The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Trilogy Bundle (41 page)

In 1949 Gottfried was twenty-two years old. The first murder took place in his home territory. Hedestad. Rebecka Jacobsson
,
who worked at the Vanger Corporation. Where did the two of you meet? What did you promise her
?

Salander bit her lip. The problem was that Gottfried Vanger had drowned when he was drunk in 1965, while the last murder was committed in Uppsala in February 1966. She wondered if she was mistaken when she had added Lena Andersson, the seventeen-year-old schoolgirl, to the list.
No. It might not be the same signature
,
but it was the same Bible parody. They must be connected.

         

By 9:00 it was getting dark. The air was cool and it was drizzling. Mikael was sitting in the kitchen, drumming his fingers on the table, when Martin Vanger's Volvo crossed the bridge and turned out towards the point. That somehow brought matters to a head.

He did not know what he should do. His whole being was burning with a desire to ask questions—to initiate a confrontation. It was certainly not a sensible attitude to have if he suspected Martin Vanger of being an insane murderer who had killed his sister and a girl in Uppsala, and who had also very nearly succeeded in killing him too. But Martin was also a magnet. And he did not know that Blomkvist knew; he could go and see him with the pretext that … well, he wanted to return the key to Gottfried Vanger's cabin. Blomkvist locked the door behind him and strolled out to the point.

Harald Vanger's house was pitch dark, as usual. In Henrik's house the lights were off except in one room facing the courtyard. Anna had gone to bed. Isabella's house was dark. Cecilia wasn't at home. The lights were on upstairs in Alexander's house, but they were off in the two houses occupied by people who were not members of the Vanger family. He did not see a soul.

He paused irresolutely outside Martin Vanger's house, took out his mobile, and punched in Salander's number. Still no answer. He turned off his mobile so that it would not start ringing.

There were lights on downstairs. Blomkvist walked across the lawn and stopped a few yards from the kitchen window, but he could see no-one. He continued on around the house, pausing at each window, but there was no sign of Martin. On the other hand, he did discover that the small side door into the garage was slightly open.
Don't be a damn fool.
But he could not resist the temptation to look.

The first thing he saw on the carpenter's bench was an open box of ammunition for a moose rifle. Then he saw two gasoline cans on the floor under the bench.
Preparations for another nocturnal visit
,
Martin
?

“Come in, Mikael. I saw you on the road.”

Blomkvist's heart skipped a beat. Slowly he turned his head and saw Martin Vanger standing in the dark by a door leading into the house.

“You simply couldn't stay away, could you?”

His voice was calm, almost friendly.

“Hi, Martin,” Blomkvist said.

“Come in,” Martin repeated. “This way.”

He took a step forward and to the side, holding out his left hand in an inviting gesture. He raised his right hand, and Blomkvist saw the reflection of dull metal.

“I have a Glock in my hand. Don't do anything stupid. At this distance I won't miss.”

Blomkvist slowly moved closer. When he reached Martin, he stopped and looked him in the eye.

“I had to come here. There are so many questions.”

“I understand. Through the door.”

Blomkvist entered the house. The passage led to the hall near the kitchen, but before he got that far, Martin Vanger stopped him by putting a hand lightly on Blomkvist's shoulder.

“No, not that way. To your right. Open the door.”

The basement. When Blomkvist was halfway down the steps, Martin Vanger turned a switch and the lights went on. To the right of him was the boiler room. Ahead he could smell the scents of laundry. Martin guided him to the left, into a storage room with old furniture and boxes, at the back of which was a steel security door with a deadbolt lock.

“Here,” Martin said, tossing a key ring to Blomkvist. “Open it.”

He opened the door.

“The switch is on the left.”

Blomkvist had opened the door to hell.

         

Around 9:00 Salander went to get some coffee and a plastic-wrapped sandwich from the vending machine in the corridor outside the archives. She kept on paging through old documents, looking for any trace of Gottfried Vanger in Kalmar in 1954. She found nothing.

She thought about calling Blomkvist, but decided to go through the staff newsletters before she called it a day.

         

The space was approximately ten by twenty feet. Blomkvist assumed that it was situated along the north side of the house.

