Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The - Stieg Larsson [174]
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