The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

by Stieg Larsson

Page 17

 

  Blomkvist put on some coffee. She began to object but then sat at the kitchen table, casting a furtive glance out the window.

  "Here comes Henrik with my husband. It looks like some boxes for you. "

  Vanger and Gunnar Nilsson drew up outside with a dolly, and Blomkvist rushed out to greet them and to help carry the four packing crates inside. They set the boxes on the floor next to the stove. Blomkvist got out the coffee cups and cut into Froken Nilsson's sponge cake.

  The Nilssons were pleasant people. They did not seem curious about why Blomkvist was in Hedestad - the fact that he was working for Henrik Vanger was evidently enough of an explanation. Blomkvist observed the interaction between the Nilssons and Vanger, concluding that it was relaxed and lacking in any sort of gulf between master and servants. They talked about the village and the man who had built the guest house where Blomkvist was living. The Nilssons would prompt Vanger when his memory failed him. He, on the other hand, told a funny story about how Nilsson had come home one night to discover the village idiot from across the bridge trying to break a window at the guest house. Nilsson went over to ask the half-witted delinquent why he didn't go in through the unlocked front door. Nilsson inspected Blomkvist's little TV with misgiving and invited him to come across to their house if there was ever a programme he wanted to see.

  Vanger stayed on briefly after the Nilssons left. He thought it best that Blomkvist sort through the files himself, and he could come to the house if he had any problems.

  When he was alone once more, Blomkvist carried the boxes into his office and made an inventory of the contents.

  Vanger's investigation into the disappearance of his brother's granddaughter had been going on for thirty-six years. Blomkvist wondered whether this was an unhealthy obsession or whether, over the years, it had developed into an intellectual game. What was clear was that the old patriarch had tackled the job with the systematic approach of an amateur archaeologist - the material was going to fill twenty feet of shelving.

  The largest section of it consisted of twenty-six binders, which were the copies of the police investigation. Hard to believe an ordinary missing-person case would have produced such comprehensive material. Vanger no doubt had enough clout to keep the Hedestad police following up both plausible and implausible leads.

  Then there were scrapbooks, photograph albums, maps, texts about Hedestad and the Vanger firm, Harriet's diary (though it did not contain many pages), her schoolbooks, medical certificates. There were sixteen bound A4 volumes of one hundred or so pages each, which were Vanger's logbook of the investigations. In these notebooks he had recorded in an impeccable hand his own speculations, theories, digressions. Blomkvist leafed through them. The text had a literary quality, and he had the feeling that these texts were fair copies of perhaps many more notebooks. There were ten binders containing material on members of the Vanger family; these pages were typed and had been compiled over the intervening years, Vanger's investigations of his own family.

  Around 7:00 he heard a loud meowing at the front door. A reddish-brown cat slipped swiftly past him into the warmth.

  "Wise cat," he said.

  The cat sniffed around the guest house for a while. Mikael poured some milk into a dish, and his guest lapped it up. Then the cat hopped on to the kitchen bench and curled up. And there she stayed.

  It was after 10:00 before Blomkvist had the scope of the material clear in his mind and had arranged it on the shelves. He put on a pot of coffee and made himself two sandwiches. He had not eaten a proper meal all day, but he was strangely uninterested in food. He offered the cat a piece of sausage and some liverwurst. After drinking his coffee, he took the cigarettes out of his jacket pocket and opened the pack.

  He checked his mobile. Berger had not called. He tried her once more. Again only her voicemail.

  One of the first steps Blomkvist had taken was to scan in the map of Hedeby Island that he had borrowed from Vanger. While all the names were still fresh in his mind, he wrote down who lived in each house. The Vanger clan consisted of such an extensive cast that it would take time to learn who was who.

  Just before midnight he put on warm clothes and his new shoes and walked across the bridge. He turned off the road and along the sound below the church. Ice had formed on the sound and inside the old harbour, but farther out he could see a darker belt of open water. As he stood there, the lights on the facade of the church went out, and it was dark all around him. It was icy cold and stars filled the sky.

  All of a sudden Blomkvist felt depressed. He could not for the life of him understand how he had allowed Vanger to talk him into taking on this assignment. Berger was right: he should be in Stockholm - in bed with her, for instance - and planning his campaigns against Wennerstrom. But he felt apathetic about that too, and he didn't even have the faintest idea how to begin planning a counter-strategy.

