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,