“I presume the family chronicle has now reached the chapter about Harriet.”
“I just want to take a look…”
Martin came back with the key in a minute.
“Is it OK then?”
“As far as I’m concerned, you can move in there if you want. Except for the fact that it’s stuck right at the other end of the island, it’s actually a nicer spot than the cottage you’re in.”
Blomkvist made coffee and sandwiches. He filled a bottle with water before he set off, stuffing his picnic lunch in a rucksack he slung over one shoulder. He followed a narrow, partially overgrown path that ran along the bay on the north side of Hedeby Island. Gottfried’s cabin was on a point about one and a half miles from the village, and it took him only half an hour to cover the distance at a leisurely pace.
Martin Vanger had been right. When Blomkvist came around the bend of the narrow path, a shaded area by the water opened up. There was a marvellous view of the inlet to the Hede River, Hedestad marina to the left, and the industrial harbour to the right.
He was surprised that no-one had wanted to move into Gottfried’s cabin. It was a rustic structure made of horizontal dark-stained timber with a tile roof and green frames, and with a small porch at the front door. The maintenance of the cabin had been neglected. The paint around the doors and windows was flaking off, and what should have been a lawn was scrub a yard high. Clearing it would take one whole day’s hard work with scythe and saw.
Blomkvist unlocked the door and unscrewed the shutters over the windows from the inside. The framework seemed to be an old barn of less than 1,300 square feet. The inside was finished with planks and consisted of one room with big windows facing the water on either side of the front door. A staircase led to an open sleeping loft at the rear of the cabin that covered half the space. Beneath the stairs was a niche with a propane gas stove, a counter, and a sink. The furnishings were basic; built into the wall to the left of the door there was bench, a rickety desk, and above it a bookcase with teak shelves. Farther down on the same side was a broad wardrobe. To the right of the door was a round table with five wooden chairs; a fireplace stood in the middle of the side wall.
The cabin had no electricity; instead there were several kerosene lamps. In one window was an old Grundig transistor radio. The antenna was broken off. Blomkvist pressed the power button but the batteries were dead.
He went up the narrow stairs and looked around the sleeping loft. There was a double bed with a bare mattress, a bedside table, and a chest of drawers.
Blomkvist spent a while searching through the cabin. The bureau was empty except for some hand towels and linen smelling faintly of mould. In the wardrobe there were some work clothes, a pair of overalls, rubber boots, a pair of worn tennis shoes, and a kerosene stove. In the desk drawers were writing paper, pencils, a blank sketchpad, a deck of cards, and some bookmarks. The kitchen cupboard contained plates, mugs, glasses, candles, and some packages of salt, tea bags, and the like. In a drawer in the table there were eating utensils.
He found the only traces of any intellectual interests on the bookcase above the desk. Mikael brought over a chair and got up on it to see what was on the shelves. On the lowest shelf lay issues of Se, [domain], Tidsf?rdriv, and Lektyr from the late fifties and early sixties. There were several Bildjournalen from 1965 and 1966, Matt Livs Novell, and a few comic books: The 91, Phantomen, and Romans. He opened a copy of Lektyr from 1964 and smiled to see how chaste the pin-up was.
Of the books, about half were mystery paperbacks from Wahlstr?m’s Manhattan series: Mickey Spillane with titles like Kiss Me, Deadly with the classic covers by Bertil Hegland. He found half a dozen Kitty books, some Famous Five novels by Enid Blyton, and a Twin Mystery by Sivar Ahlrud—The Metro Mystery. He smiled in recognition. Three books by Astrid Lindgren: The Children of Noisy Village, Kalle Blomkvist and Rasmus, and Pippi Longstocking. The top shelf had a book about short-wave radio, two books on astronomy, a bird guidebook, a book called The Evil Empire on the Soviet Union, a book on the Finnish Winter War, Luther’s catechism, the Book of Hymns, and the Bible.
He opened the Bible and read on the inside cover: Harriet Vanger, May 12, 1963. It was her Confirmation Bible. He sadly put it back on the shelf.
Behind the cabin there were a wood and tool shed with a scythe, rake, hammer, and a big box with saws, planes, and other tools. He took a chair on to the porch and poured coffee from his thermos. He lit a cigarette and looked across Hedestad Bay through the veil of undergrowth.
Gottfried’s cabin was much more modest than he had expected. Here was the place to which Harriet and Martin’s father had retreated when his marriage to Isabella was going to the dogs in the late fifties. He had made this cabin his home and here he got drunk. And down there, near the wharf, he had drowned. Life at the cabin had probably been pleasant in the summer, but when the temperature dropped to freezing it must have been raw and wretched. According to what Vanger told him, Gottfried continued to work in the Vanger Corporation—interrupted by periods when he was on wild binges—until 1964. The fact that he was able to live in the cabin more or less permanently and still appear for work shaven, washed, and in a jacket and tie spoke of a surviving personal discipline.
And here was also the place that Harriet had been to so often that it was one of the first in which they looked for her. Vanger had told him that during her last year, Harriet had gone often to the cabin, apparently to be in peace on weekends or holidays. In her last summer she had lived here for three months, though she came into the village every day. Anita Vanger, Cecilia’s sister, spent six weeks with her here.
What had she done out here all alone? The magazines Mitt Livs Novell and Romans, as well as a number of books about Kitty, must have been hers. Perhaps the sketchpad had been hers. And her Bible was here.
