"so what are you doing in the city?"

blomkvist was embarrassed. he had been at milton security, only a few streets away, and he had decided on sheer impulse to come in. it seemed too complicated to explain that he had been there to hire a research assistant who was a security consultant who had hacked into his computer. instead he shrugged and said he had come to stockholm on vanger-related business, and he would have to go back north at once. he asked how things were going at the magazine.

"apart from the good news on the advertising and the subscription fronts, there is one cloud on the horizon."

"which is?"

"janne dahlman."

"of course."

"i had a talk with him in april, after we released the news that henrik had become a partner. i don't know if it's just janne's nature to be negative or if there's something more serious going on, if he's playing some sort of game."

"what happened?"

"it's nothing i can put a finger on, rather that i no longer trust him. after we signed the agreement with vanger, christer and i had to decide whether to inform the whole staff that we were no longer at risk of going under this autumn, or..."

"or to tell just a chosen few."

"exactly. i may be paranoid, but i didn't want to risk having dahlman leak the story. so we decided to inform the whole staff on the same day the agreement was made public. which meant that we kept the lid on it for over a month."

"and?"

"well, that was the first piece of good news they'd had in a year. everyone cheered except for dahlman. i mean - we don't have the world's biggest editorial staff. there were three people cheering, plus the intern, and one person who got his nose out of joint because we hadn't told everybody earlier."

"he had a point..."

"i know. but the thing is, he kept on bitching about the issue day after day, and morale in the office was affected. after two weeks of this shit i called him into my office and told him to his face that my reason for not having informed the staff earlier was that i didn't trust him to keep the news secret."

"how did he take it?"

"he was terribly upset, of course. i stood my ground and gave him an ultimatum - either he had to pull himself together or start looking for another job."

"and?"

"he pulled himself together. but he keeps to himself, and there's a tension between him and the others. christer can't stand him, and he doesn't hide it."

"what do you suspect dahlman of doing?"

"i don't know. we hired him a year ago, when we were first talking about trouble with wennerstrom. i can't prove a thing, but i have a nasty feeling that he's not working for us."

"trust your instincts."

"maybe he's just a square peg in a round hole who just happens to be poisoning the atmosphere."

"it's possible. but i agree that we made a mistake when we hired him."

half an hour later he was on his way north across the locks at slussen in the car he had borrowed from frode's wife. it was a ten-year-old volvo she never used. blomkvist had been given leave to borrow it whenever he liked.

it was the tiny details that he could easily have missed if he had not been alert: some papers not as evenly stacked as he remembered; a binder not quite flush on the shelf; his desk drawer closed all the way - he was positive that it was an inch open when he left.

someone had been inside his cottage.

he had locked the door, but it was an ordinary old lock that almost anyone could pick with a screwdriver, and who knew how many keys were in circulation. he systematically searched his office, looking for what might be missing. after a while he decided that everything was still there.

nevertheless someone had been in the cottage and gone through his papers and binders. he had taken his computer with him, so they had not been able to access that. two questions arose: who was it? and how much had his visitor been able to find out?

the binders belonged to the part of vanger's collection that he brought back to the guest house after returning from prison. there was nothing of the new material in them. his notebooks in the desk would read like code to the uninitiated - but was the person who had searched his desk uninitiated?

in a plastic folder on the middle of the desk he had put a copy of the date book list and a copy of the verses. that was serious. it would tell whoever it was that the date book code was cracked.

so who was it?

vanger was in the hospital. he did not suspect anna. frode? he had already told him all the details. cecilia vanger had cancelled her trip to florida and was back from london - along with her sister. blomkvist had only seen her once, driving her car across the bridge the day before. martin vanger. harald vanger. birger vanger - he had turned up for a family gathering to which blomkvist had not been invited on the day after vanger's heart attack. alexander vanger. isabella vanger.

whom had frode talked to? what might he have let slip this time? how many of the anxious relatives had picked up on the fact that blomkvist had made a breakthrough in his investigation?

it was after 8:00. he called the locksmith in hedestad and ordered a new lock. the locksmith said that he could come out the following day. blomkvist said he would pay double if he came at once. they agreed that he would come at around 10:30 that night and install a new deadbolt lock.

blomkvist drove to frode's house. his wife showed him into the garden behind the house and offered him a cold pilsner, which he gratefully accepted. he asked how henrik vanger was.

frode shook his head.

"they operated on him. he had blockages in his coronary arteries. the doctors say that the next few days are critical."

they thought about this for a while as they drank their pilsners.

"you haven't talked to him, i suppose?"

"no. he's not well enough to talk. how did it go in stockholm?"

"the salander girl accepted the job. here's the contract from milton security. you have to sign it and put it in the post."

frode read through the document.

"she's expensive," he said.

"henrik can afford it."

frode nodded. he took a pen out of his breast pocket and scrawled his name.

