inside his car, screaming in pain. The tanker driver was also injured but managed to
scramble out of his cabin.”
The old man went back to his chair.
“The accident actually had nothing to do with Harriet. But it was significant in a
crucial way. A shambles ensued: people on both sides of the bridge hurried to try
to help; the risk of fire was significant and a major alarm was sounded. Police
officers, an ambulance, the rescue squad, the fire brigade, reporters and sightseers
arrived in rapid succession. Naturally all of them assembled on the mainland side;
here on the island side we did what we could to get Aronsson out of the wreck,
which proved to be damnably difficult. He was pinned in and seriously injured.
“We tried to prise him loose with our bare hands, and that didn’t work. He would
have to be cut or sawed out, but we couldn’t do anything that risked striking a
spark; we were standing in the middle of a sea of oil next to a tanker truck lying on
its side. If it had exploded we would have all been killed. It took a long time before
we could get help from the mainland side; the truck was wedged right across the
bridge, and climbing over it would have been the same as climbing over a bomb.”
Blomkvist could not resist the feeling that the old man was telling a meticulously
rehearsed story, deliberately to capture his interest. The man was an excellent
storyteller, no question. On the other hand, where was the story heading?
“What matters about the accident is that the bridge was blocked for twenty-four
hours. Not until Sunday evening was the last of the oil pumped out, and then the
truck could be lifted up by crane and the bridge opened for traffic. During these
twenty-four hours Hedeby Island was to all intents and purposes cut off from the
rest of the world. The only way to get across to the mainland was on a fireboat that
was brought in to transport people from the small-boat harbour on this side to the
old harbour below the church. For several hours the boat was used only by rescue
crews—it wasn’t until quite late on Saturday night that stranded islanders began to
be ferried across. Do you understand the significance of this?”
“I assume that something happened to Harriet here on the island,” Blomkvist said,
“and that the list of suspects consists of the finite number of people trapped here.
A sort of locked-room mystery in island format?”
Vanger smiled ironically. “Mikael, you don’t know how right you are. Even I have
read my Dorothy Sayers. These are the facts: Harriet arrived here on the island