“Forgive me for bothering you like this unannounced, so to speak. My name is
Dirch Frode.” Blomkvist noted the name and the time. “I’m a lawyer, and I represent
a client who would very much like to have a talk with you.”
“That’s fine, please ask your client to call me.”
“I mean that he wants to meet with you in person.”
“OK, make an appointment and send him up to the office. But you’d better hurry;
I’m clearing out my desk right now.”
“My client would like you to visit him in Hedestad—it’s only three hours by train.”
Blomkvist pushed a filing tray aside. The media have the ability to attract the
craziest people to call in perfectly absurd tips. Every newsroom in the world gets
updates from UFOlogists, graphologists, scientologists, paranoiacs, every sort of
conspiracy theorist.
Blomkvist had once listened to a lecture by the writer Karl Alvar Nilsson at the ABF
hall on the anniversary of the murder of Prime Minister Olof Palme. The lecture was
serious, and in the audience were Lennart Bodström and other friends of Palme’s.
But a surprising number of amateur investigators had turned up. One of them was
a woman in her forties who during the Q and A had taken the proffered
microphone and then lowered her voice to a barely audible whisper. This alone
heralded an interesting development, and nobody was surprised when the woman
began by claiming, “I know who murdered Olof Palme.” From the stage it was
suggested somewhat ironically that if the woman had this information then it
would be helpful if she shared it with the Palme investigation at once. She hurried
to reply: “I can’t,” she said so softly it was almost impossible to hear. “It’s too
dangerous!”
Blomkvist wondered whether this Frode was another one of the truth-sayers who
could reveal the secret mental hospital where Säpo, the Security Police, ran
experiments on thought control.
“I don’t make house calls,” he said.
“I hope I can convince you to make an exception. My client is over eighty, and for
him it would be too exhausting to come down to Stockholm. If you insist, we could
certainly arrange something, but to tell you the truth, it would be preferable if you
would be so kind...”