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 61/2-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.”