CHAPTER 22
Thursday, July 10
They ate breakfast in the garden in silence and without milk in their coffee. Salander had taken out a Canon digital camera and photographed the macabre tableau before Blomkvist got a rubbish sack and cleaned it away. He put the cat in the boot of the Volvo. He ought to file a police report for animal cruelty, possibly intimidation, but he did not think he would want to explain why the intimidation had taken place.
At 8:30 Isabella Vanger walked past and on to the bridge. She did not see them or at least pretended not to.
“How are you doing?” Blomkvist said.
“Oh, I’m fine.” Salander looked at him, perplexed. OK, then. He expects me to be upset. “When I find the motherfucker who tortured an innocent cat to death just to send us a warning, I’m going to clobber him with a baseball bat.”
“You think it’s a warning?”
“Have you got a better explanation? It definitely means something.”
“Whatever the truth is in this story, we’ve worried somebody enough for that person to do something really sick. But there’s another problem too.”
“I know. This is an animal sacrifice in the style of 1954 and 1960 and it doesn’t seem credible that someone active fifty years ago would be putting tortured animal corpses on your doorstep today.”
Blomkvist agreed.
“The only ones who could be suspected in that case are Harald Vanger and Isabella Vanger. There are a number of older relatives on Johan Vanger’s side, but none of them live in the area.”
Blomkvist sighed.
“Isabella is a repulsive bitch who could certainly kill a cat, but I doubt she was running around killing women in the fifties. Harald Vanger…I don’t know, he seems so decrepit he can hardly walk, and I can’t see him sneaking over here last night, catching a cat, and doing all this.”
“Unless it was two people. One older, one younger.”
Blomkvist heard a car go by and looked up and saw Cecilia driving away over the bridge. Harald and Cecilia, he thought, but they hardly spoke. Despite Martin Vanger’s promise to talk to her, Cecilia had still not answered any of his telephone messages.
“It must be somebody who knows we’re doing this work and that we’re making progress,” Salander said, getting up to go inside. When she came back out she had put on her leathers.
“I’m going to Stockholm. I’ll be back tonight.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Pick up some gadgets. If someone is crazy enough to kill a cat in that disgusting way, he or she could attack us next time. Or set the cottage on fire while we’re asleep. I want you to go into Hedestad and buy two fire extinguishers and two smoke alarms today. One of the fire extinguishers has to be halon.”
Without another word, she put on her helmet, kick-started the motorcycle, and roared off across the bridge.
Blomkvist hid the corpse and the head and guts in the rubbish bin beside the petrol station before he drove into Hedestad to do his errands. He drove to the hospital. He had made an appointment to meet Frode in the cafeteria, and he told him what had happened that morning. Frode blanched.
“Mikael, I never imagined that this story could take this turn.”
“Why not? The job was to find a murderer, after all.”
“But this is disgusting and inhuman. If there’s a danger to your life or to Fröken Salander’s life, we are going to call it off. Let me talk to Henrik.”
“No. Absolutely not. I don’t want to risk his having another attack.”
“He asks me all the time how things are going with you.”
“Say hello from me, please, and tell him I’m moving forward.”
“What is next, then?”
“I have a few questions. The first incident occurred just after Henrik had his heart attack and I was down in Stockholm for the day. Somebody went through my office. I had printed out the Bible verses, and the photographs from Järnvägsgatan were on my desk. You knew and Henrik knew. Martin knew a part of it since he organised for me to get into the Courier offices. How many other people knew?”
“Well, I don’t know who Martin talked to. But both Birger and Cecilia knew about it. They discussed your hunting in the pictures archive between themselves. Alexander knew about it too. And, by the way, Gunnar and Helena Nilsson did too. They were up to say hello to Henrik and got dragged into the conversation. And Anita Vanger.”
“Anita? The one in London?”
“Cecilia’s sister. She came back with Cecilia when Henrik had his heart attack but stayed at a hotel; as far as I know, she hasn’t been out to the island. Like Cecilia, she doesn’t want to see her father. But she flew back when Henrik came out of intensive care.”
“Where’s Cecilia living? I saw her this morning as she drove across the bridge, but her house is always dark.”
“She’s not capable of doing such a thing, is she?”
