“That’s a surprise.”
“For me too. I found out last night.”
They looked at each other for a few seconds. Then the old man surprised Blomkvist by throwing his arms around him and giving him a bear hug.
“I was just about to eat. Join me.”
Anna produced a great quantity of bacon pancakes with lingonberries. They sat there in the dining room and talked for almost two hours. Blomkvist told him about how far he had got with the family chronicle, and where there were holes and gaps. They did not talk at all about Harriet, but Vanger told him all about Millennium.
“We had a board meeting. Fr?ken Berger and your partner Malm were kind enough to move two of the meetings up here, while Dirch stood in for me at a meeting in Stockholm. I really wish I were a few years younger, but the truth is that it’s too tiring for me to travel so far. I’ll try to get down there during the summer.”
“No reason not to hold the meetings up here,” Blomkvist said. “So how does it feel to be a part owner of the magazine?”
Vanger gave him a wry smile.
“It’s actually the most fun I’ve had in years. I’ve taken a look at the finances, and they look pretty fair. I won’t have to put up as much money as I thought—the gap between income and expenses is dwindling.”
“I talked with Erika this week. She says that advertising revenue has perked up.”
“It’s starting to turn around, yes, but it’ll take time. At first the companies in the Vanger Corporation went in and bought up a bunch of fullpage ads. But two former advertisers—mobile telephones and a travel bureau—have come back.” He smiled broadly. “We’re also doing a little more one-to-one hustling among Wennerstr?m’s enemies. And, believe me, there’s a long list.”
“Have you heard directly from Wennerstr?m?”
“Well, not really. But we leaked a story that Wennerstr?m is organising the boycott of Millennium. That must have made him look petty. A reporter at DN is said to have reached him and got a surly reply.”
“You are enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“Enjoy isn’t the word. I should have devoted myself to this years ago.”
“What is it between you and Wennerstr?m, anyway?”
“Don’t even try. You’ll find out at the end of your year.”
When Blomkvist left Vanger around 9:00 there was a distinct feeling of spring in the air. It was dark outside and he hesitated for a moment. Then he made his familiar circuit and knocked on the door of Cecilia Vanger’s house.
He wasn’t sure what he expected. Cecilia opened her eyes wide and instantly looked uncomfortable as she let him into the hall. They stood there, suddenly unsure of each other. She too asked if he had escaped, and he explained the situation.
“I just wanted to say hello. Am I interrupting something?”
She avoided his eyes. Mikael could sense at once that she wasn’t particularly glad to see him.
“No…no, come in. Would you like some coffee?”
“I would.”
He followed her into the kitchen. She stood with her back to him as she filled the coffeemaker with water. He put a hand on her shoulder, and she stiffened.
“Cecilia, you don’t look as if you want to give me coffee.”
“I wasn’t expecting you for another month,” she said. “You surprised me.”
He turned her around so that he could see her face. They stood in silence for a moment. She still would not look him in the eye.
“Cecilia. Forget about the coffee. What’s going on?”
She shook her head and took a deep breath.
“Mikael, I’d like you to leave. Don’t ask. Just leave.”
?
Mikael first walked back to the cottage, but paused at the gate, undecided. Instead of going in he went down to the water by the bridge and sat on a rock. He smoked a cigarette while he sorted out his thoughts and wondered what could have so dramatically changed Cecilia Vanger’s attitude towards him.
He suddenly heard the sound of an engine and saw a big white boat slip into the sound beneath the bridge. When it passed, Mikael saw that it was Martin Vanger standing at the wheel, with his gaze focused on avoiding sunken rocks in the water. The boat was a forty-foot motor cruiser—an impressive bundle of power. He stood up and took the beach path. He discovered that several boats were already in the water at various docks, a mixture of motorboats and sailing boats. There were several Pettersson boats, and at one dock an IF-class yacht was rocking in the wake. Other boats were larger and more expensive vessels. He noticed a Hallberg-Rassy. The boats also indicated the class distribution of Hedeby’s marina—Martin Vanger had without a doubt the largest and the plushest boat in view.
He stopped below Cecilia Vanger’s house and stole a glance at the lighted windows on the top floor. Then he went home and put on some coffee of his own. He went into his office while he waited for it to brew.
Before he presented himself at the prison he had returned the majority of Vanger’s documentation on Harriet. It had seemed wise not to leave it in an empty house. Now the shelves looked bare. He had, of the reports, only five of Vanger’s own notebooks, and these he had taken with him to Rull?ker and now knew by heart. He noticed an album on the top shelf of the bookcase that he had forgotten.
He carried it to the kitchen table. He poured himself coffee and began going through it.
They were photographs that had been taken on the day Harriet disappeared. The first of them was the last photograph of Harriet, at the Children’s Day parade in Hedestad. Then there were some 180 crystal-clear pictures of the scene of the accident on the bridge. He had examined the images one by one with a magnifying glass on several occasions previously. Now he turned the pages almost absent-mindedly; he knew he was not going to find anything he had not seen before. In fact he felt all of a sudden fed up with the unexplainable disappearance of Harriet Vanger and slammed the album shut.
Restlessly he went to the kitchen window and peered out into the darkness.
Then he turned his gaze back to the album. He could not have explained the feeling, but a thought flitted through his head, as though he were reacting to something he had just seen. It was as though an invisible creature had whispered in his ear, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.
He opened the album again. He went through it page by page, looking at all the pictures of the bridge. He looked at the younger version of an oil-soaked Henrik Vanger and a younger Harald, a man whom he had still not met. The broken railing, the buildings, the windows and the vehicles visible in the pictures. He could not fail to identify a twenty-year-old Cecilia in the midst of the onlookers. She had on a light-coloured dress and a dark jacket and was in at least twenty of the photographs.
He felt a fresh excitement, and over the years Blomkvist had learned to trust his instincts. These instincts were reacting to something in the album, but he could not yet say what it was.
?
He was still at the kitchen table at 11:00, staring one by one again at the photographs when he heard the door open.
“May I come in?” It was Cecilia Vanger. Without waiting for an answer she sat down across from him at the table. Blomkvist had a strange feeling of déjà vu. She was dressed in a thin, loose, light-coloured dress and a greyish-blue jacket, clothes almost identical to those she was wearing in the photographs from 1966.
“You’re the one who’s the problem,” she said.
Blomkvist raised his eyebrows.
“Forgive me, but you took me by surprise when you knocked on the door tonight. Now I’m so unhappy I can’t sleep.”
“Why are you unhappy?”
“Don’t you know?”
He shook his head.
