Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The - Stieg Larsson [134]
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 Wennerström. 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