“No, I just wonder where she’s staying.”
“She’s staying with her brother, Birger. It’s within walking distance to visit Henrik.”
“Do you know where she is right now?”
“No. She’s not visiting Henrik, at any rate.”
“Thanks,” Blomkvist said, getting up.
The Vanger family was hovering around Hedestad Hospital. In the reception Birger Vanger passed on his way to the lifts. Blomkvist waited until he was gone before he went out to the reception. Instead he ran into Martin Vanger at the entrance, at exactly the same spot where he had run into Cecilia on his previous visit. They said hello and shook hands.
“Have you been up to see Henrik?”
“No, I just happened to meet Dirch Frode.”
Martin looked tired and hollow-eyed. It occurred to Mikael that he had aged appreciably during the six months since he had met him.
“How are things going with you, Mikael?” he said.
“More interesting with every day that passes. When Henrik is feeling better I hope to be able to satisfy his curiosity.”
Birger Vanger’s was a white-brick terrace house a five-minute walk from the hospital. He had a view of the sea and the Hedestad marina. No-one answered when Blomkvist rang the doorbell. He called Cecilia’s mobile number but got no answer there either. He sat in the car for a while, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. Birger Vanger was the wild card in the deck; born in 1939 and so ten years old when Rebecka Jacobsson was murdered; twenty-seven when Harriet disappeared.
According to Henrik, Birger and Harriet hardly ever saw each other. He had grown up with his family in Uppsala and only moved to Hedestad to work for the firm. He jumped ship after a couple of years and devoted himself to politics. But he had been in Uppsala at the time Lena Andersson was murdered.
The incident with the cat gave him an ominous feeling, as if he were about to run out of time.
Otto Falk was thirty-six when Harriet vanished. He was now seventy-two, younger than Henrik Vanger but in a considerably worse mental state. Blomkvist sought him out at the Svalan convalescent home, a yellow-brick building a short distance from the Hede River at the other end of the town. Blomkvist introduced himself to the receptionist and asked to be allowed to speak with Pastor Falk. He knew, he explained, that the pastor suffered from Alzheimer’s and enquired how lucid he was now. A nurse replied that Pastor Falk had first been diagnosed three years earlier and that alas the disease had taken an aggressive course. Falk could communicate, but he had a very feeble short-term memory, and did not recognise all of his relatives. He was on the whole slipping into the shadows. He was also prone to anxiety attacks if he was confronted with questions he could not answer.
Falk was sitting on a bench in the garden with three other patients and a male nurse. Blomkvist spent an hour trying to engage him in conversation.
He remembered Harriet Vanger quite well. His face lit up, and he described her as a charming girl. But Blomkvist was soon aware that the pastor had forgotten that she had been missing these last thirty-seven years. He talked about her as if he had seen her recently and asked Blomkvist to say hello to her and urge her to come and see him. Blomkvist promised to do so.
He obviously did not remember the accident on the bridge. It was not until the end of their conversation that he said something which made Blomkvist prick up his ears.
It was when Blomkvist steered the talk to Harriet’s interest in religion that Falk suddenly seemed hesitant. It was as though a cloud passed over his face. Falk sat rocking back and forth for a while and then looked up at Blomkvist and asked who he was. Blomkvist introduced himself again and the old man thought for a while. At length he said: “She’s still a seeker. She has to take care of herself and you have to warn her.”
“What should I warn her about?”
Falk grew suddenly agitated. He shook his head with a frown.
“She has to read sola scriptura and understand sufficientia scripturae. That’s the only way that she can maintain sola fide. Josef will certainly exclude them. They were never accepted into the canon.”
Blomkvist understood nothing of this, but took assiduous notes. Then Pastor Falk leaned towards him and whispered, “I think she’s a Catholic. She loves magic and has not yet found her God. She needs guidance.”
The word “Catholic” obviously had a negative connotation for Pastor Falk.
“I thought she was interested in the Pentecostal movement?”
“No, no, no, not the Pentecostals. She’s looking for the forbidden truth. She is not a good Christian.”
Then Pastor Falk seemed to forget all about Blomkvist and started talking with the other patients.
