and he had the feeling that these texts were fair copies of perhaps many more
notebooks. There were ten binders containing material on members of the Vanger
family; these pages were typed and had been compiled over the intervening years,
Vanger’s investigations of his own family.
Around 7:00 he heard a loud meowing at the front door. A reddish-brown cat
slipped swiftly past him into the warmth.
“Wise cat,” he said.
The cat sniffed around the guest house for a while. Mikael poured some milk into a
dish, and his guest lapped it up. Then the cat hopped on to the kitchen bench and
curled up. And there she stayed.
It was after 10:00 before Blomkvist had the scope of the material clear in his mind
and had arranged it on the shelves. He put on a pot of coffee and made himself two
sandwiches. He had not eaten a proper meal all day, but he was strangely
uninterested in food. He offered the cat a piece of sausage and some liverwurst.
After drinking his coffee, he took the cigarettes out of his jacket pocket and opened
the pack.
He checked his mobile. Berger had not called. He tried her once more. Again only
her voicemail.
One of the first steps Blomkvist had taken was to scan in the map of Hedeby Island
that he had borrowed from Vanger. While all the names were still fresh in his mind,
he wrote down who lived in each house. The Vanger clan consisted of such an
extensive cast that it would take time to learn who was who.
Just before midnight he put on warm clothes and his new shoes and walked across
the bridge. He turned off the road and along the sound below the church. Ice had
formed on the sound and inside the old harbour, but farther out he could see a
darker belt of open water. As he stood there, the lights on the facade of the church
went out, and it was dark all around him. It was icy cold and stars filled the sky.
All of a sudden Blomkvist felt depressed. He could not for the life of him
understand how he had allowed Vanger to talk him into taking on this assignment.