The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (57 page)

“We’re one of the largest in all of Australia,” Jeff said with a certain pride in his voice. “We run about 9,000 sheep here in the Makawaka district, but we have stations in both New South Wales and Western Australia. We have 60,000 plus head.”

They came out from the ravine into a hilly but gentler landscape. Blomkvist suddenly heard shots. He saw sheep cadavers, big bonfires, and a dozen ranch hands. Several men seemed to be carrying rifles. They were apparently slaughtering sheep.

Involuntarily, he thought of the biblical sacrificial lambs.

Then he saw a woman with short blonde hair wearing jeans and a red-and-white checked shirt. Jeff stopped a few yards away from her.

“Hi, Boss. We’ve got a tourist,” he said.

Blomkvist got out of the Jeep and looked at her. She looked back with an inquisitive expression.

“Hi, Harriet. It’s been a long time,” he said in Swedish.

None of the men who worked for Anita Cochran understood what he said, but they all saw her reaction. She took a step back, looking shocked. The men saw her response, stopped their joking, and straightened up, ready to intervene against this odd stranger. Jeff’s friendliness suddenly evaporated and he advanced toward Blomkvist.

Blomkvist was keenly aware how vulnerable he was. A word from Anita Cochran and he would be done for.

Then the moment passed. Harriet Vanger waved her hand in a peaceful gesture and the men moved back. She came over to Blomkvist and met his gaze. Her face was sweaty and dirty. Her blonde hair had darker roots. Her face was older and thinner, but she had grown into the beautiful woman that her confirmation portrait had promised.

“Have we met before?” she said.

“Yes, we have. I am Mikael Blomkvist. You were my babysitter one summer when I was three years old. You were twelve or thirteen at the time.”

It took a few seconds for her puzzled expression to clear, and then he saw that she remembered. She looked surprised.

“What do you want?”

“Harriet, I’m not your enemy. I’m not here to make trouble for you. But I need to talk with you.”

She turned to Jeff and told him to takeover, then signalled to Blomkvist to follow her. They walked a few hundred feet over to a group of white canvas tents in a grove of trees. She motioned him to a camp stool at a rickety table and poured water into a basin. She rinsed her face, dried it, and went inside the tent to change her shirt. She got two beers out of a cooler.

“So. Talk.”

“Why are you shooting the sheep?”

“We have a contagious epidemic. Most of these sheep are probably healthy, but we can’t risk it spreading. We’re going to have to slaughter more than six hundred in the coming week. So I’m not in a very good mood.”

Blomkvist said: “Your brother crashed his car into a truck a few days ago. He must have died instantaneously.”

“I heard that.”

“From Anita, who called you.”

She scrutinised him for a long moment. Then she nodded. She knew that it was pointless to deny the fact.

“How did you find me?”

“We tapped Anita’s telephone.” Blomkvist did not think there was any reason to lie. “I saw your brother a few minutes before he died.”

Harriet Vanger frowned. He met her gaze. Then he took off the ridiculous scarf he was wearing, turned down his collar, and showed her the stripe left from the noose. It was still red and inflamed, and he would probably always have a scar to remind him of Martin Vanger.

“Your brother had hung me from a hook, but by the grace of God my partner arrived in time to stop him killing me.”

Harriet’s eyes suddenly burned.

“I think you’d better tell me the story from the beginning.”

It took more than an hour. He told her who he was and what he was working on. He described how he came to be given the assignment by Henrik Vanger. He explained how the police’s investigation had come to a dead end, and he told her of Henrik’s long investigation, and finally he told her how a photograph of her with friends in Järnvägsgatan in Hedestad had led to the uncovering of the sorrows behind the mystery of her disappearance and its appalling sequel, which had ended with Martin Vanger’s suicide.

As he talked, dusk set in. The men quit work for the day, fires were started, and pots began to simmer. Blomkvist noticed that Jeff stayed close to his boss and kept a watchful eye on him. The cook served them dinner. They each had another beer. When he was finished Harriet sat for a long time in silence.

At length she said: “I was so happy that my father was dead and the violence was over. It never occurred to me that Martin…I’m glad he’s dead.”

“I can understand that.”

“Your story doesn’t explain how you knew that I was alive.”

“After we realised what had happened, it wasn’t so difficult to work out the rest. To disappear, you needed help. Anita was your confidante and the only one you could even consider. You were friends, and she had spent the summer with you. You stayed out at your father’s cabin. If there was anyone you had confided in, it had to be her—and also she had just got her driver’s licence.”

Harriet looked at him with an unreadable expression.

“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 room cheap, to have peace and quiet to think. Then I met Spencer Cochran. He was some years older; he’d just finished his degree in England and was hitchhiking around Europe. I fell in love. He did too. That’s all there was to it. ‘Anita’ Vanger married him in 1971. I’ve never had any regrets. He was a wonderful man. Very sadly, he died eight years ago, and I became the owner of the station.”

“But your passport—surely someone should have discovered that there were two Anita Vangers?”

“No, why should they? A Swedish girl named Anita Vanger who’s married to Spencer Cochran. Whether she lives in London or Australia makes no difference. The one in London has been Spencer Cochran’s estranged wife. The one in Australia was his very much present wife. They don’t match up computer files between Canberra and London. Besides, I soon got an Australian passport under my married name. The arrangement functioned perfectly. The only thing that could have upset the story was if Anita herself wanted to get married. My marriage had to be registered in the Swedish national registration files.”