He got back to Hedeby Island just after 2:00. He walked over to Cecilia Vanger’s and knocked on the door, but without success. He tried her mobile number again but no answer.
He attached one smoke alarm to a wall in the kitchen and one next to the front door. He put one fire extinguisher next to the woodstove beside the bedroom door and another one beside the bathroom door. Then he made himself lunch, which consisted of coffee and open sandwiches, and sat in the garden, where he was typing up the notes of his conversation with Pastor Falk. When that was done, he raised his eyes to the church.
Hedeby’s new parsonage was quite an ordinary modern dwelling a few minutes’ walk from the church. Blomkvist knocked on the door at 4:00 and explained to Pastor Margareta Strandh that he had come to seek advice on a theological matter. Margareta Strandh was a dark-haired woman of about his own age, dressed in jeans and a flannel shirt. She was barefoot and had painted toenails. He had run into her before at Susanne’s Bridge Café on a couple of occasions and talked to her about Pastor Falk. He was given a friendly reception and invited to come and sit in her courtyard.
Blomkvist told her that he had interviewed Otto Falk and what the old man had said. Pastor Strandh listened and then asked him to repeat it word for word.
“I was sent to serve here in Hedeby only three years ago, and I’ve never actually met Pastor Falk. He retired several years before that, but I believe that he was fairly high-church. What he said to you meant something on the lines of ‘keep to Scripture alone’—sola scriptura—and that it is sufficientia scripturae. This latter is an expression that establishes the sufficiency of Scripture among literal believers. Sola fide means faith alone or the true faith.”
“I see.”
“All this is basic dogma, so to speak. In general it’s the platform of the church and nothing unusual at all. He was saying quite simply: ‘Read the Bible—it will provide sufficient knowledge and vouches for the true faith.’”
Mikael felt a bit embarrassed.
“Now I have to ask you in what connection this conversation occurred,” she said.
“I was asking him about a person he had met many years ago, someone I’m writing about.”
“A religious seeker?”
“Something along that line.”
“OK. I think I understand the context. You told me that Pastor Falk said two other things—that ‘Josef will certainly exclude them’ and that‘ they were never accepted into the canon.’ Is it possible that you misunderstood and that he said Josefus instead of Josef? It’s actually the same name.”
“That’s possible,” Blomkvist said. “I taped the conversation if you want to listen to it.”
“No, I don’t think that’s necessary. These two sentences establish fairly unequivocally what he was alluding to. Josefus was a Jewish historian, and the sentence ‘they were never accepted into the canon’ may have meant that they were never in the Hebrew canon.”
“And that means?”
She laughed.
“Pastor Falk was saying that this person was enthralled by esoteric sources, specifically the Apocrypha. The Greek word apokryphos means ‘hidden,’ and the Apocrypha are therefore the hidden books which some consider highly controversial and others think should be included in the Old Testament. They are Tobias, Judith, Esther, Baruch, Sirach, the books of the Maccabees, and some others.”
“Forgive my ignorance. I’ve heard about the books of the Apocrypha but have never read them. What’s special about them?”
“There’s really nothing special about them at all, except that they came into existence somewhat later than the rest of the Old Testament. The Apocrypha were deleted from the Hebrew Bible—not because Jewish scholars mistrusted their content but simply because they were written after the time when God’s revelatory work was concluded. On the other hand, the Apocrypha are included in the old Greek translation of the Bible. They’re not considered controversial in, for example, the Roman Catholic Church.”
“I see.”
“However, they are controversial in the Protestant Church. During the Reformation, theologians looked to the old Hebrew Bible. Martin Luther deleted the Apocrypha from the Reformation’s Bible and later Calvin declared that the Apocrypha absolutely must not serve as the basis for convictions in matters of faith. Thus their contents contradict or in some way conflict with claritas scripturae—the clarity of Scripture.”
“In other words, censored books.”
“Quite right. For example, the Apocrypha claim that magic can be practised and that lies in certain cases may be permissible, and such statements, of course, upset dogmatic interpreters of Scripture.”
“So if someone has a passion for religion, it’s not unthinkable that the Apocrypha will pop up on their reading list, or that someone like Pastor Falk would be upset by this.”
