The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Trilogy Bundle (32 page)

“Fine.” He hesitated. “Armansky may not be completely aware of what I want to hire you for …”

“Some historical research, he said.”

“Well, yes, that's right. I want you to help me to identify a murderer.”

         

It took Blomkvist an hour to explain all the intricate details in the Harriet Vanger case. He left nothing out. He had Frode's permission to hire her, and to do that he had to be able to trust her completely.

He told her everything about Cecilia Vanger and that he had found her face in Harriet's window. He gave Salander as good a description of her character as he could. She had moved high up on the list of suspects, his list. But he was still far from believing that she could be in any way associated with a murderer who was active when she was still a young woman.

He gave Salander a copy of the list in the date book: “Magda—32016; Sara—32109; R.J.—30112; R.L.—32027; Mari—32018.” And he gave her a copy of the verses from Leviticus.

“What do you want me to do?”

“I've identified the R.J., Rebecka Jacobsson.” He told her what the five-figure numbers stood for. “If I'm right, then we're going to find four more victims—Magda, Sara, Mari, and R.L.”

“You think they're all murdered?”

“What I think is that we are looking for someone who—if the other numbers and initials also prove to be shorthand for four more killings—is a murderer who was active in the fifties and maybe also in the sixties. And who is in some way linked to Harriet Vanger. I've gone through back issues of the
Hedestad Courier
. Rebecka's murder is the only grotesque crime that I could find with a connection to Hedestad. I want you to keep digging, all over Sweden if necessary, until you make sense of the other names and verses.”

Salander thought in expressionless silence for such a long time that Blomkvist began to grow impatient. He was wondering whether he had chosen the wrong person when she at last raised her head.

“I'll take the job. But first you have to sign a contract with Armansky.”

         

Armansky printed out the contract that Blomkvist would take back to Hedestad for Frode's signature. When he returned to Salander's office, he saw how she and Blomkvist were leaning over her PowerBook. He had his hand on her shoulder—
he was touching her
—and pointing. Armansky paused in the corridor.

Blomkvist said something that seemed to surprise Salander. Then she laughed out loud.

Armansky had never once heard her laugh before, and for years he had been trying to win her trust. Blomkvist had known her for five minutes and she was practically giggling with him. He felt such a loathing for Blomkvist at that moment that he surprised himself. He cleared his throat as he stood in the doorway and put down the folder with the contract.

         

Blomkvist paid a quick visit to the
Millennium
office in the afternoon. It was his first time back. It felt very odd to be running up those familiar stairs. They had not changed the code on the door, and he was able to slip in unnoticed and stand for a moment, looking around.

Millennium
's offices were arranged in an L shape. The entry was a hall that took up a lot of space without being able to be put to much use. There were two sofas there, so it was by way of being a reception area. Beyond was a lunchroom kitchenette, then cloakroom/toilets, and two storage rooms with bookshelves and filing cabinets. There was also a desk for an intern. To the right of the entry was the glass wall of Malm's studio, which took up about 500 square feet, with its own entrance from the landing. To the left was the editorial office, encompassing about 350 square feet, with the windows facing Götgatan.

Berger had designed everything, putting in glass partitions to make separate quarters for three of the employees and an open plan for the others. She had taken the largest room at the very back for herself, and given Blomkvist his own room at the opposite end. It was the only room that you could look into from the entry. No-one had moved into it, it seemed.

The third room was slightly apart from the others, and it was occupied by Sonny Magnusson, who had been for several years
Millennium
's most successful advertising salesman. Berger had handpicked him; she offered him a modest salary and a commission. Over the past year, it had not made any difference how energetic he was as a salesman, their advertising income had taken a beating and Magnusson's income with it. But instead of looking elsewhere, he had tightened his belt and loyally stayed put. Unlike me, who caused the whole landslide, Blomkvist thought.

He gathered his courage and walked into the office. It was almost deserted. He could see Berger at her desk, telephone pressed to her ear. Monika Nilsson was at her desk, an experienced general reporter specialising in political coverage; she could be the most jaded cynic he had ever met. She'd been at
Millennium
for nine years and was thriving. Henry Cortez was the youngest employee on the editorial staff. He had come as an intern straight out of JMK two years ago, saying that he wanted to work at
Millennium
and nowhere else. Berger had no budget to hire him, but she offered him a desk in a corner and soon took him on as a permanent dogsbody, and anon as a staff reporter.

Both uttered cries of delight. He received kisses on the cheek and pats on the back. At once they asked him if he was returning to work. No, he had just stopped by to say hello and have a word with the boss.

Berger was glad to see him. She asked about Vanger's condition. Blomkvist knew no more than what Frode could tell him: his condition was inescapably serious.

“So what are you doing in the city?”

Blomkvist was embarrassed. He had been at Milton Security, only a few streets away, and he had decided on sheer impulse to come in. It seemed too complicated to explain that he had been there to hire a research assistant who was a security consultant who had hacked into his computer. Instead he shrugged and said he had come to Stockholm on Vanger-related business, and he would have to go back north at once. He asked how things were going at the magazine.

“Apart from the good news on the advertising and the subscription fronts, there is one cloud on the horizon.”

“Which is?”

“Janne Dahlman.”

“Of course.”

“I had a talk with him in April, after we released the news that Henrik had become a partner. I don't know if it's just Janne's nature to be negative or if there's something more serious going on, if he's playing some sort of game.”

“What happened?”

“It's nothing I can put a finger on, rather that I no longer trust him. After we signed the agreement with Vanger, Christer and I had to decide whether to inform the whole staff that we were no longer at risk of going under this autumn, or …”

“Or to tell just a chosen few.”

“Exactly. I may be paranoid, but I didn't want to risk having Dahlman leak the story. So we decided to inform the whole staff on the same day the agreement was made public. Which meant that we kept the lid on it for over a month.”

“And?”

“Well, that was the first piece of good news they'd had in a year. Everyone cheered except for Dahlman. I mean—we don't have the world's biggest editorial staff. There were three people cheering, plus the intern, and one person who got his nose out of joint because we hadn't told everybody earlier.”

“He had a point …”

“I know. But the thing is, he kept on bitching about the issue day after day, and morale in the office was affected. After two weeks of this shit I called him into my office and told him to his face that my reason for not having informed the staff earlier was that I didn't trust him to keep the news secret.”

“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.