“So now that you know I’m alive, what are you going to do?”
“I have to tell Henrik. He deserves to know.”
“And then? You’re a journalist.”
“I’m not thinking of exposing you. I’ve already breached so many rules of
professional conduct in this whole dismal mess that the Journalists Association
would undoubtedly expel me if they knew about it.” He was trying to make light of
it. “One more won’t make any difference, and I don’t want to make my old
babysitter angry.”
She was not amused.
“How many people know the truth?”
“That you’re alive? Right now, you and me and Anita and my partner. Henrik’s
lawyer knows about two-thirds of the story, but he still thinks you died in the
sixties.”
Harriet Vanger seemed to be thinking something over. She stared out at the dark.
Mikael once again had an uneasy feeling that he was in a vulnerable situation, and
he reminded himself that Harriet Vanger’s own rifle was on a camp bed three paces
away. Then he shook himself and stopped imagining things. He changed the
subject.
“But how did you come to be a sheep farmer in Australia? I already know that Anita
smuggled you off Hedeby Island, presumably in the boot of her car when the
bridge re-opened the day after the accident.”
“Actually, I lay on the floor of the back seat with a blanket over me. But no-one was
looking. I went to Anita when she arrived on the island and told her that I had to
escape. You guessed right that I confided in her. She helped me, and she’s been a
loyal friend all these years.”
“Why Australia?”
“I stayed in Anita’s room in Stockholm for a few weeks. Anita had her own money,
which she generously lent me. She also gave me her passport. We looked almost
exactly like each other, and all I had to do was dye my hair blonde. For four years I
lived in a convent in Italy—I wasn’t a nun. There are convents where you can rent a