wednesday, june 18
salander awoke with a start from a dreamless slumber. she felt faintly sick. she did not have to turn her head to know that mimmi had left already for work, but her scent still lingered in the stuffy air of the bedroom. salander had drunk too many beers the night before with the evil fingers at the mill. mimmi had turned up not long before closing time and come home with her and into bed.
salander—unlike mimmi—had never thought of herself as a lesbian. she had never brooded over whether she was straight, gay, or even bisexual. she did not give a damn about labels, did not see that it was anyone else’s business whom she spent her nights with. if she had to choose, she preferred guys—and they were in the lead, statistically speaking. the only problem was finding a guy who was not a jerk and one who was also good in bed; mimmi was a sweet compromise, and she turned salander on. they had met in a beer tent at the pride festival a year ago, and mimmi was the only person that salander had introduced to the evil fingers. but it was still just a casual affair for both of them. it was nice lying close to mimmi’s warm, soft body, and salander did not mind waking up with her and their having breakfast together.
her clock said it was 9:30, and she was wondering what could have woken her when the doorbell rang again. she sat up in surprise. no-one had ever rung her doorbell at this hour. very few people rang her doorbell at all. she wrapped a sheet around her and walked unsteadily to the hall to open the door. she stared straight into the eyes of mikael blomkvist, felt panic race through her body, and took a step back.
“good morning, fr?ken salander,” he greeted her cheerfully. “it was a late night, i see. can i come in?”
without waiting for an answer, he walked in, closing the door behind him. he regarded with curiosity the pile of clothes on the hall floor and the rampart of bags filled with newspapers; then he peered through the bedroom door while salander’s world started spinning in the wrong direction. how? what? who? blomkvist looked at her bewilderment with amusement.
“i assumed that you would not have had breakfast yet, so i brought some filled bagels with me. i got one with roast beef, one with turkey and dijon mustard, and one vegetarian with avocado, not knowing your preference.” he marched into her kitchen and started rinsing her coffeemaker. “where do you keep coffee?” he said. salander stood in the hall as if frozen until she heard the water running out of the tap. she took three quick strides.
“stop! stop at once!” she realised that she was shouting and lowered her voice. “damn it all, you can’t come barging in here as if you owned the place. we don’t even know each other.”
blomkvist paused, holding a jug and turned to look at her.
“wrong! you know me better than almost anyone else does. isn’t that so?”
he turned his back on her and poured the water into the machine. then he started opening her cupboards in search of coffee. “speaking of which, i know how you do it. i know your secrets.”
salander shut her eyes, wishing that the floor would stop pitching under her feet. she was in a state of mental paralysis. she was hung over. this situation was unreal, and her brain was refusing to function. never had she met one of her subjects face to face. he knows where i live! he was standing in her kitchen. this was impossible. it was outrageous. he knows who i am!
she felt the sheet slipping, and she pulled it tighter around her. he said something, but at first she didn’t understand him. “we have to talk,” he said again. “but i think you’d better take a shower first.”
she tried to speak sensibly. “you listen to me—if you’re thinking of making trouble, i’m not the one you should be talking to. i was just doing a job. you should talk to my boss.”
he held up his hands. a universal sign of peace, or i have no weapon.
“i’ve already talked to armansky. by the way, he wants you to ring him—you didn’t answer his call last night.”
she did not sense any threat, but she still stepped back a pace when he came closer, took her arm and escorted her to the bathroom door. she disliked having anyone touch her without her leave.
“i don’t want to make trouble,” he said. “but i’m quite anxious to talk to you. after you’re awake, that is. the coffee will be ready by the time you put on some clothes. first, a shower. vamoose!”
passively she obeyed. lisbeth salander is never passive, she thought.
she leaned against the bathroom door and struggled to collect her thoughts. she was more shaken than she would have thought possible. gradually she realised that a shower was not only good advice but a necessity after the tumult of the night. when she was done, she slipped into her bedroom and put on jeans, and a t-shirt with the slogan armageddon was yesterday—today we have a serious problem.
after pausing for a second, she searched through her leather jacket that was slung over a chair. she took the taser out of the pocket, checked to see that it was loaded, and stuck it in the back pocket of her jeans. the smell of coffee was spreading through the apartment. she took a deep breath and went back to the kitchen.
“do you never clean up?” he said.
he had filled the sink with dirty dishes and ashtrays; he had put the old milk cartons into a rubbish sack and cleared the table of five weeks of newspapers; he had washed the table clean and put out mugs and—he wasn’t joking after all—bagels. ok, let’s see where this is heading. she sat down opposite him.
“you didn’t answer my question. roast beef, turkey, or vegetarian?”
“roast beef.”
