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Thursday, December 26

The time limit set by Blomkvist had been exceeded by a good margin. It was 4:30, and there was no hope

of catching the afternoon train, but he still had a chance of making the evening train at 9:30. He stood by the window rubbing his neck as he stared out at the illuminated facade of the church on the other side of

the bridge. Vanger had shown him a scrapbook with articles from both the local newspaper and the national media. There had been quite a bit of media interest for a while—girl from noted industrialist’s

family disappears. But when no body was found and there was no breakthrough in the investigation, interest gradually waned. Despite the fact that a prominent family was involved, thirty-six years later the case of Harriet Vanger was all but forgotten. The prevailing theory in articles from the late sixties seemed to be that she drowned and was swept out to sea—a tragedy, but something that could happen to any family.

Blomkvist had been fascinated by the old man’s account, but when Vanger excused himself to go to the

bathroom, his scepticism returned. The old man had still not got to the end, and Blomkvist had finally promised to listen to the whole story.

“What do you think happened to her?” he said when Vanger came back into the room.

“Normally there were some twenty-five people living here year-round, but because of the family gathering there were more than sixty on Hedeby Island that day. Of these, between twenty and twenty-five

can be ruled out, pretty much so. I believe that of those remaining, someone—and in all likelihood it was

someone from the family—killed Harriet and hid the body.”

“I have a dozen objections to that.”

“Let’s hear them.”

“Well, the first one is that even if someone hid her body, it should have been found if the search was as

thorough as the one you described.”

“To tell you the truth, the search was even more extensive than I’ve described. It wasn’t until I began to think of Harriet as a murder victim that I realised several ways in which her body could have disappeared. I can’t prove this, but it’s at least within the realm of possibility.”

“Tell me.”

“Harriet went missing sometime around 3:00 that afternoon. At about 2:55 she was seen by Pastor Falk,

who was hurrying to the bridge. At almost exactly the same time a photographer arrived from the local paper, and for the next hour he took a great number of pictures of the drama. We—the police, I mean—

examined the photographs and confirmed that Harriet was not in any one of them; but every other person

in town was seen in at least one, apart from very small children.”

Vanger took out another album and placed it on the table.

“These are pictures from that day. The first one was taken in Hedestad during the Children’s Day parade. The same photographer took it around 1:15 p.m., and Harriet is there in it.”

The photograph was taken from the second floor of a building and showed a street along which the parade—clowns on trucks and girls in bathing suits—had just passed. Spectators thronged the pavements.



Vanger pointed at a figure in the crowd.

“That’s Harriet. It’s about two hours before she will disappear; she’s with some of her schoolfriends in

town. This is the last picture taken of her. But there’s one more interesting shot.”

Vanger leafed through the pages. The album contained about 180 pictures—five rolls—from the crash

on the bridge. After having heard the account, it was almost too much to suddenly see it in the form of sharp black-and-white images. The photographer was a professional who had managed to capture the turmoil surrounding the accident. A large number of the pictures focused on the activities around the overturned tanker truck. Blomkvist had no problem identifying a gesticulating, much younger Henrik Vanger soaked with heating oil.

“This is my brother Harald.” The old man pointed to a man in shirtsleeves bending forward and pointing at something inside the wreck of Aronsson’s car. “My brother Harald may be an unpleasant person, but I think he can be eliminated from the list of suspects. Except for a very short while, when he had to run back here to the farm to change his shoes, he spent the afternoon on the bridge.”

Vanger turned some more pages. One image followed another. Focus on the tanker truck. Focus on spectators on the foreshore. Focus on Aronsson’s car. General views. Close-ups with a telephoto lens.

“This is the interesting picture,” Vanger said. “As far as we could determine it was taken between 3:40

and 3:45, or about 45 minutes after Harriet ran into Falk. Take a look at the house, the middle second floor window. That’s Harriet’s room. In the preceding picture the window was closed. Here it’s open.”

“Someone must have been in Harriet’s room.”

“I asked everyone; nobody would admit to opening the window.”

“Which means that either Harriet did it herself, and she was still alive at that point, or else that someone was lying to you. But why would a murderer go into her room and open the window? And why

should anyone lie about it?”

Vanger shook his head. No explanation presented itself.

“Harriet disappeared sometime around 3:00 or shortly thereafter. These pictures give an impression of

where certain people were at that time. That’s why I can eliminate a number of people from the list of suspects. For the same reason I can conclude that some people who were not in the photographs at that

time must be added to the list of suspects.”

“You didn’t answer my question about how you think the body was removed. I realise, of course, that

there must be some plausible explanation. Some sort of common old illusionist’s trick.”

“There are actually several very practical ways it could have been done. Sometime around 3:00 the killer struck. He or she presumably didn’t use any sort of weapon—or we would have found traces of blood. I’m guessing that Harriet was strangled and I’m guessing that it happened here—behind the wall in

the courtyard, somewhere out of the photographer’s line of sight and in a blind spot from the house.

There’s a path, if you want to take a shortcut, to the parsonage—the last place she was seen—and back to

the house. Today there’s a small flower bed and lawn there, but in the sixties it was a gravelled area used for parking. All the killer had to do was open the boot of a car and put Harriet inside. When we began

searching the island the next day, nobody was thinking that a crime had been committed. We focused on

the shorelines, the buildings, and the woods closest to the village.”

“So nobody was checking the boots of cars.”

“And by the following evening the killer would have been free to get in his car and drive across the

bridge to hide the body somewhere else.”

“Right under the noses of everyone involved in the search. If that’s the way it happened, we’re talking

about a cold-blooded bastard.”

