CHAPTER 10
Thursday, January 9-Friday, January 31
According to the Hedestad Courier, Blomkvist’s first month out in the country was the coldest in recorded memory, or (as Vanger informed him) at least since the wartime winter of 1942. After only a week in Hedeby he had learned all about long underwear, woolly socks, and double undershirts.
He had several miserable days in the middle of the month when the temperature dropped to -35°F. He had experienced nothing like it, not even during the year he spent in Kiruna in Lapland doing his military service.
One morning the water pipes froze. Nilsson gave him two big plastic containers of water for cooking and washing, but the cold was paralysing. Ice flowers formed on the insides of the windows, and no matter how much wood he put in the stove, he was still cold. He spent a long time each day splitting wood in the shed next to the house.
At times he was on the brink of tears and toyed with taking the first train heading south. Instead he would put on one more sweater and wrap up in a blanket as he sat at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and reading old police reports.
Then the weather changed and the temperature rose steadily to a balmy 14°F.
Mikael was beginning to get to know people in Hedeby. Martin Vanger kept his promise and invited him for a meal of moose steak. His lady friend joined them for dinner. Eva was a warm, sociable, and entertaining woman. Blomkvist found her extraordinarily attractive. She was a dentist and lived in Hedestad, but she spent the weekends at Martin’s home. Blomkvist gradually learned that they had known each other for many years but that they had not started going out together until they were middle-aged. Evidently they saw no reason to marry.
“She’s actually my dentist,” said Martin with a laugh.
“And marrying into this crazy family isn’t really my thing,” Eva said, patting Martin affectionately on the knee.
Martin Vanger’s villa was furnished in black, white, and chrome. There were expensive designer pieces that would have delighted the connoisseur Christer Malm. The kitchen was equipped to a professional chef’s standard. In the living room there was a high-end stereo with an impressive collection of jazz records from Tommy Dorsey to John Coltrane. Martin Vanger had money, and his home was both luxurious and functional. It was also impersonal. The artwork on the walls was reproductions and posters, of the sort found in IKEA. The bookshelves, at least in the part of the house that Blomkvist saw, housed a Swedish encyclopedia and some coffee table books that people might have given him as Christmas presents, for want of a better idea. All in all, he could discern only two personal aspects of Martin Vanger’s life: music and cooking. His 3,000 or so LPs spoke for the one and the other could be deduced from the fact of Martin’s stomach bulging over his belt.
The man himself was a mixture of simplicity, shrewdness, and amiability. It took no great analytical skill to conclude that the corporate CEO was a man with problems. As they listened to “Night in Tunisia,” the conversation was devoted to the Vanger Corporation, and Martin made no secret of the fact that the company was fighting for survival. He was certainly aware that his guest was a financial reporter whom he hardly knew, yet he discussed the internal problems of his company so openly that it seemed reckless. Perhaps he assumed that Blomkvist was one of the family since he was working for his great-uncle; and like the former CEO, Martin took the view that the family members only had themselves to blame for the situation in which the company found itself. On the other hand, he seemed almost amused by his family’s incorrigible folly. Eva nodded but passed no judgement of her own. They had obviously been over the same ground before.
Martin accepted the story that Blomkvist had been hired to write a family chronicle, and he inquired how the work was going. Blomkvist said with a smile that he was having the most trouble remembering the names of all the relatives. He asked if he might come back to do an interview in due course. Twice he considered turning the conversation to the old man’s obsession with Harriet’s disappearance. Vanger must have pestered her brother with his theories, and Martin must realise that if Blomkvist was going to write about the Vangers, he could not ignore the fact that one family member had vanished in dramatic circumstances. But Martin showed no sign of wanting to discuss the subject.
The evening ended, after several rounds of vodka, at 2:00 in the morning. Blomkvist was fairly drunk as he skidded the three hundred yards to the guest house. It had been a pleasant evening.
One afternoon during Blomkvist’s second week in Hedeby there was a knock on the door. He put aside the binder from the police report that he had just opened—the sixth in the series—and closed the door to his office before he opened the front door to a blonde woman well wrapped up against the cold.