"it's a good thing that i'm signing it while he's still alive. could you put it in the letter box at konsum on your way home?"

blomkvist was in bed by midnight, but he could not sleep. until now his work on hedeby island had seemed like research on a historical curiosity. but if someone was sufficiently interested in what he was doing to break into his office, then the solution had to be closer to the present than he had thought.

then it occurred to him that there were others who might be interested in what he was working on. vanger's sudden appearance on the board of millennium had not gone unnoticed by wennerstrom. or was this paranoia?

mikael got out of bed and went to stand naked at the kitchen window, gazing at the church on the other side of the bridge. he lit a cigarette.

he couldn't figure out lisbeth salander. she was altogether odd. long pauses in the middle of the conversation. her apartment was messy, bordering on chaotic. bags filled with newspapers in the hall. a kitchen that had not been cleaned or tidied in years. clothes were scattered in heaps on the floor. she had obviously spent half the night in a bar. she had love bites on her neck and she had clearly had company overnight. she had heaven knows how many tattoos and two piercings on her face and maybe in other places. she was weird.

armansky assured him that she was their very best researcher, and her report on him was excruciatingly thorough. a strange girl.

salander was sitting at her powerbook, but she was thinking about mikael blomkvist. she had never in her adult life allowed anyone to cross her threshold without an express invitation, and she could count those she had invited on one hand. blomkvist had nonchalantly barged into her life, and she had uttered only a few lame protests.

not only that, he had teased her.

under normal circumstances that sort of behaviour would have made her mentally cock a pistol. but she had not felt an iota of threat or any sort of hostility from his side. he had good reason to read her the riot act, even report her to the police. instead he had treated even her hacking into his computer as a joke.

that had been the most sensitive part of their conversation. blomkvist seemed to be deliberately not broaching the subject, and finally she could not help asking the question.

"you said that you knew what i did."

"you've been inside my computer. you're a hacker."

"how do you know that?" salander was absolutely positive that she had left no traces and that her trespassing could not be discovered by anyone unless a top security consultant sat down and scanned the hard drive at the same time as she was accessing the computer.

"you made a mistake."

she had quoted from a text that was only on his computer.

salander sat in silence. finally she looked up at him, her eyes expressionless.

"how did you do it?" he asked.

"my secret. what are you thinking of doing about it?"

mikael shrugged.

"what can i do?"

"it's exactly what you do as a journalist."

"of course. and that's why we journalists have an ethics committee that keeps track of the moral issues. when i write an article about some bastard in the banking industry, i leave out, for instance, his or her private life. i don't say that a forger is a lesbian or gets turned on by having sex with her dog or anything like that, even if it happens to be true. bastards too have a right to their private lives. does that make sense?"

"yes."

"so you encroached on my integrity. my employer doesn't need to know who i have sex with. that's my business."

salander's face was creased by a crooked smile.

"you think i shouldn't have mentioned that?"

"in my case it didn't make a lot of difference. half the city knows about my relationship with erika. but it's a matter of principle."

"in that case, it might amuse you to know that i also have principles comparable to your ethics committee's. i call them salander's principles. one of them is that a bastard is always a bastard, and if i can hurt a bastard by digging up shit about him, then he deserves it."

"ok," blomkvist said. "my reasoning isn't too different from yours, but..."

"but the thing is that when i do a pi, i also look at what i think about the person. i'm not neutral. if the person seems like a good sort, i might tone down my report."

"really?"

"in your case i toned it down. i could have written a book about your sex life. i could have mentioned to frode that erika berger has a past in club xtreme and played around with bdsm in the eighties - which would have prompted certain unavoidable notions about your sex life and hers."

blomkvist met salander's gaze. after a moment he laughed.

"you're really meticulous, aren't you? why didn't you put it in the report?"

"you are adults who obviously like each other. what you do in bed is nobody's business, and the only thing i would have achieved by talking about her was to hurt both of you, or to provide someone with blackmail material. i don't know frode - the information could have ended up with wennerstrom."

"and you don't want to provide wennerstrom with information?"

"if i had to choose between you and him, i'd probably end up in your court."

"erika and i have a... our relationship is..."

"please, i really don't give a toss about what sort of relationship you have. but you haven't answered my question: what do you plan to do about my hacking into your computer?"

"lisbeth, i'm not here to blackmail you. i'm here to ask you to help me do some research. you can say yes or no. if you say no, fine, i'll find someone else and you'll never hear from me again."

chapter 19

thursday, june 19 - sunday, june 29

while he waited for word on whether vanger was going to pull through or not, blomkvist spent the days going over his materials. he kept in close touch with frode. on thursday evening frode brought him the news that the immediate crisis seemed to be over.

"i was able to talk to him for a while today. he wants to see you as soon as possible."

so it was that, around 1:00 on the afternoon of midsummer eve, blomkvist drove to hedestad hospital and went in search of the ward. he encountered an angry birger vanger, who blocked his way. henrik could not possibly receive visitors, he said.

"that's odd," blomkvist said, "henrik sent word saying that he expressly wanted to see me today."

"you're not a member of the family; you have no business here."

"you're right. i'm not a member of the family. but i'm working for henrik vanger, and i take orders only from him."

this might have led to a heated exchange if frode had not at that moment come out of vanger's room.

"oh, there you are. henrik has been asking after you."

frode held open the door and blomkvist walked past birger into the room.

vanger looked to have aged ten years. he was lying with his eyes half closed, an oxygen tube in his nose, and his hair more dishevelled than ever. a nurse stopped blomkvist, putting a hand firmly on his arm.

"two minutes. no more. and don't upset him." blomkvist sat on a visitor's chair so that he could see vanger's face. he felt a tenderness that astonished him, and he stretched out his hand to gently squeeze the old man's hand.

"any news?" the voice was weak.

blomkvist nodded.