The Man Who Left Too Soon: The Life and Works of Stieg Larsson (15 page)

Blomkvist returns to the guesthouse, shivering with the cold, having asked for the files about Harriet to be sent over. We are then given an atmospherically written rendering of life on the island for Blomkvist with its cold, its regimented routine, and his reactions to things such as the muted clang of the church bell. He tries unsuccessfully to contact Erika, but goes to sleep and wakes to complete silence – a novel experience for him. He decides to take a bus to Hedestad and obtains a library card before borrowing two mystery books by Elizabeth George. Readers might wonder if this reference to one of the possible inspirations for Larsson is a good idea – is it a nod of the head by the author to crime novels he has enjoyed? (A trick repeated elsewhere in the novel by several references to Val McDermid.) After all, is it likely that such a rigorous investigative journalist would muddy the waters by spending his time reading fictional mysteries? Any such objections might be put to rest by the fact that with such a demanding task ahead of him, it is likely that Blomkvist would seek out some kind of relaxation. And why not that of his creator?

Back on the island he has a visitor, a blonde woman perhaps in her fifties, knocking on the kitchen door. She is Helena Nilsson who has come to introduce herself to her new neighbour. Her husband, Gunnar, and Henrik arrive with some boxes for him in a wheelbarrow. Blomkvist notices that the couple do not appear to be curious about his job there, and when he is alone he begins to investigate the contents of the boxes. The largest amount of space is taken up by 26 binders which are copies of the police investigation, but there are scrapbooks, albums of photographs, maps and much other documentary material including binders with information on members of the Vanger family. He starts reading through them, his efforts disturbed only by the appearance of a cat, which he discovers is to be his companion. He tries to contact Erika again but fails, and at midnight takes a walk across the bridge in the icy cold.

Again Larsson shows his skill by taking us into the inner life of his investigator. By this point, having been seduced into the investigation (it’s a cliché of the genre that the detective figure often has to be persuaded to take on a case – a cliché that Larsson confronts authoritatively in these books), Blomkvist is now feeling depressed and is wondering why he has taken on such an intractable assignment and why he is not in bed with Erika Berger in Stockholm, working out how he is to deal with Wennerström again.

We are given in successive pages the details of life on the island, and it’s a measure of the author’s skills that these remain as interesting as the investigation itself (which is put on the back burner for several pages). He returns to the documents detailing the police reports, and comes across references to a Detective Inspector Gustaf Morell who arrived at Hedeby by boat and took command of the investigation into Harriet’s disappearance, interviewing a variety of people. We hear in more detail some of the information that has already been imparted to us earlier in the book, including details of a search party organised while it is still daylight (it is, as we know, a search that bears no results). Interestingly, even though we are with Blomkvist reading these reports containing information – some of which we already know – they remain interesting, and we struggle to discern significant facts, just as the protagonist does. Blomkvist notes a tone of frustration in the official notes when the search is called off and Vanger’s lengthy period of torment has begun.

Chapter 9 begins with Blomkvist getting up late on Epiphany Day. He calls upon Vanger, but is greeted by an overweight man who resembles his employer. It is Martin Vanger who welcomes him to Hedestad and already appears to be acquainted with the cover story (i.e. that Blomkvist is writing the family chronicle). He hurries away and Blomkvist finds his employer chuckling over an item in the paper which comprehensively sticks the knife into
Millennium
magazine (‘The editor in chief is a feminist who wears miniskirts and pouts her lips on TV’). There is also a dig at Blomkvist, using the ‘Kalle’ nickname that he so dislikes. He is still touchy about this issue and is unable to treat the matter as lightly as Vanger, who tells him that it’s never a good idea to get into a fight that you are sure to lose.