“Hi. I just thought I’d come and say hello. I’m Cecilia Vanger.”
They shook hands and he got out the coffee cups. Cecilia, daughter of Harald Vanger, appeared to be an open and engaging woman. Blomkvist remembered that Vanger had spoken of her appreciatively; he had also said that she was not on speaking terms with her father, her next-door neighbour. They chatted for a while before she brought up the reason for her visit.
“I understand that you’re writing a book about the family,” she said. “I’m not sure that I care for the idea. I wanted to see what sort of person you are.”
“Well, Henrik Vanger hired me. It’s his story, so to speak.”
“And our good Henrik isn’t exactly neutral in his attitude towards the family.”
Blomkvist studied her, unsure what she was getting at. “You’re opposed to having a book written about the Vanger family?”
“I didn’t say that. And it doesn’t really matter what I think. But by now you must have realised that it hasn’t always been plain sailing to be part of this family.”
Blomkvist had no idea what Vanger had said or how much Cecilia knew about his assignment. He threw out his hands.
“I’m contracted by your uncle to write a family chronicle. He has some very colourful views about members of the family, but I’ll be sticking strictly to what can be documented.”
Cecilia Vanger smiled but without warmth. “What I want to know is: will I have to go into exile or emigrate when the book comes out?”
“I don’t expect so,” Blomkvist said. “People will be able to tell the sheep from the goats.”
“Like my father, for instance?”
“Your father the famous Nazi?” Blomkvist said.
Cecilia Vanger rolled her eyes. “My father is crazy. I only see him a few times a year.”
“Why don’t you want to see him?”
“Wait a minute—before you start in asking a lot of questions…Are you planning to quote anything I say? Or can I carry on a normal conversation with you?”
“My job is to write a book starting with Alexandre Vangeersad’s arrival in Sweden with Bernadotte and going up to the present. It’s to cover the business empire over many decades, but it will also discuss why the empire is in difficulty and it will touch on the animosity that exists within the family. In such a survey it’s impossible to avoid having some dirty linen float to the surface. But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to set out to present a malicious portrait of anyone. For example, I’ve met Martin Vanger; he seems to me a very sympathetic person, and that’s how I’m going to describe him.”
Cecilia Vanger did not reply.
“What I know about you is that you’re a teacher…”
“It’s actually worse than that—I’m the headmistress of Hedestad preparatory school.”
“I’m sorry. I know that your uncle is fond of you, that you’re married but separated…and that’s about all so far. So do please go ahead and talk to me without fear of being quoted. I’m sure I’ll come knocking on your door some day soon. Then it will be an official interview, and you can choose whether you want to answer my questions or not.”
“So I can talk to you then or now…off the record, as they say?”
“Of course.”
“And this is off the record?”
“Of course. This is a social visit after all.”
“OK. Then can I ask you something?”
“Please.”
“How much of this book is going to deal with Harriet?”
Blomkvist bit his lip and then said as casually as he could: “To be honest, I have no idea. It might fill a chapter. It was a dramatic event that has cast a shadow over your uncle, at the very least.”
“But you’re not here to look into her disappearance?”
“What makes you think that?”
“Well, the fact that Nilsson lugged four massive boxes over here. That could be Henrik’s private investigations over the years. I looked in Harriet’s old room, where Henrik keeps it, and it was gone.”
Cecilia Vanger was no fool.
“You’ll have to take the matter up with Henrik, not with me,” Blomkvist said. “But it won’t surprise you to know that Henrik has talked a lot about the girl’s disappearance, and I thought it would be interesting to read through what had been collected.”
Cecilia gave him another of her joyless smiles. “I wonder sometimes who’s crazier, my father or my uncle. I must have listened to him on Harriet’s disappearance a thousand times.”
“What do you think happened to her?”
“Is this an interview question?”
“No,” he said with a laugh. “I’m just curious.”
“What I’m curious about is whether you’re a nut case too. Whether you’ve swallowed Henrik’s conviction or whether in fact you’re the one who’s egging him on.”
“You think that Henrik’s a nut case?”
