“If you go on nagging, I’ll drag you back to Martin’s grotto and chain you up again.”

As she said this, Blomkvist fell asleep, as suddenly as if he had fainted.

CHAPTER 25. Saturday, July 12-Monday, July 14

Blomkvist woke with a start at 5:00 in the morning, scrabbling at his neck to get rid of the noose. Salander came in and took hold of his hands, keeping him still. He opened his eyes and looked at her blearily.

“I didn’t know that you played golf,” he said, closing his eyes again. She sat with him for a couple of minutes until she was sure he was asleep. While he slept, Salander had gone back to Martin Vanger’s basement to examine and photograph the crime scene. In addition to the torture instruments, she had found a collection of violent pornographic magazines and a large number of Polaroid photographs pasted into albums.

There was no diary. On the other hand, she did find two A4 binders with passport photographs and handwritten notes about the women. She put the binders in a nylon bag along with Martin’s Dell PC laptop, which she found on the hall table upstairs. While Blomkvist slept she continued her examination of Martin’s computer and binders. It was after 6:00 by the time she turned off the computer. She lit a cigarette.

Together with Mikael Blomkvist she had taken up the hunt for what they thought was a serial killer from the past. They had found something appallingly different. She could hardly imagine the horrors that must have played out in Martin Vanger’s basement, in the midst of this well-ordered, idyllic spot.

She tried to understand.

Martin Vanger had been killing women since the sixties, during the past fifteen years one or two victims per year. The killing had been done so discreetly and was so well planned that no-one was even aware that a serial killer was at work. How was that possible?

The binders provided a partial answer.

His victims were often new arrivals, immigrant girls who had no friends or social contacts in Sweden. There were also prostitutes and social outcasts, with drug abuse or other problems in their background.

From her own studies of the psychology of sexual sadism, Salander had learned that this type of murderer usually collected souvenirs from his victims. These souvenirs functioned as reminders that the killer could use to re-create some of the pleasure he had experienced. Martin Vanger had developed this peculiarity by keeping a “death book.” He had catalogued and graded his victims. He had described their suffering. He had documented his killings with videotapes and photographs.

The violence and the killing were the goal, but Salander concluded that it was the hunt that was Martin Vanger’s primary interest. In his laptop he had created a database with a list of more than a hundred women. There were employees from the Vanger Corporation, waitresses in restaurants where he regularly ate, reception staff in hotels, clerks at the social security office, the secretaries of business associates, and many other women. It seemed as if Martin had pigeonholed practically every woman he had ever come into contact with.

He had killed only a fraction of these women, but every woman anywhere near him was a potential victim. The cataloguing had the mark of a passionate hobby, and he must have devoted countless hours to it.

Is she married or single? Does she have children and family? Where does she work? Where does she live? What kind of car does she drive? What sort of education does she have? Hair colour? Skin colour? Figure?

The gathering of personal information about potential victims must have been a significant part of Martin Vanger’s sexual fantasies. He was first of all a stalker, and second a murderer.

When she had finished reading, she discovered a small envelope in one of the binders. She pulled out two much handled and faded Polaroid pictures. In the first picture a dark-haired girl was sitting at a table. The girl had on dark jeans and had a bare torso with tiny, pointed breasts. She had turned her face away from the camera and was in the process of lifting one arm in a gesture of defence, almost as if the photographer had surprised her. In the second picture she was completely naked. She was lying on her stomach on a blue bedspread. Her face was still turned away from the camera.

Salander stuffed the envelope with the pictures into her jacket pocket. After that she carried the binders over to the woodstove and struck a match. When she was done with the fire, she stirred the ashes. It was pouring down with rain when she took a short walk and, kneeling as if to tie a shoelace, discreetly dropped Martin Vanger’s laptop into the water under the bridge.

When Frode marched through the open door at 7:30 that morning, Salander was at the kitchen table smoking a cigarette and drinking coffee. Frode’s face was ashen, and he looked as if he had had a cruel awakening.

“Where’s Mikael?” he said.

“He’s still asleep.”

Frode sat down heavily on a kitchen chair. Salander poured coffee and pushed the cup over to him.

“Martin…I just found out that Martin was killed in a car accident last night.”

“That’s sad,” Salander said, taking a sip of her own coffee.

Frode looked up. At first he stared at her, uncomprehending. Then his eyes opened wide.

“What…?”

“He crashed. How annoying.”

“What do you know about this?”

“He drove his car right into the front of a truck. He committed suicide. The press, the stress, a floundering financial empire, dot, dot, dot, too much for him. At least that’s what I suppose it will say on the placards.”

Frode looked as if he were about to have a cerebral haemorrhage. He stood up swiftly and walked unsteadily to the bedroom.

“Let him sleep,” Salander snapped.

Frode looked at the sleeping figure. He saw the black and blue marks on Blomkvist’s face and the contusions on his chest. Then he saw the flaming line where the noose had been. Salander touched his arm and closed the door. Frode backed out and sank on to the kitchen bench.

Lisbeth Salander told him succinctly what had happened during the night. She told him what Martin Vanger’s chamber of horrors looked like and how she had found Mikael with a noose around his neck and the CEO of the Vanger Corporation standing in front of his naked body. She told him what she had found in the company’s archives the day before and how she had established a possible link between Martin’s father and the murders of at least seven women.

Frode interrupted her recitation only once. When she stopped talking, he sat mutely for several minutes before he took a deep breath and said: “What are we going to do?”

“That’s not for me to say,” Salander said.

“But…”

“As I see it, I’ve never set foot in Hedestad.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Under no circumstances do I want my name in any police report. I don’t exist in connection with any of this. If my name is mentioned in connection with this story, I’ll deny that I’ve ever been here, and I’ll refuse to answer a single question.”

Frode gave her a searching look.

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t need to understand.”

“Then what should I do?”

“You’ll have to work that out for yourself. Only leave me and Mikael out of it.”

Frode was deathly pale.

“Look at it this way: the only thing you know is that Martin Vanger died in a traffic accident. You have no idea that he was also an insane, nauseating serial killer, and you’ve never heard about the room in his basement.”

She put the key on the table between them.

“You’ve got time-before anyone is going to clean out Martin’s house and discover the basement.”