“But she never did.”

“She claims that she never found anyone. But I know that she did it for my sake. She’s been a true friend.”

“What was she doing in your room?”

“I wasn’t very rational that day. I was afraid of Martin, but as long as he was in Uppsala, I could push the problem out of my mind. Then there he was in Hedestad, and I realised that I’d never be safe the rest of my life. I went back and forth between wanting to tell Uncle Henrik and wanting to flee. When Henrik didn’t have time to talk to me, I just wandered restlessly around the village. Of course I know that the accident on the bridge overshadowed everything else for everyone, but not for me. I had my own problems, and I was hardly even aware of the accident. Everything seemed unreal. Then I ran into Anita, who was staying in a guest cottage in the compound with Gerda and Alexander. That was when I made up my mind. I stayed with her the whole time and didn’t dare go outside. But there was one thing I had to take with me—I had written down everything that happened in a diary, and I needed a few clothes. Anita got them for me.”

“I suppose she couldn’t resist the temptation to look out at the accident scene.” Blomkvist thought for a moment. “What I don’t understand is why you didn’t just go to Henrik, as you had intended.”

“Why do you think?”

“I really don’t know. Henrik would certainly have helped you. Martin would have been removed immediately—probably sent to Australia for some sort of therapy or treatment.”

“You haven’t understood what happened.”

Up to this point Blomkvist had only referred to Gottfried’s sexual assault on Martin, leaving Harriet’s role out of it.

“Gottfried molested Martin,” he said cautiously. “I suspect that he also molested you.”

Harriet Vanger did not move a muscle. Then she took a deep breath and buried her face in her hands. It took five seconds before Jeff was beside her, asking if everything was all right. Harriet looked at him and gave him a faint smile. Then she astonished Blomkvist by standing up and giving her studs manager a hug and a kiss on the cheek. She turned to Blomkvist with her arm around Jeff’s shoulder.

“Jeff, this is Mikael, an old…friend from the past. He’s brought problems and bad news, but we’re not going to shoot the messenger. Mikael, this is Jeff Cochran, my oldest son. I also have another son and a daughter.”

Blomkvist stood up to shake hands with Jeff, saying that he was sorry to have brought bad news which had upset his mother. Harriet exchanged a few words with Jeff and then sent him away. She sat down again and seemed to have made a decision.

“No more lies. I accept that it’s all over. In some sense I’ve been waiting for this day since 1966. For years I was terrified that someone might come up to me and say my name. But you know what? All of a sudden I don’t care any more. My crime falls outside the statute of limitations. And I don’t give a shit what people think about me.”

“Crime?” said Mikael.

She gave him an urgent look, but he still didn’t understand what she was talking about.

“I was sixteen. I was scared. I was ashamed. I was desperate. I was all alone. The only ones who knew the truth were Anita and Martin. I had told Anita about the sexual assaults, but I didn’t have the courage to tell her that my father was also an insane killer of women. Anita had never known about that. But I did tell her about the crime that I committed myself. It was so horrible that when it came down to it, I didn’t dare tell Henrik. I prayed to God to forgive me. And I hid inside a convent for several years.”

“Harriet, your father was a rapist and a murderer. It wasn’t your fault.”

“I know that. My father molested me for a year. I did everything to avoid…but he was my father and I couldn’t refuse to have anything to do with him without giving him some explanation. So I lied and played a role and tried to pretend that everything was OK. And I made sure that someone else was always around when I saw him. My mother knew what he was doing, of course, but she didn’t care.”

“Isabella
knew
?”

Harriet’s voice took on a new harshness.

“Of course she knew. Nothing ever happened in our family without Isabella knowing. But she ignored everything that was unpleasant or showed her in a bad light. My father could have raped me in the middle of the living room right before her eyes and she wouldn’t have noticed. She was incapable of acknowledging that anything was wrong in her life or mine.”

“I’ve met her. She’s not my favourite in the family.”

“She’s been like that her whole life. I’ve often wondered about my parents’ relationship. I realised that they rarely or maybe never had sex with each other after I was born. My father had women, but for some strange reason he was afraid of Isabella. He stayed away from her, but he couldn’t get a divorce.”

“No-one does in the Vanger family.”

She laughed for the first time.

“No, they don’t. But the point is that I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. The whole world would have found out. My schoolmates, all my relatives…”

“Harriet, I’m so sorry.”

“I was fourteen when he raped me the first time. And during the next year he would take me out to his cabin. Many times Martin came along. He forced both me and Martin to do things with him. And he held my arms while Martin…had his way with me. When my father died, Martin was ready to take over his role. He expected me to become his lover and he thought it was perfectly natural for me to submit to him. At that time I no longer had any choice. I was forced to do what Martin said. I was rid of one tormentor only to land in the clutches of another, and the only thing I could do was to make sure there was never an occasion when I was alone with him…”

“Henrik would have…”

“You still don’t understand.”

She raised her voice. Blomkvist saw that several of the men at the next tent were looking at him. She lowered her voice again and leaned towards him.

“All the cards are on the table. You’ll have to work out the rest.”

She stood up and got two more beers. When she came back, Mikael said a single word to her.