Vanger gave a bitter laugh. “You just gave an apt description of quite a few members of the Vanger family.”

They continued their discussion over supper at 6:00. Anna served roast hare with currant jelly and potatoes. Vanger poured a robust red wine. Blomkvist still had plenty of time to make the last train. He

thought it was about time to sum things up.

“It’s a fascinating story you’ve been telling me, I admit it. But I still don’t know why you wanted me to

hear it.”

“I told you. I want to nail the swine who murdered Harriet. And I want to hire you to find out who it

was.”

“Why?”

Vanger put down his knife and fork. “Mikael, for thirty-six years I’ve driven myself crazy wondering

what happened to Harriet. I’ve devoted more and more of my time to it.”

He fell silent and took off his glasses, scrutinising some invisible speck of dirt on the lens. Then he raised his eyes and looked at Blomkvist.

“To be completely honest with you, Harriet’s disappearance was the reason why gradually I withdrew

from the firm’s management. I lost all motivation. I knew that there was a killer somewhere nearby and the worrying and searching for the truth began to affect my work. The worst thing is that the burden didn’t get any lighter over time—on the contrary. Around 1970 I had a period when I just wanted to be left alone.

Then Martin joined the board of directors, and he had to take on more and more of my work. In 1976 I

retired and Martin took over as CEO. I still have a seat on the board, but I haven’t sailed many knots since I turned fifty. For the last thirty-six years not a day has passed that I have not pondered Harriet’s disappearance. You may think I’m obsessed with it—at least most of my relatives think so.”

“It was a horrific event.”

“More than that. It ruined my life. That’s something I’ve become more aware of as time has passed. Do

you have a good sense of yourself?”

“I think so, yes.”

“I do too. I can’t forget what happened. But my motives have changed over the years. At first it was

probably grief. I wanted to find her and at least have a chance to bury her. It was about getting justice for Harriet.”

“In what way has that changed?”

“Now it’s more about finding the bastard who did it. But the funny thing is, the older I get, the more of

an all-absorbing hobby it has become.”

“Hobby?”

“Yes, I would use that word. When the police investigation petered out I kept going. I’ve tried to proceed systematically and scientifically. I’ve gathered all the information that could possibly be found—

the photographs, the police report, I’ve written down everything people told me about what they were doing that day. So in effect I’ve spent almost half my life collecting information about a single day.”

“You realise, I suppose, that after thirty-six years the killer himself might be dead and buried?”

“I don’t believe that.”

Blomkvist raised his eyebrows at the conviction in his voice.

“Let’s finish dinner and go back upstairs. There’s one more detail before my story is done. And it’s the

most perplexing of all.”

Salander parked the Corolla with the automatic transmission by the commuter railway station in Sundbyberg. She had borrowed the Toyota from Milton Security’s motor pool. She had not exactly asked

permission, but Armansky had never expressly forbidden her from using Milton’s cars. Sooner or later, she thought, I have to get a vehicle of my own. She did own a second-hand Kawasaki 125, which she used

in the summer-time. During the winter the bike was locked in her cellar.

She walked to Högklintavägen and rang the bell at 6:00 on the dot. Seconds later the lock on the street

door clicked and she went up two flights and rang the doorbell next to the name of Svensson. She had no

idea who Svensson might be or if any such person even lived in that apartment.

“Hi, Plague,” she said.

“Wasp. You only pop in when you need something.”

As usual, it was dark in the apartment; the light from a single lamp seeped out into the hall from the bedroom he used as an office. The man, who was three years older than Salander, was six foot two and

weighed 330 pounds. She herself was four feet eleven and weighed 90 pounds and had always felt like a

midget next to Plague. The place smelled stuffy and stale.

“It’s because you never take a bath, Plague. It smells like a monkey house in here. If you ever went out I could give you some tips on soap. They have it at the Konsum.”

He gave her a wan smile, but said nothing. He motioned her to follow him into the kitchen. He plopped

down on a chair by the kitchen table without turning on a light. The only illumination came from the street light beyond the window.

“I mean, I may not hold the record in cleaning house either, but if I’ve got old milk cartons that smell

like maggots I bundle them up and put them out.”

“I’m on a disability pension,” he said. “I’m socially incompetent.”

“So that’s why the government gave you a place to live and forgot about you. Aren’t you ever afraid

that your neighbours are going to complain to the inspectors? Then you might fetch up in the funny farm.”

“Have you something for me?”

Salander unzipped her jacket pocket and handed him five thousand kronor.

“It’s all I can spare. It’s my own money, and I can’t really deduct you as a dependant.”

“What do you want?”

“The electronic cuff you talked about two months ago. Did you get it?”

He smiled and laid a box on the table.

“Show me how it works.”

For the next few minutes she listened intently. Then she tested the cuff. Plague might be a social incompetent, but he was unquestionably a genius.

Vanger waited until he once more had Blomkvist’s attention. Blomkvist looked at his watch and said,

“One perplexing detail.”

Vanger said: “I was born on November 1. When Harriet was eight she gave me a birthday present, a

pressed flower, framed.”

Vanger walked around the desk and pointed to the first flower. Bluebell. It had an amateurish mounting.

“That was the first. I got it in 1958.” He pointed to the next one. “1959.” Buttercup. “1960.” Daisy. “It

became a tradition. She would make the frame sometime during the summer and save it until my birthday. I

always hung them on the wall in this room. In 1966 she disappeared and the tradition was broken.”

Vanger pointed to a gap in the row of frames. Blomkvist felt the hairs rise on the back of his neck. The

wall was filled with pressed flowers.

