The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo m(-1 Page 10

  The first chapter was a sort of declaration of war in which Blomkvist did not mince words. In the last twenty years, Swedish financial journalists had developed into a group of incompetent lackeys who were puffed up with self-importance and who had no record of thinking critically. He drew this conclusion because time after time, without the least objection, so many financial reporters seemed content to regurgitate the statements issued by CEOs and stock-market speculators – even when this information was plainly misleading or wrong. These reporters were thus either so naive and gullible that they ought to be packed off to other assignments, or they were people who quite consciously betrayed their journalistic function. Blomkvist claimed that he had often been ashamed to be called a financial reporter, since then he would risk being lumped together with people whom he did not rate as reporters at all.

  He compared the efforts of financial journalists with the way crime reporters or foreign correspondents worked. He painted a picture of the outcry that would result if a legal correspondent began uncritically reproducing the prosecutor’s case as gospel in a murder trial, without consulting the defence arguments or interviewing the victim’s family before forming an opinion of what was likely or unlikely. According to Blomkvist the same rules had to apply to financial journalists.

  The rest of the book consisted of a chain of evidence to support his case. One long chapter examined the reporting of a famous dot-com in six daily papers, as well as in the Financial Journal, Dagens Industri, and “A-ekonomi,” the business report on Swedish TV. He first quoted and summarised what the reporters had said and written. Then he made a comparison with the actual situation. In describing the development of the company he listed time after time the simple questions that a serious reporter would have asked but which the whole corps of financial reporters had neglected to ask. It was a neat move.

  Another chapter dealt with the IPO of Telia stock – it was the book’s most jocular and ironic section, in which some financial writers were castigated by name, including one William Borg, to whom Blomkvist seemed to be particularly hostile. A chapter near the end of the book compared the level of competence of Swedish and foreign financial reporters. He described how serious reporters at London’s Financial Times, the Economist, and some German financial newspapers had reported similar subjects in their own countries. The comparison was not favourable to the Swedish journalists. The final chapter contained a sketch with suggestions as to how this deplorable situation could be remedied. The conclusion of the book echoed the introduction:

  If a parliamentary reporter handled his assignment by uncritically taking up a lance in support of every decision that was pushed through, no matter how preposterous, or if a political reporter were to show a similar lack of judgement – that reporter would be fired or at the least reassigned to a department where he or she could not do so much damage. In the world of financial reporting, however, the normal journalistic mandate to undertake critical investigations and objectively report findings to the readers appears not to apply. Instead the most successful rogue is applauded. In this way the future of Sweden is also being created, and all remaining trust in journalists as a corps of professionals is being compromised.

  Salander had no difficulty understanding the agitated debate that had followed in the trade publication The Journalist, certain financial newspapers, and on the front pages and in the business sections of the daily papers. Even though only a few reporters were mentioned by name in the book, Salander guessed that the field was small enough that everyone would know exactly which individuals were being referred to when various newspapers were quoted. Blomkvist had made himself some bitter enemies, which was also reflected in the malicious comments to the court in the Wennerström affair.

  She closed the book and looked at the photograph on the back. Blomkvist’s dark blond shock of hair fell a bit carelessly across his forehead, as if caught in a gust of wind. Or (and this was more plausible) as if Christer Malm had posed him. He was looking into the camera with an ironic smile and an expression perhaps aiming to be charming and boyish. A very good-looking man. On his way to do three months in the slammer.

  “Hello, Kalle Blomkvist,” she said to herself. “You’re pretty pleased with yourself, aren’t you?”

  At lunchtime Salander booted up her iBook and opened Eudora to write an email. She typed: “Have you got time?” She signed it Wasp and sent it to the address ‹Plague_xyz_666@hotmail.com› To be on the safe side, she ran the message through her PGP encryption programme.

  Then she put on black jeans, heavy winter boots, a warm polo shirt, a dark pea jacket and matching knitted gloves, cap, and scarf. She took the rings out of her eyebrows and nostril, put on a pale pink lipstick, and examined herself in the bathroom mirror. She looked like any other woman out for a weekend stroll, and she regarded her outfit as appropriate camouflage for an expedition behind enemy lines. She took the tunnelbana from Zinkensdamm to Östermalmstorg and walked down towards Strandvägen. She sauntered along the central reserve reading the numbers on the buildings. She had almost got to Djurgårds Bridge when she stopped and looked at the door she had been searching for. She crossed the street and waited a few feet from the street door.

  She noticed that most people who were out walking in the cold weather on the day after Christmas were walking along the quay; only a few were on the pavement side.

  She had to wait for almost half an hour before an old woman with a cane approached from the direction of Djurgården. The woman stopped and studied Salander with suspicion. Salander gave her a friendly smile in return. The lady with the cane returned her greeting and looked as though she were trying to remember when she had last seen the young woman. Salander turned her back and took a few steps away from the door, as though she were impatiently waiting for someone, pacing back and forth. When she turned, the lady had reached the door and was slowly putting in a number on the code lock. Salander had no difficulty seeing that the combination was 1260.