“then i’ll take the turkey.”
they ate in silence, scrutinising each other. when she finished her bagel, she also ate half of the vegetarian one. she picked up a crumpled pack of cigarettes from the windowsill and dug one out.
he broke the silence. “i may not be as good as you at investigations, but at least i’ve found out that you’re not a vegetarian or—as herr frode thought—anorexic. i’ll include that information in my report.”
salander stared at him, but he looked so amused that she gave him a crooked smile. the situation was beyond all rhyme or reason. she sipped her coffee. he had kind eyes. she decided that whatever else he might be, he did not seem to be a malicious person. and there was nothing in the pi she had done that would indicate he was a vicious bastard who abused his girlfriends or anything like that. she reminded herself that she was the one who knew everything. knowledge is power.
“what are you grinning at?” she said.
“i’m sorry. i had not in fact planned to make my entrance in this way. i didn’t mean to alarm you. but you should have seen your face when you opened the door. it was priceless.”
silence. to her surprise, salander found his uninvited intrusion acceptable—well, at least not unpleasant.
“you’ll have to think of it as my revenge for your poking around in my personal life,” he said. “are you frightened?”
“not the least bit,” salander said.
“good. i’m not here to make trouble for you.”
“if you even try to hurt me i’ll have to do you an injury. you’ll be sorry.”
blomkvist studied her. she was barely four foot eleven and did not look as though she could put up much resistance if he were an assailant who had forced his way into her apartment. but her eyes were expressionless and calm.
“well, that won’t be necessary,” he said at last. “i only need to talk to you. if you want me to leave, all you have to do is say so. it’s funny but…oh, nothing…”
“what?”
“this may sound crazy, but four days ago i didn’t even know you existed. then i read your analysis of me.” he searched through his shoulder bag and brought out the report. “it was not entertaining reading.”
he looked out of the kitchen window for a while. “could i bum a cigarette?” she slid the pack across the table.
“you said before that we don’t know each other, and i said that yes, we do.” he pointed at the report. “i can’t compete with you. i’ve only done a rapid routine check, to get your address and date of birth, stuff like that. but you certainly know a great deal about me. much of which is private, dammit, things that only my closest friends know. and now here i am, sitting in your kitchen and eating bagels with you. we have known each other half an hour, but i have the feeling that we’ve been friends for years. does that make sense to you?”
she nodded.
“you have beautiful eyes,” he said.
“you have nice eyes yourself,” she said.
long silence.
“why are you here?” she said.
kalle blomkvist—she remembered his nickname and suppressed the impulse to say it out loud—suddenly looked serious. he also looked very tired. the self-confidence that he had shown when he first walked into her apartment was now gone. the clowning was over, or at least had been put aside. she felt him studying her closely.
salander felt that her composure was barely skin-deep and that she really wasn’t in complete control of her nerves. this totally unlooked-for visit had shaken her in a way that she had never experienced in connection with her work. her bread and butter was spying on people. in fact she had never thought of what she did for armansky as a real job; she thought of it more as a complicated pastime, a sort of hobby.
the truth was that she enjoyed digging into the lives of other people and exposing the secrets they were trying to hide. she had been doing it, in one form or another, for as long as she could remember. and she was still doing it today, not only when armansky gave her an assignment, but sometimes for the sheer fun of it. it gave her a kick. it was like a complicated computer game, except that it dealt with real live people. and now one of her hobbies was sitting right here in her kitchen, feeding her bagels. it was totally absurd.
“i have a fascinating problem,” blomkvist said. “tell me this, when you were doing your research on me for herr frode, did you have any idea what it was going to be used for?”
“no.”
“the purpose was to find out all that information about me because frode, or rather his employer, wanted to give me a freelance job.”
“i see.”
he gave her a faint smile.
“one of these days you and i should have a discussion about the ethics of snooping into other people’s lives. but right now i have a different problem. the job i was offered, and which inexplicably i agreed to do, is without doubt the most bizarre assignment i’ve ever undertaken. before i say more i need to be able to trust you, lisbeth.”
“what do you mean?”
“armansky tells me you’re 100 percent reliable. but i still want to ask you the question. can i tell you confidential things without your telling them to anyone else, by any means, ever?”
“wait a minute. you’ve talked to dragan? is he the one who sent you here?” i’m going to kill you, you fucking stupid armenian.
“not exactly. you’re not the only one who can find out someone’s address; i did that all on my own. i looked you up in the national registry. there are three lisbeth salanders, and the other two weren’t a good match. but i had a long talk with armansky yesterday. he too thought that i wanted to make trouble over your ferreting around in my private life. in the end i convinced him that i had a legitimate purpose.”
“which is what?”
“as i told you, frode’s employer hired me to do a job. i’ve reached a point where i need a skilled researcher. frode told me about you and said that you were pretty good. he hadn’t meant to identify you, it just slipped out. i explained to armansky what i wanted. he ok’d the whole thing and tried to call you. and here i am. call him if you want.”
it took salander a minute to find her mobile among the clothes that mimmi had pulled off her. blomkvist watched her embarrassed search with interest as he patrolled the apartment. all her furniture seemed to be strays. she had a state-of-the-art powerbook on an apology for a desk in the living room. she had a cd player on a shelf. her cd collection was a pitiful total of ten cds by groups he had never heard of, and the musicians on the covers looked like vampires from outer space. music was probably not her big interest.
salander saw that armansky had called her seven times the night before and twice this morning. she punched in his number while blomkvist leaned against the door frame and listened to the conversation.