Martin Vanger had contrived his private torture chamber with great care. On the left were chains, metal eyelets in the ceiling and floor, a table with leather straps where he could restrain his victims. And then the video equipment. A taping studio. In the back of the room was a steel cage for his guests. To the right of the door was a bench, a bed, and a TV corner with videos on a shelf.

As soon as they entered the room, Martin Vanger aimed the pistol at Blomkvist and told him to lie on his stomach on the floor. Blomkvist refused.

“Very well,” Martin said. “Then I'll shoot you in the kneecap.”

He took aim. Blomkvist capitulated. He had no choice.

He had hoped that Martin would relax his guard just a tenth of a second—he knew he would win any sort of fight with him. He had had half a chance in the passage upstairs when Martin put his hand on his shoulder, but he had hesitated. After that Martin had not come close. With a bullet in his kneecap he would have lost his chance. He lay down on the floor.

Martin approached from behind and told him to put his hands on his back. He handcuffed him. Then he kicked Mikael in the crotch and punched him viciously and repeatedly.

What happened after that seemed like a nightmare. Martin swung between rationality and pure lunacy. For a time quite calm, the next instant he would be pacing back and forth like an animal in a cage. He kicked Blomkvist several times. All Blomkvist could do was try to protect his head and take the blows in the soft parts of his body.

For the first half hour Martin did not say a word, and he appeared to be incapable of any sort of communication. After that he seemed to recover control. He put a chain round Blomkvist's neck, fastening it with a padlock to a metal eyelet on the floor. He left Blomkvist alone for about fifteen minutes. When he returned, he was carrying a litre bottle of water. He sat on a chair and looked at Blomkvist as he drank.

“Could I have some water?” Blomkvist said.

Martin leaned down and let him take a good long drink from the bottle. Blomkvist swallowed greedily.

“Thanks.”

“Still so polite,
Kalle Blomkvist
.”

“Why all the punching and kicking?” Blomkvist said.

“Because you make me very angry indeed. You deserve to be punished. Why didn't you just go home? You were needed at
Millennium
. I was serious—we could have made it into a great magazine. We could have worked together for years.”

Blomkvist grimaced and tried to shift his body into a more comfortable position. He was defenceless. All he had was his voice.

“I assume you mean that the opportunity has passed,” Blomkvist said.

Martin Vanger laughed.

“I'm sorry, Mikael. But, of course, you know perfectly well that you're going to die down here.”

Blomkvist nodded.

“How the hell did you find me, you and that anorexic spook that you dragged into this?”

“You lied about what you were doing on the day that Harriet disappeared. You were in Hedestad at the Children's Day parade. You were photographed there, looking at Harriet.”

“Was that why you went to Norsjö?”

“To get the picture, yes. It was taken by a honeymoon couple who happened to be in Hedestad.”

He shook his head.

“That's a crass lie,” Martin said.

Blomkvist thought hard: what to say to prevent or postpone his execution.

“Where's the picture now?”

“The negative? It's in a safe-deposit box at Handelsbanken here in Hedestad … You didn't know that I have a safe-deposit box?” He lied easily. “There are copies in various places. In my computer and in the girl's, on the server at
Millennium
, and on the server at Milton Security, where the girl works.”

Martin waited, trying to work out whether or not Blomkvist was bluffing.

“How much does the girl know?”

Blomkvist hesitated. Salander was right now his only hope of rescue. What would she think when she came home and found him not there? He had put the photograph of Martin Vanger wearing the padded jacket on the kitchen table. Would she make the connection? Would she sound the alarm?
She is not going to call the police
. The nightmare was that she would come to Martin Vanger's house and ring the bell, demanding to know where Blomkvist was.

“Answer me,” Martin said, his voice ice-cold.

“I'm thinking. She knows almost as much as I do, maybe even a little more. Yes, I would reckon she knows more than I do. She's bright. She's the one who made the link to Lena Andersson.”

“Lena Andersson?” Martin sounded perplexed.

“The girl you tortured and killed in Uppsala in 1966. Don't tell me you've forgotten?”

“I don't know what you're talking about.” But for the first time he sounded shaken. It was the first time that anyone had made that connection—Lena Andersson was not included in Harriet's date book.

“Martin,” Blomkvist said, making his voice as steady as he could. “It's over. You can kill me, but it's finished. Too many people know.”

Martin started pacing back and forth again.

