she turned him over and gave him the same treatment on the front.

“You’re going to have some serious bruises for a while.”

“Lisbeth, we have to call the police.”

“No,” she replied with such vehemence that Blomkvist opened his eyes in surprise. “If you call the police, I’m leaving. I don’t want to have anything to do with them. Martin Vanger is dead. He died in a car accident. He was alone in the car. There are witnesses. Let the police or someone else discover that fucking torture chamber. You and I are just as ignorant about its existence as everyone else in this village.”

“Why?”

She ignored him and started massaging his aching thighs.

“Lisbeth, we can’t just…”

“If you go on nagging, I’ll drag you back to Martin’s grotto and chain you up again.”

As she said this, Blomkvist fell asleep, as suddenly as if he had fainted.

CHAPTER 25 Saturday, July 12 – Monday, July 14

Blomkvist woke with a start at 5:00 in the morning, scrabbling at his neck to get rid of the noose. Salander came in and took hold of his hands, keeping him still. He opened his eyes and looked at her blearily.

“I didn’t know that you played golf,” he said, closing his eyes again. She sat with him for a couple of minutes until she was sure he was asleep. While he slept, Salander had gone back to Martin Vanger’s basement to examine and photograph the crime scene. In addition to the torture instruments, she had found a collection of violent pornographic magazines and a large number of Polaroid photographs pasted into albums.

There was no diary. On the other hand, she did find two A4 binders with passport photographs and handwritten notes about the women. She put the binders in a nylon bag along with Martin’s Dell PC laptop, which she found on the hall table upstairs. While Blomkvist slept she continued her examination of Martin’s computer and binders. It was after 6:00 by the time she turned off the computer. She lit a cigarette.

Together with Mikael Blomkvist she had taken up the hunt for what they thought was a serial killer from the past. They had found something appallingly different. She could hardly imagine the horrors that must have played out in Martin Vanger’s basement, in the midst of this well-ordered, idyllic spot.

She tried to understand.

Martin Vanger had been killing women since the sixties, during the past fifteen years one or two victims per year. The killing had been done so discreetly and was so well planned that no-one was even aware that a serial killer was at work. How was that possible?

The binders provided a partial answer.

His victims were often new arrivals, immigrant girls who had no friends or social contacts in Sweden. There were also prostitutes and social outcasts, with drug abuse or other problems in their background.

From her own studies of the psychology of sexual sadism, Salander had learned that this type of murderer usually collected souvenirs from his victims. These souvenirs functioned as reminders that the killer could use to re-create some of the pleasure he had experienced. Martin Vanger had developed this peculiarity by keeping a “death book.” He had catalogued and graded his victims. He had described their suffering. He had documented his killings with videotapes and photographs.

The violence and the killing were the goal, but Salander concluded that it was the hunt that was Martin Vanger’s primary interest. In his laptop he had created a database with a list of more than a hundred women. There were employees from the Vanger Corporation, waitresses in restaurants where he regularly ate, reception staff in hotels, clerks at the social security office, the secretaries of business associates, and many other women. It seemed as if Martin had pigeonholed practically every woman he had ever come into contact with.

He had killed only a fraction of these women, but every woman anywhere near him was a potential victim. The cataloguing had the mark of a passionate hobby, and he must have devoted countless hours to it.

Is she married or single? Does she have children and family? Where does she work? Where does she live? What kind of car does she drive? What sort of education does she have? Hair colour? Skin colour? Figure?

The gathering of personal information about potential victims must have been a significant part of Martin Vanger’s sexual fantasies. He was first of all a stalker, and second a murderer.

When she had finished reading, she discovered a small envelope in one of the binders. She pulled out two much handled and faded Polaroid pictures. In the first picture a dark-haired girl was sitting at a table. The girl had on dark jeans and had a bare torso with tiny, pointed breasts. She had turned her face away from the camera and was in the process of lifting one arm in a gesture of defence, almost as if the photographer had surprised her. In the second picture she was completely naked. She was lying on her stomach on a blue bedspread. Her face was still turned away from the camera.

Salander stuffed the envelope with the pictures into her jacket pocket. After that she carried the binders over to the woodstove and struck a match. When she was done with the fire, she stirred the ashes. It was pouring down with rain when she took a short walk and, kneeling as if to tie a shoelace, discreetly dropped Martin Vanger’s laptop into the water under the bridge.

When Frode marched through the open door at 7:30 that morning, Salander was at the kitchen table smoking a cigarette and drinking coffee. Frode’s face was ashen, and he looked as if he had had a cruel awakening.

“Where’s Mikael?” he said.

“He’s still asleep.”

Frode sat down heavily on a kitchen chair. Salander poured coffee and pushed the cup over to him.

“Martin… I just found out that Martin was killed in a car accident last night.”

“That’s sad,” Salander said, taking a sip of her own coffee.

Frode looked up. At first he stared at her, uncomprehending. Then his eyes opened wide.

“What…?”

“He crashed. How annoying.”

“What do you know about this?”

“He drove his car right into the front of a truck. He committed suicide. The press, the stress, a floundering financial empire, dot, dot, dot, too much for him. At least that’s what I suppose it will say on the placards.”

Frode looked as if he were about to have a cerebral haemorrhage. He stood up swiftly and walked unsteadily to the bedroom.

“Let him sleep,” Salander snapped.

Frode looked at the sleeping figure. He saw the black and blue marks on Blomkvist’s face and the contusions on his chest. Then he saw the flaming line where the noose had been. Salander touched his arm and closed the door. Frode backed out and sank on to the kitchen bench.

Lisbeth Salander told him succinctly what had happened during the night. She told him what Martin Vanger’s chamber of horrors looked like and how she had found Mikael with a noose around his neck and the CEO of the Vanger Corporation standing in front of his naked body. She told him what she had found in the company’s archives the day before and how she had established a possible link between Martin’s father and the murders of at least seven women.

Frode interrupted her recitation only once. When she stopped talking, he sat mutely for several minutes before he took a deep breath and said: “What are we going to do?”

“That’s not for me to say,” Salander said.

“But…”

“As I see it, I’ve never set foot in Hedestad.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Under no circumstances do I want my name in any police report. I don’t exist in connection with any of this. If my name is mentioned in connection with this story, I’ll deny that I’ve ever been here, and I’ll refuse to answer a single question.”

Frode gave her a searching look.

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t need to understand.”

“Then what should I do?”

“You’ll have to work that out for yourself. Only leave me and Mikael out of it.”

Frode was deathly pale.

“Look at it this way: the only thing you know is that Martin Vanger died in a traffic accident. You have no idea that he was also an insane, nauseating serial killer, and you’ve never heard about the room in his basement.”

She put the key on the table between them.

“You’ve got time – before anyone is going to clean out Martin’s house and discover the basement.”

“We have to go to the police about this.”

“Not we. You can go to the police if you like. It’s your decision.”

“This can’t be brushed under a carpet.”

“I’m not suggesting that it should be brushed anywhere, just that you leave me and Mikael out of it. When you discover the room, you draw your own conclusions and decide for yourself who you want to tell.”

“If what you say is true, it means that Martin has kidnapped and murdered women… there must be families that are desperate because they don’t know where their children are. We can’t just…”

“That’s right. But there’s just one problem. The bodies are gone. Maybe you’ll find passports or ID cards in some drawer. Maybe some of the victims can be identified from the videotapes. But you don’t need to decide today. Think it over.”

Frode looked panic-stricken.

“Oh, dear God. This will be the death blow for the company. Think of how many families will lose their livelihood if it gets out that Martin…”

Frode rocked back and forth, juggling with a moral dilemma.

“That’s one issue. If Isabella Vanger is to inherit, you may think it would be inappropriate if she were the first one to light upon her son’s hobby.”

“I have to go and see…”

“I think you should stay away from that room today,” Salander said sharply. “You have a lot of things to take care of. You have to go and tell Henrik, and you have to call a special meeting of the board and do all those things you chaps do when your CEO dies.”

Frode thought about what she was saying. His heart was thumping. He was the old attorney and problem-solver who was expected to have a plan ready to meet any eventuality, yet he felt powerless to act. It suddenly dawned on him that here he was, taking orders from a child. She had somehow seized control of the situation and given him the guidelines that he himself was unable to formulate.

“And Harriet…?”

“Mikael and I are not finished yet. But you can tell Herr Vanger that I think now that we’re going to solve it.”

Martin Vanger’s unexpected demise was the top story on the 9:00 news on the radio when Blomkvist woke up. Nothing was reported about the night’s events other than to say that the industrialist had inexplicably and at high speed crossed to the wrong side of the E4, travelling south. He had been alone in the car.

The local radio ran a story that dealt with concern for the future of the Vanger Corporation and the consequences that this death would inevitably have for the company.

A hastily composed lunchtime update from the TT wire service had the headline A TOWN IN SHOCK, and it summed up the problems of the Vanger Corporation. It escaped no-one’s notice that in Hedestad alone more than 3,000 of the town’s 21,000 inhabitants were employed by the Vanger Corporation or were otherwise dependent on the prosperity of the company. The firm’s CEO was dead, and the former CEO was seriously ill after a heart attack. There was no natural heir. All this at a time considered to be among the most critical in the company’s history.

Blomkvist had had the option of going to the police in Hedestad and telling them what had happened that night, but Salander had already set a certain process in motion. Since he had not immediately called the police, it became harder to do so with each hour that passed. He spent the morning in gloomy silence, sitting on the kitchen bench, watching the rain outside. Around 10:00 there was another cloudburst, but by lunchtime the rain had stopped and the wind had died down a bit. He went out and wiped off the garden furniture and then sat there with a mug of coffee. He was wearing a shirt with the collar turned up.

Martin’s death cast a shadow, of course, over the daily life of Hedeby. Cars began parking outside Isabella Vanger’s house as the clan gathered to offer condolences. Salander observed the procession without emotion.

“How are you feeling?” she said at last.

“I think I’m still in shock,” he said. “I was helpless. For several hours I was convinced that I was going to die. I felt the fear of death and there wasn’t a thing I could do.”

He stretched out his hand and placed it on her knee.

“Thank you,” he said. “But for you, I would be dead.”

Salander smiled her crooked smile.

“All the same… I don’t understand how you could be such an idiot as to tackle him on your own. I was chained to the floor down there, praying that you’d see the picture and put two and two together and call the police.”

“If I’d waited for the police, you wouldn’t have survived. I wasn’t going to let that motherfucker kill you.”

“Why don’t you want to talk to the police?”

“I never talk to the authorities.”

“Why not?”

“That’s my business. But in your case, I don’t think it would be a terrific career move to be hung out to dry as the journalist who was stripped naked by Martin Vanger, the famous serial killer. If you don’t like ‘Kalle Blomkvist,’ you can think up a whole new epithet. Just don’t take it out of this chapter of your heroic life.”

Blomkvist gave her a searching look and dropped the subject.

“We do still have a problem,” she said.

Blomkvist nodded. “What happened to Harriet. Yes.”

Salander laid the two Polaroid pictures on the table in front of him. She explained where she’d found them. Mikael studied the pictures intently for a while before he looked up.

“It might be her,” he said at last. “I wouldn’t swear to it, but the shape of her body and the hair remind me of the pictures I’ve seen.”

They sat in the garden for an hour, piecing together the details. They discovered that each of them, independently and from different directions, had identified Martin Vanger as the missing link.

Salander never did find the photograph that Blomkvist had left on the kitchen table. She had come to the conclusion that Blomkvist had done something stupid after studying the pictures from the surveillance cameras. She had gone over to Martin Vanger’s house by way of the shore and looked in all the windows and seen no-one. She had tried all the doors and windows on the ground floor. Finally she had climbed in through an open balcony door upstairs. It had taken a long time, and she had moved extremely cautiously as she searched the house, room by room. Eventually she found the stairs down to the basement. Martin had been careless. He left the door to his chamber of horrors ajar, and she was able to form a clear impression of the situation.

Blomkvist asked her how much she had heard of what Martin said.

“Not much. I got there when he was asking you about what happened to Harriet, just before he hung you up by the noose. I left for a few minutes to go back and find a weapon.”

“Martin had no idea what happened to Harriet,” Blomkvist said.

“Do you believe that?”

“Yes,” Blomkvist said without hesitation. “Martin was dafter than a syphilitic polecat – where do I get these metaphors from? – but he confessed to all the crimes he had committed. I think that he wanted to impress me. But when it came to Harriet, he was as desperate as Henrik Vanger to find out what happened.”

“So… where does that take us?”

“We know that Gottfried was responsible for the first series of murders, between 1949 and 1965.”

“OK. And he brought on little Martin.”

“Talk about a dysfunctional family,” Blomkvist said. “Martin really didn’t have a chance.”

Salander gave him a strange look.

“What Martin told me – even though it was rambling – was that his father started his apprenticeship after he reached puberty. He was there at the murder of Lea in Uddevalla in 1962. He was fourteen, for God’s sake. He was there at the murder of Sara in 1964 and that time he took an active part. He was sixteen.”

“And?”

“He said that he had never touched another man – except his father. That made me think that… well, the only possible conclusion is that his father raped him. Martin called it ‘his duty.’ The sexual assaults must have gone on for a long time. He was raised by his father, so to speak.”

“Bullshit,” Salander said, her voice as hard as flint.

Blomkvist stared at her in astonishment. She had a stubborn look in her eyes. There was not an ounce of sympathy in it.

“Martin had exactly the same opportunity as anyone else to strike back. He killed and he raped because he liked doing it.”

“I’m not saying otherwise. But Martin was a repressed boy and under the influence of his father, just as Gottfried was cowed by his father, the Nazi.”

“So you’re assuming that Martin had no will of his own and that people become whatever they’ve been brought up to be.”

Blomkvist smiled cautiously. “Is this a sensitive issue?”

Salander’s eyes blazed with fury. Blomkvist quickly went on.

“I’m only saying that I think that a person’s upbringing does play a role. Gottfried’s father beat him mercilessly for years. That leaves its mark.”

“Bullshit,” Salander said again. “Gottfried isn’t the only kid who was ever mistreated. That doesn’t give him the right to murder women. He made that choice himself. And the same is true of Martin.”

Blomkvist held up his hand.

“Can we not argue?”

“I’m not arguing. I just think that it’s pathetic that creeps always have to have someone else to blame.”

“They have a personal responsibility. We’ll work it all out later. What matters is that Martin was seventeen when Gottfried died, and he didn’t have anyone to guide him. He tried to continue in his father’s footsteps. In February 1966, in Uppsala.”

Blomkvist reached for one of Salander’s cigarettes.

“I won’t speculate about what impulses Gottfried was trying to satisfy or how he himself interpreted what he was doing. There’s some sort of Biblical gibberish that a psychiatrist might be able to figure out, something to do with punishment and purification in a figurative sense. It doesn’t matter what it was. He was a cut and dried serial killer.

“Gottfried wanted to kill women and clothe his actions in some sort of pseudo-religious clap-trap. Martin didn’t even pretend to have an excuse. He was organised and did his killing systematically. He also had money to put into his hobby. And he was shrewder than his father. Every time Gottfried left a body behind, it led to a police investigation and the risk that someone might track him down, or at least link together the various murders.”

“Martin Vanger built his house in the seventies,” Salander said pensively.

“I think Henrik mentioned it was in 1978. Presumably he ordered a safe room put in for important files or some such purpose. He got a soundproofed, windowless room with a steel door.”

“He’s had that room for twenty-five years.”

They fell silent for a while as Blomkvist thought about what atrocities must have taken place there for a quarter of a century. Salander did not need to think about the matter; she had seen the videotapes. She noticed that Blomkvist was unconsciously touching his neck.