“1967, a year after she disappeared, I received this flower on my birthday. It’s a violet.”

“How did the flower come to you?”

“Wrapped in what they call gift paper and posted in a padded envelope from Stockholm. No return address. No message.”

“You mean that . . .” Blomkvist made a sweeping gesture.

“Precisely. On my birthday every damn year. Do you know how that feels? It’s directed at me, precisely

as if the murderer wants to torture me. I’ve worried myself sick over whether Harriet might have been taken away because someone wanted to get at me. It was no secret that she and I had a special relationship and that I thought of her as my own daughter.”

“So what is it you want me to do?” Blomkvist said.

When Salander returned the Corolla to the garage under Milton Security, she made sure to go to the toilet

upstairs in the office. She used her card key in the door and took the lift straight up to the third floor to avoid going in through the main entrance on the second floor, where the duty officer worked. She used the

toilet and got a cup of coffee from the espresso machine that Armansky had bought when at long last he

recognised that Salander would never make coffee just because it was expected of her. Then she went to

her office and hung her leather jacket over the back of her chair.

The office was a 6½-by-10-foot glass cubicle. There was a desk with an old model Dell desktop PC, a

telephone, one office chair, a metal waste paper basket, and a bookshelf. The bookshelf contained an assortment of directories and three blank notebooks. The two desk drawers housed some ballpoints, paper clips, and a notebook. On the window sill stood a potted plant with brown, withered leaves.

Salander looked thoughtfully at the plant, as if it were the first time she had seen it, then she deposited it firmly in the waste paper basket.

She seldom had anything to do in her office and visited it no more than half a dozen times a year, mainly

when she needed to sit by herself and prepare a report just before handing it in. Armansky had insisted

that she have her own space. His reasoning was that she would then feel like part of the company although

she worked as a freelancer. She suspected that Armansky hoped that this way he would have a chance to

keep an eye on her and meddle in her affairs. At first she had been given space farther down the corridor, in a larger room that she was expected to share with a colleague. But since she was never there Armansky

finally moved her into the cubbyhole at the end of the corridor.

Salander took out the cuff. She looked at it, meditatively biting her lower lip.

It was past 11:00 and she was alone on the floor. She suddenly felt excruciatingly bored.

After a while she got up and walked to the end of the hall and tried the door to Armansky’s office.

Locked. She looked around. The chances of anyone turning up in the corridor around midnight on December 26 were almost nonexistent. She opened the door with a pirate copy of the company’s card key,

which she had taken the trouble to make several years before.

Armansky’s office was spacious: in front of his desk were guest chairs, and a conference table with room for eight people was in the corner. It was impeccably neat. She had not snooped in his office for quite some time, but now that she was here . . . She spent a while at his desk to bring herself up to date regarding the search for a suspected mole in the company, which of her colleagues had been planted undercover in a firm where a theft ring was operating, and what measures had been taken in all secrecy to

protect a client who was afraid her child was in danger of being kidnapped by the father.

At last she put the papers back precisely the way they were, locked Armansky’s door, and walked home. She felt satisfied with her day.

“I don’t know whether we’ll find out the truth, but I refuse to go to my grave without giving it one last try,”

the old man said. “I simply want to commission you to go through all the evidence one last time.”

“This is crazy,” Blomkvist said.

“Why is it crazy?”

“I’ve heard enough. Henrik, I understand your grief, but I have to be honest with you. What you’re asking me to do is a waste of my time and your money. You are asking me to conjure up a solution to a

mystery that the police and experienced investigators with considerably greater resources have failed to

solve all these years. You’re asking me to solve a crime getting on for forty years after it was committed.

How could I possibly do that?”

“We haven’t discussed your fee,” Vanger said.

“That won’t be necessary.”

“I can’t force you, but listen to what I’m offering. Frode has already drawn up a contract. We can negotiate the details, but the contract is simple, and all it needs is your signature.”

“Henrik, this is absurd. I really don’t believe I can solve the mystery of Harriet’s disappearance.”

“According to the contract, you don’t have to. All it asks is that you do your best. If you fail, then it’s God’s will, or—if you don’t believe in Him—it’s fate.”

Blomkvist sighed. He was feeling more and more uncomfortable and wanted to end this visit to Hedeby, but he relented.

“All right, let’s hear it.”

“I want you to live and work here in Hedeby for a year. I want you to go through the investigative report on Harriet’s disappearance one page at a time. I want you to examine everything with new eyes. I

want you to question all the old conclusions exactly the way an investigative reporter would. I want you

to look for something that I and the police and other investigators may have missed.”

“You’re asking me to set aside my life and career to devote myself for a whole year to something that’s

a complete waste of time.”

Vanger smiled. “As to your career, we might agree that for the moment it’s somewhat on hold.”

Blomkvist had no answer to that.

“I want to buy a year of your life. Give you a job. The salary is better than any offer you’ll ever get in your life. I will pay you 200,000 kronor a month—that’s 2.4 million kronor if you accept and stay the whole year.”

Blomkvist was astonished.

“I have no illusions. The possibility you will succeed is minimal, but if against all odds you should crack the mystery then I’m offering a bonus of double payment, or 4.8 million kronor. Let’s be generous

and round it off to five million.”

Vanger leaned back and cocked his head.

“I can pay the money into any bank account you wish, anywhere in the world. You can also take the money in cash in a suitcase, so it’s up to you whether you want to report the income to the tax authorities.”

“This is . . . not healthy,” Blomkvist stammered.

