She switched off the desk lamp and left the newsletters in piles all over the desk—
something for that slut Lindgren to take care of tomorrow.
She went out to the car park through a side door. As it closed behind her, she
remembered that she had promised to tell the night watchman when she left. She
stopped and let her eyes sweep over the car park. The watchman’s office was on
the other side of the building. That meant that she would have to walk all the way
round to the other side. Let sleeping dogs lie, she decided.
Before she put on her helmet, she turned on her mobile and called Blomkvist’s
number. She got a message saying that the subscriber could not be reached. But
she also saw that he had tried to call her no fewer than thirteen times between 3:30
and 9:00. In the last two hours, no call.
Salander tried the cottage number, but there was no answer. She frowned,
strapped on her computer, put on her helmet, and kick-started the motorcycle. The
ride from the main office at the entrance to Hedestad’s industrial district out to
Hedeby Island took ten minutes. A light was on in the kitchen.
Salander looked around. Her first thought was that Blomkvist had gone to see
Frode, but from the bridge she had already noticed that the lights were off in
Frode’s house on the other side of the water. She looked at her watch: 11:40.
She went into the cottage, opened the wardrobe, and took out the two PCs that
she was using to store the surveillance pictures from the cameras she had installed.
It took her a while to run up the sequence of events.
At 15:32 Blomkvist entered the cabin.
At 16:03 he took his coffee cup out to the garden. He had a folder with him, which
he studied. He made three brief telephone calls during the hour he spent out in the
garden. The three calls corresponded exactly to calls she had not answered.
At 17:21 Blomkvist left the cottage. He was back less than fifteen minutes later.
At 18:20 he went to the gate and looked in the direction of the bridge.
At 21:03 he went out. He had not come back.