“Don’t get me wrong. He’s one of the warmest and most thoughtful people I know. I’m very fond of him. But on this particular topic, he’s obsessive.”
“But Harriet really did disappear.”
“I’m just so damn sick of the whole story. It’s poisoned our lives for decades, and it doesn’t stop doing so.” She got up abruptly and put on her fur coat. “I have to go. You seem like a pleasant sort. Martin thinks so too, but his judgement isn’t always reliable. You’re welcome to come for coffee at my house whenever you like. I’m almost always home in the evening.”
“Thank you,” Blomkvist said. “You didn’t answer the question that wasn’t an interview question.”
She paused at the door and replied without looking at him.
“I have no idea. I think it was an accident that has such a simple explanation that it will astonish us if we ever find out.”
She turned to smile at him—for the first time with warmth. Then she was gone.
If it had been an agreeable first meeting with Cecilia Vanger, the same could not be said of his first encounter with Isabella. Harriet’s mother was exactly as Henrik Vanger had warned: she proved to be an elegant woman who reminded him vaguely of Lauren Bacall. She was thin, dressed in a black Persian lamb coat with matching cap, and she was leaning on a black cane when Blomkvist ran into her one morning on his way to Susanne’s. She looked like an ageing vampire—still strikingly beautiful but as venomous as a snake. Isabella Vanger was apparently on her way home after taking a walk. She called to him from the crossroad.
“Hello there, young man. Come here.”
The commanding tone was hard to mistake. Blomkvist looked around and concluded that he was the one summoned. He did as instructed.
“I am Isabella Vanger,” the woman said.
“Hello. My name is Mikael Blomkvist.” He stuck out his hand, which she ignored.
“Are you that person who’s been snooping around in our family affairs?”
“Well, if you mean am I the person that Henrik Vanger has put under contract to help him with his book about the Vanger family, then yes.”
“That’s none of your business.”
“Which? The fact that Henrik Vanger offered me a contract or the fact that I accepted?”
“You know perfectly well what I mean. I don’t care for people poking around in my life.”
“I won’t poke around in your life. The rest you’ll have to discuss with Henrik.”
Isabella raised her cane and pressed the handle against Mikael’s chest. She did not use much force, but he took a step back in surprise.
“Just you keep away from me,” she said, and turned on her heel and walked unsteadily towards her house. Blomkvist went on standing where he was, looking like a man who has just met a real live comic-book character. When he looked up he saw Vanger in the window of his office. In his hand he was holding a cup, which he raised in an ironic salute.
The only travelling that Blomkvist did during that first month was a drive to a bay on Lake Siljan. He borrowed Frode’s Mercedes and drove through a snowy landscape to spend the afternoon with Detective Superintendent Morell. Blomkvist had tried to form an impression of Morell based on the way he came across in the police report. What he found was a wiry old man who moved softly and spoke even more slowly.
Blomkvist brought with him a notebook with ten questions, mainly ideas that had cropped up while he was reading the police report. Morell answered each question put to him in a schoolmasterly way. Finally Blomkvist put away his notes and explained that the questions were simply an excuse for a meeting. What he really wanted was to have a chat with him and ask one crucial question: was there any single thing in the investigation that had not been included in the written report? Any hunches, even, that the inspector might be willing to share with him?
Because Morell, like Vanger, had spent thirty-six years pondering the mystery, Blomkvist had expected a certain resistance—he was the new man who had come in and started tramping around in the thicket where Morell had gone astray. But there was not a hint of hostility. Morell methodically filled his pipe and lit it before he replied.
“Well yes, obviously I had my own ideas. But they’re so vague and fleeting that I can hardly put them into words.”
“What do you think happened?”
“I think Harriet was murdered. Henrik and I agree on that. It’s the only reasonable explanation. But we never discovered what the motive might have been. I think she was murdered for a very specific reason—it wasn’t some act of madness or a rape or anything like that. If we had known the motive, we’d have known who killed her.” Morell stopped to think for a moment. “The murder may have been committed spontaneously. By that I mean that someone seized an opportunity when it presented itself in the coming and going in the wake of the accident. The murderer hid the body and then at some later time removed it while we were searching for her.”