I have to remember that he's irrational. The cat. He could have brought the cat down here
,
but he went to the family crypt.
Martin stopped.

“I think you're lying. You and Salander are the only ones who know anything. You obviously haven't talked to anyone, or the police would have been here by now. A nice little blaze in the guest cottage and the proof will be gone.”

“And if you're wrong?”

“If I'm wrong, then it really is over. But I don't think it is. I'll bet that you're bluffing. And what other choice do I have? I'll give that some thought. It's that anorexic little cunt who's the weak link.”

“She went to Stockholm at lunchtime.”

Martin laughed.

“Bluff away, Mikael. She has been sitting in the archives at the Vanger Corporation offices all evening.”

Blomkvist's heart skipped a beat.
He knew. He's known all along.

“That's right. The plan was to visit the archive and then go to Stockholm,” Blomkvist said. “I didn't know she stayed there so long.”

“Stop all this crap, Mikael. The archives manager rang to tell me that Dirch had let the girl stay there as late as she liked. Which means she'll certainly be home. The night watchman is going to call me when she leaves.”

PART
4

Hostile Takeover

J
ULY
11
TO
D
ECEMBER
30

Ninety-two percent of women in Sweden who have been subjected to sexual assault have not reported the most recent violent incident to the police.

Martin Vanger bent down and went through Mikael's pockets. He took the key.

“Smart of you to change the lock,” he said. “I'm going to take care of your girlfriend when she gets back.”

Blomkvist reminded himself that Martin was a negotiator experienced from many industrial battles. He had already seen through one bluff.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why all of this?” Blomkvist gestured vaguely at the space around him.

Martin bent down and put one hand under Blomkvist's chin, lifting his head so their eyes met.

“Because it's so easy,” he said. “Women disappear all the time. Nobody misses them. Immigrants. Whores from Russia. Thousands of people pass through Sweden every year.”

He let go of Blomkvist's head and stood up.

Martin's words hit Blomkvist like a punch in the face.

Christ Almighty. This is no historical mystery. Martin Vanger is murdering women today. And I wandered right into it … 

“As it happens, I don't have a guest right now. But it might amuse you to know that while you and Henrik sat around babbling this winter and spring, there was a girl down here. Irina from Belarus. While you sat and ate dinner with me, she was locked up in the cage down here. It was a pleasant evening as I remember, no?”

Martin perched on the table, letting his legs dangle. Blomkvist shut his eyes. He suddenly felt acid in his throat and he swallowed hard. The pain in his gut and in his ribs seemed to swell.

“What do you do with the bodies?”

“I have my boat at the dock right below here. I take them a long way out to sea. Unlike my father, I don't leave traces. But he was smart too. He spread his victims out all over Sweden.”

The puzzle pieces were falling into place.

Gottfried Vanger. From 1949 until 1965. Then Martin Vanger
,
starting in 1966 in Uppsala.

“You admire your father.”

“He was the one who taught me. He initiated me when I was fourteen.”

“Uddevalla. Lea Persson.”

“Aren't you clever? Yes, I was there. I only watched, but I was there.”

“1964. Sara Witt in Ronneby.”

“I was sixteen. It was the first time I had a woman. My father taught me. I was the one who strangled her.”

He's bragging. Good Lord
,
what a revoltingly sick family.

“You can't have any notion of how demented this is.”

“You are a very ordinary little person, Mikael. You would not be able to understand the godlike feeling of having absolute control over someone's life and death.”

“You enjoy torturing and killing women, Martin.”

“I don't think so really. If I do an intellectual analysis of my condition, I'm more of a serial rapist than a serial murderer. In fact, most of all I'm a serial kidnapper. The killing is a natural consequence, so to speak, because I have to hide my crime.

“Of course my actions aren't socially acceptable, but my crime is first and foremost a crime against the conventions of society. Death doesn't come until the end of my guests' visits here, after I've grown weary of them. It's always so fascinating to see their disappointment.”

“Disappointment?”

“Exactly.
Disappointment
. They imagine that if they please me, they'll live. They adapt to my rules. They start to trust me and develop a certain camaraderie with me, hoping to the very end that this camaraderie means something. The disappointment comes when it finally dawns on them that they've been well and truly screwed.”

