Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The - Stieg Larsson [56]
He stopped at the library to get himself a card and borrowed two mysteries by Elizabeth George. He bought pens and notebooks. He also bought a rucksack for carrying his new possessions.
Finally he bought a pack of cigarettes. He had stopped smoking ten years ago, but occasionally he would have a relapse. He stuck the pack in his jacket pocket without opening it. His last stop was the optician’s, and there he bought contact lens solution and ordered new lenses.
By 2:00 he was back in Hedeby, and he was just removing the price tags from his new clothes when he heard the front door open. A blonde woman—perhaps in her fifties—knocked on the open kitchen door as she stepped across the threshold. She was carrying a sponge cake on a platter.
“Hello. I just wanted to come over to introduce myself. My name is Helena Nilsson, and I live across the road. I hear we’re going to be neighbours.”
They shook hands and he introduced himself.
“Oh yes, I’ve seen you on TV. It’s going to be nice to see lights over here in the evening.”
Blomkvist put on some coffee. She began to object but then sat at the kitchen table, casting a furtive glance out the window.
“Here comes Henrik with my husband. It looks like some boxes for you.”
Vanger and Gunnar Nilsson drew up outside with a dolly, and Blomkvist rushed out to greet them and to help carry the four packing crates inside. They set the boxes on the floor next to the stove. Blomkvist got out the coffee cups and cut into Fröken Nilsson’s sponge cake.
The Nilssons were pleasant people. They did not seem curious about why Blomkvist was in Hedestad—the fact that he was working for Henrik Vanger was evidently enough of an explanation. Blomkvist observed the interaction between the Nilssons and Vanger, concluding that it was relaxed and lacking in any sort of gulf between master and servants. They talked about the village and the man who had built the guest house where Blomkvist was living. The Nilssons would prompt Vanger when his memory failed him. He, on the other hand, told a funny story about how Nilsson had come home one night to discover the village idiot from across the bridge trying to break a window at the guest house. Nilsson went over to ask the half-witted delinquent why he didn’t go in through the unlocked front door. Nilsson inspected Blomkvist’s little TV with misgiving and invited him to come across to their house if there was ever a programme he wanted to see.
Vanger stayed on briefly after the Nilssons left. He thought it best that Blomkvist sort through the files himself, and he could come to the house if he had any problems.
When he was alone once more, Blomkvist carried the boxes into his office and made an inventory of the contents.
Vanger’s investigation into the disappearance of his brother’s granddaughter had been going on for thirty-six years. Blomkvist wondered whether this was an unhealthy obsession or whether, over the years, it had developed into an intellectual game. What was clear was that the old patriarch had tackled the job with the systematic approach of an amateur archaeologist—the material was going to fill twenty feet of shelving.
The largest section of it consisted of twenty-six binders, which were the copies of the police investigation. Hard to believe an ordinary missing-person case would have produced such comprehensive material. Vanger no doubt had enough clout to keep the Hedestad police following up both plausible and implausible leads.
Then there were scrapbooks, photograph albums, maps, texts about Hedestad and the Vanger firm, Harriet’s diary (though it did not contain many pages), her schoolbooks, medical certificates. There were sixteen bound A4 volumes of one hundred or so pages each, which