  Had it been daylight, he would have walked straight to Vanger's house, cancelled his contract, and gone home. But from the rise beside the church he could make out all the houses on the island side. Harald Vanger's house was dark, but there were lights on in Cecilia's home, as well as in Martin's villa out by the point and in the house that was leased. In the small-boat harbour there were lights on in the draughty cabin of the artist and little clouds of sparks were rising from his chimney. There were also lights on in the top floor of the cafe, and Blomkvist wondered whether Susanne lived there, and if so, whether she was alone.

  On Sunday morning he awoke in panic at the incredible din that filled the guest house. It took him a second to get his bearings and realise that it was the church bells summoning parishioners to morning service. It was nearly 11:00. He stayed in bed until he heard an urgent meowing in the doorway and got up to let out the cat.

  By noon he had showered and eaten breakfast. He went resolutely into his office and took down the first binder from the police investigation. Then he hesitated. From the gable window he could see Susanne's Bridge Cafe. He stuffed the binder into his shoulder bag and put on his outdoor clothes. When he reached the cafe, he found it brimming with customers, and there he had the answer to a question that had been in the back of his mind: how could a cafe survive in a backwater like Hedeby? Susanne specialised in churchgoers and presumably did coffee and cakes for funerals and other functions.

  He took a walk instead. Konsum was closed on Sundays, and he continued a few hundred yards towards Hedestad, where he bought newspapers at a petrol station. He spent an hour walking around Hedeby, familiarising himself with the town before the bridge. The area closest to the church and past Konsum was the centre, with older buildings - two-storey stone structures which Blomkvist guessed had been built in the 1910s or '20s and which formed a short main street. North of the road into town were well-kept apartment buildings for families with children. Along the water and to the south of the church were mostly single-family homes. Hedeby looked to be a relatively well-to-do area for Hedestad's decision-makers and civil servants.

  When he returned to the bridge, the assault on the cafe had ebbed, but Susanne was still clearing dishes from the tables.

  "The Sunday rush?" he said in greeting.

  She nodded as she tucked a lock of hair behind one ear. "Hi, Mikael. "

  "So you remember my name. "

  "Hard to forget," she said. "I followed your trial on TV. "

  "They have to fill up the news with something," he muttered, and drifted over to the corner table with a view of the bridge. When he met Susanne's eyes, she smiled.

  At 3:00 Susanne announced that she was closing the cafe for the day. After the church rush, only a few customers had come and gone. Blomkvist had read more than a fifth of the first binder of the police investigation. He stuck his notebook into his bag and walked briskly home across the bridge.

  The cat was waiting on the steps. He looked around, wondering whose cat it was. He let it inside all the same, since the
cat was at least some sort of company.

  He made one more vain attempt to reach Berger. Obviously she was furious with him still. He could have tried calling her direct line at the office or her home number, but he had already left enough messages. Instead, he made himself coffee, moved the cat farther along the kitchen bench, and opened the binder on the table.

  He read carefully and slowly, not wanting to miss any detail. By late evening, when he closed the binder, he had filled several pages of his own notebook - with reminders and questions to which he hoped to find answers in subsequent binders. The material was all arranged in chronological order. He could not tell whether Vanger had reorganised it that way or whether that was the system used by the police at the time.

  The first page was a photocopy of a handwritten report form headed Hedestad Police Emergency Centre. The officer who had taken the call had signed his name D. O. Ryttinger, and Blomkvist assumed the "D. O. " stood for "duty officer. " The caller was Henrik Vanger. His address and telephone number had been noted. The report was dated Sunday, September 25, 1966, at 11:14 a. m. The text was laconic:

  Call from Hrk. Vanger, stating that his brother's daughter (?) Harriet Ulrika VANGER, born 15 Jan. 1950 (age 16) has been missing from her home on Hedeby Island since Saturday afternoon. The caller expressed great concern.

  A note sent at 11:20 a. m. stated that P-014 (police car? patrol? pilot of a boat?) had been sent to the site.

