Thursday, December 26
For the first time since he began his monologue, the old man had managed to take
Blomkvist by surprise. He had to ask him to repeat it to be sure he had heard
correctly. Nothing in the cuttings had hinted at a murder.
“It was September 24, 1966. Harriet was sixteen and had just begun her second
year at prep school. It was a Saturday, and it turned into the worst day of my life.
I’ve gone over the events so many times that I think I can account for what
happened in every minute of that day—except the most important thing.”
He made a sweeping gesture. “Here in this house a great number of my family had
gathered. It was the loathsome annual dinner. It was a tradition which my father’s
father introduced and which generally turned into pretty detestable affairs. The
tradition came to an end in the eighties, when Martin simply decreed that all
discussions about the business would take place at regular board meetings and by
voting. That’s the best decision he ever made.”
“You said that Harriet was murdered...”
“Wait. Let me tell you what happened. It was a Saturday, as I said. It was also the
day of the party, with the Children’s Day parade that was arranged by the sports
club in Hedestad. Harriet had gone into the town during the day and watched the
parade with some of her schoolfriends. She came back here to Hedeby Island just
after 2:00 in the afternoon. Dinner was supposed to begin at 5:00, and she was
expected to take part along with the other young people in the family.”
Vanger got up and went over to the window. He motioned Blomkvist to join him,
and pointed.
“At 2:15, a few minutes after Harriet came home, a dramatic accident occurred out
there on the bridge. A man called Gustav Aronsson, brother of a farmer at
Östergården—a smallholding on Hedeby Island—turned on to the bridge and
crashed head-on with an oil truck. Evidently both were going too fast and what
should have been a minor collision proved a catastrophe. The driver of the truck,
presumably instinctively, turned his wheel away from the car, hit the railing of the
bridge and the tanker flipped over; it ended up across the bridge with its trailer
hanging over the edge. One of the railings had been driven into the oil tank and
flammable heating oil began spurting out. In the meantime Aronsson sat pinned