“Gottfried hated women and taught his son to hate women at the same time as he was raping him. But there’s also some sort of undertone… I think Gottfried fantasised that his children would share his, to put it mildly, perverted world view. When I asked about Harriet, his own sister, Martin said: ‘We tried to talk to her. But she was just an ordinary cunt. She was planning to tell Henrik.’”

“I heard him. That was about when I got down to the basement. And that means that we know what her aborted conversation with Henrik was to have been about.”

Blomkvist frowned. “Not really. Think of the chronology. We don’t know when Gottfried first raped his son, but he took Martin with him when he murdered Lea Persson in Uddevalla in 1962. He drowned in 1965. Before that, he and Martin tried to talk to Harriet. Where does that lead us?”

“Martin wasn’t the only one that Gottfried assaulted. He also assaulted Harriet.”

“Gottfried was the teacher. Martin was the pupil. Harriet was what? Their plaything?”

“Gottfried taught Martin to screw his sister.” Salander pointed at the Polaroid prints. “It’s hard to determine her attitude from these two pictures because we can’t see her face, but she’s trying to hide from the camera.”

“Let’s say that it started when she was fourteen, in 1964. She defended herself – couldn’t accept it, as Martin put it. That was what she was threatening to tell Henrik about. Martin undoubtedly had nothing to say in this connection; he just did what his father told him. But he and Gottfried had formed some sort of… pact, and they tried to initiate Harriet into it too.”

Salander said: “In your notes you wrote that Henrik had let Harriet move into his house in the winter of 1964.”

“Henrik could see there was something wrong in her family. He thought it was the bickering and friction between Gottfried and Isabella that was the cause, and he took her in so that she could have some peace and quiet and concentrate on her studies.”

“An unforeseen obstacle for Gottfried and Martin. They couldn’t get their hands on her as easily or control her life. But eventually… Where did the assault take place?”

“It must have been at Gottfried’s cabin. I’m almost positive that these pictures were taken there – it should be possible to check. The cabin is in a perfect location, isolated and far from the village. Then Gottfried got drunk one last time and died in a most banal way.”

“So Harriet’s father had attempted to have sex with her, but my guess is that he didn’t initiate her into the killing.”

Blomkvist realised that this was a weak point. Harriet had made note of the names of Gottfried’s victims, pairing them up with Bible quotes, but her interest in the Bible did not emerge until the last year, and by then Gottfried was already dead. He paused, trying to come up with a logical explanation.

“Sometime along the way Harriet discovered that Gottfried had not only committed incest, but he was also a serial sex murderer,” he said.

“We don’t know when she found out about the murders. It could have been right before Gottfried drowned. It might also have been after he drowned, if he had a diary or had saved press cuttings about them. Something put her on his track.”

“But that wasn’t what she was threatening to tell Henrik,” Blomkvist said.

“It was Martin,” Salander said. “Her father was dead, but Martin was going on abusing her.”

“Exactly.”

“But it was a year before she took any action.”

“What would you do if you found out that your father was a murderer who had been raping your brother?”

“I’d kill the fucker,” Salander said in such a sober tone that Blomkvist believed her. He remembered her face as she was attacking Martin Vanger. He smiled joylessly.

“OK, but Harriet wasn’t like you. Gottfried died before she managed to do anything. That also makes sense. When Gottfried died, Isabella sent Martin to Uppsala. He might have come home for Christmas or other holidays, but during that following year he didn’t see Harriet very often. She was able to get some distance from him.”

“And she started studying the Bible.”

“And in light of what we now know, it didn’t have to be for any religious reasons. Maybe she simply wanted to know what her father had been up to. She brooded over it until the Children’s Day celebration in 1966. Then suddenly she sees her brother on Järnvägsgatan and realises that he’s back. We don’t know if they talked to each other or if he said anything. But no matter what happened, Harriet had an urge to go straight home and talk to Henrik.”

“And then she disappeared.”

After they had gone over the chain of events, it was not hard to understand what the rest of the puzzle must have looked like. Blomkvist and Salander packed their bags. Before they left, Blomkvist called Frode and told him that he and Salander had to go away for a while, but that he absolutely wanted to see Henrik Vanger before they left.

Blomkvist needed to know what Frode had told Henrik. The man sounded so stressed on the telephone that Blomkvist felt concerned for him. Frode said that he had only told him that Martin had died in a car accident.

It was thundering again when Blomkvist parked outside Hedestad Hospital, and the sky was filled once more with heavy rain clouds. He hurried across the car park just as it started to rain.

Vanger was wearing a bathrobe, sitting at a table by the window of his room. His illness had left its mark, but Vanger had regained some colour in his face and looked as if he were on the path to recovery. They shook hands. Blomkvist asked the nurse to leave them alone for a few minutes.

“You’ve been avoiding me,” Vanger said.

Mikael nodded. “On purpose. Your family didn’t want me to come at all, but today everyone is over at Isabella’s house.”

“Poor Martin,” Vanger said.

“Henrik. You gave me an assignment to dig up the truth about what happened to Harriet. Did you expect the truth to be painless?”

The old man looked at him. Then his eyes widened.

“Martin?”

“He’s part of the story.”

Henrik closed his eyes.

“Now I have got a question for you,” Blomkvist said.

“Tell me.”

“Do you still want to know what happened? Even if it turns out to be painful and even if the truth is worse than you imagined?”

Henrik gave Blomkvist a long look. Then he said, “I want to know. That was the point of your assignment.”

“OK. I think I know what happened to Harriet. But there’s one last piece of the puzzle missing before I’m sure.”

“Tell me.”

“No. Not today. What I want you to do right now is to rest. The doctors say that the crisis is over and that you’re getting better.”

“Don’t you treat me like a child, young man.”

“I haven’t worked it all out yet. What I have is a theory. I am going out to find the last piece of the puzzle. The next time you see me, I’ll tell you the whole story. It may take a while, but I want you to know that I’m coming back and that you’ll know the truth.”

Salander pulled a tarpaulin over her motorcycle and left it on the shady side of the cabin. Then she got into Blomkvist’s borrowed car. The thunderstorm had returned with renewed force, and just south of Gävle there was such a fierce downpour that Blomkvist could hardly see the road. Just to be safe, he pulled into a petrol station. They waited for the rain to let up, so they did not arrive in Stockholm until 7:00 that evening. Blomkvist gave Salander the security code to his building and dropped her off at the central tunnelbana. His apartment seemed unfamiliar.

He vacuumed and dusted while Salander went to see Plague in Sundbyberg. She arrived at Blomkvist’s apartment at around midnight and spent ten minutes examining every nook and cranny of it. Then she stood at the window for a long time, looking at the view facing the Slussen locks.

They got undressed and slept.

At noon the next day they landed at London’s Gatwick Airport. They were met with rain. Blomkvist had booked a room at the Hotel James near Hyde Park, an excellent hotel compared to all the one-star places in Bayswater where he had always ended up on his previous trips to London.

At 5:00 p.m. they were standing at the bar when a youngish man came towards them. He was almost bald, with a blond beard, and he was wearing jeans and a jacket that was too big for him.

“Wasp?”

“Trinity?” she said. They nodded to each other. He did not ask for Blomkvist’s name.

Trinity’s partner was introduced as Bob the Dog. He was in an old VW van around the corner. They climbed in through the sliding doors and sat down on folding chairs fastened to the sides. While Bob navigated through the London traffic, Wasp and Trinity talked.

“Plague said this had to do with some crash-bang job.”

“Telephone tapping and checking emails in a computer. It might go fast, or it could take a couple of days, depending on how much pressure he applies.” Lisbeth gestured towards Blomkvist with her thumb. “Can you do it?”

“Do dogs have fleas?” Trinity said.

Anita Vanger lived in a terrace house in the attractive suburb of St. Albans, about an hour’s drive north. From the van they saw her arrive home and unlock the door some time after 7:30 that evening. They waited until she had settled, had her supper, and was sitting in front of the TV before Blomkvist rang the doorbell.

An almost identical copy of Cecilia Vanger opened the door, her expression politely questioning.

“Hi, Anita. My name is Mikael Blomkvist. Henrik Vanger asked me to come and see you. I assume that you’ve heard the news about Martin.”

Her expression changed from surprise to wariness. She knew exactly who Mikael Blomkvist was. But Henrik’s name meant that she was forced to open the door. She showed Blomkvist into her living room. He noticed a signed lithograph by Anders Zorn over the fireplace. It was altogether a charming room.

“Forgive me for bothering you out of the blue, but I happened to be in St. Albans, and I tried to call you during the day.”

“I understand. Please tell me what this is about?”

“Are you planning to be at the funeral?”

“No, as a matter of fact, I’m not. Martin and I weren’t close, and anyway, I can’t get away at the moment.”

Anita Vanger had stayed away from Hedestad for thirty years. After her father moved back to Hedeby Island, she had hardly set foot there.

“I want to know what happened to Harriet Vanger, Anita. It’s time for the truth.”

“Harriet? I don’t know what you mean.”

Blomkvist smiled at her feigned surprise.

“You were Harriet’s closest friend in the family. You were the one she turned to with her horrible story.”

“I can’t think what you’re talking about,” Anita said.

“Anita, you were in Harriet’s room that day. I have photographic proof of it, in spite of what you said to Inspector Morell. In a few days I’m going to report to Henrik, and he’ll take it from there. It would be better to tell me what happened.”

Anita Vanger stood up.

“Get out of my house this minute.”

Blomkvist got up.

“Sooner or later you’re going to have to talk to me.”

“I have nothing now, nor ever will have, anything to say to you.”

“Martin is dead,” Blomkvist said. “You never liked Martin. I think that you moved to London not only to avoid seeing your father but also so that you wouldn’t have to see Martin. That means that you also knew about Martin, and the only one who could have told you was Harriet. The question is: what did you do with that knowledge?”

Anita Vanger slammed her front door in his face.

Salander smiled with satisfaction as she unfastened the microphone from under his shirt.

“She picked up the telephone about twenty seconds after she nearly took the door off its hinges,” she said.

“The country code is Australia,” Trinity said, putting down the earphones on the little desk in the van. “I need to check the area code.” He switched on his laptop. “OK, she called the following number, which is a telephone in a town called Tennant Creek, north of Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. Do you want to hear the conversation?”

Blomkvist nodded. “What time is it in Australia right now?”

“About 5:00 in the morning.” Trinity started the digital player and attached a speaker. Mikael counted eight rings before someone picked up the telephone. The conversation took place in English.

“Hi. It’s me.”

“Hmm, I know I’m a morning person but…”

“I thought of calling you yesterday… Martin is dead. He seems to have driven his car into a truck the day before yesterday.”

Silence. Then what sounded like someone clearing their throat, but it might have been: “Good.”

“But we have got a problem. A disgusting journalist that Henrik dug up from somewhere has just knocked on my door, here in St. Albans. He’s asking questions about what happened in 1966. He knows something.”

Again silence. Then a commanding voice.

“Anita. Put down the telephone right now. We can’t have any contact for a while.”

“But…”

“Write a letter. Tell me what’s going on.” Then the conversation was over.

“Sharp chick,” Salander said.

They returned to their hotel just before 11:00. The front desk manager helped them to reserve seats on the next available flight to Australia. Soon they had reservations on a plane leaving at 7:05 the following evening, destination Melbourne, changing in Singapore.

This was Salander’s first visit to London. They spent the morning walking from Covent Garden through Soho. They stopped to have a caffe latte on Old Compton Street. Around 3:00 they were back at the hotel to collect their luggage. While Blomkvist paid the bill, Salander turned on her mobile. She had a text message.

“Armansky says to call at once.”

She used a telephone in the lobby. Blomkvist, who was standing a short distance away, noticed Salander turn to him with a frozen expression on her face. He was at her side at once.

“What is it?”

“My mother died. I have to go home.”

Salander looked so unhappy that he put his arms around her. She pushed him away.

They sat in the hotel bar. When Blomkvist said that he would cancel the reservations to Australia and go back to Stockholm with her, she shook her head.

“No,” she said. “We can’t screw up the job now. You’ll have to go by yourself.”

They parted outside the hotel, each of them making for a different airport.

CHAPTER 26 Tuesday, July 15 – Thursday, July 17

Blomkvist flew from Melbourne to Alice Springs. After that he had to choose either to charter a plane or to rent a car for the remaining 250-mile trip north. He chose to go by car.

An unknown person with the biblical signature of Joshua, who was part of Plague’s or possibly Trinity’s mysterious international network, had left an envelope for him at the central information desk at Melbourne airport.

The number that Anita had called belonged to a place called Cochran Farm. It was a sheep station. An article pulled off the Internet gave a snapshot guide.

Australia: population of 18 million; sheep farmers, 53,000; approx. 120 million head of sheep. The export of wool approx. 3.5 billion dollars annually. Australia exports 700 million tons of mutton and lamb, plus skins for clothing. Combined meat and wool production one of the country’s most important industries…

Cochran Farm, founded 1891 by Jeremy Cochran, Australia’s fifth largest agricultural enterprise, approx 60,000 Merino sheep (wool considered especially fine). The station also raised cattle, pigs, and chickens. Cochran Farm had impressive annual exports to the U.S.A., Japan, China, and Europe.

The personal biographies were fascinating.

In 1972 Cochran Farm passed down from Raymond Cochran to Spencer Cochran, educ. Oxford. Spencer d. in 1994, and farm run by widow. Blomkvist found her in a blurry, low-resolution photograph downloaded from the Cochran Farm website. It showed a woman with short blonde hair, her face partially hidden, shearing a sheep.

According to Joshua’s note, the couple had married in Italy in 1971.

Her name was Anita Cochran.

Blomkvist stopped overnight in a dried-up hole of a town with the hopeful name of Wannado. At the local pub he ate roast mutton and downed three pints along with some locals who all called him “mate.”

Last thing before he went to bed he called Berger in New York.

“I’m sorry, Ricky, but I’ve been so busy that I haven’t had time to call.”

“What the hell is going on?” she exploded. “Christer called and told me that Martin Vanger had been killed in a car accident.”

“It’s a long story.”

“And why don’t you answer your telephone? I’ve been calling like crazy for two days.”

“It doesn’t work here.”

“Where is here?”

“Right now I’m about one hundred twenty-five miles north of Alice Springs. In Australia, that is.”

Mikael had rarely managed to surprise Berger. This time she was silent for nearly ten seconds.

“And what are you doing in Australia? If I might ask.”

“I’m finishing up the job. I’ll be back in a few days. I just called to tell you that my work for Henrik Vanger is almost done.”

He arrived at Cochran Farm around noon the following day, to be told that Anita Cochran was at a sheep station near a place called Makawaka seventy-five miles farther west.

It was 4:00 in the afternoon by the time Mikael found his way there on dusty back roads. He stopped at a gate where some sheep ranchers were gathered around the hood of a Jeep having coffee. Blomkvist got out and explained that he was looking for Anita Cochran. They all turned towards a muscular young man, clearly the decision-maker of the group. He was bare chested and very brown except for the parts normally covered by his T-shirt. He was wearing a wide-brimmed hat.

“The boss is about eighteen miles off in that direction,” he said, pointing with his thumb.

He cast a sceptical glance at Blomkvist’s vehicle and said that it might not be such a good idea to go on in that Japanese toy car. Finally the tanned athlete said that he was heading that way and would drive Blomkvist in his Jeep. Blomkvist thanked him and took along his computer case.