  Another at 11:35 a. m. , in a less legible hand than Ryttinger's, inserted that Off. Magnusson reports that bridge to Hedeby Island still blocked. Transp. by boat. In the margin an illegible signature.

  At 12:14 p. m. Ryttinger is back: Telephone conversation Off. Magnusson in H-by confirms that 16-year-old Harriet Vanger missing since early Saturday afternoon. Family expressed great concern. Not believed to have slept in her bed last night. Could not have left island due to blocked bridge. None of family members has any knowledge as to HV's whereabouts.

  At 12:19 p. m. : G. M. informed by telephone about the situation.

  The last note was recorded at 1:42 p. m. : G. M. on site at H-by; will take over the matter.

  The next page revealed that the initials "G. M. " referred to Detective Inspector Gustaf Morell, who arrived at Hedeby Island by boat and there took over command, preparing a formal report on the disappearance of Harriet Vanger. Unlike the initial notations with their needless abbreviations, Morell's reports were written on a typewriter and in very readable prose. The following pages recounted what measures had been taken, with an objectivity and wealth of detail that surprised Blomkvist.

  Morell had first interviewed Henrik Vanger along with Isabella Vanger, Harriet's mother. Then he talked in turn with Ulrika Vanger, Harald Vanger, Greger Vanger, Harriet's brother Martin Vanger, and Anita Vanger. Blomkvist came to the conclusion that these interviews had been conducted according to a scale of decreasing importance.

  Ulrika Vanger was Henrik Vanger's mother, and evidently she held a status comparable to that of a dowager queen. Ulrika lived at the Vanger estate and was able to provide no information. She had gone to bed early on the previous night and had not seen Harriet for several days. She appeared to have insisted on meeting Detective Inspector Morell solely to give air to her opinion that the police had to act at once, immediately.

  Harald Vanger ranked as number two on the list. He had seen Harriet only briefly when she returned from the festivities in Hedestad, but he had not seen her since the accident on the bridge occurred and he had no knowledge of where she might be at present.

  Greger Vanger, brother of Henrik and Harald, stated that he had seen the missing sixteen-year-old in Henrik Vanger's study, asking to speak with Henrik after her visit to Hedestad earlier in the day. Greger Vanger stated that he had not spoken with her himself, merely given her a greeting. He had no idea where she might be found, but he expressed the view that she had probably, thoughtlessly, gone to visit some friend without telling anyone and would reappear soon. When asked how she might in that case have left the island, he offered no answer.

  Martin Vanger was interviewed in a cursory fashion. He was in his final year at the preparatory school in Uppsala, where he lived in the home of Harald Vanger. There was no room for him in Harald's car, so he had taken the train home to Hedeby, arriving so late that he was stranded on the wrong side of the bridge accident and could not cross until late in the evening by boat. He was interviewed in the hope that his sister might have confided in him and perhaps given him some clue if she was thinking of running away. The question was met with protests from Harriet Vanger's mother, but at that moment Inspector Morell was perhaps thinking that Harriet's having run away would be the best they could hope for. But Martin had not spoken with his sister since the summer holiday and had no information of value.

  Anita Vanger, daughter of Harald Vanger, was erroneously listed as Harriet's "first cousin. " She was in her first year at the university in Stockholm and had spent the summer in Hedeby. She was almost the same age as Harriet and they had become close friends. She stated that she had arrived at the island with her father on Saturday and was looking forward to seeing Harriet, but she had not had the opportunity to find her. Anita stated that she felt uneasy, and that it was not like Harriet to go off without telling the family. Henrik and Isabella Vanger confirmed that this was the case.

  While Inspector Morell was interviewing family members, he had told Magnusson and Bergman - patrol 014 - to organise the first search party while there was still daylight. The bridge was still closed to traffic, so it was difficult to call in reinforcements. The group consisted of about thirty available individuals, men and women of varying ages. The areas they searched that afternoon included the unoccupied houses at the fishing harbour, the shoreline at the point and along the sound, the section of woods closest to the village, and the hill called Soderberget behind the fishing harbour. The latter was searched because someone had put forward the theory that Harriet might have gone up there to get a good view of the scene on the bridge. Patrols were also sent out to ostergarden and to Gottfried's cabin on the other side of the island, which Harriet occasionally visited.