lived. At each stop Burman was greeted with warmth, but no-one was able to help
them. Blomkvist was beginning to despair.
At 4:00 in the afternoon, Burman parked his car outside a typical red Västerbotten
farm near Norsjövallen, just north of Norsjö, and introduced Mikael to Henning
Forsman, a retired master carpenter.
“Yes, that’s Assar Brännlund’s lad,” Forsman said as soon as Blomkvist showed him
the photographs. Bingo.
“Oh, so that’s Assar’s boy,” Burman said. “Assar was a buyer.”
“How can I find him?”
“The lad? Well, you’ll have to dig. His name was Gunnar, and he worked at the
Boliden mine. He died in a blasting accident in the mid-seventies.”
Blomkvist’s heart sank.
“But his wife is still alive. The one in the picture here. Her name is Mildred, and she
lives in Bjursele.”
“Bjursele?”
“It’s about six miles down the road to Bastuträsk. She lives in the long red house on
the right-hand side as you’re coming into the village. It’s the third house. I know the
family well.”
“Hi, my name is Lisbeth Salander, and I’m writing my thesis on the criminology of
violence against women in the twentieth century. I’d like to visit the police district
in Landskrona and read through the documents of a case from 1957. It has to do
with the murder of a woman by the name of Rakel Lunde. Do you have any idea
where those documents are today?”
Bjursele was like a poster for the Västerbotten country village. It consisted of about
twenty houses set relatively close together in a semicircle at one end of a lake. In
the centre of the village was a crossroads with an arrow pointing towards