The man introduced himself as Jeff and said that he was the “studs manager” at the station. Blomkvist asked him to explain what that meant. Jeff gave him a sidelong look and concluded that Blomkvist was not from these parts. He explained that a studs manager was rather the equivalent of a financial manager in a bank, although he administered sheep, and that a “station” was the Australian word for ranch.

They continued to converse as Jeff cheerfully steered the Jeep at about ten kilometres an hour down into a ravine with a 20° slope. Blomkvist thanked his lucky stars that he had not attempted the drive in his rental car. He asked what was down in the ravine and was told that it was the pasture land for 700 head of sheep.

“As I understand it, Cochran Farm is one of the bigger ranches.”

“We’re one of the largest in all of Australia,” Jeff said with a certain pride in his voice. “We run about 9,000 sheep here in the Makawaka district, but we have stations in both New South Wales and Western Australia. We have 60,000 plus head.”

They came out from the ravine into a hilly but gentler landscape. Blomkvist suddenly heard shots. He saw sheep cadavers, big bonfires, and a dozen ranch hands. Several men seemed to be carrying rifles. They were apparently slaughtering sheep.

Involuntarily, he thought of the biblical sacrificial lambs.

Then he saw a woman with short blonde hair wearing jeans and a red-and-white checked shirt. Jeff stopped a few yards away from her.

“Hi, Boss. We’ve got a tourist,” he said.

Blomkvist got out of the Jeep and looked at her. She looked back with an inquisitive expression.

“Hi, Harriet. It’s been a long time,” he said in Swedish.

None of the men who worked for Anita Cochran understood what he said, but they all saw her reaction. She took a step back, looking shocked. The men saw her response, stopped their joking, and straightened up, ready to intervene against this odd stranger. Jeff’s friendliness suddenly evaporated and he advanced toward Blomkvist.

Blomkvist was keenly aware how vulnerable he was. A word from Anita Cochran and he would be done for.

Then the moment passed. Harriet Vanger waved her hand in a peaceful gesture and the men moved back. She came over to Blomkvist and met his gaze. Her face was sweaty and dirty. Her blonde hair had darker roots. Her face was older and thinner, but she had grown into the beautiful woman that her confirmation portrait had promised.

“Have we met before?” she said.

“Yes, we have. I am Mikael Blomkvist. You were my babysitter one summer when I was three years old. You were twelve or thirteen at the time.”

It took a few seconds for her puzzled expression to clear, and then he saw that she remembered. She looked surprised.

“What do you want?”

“Harriet, I’m not your enemy. I’m not here to make trouble for you. But I need to talk with you.”

She turned to Jeff and told him to takeover, then signalled to Blomkvist to follow her. They walked a few hundred feet over to a group of white canvas tents in a grove of trees. She motioned him to a camp stool at a rickety table and poured water into a basin. She rinsed her face, dried it, and went inside the tent to change her shirt. She got two beers out of a cooler.

“So. Talk.”

“Why are you shooting the sheep?”

“We have a contagious epidemic. Most of these sheep are probably healthy, but we can’t risk it spreading. We’re going to have to slaughter more than six hundred in the coming week. So I’m not in a very good mood.”

Blomkvist said: “Your brother crashed his car into a truck a few days ago. He must have died instantaneously.”

“I heard that.”

“From Anita, who called you.”

She scrutinised him for a long moment. Then she nodded. She knew that it was pointless to deny the fact.

“How did you find me?”

“We tapped Anita’s telephone.” Blomkvist did not think there was any reason to lie. “I saw your brother a few minutes before he died.”

Harriet Vanger frowned. He met her gaze. Then he took off the ridiculous scarf he was wearing, turned down his collar, and showed her the stripe left from the noose. It was still red and inflamed, and he would probably always have a scar to remind him of Martin Vanger.

“Your brother had hung me from a hook, but by the grace of God my partner arrived in time to stop him killing me.”

Harriet’s eyes suddenly burned.

“I think you’d better tell me the story from the beginning.”

It took more than an hour. He told her who he was and what he was working on. He described how he came to be given the assignment by Henrik Vanger. He explained how the police’s investigation had come to a dead end, and he told her of Henrik’s long investigation, and finally he told her how a photograph of her with friends in Järnvägsgatan in Hedestad had led to the uncovering of the sorrows behind the mystery of her disappearance and its appalling sequel, which had ended with Martin Vanger’s suicide.

As he talked, dusk set in. The men quit work for the day, fires were started, and pots began to simmer. Blomkvist noticed that Jeff stayed close to his boss and kept a watchful eye on him. The cook served them dinner. They each had another beer. When he was finished Harriet sat for a long time in silence.

At length she said: “I was so happy that my father was dead and the violence was over. It never occurred to me that Martin… I’m glad he’s dead.”

“I can understand that.”

“Your story doesn’t explain how you knew that I was alive.”

“After we realised what had happened, it wasn’t so difficult to work out the rest. To disappear, you needed help. Anita was your confidante and the only one you could even consider. You were friends, and she had spent the summer with you. You stayed out at your father’s cabin. If there was anyone you had confided in, it had to be her – and also she had just got her driver’s licence.”

Harriet looked at him with an unreadable expression.

“So now that you know I’m alive, what are you going to do?”

“I have to tell Henrik. He deserves to know.”

“And then? You’re a journalist.”

“I’m not thinking of exposing you. I’ve already breached so many rules of professional conduct in this whole dismal mess that the Journalists Association would undoubtedly expel me if they knew about it.” He was trying to make light of it. “One more won’t make any difference, and I don’t want to make my old babysitter angry.”

She was not amused.

“How many people know the truth?”

“That you’re alive? Right now, you and me and Anita and my partner. Henrik’s lawyer knows about two-thirds of the story, but he still thinks you died in the sixties.”

Harriet Vanger seemed to be thinking something over. She stared out at the dark. Mikael once again had an uneasy feeling that he was in a vulnerable situation, and he reminded himself that Harriet Vanger’s own rifle was on a camp bed three paces away. Then he shook himself and stopped imagining things. He changed the subject.

“But how did you come to be a sheep farmer in Australia? I already know that Anita smuggled you off Hedeby Island, presumably in the boot of her car when the bridge re-opened the day after the accident.”

“Actually, I lay on the floor of the back seat with a blanket over me. But no-one was looking. I went to Anita when she arrived on the island and told her that I had to escape. You guessed right that I confided in her. She helped me, and she’s been a loyal friend all these years.”

“Why Australia?”

“I stayed in Anita’s room in Stockholm for a few weeks. Anita had her own money, which she generously lent me. She also gave me her passport. We looked almost exactly like each other, and all I had to do was dye my hair blonde. For four years I lived in a convent in Italy – I wasn’t a nun. There are convents where you can rent a room cheap, to have peace and quiet to think. Then I met Spencer Cochran. He was some years older; he’d just finished his degree in England and was hitchhiking around Europe. I fell in love. He did too. That’s all there was to it. ‘Anita’ Vanger married him in 1971. I’ve never had any regrets. He was a wonderful man. Very sadly, he died eight years ago, and I became the owner of the station.”

“But your passport – surely someone should have discovered that there were two Anita Vangers?”

“No, why should they? A Swedish girl named Anita Vanger who’s married to Spencer Cochran. Whether she lives in London or Australia makes no difference. The one in London has been Spencer Cochran’s estranged wife. The one in Australia was his very much present wife. They don’t match up computer files between Canberra and London. Besides, I soon got an Australian passport under my married name. The arrangement functioned perfectly. The only thing that could have upset the story was if Anita herself wanted to get married. My marriage had to be registered in the Swedish national registration files.”

“But she never did.”

“She claims that she never found anyone. But I know that she did it for my sake. She’s been a true friend.”

“What was she doing in your room?”

“I wasn’t very rational that day. I was afraid of Martin, but as long as he was in Uppsala, I could push the problem out of my mind. Then there he was in Hedestad, and I realised that I’d never be safe the rest of my life. I went back and forth between wanting to tell Uncle Henrik and wanting to flee. When Henrik didn’t have time to talk to me, I just wandered restlessly around the village. Of course I know that the accident on the bridge overshadowed everything else for everyone, but not for me. I had my own problems, and I was hardly even aware of the accident. Everything seemed unreal. Then I ran into Anita, who was staying in a guest cottage in the compound with Gerda and Alexander. That was when I made up my mind. I stayed with her the whole time and didn’t dare go outside. But there was one thing I had to take with me – I had written down everything that happened in a diary, and I needed a few clothes. Anita got them for me.”

“I suppose she couldn’t resist the temptation to look out at the accident scene.” Blomkvist thought for a moment. “What I don’t understand is why you didn’t just go to Henrik, as you had intended.”

“Why do you think?”

“I really don’t know. Henrik would certainly have helped you. Martin would have been removed immediately – probably sent to Australia for some sort of therapy or treatment.”

“You haven’t understood what happened.”

Up to this point Blomkvist had only referred to Gottfried’s sexual assault on Martin, leaving Harriet’s role out of it.

“Gottfried molested Martin,” he said cautiously. “I suspect that he also molested you.”

Harriet Vanger did not move a muscle. Then she took a deep breath and buried her face in her hands. It took five seconds before Jeff was beside her, asking if everything was all right. Harriet looked at him and gave him a faint smile. Then she astonished Blomkvist by standing up and giving her studs manager a hug and a kiss on the cheek. She turned to Blomkvist with her arm around Jeff’s shoulder.

“Jeff, this is Mikael, an old… friend from the past. He’s brought problems and bad news, but we’re not going to shoot the messenger. Mikael, this is Jeff Cochran, my oldest son. I also have another son and a daughter.”

Blomkvist stood up to shake hands with Jeff, saying that he was sorry to have brought bad news which had upset his mother. Harriet exchanged a few words with Jeff and then sent him away. She sat down again and seemed to have made a decision.

“No more lies. I accept that it’s all over. In some sense I’ve been waiting for this day since 1966. For years I was terrified that someone might come up to me and say my name. But you know what? All of a sudden I don’t care any more. My crime falls outside the statute of limitations. And I don’t give a shit what people think about me.”

“Crime?” said Mikael.

She gave him an urgent look, but he still didn’t understand what she was talking about.

“I was sixteen. I was scared. I was ashamed. I was desperate. I was all alone. The only ones who knew the truth were Anita and Martin. I had told Anita about the sexual assaults, but I didn’t have the courage to tell her that my father was also an insane killer of women. Anita had never known about that. But I did tell her about the crime that I committed myself. It was so horrible that when it came down to it, I didn’t dare tell Henrik. I prayed to God to forgive me. And I hid inside a convent for several years.”

“Harriet, your father was a rapist and a murderer. It wasn’t your fault.”

“I know that. My father molested me for a year. I did everything to avoid… but he was my father and I couldn’t refuse to have anything to do with him without giving him some explanation. So I lied and played a role and tried to pretend that everything was OK. And I made sure that someone else was always around when I saw him. My mother knew what he was doing, of course, but she didn’t care.”

“Isabella knew?”

Harriet’s voice took on a new harshness.

“Of course she knew. Nothing ever happened in our family without Isabella knowing. But she ignored everything that was unpleasant or showed her in a bad light. My father could have raped me in the middle of the living room right before her eyes and she wouldn’t have noticed. She was incapable of acknowledging that anything was wrong in her life or mine.”

“I’ve met her. She’s not my favourite in the family.”

“She’s been like that her whole life. I’ve often wondered about my parents’ relationship. I realised that they rarely or maybe never had sex with each other after I was born. My father had women, but for some strange reason he was afraid of Isabella. He stayed away from her, but he couldn’t get a divorce.”

“No-one does in the Vanger family.”

She laughed for the first time.

“No, they don’t. But the point is that I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. The whole world would have found out. My schoolmates, all my relatives…”

“Harriet, I’m so sorry.”

“I was fourteen when he raped me the first time. And during the next year he would take me out to his cabin. Many times Martin came along. He forced both me and Martin to do things with him. And he held my arms while Martin… had his way with me. When my father died, Martin was ready to take over his role. He expected me to become his lover and he thought it was perfectly natural for me to submit to him. At that time I no longer had any choice. I was forced to do what Martin said. I was rid of one tormentor only to land in the clutches of another, and the only thing I could do was to make sure there was never an occasion when I was alone with him…”

“Henrik would have…”

“You still don’t understand.”

She raised her voice. Blomkvist saw that several of the men at the next tent were looking at him. She lowered her voice again and leaned towards him.

“All the cards are on the table. You’ll have to work out the rest.”

She stood up and got two more beers. When she came back, Mikael said a single word to her.

“Gottfried.”

She nodded.

“On August 7, 1965, my father forced me to go out to his cabin. Henrik was away. My father was drinking, and he tried to force himself on me. But he couldn’t get it up and he flew into a drunken rage. He was always… rough and violent towards me when we were alone, but this time he crossed the line. He urinated on me. Then he started telling me what he was going to do to me. That night he told me about the women he had killed. He was bragging about it. He quoted from the Bible. This went on for an hour. I didn’t understand half of what he was saying, but I realised that he was totally, absolutely sick.”

She took a gulp of her beer.

“Sometime around midnight he had a fit. He was totally insane. We were up in the sleeping loft. He put a T-shirt around my neck and pulled it as tight as he could. I blacked out. I don’t have the slightest doubt that he really was trying to kill me, and for the first time that night he managed to complete the rape.”

Harriet looked at Blomkvist. Her eyes entreated him to understand.

“But he was so drunk that somehow I managed to get away. I jumped down from the loft and fled. I was naked and I ran without thinking, and ended up on the jetty by the water. He came staggering after me.”

Blomkvist suddenly wished that she would not tell him anything more.

“I was strong enough to shove an old drunk into the water. I used an oar to hold him under until he wasn’t struggling any more. It didn’t take long.”

When she stopped, the silence was deafening.

“And when I looked up, there stood Martin. He looked terrified, but at the same time he was grinning. I don’t know how long he was outside the cabin, spying on us. From that moment I was at his mercy. He came up to me, grabbed me by the hair, and led me back to the cabin – to Gottfried’s bed. He tied me up and raped me while our father was still floating in the water. And I couldn’t even offer any resistance.”

Blomkvist closed his eyes. He was terribly ashamed and wished that he had left Harriet Vanger in peace. But her voice had taken on a new force.

“From that day on, I was in his power. I did what he told me to do. I felt paralysed, and the only thing that saved my sanity was that Isabella – or maybe it was Uncle Henrik – decided that Martin needed a change of scenery after his father’s tragic death, so she sent him to Uppsala. Of course this was because she knew what he was doing to me, and it was her way of solving the problem. You can bet that Martin was disappointed. During the next year he was home only for the Christmas holiday. I managed to keep away from him. I went with Henrik on a trip to Copenhagen between Christmas and New Year’s. And during the summer holiday, Anita was there. I confided in her, and she stayed with me the whole time, making sure that he didn’t come near me.”

“Until you saw him on Järnvägsgatan.”

“I was told that he wouldn’t be coming to the family gathering, that he was staying in Uppsala. But obviously he changed his mind, and suddenly there he was on the other side of the street, staring at me. He smiled at me. It felt like a hideous dream. I had murdered my father, and I realised that I would never be free of my brother. Up until then, I had thought about killing myself. I chose instead to flee.” She gave Blomkvist what was almost a look of relief. “It feels fantastic to tell the truth. So now you know.”

CHAPTER 27 Saturday, July 26 – Monday, July 28

Blomkvist picked up Salander by her front door on Lundagatan at 10:00 and drove her to the Norra crematorium. He stayed at her side during the ceremony. For a long time they were the only mourners along with the pastor, but when the funeral began Armansky slipped in. He nodded curtly to Blomkvist and stood behind Salander, gently putting a hand on her shoulder. She nodded without looking at him, as if she knew who was standing there. Then she ignored them both.

