Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The - Stieg Larsson [110]
“Have you heard directly from Wennerström?”
“Well, not really. But we leaked a story that Wennerström 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 Wennerström, 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 Rullåker 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