Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The - Stieg Larsson [50]
“What’s this about?” she said, drunk with sleep. Her mouth tasted like tar.
“Mikael Blomkvist. I just talked to our client, the lawyer, Frode.”
“So?”
“He called to say that we can drop the investigation of Wennerström.”
“Drop it? But I’ve just started working on it.”
“Frode isn’t interested any more.”
“Just like that?”
“He’s the one who decides.”
“We agreed on a fee.”
“How much time have you put in?”
Salander thought about it. “Three full days.”
“We agreed on a ceiling of forty thousand kronor. I’ll write an invoice for ten thousand; you’ll get half, which is acceptable for three days of time wasted. He’ll have to pay because he’s the one who initiated the whole thing.”
“What should I do with the material I’ve gathered?”
“Is there anything dramatic?”
“No.”
“Frode didn’t ask for a report. Put it on the shelf in case he comes back. Otherwise you can shred it. I’ll have a new job for you next week.”
Salander sat for a while holding the telephone after Armansky hung up. She went to her work corner in the living room and looked at the notes she had pinned up on the wall and the papers she had stacked on the desk. What she had managed to collect was mostly press cuttings and articles downloaded from the Internet. She took the papers and dropped them in a desk drawer.
She frowned. Blomkvist’s strange behaviour in the courtroom had presented an interesting challenge, and Salander did not like aborting an assignment once she had started. People always have secrets. It’s just a matter of finding out what they are.
PART 2
Consequence Analyses
JANUARY 3–MARCH 17
Forty-six percent of the women in Sweden have been subjected to violence by a man.
CHAPTER 8
Friday, January 3–Sunday, January 5
When Blomkvist alighted from his train in Hedestad for the second time, the sky was a pastel blue and the air icy cold. The thermometer on the wall of the station said 0°F. He was wearing unsuitable walking shoes. Unlike on his previous visit, there was no Herr Frode waiting with a warm car. Blomkvist had told them which day he would arrive, but not on which train. He assumed there was a bus to Hedeby, but he did not feel like struggling with two heavy suitcases and a shoulder bag, so he crossed the square to the taxi stand.
It had snowed massively all along the Norrland coast between Christmas and New Year’s, and judging by the ridges and piles of snow thrown up by the ploughs, the road teams had been out in full force in Hedestad. The taxi driver, whose name, according to his ID posted on the window, was Hussein, nodded when Blomkvist asked whether they had been having rough weather. In the broadest Norrland accent, he reported that it had been the worst snowstorm in decades, and he bitterly regretted not taking his holiday in Greece over the Christmas period.
Blomkvist directed him to Henrik Vanger’s newly shovelled courtyard, where he lifted his suitcases on to the cobblestones and watched the taxi head back towards Hedestad. He suddenly felt lonely and uncertain.
He heard the door open behind him. Vanger was wrapped up in a heavy fur coat, thick boots, and a cap with earflaps. Blomkvist was in jeans and a thin leather jacket.
“If you’re going to live up here, you need to learn to dress more warmly for this time of year.” They shook hands. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay in the main house? No? Then I think we’d better start getting you settled into your new lodgings.”
One of the conditions in his negotiations with Vanger and Dirch Frode had been that he have living quarters where he could do his own housekeeping and come and go as he pleased. Vanger led Blomkvist back along the road towards the bridge and then turned to open the gate to another newly shovelled courtyard in front of a small timbered house close to the end of the bridge. The house was not locked. They stepped into a modest hallway where Blomkvist, with a sigh of relief, put down his suitcases.
“This is what we call our guest house. It’s where we usually put people up who