Martin walked around the table and leaned against the steel cage.

“You with your bourgeois conventions would never grasp this, but the excitement comes from planning a kidnapping. They're not done on impulse—those kinds of kidnappers invariably get caught. It's a science with thousands of details that I have to weigh. I have to identify my prey, map out her life, who is she, where does she come from, how can I make contact with her, what do I have to do to be alone with my
prey
without revealing my name or having it turn up in any future police investigation?”

Shut up
,
for God's sake
, Blomkvist thought.

“Are you really interested in all this, Mikael?”

He bent down and stroked Blomkvist's cheek. The touch was almost tender.

“You realise that this can only end one way? Will it bother you if I smoke?”

“You could offer me a cigarette,” he said.

Martin lit two cigarettes and carefully placed one of them between Blomkvist's lips, letting him take a long drag.

“Thanks,” Blomkvist said, automatically.

Martin Vanger laughed again.

“You see. You've already started to adapt to the submission principle. I hold your life in my hands, Mikael. You know that I can dispatch you at any second. You pleaded with me to improve your quality of life, and you did so by using reason and a little good manners. And you were rewarded.”

Blomkvist nodded. His heart was pounding so hard it was almost unbearable.

         

At 11:15 Lisbeth Salander drank the rest of the water from her PET bottle as she turned the pages. Unlike Blomkvist, who earlier in the day had choked on his coffee, she didn't get the water down the wrong way. On the other hand, she did open her eyes wide when she made the connection.

Click!

For two hours she had been wading through the staff newsletters from all points of the compass. The main newsletter was
Company Information
. It bore the Vanger logo—a Swedish banner fluttering in the wind, with the point forming an arrow. The publication was presumably put together by the firm's advertising department, and it was filled with propaganda that was supposed to make the employees feel that they were members of one big family.

In association with the winter sports holiday in February 1967, Henrik Vanger, in a magnanimous gesture, had invited fifty employees from the main office and their families to a week's skiing holiday in Härjedalen. The company had made record profits during the previous year. The PR department went too and put together a picture report.

Many of the pictures with amusing captions were from the slopes. Some showed groups in the bar, with laughing employees hoisting beer mugs. Two photographs were of a small morning function when Henrik Vanger proclaimed Ulla-Britt Mogren to be the Best Office Worker of the Year. She was given a bonus of five hundred kronor and a glass bowl.

The ceremony was held on the terrace of the hotel, clearly right before people were thinking of heading back to the slopes. About twenty people were in the picture.

On the far right, just behind Henrik Vanger, stood a man with long blond hair. He was wearing a dark padded jacket with a distinctive patch at the shoulder. Since the publication was in black-and-white, the colour wasn't identifiable, but Salander was willing to bet her life that the shoulder patch was red.

The caption explained the connection.
 … far right
,
Martin Vanger (19)
,
who is studying in Uppsala. He is already being discussed as someone with a promising future in the company's management
.

“Gotcha,” Salander said in a low voice.

She switched off the desk lamp and left the newsletters in piles all over the desk—
something for that slut Lindgren to take care of tomorrow
.

She went out to the car park through a side door. As it closed behind her, she remembered that she had promised to tell the night watchman when she left. She stopped and let her eyes sweep over the car park. The watchman's office was on the other side of the building. That meant that she would have to walk all the way round to the other side.
Let sleeping dogs lie
, she decided.

Before she put on her helmet, she turned on her mobile and called Blomkvist's number. She got a message saying that the subscriber could not be reached. But she also saw that he had tried to call her no fewer than thirteen times between 3:30 and 9:00. In the last two hours, no call.

Salander tried the cottage number, but there was no answer. She frowned, strapped on her computer, put on her helmet, and kick-started the motorcycle. The ride from the main office at the entrance to Hedestad's industrial district out to Hedeby Island took ten minutes. A light was on in the kitchen.

Salander looked around. Her first thought was that Blomkvist had gone to see Frode, but from the bridge she had already noticed that the lights were off in Frode's house on the other side of the water. She looked at her watch: 11:40.

She went into the cottage, opened the wardrobe, and took out the two PCs that she was using to store the surveillance pictures from the cameras she had installed. It took her a while to run up the sequence of events.

At 15:32 Blomkvist entered the cabin.

