The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo m(-1 Page 31

  “How did he take it?”

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

  “And?”

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

  “What do you suspect Dahlman of doing?”

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

  “Trust your instincts.”

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

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

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

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

  Someone had been inside his cottage.

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

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

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

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

  So who was it?

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

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

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

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

  Frode shook his head.

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

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

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

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

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

  Frode read through the document.

  “She’s expensive,” he said.

  “Henrik can afford it.”

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

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

  ***

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Not only that, he had teased her.

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

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

  “You said that you knew what I did.”

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

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

  “You made a mistake.”

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

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

  “How did you do it?” he asked.

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

  Mikael shrugged.

  “What can I do?”

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

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

  “Yes.”

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

  Salander’s face was creased by a crooked smile.

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

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

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

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

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

  “Really?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  CHAPTER 19

  Thursday, June 19 – Sunday, June 29

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Any news?” The voice was weak.

  Blomkvist nodded.

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

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

  “I have to be away for a few days.”

  Henrik raised his eyebrows.

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

  “Dirch is… my man… in all matters.”

  Blomkvist squeezed Vanger’s hand again.

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

  “I will finish the job.”

  “Dirch has… full…”

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

  “Two minutes,” the nurse said.

  “Next time we’ll have a long talk.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “We need to talk.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Cecilia Vanger’s face was suddenly flushed with anger.

  “You really are the fucking pits.”

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

  She took a step away from him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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