Salander had told him nothing about her mother, but the pastor had apparently spoken to someone at the nursing home where she died, and Blomkvist understood that the cause of death was a cerebral haemorrhage. Salander did not say a word during the ceremony. The pastor lost her train of thought twice when she turned directly to her. Salander looked her straight in the eye without expression. When it was over she turned on her heel and left without saying thank you or goodbye. Blomkvist and Armansky took a deep breath and looked at each other.

“She’s feeling really bad,” Armansky said.

“I know that,” Blomkvist said. “It was good of you to come.”

“I’m not so sure about that.”

Armansky fixed Blomkvist with his gaze.

“If you two are driving back north, keep an eye on her.”

He promised to do that. They said goodbye, and to the pastor, at the church door. Salander was already in the car, waiting.

She had to go back with him to Hedestad to get her motorcycle and the equipment she had borrowed from Milton Security. Not until they had passed Uppsala did she break her silence and ask how the trip to Australia had gone. Blomkvist had landed at Arlanda late the night before and had slept only a few hours. During the drive he told her Harriet Vanger’s story. Salander sat in silence for half an hour before she opened her mouth.

“Bitch,” she said.

“Who?”

“Harriet Fucking Vanger. If she had done something in 1966, Martin Vanger couldn’t have kept killing and raping for thirty-seven years.”

“Harriet knew about her father murdering women, but she had no idea that Martin had anything to do with it. She fled from a brother who raped her and then threatened to reveal that she had drowned her father if she didn’t do what he said.”

“Bullshit.”

After that they sat in silence all the way to Hedestad. Blomkvist was late for his appointment and dropped her at the turnoff to Hedeby Island; he asked if she would please be there when he came back.

“Are you thinking of staying overnight?” she said.

“I think so.”

“Do you want me to be here?”

He climbed out of the car and went around and put his arms around her. She pushed him away, almost violently. Blomkvist took a step back.

“Lisbeth, you’re my friend.”

“Do you want me to stay here so you’ll have somebody to fuck tonight?”

Blomkvist gave her a long look. Then he turned and got into the car and started the engine. He wound down the window. Her hostility was palpable.

“I want to be your friend,” he said. “If you want otherwise, then you don’t need to be here when I get home.”

Henrik Vanger was sitting up, dressed, when Dirch Frode let him into the hospital room.

“They’re thinking of letting me out for Martin’s funeral tomorrow.”

“How much has Dirch told you?”

Henrik looked down at the floor.

“He told me about what Martin and Gottfried got up to. This is far, far worse than I could have imagined.”

“I know what happened to Harriet.”

“Tell me: how did she die?”

“She didn’t die. She’s still alive. And if you like, she really wants to see you.”

Both men stared at him as if their world had just been turned upside down.

“It took a while to convince her to come, but she’s alive, she’s doing fine, and she’s here in Hedestad. She arrived this morning and can be here in an hour. If you want to see her, that is.”

Blomkvist had to tell the story from beginning to end. A couple of times Henrik interrupted with a question or asked him to repeat something. Frode said not a word.

When the story was done, Henrik sat in silence. Blomkvist had been afraid that it would be too much for the old man, but Henrik showed no sign of emotion, except that his voice might have been a bit thicker when he broke his silence

“Poor, poor Harriet. If only she had come to me.”

Blomkvist glanced at the clock. It was five minutes to four.

“Do you want to see her? She’s still afraid that you won’t want to after you found out what she did.”

“What about the flowers?” Henrik said.

“I asked her that on the plane coming home. There was one person in the family, apart from Anita, whom she loved, and that was you. She, of course, was the one who sent the flowers. She said that she hoped you would understand that she was alive and that she was doing fine, without having to make an appearance. But since her only channel of information was Anita, who moved abroad as soon as she finished her studies and never visited Hedestad, Harriet’s awareness about what went on here was limited. She never knew how terribly you suffered or that you thought it was her murderer taunting you.”

“I assume it was Anita who posted the flowers.”

“She worked for an airline and flew all over the world. She posted them from wherever she happened to be.”

“But how did you know Anita was the one who helped her?”

“She was the one in Harriet’s window.”

“But she could have been mixed up in… she could have been the murderer instead. How did you find out that Harriet was alive?”

Blomkvist gave Henrik a long look. Then he smiled for the first time since he had returned to Hedestad.

“Anita was involved in Harriet’s disappearance, but she couldn’t have killed her.”

“How could you be sure of that?”

“Because this isn’t some damned locked-room mystery novel. If Anita had murdered Harriet, you would have found the body years ago. So the only logical thing was that she helped Harriet escape and hide. Do you want to see her?”

“Of course I want to see her.”

Blomkvist found Harriet by the lift in the lobby. At first he did not recognise her. Since they had parted at Arlanda Airport the night before she had dyed her hair brown again. She was dressed in black trousers, a white blouse, and an elegant grey jacket. She looked radiant, and Blomkvist bent down to give her an encouraging hug.

Henrik got up from his chair when Mikael opened the door. She took a deep breath.

“Hi, Henrik,” she said.

The old man scrutinised her from top to toe. Then Harriet went over and kissed him. Blomkvist nodded to Frode and closed the door.

Salander was not in the cottage when Blomkvist returned to Hedeby Island. The video equipment and her motorcycle were gone, as well as the bag with her extra clothes and her sponge bag. The cottage felt empty. It suddenly seemed alien and unreal. He looked at the stacks of paper in the office, which he would have to pack up in boxes and carry back to Henrik’s house. But he could not face starting the process. He drove to Konsum and bought bread, milk, cheese, and something for supper. When he returned he put on water for coffee, sat in the garden, and read the evening papers without thinking of anything else.

At 5:30 a taxi drove across the bridge. After three minutes it went back the way it came. Blomkvist caught a glimpse of Isabella Vanger in the back seat.

Around 7:00 he had dozed off in the garden chair when Frode woke him up.

“How’s it going with Henrik and Harriet?” he said.

“This unhappy cloud has its silver lining,” Frode said with a restrained smile. “Isabella, would you believe, came rushing into Henrik’s hospital room. She’d obviously seen that you’d come back and was completely beside herself. She screamed at him that there had to be an end to this outrageous fuss about her Harriet, adding that you were the one who drove her son to his death with your snooping.”

“Well, she’s right, in a way.”

“She commanded Henrik to dismiss you forthwith and run you off the property for good. And would he, once and for all, stop searching for ghosts.”

“Wow!”

“She didn’t even glance at the woman sitting beside the bed talking to Henrik. She must have thought it was one of the staff. I will never forget the moment when Harriet stood up and said, ‘Hello, Mamma.’”

“What happened?”

“We had to call a doctor to check Isabella’s vital signs. Right now she’s refusing to believe that it’s Harriet. You are accused of dragging in an impostor.”

Frode was on his way to visit Cecilia and Alexander to give them the news that Harriet had risen from the dead. He hurried away, leaving Blomkvist to his solitary musings.

Salander stopped and filled her tank at a petrol station north of Uppsala. She had been riding doggedly, staring straight ahead. She paid quickly and got back on her bike. She started it up and rode to the exit, where she stopped, undecided.

She was still in a terrible mood. She was furious when she left Hedeby, but her rage had slowly dissolved during the ride. She could not make up her mind why she was so angry with Blomkvist, or even if he was the one she was angry with.

She thought of Martin Vanger and Harriet Fucking Vanger and Dirch Fucking Frode and the whole damned Vanger clan sitting in Hedestad reigning over their little empire and plotting against each other. They had needed her help. Normally they wouldn’t even have said hello to her in the street, let alone entrust her with their repellent secrets.

Fucking riff-raff.

She took a deep breath and thought about her mother, whom she had consigned to ashes that very morning. She would never be able to mend things. Her mother’s death meant that the wound would never heal, since she would never now get an answer to the questions she had wanted to ask.

She thought about Armansky standing behind her at the crematorium. She should have said something to him. At least given him some sign that she knew he was there. But if she did that, he would have taken it as a pretext for trying to structure her life. If she gave him her little finger he’d take her whole arm. And he would never understand.

She thought about the lawyer, Bjurman, who was still her guardian and who, at least for the time being, had been neutralised and was doing as he was told.

She felt an implacable hatred and clenched her teeth.

And she thought about Mikael Blomkvist and wondered what he would say when he found out that she was a ward of the court and that her entire life was a fucking rats’ nest.

It came to her that she really was not angry with him. He was just the person on whom she had vented her anger when what she had wanted most of all was to murder somebody, several people. Being angry with him was pointless.

She felt strangely ambivalent towards him.

He stuck his nose in other people’s business and poked around in her life and… but… she had also enjoyed working with him. Even that was an odd feeling – to work with somebody. She wasn’t used to that, but it had been unexpectedly painless. He did not mess with her. He did not try to tell her how to live her life.

She was the one who had seduced him, not vice versa.

And besides, it had been satisfying.

So why did she feel as if she wanted to kick him in the face?

She sighed and unhappily raised her eyes to see an inter-continental roar past on the E4.

Blomkvist was still in the garden at 8:00 when he was roused by the rattle of the motorcycle crossing the bridge and saw Salander riding towards the cottage. She put her bike on its stand and took off her helmet. She came up to the garden table and felt the coffeepot, which was empty and cold. Blomkvist stood up, gazing at her in surprise. She took the coffeepot and went into the kitchen. When she came back out she had taken off her leathers and sat down in jeans and a T-shirt with the slogan I CAN BE A REGULAR BITCH. JUST TRY ME.

“I thought you’d be in Stockholm by now,” he said.

“I turned round in Uppsala.”

“Quite a ride.”

“I’m sore.”

“Why did you turn around?”

No answer. He waited her out while they drank coffee. After ten minutes she said, reluctantly, “I like your company.”

Those were words that had never before passed her lips.

“It was… interesting to work with you on this case.”

“I enjoyed working with you too,” he said.

“Hmm.”

“The fact is, I’ve never worked with such a brilliant researcher. OK, I know you’re a hacker and hang out in suspect circles in which you can set up an illegal wiretap in London in twenty-four hours, but you get results.”

She looked at him for the first time since she had sat at the table. He knew so many of her secrets.

“That’s just how it is. I know computers. I’ve never had a problem with reading a text and absorbing what it said.”

“Your photographic memory,” he said softly.

“I admit it. I just have no idea how it works. It’s not only computers and telephone networks, but the motor in my bike and TV sets and vacuum cleaners and chemical processes and formulae in astrophysics. I’m a nut case, I admit it: a freak.”

Blomkvist frowned. He sat quietly for a long time.

Asperger’s syndrome, he thought. Or something like that. A talent for seeing patterns and understanding abstract reasoning where other people perceive only white noise.

Salander was staring down at the table.

“Most people would give an eye tooth to have such a gift.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“We’ll drop it. Are you glad you came back?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it was a mistake.”

“Lisbeth, can you define the word friendship for me?”

“It’s when you like somebody.”

“Sure, but what is it that makes you like somebody?”

She shrugged.

“Friendship – my definition – is built on two things,” he said. “Respect and trust. Both elements have to be there. And it has to be mutual. You can have respect for someone, but if you don’t have trust, the friendship will crumble.”

She was still silent.

“I understand that you don’t want to discuss yourself with me, but someday you’re going to have to decide whether you trust me or not. I want us to be friends, but I can’t do it all by myself.”

“I like having sex with you.”

“Sex has nothing to do with friendship. Sure, friends can have sex, but if I had to choose between sex and friendship when it comes to you, there’s no doubt which I would pick.”

“I don’t get it. Do you want to have sex with me or not?”

“You shouldn’t have sex with people you’re working with,” he muttered. “It just leads to trouble.”

“Did I miss something here, or isn’t it true that you and Erika Berger fuck every time you get the chance? And she’s married.”

“Erika and I… have a history that started long before we started working together. The fact that she’s married is none of your business.”

“Oh, I see, all of a sudden you’re the one who doesn’t want to talk about yourself. And there I was, learning that friendship is a matter of trust.”

“What I mean is that I don’t discuss a friend behind her back. I’d be breaking her trust. I wouldn’t discuss you with Erika behind your back either.”

Salander thought about that. This had become an awkward conversation. She did not like awkward conversations.

“I do like having sex with you,” she said.

“I like it too… but I’m still old enough to be your father.”

“I don’t give a shit about your age.”

“No, you can’t ignore our age difference. It’s no sort of basis for a lasting relationship.”

“Who said anything about lasting?” Salander said. “We just finished up a case in which men with fucked-up sexuality played a prominent role. If I had to decide, men like that would be exterminated, every last one of them.”

“Well, at least you don’t compromise.”

“No,” she said, giving him her crooked non-smile. “But at least you’re not like them.” She got up. “Now I’m going in to take a shower, and then I think I’ll get into your bed naked. If you think you’re too old, you’ll have to go and sleep on the camp bed.”

Whatever hang-ups Salander had, modesty certainly was not one of them. He managed to lose every argument with her. After a while he washed up the coffee things and went into the bedroom.

They got up at 10:00, took a shower together, and ate breakfast out in the garden. At 11:00 Dirch Frode called and said that the funeral would take place at 2:00 in the afternoon, and he asked if they were planning to attend.

“I shouldn’t think so,” said Mikael.

Frode asked if he could come over around 6:00 for a talk. Mikael said that would be fine.

He spent a few hours sorting the papers into the packing crates and carrying them over to Henrik’s office. Finally he was left with only his own notebooks and the two binders about the Hans-Erik Wennerström affair that he hadn’t opened in six months. He sighed and stuffed them into his bag.

Frode rang to say he was running late and did not reach the cottage until 8:00. He was still in his funeral suit and looked harried when he sat down on the kitchen bench and gratefully accepted the cup of coffee that Salander offered him. She sat at the side table with her computer while Blomkvist asked how Harriet’s reappearance had been received by the family as a whole.

“You might say that it has overshadowed Martin’s demise. Now the media have found out about her too.”

“And how are you explaining the situation?”

“Harriet talked with a reporter from the Courier. Her story is that she ran away from home because she didn’t get along with her family, but that she obviously has done well in the world since she’s the head of a very substantial enterprise.”

Blomkvist whistled.

“I discovered that there was money in Australian sheep, but I didn’t know the station was doing that well.”

“Her sheep station is going superbly, but that isn’t her only source of income. The Cochran Corporation is in mining, opals, manufacturing, transport, electronics, and a lot of other things too.”

“Wow! So what’s going to happen now?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. People have been turning up all day, and the family has been together for the first time in years. They’re here from both Fredrik and Johan Vanger’s sides, and quite a few from the younger generation too – the ones in their twenties and up. There are probably around forty Vangers in Hedestad this evening. Half of them are at the hospital wearing out Henrik; the other half are at the Grand Hotel talking to Harriet.”

“Harriet must be the big sensation. How many of them know about Martin?”

“So far it’s just me, Henrik, and Harriet. We had a long talk together. Martin and… your uncovering of his unspeakable life, it’s overshadowing just about everything for us at the moment. It has brought an enormous crisis for the company to a head.”

“I can understand that.”

“There is no natural heir, but Harriet is staying in Hedestad for a while. The family will work out who owns what, how the inheritance is to be divided and so on. She actually has a share of it that would have been quite large if she had been here the whole time. It’s a nightmare.”

Mikael laughed. Frode was not laughing at all.

“Isabella had a collapse at the funeral. She’s in the hospital now. Henrik says he won’t visit her.”

“Good for Henrik.”