“Why so?” Vanger said calmly. “I’m eighty-two and still in full possession of my faculties. I have a large personal fortune; I can spend it any way I want. I have no children and absolutely no desire to leave any money to relatives I despise. I’ve made my last will and testament; I’ll be giving the bulk of my fortune to the World Wildlife Fund. A few people who are close to me will receive significant amounts—

including Anna.”

Blomkvist shook his head.

“Try to understand me,” Vanger said. “I’m a man who’s going to die soon. There’s one thing in the world I want to have—and that’s an answer to this question that has plagued me for half my life. I don’t

expect to find the answer, but I do have resources to make one last attempt. Is that unreasonable? I owe it to Harriet. And I owe it to myself.”

“You’ll be paying me several million kronor for nothing. All I need to do is sign the contract and then

twiddle my thumbs for a year.”

“You wouldn’t do that. On the contrary—you’ll work harder than you’ve ever worked in your life.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Because I can offer you something that you can’t buy for any price, but which you want more than anything in the world.”

“And what would that be?”

Vanger’s eyes narrowed.

“I can give you Hans-Erik Wennerström. I can prove that he’s a swindler. He happened, thirty-five years ago, to begin his career with me, and I can give you his head on a platter. Solve the mystery and you can turn your defeat in court into the story of the year.”

CHAPTER 7

Friday, January 3

Erika set her coffee cup on the table and stood by the window looking out at the view of Gamla Stan. It

was 9:00 in the morning. All the snow had been washed away by the rain over New Year’s.

“I’ve always loved this view,” she said. “An apartment like this would make me give up living in Saltsjöbaden.”

“You’ve got the keys. You can move over from your upper-class reserve any time you want,” Blomkvist

said. He closed the suitcase and put it by the front door.

Berger turned and gave him a disbelieving look. “You can’t be serious, Mikael,” she said. “We’re in

our worst crisis and you’re packing to go and live in Tjottahejti.”

“Hedestad. A couple of hours by train. And it’s not for ever.”

“It might as well be Ulan Bator. Don’t you see that it will look as if you’re slinking off with your tail

between your legs?”

“That’s precisely what I am doing. Besides, I have to do some gaol time too.”

Christer Malm was sitting on the sofa. He was uncomfortable. It was the first time since they founded

Millennium that he had seen Berger and Blomkvist in such disagreement. Over all the years they had been inseparable. Sometimes they had furious clashes, but their arguments were always about business matters,

and they would invariably resolve all those issues before they hugged each other and went back to their

corners. Or to bed. Last autumn had not been fun, and now it was as if a great gulf had opened up between

them. Malm wondered if he was watching the beginning of the end of Millennium.

“I don’t have a choice,” Blomkvist said. “We don’t have a choice.”

He poured himself a coffee and sat at the kitchen table. Berger shook her head and sat down facing him.

“What do you think, Christer?” she said.

He had been expecting the question and dreading the moment when he would have to take a stand. He

was the third partner, but they all knew that it was Blomkvist and Berger who were Millennium. The only time they asked his advice was when they could not agree.

“Honestly,” Malm said, “you both know perfectly well it doesn’t matter what I think.”

He shut up. He loved making pictures. He loved working with graphics. He had never considered himself an artist, but he knew he was a damned good designer. On the other hand, he was helpless at intrigue and policy decisions.

Berger and Blomkvist looked at each other across the table. She was cool and furious. He was thinking

hard.

This isn’t an argument, Malm thought. It’s a divorce.

“OK, let me present my case one last time,” Blomkvist said. “This does not mean I’ve given up on Millennium. We’ve spent too much time working our hearts out for that.”

“But now you won’t be at the office—Christer and I will have to carry the load. Can’t you see that?

You’re the one marching into self-imposed exile.”

“That’s the second thing. I need a break, Erika. I’m not functioning anymore. I’m burned out. A paid sabbatical in Hedestad might be exactly what I need.”

“The whole thing is idiotic, Mikael. You might as well take a job in a circus.”

“I know. But I’m going to get 2.4 million for sitting on my backside for a year, and I won’t be wasting

my time. That’s the third thing. Round One with Wennerström is over, and he knocked me out. Round Two

has already started—he’s going to try to sink Millennium for good because he knows that the staff here will always know what he’s been up to, for as long as the magazine exists.”

“I know what he’s doing. I’ve seen it in the monthly ad sales figures for the last six months.”

“That’s exactly why I have to get out of the office. I’m like a red rag waving at him. He’s paranoid as far as I’m concerned. As long as I’m here, he’ll just keep on coming. Now we have to prepare ourselves

for Round Three. If we’re going to have the slightest chance against Wennerström, we have to retreat and

work out a whole new strategy. We have to find something to hammer him with. That’ll be my job this year.”

“I understand all that,” Berger said. “So go ahead and take a holiday. Go abroad, lie on a beach for a

month. Check out the love life on the Costa Brava. Relax. Go out to Sandhamn and look at the waves.”

“And when I come back nothing will be different. Wennerström is going to crush Millennium unless he is appeased by my having stood down. You know that. The only thing which might otherwise stop him is if

we get something on him that we can use.”

“And you think that’s what you will find in Hedestad?”

“I checked the cuttings. Wennerström did work at the Vanger company from 1969 to 1972. He was in

management and was responsible for strategic placements. He left in a hurry. Why should we rule out the

possibility that Henrik Vanger does have something on him?”

“But if what he did happened thirty years ago, it’s going to be hard to prove it today.”

“Vanger promised to set out in detail what he knows. He’s obsessed with this missing girl—it seems to

be the only thing he’s interested in, and if this means he has to burn Wennerström then I think there’s a good chance he’ll do it. We certainly can’t ignore the opportunity—he’s the first person who’s said he’s

willing to go on record with evidence against Wennerström.”

