The Girl Who Played with Fire (14 page)

Harriet Vanger glanced at them in turn. Her gaze lingered on Blomkvist, but she could not read anything from their expressions.

“If you want to buy the family out it will cost around three million kronor plus interest. Can you afford to buy us out?” she asked mildly.

“Yes, we can,” Blomkvist said with a smile.

He had been paid five million kronor by Henrik Vanger for the work he had done for the old industrial tycoon. Part of that work, ironically, had been to find out what had happened to Harriet, his niece.

“In that case, the decision is in your hands,” Harriet said. “The agreement stipulates that you can cancel the Vanger shareholding as of today. I would never have written a contract as sloppy as the one Henrik signed.”

“We can buy you out if we have to,” Berger said. “But the real question is what you want to do. You’re the CEO of a substantial industrial concern—two concerns, actually. Our annual budget might correspond to what you turn over during a coffee break. Why would you give your time to a business as marginal as
Millennium?”

Harriet Vanger looked calmly at the chair of the board, saying nothing for a long moment. Then she turned to Blomkvist and replied:

“I’ve been the owner of something or other since the day I was born. And I spend my days running a corporation that has more intrigues than a four-hundred-page romance novel. When I first joined your board it was to fulfil obligations that I could not neglect. But you know what? During the past eighteen months I’ve realized that I’m having more fun on this board than on all the others put together.”

Blomkvist absorbed this thoughtfully. Vanger now turned to Malm.

“The problems you face at
Millennium
are small and manageable. Naturally the company wants to operate at a profit—that’s a given. But all of you have another goal—you want to achieve something.”

She took a sip from her glass of water and fixed her eyes on Berger.

“Exactly what that something is remains a bit unclear to me. The objective is hazy. You aren’t a political party or a special-interest group. You have no loyalties to consider except your own. But you pinpoint flaws in society, and you don’t mind entering into battles with public figures. Often you want to change things and make a real difference. You all pretend to be cynics and nihilists, but it’s your own morality that steers the magazine, and several times I’ve noticed that it’s quite a special sort of morality. I don’t know what to call it, except to say that
Millennium
has a soul. This is the only board I’m proud to be a part of.”

She fell silent for so long that Berger had to laugh.

“That sounds good. But you still haven’t answered the question.”

“This has been some of the wackiest, most absurd stuff I’ve ever been involved with, but I enjoy your company and I’ve had a great time. If you want me to stay on I gladly will.”

“OK,” Malm said. “We’ve been back and forth and we’re all agreed. We’ll buy you out.”

Vanger’s eyes widened. “You want to get rid of me?”

“When we signed the contract we had our heads on the block waiting for the axe. We had no choice. From the start we were counting the days until we could buy out your uncle.”

Berger opened a file, laid some papers on the table, and pushed them over to Vanger, together with a cheque for exactly the sum due. Vanger read through the papers and without a word she signed them.

“All right, then,” Berger said. “That was fairly painless. I want to put on record our gratitude to Henrik Vanger for all he did for
Millennium
. I hope you will convey this to him.”

“I will,” Harriet Vanger said in a neutral tone, betraying nothing of what she felt. She was both hurt and deeply disappointed that they had let her say that she wanted to stay and then had simply kicked her out.

“And now let me see if I can interest you in a completely different contract,” Berger said.

She took out another set of papers and slid them across the table.

“We were wondering if you personally had any interest in being a partner at
Millennium
. The price would be the same as the sum you’ve just received. The agreement has no time limits or exception clauses. You would be a full partner with the same responsibilities as the rest of us.”

Vanger raised her eyebrows. “Why this roundabout process?”

“It had to be done sooner or later,” Malm said. “We could have renewed the old agreement a year at a time or until the board had an argument and put you out. But it was always a contract that would have to be dissolved.”

Harriet leaned on her elbow and gave him a searching glance. She looked at Blomkvist and then at Berger.

“We signed our agreement with Henrik when we were in financial straits,” Berger said. “We’re offering you this agreement because we want to. And unlike the old one, it won’t let us boot you out so easily in the future.”