“However, Anita is coming over from London. I am to call a family meeting for next week. It will be the first time in twenty-five years that she’s participated.”

“Who will be the new CEO?”

“Birger is after the job, but he’s out of the question. What’s going to happen is that Henrik will step in as CEO pro tem from his sickbed until we hire either someone from outside or someone from within the family…”

Blomkvist raised his eyebrows.

“Harriet? You can’t be serious.”

“Why not? We’re talking about an exceptionally competent and respected businesswoman.”

“She has a company in Australia to look after.”

“True, but her son Jeff Cochran is minding the store in her absence.”

“He’s the studs manager on a sheep ranch. If I understood the matter correctly, he sees to it that the correct sheep mate with each other.”

“He also has a degree in economics from Oxford and a law degree from Melbourne.”

Blomkvist thought about the sweaty, muscular man with his shirt off who had driven him into and through the ravine; he tried to imagine him in a pinstripe suit. Why not?

“All of this will take time to work out,” Frode said. “But she would be a perfect CEO. With the right support team she could represent a whole new deal for the company.”

“She doesn’t have the experience…”

“That’s true. She can’t just pop up out of more or less nowhere and start micro-managing the company. But the Vanger Corporation is international, and we could certainly have an American CEO who doesn’t speak a word of Swedish… it’s only business, when all’s said and done.”

“Sooner or later you’re going to have to face up to the problem of Martin’s basement.”

“I know. But we can’t say anything without destroying Harriet… I’m glad I’m not the one who has to make the decision about this.”

“Damn it, Dirch, you won’t be able to bury the fact that Martin was a serial killer.”

“Mikael, I’m in a… very uncomfortable position.”

“Tell me.”

“I have a message from Henrik. He thanks you for the outstanding work you did and says that he considers the contract fulfilled. That means he is releasing you from any further obligations and that you no longer have to live or work here in Hedestad, etc. So, taking effect immediately, you can move back to Stockholm and devote yourself to your other pursuits.”

“He wants me to vanish from the scene, is that the gist of it?”

“Absolutely not. He wants you to visit him for a conversation about the future. He says he hopes that his involvement on the board of Millennium can proceed without restrictions. But…”

Frode looked even more uncomfortable, if that was possible.

“Don’t tell me, Dirch… he no longer wants me to write a history of the Vanger family.”

Dirch Frode nodded. He picked up a notebook, opened it, and pushed it over to Mikael.

“He wrote you this letter.”

“Henrik also says that if you require compensation for financial losses that may arise from your refraining from publishing the story, he is entirely open to discussion. You can set any financial demands you think fit.”

“Henrik Vanger is trying to shut me up. Tell him that I wish he had never given me this offer.”

“The situation is just as troublesome for Henrik as it is for you. He likes you very much and considers you his friend.”

“Henrik Vanger is a clever bastard,” Blomkvist said. He was suddenly furious. “He wants to hush up the story. He’s playing on my emotions and he knows I like him too. And what he’s also saying is that I have a free hand to publish, and if I do so he would have to revise his attitude towards Millennium.”

“Everything changed when Harriet stepped on to the stage.”

“And now Henrik is feeling out what my price tag might be. I don’t intend to hang Harriet out to dry, but somebody has to say something about the women who died in Martin’s basement. Dirch, we don’t even know how many women he tortured and slaughtered. Who is going to speak up on their behalf?”

Salander looked up from her computer. Her voice was almost inaudible as she said to Frode, “Isn’t there anyone in your company who’s going to try to shut me up?”

Frode looked astonished. Once again he had managed to ignore her existence.

“If Martin Vanger were alive at this moment, I would have hung him out to dry,” she went on. “Whatever agreement Mikael made with you, I would have sent every detail about him to the nearest evening paper. And if I could, I would have stuck him down in his own torture hole and tied him to that table and stuck needles through his balls. Unfortunately he’s dead.”

She turned to Blomkvist.

“I’m satisfied with the solution. Nothing we do can repair the harm that Martin Vanger did to his victims. But an interesting situation has come up. You’re in a position where you can continue to harm innocent women – especially that Harriet whom you so warmly defended in the car on the way up here. So my question to you is: which is worse – the fact that Martin Vanger raped her out in the cabin or that you’re going to do it in print? You have a fine dilemma. Maybe the ethics committee of the Journalists Association can give you some guidance.”

She paused. Blomkvist could not meet her gaze. He stared down at the table.

“But I’m not a journalist,” she said at last.

“What do you want?” Dirch Frode asked.

“Martin videotaped his victims. I want you to do your damnedest to identify as many as you can and see to it that their families receive suitable compensation. And then I want the Vanger Corporation to donate 2 million kronor annually and in perpetuity to the National Organisation for Women’s Crisis Centres and Girls’ Crisis Centres in Sweden.”

Frode weighed the price tag for a minute. Then he nodded.

“Can you live with that, Mikael?” Salander said.

Blomkvist felt only despair. His professional life he had devoted to uncovering things which other people had tried to hide, and he could not be party to the covering up of the appalling crimes committed in Martin Vanger’s basement. He who had lambasted his colleagues for not publishing the truth, here he sat, discussing, negotiating even, the most macabre cover-up he had ever heard of.

He sat in silence for a long time. Then he nodded his assent.

“So be it,” Frode said. “And with regard to Henrik’s offer for financial compensation…”

“He can shove it up his backside, and Dirch, I want you to leave now. I understand your position, but right now I’m so furious with you and Henrik and Harriet that if you stay any longer we might not be friends any more.”

Frode made no move to go.

“I can’t leave yet. I’m not done. I have another message to deliver, and you’re not going to like this one either. Henrik is insisting that I tell you tonight. You can go up to the hospital and flay him tomorrow morning if you wish.”

Blomkvist looked up and stared at him.

Frode went on. “This has got to be the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. But I think that only complete candour with all the cards on the table can save the situation now.”

“So it’s candour at last, is it?”

“When Henrik convinced you to take the job last Christmas,” Dirch said, ignoring his sarcasm, “neither he nor I thought that anything would come of it. That was exactly what he said, but he wanted to give it one last try. He had analysed your situation, particularly with the help of the report that Fröken Salander put together. He played on your isolation, he offered good pay, and he used the right bait.”

“Wennerström.”

Frode nodded.

“You were bluffing?”

“No, no,” Frode said.

Salander raised an eyebrow with interest.

“Henrik is going to make good on everything he promised. He’s arranging an interview and is going public with a direct assault on Wennerström. You can have all the details later, but roughly the situation is this: when Wennerström was employed in the finance department of the Vanger Corporation, he spent several million kronor speculating on foreign currency. This was long before foreign exchange futures became the rage. He did this without authority. One deal after another went bad, and he was sitting there with a loss of seven million kronor that he tried to cover up. Partly by cooking the books and partly by speculating even harder. It inevitably came to light and he was sacked.”

“Did he make any profit himself?”

“Oh yes, he made off with about half a million kronor, which ironically enough became the seed money for the Wennerström Group. We have documentation for all of this. You can use the information however you like, and Henrik will back up the accusations publicly. But…”

“But, and it’s a big but, Dirch, the information is worthless,” Blomkvist said, slamming his fist on the table. “It all happened thirty-plus years ago and it’s a closed book.”

“You’ll get confirmation that Wennerström is a crook.”

“That will annoy Wennerström when it comes out, but it won’t damage him any more than a direct hit from a peashooter. He’s going to shuffle the deck by putting out a press release saying that Henrik Vanger is an old has-been who’s still trying to steal some business from him, and then he’ll probably claim that he was acting on orders from Henrik. Even if he can’t prove his innocence, he can lay down enough smoke screens that no-one will take the story seriously.”

Frode looked unhappy.

“You conned me,” Blomkvist said.

“That wasn’t our intention.”

“I blame myself. I was grasping at straws, and I should have realised it was something like that.” He laughed abruptly. “Henrik is an old shark. He was selling a product and told me what I wanted to hear. It’s time you went, Dirch.”

“Mikael… I’m sorry that…”

“Dirch. Go.”

Salander did not know whether to go over to Blomkvist or to leave him in peace. He solved the problem for her by picking up his jacket without a word and slamming the door behind him.

For more than an hour she waited restlessly in the kitchen. She felt so bad that she cleared the table and washed the dishes – a role she usually left to Blomkvist. She went regularly to the window to see if there was any sign of him. Finally she was so nervous that she put on her jacket and went out to look for him.

First she walked to the marina, where lights were still on in the cabins, but there was no sign of him. She followed the path along the water where they usually took their evening walks. Martin Vanger’s house was dark and already looked abandoned. She went out to the rocks at the point where they had often sat talking, and then she went back home. He still had not returned.

She went to the church. Still no sign. She was at a loss to know what to do. Then she went back to her motor cycle and got a flashlight from the saddlebag and set off along the water again. It took her a while to wind her way along the half-overgrown road, and even longer to find the path to Gottfried’s cabin. It loomed out of the darkness behind some trees when she had almost reached it. He was not on the porch and the door was locked.

She had turned towards the village when she stopped and went back, all the way out to the point. She caught sight of Blomkvist’s silhouette in the darkness on the end of the jetty where Harriet Vanger had drowned her father. She sighed with relief.

He heard her as she came out on to the jetty, and he turned around. She sat down next to him without a word. At last he broke the silence.

“Forgive me. I had to be alone for a while.”

“I know.”

She lit two cigarettes and gave him one. Blomkvist looked at her. Salander was the most asocial human being he had ever met. Usually she ignored any attempt on his part to talk about anything personal, and she had never accepted a single expression of sympathy. She had saved his life, and now she had tracked him out here in the night. He put an arm around her.

“Now I know what my price is,” he said. “We’ve forsaken those girls. They’re going to bury the whole story. Everything in Martin’s basement will be vacuumed into oblivion.”

Salander did not answer.

“Erika was right,” he said. “I would have done more good if I’d gone to Spain for a month and then come home refreshed and taken on Wennerström. I’ve wasted all these months.”

“If you’d gone to Spain, Martin Vanger would still be operating in his basement.”

They sat together for a long time before he suggested that they go home.

Blomkvist fell asleep before Salander. She lay awake listening to him breathe. After a while she went to the kitchen and sat in the dark on the kitchen bench, smoking several cigarettes as she brooded. She had taken it for granted that Vanger and Frode might con him. It was in their nature. But it was Blomkvist’s problem, not hers. Or was it?

At last she made a decision. She stubbed out her cigarette and went into the bedroom, turned on the lamp, and shook Mikael awake. It was 2:30 in the morning.

“What?”

“I’ve got a question. Sit up.”

Blomkvist sat up, drunk with sleep.

“When you were indicted, why didn’t you defend yourself?”

Blomkvist rubbed his eyes. He looked at the clock.

“It’s a long story, Lisbeth.”

“I’ve got time. Tell me.”

He sat for a long while, pondering what he should say. Finally he decided on the truth.

“I had no defence. The information in the article was wrong.”

“When I hacked your computer and read your email exchange with Berger, there were plenty of references to the Wennerström affair, but you two kept discussing practical details about the trial and nothing about what actually happened. What was it that went wrong?”

“Lisbeth, I can’t let the real story get out. I fell into a trap. Erika and I are quite clear that it would damage our credibility even further if we told anyone what really happened.”

“Listen, Kalle Blomkvist, yesterday afternoon you sat here preaching about friendship and trust and stuff. I’m not going to put the story on the Net.”

Blomkvist protested. It was the middle of the night. He could not face thinking about the whole thing now. She went on stubbornly sitting there until he gave in. He went to the bathroom and washed his face and put the coffeepot on. Then he came back to the bed and told her about how his old schoolfriend Robert Lindberg, in a yellow Mälar-30 in the guest marina in Arholma, had aroused his curiosity.

“You mean that your buddy was lying?”

“No, not at all. He told me exactly what he knew, and I could verify each and every word in documents from the audit at SIB. I even went to Poland and photographed the sheet-metal shack where this huge big Minos Company was housed. I interviewed several of the people who had been employed at the company. They all said exactly the same thing.”

“I don’t get it.”

Blomkvist sighed. It was a while before he spoke again.

“I had a damned good story. I still hadn’t confronted Wennerström himself, but the story was airtight; if I had published it at that moment I really would have shook him up. It might not have led to an indictment for fraud – the deal had already been approved by the auditors – but I would have damaged his reputation.”

“What went wrong?”

“Somewhere along the way somebody heard about what I was poking my nose into, and Wennerström was made aware of my existence. And all of a sudden a whole bunch of strange things started happening. First I was threatened. Anonymous calls from card telephones that were impossible to trace. Erika was also threatened. It was the usual nonsense: lie down or else we’re going to nail you to a barn door, and so on. She, of course, was mad as a hellcat.”

He took a cigarette from Salander.

“Then something extremely unpleasant happened. Late one night when I left the office I was attacked by two men who just walked up to me and gave me a couple of punches. I got a fat lip and fell down in the street. I couldn’t identify them, but one of them looked like an old biker.”

“So, next…”

“All these goings-on, of course, only had the effect of making Erika very cross indeed, and I got stubborn. We beefed up security at Millennium. The problem was that the harassment was out of all proportion to the content of the story. We couldn’t fathom why all this was happening.”

“But the story you published was something quite different.”

“Exactly. Suddenly we made a breakthrough. We found a source, a Deep Throat in Wennerström’s circle. This source was literally scared to death, and we were only allowed to meet him in hotel rooms. He told us that the money from the Minos affair had been used for weapons deals in the war in Yugoslavia. Wennerström had been making deals with the right-wing Ustashe in Croatia. Not only that, the source was able to give us copies of documents to back it up.”

“You believed him?”

“He was clever. He only ever gave us enough information to lead us to the next source, who would confirm the story. We were even given a photograph of one of Wennerström’s closest colleagues shaking hands with the buyer. It was detailed blockbuster material, and everything seemed verifiable. So we published.”

“And it was a fake.”

“It was all a fake from beginning to end. The documents were skilful forgeries. Wennerström’s lawyer was able to prove that the photograph of Wennerström’s subordinate and the Ustashe leader was a montage of two different images.”

“Fascinating,” Salander said.

“In hindsight it was very easy to see how we had been manipulated. Our original story really had damaged Wennerström. Now that story was drowned in a clever forgery. We published a story that Wennerström could pick apart point by point and prove his innocence.”

“You couldn’t back down and tell the truth? You had absolutely no proof that Wennerström had committed the falsification?”

“If we had tried to tell the truth and accused Wennerström of being behind the whole thing, nobody would have believed us. It would have looked like a desperate attempt to shift the blame from our stupidity on to an innocent leader of industry.”

“I see.”

“Wennerström had two layers of protection. If the fake had been revealed, he would have been able to claim that it was one of his enemies trying to slander him. And we at Millennium would once again have lost all credibility, since we fell for something that turned out to be false.”

“So you chose not to defend yourself and take the prison sentence.”

“I deserved it,” Blomkvist said. “I had committed libel. Now you know. Can I go back to sleep now?”

He turned off the lamp and shut his eyes. Salander lay down next to him.

“Wennerström is a gangster.”

“I know.”

“No, I mean, I know that he’s a gangster. He works with everybody from the Russian mafia to the Colombian drug cartels.”

“What do you mean?”

“When I turned in my report to Frode he gave me an extra assignment. He asked me to try to find out what really happened at the trial. I had just started working on it when he called Armansky and cancelled the job.”

“I wonder why.”

“I assume that they scrapped the investigation as soon as you accepted Henrik Vanger’s assignment. It would no longer have been of immediate interest.”

“And?”