“We’re talking about someone who has nerves of ice.”
“There’s one detail…Harriet went to Henrik’s room wanting to speak to him. In hindsight, it seems to me a strange way to behave—she knew he had his hands full with all the relatives who were hanging around. I think Harriet alive represented a grave threat to someone, that she was going to tell Henrik something, and that the murderer knew she was about to…well, spill the beans.”
“And Henrik was busy with several family members?”
“There were four people in the room, besides Henrik. His brother Greger, a cousin named Magnus Sjögren, and two of Harald’s children, Birger and Cecilia. But that doesn’t tell us anything. Let’s suppose that Harriet had discovered that someone had embezzled money from the company—hypothetically, of course. She may have known about it for months, and at some point she may even have discussed it with the person in question. She may have tried to blackmail him, or she may have felt sorry for him and felt uneasy about exposing him. She may have decided all of a sudden and told the murderer so, and he in desperation killed her.”
“You’ve said ‘he’ and ‘him.’”
“The book says that most killers are men. But it’s also true that in the Vanger family are several women who are real firebrands.”
“I’ve met Isabella.”
“She’s one of them. But there are others. Cecilia Vanger can be extremely caustic. Have you met Sara Sjögren?”
Blomkvist shook his head.
“She’s the daughter of Sofia Vanger, one of Henrik’s cousins. In her case we’re talking about a truly unpleasant and inconsiderate lady. But she was living in Malmö, and as far as I could ascertain, she had no motive for killing the girl.”
“So she’s off the list.”
“The problem is that no matter how we twisted and turned things, we never came up with a motive. That’s the important thing.”
“You put a vast amount of work into this case. Was there any lead you remember not having followed up?”
Morell chuckled. “No. I’ve devoted an endless amount of time to this case, and I can’t think of anything that I didn’t follow up to the bitter, fruitless end. Even after I was promoted and moved away from Hedestad.”
“Moved away?”
“Yes, I’m not from Hedestad originally. I served there from 1963 until 1968. After that I was promoted to superintendent and moved to the Gävle police department for the rest of my career. But even in Gävle I went on digging into the case.”
“I don’t suppose that Henrik would ever let up.”
“That’s true, but that’s not the reason. The puzzle about Harriet still fascinates me to this day. I mean…it’s like this: every police officer has his own unsolved mystery. I remember from my days in Hedestad how older colleagues would talk in the canteen about the case of Rebecka. There was one officer in particular, a man named Torstensson—he’s been dead for years—who year after year kept returning to that case. In his free time and when he was on holiday. Whenever there was a period of calm among the local hooligans he would take out those folders and study them.”
“Was that also a case about a missing girl?”
Morell looked surprised. Then he smiled when he realised that Blomkvist was looking for some sort of connection.
“No, that’s not why I mentioned it. I’m talking about the soul of a policeman. The Rebecka case was something that happened before Harriet Vanger was even born, and the statute of limitations has long since run out. Sometime in the forties a woman was assaulted in Hedestad, raped, and murdered. That’s not altogether uncommon. Every officer, at some point in his career, has to investigate that kind of crime, but what I’m talking about are those cases that stay with you and get under your skin during the investigation. This girl was killed in the most brutal way. The killer tied her up and stuck her head into the smouldering embers of a fireplace. One can only guess how long it took for the poor girl to die, or what torment she must have endured.”
“Christ Almighty.”
“Exactly. It was so sadistic. Poor Torstensson was the first detective on the scene after she was found. And the murder remained unsolved, even though experts were called in from Stockholm. He could never let go of that case.”
“I can understand that.”
“My Rebecka case was Harriet. In this instance we don’t even know how she died. We can’t even prove that a murder was committed. But I have never been able to let it go.” He paused to think for a moment. “Being a homicide detective can be the loneliest job in the world. The friends of the victim are upset and in despair, but sooner or later—after weeks or months—they go back to their everyday lives. For the closest family it takes longer, but for the most part, to some degree, they too get over their grieving and despair. Life has to go on; it does go on. But the unsolved murders keep gnawing away and in the end there’s only one person left who thinks night and day about the victim: it’s the officer who’s left with the investigation.”