“We couldn’t use it even if you came back with incontrovertible proof that it was Wennerström who strangled the girl. Not after so many years. He’d massacre us in court.”

“The thought had crossed my mind, but it’s no good: he was plugging away at the Stockholm School of

Economics and had no connection with the Vanger companies at the time she disappeared.” Blomkvist paused. “Erika, I’m not going to leave Millennium, but it’s important for it to look as if I have. You and Christer have to go on running the magazine. If you can . . . if you have a chance to . . . arrange a cease-fire with Wennerström, then do it. You can’t do that if I’m still on the editorial board.”

“OK, but it’s a rotten situation, and I think you’re grasping at straws going to Hedestad.”

“Have you a better idea?”

Berger shrugged. “We ought to start chasing down sources right now. Build up the story from the beginning. And do it right this time.”

“Ricky—that story is dead as a doornail.”

Dejected, Berger rested her head on her hands. When she spoke, at first she did not want to meet Blomkvist’s eyes.

“I’m so fucking angry with you. Not because the story you wrote was baseless—I was in on it as much

as you were. And not because you’re leaving your job as publisher—that’s a smart decision in this situation. I can go along with making it look like a schism or a power struggle between you and me—I

understand the logic when it’s a matter of making Wennerström believe I’m a harmless bimbo and you’re

the real threat.” She paused and now looked him resolutely in the eye. “But I think you’re making a mistake. Wennerström isn’t going to fall for it. He’s going to keep on destroying Millennium. The only difference is that starting from today, I have to fight him alone, and you know that you’re needed more than ever on the editorial board. OK, I’d love to wage war against Wennerström, but what makes me so cross

is that you’re abandoning ship all of a sudden. You’re leaving me in the lurch when things are absolutely

at their worst ever.”

Blomkvist reached across and stroked her hair.

“You’re not alone. You’ve got Christer and the rest of the staff behind you.”

“Not Janne Dahlman. By the way, I think you made a mistake hiring him. He’s competent, but he does

more harm than good. I don’t trust him. He went around looking gleeful about your troubles all autumn. I

don’t know if he hopes he can take over your role or whether it’s just personal chemistry between him and

the rest of the staff.”

“I’m afraid you’re right,” Blomkvist said.

“So what should I do? Fire him?”

“Erika, you’re editor in chief and the senior shareholder of Millennium. If you have to, fire him.”

“We’ve never fired anyone, Micke. And now you’re dumping this decision on me too. It’s no fun any

more going to the office in the morning.”

At that point Malm surprised them by standing up.

“If you’re going to catch that train we’ve got to get moving.” Berger began to protest, but he held up a

hand. “Wait, Erika, you asked me what I thought. Well, I think the situation is shitty. But if things are the way Mikael says—that he’s about to hit the wall—then he really does have to leave for his own sake. We

owe him that much.”

They stared at Malm in astonishment and he gave Blomkvist an embarrassed look.

“You both know that it’s you two who are Millennium. I’m a partner and you’ve always been fair with me and I love the magazine and all that, but you could easily replace me with some other art director. But since you asked for my opinion, there you have it. As far as Dahlman is concerned, I agree with you. And

if you want to fire him, Erika, then I’ll do it for you. As long as we have a credible reason. Obviously it’s extremely unfortunate that Mikael’s leaving right now, but I don’t think we have a choice. Mikael, I’ll drive you to the station. Erika and I will hold the fort until you get back.”

“What I’m afraid of is that Mikael won’t ever come back,” Berger said quietly.

Armansky woke up Salander when he called her at 1:30 in the afternoon.

“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 are going to stay for a

longer period of time. This was where you and your parents lived in 1963. It’s one of the oldest buildings in the village, but it’s been modernised. I asked Nilsson, my caretaker, to light the fire this morning.”

The house consisted of a large kitchen and two smaller rooms, totalling about 500 square feet. The kitchen took up half the space and was quite modern, with an electric stove and a small refrigerator.

Against the wall facing the front door stood an old cast-iron stove in which a fire had indeed been lit earlier in the day.

“You don’t need to use the woodstove unless it gets bitterly cold. The firewood bin is there in the hallway, and you’ll find a woodshed at the back. The house has been unlived-in this autumn. The electric

heaters are usually sufficient. Just make sure you don’t hang any clothes on them, or it may start a fire.”

Blomkvist looked around. Windows faced three different directions, and from the kitchen table he had a

view of the bridge, about a hundred feet away. The furnishings in the kitchen included three big cupboards, some kitchen chairs, an old bench, and a shelf for newspapers. On top was an issue of See from 1967. In one corner was a smaller table that could be used as a desk.

Two narrow doors led to smaller rooms. The one on the right, closest to the outside wall, was hardly

more than a cubby hole with a desk, a chair, and some shelves along the wall. The other room, between

the hallway and the little office, was a very small bedroom with a narrow double bed, a bedside table,

and a wardrobe. On the walls hung landscape paintings. The furniture and wallpaper in the house were all

old and faded, but the place smelled nice and clean. Someone had worked over the floor with a dose of

soap. The bedroom had another door to the hallway, where a storeroom had been converted into a bathroom with a shower.

“You may have a problem with the water,” Vanger said. “We checked it this morning, but the pipes aren’t buried very deep, and if this cold hangs on for long they may freeze. There’s a bucket in the hallway so come up and get water from us if you need to.”

“I’ll need a telephone,” Blomkvist said.

