hidden without being discovered? Where would she get money? And even if she
got a job somewhere, she would need a social security card and an address.”
He held up two fingers.
“My next thought was that she had had some kind of accident. Can you do me a
favour? Go to the desk and open the top drawer. There’s a map there.”
Blomkvist did as he was asked and unfolded the map on the coffee table. Hedeby
Island was an irregularly shaped land mass about two miles long with a maximum
width of about one mile. A large part of the island was covered by forest. There was
a built-up area by the bridge and around the little summer-house harbour. On the
other side of the island was the smallholding, Östergården, from which the
unfortunate Aronsson had started out in his car.
“Remember that she couldn’t have left the island,” Vanger said. “Here on Hedeby
Island you could die in an accident just like anywhere else. You could be struck by
lightning—but there was no thunderstorm that day. You could be trampled to
death by a horse, fall down a well, or tumble into a rock crevice. There are no doubt
hundreds of ways to fall victim to an accident here. I’ve thought of most of them.”
He held up three fingers.
“There’s just one catch, and this also applies to the third possibility—that the girl,
contrary to every indication, took her own life. Her body must be somewhere in this
limited area.”
Vanger slammed his fist down on the map.
“In the days after she disappeared, we searched everywhere, crisscrossing the
island. The men waded through every ditch, scoured every patch of field, cliff, and
uprooted tree. We went through every building, chimney, well, barn, and hidden
garret.”
The old man looked away from Blomkvist and stared into the darkness outside the
window. His voice grew lower and more intimate.
“The whole autumn I looked for her, even after the search parties stopped and
people had given up. When I wasn’t tending to my work I began going for walks
back and forth across the island. Winter came on and we still hadn’t found a trace
of her. In the spring I kept on looking until I realised how preposterous my search