“Exactly. Encountering the Apocrypha is almost unavoidable if you’re studying the Bible or the Catholic faith, and it’s equally probable that someone who is interested in esoterica in general might read them.”
“You don’t happen to have a copy of the Apocrypha, do you?”
She laughed again. A bright, friendly laugh.
“Of course I do. The Apocrypha were actually published as a state report from the Bible Commission in the eighties.”
Armansky wondered what was going on when Salander asked to speak to him in private. He shut the door behind her and motioned her to the visitor’s chair. She told him that her work for Mikael Blomkvist was done—the lawyer would be paying her before the end of the month—but that she had decided to keep on with this particular investigation. Blomkvist had offered her a considerably higher salary for a month.
“I am self-employed,” Salander said. “Until now I’ve never taken a job that you haven’t given me, in keeping with our agreement. What I want to know is what will happen to our relationship if I take a job on my own?”
Armansky shrugged.
“You’re a freelancer, you can take any job you want and charge what you think it’s worth. I’m just glad you’re making your own money. It would, however, be disloyal of you to take on clients you find through us.”
“I have no plans to do that. I’ve finished the job according to the contract we signed with Blomkvist. What this is about is that I want to stay on the case. I’d even do it for nothing.”
“Don’t ever do anything for nothing.”
“You know what I mean. I want to know where this story is going. I’ve convinced Blomkvist to ask the lawyer to keep me on as a research assistant.”
She passed the agreement over to Armansky, who read rapidly through it.
“With this salary you might as well be working for free. Lisbeth, you’ve got talent. You don’t have to work for small change. You know you can make a hell of a lot more with me if you come on board full-time.”
“I don’t want to work full-time. But, Dragan, my loyalty is to you. You’ve been great to me since I started here. I want to know if a contract like this is OK with you, that there won’t be any friction between us.”
“I see.” He thought for a moment. “It’s 100 percent OK. Thanks for asking. If any more situations like this crop up in the future I’d appreciate it if you asked me so there won’t be any misunderstandings.”
Salander thought over whether she had anything to add. She fixed her gaze on Armansky, saying not a word. Instead she just nodded and then stood up and left, as usual with no farewell greeting.
She got the answer she wanted and instantly lost interest in Armansky. He smiled to himself. That she had even asked him for advice marked a new high point in her socialisation process.
He opened a folder with a report on security at a museum where a big exhibition of French Impressionists was opening soon. Then he put down the folder and looked at the door through which Salander had just gone. He thought about how she had laughed with Blomkvist in her office and wondered if she was finally growing up or whether it was Blomkvist who was the attraction. He also felt a strange uneasiness. He had never been able to shake off the feeling that Lisbeth Salander was a perfect victim. And here she was, hunting a madman out in the back of beyond.
On the way north again, Salander took on impulse a detour by way of Äppelviken Nursing Home to see her mother. Except for the visit on Midsummer Eve, she had not seen her mother since Christmas, and she felt bad for so seldom taking the time. A second visit within the course of a few weeks was quite unusual.
Her mother was in the day room. Salander stayed a good hour and took her mother for a walk down to the duck pond in the grounds of the hospital. Her mother was still muddling Lisbeth with her sister. As usual, she was hardly present, but she seemed troubled by the visit.
When Salander said goodbye, her mother did not want to let go of her hand. Salander promised to visit her again soon, but her mother gazed after her sadly and anxiously.
It was as if she had a premonition of some approaching disaster.
Blomkvist spent two hours in the garden behind his cabin going through the Apocrypha without gaining a single insight. But a thought had occurred to him. How religious had Harriet Vanger actually been? Her interest in Bible studies had started the last year before she vanished. She had linked a number of Bible quotes to a series of murders and then had methodically read not only her Bible but also the Apocrypha, and she had developed an interest in Catholicism.
Had she really done the same investigation that Blomkvist and Salander were doing thirty-seven years later? Was it the hunt for a murderer that had spurred her interest rather than religiosity? Pastor Falk had indicated that in his eyes she was more of a seeker, less a good Christian.
He was interrupted by Berger calling him on his mobile.
“I just wanted to tell you that Greger and I are leaving on holiday next week. I’ll be gone for four weeks.”
“Where are you going?”