At 16:03 he took his coffee cup out to the garden. He had a folder with him, which he studied. He made three brief telephone calls during the hour he spent out in the garden. The three calls corresponded exactly to calls she had not answered.

At 17:21 Blomkvist left the cottage. He was back less than fifteen minutes later.

At 18:20 he went to the gate and looked in the direction of the bridge.

At 21:03 he went out. He had not come back.

Salander fast-forwarded through the pictures from the other PC, which photographed the gate and the road outside the front door. She could see who had gone past during the day.

At 19:12 Nilsson came home.

At 19:42 the Saab that belonged to Östergården drove towards Hedestad.

At 20:02 the Saab was on its way back.

At 21:00 Martin Vanger's car went by. Three minutes later Blomkvist left the house.

At 21:50, Martin Vanger appeared in the camera's viewfinder. He stood at the gate for over a minute, looking at the house, then peering through the kitchen window. He went up to the porch and tried the door, taking out a key. He must have discovered that they had put in a new lock. He stood still for a moment before he turned on his heel and left the house.

Salander felt an ice-cold fear in her gut.

         

Martin Vanger once again left Blomkvist alone. He was still in his uncomfortable position with his hands behind his back and his neck fastened by a thin chain to an eyelet in the floor. He fiddled with the handcuffs, but he knew that he would not be able to get them off. The cuffs were so tight that his hands were numb.

He had no chance. He shut his eyes.

He did not know how much time had passed when he heard Martin's footsteps again. He appeared in Blomkvist's field of vision. He looked worried.

“Uncomfortable?” he said.

“Very,” said Blomkvist.

“You've only got yourself to blame. You should have gone back to Stockholm.”

“Why do you kill, Martin?”

“It's a choice that I made. I could discuss the moral and intellectual aspects of what I do; we could talk all night, but it wouldn't change anything. Try to look at it this way: a human being is a shell made of skin keeping the cells, blood, and chemical components in place. Very few end up in the history books. Most people succumb and disappear without a trace.”

“You kill women.”

“Those of us who murder for pleasure—I'm not the only one with this hobby—we live a complete life.”

“But why Harriet? Your own sister?”

In a second Martin grabbed him by the hair.

“What happened to her, you little bastard?
Tell me
.”

“What do you mean?” Blomkvist gasped. He tried to turn his head to lessen the pain in his scalp. The chain tightened round his neck.

“You and Salander. What have you come up with?”

“Let go, for heaven's sake. We're talking.”

Martin Vanger let go of his hair and sat cross-legged in front of Blomkvist. He took a knife from his jacket and opened it. He set the point against the skin just below Blomkvist's eye. Blomkvist forced himself to meet Martin's gaze.

“What the hell happened to her, bastard?”

“I don't understand. I thought you killed her.”

Martin Vanger stared at Blomkvist for a long moment. Then he relaxed. He got up and wandered around the room, thinking. He threw the knife on the floor and laughed before he came back to face Blomkvist.

“Harriet, Harriet, always Harriet. We tried … to talk to her. Gottfried tried to teach her. We thought that she was one of us and that she would accept her duty, but she was just an ordinary … 
cunt
. I had her under control, or so I thought, but she was planning to tell Henrik, and I realised that I couldn't trust her. Sooner or later she was going to tell someone about me.”

“You killed her.”

“I
wanted
to kill her. I
thought
about it, but I arrived too late. I couldn't get over to the island.”

Blomkvist's brain was with difficulty trying to absorb this information, but it felt as if a message had popped up with the words
INFORMATION OVERLOAD
. Martin Vanger did not know what had happened to his sister.

All of a sudden Martin pulled his mobile telephone out of his pocket, glanced at the display, and put it on the chair next to the pistol.

“It's time to stop all this. I have to dispose of your anorexic bitch tonight too.”

He took out a narrow leather strap from a cupboard and slipped it around Blomkvist's neck, like a noose. He loosened the chain that held him shackled to the floor, hauled him to his feet, and shoved him towards the wall. He slipped the leather strap through a loop above Blomkvist's head and then tightened it so that he was forced to stand on tiptoes.

“Is that too tight? Can you breathe?” He loosened it a notch and locked the other end of the strap in place, further down the wall. “I don't want you to suffocate all at once.”