The Man Who Left Too Soon: The Life and Works of Stieg Larsson (17 page)

Blomkvist continues his investigations, including a search through Gottfried’s cabin – and it’s here that we get another of the references to the crime fiction that Larsson is so enamoured of. In fact, the reference is to Mickey Spillane’s ‘thick-ear’ novel,
Kiss Me Deadly
, and Larsson mentions the (as he puts it) classic covers by Bertil Hegland, an illustrator not known to British and American readers. Surprisingly, Larsson also references another celebrated mystery series, the
Famous Five
novels by Enid Blyton and, of course, books by Astrid Lindgren, including
Pippi Longstocking
– a book, which as we now know, figures in the background to the trilogy we are reading. He finds Harriet Vanger’s confirmation Bible and wonders if this was a place which she tried to imagine (during her period of religious brooding) had the feeling of a convent. He subsequently tells Cecilia that their relationship is becoming a little complicated for him and asks if she would be prepared to leave him in peace for a while.

If the reader is now a little impatient for momentum in the plot, Larsson has been cannily withholding it until Chapter 16, when we are told that the case of Harriet Vanger ‘cracked’ when Blomkvist managed to piece together new aspects of the mystery. One involves the last photograph taken of Harriet while she had been watching the Children’s Day parade. The wide-angle lens has included the front of one of the floats featuring clowns and other figures. Harriet’s gaze is settled upon something, which Blomkvist examines with a magnifying glass. He takes the photograph to the building from which it was taken, and finds that it is a shop. He asks the proprietor if he might see the view that she saw on the day. He then discovers what he says is ‘new evidence’. He realises that the chain of events leading to Harriet’s disappearance has begun earlier, when she saw something or someone that disturbed her. Larsson again utilises the careful ‘parcelling out’ of clues to construct an accretion of detail.

Later he asks Vanger whether or not the family still has an interest in the
Hedestad Courier
and requests access to the photographic archives from 1966. What he discovers (after lengthy investigations of the archives) is that Harriet is observing the blurred face of a woman – though it is impossible to make out the features. He works out her height in relation to the window. She was about 5ft 7in. Again, the facts point to the 20-year-old Cecilia Vanger. Blomkvist is now convinced that Harriet has seen something which has shocked her – she attempted to talk to Vanger about what she has seen, but the meeting was not destined to happen. She subsequently vanished, never to be seen again. A classic piece of jigsaw-puzzle plotting.

Harald Vanger accosts him, saying that his ‘whore isn’t home’. Blomkvist shouts back that this unpleasant man is talking about his own daughter but from this conversation he learns from Vanger that Cecilia has had a striking sexual history: her lovers include a man called Peter Samuelsson, a financial assistant for the Vanger Corporation. This individual is the reason for Harald’s splenetic hatred of his daughter, as he has discovered that her lover is Jewish – and we are given another emblem of Harald’s unpleasantness (as Larsson would expect readers to perceive it).

Looking once again at the evidence involving Harriet, he finds a series of particularly bloodthirsty quotations in her Bible (including, from Leviticus, ‘And the daughter of any priest, if she profanes herself by playing the harlot, profanes her father; she shall be burned with fire.’). Biblical quotations, of course, are always bad news in the lexicon of crime fiction. At this point, as the pace of the revelations begins to increase, the reader is pleasurably thrown into unexpected territory by Larsson.
Millennium
’s new partner (and Blomkvist’s employer) Henrik Vanger has had a serious heart attack. Blomkvist visits the lawyer Frode and is told that the old man is alive but not doing well in intensive care. Frode assures him that the terms of his conditions do not change. Blomkvist says that he has found a connection with the murder of Rebecka Jacobsson in 1949, and that the murder of this girl appears to have something to do with Harriet’s disappearance – she has written her initials in her date book alongside the references to Old Testament quotations concerning burnt offerings.

Rebecka Jacobsson was burnt to death – and she worked for the Vanger Corporation. Frode asks if there is a connection with Harriet that can be explained, but Blomkvist says that he has not deduced this yet. Blomkvist has decided to follow up the photographic lead and try to find out what it was that Harriet saw, but in order to research all the information he will need an expert research assistant. At this point, nearly 300 pages into the novel, Frode utters the words which will ultimately bring the two protagonists together: ‘Actually I believe I know of an expert researcher… She was the one who did the background investigation on you.’