We now switch to Salander, who is calling on the advocate Nils Bjurman. What follows is, in plot terms, quite as significant as anything involving Blomkvist – but Larsson is careful not to intimate too early quite how crucial the episode (and its incendiary consequences) will be in the context of the novel. We learn that Salander is under social and psychiatric guardianship, and Bjurman is her new contact. In another of Larsson’s characteristically sharp pieces of background-filling we are told that Salander has been assigned to this treatment by the court for 12 years, based on the fact that she is clearly emotionally disturbed and has demonstrated violence towards her classmates; she may also be dangerous to herself.

This reference to the latent violence in Salander is something of a heads-up to the reader from the author – a harbinger of spectacularly shocking developments later in the trilogy. We also see her difficulties in relating to any authority figure, particularly in regard to any discussion of her emotional state of being. Her body language is confrontational, with folded arms and a steadfast resistance to any kind of psychological tests. Those who have attempted to deal with her have found her impossible to handle, although at the age of 15 it was concluded that she is not dangerously violent or particularly given to self-harming. But she nevertheless has a history of problems with the police, having been arrested several times when drunk, once with her clothes in disarray with a drunken (and much older) male companion. The last arrest, we are told, involved an assault on a male passenger at a railway station; her defence is that the man made sexual advances to her. There are witnesses to support this, but her troubled background (and psychiatric problems) means that the court has ordered a psychiatric evaluation which, of course, Salander refuses.

The details of the hearing are conveyed with under-standing and sympathy by Larsson, and it is made clear to the reader that the author will always be on the side of the misunderstood and alienated members of society, in his fiction as in his life. This, of course, may be said to be a characteristic of crime and thriller writers of the Left (less evident in those of a more right-wing persuasion), but that’s not to say that left-wing readers will not occasionally be furious with Salander – despite the sympathy that Larsson extends to her, she is still an infuriating figure and a severe test of left/liberal indulgence in such areas. In fact, it might be argued that the books could be said to reinforce certain right-wing prejudices against those on the fringes of society rather than making a persuasive case for them.

Salander’s original counsellor, Palmgren, somehow managed to get past her resistance and succeeded in helping her, but dealing with Bjurman is a different ball game. He is far less sympathetic and considers that Salander has been allowed free rein to behave as she liked. As she is lectured by him, she conducts an inward colloquy with herself, which Larsson describes in italics (‘
I’ve taken care of myself since I was ten, you creep!
’). She is asked about her duties at Milton Security, and lies about the extent of the trust that has been invested in her. Given the immensely complicated filigrees of influence shown by her in dealing with her enemies later in the trilogy, this kind of lying is subsequently to prove a good idea – although the reader does not know it at this point.

Blomkvist, meanwhile, is hitting something of a dead end and becoming aware that the suggestion that he can arrive at a conclusion is actually beyond reasonable common sense. He looks into inheritance laws and the complicated arrangements involving the sale of shares – and at this point Larsson provides us with a breakdown table of the convoluted Vanger family tree.

This is perhaps another point at which faint-hearted readers may fall away. Certainly, some people have responded to this forensically detailed information by saying ‘How much of this do we really need to bear in mind?’ In fact, the answer is: not very much – but not because we will be reminded of the relevant information later (although we will) but because, as with Raymond Chandler, another narrative as significant as the one we appear to be addressing will assume centre stage.

We are reminded of the importance of the internet in this part of the narrative when Blomkvist opens his e-mail to find nearly 350 messages, the first of which is a series of obscene insults (he files it under ‘intelligent criticism’). After putting Erika’s mind to rest about his new situation, he continues his forensic examination of the Vanger family. What follows, again, is perhaps more detailed than casual readers may like, but it’s undoubtedly true that those who fall under the spell of the Larsson books realise that they will be obliged to deal with a great amount of information (and, in fact, the sifting of that information is part of the pleasure of the books).

