Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The - Stieg Larsson [29]
She had followed the trial in the firm belief that things were just as her father said: he was innocent, but he could not prove it.
She told him about a sort-of boyfriend who was in another class, and she surprised him by saying that she had joined a church. Blomkvist refrained from comment.
He was invited to stay for dinner but he was expected with his sister and her family out in the yuppie suburb of Stäket.
That morning he had also had an invitation to celebrate Christmas Eve with the Beckmans in Saltsjöbaden. He said no, but thank you, certain that there was a limit to Beckman’s indulgence and quite sure that he had no ambition to find out what that limit might be.
Instead he was knocking on the door where Annika Blomkvist, now Annika Giannini, lived with her Italian-born husband and their two children. With a platoon of her husband’s relatives, they were about to carve the Christmas ham. During dinner he answered questions about the trial and received much well-meaning and quite useless advice.
The only one who had nothing to say about the verdict was his sister, although she was the only lawyer in the room. She had worked as clerk of a district court and as an assistant prosecutor for several years before she and three colleagues opened a law firm of their own with offices on Kungsholmen. She specialised in family law, and without Blomkvist having taken stock of its happening, his little sister began to appear in newspapers as representing battered or threatened women, and on panel discussions on TV as a feminist and women’s rights advocate.
As he was helping her prepare the coffee, she put a hand on his shoulder and asked him how was he doing. He told her he felt as low as he had in life.
“Get yourself a real lawyer next time,” she said.
“It probably wouldn’t have helped in this case. But we’ll talk it all the way through, Sis, some other time when all the dust is settled.”
She gave him a hug and kissed him on the cheek before they carried out the Christmas cake and the coffee. Then Blomkvist excused himself and asked to use the telephone in the kitchen. He called the lawyer in Hedestad and could hear there too the buzz of voices in the background.
“Merry Christmas,” Frode said. “Dare I hope you have made up your mind?”
“I really don’t have any immediate plans and I am curious to know more. I’ll come up the day after Christmas if that suits you.”
“Excellent, excellent. I am incredibly pleased. You will forgive me, I’ve got children and grandchildren visiting and can hardly hear myself think. Can I call you tomorrow to agree on a time? Where can I reach you?”
Blomkvist regretted his decision before even he left for home, but by then it was too awkward to call and cancel. So on the morning of December 26 he was on the train heading north. He had a driver’s license, but he had never felt the need to own a car.
Frode was right, it was not a long journey. After Uppsala came the string of small industrial towns along the Norrland coast. Hedestad was one of the smaller ones, a little more than an hour north of Gävle.
On Christmas night there had been a big snowstorm, but the skies had now cleared and the air was ice-cold when Blomkvist alighted at Hedestad. He realised at once that he wasn’t wearing enough clothes for winter in Norrland. Frode knew what he looked like and kindly collected him from the platform and led him straight to the warmth of his Mercedes. In the centre of Hedestad, snow clearing was in full swing, and Frode wove his careful way through the narrow streets. High banks of snow presented a picturesque contrast to Stockholm. The town seemed almost like another planet, yet he was only a little more than three hours from Sergels Torg in downtown Stockholm. He stole a glance at the lawyer: an angular face with sparse, bristly white hair and thick glasses perched on an impressive nose.