“OK. Then can I ask you something?”
“Please.”
“How much of this book is going to deal with Harriet?”
Blomkvist bit his lip and then said as casually as he could: “To be honest, I have no
idea. It might fill a chapter. It was a dramatic event that has cast a shadow over your
uncle, at the very least.”
“But you’re not here to look into her disappearance?”
“What makes you think that?”
“Well, the fact that Nilsson lugged four massive boxes over here. That could be
Henrik’s private investigations over the years. I looked in Harriet’s old room, where
Henrik keeps it, and it was gone.”
Cecilia Vanger was no fool.
“You’ll have to take the matter up with Henrik, not with me,” Blomkvist said. “But it
won’t surprise you to know that Henrik has talked a lot about the girl’s
disappearance, and I thought it would be interesting to read through what had
been collected.”
Cecilia gave him another of her joyless smiles. “I wonder sometimes who’s crazier,
my father or my uncle. I must have listened to him on Harriet’s disappearance a
thousand times.”
“What do you think happened to her?”
“Is this an interview question?”
“No,” he said with a laugh. “I’m just curious.”
“What I’m curious about is whether you’re a nut case too. Whether you’ve
swallowed Henrik’s conviction or whether in fact you’re the one who’s egging him
on.”
“You think that Henrik’s a nut case?”