“Well, I don’t like leaving things unresolved. I had a few weeks… free last spring when Armansky didn’t have any jobs for me, so I did some digging into Wennerström for fun.”

Blomkvist sat up and turned on the lamp and looked at Salander. He met her eyes. She actually looked guilty.

“Did you find out anything?”

“I have his entire hard disk on my computer. You can have as much proof as you need that he’s a gangster.”

CHAPTER 28 Tuesday, July 29 – Friday, October 24

Blomkvist had been poring over Salander’s computer printouts for three days – boxes full of papers. The problem was that the subjects kept changing all the time. An option deal in London. A currency deal in Paris through an agent. A company with a post-office box in Gibraltar. A sudden doubling of funds in an account at the Chase Manhattan Bank in New York.

And then all those puzzling question marks: a trading company with 200,000 kronor in an untouched account registered five years earlier in Santiago, Chile – one of nearly thirty such companies in twelve different countries – and not a hint of what type of activity was involved. A dormant company? Waiting for what? A front for some other kind of activity? The computer gave no clue as to what was going on in Wennerström’s mind or what may have been perfectly obvious to him and so was never formulated in an electronic document.

Salander was persuaded that most of these questions would never be answered. They could see the message, but without a key they would never be able to interpret the meaning. Wennerström’s empire was like an onion from which one layer after another could be removed; a labyrinth of enterprises owned by one another. Companies, accounts, funds, securities. They reckoned that nobody – perhaps not even Wennerström himself – could have a complete overview. Wennerström’s empire had a life of its own.

But there was a pattern, or at least a hint of a pattern. A labyrinth of enterprises owned by each other. Wennerström’s empire was variously valued at between 100 and 400 billion kronor, depending on whom you asked and how it was calculated. But if companies own each other’s assets – what then would be their value?

They had left Hedeby Island in great haste early in the morning after Salander dropped the bomb that was now occupying every waking moment of Blomkvist’s life. They drove to Salander’s place and spent two days in front of her computer while she guided him through Wennerström’s universe. He had plenty of questions. One of them was pure curiosity.

“Lisbeth, how are you able to operate his computer, from a purely practical point of view?”

“It’s a little invention that my friend Plague came up with. Wennerström has an IBM laptop that he works on, both at home and at the office. That means that all the information is on a single hard drive. He has a broadband connection to his property at home. Plague invented a type of cuff that you fasten around the broadband cable, and I’m testing it out for him. Everything that Wennerström sees is registered by the cuff, which forwards the data to a server somewhere else.”

“Doesn’t he have a firewall?”

Salander smiled.

“Of course he has a firewall. But the point is that the cuff also functions as a type of firewall. It takes a while to hack the computer this way. Let’s say that Wennerström gets an email; it goes first to Plague’s cuff and we can read it before it even passes through his firewall. But the ingenious part is that the email is rewritten and a few bytes of source code are added. This is repeated every time he downloads anything to his computer. Pictures are even better. He does a lot of surfing on the Net. Each time he picks up a porn picture or opens a new home page, we add several rows of source code. After a while, in several hours or several days, depending on how much he uses the computer, Wennerström has downloaded an entire programme of approximately three megabytes in which each bit is linked to the next bit.”

“And?”

“When the last bits are in place, the programme is integrated with his Internet browser. To him it will look as though his computer has locked up, and he has to restart it. During the restart a whole new software programme is installed. He uses Internet Explorer. The next time he starts Explorer, he’s really starting a whole different programme that’s invisible on his desktop and looks and functions just like Explorer, but it also does a lot of other things. First it takes control of his firewall and makes sure that everything is working. Then it starts to scan the computer and transmits bits of information every time he clicks the mouse while he’s surfing. After a while, again depending on how much he surfs, we’ve accumulated a complete mirror image of the contents of his hard drive on a server somewhere. And then it’s time for the HT.”

“HT?”

“Sorry. Plague calls it the HT. Hostile Takeover.”

“I see.”

“The really subtle thing is what happens next. When the structure is ready, Wennerström has two complete hard drives, one on his own machine and one on our server. The next time he boots up his computer, it’s actually the mirrored computer that’s starting. He’s no longer working on his own computer; in reality he’s working on our server. His computer will run a little slower, but it’s virtually not noticeable. And when I’m connected to the server, I can tap his computer in real time. Each time Wennerström presses a key on his computer I see it on mine.”

“Your friend is also a hacker?”

“He was the one who arranged the telephone tap in London. He’s a little out of it socially, but on the Net he’s a legend.”

“OK,” Blomkvist said, giving her a resigned smile. “Question number two: why didn’t you tell me about Wennerström earlier?”

“You never asked me.”

“And if I never did ask you – let’s suppose that I never met you – you would have sat here knowing that Wennerström was a gangster while Millennium went bankrupt?”

“Nobody asked me to expose Wennerström for what he is,” Salander replied in a know-it-all voice.

“Yes, but what if?”

“I did tell you,” she said.

Blomkvist dropped the subject.

Salander burned the contents of Wennerström’s hard drive – about five gigabytes – on to ten CDs, and she felt as if she had more or less moved into Blomkvist’s apartment. She waited patiently, answering all the questions he asked.

“I can’t understand how he can be so fucking dim to put all his dirty laundry on one hard drive,” he said. “If it ever got into the hands of the police…”

“People aren’t very rational. He has to believe that the police would never think of confiscating his computer.”

“Above suspicion. I agree that he’s an arrogant bastard, but he must have security consultants telling him how to handle his computer. There’s material on this machine going all the way back to 1993.”

“The computer itself is relatively new. It was manufactured a year ago, but he seems to have transferred all his old correspondence and everything else on to the hard drive instead of storing it on CDs. But at least he’s using an encryption programme.”

“Which is totally useless if you’re inside his computer and reading the passwords every time he types them in.”

After they’d been back in Stockholm for four days, Malm called on Blomkvist’s mobile at 3:00 in the morning.

“Henry Cortez was at a bar with his girlfriend tonight.”

“Uh-huh,” Blomkvist said, sleepily.

“On the way home they ended up at Centralen’s bar.”

“Not a very good place for a seduction.”

“Listen. Dahlman is on holiday. Henry discovered him sitting at a table with some guy.”

“And?”

“Henry recognised the man from his byline pic. Krister Söder.”

“I don’t think I recognise the name, but…”

“He works for Monopoly Financial Magazine, which is owned by the Wennerström Group.”

Blomkvist sat up straight in bed.

“Are you there?”

“I’m here. That might not mean anything. Söder is a journalist, and he might be an old friend.”

“Maybe I’m being paranoid. But a while ago Millennium bought a story from a freelancer. The week before we were going to publish it, Söder ran an exposé that was almost identical. It was the story about the mobile telephone manufacturer and the defective component.”

“I hear what you’re saying. But that sort of thing does happen. Have you talked to Erika?”

“No, she’s not back until next week.”

“Don’t do anything. I’ll call you back later,” Blomkvist said.

“Problems?” Salander asked.

“Millennium,” Blomkvist said. “I have to go there. Want to come along?”

The editorial offices were deserted. It took Salander three minutes to crack the password protection on Dahlman’s computer, and another two minutes to transfer its contents to Blomkvist’s iBook.

Most of Dahlman’s emails were probably on his own laptop, and they did not have access to it. But through his desktop computer at Millennium, Salander was able to discover that Dahlman had a Hotmail account in addition to his millennium.se address. It took her six minutes to crack the code and download his correspondence from the past year. Five minutes later Blomkvist had evidence that Dahlman had leaked information about the situation at Millennium and kept the editor of Monopoly Financial Magazine updated on which stories Berger was planning for which issues. The spying had been going on at least since the previous autumn.

They turned off the computers and went back to Mikael’s apartment to sleep for a few hours. He called Christer Malm at 10:00 a.m.

“I have proof that Dahlman is working for Wennerström.”

“I knew it. Great, I’m going to fire that fucking pig today.”

“No, don’t. Don’t do anything at all.”

“Nothing?”

“Christer, trust me. Is Dahlman still on holiday?”

“Yes, he’s back on Monday.”

“How many are in the office today?”

“Well, about half.”

“Can you call a meeting for 2:00? Don’t say what it’s about. I’m coming over.”

There were six people around the conference table. Malm looked tired. Cortez looked like someone newly in love, the way that only twenty-four-year-olds can look. Nilsson looked on edge – Malm had not told anyone what the meeting was about, but she had been with the company long enough to know that something out of the ordinary was going on, and she was annoyed that she had been kept out of the loop. The only one who looked the same as usual was the part-timer Ingela Oskarsson, who worked two days a week dealing with simple administrative tasks, the subscriber list and the like; she had not looked truly relaxed since she became a mother two years ago. The other part-timer was the freelance reporter Lotta Karim, who had a contract similar to Cortez’s and had just started back to work after her holiday. Malm had also managed to get Magnusson to come in, although he was still on holiday.

Blomkvist began by greeting everyone warmly and apologising for being so long absent.

“What we’re going to discuss today is something that Christer and I haven’t taken up with Erika, but I can assure you that in this case I speak for her too. Today we’re going to determine Millennium’s future.”

He paused to let the words sink in. No-one asked any questions.

“The past year has been rough. I’m surprised and proud that none of you has reconsidered and found a job somewhere else. I have to assume that either you’re stark raving mad or wonderfully loyal and actually enjoy working on this magazine. That’s why I’m going to lay the cards on the table and ask you for one last effort.”

“One last effort?” Nilsson said. “That sounds as if you’re thinking of shutting down the magazine.”

“Exactly, Monika,” Blomkvist said. “And thank you for that. When she gets back Erika is going to gather us all together for a gloomy editorial meeting and to tell us that Millennium will fold at Christmas and that you’re all fired.”

Now alarm began spreading through the group. Even Malm thought for a moment that Blomkvist was serious. Then they all noticed his broad smile.

“What you have to do this autumn is play a double game. The disagreeable fact is that our dear managing editor, Janne Dahlman, is moonlighting as an informer for Hans-Erik Wennerström. This means that the enemy is being kept informed of exactly what’s going on in our editorial offices. This explains a number of setbacks we’ve experienced. You especially, Sonny, when advertisers who seemed positive pulled out without warning.”

Dahlman had never been popular in the office, and the revelation was apparently not a shock to anyone. Blomkvist cut short the murmuring that started up.

“The reason that I’m telling you this is because I have absolute confidence in all of you. I know that you’ve all got your heads screwed on straight. That’s why I also know that you’ll play along with what takes place this autumn. It’s very important that Wennerström believes that Millennium is on the verge of collapse. It will be your job to make sure he does.”

“What’s our real situation?” Cortez said.

“OK, here it is: by all accounts Millennium should be on its way to the grave. I give you my word that that’s not going to happen. Millennium is stronger today than it was a year ago. When this meeting is over, I’m going to disappear again for about two months. Towards the end of October I’ll be back. Then we’re going to clip Wennerström’s wings.”

“How are we going to do that?” Nilsson said.

“Sorry, Monika. I don’t want to give you the details, but I’m writing a new story, and this time we’re going to do it right. I’m thinking of having roast Wennerström for the Christmas party and various critics for dessert.”

The mood turned cheerful. Blomkvist wondered how he would have felt if he were one of them sitting listening to all this. Dubious? Most likely. But apparently he still had some “trust capital” among Millennium’s small group of employees. He held up his hand.

“If this is going to work, it’s important that Wennerström believes that Millennium is on the verge of collapse because I don’t want him to start some sort of retaliation or indeed get rid of the evidence which we mean to expose. So we’re going to start writing a script that you’ll follow during the coming months. First of all, it’s important that nothing we discuss here today is written down or is referred to in emails. We don’t know to what if any extent Dahlman has been digging around in our computers, and I’ve become aware that it’s alarmingly simple to read coworkers’ private email. So – we’re going to do this orally. If you feel the need to air anything, go and see Christer at home. Very discreetly.”

Blomkvist wrote “no email” on the whiteboard.

“Second, I want you to start squabbling among yourselves, complaining about me when Dahlman is around. Don’t exaggerate. Just give your natural bitchy selves full rein. Christer, I want you and Erika to have a serious disagreement. Use your imagination and be secretive about the cause.”

He wrote “start bitching” on the whiteboard.

“Third, when Erika comes home, her job will be to see to it that Janne Dahlman thinks our agreement with the Vanger Corporation – which is in fact giving us its full support – has fallen through because Henrik Vanger is seriously ill and Martin Vanger died in a car crash.”

He wrote the word “disinformation.”

“But the agreement really is solid?” Nilsson said.

“Believe me,” Blomkvist said, “the Vanger Corporation will go to great lengths to ensure that Millennium survives. In a few weeks, let’s say at the end of August, Erika will call a meeting to warn you about layoffs. You all know that it’s a scam, and that the only one who’s going to be leaving is Dahlman. But start talking about looking for new jobs and say what a lousy reference it is to have Millennium on your C.V.”

“And you really think that this game will end up saving Millennium?” Magnusson said.

“I know it will. And Sonny, I want you to put together a fake report each month showing falling advertising sales and showing that the number of subscribers has also dropped.”

“This sounds fun,” Nilsson said. “Should we keep it internal here in the office, or should we leak it to other media too?”

“Keep it internal. If the story shows up anywhere, we’ll know who put it there. In a very few months, if anyone asks us about it, we’ll be able to tell them: you’ve been listening to baseless rumours, and we’ve never considered closing Millennium down. The best thing that could happen is for Dahlman to go out and tip off the other mass media. If you’re able to give Dahlman a tip about a plausible but fundamentally idiotic story, so much the better.”

They spent an hour concocting a script and dividing up the various roles.

After the meeting Blomkvist had coffee with Malm at Java on Horngatspuckeln.

“Christer, it’s really important that you pick up Erika at the airport and fill her in. You have to convince her to play along with the game. If I know her, she’ll want to confront Dahlman instantly – but that can’t happen. I don’t want Wennerström to hear any kind of buzz and then manage to bury the evidence.”

“Will do.”

“And see to it that Erika stays away from her email until she installs the PGP encryption programme and learns how to use it. It’s pretty likely that through Dahlman, Wennerström is able to read everything we email to each other. I want you and everyone else in the editorial offices to install PGP. Do it in a natural way. Get the name of a computer consultant to contact and have him come over to inspect the network and all the computers in the office. Let him install the software as if it were a perfectly natural part of the service.”

“I’ll do my best. But Mikael – what are you working on?”

“Wennerström.”

“What exactly?”

“For the time being, that has to remain my secret.”

Malm looked uncomfortable. “I’ve always trusted you, Mikael. Does this mean that you don’t trust me?”

Blomkvist laughed.

“Of course I trust you. But right now I’m involved in rather serious criminal activities that could get me two years in prison. It’s the nature of my research that’s a little dubious… I’m playing with the same underhand methods as Wennerström uses. I don’t want you or Erika or anyone else at Millennium to be involved in any way.”

“You’re making me awfully nervous.”

“Stay cool, Christer, and tell Erika that the story is going to be a big one. Really big.”

“Erika will insist on knowing what you’re working on…”

Mikael thought for a second. Then he smiled.

“Tell her that she made it very clear to me in the spring when she signed a contract with Henrik Vanger behind my back that I’m now just an ordinary mortal freelancer who no longer sits on the board and has no influence on Millennium policy. Which means that I no longer have any obligation to keep her informed. But I promise that if she behaves herself, I’ll give her first option on the story.”

“She’s going to go through the roof,” Malm said cheerfully.

Blomkvist knew that he had not been entirely honest with Malm. He was deliberately avoiding Berger. The most natural thing would have been to contact her at once and tell her about the information in his possession. But he did not want to talk to her. A dozen times he had stood with his mobile in his hand, starting to call her. Each time he changed his mind.

