Read Online the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo

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PROLOGUE

A Friday in November

It happened every year, was nearly a ritual. And this was his eighty-second birthday. When, equally usual, the flower was delivered, he took off the wrapping paper and then picked up the phone to call Detective Superintendent Morell who, when he retired, had moved to Lake Siljan in Dalarna. They were not only the same age, they had been born on the same twenty-four hour period - which was something of an irony under the circumstances. The old policeman was sitting with his coffee, waiting, expecting the phone call.

"It arrived. "

"What is information technology this year?"

"I don't know what kind information technology is. I'll have to get someone to tell me what information technology is. Information technology's white. "

"No letter, I suppose. "

"Just the flower. The frame is the same kind as last yr. One of those exercise-it-yourself ones. "

"Postmark?"

"Stockholm. "

"Handwriting?"

"Same equally always, all in capitals. Upright, great lettering. "

With that, the field of study was exhausted, and not some other word was exchanged for almost a minute. The retired policeman leaned dorsum in his kitchen chair and drew on his piping. He knew he was no longer expected to come upwardly with a pithy comment or any abrupt question which would shed a new lite on the case. Those days had long since passed, and the exchange between the 2 men seemed similar a ritual attaching to a mystery which no-ane else in the whole world had the least interest in unravelling.

The Latin name was Leptospermum (Myrtaceae) rubinette. It was a institute about 4 inches high with modest, heather-similar leaf and a white flower with 5 petals about 1 inch across.

The plant was native to the Australian bush and uplands, where information technology was to be found amidst tussocks of grass. There it was chosen Desert Snow. Someone at the botanical gardens in Uppsala would later confirm that it was a plant seldom cultivated in Sweden. The botanist wrote in her study that it was related to the tea tree and that it was sometimes confused with its more than mutual cousin Leptospermum scoparium, which grew in affluence in New Zealand. What distinguished them, she pointed out, was that rubinette had a small number of microscopic pinkish dots at the tips of the petals, giving the flower a faint pinkish tinge.

Rubinette was altogether an unpretentious flower. It had no known medicinal properties, and it could not induce hallucinatory experiences. It was neither edible, nor had a use in the manufacture of plant dyes. On the other hand, the aboriginal people of Australia regarded as sacred the region and the flora around Ayers Stone.

The botanist said that she herself had never seen one earlier, merely afterwards consulting her colleagues she was to report that attempts had been fabricated to introduce the constitute at a nursery in Goteborg, and that it might, of course, be cultivated by amateur botanists. It was difficult to abound in Sweden because it thrived in a dry climate and had to remain indoors half of the year. Information technology would not thrive in calcareous soil and information technology had to be watered from below. It needed pampering.

The fact of its existence so rare a flower ought to have made information technology easier to trace the source of this particular specimen, just in practise information technology was an impossible task. In that location was no registry to await it up in, no licences to explore. Anywhere from a handful to a few hundred enthusiasts could have had access to seeds or plants. And those could take inverse hands betwixt friends or been bought by postal service order from anywhere in Europe, anywhere in the Antipodes.

But it was only ane in the serial of mystifying flowers that each year arrived by mail on the first day of Nov. They were always beautiful and for the most office rare flowers, always pressed, mounted on water-colour paper in a simple frame measuring six inches by 11 inches.

The strange story of the flowers had never been reported in the press; merely a very few people knew of it. Thirty years ago the regular arrival of the flower was the object of much scrutiny - at the National Forensic Laboratory, among fingerprint experts, graphologists, criminal investigators, and one or ii relatives and friends of the recipient. Now the actors in the drama were but three: the elderly birthday male child, the retired law detective, and the person who had posted the flower. The first 2 at least had reached such an age that the group of interested parties would shortly be further diminished.

The policeman was a hardened veteran. He would never forget his first case, in which he had had to take into custody a violent and appallingly boozer worker at an electric substation earlier he acquired others harm. During his career he had brought in poachers, wife beaters, con men, car thieves, and drunk drivers. He had dealt with burglars, drug dealers, rapists, and one deranged bomber. He had been involved in nine murder or manslaughter cases. In five of these the murderer had chosen the police force himself and, full of remorse, confessed to having killed his wife or blood brother or some other relative. Ii others were solved within a few days. Another required the help of the National Criminal Police and took ii years.

The 9th case was solved to the constabulary'due south satisfaction, which is to say that they knew who the murderer was, but because the evidence was and so insubstantial the public prosecutor decided not to proceed with the instance. To the detective superintendent'southward dismay, the statute of limitations somewhen put an cease to the thing. But all in all he could look back on an impressive career.