Blomkvist insists on seeing Lisbeth Salander’s report and finds it a strange, unsettling experience. As a journalist himself, he notes that Salander is clearly, as he puts it, ‘one hell of an investigator’ and he realises that she has information that can only have been obtained by entering his computer. He says aloud, ‘You’re a fucking hacker.’

It has been some time since Larsson has allowed the reader into the company of Lisbeth Salander, but as usual, when he does the results are always fascinating. She has gone to bed with a woman, Mimmi, and this leads her to think about her own sexuality. She has, apparently, never thought of herself as a lesbian or even, for that matter, bisexual – this is all of a part with her rejection of labels of any kind (not a rejection her creator shares). Her problem with men has been finding those who can attend to her sexual needs but not be ‘creeps’ afterwards – a combination she is finding difficult to accept.

Her doorbell rings, and at the door is a man who greets her cheerfully. It’s Blomkvist, who has arrived with filled bagels for her breakfast; he has researched her preferences. She screams at him, saying she doesn’t know who he is, but Blomkvist points out that she knows him better than almost anyone else – and what’s more, he knows how she does it, he knows her secrets. She tells him that he should talk to her boss, but he points out that he has already had a conversation with Armansky. He then tells her, peremptorily, to have a shower. And finally, the two central characters in the
Millennium Trilogy
have met.

What follows is a fascinating colloquy between the two characters, full of interesting detail, such as the fact that Blomkvist is mildly disgusted by the less-than-hygienic fashion in which Salander lives. The dynamic of the relationship between the two is already intriguing, and while we are clearly looking at Salander through Blomkvist’s eyes (inasmuch as he is the more open ‘normal’ character), it is her response to the conversation that fascinates us – particularly as we know that her responses can, as Americans say, ‘turn on a dime’. Blomkvist asks about the job she has been employed to do and he tells her why he needs a skilled researcher for the assignment he has undertaken for Vanger. The initial commission was, she understands, for some historical research. But Blomkvist tells her – in no uncertain terms – that he wants her to help him identify a murderer.

He tells her all the details of the Vanger case and how he has identified the ‘RJ’ from the list in the date book as Rebecka Jacobsson. She asks if he considers all the other names in the list to be murder victims, and he replies that they may be looking for a killer who was active in the 1950s (and also the 1960s) and who is in some way linked to Harriet Vanger. She agrees to help but tells him that he must sign a contract with her boss, Armansky. On returning to the island Blomkvist finds that his cottage has been ransacked.

Salander is musing on her meeting with him. It is clear that he has to some degree got under her skin and she is reacting to him as she has done to so many males who had the upper hand in her past. But as he said, he was not there to blackmail her, only here to ask her to help. She could say ‘yes’ or ‘no’. But the partnership is now a foregone conclusion – as Larsson knows readers will want it to be.

Blomkvist learns from Martin Vanger that Cecilia is very much against him continuing with his investigations. After he leaves, Blomkvist pours himself a drink and, as Larsson puts it, picks up his copy of a Val McDermid novel (another nod to an important influence on Larsson’s work). While Blomkvist tries to identify a car with the AC plates, he finds himself getting closer to the mystery. Salander, too, an expert in methodology, is trying to track down the identity of the individuals who may have been killed by the unknown murderer. She finds that a Magda (one of the names in the list) is a name in a grisly killing in April 1960. She also finds that the subject had been subjected to a grim sexual assault and murdered with a pitchfork – and that one of the animals at the farm on which the killing took place suffered similar stab wounds.

Suspicion had fallen on a neighbour in the village, a young man accused of a homosexual crime, but Salander is bemused as to why a reputed homosexual would take part in a sex killing against a woman. As the duo begin to peel back more layers of the mystery, Blomkvist tells Frode that he is no longer convinced that Cecilia is central to the Harriet mystery, and is now looking at the emotionally cold Isabella. Inevitably, of course, Salander has to travel to Hedeby Island, and we are reminded once again that the novel began with an Agatha Christie-style murder in a cloistered setting. However, that was a springboard for the events that followed in which the rules of the classic English mystery have been shaken up and exploded. Now this highly unorthodox character is travelling to a crucial location. As Blomkvist sautés lamb chops for Salander, he finds himself sneaking glimpses of the tattoos on her back. Further suggestions that the relationship between the two will develop in some way.