“it’s me…sorry…yes…it was turned off…i know, he wants to hire me…no, he’s standing in the middle of my fucking living room, for christ’s sake…” she raised her voice. “dragan, i’m hung over and my head hurts, so please, no games, did you ok this job or not?…thanks.”
salander looked through the door to the living room at blomkvist pulling out cds and taking books off the bookshelf. he had just found a brown pill bottle that was missing its label, and he was holding it up to the light. he was about to unscrew the top, so she reached out and took the bottle from him. she went back to the kitchen and sat down on a chair, massaging her forehead until he joined her.
“the rules are simple,” she said. “nothing that you discuss with me or with armansky will be shared with anyone at all. there will be a contract which states that milton security pledges confidentiality. i want to know what the job is about before i decide whether i want to work for you or not. that also means that i agree to keep to myself everything you tell me, whether i take the job or not, provided that you’re not conducting any sort of serious criminal activity. in which case, i’ll report it to dragan, who in turn will report it to the police.”
“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 g?tgatan.
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 wennerstr?m. 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 wennerstr?m. 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.
armansky assured him that she was their very best researcher, and her report on him was excruciatingly thorough. a strange girl.
salander was sitting at her powerbook, but she was thinking about mikael blomkvist. she had never in her adult life allowed anyone to cross her threshold without an express invitation, and she could count those she had invited on one hand. blomkvist had nonchalantly barged into her life, and she had uttered only a few lame protests.
not only that, he had teased her.
under normal circumstances that sort of behaviour would have made her mentally cock a pistol. but she had not felt an iota of threat or any sort of hostility from his side. he had good reason to read her the riot act, even report her to the police. instead he had treated even her hacking into his computer as a joke.
that had been the most sensitive part of their conversation. blomkvist seemed to be deliberately not broaching the subject, and finally she could not help asking the question.
“you said that you knew what i did.”
“you’ve been inside my computer. you’re a hacker.”
“how do you know that?” salander was absolutely positive that she had left no traces and that her trespassing could not be discovered by anyone unless a top security consultant sat down and scanned the hard drive at the same time as she was accessing the computer.
“you made a mistake.”
she had quoted from a text that was only on his computer.
salander sat in silence. finally she looked up at him, her eyes expressionless.
“how did you do it?” he asked.
“my secret. what are you thinking of doing about it?”
mikael shrugged.
“what can i do?”
“it’s exactly what you do as a journalist.”
“of course. and that’s why we journalists have an ethics committee that keeps track of the moral issues. when i write an article about some bastard in the banking industry, i leave out, for instance, his or her private life. i don’t say that a forger is a lesbian or gets turned on by having sex with her dog or anything like that, even if it happens to be true. bastards too have a right to their private lives. does that make sense?”
“yes.”
“so you encroached on my integrity. my employer doesn’t need to know who i have sex with. that’s my business.”
salander’s face was creased by a crooked smile.
“you think i shouldn’t have mentioned that?”
“in my case it didn’t make a lot of difference. half the city knows about my relationship with erika. but it’s a matter of principle.”
“in that case, it might amuse you to know that i also have principles comparable to your ethics committee’s. i call them salander’s principles. one of them is that a bastard is always a bastard, and if i can hurt a bastard by digging up shit about him, then he deserves it.”
“ok,” blomkvist said. “my reasoning isn’t too different from yours, but…”
“but the thing is that when i do a pi, i also look at what i think about the person. i’m not neutral. if the person seems like a good sort, i might tone down my report.”
“really?”
“in your case i toned it down. i could have written a book about your sex life. i could have mentioned to frode that erika berger has a past in club xtreme and played around with bdsm in the eighties—which would have prompted certain unavoidable notions about your sex life and hers.”
blomkvist met salander’s gaze. after a moment he laughed.
“you’re really meticulous, aren’t you? why didn’t you put it in the report?”
“you are adults who obviously like each other. what you do in bed is nobody’s business, and the only thing i would have achieved by talking about her was to hurt both of you, or to provide someone with blackmail material. i don’t know frode—the information could have ended up with wennerstr?m.”
“and you don’t want to provide wennerstr?m with information?”
“if i had to choose between you and him, i’d probably end up in your court.”
“erika and i have a…our relationship is…”
“please, i really don’t give a toss about what sort of relationship you have. but you haven’t answered my question: what do you plan to do about my hacking into your computer?”
“lisbeth, i’m not here to blackmail you. i’m here to ask you to help me do some research. you can say yes or no. if you say no, fine, i’ll find someone else and you’ll never hear from me again.”
