The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

by Stieg Larsson

Page 18

 

  But the search was fruitless; it was not called off until long after dark fell, at 10:00 at night. The temperature overnight dropped to freezing.

  During the afternoon Inspector Morell set up his headquarters in a drawing room that Henrik Vanger had put at his disposal on the ground floor of the Vanger estate office. He had undertaken a number of measures.

  In the company of Isabella Vanger, he had examined Harriet's room and tried to ascertain whether anything was missing: clothes, a suitcase, or the like, which would indicate that Harriet had run away from home. Isabella, a note implied, had not been helpful and did not seem to be familiar with her daughter's wardrobe. She often wore jeans, but they all look the same, don't they? Harriet's purse was on her desk. It contained ID, a wallet holding nine kronor and fifty ore, a comb, a mirror, and a handkerchief. After the inspection, Harriet's room was locked.

  Morell had summoned more people to be interviewed, family members and employees. All the interviews were meticulously reported.

  When the participants in the first search party began returning with disheartening reports, the inspector decided that a more systematic search had to be made. That evening and night, reinforcements were called in. Morell contacted, among others, the chairman of Hedestad's Orienteering Club and appealed for help in summoning volunteers for the search party. By midnight he was told that fifty-three members, mostly from the junior division, would be at the Vanger estate at 7:00 the next morning. Henrik Vanger called in part of the morning shift, numbering fifty men, from the paper mill. He also arranged for food and drink for them all.

  Blomkvist could vividly imagine the scenes played out at the Vanger estate during those days. The accident on the bridge had certainly contributed to the confusion during the first hours - by making it difficult to bring in reinforcements, and also because people somehow thought that these two dramatic events happening at the same place and close to the same time must in some way have been connected. When the tanker truck was hoisted away, Inspector Morell went down to the bridge to be sure that Harriet Vanger had not, by some unlikely turn of events, ended up under the wreck. That was the only irrational action that Mikael could detect in the inspector's conduct, since the missing girl had unquestionably been seen on the island after the accident had occurred.

  During those first confused twenty-four hours, their hopes that the situation would come to a swift and happy resolution sank. Instead, they were gradually replaced by two theories. In spite of the obvious difficulties in leaving the island unnoticed, Morell refused to discount the possibility that she had run away. He decided that an all-points bulletin should be sent out for Harriet Vanger, and he gave instructions for the patrol officers in Hedestad to keep their eyes open for the missing girl. He also sent a colleague in the criminal division to interview bus drivers and staff at the railway station, to find out whether anyone might have seen her.

  As the negative reports came in, it became increasingly likely that Harriet Vanger had fallen victim to some sort of misfortune. This theory ended up dominating the investigative work of the following days.

  The big search party two days after her disappearance was apparently, as far as Blomkvist could tell, carried out effectively. Police and firefighters who had experience with similar operations had organised the search. Hedeby Island did have some parts that were almost inaccessible, but it was nevertheless a small area, and the island was searched with a fine-tooth comb in one day. A police boat and two volunteer Pettersson boats did what they could to search the waters around the island.

  On the following day the search was continued with decreased manpower. Patrols were sent out to make a second sweep of the particularly rugged terrain, as well as an area known as "the fortress" - a now-abandoned bunker system that was built during the Second World War. That day they also searched cubbyholes, wells, vegetable cellars, outhouses, and attics in the village.

  A certain frustration could be read in the official notes when the search was called off on the third day after the girl's disappearance. Morell was, of course, not yet aware of it, but at that moment he had actually reached as far in the investigation as he would ever get. He was puzzled and struggled to identify the natural next step or any place where the search ought to be pursued. Harriet Vanger seemed to have dissolved into thin air, and Henrik Vanger's years of torment had begun.

  CHAPTER 9

  Monday, January 6 - Wednesday, January 8

  Blomkvist kept reading until the small hours and did not get up until late on Epiphany Day. A navy blue, late-model Volvo was parked outside Vanger's house. Even as he reached for the door handle, the door was opened by a man on his way out. They almost collided. The man seemed to be in a hurry.