“I’ve already ordered one. They’ll be here to install it the day after tomorrow. So, what do you think? If you change your mind, you would be welcome in the main house at any time.”

“This will be just fine,” Blomkvist said.

“Excellent. We have another hour or so of daylight left. Shall we take a walk so you can familiarise yourself with the village? Might I suggest that you put on some heavy socks and a pair of boots? You’ll

find them by the front door.” Blomkvist did as he suggested and decided that the very next day he would

go shopping for long underwear and a pair of good winter shoes.

The old man started the tour by explaining that Blomkvist’s neighbour across the road was Gunnar Nilsson, the assistant whom Vanger insisted on calling “the caretaker.” But Blomkvist soon realised that

he was more of a superintendent for all the buildings on Hedeby Island, and he also had responsibility for several buildings in Hedestad.

“His father was Magnus Nilsson, who was my caretaker in the sixties, one of the men who helped out at

the accident on the bridge. Magnus is retired and lives in Hedestad. Gunnar lives here with his wife, whose name is Helena. Their children have moved out.”

Vanger paused for a moment to shape what he would say next, which was: “Mikael, the official explanation for your presence here is that you’re going to help me write my autobiography. That will give

you an excuse for poking around in all the dark corners and asking questions. The real assignment is strictly between you and me and Dirch Frode.”

“I understand. And I’ll repeat what I said before: I don’t think I’m going to be able to solve the mystery.”

“All I ask is that you do your best. But we must be careful what we say in front of anyone else. Gunnar

is fifty-six, which means that he was nineteen when Harriet disappeared. There’s one question that I never got answered—Harriet and Gunnar were good friends, and I think some sort of childish romance went on

between them. He was pretty interested in her, at any rate. But on the day she disappeared, he was in Hedestad; he was one of those stranded on the mainland. Because of their relationship, he came under close scrutiny. It was quite unpleasant for him. He was with some friends all day, and he didn’t get back

here until evening. The police checked his alibi and it was airtight.”

“I assume that you have a list of everyone who was on the island and what everybody was doing that

day.”

“That’s correct. Shall we go on?”

They stopped at the crossroads on the hill, and Vanger pointed down towards the old fishing harbour,

now used for small boats.

“All the land on Hedeby Island is owned by the Vanger family—or by me, to be more precise. The one

exception is the farmland at Östergården and a few houses here in the village. The cabins down there at

the fishing harbour are privately owned, but they’re summer cottages and are mostly vacant during the winter. Except for that house farthest away—you can see smoke coming from the chimney.”

Blomkvist saw the smoke rising. He was frozen to the bone.

“It’s a miserably draughty hovel that functions as living quarters year-round. That’s where Eugen Norman lives. He’s in his late seventies and is a painter of sorts. I think his work is kitsch, but he’s rather well known as a landscape painter. You might call him the obligatory eccentric in the village.”

Vanger guided Blomkvist out towards the point, identifying one house after the other. The village consisted of six buildings on the west side of the road and four on the east. The first house, closest to Blomkvist’s guest house and the Vanger estate, belonged to Henrik Vanger’s brother Harald. It was a rectangular, two-storey stone building which at first glance seemed unoccupied. The curtains were drawn

and the path to the front door had not been cleared; it was covered with a foot and a half of snow. On second glance, they could see the footprints of someone who had trudged through the snow from the road

up to the door.

“Harald is a recluse. He and I have never seen eye to eye. Apart from our disagreements over the firm

—he’s a shareholder—we’ve barely spoken to each other in nearly 60 years. He’s ninety-two now, and

the only one of my four brothers still alive. I’ll tell you the details later, but he trained to be a doctor and spent most of his professional life in Uppsala. He moved back to Hedeby when he turned seventy.”

“You don’t care much for each other, and yet you’re neighbours.”

“I find him detestable, and I would have rather he’d stayed in Uppsala, but he owns this house. Do I

sound like a scoundrel?”

“You sound like someone who doesn’t much like his brother.”

“I spent the first twenty-five years of my life apologising for people like Harald because we’re family.

Then I discovered that being related is no guarantee of love and I had few reasons to defend Harald.”

The next house belonged to Isabella, Harriet Vanger’s mother.

“She’ll be seventy-five this year, and she’s still as stylish and vain as ever. She’s also the only one in the village who talks to Harald, and occasionally visits him, but they don’t have much in common.”

“How was her relationship with Harriet?”

“Good question. The women have to be included among the suspects. I told you that she mostly left the

children to their own devices. I can’t be sure, but I think her heart was in the right place; she just wasn’t capable of taking responsibility. She and Harriet were never close, but they weren’t enemies either.

Isabella can be tough, but sometimes she’s not all there. You’ll see what I mean when you meet her.”

Isabella’s neighbour was Cecilia Vanger, the daughter of Harald.

“She was married once and lived in Hedestad, but she and her husband separated some twenty years

ago. I own the house and offered to let her move in. She is a teacher, and in many ways she’s the direct

opposite of her father. I might add that she and her father speak to each other only when necessary.”

“How old is she?”

“Born in 1946. So she was twenty when Harriet disappeared. And yes, she was one of the guests on the

island that day. Cecilia may seem flighty, but in fact she’s shrewder than most. Don’t underestimate her. If anyone’s going to ferret out what you’re up to, she’s the one. I might add that she’s one of my relatives for whom I have the highest regard.”

“Does that mean that you don’t suspect her?”

“I wouldn’t say that. I want you to ponder the matter without any constraints, regardless of what I think

or believe.”

