“I have to go and see...”
“I think you should stay away from that room today,” Salander said sharply. “You
have a lot of things to take care of. You have to go and tell Henrik, and you have to
call a special meeting of the board and do all those things you chaps do when your
CEO dies.”
Frode thought about what she was saying. His heart was thumping. He was the old
attorney and problem-solver who was expected to have a plan ready to meet any
eventuality, yet he felt powerless to act. It suddenly dawned on him that here he
was, taking orders from a child. She had somehow seized control of the situation
and given him the guidelines that he himself was unable to formulate.
“And Harriet...?”
“Mikael and I are not finished yet. But you can tell Herr Vanger that I think now that
we’re going to solve it.”
Martin Vanger’s unexpected demise was the top story on the 9:00 news on the
radio when Blomkvist woke up. Nothing was reported about the night’s events
other than to say that the industrialist had inexplicably and at high speed crossed
to the wrong side of the E4, travelling south. He had been alone in the car.
The local radio ran a story that dealt with concern for the future of the Vanger
Corporation and the consequences that this death would inevitably have for the
company.
A hastily composed lunchtime update from the TT wire service had the headline A
TOWN IN SHOCK, and it summed up the problems of the Vanger Corporation. It
escaped no-one’s notice that in Hedestad alone more than 3,000 of the town’s
21,000 inhabitants were employed by the Vanger Corporation or were otherwise
dependent on the prosperity of the company. The firm’s CEO was dead, and the
former CEO was seriously ill after a heart attack. There was no natural heir. All this at
a time considered to be among the most critical in the company’s history.
Blomkvist had had the option of going to the police in Hedestad and telling them
what had happened that night, but Salander had already set a certain process in