  "Yes? Can I help you?"

  "I'm here to see Henrik Vanger," Blomkvist said.

  The man's eyes brightened. He smiled and stuck out his hand. "You must be Mikael Blomkvist, the one who's going to help Henrik with the family chronicle, right?"

  They shook hands. Vanger had apparently begun spreading Blomkvist's cover story. The man was overweight - the result, no doubt, of too many years of negotiating in offices and conference rooms - but Blomkvist noticed at once the likeness, the similarity between his face and Harriet Vanger's.

  "I'm Martin Vanger," the man said. "Welcome to Hedestad. "

  "Thank you. "

  "I saw you on TV a while ago. "

  "Everybody seems to have seen me on TV. "

  "Wennerstrom is. . . not very popular in this house. "

  "Henrik mentioned that. I'm waiting to hear the rest of the story. "

  "He told me a few days ago that he'd hired you. " Martin Vanger laughed. "He said it was probably because of Wennerstrom that you took the job up here. "

  Blomkvist hesitated before deciding to tell the truth. "That was one important reason. But to be honest, I needed to get away from Stockholm, and Hedestad cropped up at the right moment. At least I think so. I can't pretend that the court case never happened. And anyway, I'm going to have to go to prison. "

  Martin Vanger nodded, suddenly serious. "Can you appeal?"

  "It won't do any good. "

  Vanger glanced at his watch.

  "I have to be in Stockholm tonight, so I must hurry away. I'll be back in a few days. Come over and have dinner. I'd really like to hear what actually went on during that trial. Henrik is upstairs. Go right in. "

  Vanger was sitting on a sofa in his office where he had the Hedestad Courier, Dagens Industri, Svenska Dagbladet, and both national evening papers on the coffee table.

  "I ran into Martin outside. "

  "Rushing off to save the empire," Vanger said. "Coffee?"

  "Yes, please. " Blomkvist sat down, wondering why Vanger looked so amused.

  "You're mentioned in the paper. "

  Vanger shoved across one of the evening papers, open at a page with the headline "Media Short Circuit. " The article was written by a columnist who had previously worked for Monopoly Financial Magazine, making a name for himself as one who cheerfully ridiculed everyone who felt passionate about any issue or who stuck their neck out. Feminists, antiracists, and environmental activists could all reckon on receiving their share. The writer was not known for espousing a single conviction of his own. Now, several weeks after the trial in the Wennerstrom affair, he was bringing his fire to bear on Mikael Blomkvist, whom he described as a complete idiot. Erika Berger was portrayed as an incompetent media bimbo:

  A rumour is circulating that Millennium is on the verge of collapse in spite of the fact that the editor in chief is a feminist who wears mini-skirts and pouts her lips on TV. For several years the magazine has survived on the image that has been successfully marketed by the editors - young reporters who undertake investigative journalism and expose the scoundrels of the business world. This advertising trick may work with young anarchists who want to hear just such a message, but it doesn't wash in the
district court. As Kalle Blomkvist recently found out.

  Blomkvist switched on his mobile and checked to see if he had any calls from Berger. There were no messages. Vanger waited without saying anything. Blomkvist realised that the old man was allowing him to break the silence.

  "He's a moron," Blomkvist said.

  Vanger laughed, but he said: "That may be. But he's not the one who was sentenced by the court. "

  "That's true. And he never will be. He never says anything original; he always just jumps on the bandwagon and casts the final stone in the most damaging terms he can get away with. "

  "I've had many enemies over the years. If there's one thing I've learned, it's never engage in a fight you're sure to lose. On the other hand, never let anyone who has insulted you get away with it. Bide your time and strike back when you're in a position of strength - even if you no longer need to strike back. "

  "Thank you for your wisdom, Henrik. Now I'd like you to tell me about your family. " He set the tape recorder between them on the table and pressed the record button.

  "What do you want to know?"