The house closest to Cecilia’s was also owned by Henrik Vanger, but it was leased to an elderly couple

formerly part of the management team of the Vanger companies. They had moved to Hedeby Island in the

eighties, so they had nothing to do with Harriet’s disappearance. The next house was owned by Birger Vanger, Cecilia’s brother. The house had been empty for many years since Birger moved to a modern house in Hedestad.

Most of the buildings lining the road were solid stone structures from the early twentieth century. The

last house was of a different type, a modern, architect-designed home built of white brick with black window frames. It was in a beautiful situation, and Blomkvist could see that the view from the top floor

must be magnificent, facing the sea to the east and Hedestad to the north.

“This is where Martin lives—Harriet’s brother and the Vanger Corporation CEO. The parsonage used

to be here, but that building was destroyed by a fire in the seventies, and Martin built this house in 1978

when he took over as CEO.”

In the last building on the east side of the road lived Gerda Vanger, widow of Henrik’s brother Greger,

and her son, Alexander.

“Gerda is sickly. She suffers from rheumatism. Alexander owns a small share of the Vanger

Corporation, but he runs a number of his own businesses, including restaurants. He usually spends a few

months each year in Barbados, where he has invested a considerable sum in the tourist trade.”

Between Gerda’s and Henrik’s houses was a plot of land with two smaller, empty buildings. They were

used as guest houses for family members. On the other side of Henrik’s house stood a private dwelling

where another retired employee lived with his wife, but it was empty in the winter when the couple repaired to Spain.

They returned to the crossroads, and with that the tour was over. Dusk was beginning to fall. Blomkvist

took the initiative.

“Henrik, I’ll do what I’ve been hired to do. I’ll write your autobiography, and I’ll humour you by reading all the material about Harriet as carefully and critically as I can. I just want you to realise that I’m not a private detective.”

“I expect nothing.”

“Fine.”

“I’m a night owl,” Vanger said. “So I’m at your disposal any time after lunch. I’ll arrange for you to

have an office up here, and you can make use of it whenever you like.”

“No, thank you. I have an office in the guest house, and that’s where I’ll do my work.”

“As you wish.”

“If I need to talk to you, we’ll do it in your office, but I’m not going to start throwing questions at you tonight.”

“I understand.” The old man seemed improbably timid.

“It’s going to take a couple of weeks to read through the papers. We’ll work on two fronts. We’ll meet

for a few hours each day so that I can interview you and gather material for your biography. When I start

having questions about Harriet which I need to discuss with you, I’ll let you know.”

“That sounds sensible.”

“I’m going to require a free hand to do my work, and I won’t have any set work hours.”

“You decide for yourself how the work should be done.”

“I suppose you’re aware that I have to spend a couple of months in prison. I don’t know exactly when,

but I’m not going to appeal. It’ll probably be sometime this year.”

Vanger frowned. “That’s unfortunate. We’ll have to solve that problem when it comes up. You can always request a postponement.”

“If it’s permitted and I have enough material, I might be able to work on your book in prison. One more

thing: I’m still part owner of Millennium and as of now it’s a magazine in crisis. If something happens that requires my presence in Stockholm, I would have to drop what I’m doing and go there.”

“I didn’t take you on as a serf. I want you to do a thorough job on the assignment I’ve given you, but, of course, you can set your own schedule and do the work as you see fit. If you need to take some time off,

feel free to do it, but if I find out that you’re not doing the work, I’ll consider that a breach of contract.”

Vanger looked over towards the bridge. He was a gaunt man, and Blomkvist thought that he looked at

that moment like a melancholy scarecrow.

“As far as Millennium is concerned, we ought to have a discussion about what kind of crisis it’s in and whether I can help in some way.”

“The best assistance you can offer is to give me Wennerström’s head on a platter right here and now.”

“Oh no, I’m not thinking of doing that.” The old man gave Blomkvist a hard look. “The only reason you

took this job was because I promised to expose Wennerström. If I give you the information now, you could

stop work on the job whenever you felt like it. I’ll give you the information a year from now.”

“Henrik, forgive me for saying this, but I can’t be sure that a year from now you’ll be alive.”

Vanger sighed and cast a thoughtful gaze over the fishing harbour.

“Fair enough. I’ll talk to Frode and see if we can work something out. But as far as Millennium is concerned, I might be able to help in another way. As I understand it, the advertisers have begun to pull

out.”

“The advertisers are the immediate problem, but the crisis goes deeper than that. It’s a matter of trust. It doesn’t matter how many advertisers we have if no-one wants to buy the magazine.”

“I realise that. I’m still on the board of directors of quite a large corporation, albeit in a passive role.

We have to place advertisements somewhere. Let’s discuss the matter at some stage. Would you like to have dinner . . .”

“No. I want to get settled, buy some groceries, and take a look around. Tomorrow I’ll go to Hedestad

and shop for winter clothes.”

“Good idea.”

“I’d like the files about Harriet to be moved over to my place.”

“They need to be handled . . .”

“With great care—I understand.”

Blomkvist returned to the guest house. His teeth were chattering by the time he got indoors. The thermometer outside the window said 5°F, and he couldn’t remember ever feeling so cold as after that walk, which had lasted barely twenty minutes.

He spent an hour settling himself into what was to be his home for the coming year. He put his clothes

in the wardrobe in the bedroom, his toiletries went in the bathroom cabinet. His second suitcase was actually a trunk on wheels. From it he took books, CDs and a CD player, notebooks, a Sanyo tape recorder, a Microtek scanner, a portable ink-jet printer, a Minolta digital camera, and a number of other

items he regarded as essential kit for a year in exile.

