Blomkvist directed him to Henrik Vanger’s newly shovelled courtyard, where he
lifted his suitcases on to the cobblestones and watched the taxi head back towards
Hedestad. He suddenly felt lonely and uncertain.
He heard the door open behind him. Vanger was wrapped up in a heavy fur coat,
thick boots, and a cap with earflaps. Blomkvist was in jeans and a thin leather
jacket.
“If you’re going to live up here, you need to learn to dress more warmly for this
time of year.” They shook hands. “Are you sure you don’t want to stay in the main
house? No? Then I think we’d better start getting you settled into your new
lodgings.”
One of the conditions in his negotiations with Vanger and Dirch Frode had been
that he have living quarters where he could do his own housekeeping and come
and go as he pleased. Vanger led Blomkvist back along the road towards the bridge
and then turned to open the gate to another newly shovelled courtyard in front of
a small timbered house close to the end of the bridge. The house was not locked.
They stepped into a modest hallway where Blomkvist, with a sigh of relief, put
down his suitcases.
“This is what we call our guest house. It’s where we usually put people up who are
going to stay for a longer period of time. This was where you and your parents lived
in 1963. It’s one of the oldest buildings in the village, but it’s been modernised. I
asked Nilsson, my caretaker, to light the fire this morning.”
The house consisted of a large kitchen and two smaller rooms, totalling about 500
square feet. The kitchen took up half the space and was quite modern, with an
electric stove and a small refrigerator. Against the wall facing the front door stood
an old cast-iron stove in which a fire had indeed been lit earlier in the day.
“You don’t need to use the woodstove unless it gets bitterly cold. The firewood bin
is there in the hallway, and you’ll find a woodshed at the back. The house has been
unlived-in this autumn. The electric heaters are usually sufficient. Just make sure
you don’t hang any clothes on them, or it may start a fire.”
Blomkvist looked around. Windows faced three different directions, and from the
kitchen table he had a view of the bridge, about a hundred feet away. The
furnishings in the kitchen included three big cupboards, some kitchen chairs, an