“New York. Greger has an exhibition, and then we thought we’d go to the Caribbean. We have a chance to borrow a house on Antigua from a friend of Greger’s and we’re staying there two weeks.”
“That sounds wonderful. Have a great time. And say hi to Greger.”
“The new issue is finished and we’ve almost wrapped up the next one. I wish you could take over as editor, but Christer has said he will do it.”
“He can call me if he needs any help. How’s it going with Janne Dahlman?”
She hesitated.
“He’s also going on holiday. I’ve pushed Henry into being the acting managing editor. He and Christer are minding the store.”
“OK.”
“I’ll be back on August seventh.”
In the early evening Blomkvist tried five times to telephone Cecilia Vanger. He sent her a text as king her to call him. But he received no answer.
He put away the Apocrypha and got into his tracksuit, locking the door before he set off.
He followed the narrow path along the shore and then turned into the woods. He ground his way through thickets and around uprooted trees as fast as he could go, emerging exhausted at the Fortress with his pulse racing. He stopped by one of the old artillery batteries and stretched for several minutes.
Suddenly he heard a sharp crack and the grey concrete wall next to his head exploded. Then he felt the pain as fragments of concrete and shrapnel tore a deep gash in his scalp.
For what seemed an eternity Blomkvist stood paralysed. Then he threw himself into the artillery trench, landing hard on his shoulder and knocking the wind out of himself. A second round came at the instant he dived. The bullet smacked into the concrete foundation.
He got to his feet and looked all around. He was in the middle of the Fortress. To the right and left narrow, overgrown passages a yard deep ran to the batteries that were spread along a line of 250 yards. In a crouch, he started running south through the labyrinth.
He suddenly heard an echo of Captain Adolfsson’s inimitable voice from winter manoeuvres at the infantry school in Kiruna. Blomkvist, keep your fucking head down if you don’t want to get your arse shot off. Years later he still remembered the extra practise drills that Captain Adolfsson used to devise.
He stopped to catch his breath, his heart pounding. He could hear nothing but his own breathing. The human eye perceives motion much quicker than shapes and figures. Move slowly when you’re scouting. Blomkvist slowly peeked an inch over the top edge of the battery. The sun was straight ahead and made it impossible to make out details, but he could see no movement.
He pulled his head back down and ran on to the next battery. It doesn’t matter how good the enemy’s weapons are. If he can’t see you, he can’t hit you. Cover, cover, cover. Make sure you’re never exposed.
He was 300 yards from the edge of Östergården farm. Some 40 yards from where he knelt there was an almost impenetrable thicket of low brush. But to reach the thicket he would have to sprint down a grass slope from the artillery battery, and he would be completely exposed. It was the only way. At his back was the sea.
He was suddenly aware of pain in his temple and discovered that he was bleeding and that his T-shirt was drenched with blood. Scalp wounds never stop bleeding, he thought before he again concentrated on his position. One shot could just have been an accident, but two meant that somebody was trying to kill him. He had no way of knowing if the marksman was waiting for him to reappear.
He tried to be calm, think rationally. The choice was to wait or to get the hell out. If the marksman was still there, the latter alternative was assuredly not a good idea. If he waited where he was, the marksman would calmly walk up to the Fortress, find him, and shoot him at close range.
He (or she?) can’t know if I’ve gone to the right or left. Rifle, maybe a moose rifle. Probably with telescopic sights. Which would mean that the marksman would have a limited field of vision if he was looking for Mikael through the sights.
If you’re in a tight spot—take the initiative. Better than waiting. He watched and listened for sounds for two minutes; then he clambered out of the battery and raced down the slope as fast as he could.
He was halfway down the slope as a third shot was fired, but he only heard a vague smack behind him. He threw himself flat through the curtain of brush and rolled through a sea of stinging nettles. Then he was on his feet and moving away from the direction of the fire, crouching, running, stopping every fifty yards, listening. He heard a branch crack somewhere between him and the Fortress. He dropped to his stomach.
