Mikael waited.

“I suppose we should have a board meeting to look at the situation.”

“That’s a good idea. But as far as I know, it’s been decided that the next board meeting won’t be held until August.”

“I know that, but maybe we should hold it earlier.”

Blomkvist smiled politely.

“You’re really talking to the wrong person. At the moment I’m not on the board. I left in December. You should get in touch with Erika Berger. She knows that Henrik has been taken ill.”

Martin Vanger had not expected this response.

“You’re right, of course. I’ll talk to her.” He patted Blomkvist on the shoulder to say goodbye and was gone.

Nothing concrete had been said, but the threat hung in the air. Martin Vanger had set Millennium on the balance tray. After a moment Blomkvist poured himself another drink and picked up his Val McDermid.

The mottled brown cat came to say hello and rubbed on his leg. He lifted her up and scratched behind her ears.

“The two of us are having a very boring Midsummer Eve, aren’t we?” he said.

When it started to rain, he went inside and went to bed. The cat preferred to stay outdoors.

Salander got out her Kawasaki on Midsummer Eve and spent the day giving it a good overhaul. A lightweight 125cc might not be the toughest bike in the world, but it was hers, and she could handle it. She had restored it, one nut at a time, and she had souped it up just a bit over the legal limit.

In the afternoon she put on her helmet and leather suit and drove to Äppelviken Nursing Home, where she spent the evening in the park with her mother. She felt a pang of concern and guilt. Her mother seemed more remote than ever before. During three hours they exchanged only a few words, and when they did speak, her mother did not seem to know who she was talking to.

Blomkvist wasted several days trying to identify the car with the AC plates. After a lot of trouble and finally by consulting a retired mechanic in Hedestad, he came to the conclusion that the car was a Ford Anglia, a model that he had never heard of before. Then he contacted a clerk at the motor vehicle department and enquired about the possibility of getting a list of all the Ford Anglias in 1966 that had a licence plate beginning AC3. He was eventually told that such an archaeological excavation in the records presumably could be done, but that it would take time and it was beyond the boundaries of what could be considered public information.

Not until several days after Midsummer did Blomkvist get into his borrowed Volvo and drive north on the E4. He drove at a leisurely pace. Just short of the Härnösand Bridge he stopped to have coffee at the Vesterlund pastry shop.

The next stop was Umeå, where he pulled into an inn and had the daily special. He bought a road atlas and continued on to Skellefteå, where he turned towards Norsjö. He arrived around 6:00 in the evening and took a room in the Hotel Norsjö.

He began his search early the next morning. The Norsjö Carpentry Shop was not in the telephone book. The Polar Hotel desk clerk, a girl in her twenties, had never heard of the business.

“Who should I ask?”

The clerk looked puzzled for a few seconds until her face lit up and she said that she would call her father. Two minutes later she came back and explained that the Norsjö Carpentry Shop closed in the early eighties. If he needed to talk to someone who knew more about the business, he should go and see a certain Burman, who had been the foreman and who now lived on a street called Solvändan.

Norsjö was a small town with one main street, appropriately enough called Storgatan, that ran through the whole community. It was lined with shops with residential side streets off it. At the east end there was a small industrial area and a stable; at the western end stood an uncommonly beautiful wooden church. Blomkvist noted that the village also had a Missionary church and a Pentecostal church. A poster on a bulletin board at the bus station advertised a hunting museum and a skiing museum. A leftover flyer announced that Veronika would sing at the fair-grounds at Midsummer. He could walk from one end of the village to the other in less than twenty minutes.

The street called Solvändan consisted of single-family homes and was about five minutes from the hotel. There was no answer when Blomkvist rang the bell. It was 9:30, and he assumed that Burman had left for work or, if he was retired, was out on an errand.

His next stop was the hardware store on Storgatan. He reasoned that anyone living in Norsjö would sooner or later pay a visit to the hardware store. There were two sales clerks in the shop. Blomkvist chose the older one, maybe fifty or so.

“Hi. I’m looking for a couple who probably lived in Norsjö in the sixties. The man might have worked for the Norsjö Carpentry Shop. I don’t know their name, but I have two pictures that were taken in 1966.”

The clerk studied the photographs for a long time but finally shook his head, saying he could not recognise either the man or the woman.

At lunchtime he had a burger at a hot-dog stand near the bus station. He had given up on the shops and had made his way through the municipal office, the library, and the pharmacy. The police station was empty, and he had started approaching older people at random. Early in the afternoon he asked two young women: they did not recognise the couple in the photographs, but they did have a good idea.

“If the pictures were taken in 1966, the people would have to be in their sixties today. Why don’t you go over to the retirement home on Solbacka and ask there?”

Blomkvist introduced himself to a woman at the front desk of the retirement home, explaining what he wanted to know. She glared at him suspiciously but finally allowed herself to be persuaded. She led him to the day room, where he spent half an hour showing the pictures to a group of elderly people. They were very helpful, but none of them could identify the couple.

At 5:00 he went back to Solvändan and knocked on Burman’s door. This time he had better luck. The Burmans, both the man and the wife, were retired, and they had been out all day. They invited Blomkvist into their kitchen, where his wife promptly made coffee while Mikael explained his errand. As with all his other attempts that day, he again drew a blank. Burman scratched his head, lit a pipe, and then concluded after a moment that he did not recognise the couple in the photographs. The Burmans spoke in a distinct Norsjö dialect to each other, and Blomkvist occasionally had difficulty understanding what they were saying. The wife meant “curly hair” when she remarked that the woman in the picture had knövelhära.

“But you’re quite right that it’s a sticker from the carpentry shop,” her husband said. “That was clever of you to recognise it. But the problem was that we handed out those stickers left and right. To contractors, people who bought or delivered timber, joiners, machinists, all sorts.”

“It’s turning out to be harder to find this couple than I thought.”

“Why do you want to find them?”

Blomkvist had decided to tell the truth if anyone asked him. Any attempt to make up a story about the couple in the pictures would just sound false and create confusion.

“It’s a long story. I’m investigating a crime that occurred in Hedestad in 1966, and I think there’s a possibility, although a very small one, that the people in the photographs might have seen what happened. They’re not in any way under suspicion, and I don’t think they’re even aware that they might have information that could solve the crime.”

“A crime? What kind of crime?”

“I’m sorry, but I can’t tell you any more than that. I know it sounds bizarre that someone would come here almost forty years later, trying to find this couple, but the crime is still unsolved, and it’s only lately that new facts have come to light.”