“That’s a very big difference for us,” Blomkvist said in a low voice, and that was his only contribution to the discussion.

“The fact is that we believe you add something to
Millennium
besides the financial underpinning implied by the name of Vanger,” Berger said.

“You’re smart and sensible and you come up with constructive solutions. Until now you’ve kept a low profile, almost like a guest visiting us once a quarter, but you represent for this board a stability and direction that we’ve never had before. You know business. Once you asked if you could trust me, and I wondered the same thing about you. By now we both know the answer. I like you and I trust you—we all do. We don’t want you to be a part of us by way of some complicated legal mumbo jumbo. We want you as a partner and a real shareholder.”

Harriet reached for the contract and spent five minutes reading through it. Finally she looked up.

“And all three of you are agreed?” she said.

Three heads nodded. Vanger lifted her pen and signed. She shoved the cheque back across the table, and Blomkvist tore it up.

The partners
of Millennium
had dinner together at Samir’s Cauldron on Tavastgatan. It was a quiet party—to celebrate the new arrangement—with good wine and couscous with lamb. The conversation was relaxed, and Vanger was noticeably dazed. It felt a little like an uncomfortable first date: something is going to happen, but no-one knows exactly what it might be.

Vanger had to leave at 7:30. She excused herself by saying that she had to go to her hotel and get an early night. Berger was heading home to her husband and walked with her some of the way. They parted at Slussen. Blomkvist and Malm stayed on for a while before Malm excused himself and said that he too had to get home.

Vanger took a taxi to the Sheraton and went straight to her room on the eighth floor. She got undressed and had a bath and put on the hotel’s robe. Then she sat at the window and looked out towards Riddarholmen. She took a pack of Dunhills from her bag. She smoked three or four cigarettes a day, so few that she could consider herself a nonsmoker and still enjoy it without a guilty conscience.

At 9:00 there was a knock at the door. She opened it and let Blomkvist in.

“You scoundrel,” she said.

He smiled and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

“I really thought you guys were going to kick me out.”

“We never would have done it like that. Do you understand why we wanted to rewrite the contract?”

“Of course. It makes perfect sense.”

Blomkvist opened her robe and put a hand on her breast, caressing it cautiously.

“You scoundrel,” she said again.

Salander stopped at the door with a nameplate that said
WU
. She had seen a light from the street, and now she could hear music coming from inside. So Miriam Wu still lived here in the studio apartment on Tomtebogatan near St. Eriksplan. It was Friday evening, and Salander had half hoped that Mimmi would be out having fun somewhere. The only questions that remained to be answered were whether Mimmi still wanted to have anything to do with her and whether she was alone and available.

She rang the bell.

Mimmi opened the door and her eyebrows lifted in surprise. Then she leaned against the doorjamb and put her hand on her hip.

“Salander. I thought you were dead or something.”

“Or something.”

“What do you want?”

“There are many answers to that question.”

Miriam Wu looked around the stairwell before she again fixed her eyes on Salander.

“Try one.”

“Well, I just wanted to see whether you’re still single and might want some company tonight.”

Mimmi looked astonished for a few seconds and then laughed out loud.

“I know only one person who would even dream of ringing my bell after a year and a half’s silence to ask me if I wanted to fuck.”

“Do you want me to leave?”

Mimmi stopped laughing. She was quiet for a few seconds.

“Lisbeth … Jesus, you’re serious.”

Salander waited.

Finally Mimmi sighed and opened the door wide.

“Come on, then. I can at least offer you a coffee.”

Salander followed her in and sat on one of two stools by a small table in the hall. The apartment was about 250 square feet: one cramped room and a hall. The kitchen was little more than a niche for cooking in a corner of the hall. Mimmi had fixed a hose to the sink from the bathroom.

Mimmi’s mother was from Hong Kong, her father from Boden. Salander knew that her parents lived in Paris. Mimmi was studying sociology
in Stockholm, and she had an older sister studying anthropology in the States. Her mother’s genes were visible in Mimmi’s raven black hair, cut short, and her slightly Asian features. Her father had given her the clear blue eyes. She had a wide mouth and dimples that did not come from either of her parents.