Three other people in the Vanger family lived on Hedeby Island. Alexander Vanger, son of Greger, born in 1946, lived in a renovated wooden house. Vanger told Blomkvist that Alexander was presently in the West Indies, where he gave himself over to his favourite pastimes: sailing and whiling away the time, not doing a scrap of work. Alexander had been twenty and he had been there on that day.
Alexander shared the house with his mother, Gerda, eighty years old and widow of Greger Vanger. Blomkvist had never seen her; she was mostly bedridden.
The third family member was Harald Vanger. During his first month Blomkvist had not managed even a glimpse of him. Harald’s house, the one closest to Blomkvist’s cabin, looked gloomy and ominous with its blackout curtains drawn across all the windows. Blomkvist sometimes thought he saw a ripple in the curtains as he passed, and once when he was about to go to bed late, he noticed a glimmer of light coming from a room upstairs. There was a gap in the curtains. For more than twenty minutes he stood in the dark at his own kitchen window and watched the light before he got fed up and, shivering, went to bed. In the morning the curtains were back in place.
Harald seemed to be an invisible but ever-present spirit who affected life in the village by his absence. In Blomkvist’s imagination, Harald increasingly took on the form of an evil Gollum who spied on his surroundings from behind the curtains and devoted himself to no-one-knew-what matters in his barricaded cavern.
Harald was visited once a day by the home-help service (usually an elderly woman) from the other side of the bridge. She would bring bags of groceries, trudging through the snowdrifts up to his door. Nilsson shook his head when Blomkvist asked about Harald. He had offered to do the shovelling, he said, but Harald did not want anyone to set foot on his property. Only once, during the first winter after Harald had returned to Hedeby Island, did Nilsson drive the tractor up there to clear the snow from the courtyard, just as he did for all the other driveways. Harald had come out of his house at a startling pace, yelling and gesticulating until Nilsson went away.
Unfortunately, Nilsson was unable to clear Blomkvist’s yard because the gate was too narrow for the tractor. A snow shovel and manual labour were still the only way to do it.
In the middle of January Blomkvist asked his lawyer to find out when he was going to be expected to serve his three months in prison. He was anxious to take care of the matter as quickly as possible. Getting into prison turned out to be easier than he had expected. After a very few weeks of discussion, it was decreed that Blomkvist present himself on March 17 at the Rullåker Prison outside Östersund, a minimum-security prison. The lawyer advised him that the sentence would very likely be shortened.
“Fine,” Blomkvist said, without much enthusiasm.
He sat at the kitchen table and petted the cat, who now arrived every few days to spend the night with Blomkvist. From the Nilssons he had learned that the cat’s name was Tjorven. It did not belong to anyone in particular, it just made the rounds of all the houses.
Blomkvist met his employer almost every afternoon. Sometimes they would have a brief conversation; sometimes they would sit together for hours.
The conversation often consisted of Blomkvist putting up a theory that Vanger would then shoot down. Blomkvist tried to maintain a certain distance from his assignment, but there were moments when he found himself hopelessly fascinated by the enigma of the girl’s disappearance.
Blomkvist had assured Berger that he would also formulate a strategy for taking up the battle with Wennerström, but after a month in Hedestad he had not yet opened the files which had brought him to the dock in the district court. On the contrary, he had deliberately pushed the matter aside because every time he thought about Wennerström and his own situation, he would sink into depression and listlessness. He wondered whether he was going crazy like the old man. His professional reputation had imploded, and his means of recovering was to hide himself away in a tiny town in the deep country, chasing ghosts.
Vanger could tell that Blomkvist was on some days a bit off balance. By the end of January, the old man made a decision that surprised even himself. He picked up the telephone and called Stockholm. The conversation lasted twenty minutes and dealt largely with Mikael Blomkvist.
It had taken almost that whole month for Berger’s fury to subside. At 9:30 in the evening, on one of the last days in January, she called him.