She gives him a series of reports on the names on the list, all of which have been identified. After the first girl, Rebecka Jacobsson, there was a prostitute who was tied up and abused, with the cause of death being strangulation – a sanitary towel had been forced down her throat. Blomkvist finds the verse in Leviticus that reads, ‘If a man lies with a woman having her sickness, and uncovers her nakedness, he has made naked her fountain, and she has uncovered the fountain of her blood; both of them shall be cut off from among their people.’ It’s clear to both Blomkvist and Salander that Harriet Vanger, in compiling the list, had made the same biblical connection. Other examples follow in which biblical allusions are found for the various murder victims. With the kind of plotting ingenuity which is characteristic of the trilogy, Larsson allows his characters to make connections between the names of the victims (and to cut a path through some obfuscation). They find a preponderance of traditional Jewish names and, of course, the Vanger family is noted for its passionate anti-Semites. Blomkvist remembers Harald Vanger standing in the road and shouting that his own daughter was a whore.

At this point, Blomkvist tells Salander that he considers the job she was hired for is finished. But, unsurprisingly, she replies, ‘I’m not done with this.’ She is now as dedicated to the extirpation of evil and the revelation of the mystery as Blomkvist – and we have a classic detective fiction trope: the end of an investigation is not the end of the narrative. But she tells him something significant in the context of both Larsson’s preoccupation and the original Swedish title of the book: ‘It’s not an insane serial killer who read his Bible wrong. It’s just a common or garden bastard who hates women.’

In Chapter 21, on the principle that a variety of threats and obstructions should be directed against his protagonists as a dramatic imperative, Larsson has Blomkvist subjected to a scurrilous attack on his journalism, but the journalist is more concerned by the revelation he has arrived at from the photo that he was tracking down: a blurred figure standing behind the spectators. It is a six-foot man with dark blond, long hair. The image is manipulated, but neither Blomkvist nor Salander is any closer to learning his identity. As the investigation progresses we are party to Lisbeth’s thoughts, and once again Larsson renders these as more fascinating than those of his male protagonists (there is perhaps an echo of another Swedish arts icon here – Ingmar Bergman, who frequently demonstrated more sympathy with his female characters than his male protagonists). She is totally disconcerted by the fact that her new companion has reached further into the secrets of her personality than anyone she has encountered, and although her responses to him are positive, she is not happy with this.

Salander decides to do something which (although readers may have been coaxed into willing it by now) still slightly smacks of the wish-fulfilment element that many people have identified in the book. Salander makes her way to the room where Blomkvist is reading a novel by Sara Paretsky (one of the umpteen references to the crime fiction novelists who had inspired Larsson). She has a sheet wrapped around her body and stands in the doorway. She proceeds to the bed, takes the book from his hand and kisses him on the mouth. When he does not object, she leans across and bites him on the nipple. He tells her, pushing her away so that he can see her face, that he doesn’t consider this move to be a good idea as they are working together. She replies, ‘I want to have sex with you. And I won’t have any problem working with you, but I will have a hell of a problem with you if you kick me out.’ Blomkvist tells her he has no condoms. Her reply is, ‘Screw it.’

In the celebrated series of crime and thriller novels (featuring a highly capable male and female duo) by Peter O’Donnell – whose protagonists are alpha female Modesty Blaise and her male sidekick Willy Garvin – O’Donnell was careful never to allow his hero and heroine to sleep together, considering that this would alter the dynamics of the relationship. Readers at this point might be forgiven for thinking the same thing of Larsson, but he knows exactly what he is doing – and this dynamic is to shift again on several occasions. As if to remind us that the novel is not about pleasing sexual encounters but about the coercive ones, soon after their tryst, the couple find the body of a cat which Blomkvist assumes has been left by somebody who knows about the work they are doing – and about the progress that they are making. Salander tells him that she is going into Stockholm to buy some gadgets. She at this point demonstrates that she is more ready to deal with violent attacks – and in a forceful way – than her male journalist companion.