She had wanted to be close to her lost father—was it a period of mourning she needed to get through? Or did it have to do with her religious brooding? The cabin was spartan—was she pretending to live in a convent?
?
Blomkvist followed the shoreline to the southeast, but the way was so interrupted by ravines and so grown over with juniper shrubs that it was all but impassable. He went back to the cabin and started back on the road to Hedeby. According to the map there was a path through the woods to something called the Fortress. It took him twenty minutes to find it in the overgrown scrub. The Fortress was what remained of the shoreline defence from the Second World War; concrete bunkers with trenches spread out around a command building. Everything was overrun with long grass and scrub.
He walked down a path to a boathouse. Next to the boathouse he found the wreck of a Pettersson boat. He returned to the Fortress and took a path up to a fence—he had come to ?sterg?rden from the other side.
He followed the meandering path through the woods, roughly parallel to the fields of ?sterg?rden. The path was difficult to negotiate—there were patches of marsh that he had to skirt. Finally he came to a swamp and beyond it a barn. As far as he could see the path ended there, a hundred yards from the road to ?sterg?rden.
Beyond the road lay the hill, S?derberget. Blomkvist walked up a steep slope and had to climb the last bit. S?derberget’s summit was an almost vertical cliff facing the water. He followed the ridge back towards Hedeby. He stopped above the summer cottages to enjoy the view of the old fishing harbour and the church and his own cottage. He sat on a flat rock and poured himself the last of the lukewarm coffee.
Cecilia Vanger kept her distance. Blomkvist did not want to be importunate, so he waited a week before he went to her house. She let him in.
“You must think I’m quite foolish, a fifty-six-year-old, respectable headmistress acting like a teenage girl.”
“Cecilia, you’re a grown woman. You have the right to do whatever you want.”
“I know and that’s why I’ve decided not to see you any more. I can’t stand…”
“Please, you don’t owe me an explanation. I hope we’re still friends.”
“I would like for us to remain friends. But I can’t deal with a relationship with you. I haven’t ever been good at relationships. I’d like it if you would leave me in peace for a while.”
?
CHAPTER 16
Sunday, June 1–Tuesday, June 10
After six months of fruitless cogitation, the case of Harriet Vanger cracked open. In the first week of June, Blomkvist uncovered three totally new pieces of the puzzle. Two of them he found himself. The third he had help with.
After Berger’s visit in May, he had studied the album again, sitting for three hours, looking at one photograph after another, as he tried to rediscover what it was that he had reacted to. He failed again, so he put the album aside and went back to work on the family chronicle instead.
One day in June he was in Hedestad, thinking about something altogether different, when his bus turned on to J?rnv?gsgatan and it suddenly came to him what had been germinating in the back of his mind. The insight struck him like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky. He felt so confused that he stayed on the bus all the way to the last stop by the railway station. There he took the first bus back to Hedeby to check whether he had remembered correctly.
It was the first photograph in the album, the last picture taken of Harriet Vanger on that fateful day on J?rnv?gsgatan in Hedestad, while she had been watching the Children’s Day parade.
The photograph was an odd one to have included in the album. It was put there because it was taken the same day, but it was the only one of the photographs not of the accident on the bridge. Each time Blomkvist and (he supposed) everyone else had looked at the album, it was the people and the details in the pictures of the bridge that had captured their attention. There was no drama in the picture of a crowd at the Children’s Day parade, several hours earlier.
Vanger must have looked at the photograph a thousand times, a sorrowful reminder that he would never see her again.
But that was not what Blomkvist had reacted to.
It was taken from across the street, probably from a first-floor window. The wide-angle lens had caught the front of one of the floats. On the flatbed were women wearing glittering bathing suits and harem trousers, throwing sweets to the crowd. Some of them were dancing. Three clowns were jumping about in front of the float.
Harriet was in the front row of the crowd standing on the pavement. Next to her were three girls, clearly her classmates, and around and behind them were at least a hundred other spectators.
This is what Blomkvist had noticed subconsciously and which suddenly rose to the surface when the bus passed the exact same spot.
The crowd behaved as an audience should. Their eyes always follow the ball in a tennis match or the puck in an ice hockey rink. The ones standing at the far left of the photograph were looking at the clowns right in front of them. The ones closer to the float were all looking at the scantily clad girls. The expressions on their faces were calm. Children pointed. Some were laughing. Everyone looked happy.
All except one.
Harriet Vanger was looking off to the side. Her three friends and everyone else in her vicinity were looking at the clowns. Harriet’s face was turned almost 30° to 35° to her right. Her gaze seemed fixed on something across the street, but beyond the left-hand edge of the photograph.
Mikael took the magnifying glass and tried to make out the details. The photograph was taken from too great a distance for him to be entirely sure, but unlike all those around her, Harriet’s face lacked excitement. Her mouth was a thin line. Her eyes were wide open. Her hands hung limply at her sides. She looked frightened. Frightened or furious.
?
Mikael took the print out of the album, put it in a stiff plastic binder, and went to wait for the next bus back into Hedestad. He got off at J?rnv?gsgatan and stood under the window from which the picture must have been taken. It was at the edge of what constituted Hedestad’s town centre. It was a two-storey wooden building that housed a video store and Sundstr?m’s Haberdashery, established in 1932 according to a plaque on the front door. He went in and saw that the shop was on two levels; a spiral staircase led to the upper floor.