At the end of Blomkvist’s first month in the country (detailed in Chapter 10) he learns that this was the coldest in recorded memory and is now learning to equip himself with long underwear and woolly socks. The pipes are freezing, but Mikael has some compensations: he is beginning to know the people in Hedeby and spends what turns out to be a pleasant, drink-fuelled evening with Martin who, it would appear, has swallowed the story of Blomkvist’s writing the family chronicle. But the journalist has a significant meeting with a blonde woman who introduces herself as Cecilia Vanger. She has been told about the book he is putatively writing. She makes it clear that she is fully aware of the ill feeling in the family and wants to know if she will be obliged to go into exile when the book is published. When Blomkvist replies that people will be able to tell the ‘sheep from the goats’, she asks where her father is in this equation. ‘Your father the famous Nazi?’ Blomkvist replies. But she is not to be drawn into anger by this. She acknowledges that her father is insane and she only sees him a few times a year. She tells him that she is headmistress of a preparatory school and asks how much the book will deal with Harriet.

In terms of Larsson’s attention to structure and character, it’s interesting to note that it is halfway through the book before one of his subjects appears to have caught on to his real agenda – and it’s a woman who canny readers may spot as possibly assuming some importance as the narrative moves on. Cecilia makes it clear that she knows Blomkvist is really there to investigate Harriet’s disappearance. Larsson has her arrive at this conclusion by simply observing the way he has been behaving – but she points to the fact that the mystery has poisoned the lives of the family for many years and that she considers the disappearance an ‘accident’. By now, readers will realise that Larsson is happy to draw parallels with the aspects of popular culture that have inspired him, and likens the meeting with the chilly Isabella Vanger (Harriet’s mother) to a meeting with Lauren Bacall. Interestingly, however, this is not the Lauren Bacall of such Humphrey Bogart/Howard Hawks movies as
The Big Sleep
, but the later, more mature actress, as seen in the Paul Newman 1966 film version of Ross MacDonald’s
The Moving Target
: the meeting in the book seems to owe something to that memorable scene, with Bacall as a frosty matron.

The unsympathetic Isabella makes no secret of her hostility to Blomkvist’s snooping in the family affairs and makes it clear that he is to stay away from her. Of course, one of the ‘ticking clocks’ in the narrative is the fact that Blomkvist will soon be obliged to spend three months in prison, and he requests that his lawyer find out when this is to happen. He is told that he must present himself at a minimum security prison on 17 March, but is reassured that the sentence may be curtailed. We are told that Blomkvist meets his employer at least once a day for brief conversations in which the journalist posits theories that Vanger then disproves. In his own private time, the Wennerström affair hangs over him like the proverbial Damoclean sword, and he wonders if he is likely to become obsessive.

Blomkvist has a meeting with Erika Berger, but it’s an inconclusive one which ends with the couple going to bed. Up to this point in the novel the treatment of sex has been extremely discreet, so those readers perfectly happy with novelists who stop at the bedroom door may have been nonplussed by what is to follow later in the trilogy; certainly discretion is rather waived.

Larsson now takes us back to Lisbeth Salander’s third meeting with the unpleasant Advokat Bjurman at which (to continue the notion of sexuality mentioned in the previous paragraph) she is asked about her sex life. She has not the slightest intention of discussing this with him, however, answering such questions as ‘Who takes the initiative – you or him’ succinctly (‘I do,’ she replies). As the questions become more invasive, she observes that her counsellor is becoming a potential major problem. At this point in the novel we have not been fully appraised as to what Salander does when dealing with ‘major problems’, so our apprehension is vague.

Blomkvist and lover/colleague Erika Berger find themselves on the receiving end of Vanger’s generosity when he acts on an earlier suggestion and offers to become a partner in their ailing magazine. Meanwhile Blomkvist is making some advances in his investigation: it would appear that, shortly before her disappearance, Harriet Vanger had undergone a change of personality, becoming more withdrawn and uncommunicative. She had been a Christian (without any great enthusiasm) but seemed to turn towards a much more openly pious form of religion. She did not, however, visit Hedeby Island’s pastor Otto Falk but attended a more demonstrative Pentecostal church in Hedestad.