He knew what the problem was. He could not look her in the eyes.

The cover-up in which he had participated in Hedestad was unforgivable from a professional point of view. He had no idea how he could explain it to her without lying, and if there was one thing he had never thought of doing, it was lying to Erika Berger.

Above all, he did not have the energy to deal with that problem at the same time as he was tackling Wennerström. So he put off seeing her, turned off his mobile, and avoided talking to her. But he knew that the reprieve could only be temporary.

Right after the editorial meeting, Mikael moved out to his cabin in Sandhamn; he hadn’t been there in over a year. His baggage included two boxes of printouts and the CDs that Salander had given him. He stocked up on food, locked the door, opened his iBook, and started writing. Each day he took a short walk, bought the newspapers, and shopped for groceries. The guest marina was still filled with yachts, and young people who had borrowed their father’s boat were usually sitting in the Divers’ Bar, drinking themselves silly. Blomkvist scarcely took in his surroundings. He sat in front of his computer more or less from the moment he opened his eyes until he fell into bed at night, exhausted.

When Salander went out to Sandhamn she found an unshaven and hollow-eyed Blomkvist, who gave her a quick hug and asked her to make some coffee and wait while he finished what he was writing.

Salander looked around his cabin and decided almost at once that she liked it. It was right next to a jetty, with the water three paces from the door. It was only fifteen by eighteen feet but it had such a high ceiling that there was space for a sleeping loft. She could stand up straight there, just. Blomkvist would have to stoop. The bed was wide enough for both of them.

The cabin had one large window facing the water, right next to the front door. That was where his kitchen table stood, doubling as his desk. On the wall near the desk was a shelf with a CD player and a big collection of Elvis and hard rock, which was not Salander’s first choice.

In a corner was a woodstove made of soapstone with a glazed front. The rest of the sparse furnishings consisted of a large wardrobe for clothes and linen and a sink that also functioned as a washing alcove behind a shower curtain. Near the sink was a small window on one side of the cabin. Under the spiral stairs to the loft Blomkvist had built a separate space for a composting toilet. The whole cabin was arranged like the cabin on a boat, with clever cubbyholes for stowing things.

During her personal investigation of Mikael Blomkvist, Salander had found out that he had remodelled the cabin and built the furniture himself – a conclusion drawn from the comments of an acquaintance who had sent Mikael an email after visiting Sandhamn and was impressed by his handiwork. Everything was clean, unpretentious, and simple, bordering on spartan. She could see why he loved this cabin in Sandhamn so much.

After two hours she managed to distract Mikael enough that he turned off his computer in frustration, shaved, and took her out for a guided tour. It was raining and windy, and they quickly retreated to the inn. Blomkvist told her what he was writing, and Salander gave him a CD with updates from Wennerström’s computer.

Then she took him up to the loft and managed to get his clothes off and distract him even further. She woke up late that night to find herself alone. She peered down from the loft and saw him sitting hunched over his computer. She lay there for a long time, leaning on one hand, watching him. He seemed happy, and she too felt strangely content with life.

Salander stayed only five days before she went back to Stockholm to do a job for Armansky. She spent eleven days on the assignment, made her report, and then returned to Sandhamn. The stack of printed pages next to Mikael’s iBook was growing.

This time she stayed for four weeks. They fell into a routine. They got up at 8:00, ate breakfast, and spent an hour together. Then Mikael worked intently until late in the afternoon, when they took a walk and talked. Salander spent most of the days in bed, either reading books or surfing the Net using Blomkvist’s ADSL modem. She tried not to disturb him during the day. They ate dinner rather late and only then did Salander take the initiative and force him up to the sleeping loft, where she saw to it that he devoted all his attention to her.

It was as if she were on the very first holiday of her life.

In early October Salander read an article on the Internet edition of the Hedestad Courier. She told Blomkvist about it. Isabella Vanger had died after a short illness. She was mourned by her daughter, Harriet Vanger, lately returned from Australia.

The next day Mikael received another email.

Salander was not especially interested in what Mikael was writing. She looked up from her book when Blomkvist said something, but at first she could not make it out.

“Sorry. I was talking aloud. I said that this is horrible.”

“What’s horrible?”

“Wennerström had an affair with a twenty-two-year-old waitress and he got her pregnant. Have you read his correspondence with his lawyer?”

“My dear Mikael – you have ten years of correspondence, emails, agreements, travel arrangements, and God knows what on that hard drive. I don’t find Wennerström so fascinating that I’d cram six gigs of garbage into my head. I read through a fraction of it, mostly to satisfy my curiosity, and that was enough to tell me that he’s a gangster.”

“OK. He got her pregnant in 1997. When she wanted compensation, his lawyer got someone to try to convince her to have an abortion. I assume the intention was to offer her a sum of money, but she wasn’t interested. Then the persuading ended up with the heavy holding her underwater in a bath until she agreed to leave Wennerström in peace. And Wennerström’s idiot writes all this to the lawyer in an email – of course encrypted, but even so… It doesn’t say much for the IQ of this bunch.”

“What happened to the girl?”

“She had an abortion, and Wennerström was pleased.”

Salander said nothing for ten minutes. Her eyes had suddenly turned dark.

“One more man who hates women,” she muttered at last.

She borrowed the CDs and spent the next few days reading through Wennerström’s emails and other documents. While Blomkvist kept working, Salander was up in the sleeping loft with her PowerBook on her knees, pondering Wennerström’s peculiar empire.

An idea had occurred to her and she could not let it go. Most of all she wondered why it had not occurred to her sooner.

In late October Mikael turned off his computer when it was only 11:00 in the morning. He climbed up to the sleeping loft and handed Salander what he had written. Then he fell asleep. She woke him that evening and gave him her opinion of the article.

Just after 2:00 in the morning, Blomkvist made the last backup of his work.

The next day he closed the shutters on the windows and locked up. Salander’s holiday was over. They went back to Stockholm together.

He brought up the subject as they were drinking coffee from paper cups on the Vaxholm ferry.

“What the two of us need to decide is what to tell Erika. She’s going to refuse to publish this if I can’t explain how I got hold of the material.”

Erika Berger. Blomkvist’s editor in chief and long-time lover. Salander had never met her and was not sure that she wanted to either. Berger seemed like some indefinable disturbance in her life.

“What does she know about me?”

“Nothing.” He sighed. “The fact is that I’ve been avoiding her ever since the summer. She’s very frustrated about the fact that I couldn’t tell her what happened in Hedestad. She knows, of course, that I’ve been staying out at Sandhamn and writing this story, but she doesn’t know what it’s about.”

“Hmm.”

“In a couple of hours she’ll have the manuscript. Then she’s going to give me the third degree. The question is, what should I tell her?”

“What do you want to tell her?”

“I’d like to tell her the truth.”

Salander frowned.

“Lisbeth, Erika and I argue almost all the time. It seems to be part of how we communicate. But she’s absolutely trustworthy. You’re a source. She would rather die than reveal who you are.”

“How many others would you have to tell?”

“Absolutely no-one. It will go to the grave with me and Erika. But I won’t tell her your secret if you don’t want me to. On the other hand, it’s not an option for me to lie to Erika, make up some source that doesn’t exist.”

Salander thought about it until they docked by the Grand Hotel. Analysis of consequences. Reluctantly she finally gave Blomkvist permission to introduce her to Erika. He switched on his mobile and made the call.

Berger was lunching with Malin Eriksson, whom she was considering hiring as managing editor. Eriksson was twenty-nine years old and had been working as a temp for five years. She had never held a permanent job and had started to doubt that she ever would. Berger called her on the very day that Malin’s latest temp job ended to ask if she would like to apply for the Millennium position.

“It’s a temporary post for three months,” Berger said. “But if things work out, it could be permanent.”

“I’ve heard rumours that Millennium is having a difficult time.”

Berger smiled.

“You shouldn’t believe rumours.”

“This Dahlman that I would be replacing…” Eriksson hesitated. “He’s going to work at a magazine owned by Hans-Erik Wennerström…”

Berger nodded. “It’s hardly a trade secret that we’re in conflict with Wennerström. He doesn’t like people who work for Millennium.”

“So if I take the job at Millennium, I would end up in that category too.”

“It’s very likely, yes.”

“But Dahlman got a job with Monopoly Financial Magazine, didn’t he?”

“You might say that it’s Wennerström’s way of paying for services rendered. Are you still interested?”

Eriksson nodded.

“When do you want me to start?”

That’s when Blomkvist called.

She used her own key to open the door to his apartment. It was the first time since his brief visit to the office at Midsummer that she was meeting him face to face. She went into the living room and found an anorexically thin girl sitting on the sofa, wearing a worn leather jacket and with her feet propped up on the coffee table. At first she thought the girl was about fifteen, but that was before she looked into her eyes. She was still looking at this creature when Blomkvist came in with a coffeepot and coffee cake.

“Forgive me for being completely impossible,” he said.

Berger tilted her head. There was something different about him. He looked haggard, thinner than she remembered. His eyes had a shamed expression, and for a moment he avoided her gaze. She glanced at his neck. She saw a pale red line, clearly distinguishable.

“I’ve been avoiding you. It’s a very long story, and I’m not proud of my role in it. But we’ll talk about that later… Now I want to introduce you to this young woman. Erika, this is Lisbeth Salander. Lisbeth, Erika Berger, editor in chief of Millennium and my best friend.”

Salander studied Berger’s elegant clothes and self-confident manner and decided after ten seconds that she was most likely not going to be her best friend.

Their meeting lasted five hours. Berger twice made calls to cancel other meetings. She spent an hour reading parts of the manuscript that Blomkvist put in her hands. She had a thousand questions but realised that it would take weeks before she got them answered. The important thing was the manuscript, which she finally put down. If even a fraction of these claims were accurate, a whole new situation had emerged.

Berger looked at Blomkvist. She had never doubted that he was an honest person, but now she felt dizzy and wondered whether the Wennerström affair had broken him – that what he had been working on was all a figment of his imagination. Blomkvist was at that moment unpacking two boxes of printed-out source material. Berger blanched. She wanted, of course, to know how it had come into his possession.

It took a while to convince her that this odd girl, who had said not one word during the meeting, had unlimited access to Wennerström’s computer. And not just his – she had also hacked into the computers of several of his lawyers and close associates.

Berger’s immediate reaction was that they could not use the material since it had been obtained through illegal means.

But, of course, they could use it. Blomkvist pointed out that they had no obligation to explain how they had acquired the material. They could just as well have a source with access to Wennerström’s computer who had burned everything on his hard drive to a CD.

Finally Berger realised what a weapon she had in her hands. She felt exhausted and still had questions, but she did not know where to begin. At last she leaned back against the sofa and threw out her hands.

“Mikael, what happened up in Hedestad?”

Salander looked up sharply. Blomkvist answered with a question.

“How are you getting along with Harriet Vanger?”

“Fine. I think. I’ve met her twice. Christer and I drove up to Hedestad for a board meeting last week. We got drunk on wine.”

“And the board meeting?”

“She kept her word.”

“Ricky, I know you’re frustrated that I’ve been ducking you and coming up with excuses not to tell you what happened. You and I have never had secrets from each other, and all of a sudden there’s six months of my life that I’m… not prepared to tell you about.”

Berger met Blomkvist’s gaze. She knew him inside and out, but what she saw in his eyes was something she had never seen before. He was begging her not to ask. Salander watched their wordless dialogue. She was no part of it.

“Was it that bad?”

“It was worse. I’ve been dreading this conversation. I promise to tell you, but I’ve spent several months suppressing my feelings while Wennerström has absorbed all my attention… I’m still not ready. I’d prefer it if Harriet told you instead.”

“What’s that mark around your neck?”

“Lisbeth saved my life up there. If it weren’t for her, I’d be dead.”

Berger’s eyes widened. She stared at the girl in the leather jacket.

“And right now you need to come to an agreement with her. She is our source.”

Berger sat for a time, thinking. Then she did something that astonished Blomkvist and startled Salander; she surprised even herself. The whole time she had been sitting at Mikael’s living-room table, she had felt Salander’s eyes on her. A taciturn girl with hostile vibrations.

Berger stood up and went around the table and threw her arms around the girl. Salander squirmed like a worm about to be put on a hook.

CHAPTER 29 Saturday, November 1 – Tuesday, November 25

Salander was surfing through Wennerström’s cyber-empire. She had been staring at her computer screen for almost eleven hours. The idea that had materialised in some unexplored nook of her brain during the last week at Sandhamn had grown into a manic preoccupation. For four weeks she had isolated herself in her apartment and ignored any communication from Armansky. She had spent twelve hours a day in front of her computer, some days more, and the rest of her waking hours she had brooded over the same problem.

During the past month she had had intermittent contact with Blomkvist. He too was preoccupied, busy at the Millennium offices. They had conferred by telephone a couple of times each week, and she had kept him updated on Wennerström’s correspondence and other activities.

For the hundredth time she went over every detail. She was not afraid that she had missed anything, but she was not sure that she had understood how every one of the intricate connections fitted together.

This much-discussed empire was like a living, formless, pulsating organism that kept changing shape. It consisted of options, bonds, shares, partnerships, loan interest, income interest, deposits, bank accounts, payment transfers, and thousands of other elements. An incredibly large proportion of the assets was deposited in post-office-box companies that owned one another.

The financial pundits’ most inflated analyses of the Wennerström Group estimated its value at more than 900 billion kronor. That was a bluff, or at least a figure that was grossly exaggerated. Obviously Wennerström himself was by no means poor. She calculated the real assets to be worth between 90 and 100 billion kronor, which was nothing to sneez eat. A thorough audit of the entire corporation would take years. All in all Salander had identified close to three thousand separate accounts and bank holdings all over the world. Wennerström was devoting himself to fraud that was so extensive it was no longer merely criminal – it was business.

Somewhere in the Wennerström organism there was also substance. Three assets kept showing up in the hierarchy. The fixed Swedish assets were unassailable and genuine, available to public scrutiny, balance sheets, and audits. The American firm was solid, and a bank in New York served as the base for all liquid capital. The story was in the business with the post-office-box companies in places such as Gibraltar and Cyprus and Macao. Wennerström was like a clearing house for the illegal weapons trade, money laundering for suspect enterprises in Colombia, and extremely unorthodox businesses in Russia.

An anonymous account in the Cayman Islands was unique; it was personally controlled by Wennerström but was not connected to any companies. A few hundredths of a percent of every deal that Wennerström made would be siphoned into the Cayman Islands via the post-office-box companies.

Salander worked in a trance-like state. The account-click-email-click-balance sheets-click. She noted down the latest transfers. She tracked a small transaction in Japan to Singapore and on via Luxembourg to the Cayman Islands. She understood how it worked. It was as if she were part of the impulses in cyberspace. Small changes. The latest email. One brief message of somewhat peripheral interest was sent at 10:00 p.m. The PGP encryption programme (rattle, rattle) was a joke for anyone who was already inside his computer and could read the message in plain text:

Nothing dramatic. Let him worry. Your goose is cooked, old man.

At 5:30 in the morning she turned off her computer and got out a new pack of cigarettes. She had drunk four, no, five Cokes during the night, and now she got out a sixth and went to sit on the sofa. She was wearing only knickers and a washed-out camouflage shirt advertising Soldier of Fortune magazine, with the slogan KILL THEM ALL AND LET GOD SORT THEM OUT. She realised that she was cold, so she reached for a blanket, which she wrapped around herself.

