By the end of February Blomkvist fell into a daily routine that transformed his stay
in Hedeby. He got up at 9:00 every morning, ate breakfast, and worked until noon.
During this time he would cram new material into his head. Then he would take an
hour-long walk, no matter what the weather was like. In the afternoon he would go
on working, either at home or at Susanne’s Bridge Café, processing what he had
read in the morning or writing sections of what would be Vanger’s auto-biography.
Between 3:00 and 6:00 he was always free. He would shop for groceries, do his
laundry, go into Hedestad. Around 7:00 he would go over to see Vanger to ask him
questions that had arisen during the day. By 10:00 he was home, and he would
read until 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning. He was working systematically through
Vanger’s documents.
The work of shaping the autobiography was moving smoothly. He had written 120
pages of the family chronicle in rough draft. He had reached the 1920s. Beyond this
point he would have to move more slowly and start weighing his words.
Through the library in Hedestad he had ordered books dealing with Nazism during
that time, including Helene Lööw’s doctoral dissertation, The Swastika and the Wasa
Sheaf, which dealt with the symbols adopted by the German and Swedish Nazis. He
had drafted another forty pages about Vanger and his brothers, focusing on Vanger
as the person holding the story together. He had a list of subjects he needed to
research on the way the company operated during that time. And he had
discovered that the Vanger family was also heavily involved in Ivar Kreuger’s
empire—another side story he had to explore. He estimated that he had about 300
pages left to write. According to the schedule he had devised, he wanted to have a
final draft for Henrik Vanger to look at by the first of September, so that he could
spend the autumn revising the text.
For all his reading and listening, Blomkvist had made not an inch of progress in the
Harriet Vanger case. No matter how much he brooded over the details in the files,
he could find not a single piece of information that contradicted the investigative
report.
One Saturday evening in late February he had a conversation with Vanger in which
he reported on his lack of progress. The old man listened patiently as Blomkvist
listed all the dead ends he had run into.
“No crime is perfect,” Vanger said. “I’m sure we must have missed something.”
“We still can’t say whether a crime was committed.”