What had she done out here all alone? The magazines Mitt Livs
Novell and Romans, as well as a number of books about Kitty, must have been hers.
Perhaps the sketchpad had been hers. And her Bible was here.
She had wanted to be close to her lost father—was it a period of mourning she
needed to get through? Or did it have to do with her religious brooding? The cabin
was spartan—was she pretending to live in a convent?
Blomkvist followed the shoreline to the southeast, but the way was so interrupted
by ravines and so grown over with juniper shrubs that it was all but impassable. He
went back to the cabin and started back on the road to Hedeby. According to the
map there was a path through the woods to something called the Fortress. It took
him twenty minutes to find it in the overgrown scrub. The Fortress was what
remained of the shoreline defence from the Second World War; concrete bunkers
with trenches spread out around a command building. Everything was overrun
with long grass and scrub.
He walked down a path to a boathouse. Next to the boathouse he found the wreck
of a Pettersson boat. He returned to the Fortress and took a path up to a fence—he
had come to Östergården from the other side.
He followed the meandering path through the woods, roughly parallel to the fields
of Östergården. The path was difficult to negotiate—there were patches of marsh
that he had to skirt. Finally he came to a swamp and beyond it a barn. As far as he
could see the path ended there, a hundred yards from the road to Östergården.
Beyond the road lay the hill, Söderberget. Blomkvist walked up a steep slope and
had to climb the last bit. Söderberget’s summit was an almost vertical cliff facing
the water. He followed the ridge back towards Hedeby. He stopped above the
summer cottages to enjoy the view of the old fishing harbour and the church and
his own cottage. He sat on a flat rock and poured himself the last of the lukewarm
coffee.