The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (24 page)

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
.

CHAPTER
11

Saturday, February 1–Tuesday, February 18

During the brief hours of daylight on Saturday, Blomkvist and Berger took a walk past the small-boat harbour along the road to Östergården. He had been living on Hedeby Island for a month, but he had never taken a walk inland; the freezing temperatures and regular snowstorms had deterred him. But Saturday was sunny and pleasant. It was as if Berger had brought with her a hint of spring. The road was lined with snow, ploughed three feet high. As soon as they left the summer-cabin area they were walking in dense fir forest. Blomkvist was surprised by how much higher and more inaccessible Söderberget, the hill across from the cabins, was than it appeared from the village. He thought about how many times Harriet Vanger must have played here as a child, but then he pushed all thoughts of her out of his mind. After about a mile the woods ended at a fence where the Östergården farmland began. They could see a white wooden structure and red farm buildings arranged in a square. They turned to head back the same way.

As they passed the driveway to the estate house, Vanger knocked on the upstairs window and gestured firmly for them to come up. Blomkvist and Berger looked at each other.

“Would you like to meet a corporate legend?” Blomkvist said.

“Does he bite?”

“Not on Saturdays.”

Vanger received them at the door to his office.

“You must be Fröken Berger, I recognise you.” he said. “Mikael didn’t say a word about your coming to Hedeby.”

One of Berger’s outstanding talents was her ability to instantly get on friendly terms with the most unlikely individuals. Blomkvist had seen her turn on the charm for five-year-old boys, who within ten minutes were fully prepared to abandon their mothers. Men over eighty seemed not to be an exception. After two minutes Berger and Henrik Vanger were ignoring Blomkvist as they chattered on. It was as if they had known each other since childhood—well, since Erika’s childhood, at any rate.

Berger started off quite boldly by scolding Vanger for luring her publisher away into the sticks. The old man replied that as far as he could tell—from assorted press reports—she had in fact fired him. And had she not done so, then now might be high time to get rid of excess ballast in the editorial offices. And in that case, Vanger said, a period of rustic life would do young Blomkvist some good.

For five minutes they discussed Blomkvist’s shortcomings in the most irritating terms. Blomkvist leaned back and pretended to be insulted, but he frowned when Berger made some cryptic remarks that might allude to his failings as a journalist but might also have applied to sexual prowess. Vanger tilted his head back and roared with laughter.

Blomkvist was astonished. He had never seen Vanger so natural and relaxed. He could suddenly see that Vanger, fifty years younger—or even thirty years—must have been quite a charming, attractive ladies’ man. He had never remarried. There must have been women who crossed his path, yet for nearly half a century he had remained a bachelor.

Blomkvist took a sip of coffee and pricked up his ears again when he realised that the conversation had suddenly turned serious and had to do with
Millennium
.

“Mikael has told me that you’re having problems at the magazine.” Berger glanced at Blomkvist. “No, he hasn’t discussed your internal operations, but a person would have to be deaf and blind not to see that your magazine, just like the Vanger Corporation, is in difficulties.”

“I’m confident that we can repair the situation,” Berger said.

“I doubt it,” Vanger said.

“Why is that?”

“Let’s see—how many employees do you have? Six? A monthly magazine with a print run of 21,000, manufacturing costs, salaries, distribution, offices…You need revenues of about 10 million. I think we know what percentage of that amount has to come from advertising revenue.”

“So?”

“So friend Wennerström is a vengeful and narrow-minded bastard who isn’t going to forget his recent contretemps in a hurry. How many advertisers have you lost in the past six months?”

Berger regarded Vanger with a wary expression. Blomkvist caught himself holding his breath. On those occasions when he and the old man had touched on the future of
Millennium,
it had always concerned annoying remarks or the magazine’s situation in relation to Blomkvist’s ability to finish his work in Hedestad. But Vanger was now addressing Erika alone, one boss to another. Signals passed between them that Blomkvist could not interpret, which might have had to do with the fact that he was basically a poor working-class boy from Norrland and she was an upper-class girl with a distinguished, international family tree.

“Could I have a little more coffee?” Berger asked. Vanger poured her a cup at once. “OK, you’ve done your homework. We’re bleeding.”

“How long?”

“We’ve got six months to turn ourselves around. Eight months, max. We don’t have enough capital to keep ourselves afloat longer than that.”

The old man’s expression was inscrutable as he stared out of the window. The church was still standing there.

“Did you know that I was once in the newspaper business?” he said, once more addressing them both.

Blomkvist and Berger both shook their heads. Vanger laughed again, ruefully.

“We owned six daily newspapers in Norrland. That was back in the fifties and sixties. It was my father’s idea—he thought it might be politically advantageous to have a section of the media behind us. We’re actually still one of the owners of the
Hedestad Courier
. Birger is the chairman of the board for the group of owners. Harald’s son,” he added, for Blomkvist’s benefit.

“And also a local politician,” Blomkvist said.

“Martin is on the board too. He keeps Birger in line.”

“Why did you let go of the newspapers you owned?” Blomkvist asked.

“Corporate restructuring in the sixties. Publishing newspapers was in some ways more a hobby than an interest. When we needed to tighten the budget, it was one of the first assets that we sold. But I know what it takes to run a publication…May I ask you a personal question?”

This was directed at Erika.

“I haven’t asked Mikael about this, and if you don’t want to answer, you don’t have to. I’d like to know how you ended up in this quagmire. Did you have a story or didn’t you?”

Now it was Blomkvist’s turn to look inscrutable. Berger hesitated only a second before she said: “We had a story. But it was a very different story.”

Vanger nodded, as if he understood precisely what Berger was saying. Blomkvist did not.

“I don’t want to discuss the matter.” Blomkvist cut the discussion short. “I did the research and wrote the article. I had all the sources I needed. But then it all went to hell.”

“You had sources for every last thing you wrote?”

“I did.”

Vanger’s voice was suddenly sharp. “I won’t pretend to understand how the hell you could walk into such a minefield. I can’t recall a similar story except perhaps the Lundahl affair in
Expressen
in the sixties, if you youngsters have ever heard of it. Was your source also a mythomaniac?” He shook his head and turned to Berger and said quietly, “I’ve been a newspaper publisher in the past, and I can be one again. What would you say to taking on another partner?”

The question came like a bolt out of the blue, but Berger did not seem the least bit surprised.

“Tell me more,” she said.

Vanger said: “How long are you staying in Hedestad?”

“I’m going home tomorrow.”

“Would you consider—you and Mikael, of course—humouring an old man by joining me for dinner tonight? Would 7:00 suit?”

“That would suit us fine. We’d love it. But you’re not answering the question I asked. Why would you want to be a partner in
Millennium
?”

“I’m not avoiding the question. I just thought we could discuss it over dinner. I have to talk with my lawyer before I can put together a concrete offer. But in all simplicity I can say that I have money to invest. If the magazine survives and starts making a profit again, then I’ll come out ahead. If not—well, I’ve had significantly bigger losses in my day.”