Crawl using your elbows was another of Captain Adolfsson’s favourite expressions. Blomkvist covered the next 150 yards on his knees and toes and elbows through the undergrowth. He pushed aside twigs and branches. Twice he heard sudden cracks in the thicket behind him. The first seemed to be very close, maybe twenty paces to the right. He froze, lay perfectly still. After a while he cautiously raised his head and looked around, but he could see no-one. He lay still for a long time, his nerves on full alert, ready to flee or possibly make a desperate counterattack if the enemy came at him. The next crack was from farther away. Then silence.
He knows I’m here. Has he taken up a position somewhere, waiting for me to start moving, or has he retreated?
Blomkvist kept crawling through the undergrowth until he reached the Östergården’s fence.
This was the next critical moment. A path ran inside the fence. He lay stretched out on the ground, watching. The farmhouse was 400 yards down a gentle slope. To the right of the house he saw cows grazing. Why hadn’t anyone heard the shots and come to investigate? Summer. Maybe nobody is at home right now.
There was no question of crossing the pasture—there he would have no cover at all. The straight path beside the fence was the place he himself would have picked for a clear field of fire. He retreated into the brush until he came out on the other side into a sparse pine wood.
He took the long way around Östergården’s fields and Söderberget to reach home. When he passed Östergården he could see that their car was gone. At the top of Söderberget he stopped and looked down on Hedeby. In the old fishing cabins by the marina there were summer visitors; women in bathing suits were sitting talking on a dock. He smelled something cooking on an outdoor grill. Children were splashing in the water near the docks in the marina.
Just after 8:00. It was fifty minutes since the shots had been fired. Nilsson was watering his lawn, wearing shorts and no shirt. How long have you been there? Vanger’s house was empty but for Anna. Harald Vanger’s house looked deserted as always. Then he saw Isabella Vanger in her back garden. She was sitting there, obviously talking to someone. It took a second for Blomkvist to realise it was the sickly Gerda Vanger, born in 1922 and living with her son, Alexander, in one of the houses beyond Henrik’s. He had never met her, but he had seen her a few times. Cecilia Vanger’s house looked empty, but then Mikael saw a movement in her kitchen. She’s home. Was the marksman a woman? He knew that Cecilia could handle a gun. He could see Martin Vanger’s car in the drive in front of his house. How long have you been home?
Or was it someone else that he had not thought of yet? Frode? Alexander? Too many possibilities.
He climbed down from Söderberget and followed the road into the village; he got home without encountering anyone. The first thing he saw was that the door of the cottage was ajar. He went into a crouch almost instinctively. Then he smelled coffee and saw Salander through the kitchen window.
She heard him come in the front door and turned towards him. She stiffened. His face looked terrible, smeared with blood that had begun to congeal. The left side of his white T-shirt was crimson. He was holding a sodden red handkerchief to his head.
“It’s bleeding like hell, but it’s not dangerous,” Blomkvist said before she could ask.
She turned and got the first-aid kit from the cupboard; it contained two packets of elastic bandages, a mosquito stick, and a little roll of surgical tape. He pulled off his clothes and dropped them on the floor; then he went to the bathroom.
The wound on his temple was a gash so deep that he could lift up a big flap of flesh. It was still bleeding and it needed stitches, but he thought it would probably heal if he taped it closed. He ran a towel under the cold tap and wiped his face.
He held the towel against his temple while he stood under the shower and closed his eyes. Then he slammed his fist against the tile so hard that he scraped his knuckles. Fuck you, whoever you are, he thought. I’m going to find you, and I will get you.
When Salander touched his arm he jumped as if he had had an electric shock and stared at her with such anger in his eyes that she took a step back. She handed him the soap and went back to the kitchen without a word.
He put on three strips of surgical tape. He went into the bedroom, pulled on a clean pair of jeans and a new T-shirt, taking the folder of printed-out photographs with him. He was so furious he was almost shaking.
“Stay here, Lisbeth,” he shouted.
He walked over to Cecilia Vanger’s house and rang the doorbell. It was half a minute before she opened the door.
“I don’t want to see you,” she said. Then she saw his face, where blood was already seeping through the tape.
“Let me in. We have to talk.”
She hesitated. “We have nothing to talk about.”
“We do now, and you can discuss it here on the steps or in the kitchen.”
Blomkvist’s tone was so determined that Cecilia stepped back and let him in. He sat at her kitchen table.
“What have you done?” she said.