He arranged the books and the CDs on the bookshelf in the office alongside two binders containing research material on Hans-Erik Wennerström. The material was useless, but he could not let it go.

Somehow he had to turn those two folders into building blocks for his continuing career.

Finally he opened his shoulder bag and put his iBook on the desk in the office. Then he stopped and

looked about him with a sheepish expression. The benefits of living in the countryside, forsooth. There was nowhere to plug in the broadband cable. He did not even have a telephone jack to connect an old dial-up modem.

Blomkvist called the Telia telephone company from his mobile. After a slight hassle, he managed to get

someone to find the order that Vanger had placed for the guest house. He wanted to know whether the connection could handle ADSL and was told that it would be possible by way of a relay in Hedeby, and

that it would take several days.

It was after 4:00 by the time Blomkvist was done. He put on a pair of thick socks and the borrowed boots

and pulled on an extra sweater. At the front door he stopped short; he had been given no keys to the house, and his big-city instincts rebelled at the idea of leaving the front door unlocked. He went back to the kitchen and began opening drawers. Finally he found a key hanging from a nail in the pantry.

The temperature had dropped to −1°F. He walked briskly across the bridge and up the hill past the church. The Konsum store was conveniently located about three hundred yards away. He filled two paper

bags to overflowing with supplies and then carried them home before returning across the bridge. This time he stopped at Susanne’s Bridge Café. The woman behind the counter was in her fifties. He asked whether she was Susanne and then introduced himself by saying that he was undoubtedly going to be a regular customer. He was for the time being the only customer, and Susanne offered him coffee when he

ordered sandwiches and bought a loaf of bread. He picked up a copy of the Hedestad Courier from the newspaper rack and sat at a table with a view of the bridge and the church, its facade now lit up. It looked like a Christmas card. It took him about four minutes to read the newspaper. The only news of interest was a brief item explaining that a local politician by the name of Birger Vanger (Liberal) was going to invest in “IT TechCent”—a technology development centre in Hedestad. Mikael sat there until the café closed at

6:00.

At 7:30 he called Berger, but was advised that the party at that number was not available. He sat on the

kitchen bench and tried to read a novel which, according to the back cover text, was the sensational debut of a teenage feminist. The novel was about the author’s attempt to get a handle on her sex life during a trip to Paris, and Blomkvist wondered whether he could be called a feminist if he wrote a novel about his own sex life in the voice of a high-school student. Probably not. He had bought the book because the publisher had hailed the first-time novelist as “a new Carina Rydberg.” He quickly ascertained that this

was not the case in either style or content. He put the book aside for a while and instead read a Hopalong Cassidy story in an issue of Rekordmagasinet from the mid-fifties.

Every half hour he heard the curt, muted clang of the church bell. Lights were visible in the windows at

the home of the caretaker across the road, but Blomkvist could not see anyone inside the house. Harald

Vanger’s house was dark. Around 9:00 a car drove across the bridge and disappeared towards the point.

At midnight the lights on the facade of the church were turned off. That was apparently the full extent of the entertainment in Hedeby on a Friday night in early January. It was eerily quiet.

He tried again to call Berger and got her voicemail, asking him to leave his name and a message. He

did so and then turned off the light and went to bed. The last thing he thought about before he fell asleep was that he was going to run a high risk of going stir-crazy in Hedeby.

It was strange to awake to utter silence. Blomkvist passed from deep sleep to total alertness in a fraction of a second, and then lay still, listening. It was cold in the room. He turned his head and looked at his wristwatch on a stool next to the bed. It was 7:08—he had never been much of a morning person, and it

used to be hard for him to wake up without having at least two alarm clocks. Today he had woken all by

himself, and he even felt rested.

He put some water on for coffee before getting into the shower. He was suddenly amused at his situation. Kalle Blomkvist—on a research trip in the back of beyond.

The shower head changed from scalding to ice-cold at the slightest touch. There was no morning paper

on the kitchen table. The butter was frozen. There was no cheese slicer in the drawer of kitchen utensils. It was still pitch dark outside. The thermometer showed 6 below zero. It was Saturday.

The bus stop for Hedestad was over the road from Konsum, and Blomkvist started off his exile by carrying out his plan to go shopping in town. He got off the bus by the railway station and made a tour of the centre of town. Along the way he bought heavy winter boots, two pairs of long underwear, several flannel shirts, a proper thigh-length winter jacket, a warm cap, and lined gloves. At the electronics store he found a small portable TV with rabbit ears. The sales clerk assured him that he would at least be able

to get SVT, the state TV channel, out at Hedeby, and Blomkvist promised to ask for his money back if that

turned out not to be the case.

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 were Vanger’s logbook of the investigations. In these notebooks he had recorded in an impeccable hand his own speculations, theories,

digressions. Blomkvist leafed through them. The text had a literary quality, and he had the feeling that these texts were fair copies of perhaps many more notebooks. There were ten binders containing material

on members of the Vanger family; these pages were typed and had been compiled over the intervening years, Vanger’s investigations of his own family.

Around 7:00 he heard a loud meowing at the front door. A reddish-brown cat slipped swiftly past him

into the warmth.

“Wise cat,” he said.

The cat sniffed around the guest house for a while. Mikael poured some milk into a dish, and his guest

lapped it up. Then the cat hopped on to the kitchen bench and curled up. And there she stayed.

It was after 10:00 before Blomkvist had the scope of the material clear in his mind and had arranged it on the shelves. He put on a pot of coffee and made himself two sandwiches. He had not eaten a proper meal

all day, but he was strangely uninterested in food. He offered the


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