“It’s all I can spare. It’s my own money, and I can’t really deduct you as a
dependant.”
“What do you want?”
“The electronic cuff you talked about two months ago. Did you get it?”
He smiled and laid a box on the table.
“Show me how it works.”
For the next few minutes she listened intently. Then she tested the cuff. Plague
might be a social incompetent, but he was unquestionably a genius.
Vanger waited until he once more had Blomkvist’s attention. Blomkvist looked at
his watch and said, “One perplexing detail.”
Vanger said: “I was born on November 1. When Harriet was eight she gave me a
birthday present, a pressed flower, framed.”
Vanger walked around the desk and pointed to the first flower. Bluebell. It had an
amateurish mounting.
“That was the first. I got it in 1958.” He pointed to the next one. “1959.” Buttercup.
“1960.” Daisy. “It became a tradition. She would make the frame sometime during
the summer and save it until my birthday. I always hung them on the wall in this
room. In 1966 she disappeared and the tradition was broken.”
Vanger pointed to a gap in the row of frames. Blomkvist felt the hairs rise on the
back of his neck. The wall was filled with pressed flowers.
“1967, a year after she disappeared, I received this flower on my birthday. It’s a
violet.”
“How did the flower come to you?”