Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The - Stieg Larsson [176]
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