Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The - Stieg Larsson [142]
The question was why had Harriet Vanger written down the name Magda instead of Lovisa, which was apparently the name the victim went under. If her full name had not been printed in the TV listing, Salander would have missed it.
And, of course, the more important question was: was there a link between Rebecka’s murder in 1949, the murder of Magda Lovisa in 1960, and Harriet Vanger’s disappearance in 1966?
On Saturday morning Burman took Blomkvist on an extensive tour of Norsjö. In the morning they called on five former employees who lived within walking distance of Burman’s house. Everyone offered them coffee. All of them studied the photographs and shook their heads.
After a simple lunch at the Burman home, they got in the car for a drive. They visited four villages near Norsjö, where former employees of the carpentry shop lived. At each stop Burman was greeted with warmth, but no-one was able to help them. Blomkvist was beginning to despair.
At 4:00 in the afternoon, Burman parked his car outside a typical red Västerbotten farm near Norsjövallen, just north of Norsjö, and introduced Mikael to Henning Forsman, a retired master carpenter.
“Yes, that’s Assar Brännlund’s lad,” Forsman said as soon as Blomkvist showed him the photographs. Bingo.
“Oh, so that’s Assar’s boy,” Burman said. “Assar was a buyer.”
“How can I find him?”
“The lad? Well, you’ll have to dig. His name was Gunnar, and he worked at the Boliden mine. He died in a blasting accident in the mid-seventies.”
Blomkvist’s heart sank.
“But his wife is still alive. The one in the picture here. Her name is Mildred, and she lives in Bjursele.”
“Bjursele?”
“It’s about six miles down the road to Bastuträsk. She lives in the long red house on the right-hand side as you’re coming into the village. It’s the third house. I know the family well.”
“Hi, my name is Lisbeth Salander, and I’m writing my thesis on the criminology of violence against women in the twentieth century. I’d like to visit the police district in Landskrona and read through the documents of a case from 1957. It has to do with the murder of a woman by the name of Rakel Lunde. Do you have any idea where those documents are today?”
Bjursele was like a poster for the Västerbotten country village. It consisted of about twenty houses set relatively close together in a semicircle at one end of a lake. In the centre of the village was a crossroads with an arrow pointing towards Hemmingen, 101/2 miles, and another pointing towards Bastuträsk, 7 miles. Near the crossroads was a small bridge with a creek that Blomkvist assumed was the water, the sel. At the height of summer, it was as pretty as a postcard.
He parked in the courtyard in front of a Konsum that was no longer open, almost opposite the third house on the right-hand side. When he knocked on the door, no-one answered.
He took an hour-long walk along the road towards Hemmingen. He passed a spot where the stream became rushing rapids. He met two cats and saw a deer, but not a single person, before he turned around. Mildred Brännlund’s door was still shut.
On a post near the bridge he found a peeling flyer announcing the BTCC, something that could be deciphered as the Bjursele Tukting Car Championship 2002. “Tukting” a car was apparently a winter sport that involved smashing up a vehicle on the ice-covered lake.
He waited until 10:00 p.m. before he gave up and drove back to Norsjö, where he had a late dinner and then went to bed to read the denouement of Val McDermid’s novel.
It was grisly.
At 10:00 Salander added one more name to Harriet Vanger’s list. She did so with some hesitation.
She had discovered a shortcut. At quite regular intervals articles were published about unsolved murders, and in a Sunday supplement to the evening newspaper she had found an article