  She waited five minutes more before she went to the door. She punched in the code and the lock clicked. She peered into the stairwell. There was a security camera which she glanced at and ignored; it was a model that Milton Security carried and was activated only if an alarm for a break-in or an attack was sounded on the property. Farther in, to the left of an antique lift cage, there was a door with another code lock; she tried 1260 and it worked for the entrance to the cellar level and rubbish room. Sloppy, very sloppy. She spent three minutes investigating the cellar level, where she located an unlocked laundry room and a recycling room. Then she used a set of picklocks that she had “borrowed” from Milton’s locksmith to open a locked door to what seemed to be a meeting room for the condominium association. At the back of the cellar was a hobby room. Finally she found what she was looking for: the building’s small electrical room. She examined the meters, fuse boxes, and junction boxes and then took out a Canon digital camera the size of a cigarette packet. She took three pictures.

  On the way out she cast her eye down the list of residents by the lift and read the name for the apartment on the top floor. Wennerström.

  Then she left the building and walked rapidly to the National Museum, where she went into the cafeteria to have some coffee and warm up. After about half an hour she made her way back to Söder and went up to her apartment.

  There was an answer from ‹Plague_xyz_666@hotmail.com› When she decoded it in PGP it read: 20.

  CHAPTER 6

  Thursday, December 26

  The time limit set by Blomkvist had been exceeded by a good margin. It was 4:30, and there was no hope of catching the afternoon train, but he still had a chance of making the evening train at 9:30. He stood by the window rubbing his neck as he stared out at the illuminated facade of the church on the other side of the bridge. Vanger had shown him a scrapbook with articles from both the local newspaper and the national media. There had been quite a bit of media interest for a while – girl from noted industrialist’s family disappears. B
ut when no body was found and there was no breakthrough in the investigation, interest gradually waned. Despite the fact that a prominent family was involved, thirty-six years later the case of Harriet Vanger was all but forgotten. The prevailing theory in articles from the late sixties seemed to be that she drowned and was swept out to sea – a tragedy, but something that could happen to any family.

  Blomkvist had been fascinated by the old man’s account, but when Vanger excused himself to go to the bathroom, his scepticism returned. The old man had still not got to the end, and Blomkvist had finally promised to listen to the whole story.

  “What do you think happened to her?” he said when Vanger came back into the room.

  “Normally there were some twenty-five people living here year-round, but because of the family gathering there were more than sixty on Hedeby Island that day. Of these, between twenty and twenty-five can be ruled out, pretty much so. I believe that of those remaining, someone – and in all likelihood it was someone from the family – killed Harriet and hid the body.”

  “I have a dozen objections to that.”

  “Let’s hear them.”

  “Well, the first one is that even if someone hid her body, it should have been found if the search was as thorough as the one you described.”

  “To tell you the truth, the search was even more extensive than I’ve described. It wasn’t until I began to think of Harriet as a murder victim that I realised several ways in which her body could have disappeared. I can’t prove this, but it’s at least within the realm of possibility.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Harriet went missing sometime around 3:00 that afternoon. At about 2:55 she was seen by Pastor Falk, who was hurrying to the bridge. At almost exactly the same time a photographer arrived from the local paper, and for the next hour he took a great number of pictures of the drama. We – the police, I mean – examined the photographs and confirmed that Harriet was not in any one of them; but every other person in town was seen in at least one, apart from very small children.”

  Vanger took out another album and placed it on the table.

  “These are pictures from that day. The first one was taken in Hedestad during the Children’s Day parade. The same photographer took it around 1:15 p.m., and Harriet is there in it.”

  The photograph was taken from the second floor of a building and showed a street along which the parade – clowns on trucks and girls in bathing suits – had just passed. Spectators thronged the pavements. Vanger pointed at a figure in the crowd.

  “That’s Harriet. It’s about two hours before she will disappear; she’s with some of her schoolfriends in town. This is the last picture taken of her. But there’s one more interesting shot.”

  Vanger leafed through the pages. The album contained about 180 pictures – five rolls – from the crash on the bridge. After having heard the account, it was almost too much to suddenly see it in the form of sharp black-and-white images. The photographer was a professional who had managed to capture the turmoil surrounding the accident. A large number of the pictures focused on the activities around the overturned tanker truck. Blomkvist had no problem identifying a gesticulating, much younger Henrik Vanger soaked with heating oil.

  “This is my brother Harald.” The old man pointed to a man in shirtsleeves bending forward and pointing at something inside the wreck of Aronsson’s car. “My brother Harald may be an unpleasant person, but I think he can be eliminated from the list of suspects. Except for a very short while, when he had to run back here to the farm to change his shoes, he spent the afternoon on the bridge.”

  Vanger turned some more pages. One image followed another. Focus on the tanker truck. Focus on spectators on the foreshore. Focus on Aronsson’s car. General views. Close-ups with a telephoto lens.