  "I've read through the first binder, about the disappearance and the searches, but there are so many Vangers mentioned that I need your help identifying them all. "

  For nearly ten minutes Salander stood in the empty hall with her eyes fixed on the brass plaque that said "Advokat N. E. Bjurman" before she rang the bell. The lock on the entry door clicked.

  It was Tuesday. It was their second meeting, and she had a bad feeling about it.

  She was not afraid of Bjurman - Salander was rarely afraid of anyone or anything. On the other hand, she felt uncomfortable with this new guardian. His predecessor, Advokat Holger Palmgren, had been of an entirely different ilk: courteous and kind. But three months ago Palmgren had had a stroke, and Nils Erik Bjurman had inherited her in accordance with some bureaucratic pecking order.

  In the twelve years that Salander had been under social and psychiatric guardianship, two of those years in a children's clinic, she had never once given the same answer to the simple question: "So, how are you today?"

  When she turned thirteen, the court had decided, under laws governing the guardianship of minors, that she should be entrusted to the locked ward at St. Stefan's Psychiatric Clinic for Children in Uppsala. The decision was primarily based on the fact that she was deemed to be emotionally disturbed and dangerously violent towards her classmates and possibly towards herself.

  All attempts by a teacher or any authority figure to initiate a conversation with the girl about her feelings, emotional life, or the state of her health were met, to their great frustration, with a sullen silence and a great deal of intense staring at the floor, ceiling, and walls. She would fold her arms and refuse to participate in any psychological tests. Her resistance to all attempts to measure, weigh, chart, analyse, or educate her applied also to her school work - the authorities could have her carried to a classroom and could chain her to the bench, but they could not stop her from closing her ears and refusing to lift a pen to write anything. She completed the nine years of compulsory schooling without a certificate.

  This had consequently become associated with the great difficulty of even diagnosing her mental deficiencies. In short, Lisbeth Salander was anything but easy to handle.

  By the time she was thirteen, it was also decided that a trustee should be assigned to take care of her interests and assets until she came of age. This trustee was Advokat Palmgren who, in spite of a rather difficult start, had succeeded where psychiatrists and doctors had failed. Gradually he won not only a certain amount of trust but also a modest amount of warmth from the girl.

  When she turned fifteen, the doctors had more or less agreed that she was not, after all, dangerously violent, nor did she represent any immediate danger to herself. Her family had been categorised as dysfunctional, and she had no relatives who could look after her welfare, so it was decided that Lisbeth Salander should be released from the psychiatric clinic for children in Uppsala and eased back into society by way of a foster family.

  That had not been an easy journey. She ran away from the first foster family after only two weeks. The second and third foster families fell by the wayside in quick succession. At that point Palmgren had a serious discussion with her, explaining bluntly that if she persisted on this path she would be institutionalised again. This threat had the effect that she accepted foster family number four - an elderly couple who lived in Midsommarkransen.

  But it did not mean, however, that she behaved herself. At the age of seventeen, Salander was arrested by the police on four occasions; twice she was so intoxicated that she ended up in the emergency room, and once she was plainly under the influence of narcotics. On one of these occasions she was found dead drunk, with her clothes in disarray, in the back seat of a car parked at Soder Malarstrand. She was with an equally drunk and much older man.

  The last arrest occurred three weeks before her eighteenth birthday, when she, perfectly sober, kicked a male passenger in the head inside the gates of the Gamla Stan tunnelbana station. She was charged with assault and battery. Salander claimed that the man had groped her, and her testimony was supported by witnesses. The prosecutor dismissed the case. But her background was such that the district court ordered a psychiatric evaluation. Since she refused, as was her custom, to answer any questions or to participate in the examinations, the doctors consulted by the National Board of Health and Welfare handed down an opinion based on "observations of the patient. " It was unclear precisely what could be observed when it was a matter of a silent young woman sitting on a chair with her arms folded and her lower lip stuck out. The only determination made was that she must suffer from some kind of emotional disturbance, whose nature was of the sort that could not be left untreated. The medical/legal report recommended care in a closed psychiatric institution. An assistant head of the social welfare board wrote an opinion in support of the conclusions of the psychiatric experts.