Mimmi was thirty-one. She liked to dress up in leather and go to clubs where they did performance art—sometimes she appeared in the shows. Salander had not been to a club since she was sixteen.

Besides her studies, Mimmi had a job one day a week as a sales clerk at Domino Fashion on a street off Sveavägen. Customers desperate for outfits such as a rubber nurse’s uniform or black leather witch’s garb frequented Domino, which both designed and manufactured the clothes. Mimmi was part owner of the boutique with some girlfriends, and the shop provided a modest supplement to her student loan of a few thousand kronor each month. Salander had first seen Mimmi when she performed in a show at the Gay Pride Festival a couple of years before and then ran into her in a beer tent later that night. Mimmi had been dressed in an odd lemon yellow plastic dress that revealed more than it concealed. Salander saw nothing erotic about the outfit, but she had been drunk enough to suddenly want to pick up a girl dressed like a lemon. To Salander’s great surprise the citrus fruit had taken one look at her, laughed out loud, kissed her without embarrassment, and said
You’re the one I want
. They had gone back to Salander’s place and had sex all night long.

“I am what I am,” Salander said. “I ran away from everything and everybody. I should have said goodbye.”

“I thought something had happened to you. Not that we had been in touch that much in the last months you were here.”

“I was busy.”

“You’re such a mystery. You never talk about yourself. I don’t even know where you work or who I could have called when you didn’t answer your mobile.”

“I’m not working anywhere right now, and besides, you’re just like me. You wanted sex but you weren’t particularly interested in a relationship. Or were you?”

“That’s true,” Mimmi said at last.

“And it was the same with me. I never made any promises.”

“You’ve changed,” Mimmi said.

“Not a lot.”

“You look older. More mature. You have different clothes. And you’ve stuffed your bra with something.”

Salander said nothing. Mimmi had seen her naked—of course she would notice the change. In the end she lowered her eyes and mumbled, “I had a boob job.”

“What did you say?”

Salander looked up and raised her voice, unaware that it had taken on a defiant tone.

“I went to a clinic in Italy and had breast implants. That’s why I disappeared. Then I just kept on travelling. Now I’m back.”

“Are you joking?”

Salander looked at Mimmi, expressionless.

“Stupid of me. You never joke about anything, Mr. Spock.”

“I’m not going to apologize. I’m just being honest. If you want me to leave, just say the word.”

Mimmi laughed out loud. “Well, I certainly don’t want you to leave without letting me see how they look. Please.”

“I’ve always liked having sex with you, Mimmi. You didn’t give a damn what sort of work I did, and if I was busy you found somebody else.”

Mimmi nodded. When she was seventeen, after a number of fumbling attempts, she was finally initiated into the mysteries of sex at a party organized in Göteborg by the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Rights. She had never considered any other lifestyle after that. Once when she was twenty-three she had tried having sex with a man. She mechanically did everything she was expected to do, but it was not enjoyable. She also belonged to the minority within the minority who were not interested in marriage or fidelity or cosy evenings at home.

“I’ve been home for a few weeks. I needed to know if I had to go out and pick somebody up or if you’re still interested.”

Mimmi bent down and kissed her lightly on the lips.

“I was thinking of studying tonight.”

She unbuttoned the top button of Lisbeth’s blouse.

“But what the hell…”

She kissed her again and kept unbuttoning.

“I just have to see this.”

She kissed her again.

“Welcome back.”

•  •  •

Harriet Vanger fell asleep around 2:00 a.m. Blomkvist lay awake listening to her breathing. After a while he got up and filched a Dunhill from the pack in her handbag. He sat in a chair next to the bed and looked at her.

He had not planned to become Harriet Vanger’s lover. Far from it. After his time in Hedestad he wanted more than anything to keep the whole Vanger family at arm’s length. He had seen Harriet at board meetings and kept his distance. They knew each other’s secrets, but apart from Harriet Vanger’s role on
Millennium’s
board, their dealings were at an end.