“You claim that my digging for the truth about Harriet Vanger is some futile form of occupational therapy for Henrik. That’s possible, but an hour ago someone bloody nearly shot my head off, and last night someone—maybe the same humourist—left a horribly dead cat on my porch.”
Cecilia opened her mouth, but Blomkvist cut her off.
“Cecilia, I don’t give a shit about your hang-ups or what you worry about or the fact that you suddenly hate the sight of me. I’ll never come near you again, and you don’t have to worry that I’m going to bother you or run after you. Right this minute I wish I’d never heard of you or anyone else in the Vanger family. But I require answers to my questions. The sooner you answer them, the sooner you’ll be rid of me.”
“What do you want to know?”
“Number one: where were you an hour ago?”
Cecilia’s face clouded over.
“An hour ago I was in Hedestad.”
“Can anyone confirm where you were?”
“Not that I can think of, and I don’t have to account to you.”
“Number two: why did you open the window in Harriet’s room the day she disappeared?”
“What?”
“You heard me. For all these years Henrik has tried to work out who opened the window in Harriet’s room during those critical minutes. Everybody has denied doing it. Someone is lying.”
“And what in hell makes you think it was me?”
“This picture,” Blomkvist said, and flung the blurry photograph onto her kitchen table.
Cecilia walked over to the table and studied the picture. Blomkvist thought he could read shock on her face. She looked up at him. He felt a trickle of blood run down his cheek and drop onto his shirt.
“There were sixty people on the island that day,” he said. “And twenty-eight of them were women. Five or six of them had shoulder-length blonde hair. Only one of those was wearing a light-coloured dress.”
She stared intently at the photograph.
“And you think that’s supposed to be me?”
“If it isn’t you, I’d like you to tell me who you think it is. Nobody knew about this picture before. I’ve had it for weeks and tried to talk to you about it. I may be an idiot, but I haven’t showed it to Henrik or anyone else because I’m deathly afraid of casting suspicion on you or doing you wrong. But I do have to have an answer.”
“You’ll get your answer.” She held out the photograph to him. “I didn’t go into Harriet’s room that day. It’s not me in the picture. I didn’t have the slightest thing to do with her disappearance.”
She went to the front door.
“You have your answer. Now please go. But I think you should have a doctor look at that wound.”
Salander drove him to Hedestad Hospital. It took only two stitches and a good dressing to close the wound. He was given cortisone salve for the rash from the stinging nettles on his neck and hands.
After they left the hospital Blomkvist sat for a long time wondering whether he ought to go to the police. He could see the headlines now. “Libel Journalist in Shooting Drama.” He shook his head. “Let’s go home,” he said.
It was dark when they arrived back at Hedeby Island, and that suited Salander fine. She lifted a sports bag on to the kitchen table.
“I borrowed this stuff from Milton Security, and it’s time we made use of it.”
She planted four battery-operated motion detectors around the house and explained that if anyone came closer than twenty feet, a radio signal would trigger a small chirping alarm that she set up in Blomkvist’s bedroom. At the same time, two light-sensitive video cameras that she had put in trees at the front and back of the cabin would send signals to a PC laptop that she set in the cupboard by the front door. She camouflaged the cameras with dark cloth.
She put a third camera in a birdhouse above the door. She drilled a hole right through the wall for the cable. The lens was aimed at the road and the path from the gate to the front door. It took a low-resolution image every second and stored them all on the hard drive of another PC laptop in the wardrobe.
Then she put a pressure-sensitive doormat in the entrance. If someone managed to evade the infrared detectors and got into the house, a 115-decibel siren would go off. Salander demonstrated for him how to shut off the detectors with a key to a box in the wardrobe. She had also borrowed a night-vision scope.
“You don’t leave a lot to chance,” Blomkvist said, pouring coffee for her.
“One more thing. No more jogging until we crack this.”
“Believe me, I’ve lost all interest in exercise.”
“I’m not joking. This may have started out as a historical mystery, but what with dead cats and people trying to blow your head off we can be sure we’re on somebody’s trail.”
They ate dinner late. Blomkvist was suddenly dead tired and had a splitting headache. He could hardly talk any more, so he went to bed.
Salander stayed up reading the report until 2:00.