“Are you really intending to stay up there?” she began. The call was such a surprise that Blomkvist could not at first reply. Then he smiled and wrapped the blanket tighter around him.
“Hi, Ricky. You should try it yourself.”
“Why would I? What is so charming about living in the back of beyond?”
“I just brushed my teeth with ice water. It makes my fillings hurt.”
“You have only yourself to blame. But it’s cold as hell down here in Stockholm too.”
“Let’s hear the worst.”
“We’ve lost two-thirds of our regular advertisers. No-one wants to come right out and say it, but…”
“I know. Make a list of the ones that jump ship. Someday we’ll do a good story on them.”
“Micke…I’ve run the numbers, and if we don’t rope in some new advertisers, we’ll be bust by the autumn. It’s as simple as that.”
“Things will turn around.”
She laughed wearily on the other end of the line.
“That’s not something you can say, nestling up there in Laplander hell.”
“Erika, I’m…”
“I know. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do, and all that crap. You don’t have to say anything. I’m sorry I was such a bitch and didn’t answer your messages. Can we start again? Do I dare come up there to see you?”
“Whenever you like.”
“Do I need to bring along a rifle with wolf-shot?”
“Not at all. We’ll have our own Lapps, dog teams and all the gear. When are you coming?”
“Friday evening, OK?”
Apart from the narrow shovelled path to the door, there was about three feet of snow covering the property. Blomkvist gave the shovel a long, critical look and then went over to Nilsson’s house to ask whether Berger could park her BMW there. That was no problem; they had room in the double garage, and they even had engine heaters.
Berger drove through the afternoon and arrived around 6:00. They stared at each other warily for several seconds and then hugged each other for much longer.
There was not much to see in the darkness except for the illuminated church, and both Konsum and Susanne’s Bridge Café were closing up. So they hurried home. Blomkvist cooked dinner while Berger poked around in his house, making remarks about the issues of Rekordmagasinet from the fifties that were still there, and getting engrossed in his files in the office.
They had lamb cutlets with potatoes in cream sauce and drank red wine. Blomkvist tried to take up the thread of their earlier conversation, but Berger was in no mood to discuss Millennium. Instead they talked for two hours about what Blomkvist was doing up there and how he and Vanger were getting on. Later they went to see if the bed was big enough to hold both of them.
Her third meeting with Advokat Nils Bjurman was rescheduled, and finally set for 5:00 on that same Friday afternoon. At the previous meetings, Salander was greeted by a middle-aged woman who smelled of musk and worked as his secretary. This time she had left for the day, and Bjurman smelled faintly of drink. He waved Salander to a visitor’s chair and leafed distractedly through the documents on his desk until he seemed suddenly to become aware of her presence.
It turned out to be another interrogation. This time he asked Salander about her sex life—which she had no intention of discussing with anyone.
After the meeting she knew that she had handled it badly. At first she refused to answer his questions. His interpretation of this was that she was shy, retarded, or had something to hide, and he pressed her for answers. Salander realised that he was not going to give up, so she started giving him brief, colourless answers of the sort she assumed would fit with her psychological profile. She mentioned “Magnus”—who, according to her description, was a nerdy computer programmer her own age who treated her like a gentleman should, took her to the cinema, and sometimes shared her bed. “Magnus” was fiction; she made him up as she went along, but Bjurman took her account as a pretext for meticulously mapping out her sex life. How often do you have sex? Occasionally. Who takes the initiative—you or him? I do. Do you use condoms? Of course—she knew about HIV. What’s your favourite position? Hmm, usually on my back. Do you enjoy oral sex? Er, wait a second…Have you ever had anal sex?
“No, it’s not particularly nice to be fucked in the arse—but what the hell business is it of yours?”
That was the only time she lost her temper. She had kept her eyes on the floor so they would not betray her exasperation. When she looked at him again, he was grinning at her from across the desk. She left his office with a feeling of disgust. Palmgren would never have dreamed of asking such questions. On the other hand, he had always been there if she had wanted to discuss anything. Not that she did.
Bjurman was on his way to being a Major Problem.