She felt high, as if she had consumed some inappropriate and presumably illegal substance. She focused her gaze on the street lamp outside the window and sat still while her brain worked at top speed. Mamma-click-sister-click-Mimmi-click-Holger Palmgren. Evil Fingers. And Armansky. The job. Harriet Vanger. Click. Martin Vanger. Click. The golf club. Click. The lawyer Bjurman. Click. Every single fucking detail that she couldn’t forget even if she tried.

She wondered whether Bjurman would ever take his clothes off in front of a woman again, and if he did, how was he going to explain the tattoos on his stomach? And the next time he went to the doctor how would he avoid taking off his clothes?

And Mikael Blomkvist. Click.

She considered him to be a good person, possibly with a Practical Pig complex that was sometimes a little too apparent. And he was unbearably naive with regard to certain elementary moral issues. He had an indulgent and forgiving personality that looked for explanations and excuses for the way people behaved, and he would never get it that the raptors of the world understood only one language. She felt almost awkwardly protective whenever she thought of him.

She did not remember falling asleep, but she woke up at 9:00 a.m. with a crick in her neck and with her head leaning against the wall behind the sofa. She tottered to the bedroom and fell back to sleep.

It was without a doubt the biggest story of their lives. For the first time in a year and a half, Berger was happy in the way that only an editor who has a spectacular scoop in the oven can be. She and Blomkvist were polishing the article one last time when Salander called him on his mobile.

“I forgot to say that Wennerström is starting to get worried about what you’ve been doing lately, and he’s asked for an advance copy of the next issue.”

“How do you know… ah, forget that. Any idea what he plans to do?”

“Nix. Just one logical guess.”

Blomkvist thought for a few seconds. “The printer,” he exclaimed.

Berger raised her eyebrows.

“If you’re keeping a lid on the editorial offices, there aren’t many other possibilities. Provided none of his thugs is planning to pay you a nighttime visit.”

Blomkvist turned to Berger. “Book a new printer for this issue. Now. And call Dragan Armansky – I want security here at night for the next week.” Back to Salander. “Thanks.”

“What’s it worth?”

“What do you mean?”

“What’s the tip worth?”

“What would you like?”

“I’d like to discuss it over coffee. Right now.”

They met at Kaffebar on Hornsgatan. Salander looked so serious when Blomkvist sat down on the bench next to her that he felt a pang of concern. As usual, she came straight to the point.

“I need to borrow some money.”

Blomkvist gave her one of his most foolish grins and reached for his wallet.

“Sure. How much?”

“120,000 kronor.”

“Steady, steady.” He put his wallet away.

“I’m not kidding. I need to borrow 120,000 kronor for… let’s say six weeks. I have a chance to make an investment, but I don’t have anyone else to turn to. You’ve got roughly 140,000 kronor in your current account right now. You’ll get your money back.”

No point commenting on the fact that Salander had hacked his bank password.

“You don’t have to borrow the money from me,” he replied. “We haven’t discussed your share yet, but it’s more than enough to cover what you want to borrow.”

“My share?”

“Lisbeth, I have an insane fee to cash in from Henrik Vanger, and we’re going to finalise the deal at the end of the year. Without you, there wouldn’t be a me and Millennium would have gone under. I’m planning to split the fee with you. Fifty-fifty.”

Salander gave him a searching look. A frown had appeared on her brow. Blomkvist was used to her silences. Finally she shook her head.

“I don’t want your money.”

“But…”

“I don’t want one single krona from you, unless it comes in the form of presents on my birthday.”

“Come to think of it, I don’t even know when your birthday is.”

“You’re a journalist. Check it out.”

“I’m serious, Lisbeth. About splitting the money.”

“I’m serious too. I only want to borrow it, and I need it tomorrow.”

She didn’t even ask how much her share would be. “I’ll be happy to go to the bank with you today and lend you the amount you need. But at the end of the year let’s have another talk about your share.” He held up his hand. “And by the way, when is your birthday?”

“On Walpurgis Night,” she replied. “Very fitting, don’t you think? That’s when I gad around with a broom between my legs.”

She landed in Zürich at 7:30 in the evening and took a taxi to the Matterhorn Hotel. She had booked a room under the name of Irene Nesser, and she identified herself using a Norwegian passport in that name. Irene Nesser had shoulder-length blonde hair. Salander had bought a wig in Stockholm and used 10,000 kronor of what she had borrowed from Blomkvist to buy two passports through one of the contacts in Plague’s international network.

She went to her room, locked the door, and got undressed. She lay on the bed and looked up at the ceiling in the room that cost 1,600 kronor per night. She felt empty. She had already run through half the sum she’d borrowed, and even though she had added in every krona of her own savings, she was still on a tight budget. She stopped thinking and fell asleep almost at once.

She awoke just after 5:00 in the morning. She showered and spent a long time masking the tattoo on her neck with a thick layer of skin-coloured lotion and powder over it. The second item on her checklist was to make an appointment at the beauty salon in the lobby of a significantly more expensive hotel for 6:30 that morning. She bought another blonde wig, this one in a page-boy style, and then she had a manicure, getting pink nails attached to her own chewed ones. She also got false eyelashes, more powder, rouge, and finally lipstick and other make-up. No change from 8,000 kronor.

She paid with a credit card in the name of Monica Sholes, and she showed them her British passport with that name.

Next stop was Camille’s House of Fashion down the street. After an hour she came out wearing black boots, a sand-coloured skirt with matching blouse, black tights, a waist-length jacket, and a beret. Every item bore an expensive designer label. She had let the sales girl make the selection. She had also chosen an exclusive leather briefcase and a small Samsonite suitcase. The crowning touches were discreet earrings and a simple gold chain around her neck. The credit card had been debited 44,000 kronor.

For the first time in her life Salander had a bustline that made her – when she glanced at herself in the full-length mirror – catch her breath. The breasts were as fake as Monica Sholes’ identity. They were made of latex and had been bought in Copenhagen where the transvestites shopped.

She was ready for battle.

Just after 9:00 she walked two blocks to the venerable Zimmertal Hotel, where she booked a room in Monica Sholes’ name. She gave a generous tip to a boy who carried up her suitcase (which contained her travel bag). The suite was a small one, costing 22,000 kronor a day. She had booked it for one night. When she was alone she took a look around. She had a dazzling view of Lake Zürich, which didn’t interest her in the least. But she did spend close to five minutes examining herself in the mirror. She saw a total stranger. Big-busted Monica Sholes in a blonde page-boy wig, wearing more make-up than Lisbeth Salander dreamed of using in a whole month. She looked… different.

At 9:30 she had breakfast in the hotel bar: two cups of coffee and a bagel with jam. The cost was 210 kronor. Are these people soft in the head?

Just before 10:00 Monica Sholes set down her coffee cup, opened her mobile, and punched in the number of a modem uplink in Hawaii. After three rings, the handshaking tone began. The modem was connected. Monica Sholes replied by punching in a six-digit code on her mobile and texting a message containing instructions to start a programme that Salander had written especially for this purpose.

In Honolulu the programme came to life on an anonymous home page on a server that was officially located at the university. The programme was simple. Its only function was to send instructions to start another programme in another server, which in this case was a perfectly ordinary commercial ISP offering Internet services in Holland. The function of that programme, in turn, was to look for the mirrored hard drive belonging to Hans-Erik Wennerström and take command of the programme that showed the contents of his approximately 3,000 bank accounts around the world.

There was only one account of any interest. Salander had noted that Wennerström looked at the account a couple of times each week. If he turned on his computer and looked at that particular file, everything would appear to be normal. The programme showed small changes, which were to be expected, based on normal fluctuations in the account during the past six months. If during the next forty-eight hours Wennerström should go in and ask to have the funds paid out or moved from the account, the programme would dutifully report that it had been done. In reality, the change would have occurred only on the mirrored hard drive in Holland.

Monica Sholes switched off her mobile the moment she heard four short tones confirming that the programme had started.

She left the Zimmertal Hotel and walked over to Bank Hauser General, across the street, where she had made an appointment to see Herr Wagner, the general manager, at 10:00. She was there three minutes ahead of schedule, and she spent the waiting time posing in front of the surveillance camera, which took her picture as she walked into the department with offices for discreet private consultations.

“I need some assistance with a number of transactions,” she said in Oxford English. When she opened her briefcase, she let drop a pen from the Zimmertal Hotel, and Herr Wagner politely retrieved it for her. She gave him an arch smile and wrote an account number on the notepad on the desk in front of her.

Herr Wagner pigeonholed her as the spoiled daughter, or possibly mistress, of some bigshot.

“There are a number of accounts at the Bank of Kroenenfeld in the Cayman Islands. Automatic transfer can be done by sequential clearing codes,” she said.

“Fräulein Sholes, naturally you have all the required clearing codes?” he asked.

“Aber natürlich,” she replied with such a heavy accent that it was obvious she had only school-level German.

She started reciting several series of sixteen-digit numbers without once referring to any papers. Herr Wagner saw that it was going to be a long morning, but for a 4 percent commission on the transactions, he was prepared to skip lunch, and he was going to have to revise his pigeonhole for Fräulein Sholes.

She did not leave Bank Hauser General until just past noon, slightly later than planned, and she walked back to the Zimmertal. She put in an appearance at the front desk before she went up to her room and took off the clothes she had bought. She kept on the latex breasts but replaced the page-boy wig with Irene Nesser’s shoulder-length blonde hair. She put on more familiar clothes: boots with stiletto heels, black trousers, a simple shirt, and a nice black leather jacket from Malungsboden in Stockholm. She studied herself in the mirror. Not unkempt by any means, but she was no longer an heiress. Before Irene Nesser left the room, she sorted through a number of bonds, which she placed inside a thin portfolio.

At 1:05, a few minutes behind schedule, she went into Bank Dorffmann, about seventy yards away from Bank Hauser General. Irene Nesser had made an appointment in advance with a Herr Hasselmann. She apologised for being late. She spoke impeccable German with a Norwegian accent.

“No problem at all, Fräulein,” Herr Hasselmann said. “How can I be of service?”

“I would like to open an account. I have a number of private bonds that I’d like to convert.”

Irene Nesser placed her portfolio on the desk in front of him.

Herr Hasselmann examined the contents, hastily at first, and then more slowly. He raised an eyebrow and smiled politely.

She opened five numbered accounts, which she could access via the Internet and which were owned by an apparently anonymous post-office-box company in Gibraltar. A broker had set them up for her for 50,000 kronor of the money she had borrowed from Blomkvist. She cashed in fifty of the bonds and deposited the money in the accounts. Each bond was worth the equivalent of one million kronor.

Her business at the Bank Dorffmann also took more time than expected, so now she was even more behind on her schedule. She had no chance to take care of her final transactions before the banks closed for the day. So Irene Nesser returned to the Matterhorn Hotel, where she spent an hour hanging around to establish her presence. But she had a headache and went to bed early. She bought some aspirin at the front desk and ordered a wake-up call for 8:00 a.m. Then she went back to her room.

It was close to 5:00 p.m., and all the banks in Europe were closed for business. But the banks in North and South America were open. She booted up her PowerBook and uplinked to the Net through her mobile. She spent an hour emptying the numbered accounts she had opened at Bank Dorffmann earlier in the day.

She divided the money up into small amounts and used it to pay invoices for a large number of fictional companies around the world. When she was done, the money had strangely enough been transferred back to the Bank of Kroenenfeld in the Cayman Islands, but this time to an entirely different account than the one from which it had been withdrawn earlier that day.

Irene Nesser considered this first stage to be secure and almost impossible to trace. She made one payment from the account: the sum of nearly one million kronor was deposited into an account linked to a credit card that she had in her wallet. The account was owned by Wasp Enterprises, registered in Gibraltar.

Several minutes later a girl with blonde page-boy hair left the Matterhorn by a door into the hotel bar. Monica Sholes walked to the Zimmertal Hotel, nodded politely to the desk clerk, and took the lift up to her room.

There she took her time putting on Monica Sholes’ combat uniform, touching up her make-up, and applying an extra layer of skin cream to the tattoo before she went down to the hotel restaurant and had an insanely delicious fish dinner. She ordered a bottle of vintage wine that she had never heard of before though it cost 1,200 kronor, drank one glass, and nonchalantly left the rest before she went into the hotel bar. She left absurd tips, which certainly made the staff notice her.

She spent quite a while allowing herself to be picked up by a drunk young Italian with an aristocratic name which she did not bother to remember. They shared two bottles of champagne, of which she drank almost one glass.

Around 11:00 her intoxicated suitor leaned forward and boldly squeezed her breast. She moved his hand down to the table, feeling pleased. He did not seem to have noticed that he was squeezing soft latex. At times they were so loud that they caused a certain amount of irritation among the other guests. Just before midnight, when Monica Sholes noticed that a hall porter was keeping a stern eye on them, she helped her Italian boyfriend up to his room.

When he went to the bathroom, she poured one last glass of wine. She opened a folded piece of paper and spiked the wine with a crushed Rohypnol sleeping tablet. He passed out in a miserable heap on the bed within a minute after she drank a toast with him. She loosened his tie, pulled off his shoes, and drew a cover over him. She wiped the bottle clean, then washed the glasses in the bathroom and wiped them off too before going back to her room.

Monica Sholes had breakfast in her room at 6:00 and checked out of the Zimmertal at 6:55. Before leaving her room, she spent five minutes wiping off fingerprints from the door handles, wardrobes, toilet, telephone, and other objects in the room that she had touched.

Irene Nesser checked out of the Matterhorn around 8:30, shortly after the wake-up call. She took a taxi and left her luggage in a locker at the railway station. Then she spent the next few hours visiting nine private banks, where she distributed some of the private bonds from the Cayman Islands. By 3:00 in the afternoon she had converted about 10 percent of the bonds into cash, which she deposited in thirty numbered accounts. The rest of the bonds she bundled up and put in a safe-deposit box.

Irene Nesser would need to make several more visits to Zürich, but there was no immediate hurry.

At 4:30 that afternoon Irene Nesser took a taxi to the airport, where she went into the ladies’ room and cut up Monica Sholes’ passport into little pieces, flushing them down the toilet. The credit card she also cut up and put the bits in five different rubbish bins, and the scissors too. After September 11 it was not a good idea to attract attention by having any sharp objects in your baggage.

Irene Nesser took Lufthansa flight GD890 to Oslo and caught the airport bus to the Oslo train station, where she went into the ladies’ room and sorted through her clothes. She placed all items belonging to the Monica Sholes persona – the page-boy wig and the designer clothes – in three plastic bags and tossed them into three different rubbish containers and wastebaskets in the train station. She put the empty Samsonite suitcase in an unlocked locker. The gold chain and earrings were designer jewellery that could be traced; they disappeared down a drain in the street outside the station.

After a moment of anxious hesitation, Irene Nesser decided to keep the fake latex breasts.

By then she did not have much time and took on some fuel in the form of a hamburger from McDonald’s while she transferred the contents of the luxury leather briefcase to her travel bag. When she left, the empty briefcase remained under the table. She bought a latte to go at a kiosk and ran to catch the night train to Stockholm. She arrived as the doors were closing. She had booked a private sleeping berth.

When she locked the door to her compartment, she could feel that for the first time in two days, her adrenaline levels had returned to normal. She opened the compartment window and defied the no-smoking regulations. She stood there sipping at her coffee as the train rolled out of Oslo.

She ran through her checklist to be sure that she had forgotten no detail. After a moment she frowned and rummaged through her jacket pockets. She took out the complimentary pen from the Zimmertal Hotel and studied it for several minutes before she tossed it out of the window.

After fifteen minutes she crept into bed and fell asleep.