The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Trilogy Bundle Page 36

  “Actually, there is,” Salander said, with a wry smile. “First of all he was a pastor, and pastors more than anyone else have a special relationship to the Bible. Second, he was the last person known to have seen and talked with Harriet.”

  “But he went down to the scene of the accident and stayed there for several hours. He’s in lots of the pictures, especially during the time when Harriet must have vanished.”

  “All right, I can’t crack his alibi. But I was actually thinking about something else. This story is about a sadistic killer of women.”

  “So?”

  “I was … I had a little time to myself this spring and read quite a bit about sadists in a rather different context. One of the things I read was an FBI manual. It claimed that a striking portion of convicted serial killers came from dysfunctional homes and tortured animals in their childhood. Some of the convicted American serial killers were also arrested for arson. Tortured animals and arson crop up in several of Harriet’s murder cases, but what I was really thinking about was the fact that the parsonage burned down in the late seventies.”

  “It’s a long shot,” Blomkvist said.

  Lisbeth nodded. “Agreed. But I find nothing in the police report about the cause of the fire, and it would be very interesting to know if there were other unexplained fires hereabouts in the sixties. It would also be worth checking to see if there were any cases of animal abuse or mutilation in the area back then.”

  When Salander went to bed on her seventh night in Hedeby, she was mildly irritated with Blomkvist. For almost a week she had spent practically every waking minute with him. Normally seven minutes of another person’s company was enough to give her a headache, so she set things up to live as a recluse. She was perfectly content as long as people left her in peace. Unfortunately society was not very smart or understanding; she had to protect herself from social authorities, child welfare authorities, guardianship authorities, tax authorities, police, curators, psychologists, psychiatrists, teachers, and bouncers, who (apart from the guys watching the door at Kvarnen, who by this time knew who she was) would never let her into the bar even though she was twenty-five. There was a whole army of people who seemed not to have anything better to do than to try to disrupt her life, and, if they were given the opportunity, to correct the way she had chosen to live it.

  It did no good to cry, she had learned that early on. She had also learned that every time she tried to make someone aware of something in her life, the situation just got worse. Consequently it was up to her to solve her problems by herself, using whatever methods she deemed necessary. Something that Advokat Bjurman had found out the hard way.

  Blomkvist had the same tiresome habit as everyone else, poking around in her life and asking questions. On the other hand, he did not react at all like most other men she had met.

  When she ignored his questions he simply shrugged and left her in peace. Astounding.

  Her immediate move, when she got hold of his iBook that first morning, had naturally been to transfer all the information to her own computer. That way it was OK if he dumped her from the case; she would still have access to the material.

  She had expected a furious outburst when he appeared for his breakfast. Instead he had looked almost resigned, muttered something sarcastic, and gone off to the shower. Then he began discussing what she had read. A strange guy. She might even be deluded into thinking that he trusted her.

  That he knew about her propensities as a hacker was serious. Salander was aware that the legal description of the kind of hacking she did, both professionally and as a hobby, was “unlawful data trespassing” and could earn her two years in prison. She did not want to be locked up. In her case a prison sentence would mean that her computers would be taken from her, and with them the only occupation that she was really good at. She had never told Armansky how she gathered the information they were paying her to find.

  With the exception of Plague and a few people on the Net who, like her, devoted themselves to hacking on a professional level—and most of them knew her only as “Wasp” and did not know who she was or where she lived—Kalle Blomkvist was the only one who had stumbled on to her secret. He had come to her because she made a blunder that not even a twelve-year-old would commit, which only proved that her brain was being eaten up by worms and that she deserved to be flogged. But instead of going crazy with rage he had hired her.

  Consequently she was mildly irritated with him.

  When they had a snack just before she went to bed, he had suddenly asked her if she was a good hacker.

  To her own surprise she replied, “I’m probably the best in Sweden. There may be two or three others at about my level.”

  She did not doubt the accuracy of her reply. Plague had once been better than she was, but she had passed him long ago.

  On the other hand, it felt funny to say the words. She had never done it before. She had never had an outsider to have this sort of conversation with, and she enjoyed the fact that he seemed impressed by her talents. Then he had ruined the feeling by asking another question: how had she taught herself hacking?

  What could she say? I’ve always been able to do it. Instead she went to bed without saying goodnight.

  Irritating her yet further, he did not react when she left so abruptly. She lay listening to him moving about in the kitchen, clearing the table and washing the dishes. He had always stayed up later than she did, but now he was obviously on his way to bed too. She heard him in the bathroom, and then he went into his bedroom and shut the door. After a while she heard the bed creak when he got into it, not a yard away from her own but on the other side of the wall.

  She had been sharing a house with him for a week, and he had not once flirted with her. He had worked with her, asked her opinion, slapped her on the knuckles figuratively speaking when she was on the wrong track, and acknowledged that she was right when she corrected him. Dammit, he had treated her like a human being.

  She got out of bed and stood by the window, restlessly peering into the dark. The hardest thing for her was to show herself naked to another person for the first time. She was convinced that her skinny body was repulsive. Her breasts were pathetic. She had no hips to speak of. She did not have much to offer. Apart from that she was a quite normal woman, with the same desires and sex drive as every other woman. She stood there for the next twenty minutes before she made up her mind.

  Blomkvist was reading a novel by Sara Paretsky when he heard the door handle turn and looked up to see Salander. She had a sheet wrapped round her body and stood in the doorway for a moment.

  “You OK?” he said.

  She shook her head.

  “What is it?”

  She went over to his bed, took the book, and put it on the bedside table. Then she bent down and kissed him on the mouth. She quickly got into his bed and sat looking at him, searching him. She put her hand on the sheet over his stomach. When he did not protest she leaned over and bit him on the nipple.

  Blomkvist was flabbergasted. He took her shoulders and pushed her away a little so that he could see her face.

  “Lisbeth … I don’t know if this is such a good idea. We have to work together.”

  “I want to have sex with you. And I won’t have any problem working with you, but I will have a hell of a problem with you if you kick me out.”

  “But we hardly know each other.”

  She laughed, an abrupt laugh that sounded almost like a cough.

  “You’ve never let anything like that stand in your way before. In fact, as I didn’t say in my background report, you’re one of these guys who can’t keep his hands off women. So what’s wrong? Aren’t I sexy enough for you?”

  Blomkvist shook his head and tried to think of something clever to say. When he couldn’t she pulled the sheet off him and sat astride him.

  “I don’t have any condoms,” he said.

  “Screw it.”

  When he woke up, he heard her in the kitchen. It was n
ot yet 7:00. He may only have slept for two hours, and he stayed in bed, dozing.

  This woman baffled him. At absolutely no point had she even with a glance indicated that she was the least bit interested in him.

  “Good morning,” she said from the doorway. She even had the hint of a smile.

  “Hi.”

  “We are out of milk. I’ll go to the petrol station. They open at seven.” And she was gone.

  He heard her go out of the front door. He shut his eyes. Then he heard the front door open again and seconds later she was back in the doorway. This time she was not smiling.

  “You’d better come and look at this,” she said in a strange voice.

  Blomkvist was on his feet at once and pulled on his jeans.

  During the night someone had been to the cottage with an unwelcome present. On the porch lay the half-charred corpse of a cat. The cat’s legs and head had been cut off, then the body had been flayed and the guts and stomach removed, flung next to the corpse, which seemed to have been roasted over a fire. The cat’s head was intact, on the saddle of Salander’s motorcycle. He recognised the reddish-brown fur.

  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.

&
nbsp; 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.”