  “This is the interesting picture,” Vanger said. “As far as we could determine it was taken between 3:40 and 3:45, or about 45 minutes after Harriet ran into Falk. Take a look at the house, the middle second floor window. That’s Harriet’s room. In the preceding picture the window was closed. Here it’s open.”

  “Someone must have been in Harriet’s room.”

  “I asked everyone; nobody would admit to opening the window.”

  “Which means that either Harriet did it herself, and she was still alive at that point, or else that someone was lying to you. But why would a murderer go into her room and open the window? And why should anyone lie about it?”

  Vanger shook his head. No explanation presented itself.

  “Harriet disappeared sometime around 3:00 or shortly thereafter. These pictures give an impression of where certain people were at that time. That’s why I can eliminate a number of people from the list of suspects. For the same reason I can conclude that some people who were not in the photographs at that time must be added to the list of suspects.”

  “You didn’t answer my question about how you think the body was removed. I realise, of course, that there must be some plausible explanation. Some sort of common old illusionist’s trick.”

  “There are actually several very practical ways it could have been done. Sometime around 3:00 the killer struck. He or she presumably didn’t use any sort of weapon – or we would have found traces of blood. I’m guessing that Harriet was strangled and I’m guessing that it happened here – behind the wall in the courtyard, somewhere out of the photographer’s line of sight and in a blind spot from the house. There’s a path, if you want to take a shortcut, to the parsonage – the last place she was seen – and back to the house. Today there’s a small flower bed and lawn there, but in the sixties it was a gravelled area used for parking. All the killer had to do was open the boot of a car and put Harriet inside. When we began searching the island the next day, nobody was thinking that a crime had been committed. We focused on the shorelines, the buildings, and the woods closest to the village.”

  “So nobody was checking the boots of cars.”

  “And by the following evening the killer would have been free to get in his car and drive across the bridge to hide the body somewhere else.”

  “Right under the noses of everyone involved in the search. If that’s the way it happened, we’re talking about a cold-blooded bastard.”

  Vanger gave a bitter laugh. “You just gave an apt description of quite a few members of the Vanger family.”

  They continued their discussion over supper at 6:00. Anna served roast hare with currant jelly and potatoes. Vanger poured a robust red wine. Blomkvist still had plenty of time to make the last train. He thought it was about time to sum things up.

  “It’s a fascinating story you’ve been telling me, I admit it. But I still don’t know why you wanted me to hear it.”

  “I told you. I want to nail the swine who murdered Harriet. And I want to hire you to find out who it was.”

  “Why?”

  Vanger put down his knife and fork. “Mikael, for thirty-six years I’ve driven myself crazy wondering what happened to Harriet. I’ve devoted more and more of my time to it.”

  He fell silent and took off his glasses, scrutinising some invisible speck of dirt on the lens. Then he raised his eyes and looked at Blomkvist.

  “To be completely honest with you, Harriet’s disappearance was the reason why gradually I withdrew from the firm’s management. I lost all motivation. I knew that there was a killer somewhere nearby and the worrying and searching for the truth began to affect my work. The worst thing is that the burden didn’t get any lighter over time – on the contrary. Around 1970 I had a period when I just wanted to be left alone. Then Martin joined the board of directors, and he had to take on more and more of my work. In 1976 I retired and Martin took over as CEO. I still have a seat on the board, but I haven’t sailed many knots since I turned fifty. For the last thirty-six years not a day has passed that I have not pondered Harriet’s disappearance. You may think I’m obsessed with it – at least most of my relatives think so.”

  “It was a horrific event.”


  “More than that. It ruined my life. That’s something I’ve become more aware of as time has passed. Do you have a good sense of yourself?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “I do too. I can’t forget what happened. But my motives have changed over the years. At first it was probably grief. I wanted to find her and at least have a chance to bury her. It was about getting justice for Harriet.”

  “In what way has that changed?”

  “Now it’s more about finding the bastard who did it. But the funny thing is, the older I get, the more of an all-absorbing hobby it has become.”

  “Hobby?”

  “Yes, I would use that word. When the police investigation petered out I kept going. I’ve tried to proceed systematically and scientifically. I’ve gathered all the information that could possibly be found – the photographs, the police report, I’ve written down everything people told me about what they were doing that day. So in effect I’ve spent almost half my life collecting information about a single day.”

  “You realise, I suppose, that after thirty-six years the killer himself might be dead and buried?”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  Blomkvist raised his eyebrows at the conviction in his voice.

  “Let’s finish dinner and go back upstairs. There’s one more detail before my story is done. And it’s the most perplexing of all.”

  Salander parked the Corolla with the automatic transmission by the commuter railway station in Sundbyberg. She had borrowed the Toyota from Milton Security’s motor pool. She had not exactly asked permission, but Armansky had never expressly forbidden her from using Milton’s cars. Sooner or later, she thought, I have to get a vehicle of my own. She did own a second-hand Kawasaki 125, which she used in the summertime. During the winter the bike was locked in her cellar.