He was anything merely pleased.

For the detective, the "Example of the Pressed Flowers" had been nagging at him for years - his final, unsolved, and frustrating case. The situation was doubly absurd considering after spending literally thousands of hours brooding, on duty and off, he could non say across doubtfulness that a crime had indeed been committed.

The two men knew that whoever had mounted the flowers would have worn gloves, that at that place would be no fingerprints on the frame or the glass. The frame could have been bought in camera shops or stationery stores the earth over. In that location was, quite merely, no lead to follow. Most frequently the parcel was posted in Stockholm, but three times from London, twice from Paris, twice from Copenhagen, in one case from Madrid, once from Bonn, and once from Pensacola, Florida. The detective superintendent had had to expect information technology upward in an atlas.

Later on putting down the telephone the fourscore-ii-yr-quondam birthday boy sabbatum for a long time looking at the pretty but meaningless flower whose name he did not nevertheless know. And so he looked up at the wall in a higher place his desk. There hung xl-3 pressed flowers in their frames. Four rows of ten, and one at the bottom with four. In the superlative row one was missing from the ninth slot. Desert Snowfall would be number forty-four.

Without warning he began to weep. He surprised himself with this sudden flare-up of emotion after almost 40 years.

Part 1. Incentive

Dec 20 - January 3

Xviii percent of the women in Sweden have at one fourth dimension been threatened by a human.

CHAPTER 1

Friday, December 20

The trial was irretrievably over; everything that could be said had been said, but he had never doubted that he would lose. The written verdict was handed down at ten:00 on Friday forenoon, and all that remained was a summing upward from the reporters waiting in the corridor outside the district court.

"Carl" Mikael Blomkvist saw them through the doorway and slowed his step. He had no wish to hash out the verdict, but questions were unavoidable, and he - of all people - knew that they had to exist asked and answered. This is how it is to be a criminal, he thought. On the other side of the microphone. He straightened upwards and tried to grinning. The reporters gave him friendly, almost embarrassed greetings.

"Let's run across. . . Aftonbladet, Expressen, TT wire service, TV4, and. . . where are you from?. . . ah yes, Dagens Nyheter. I must be a celebrity," Blomkvist said.

"Requite us a sound bite, Kalle Blomkvist. " Information technology was a reporter from one of the evening papers.

r />   Blomkvist, hearing the nickname, forced himself as always not to roll his eyes. Once, when he was twenty-three and had only started his start summer chore as a journalist, Blomkvist had chanced upon a gang which had pulled off five bank robberies over the past two years. There was no doubt that information technology was the aforementioned gang in every case. Their trademark was to agree up two banks at a time with military precision. They wore masks from Disney World, so inevitably police logic dubbed them the Donald Duck Gang. The newspapers renamed them the Bear Gang, which sounded more sinister, more appropriate to the fact that on two occasions they had recklessly fired warning shots and threatened curious passersby.

Their sixth outing was at a bank in ostergotland at the pinnacle of the holiday season. A reporter from the local radio station happened to be in the bank at the fourth dimension. As soon every bit the robbers were gone he went to a public phone and dictated his story for live broadcast.

Blomkvist was spending several days with a girlfriend at her parents' summertime cabin near Katrineholm. Exactly why he made the connection he could not explain, even to the police, but as he was listening to the news study he remembered a group of four men in a summer cabin a few hundred anxiety downwardly the road. He had seen them playing badminton out in the thousand: four blond, athletic types in shorts with their shirts off. They were obviously bodybuilders, and there had been something about them that had fabricated him look twice - maybe it was because the game was beingness played in blazing sunshine with what he recognised as intensely focused energy.

In that location had been no good reason to suspect them of being the banking company robbers, just nevertheless he had gone to a hill overlooking their motel. It seemed empty. It was nigh forty minutes before a Volvo drove up and parked in the m. The immature men got out, in a hurry, and were each carrying a sports pocketbook, and so they might have been doing nothing more than than coming back from a swim. But one of them returned to the machine and took out from the kick something which he hurriedly covered with his jacket. Fifty-fifty from Blomkvist's relatively distant observation post he could tell that it was a good old AK4, the burglarize that had been his constant companion for the year of his military machine service.

He called the police and that was the start of a 3-day siege of the motel, blanket coverage by the media, with Blomkvist in a front end-row seat and collecting a gratifyingly large fee from an evening paper. The law set up their headquarters in a caravan in the garden of the cabin where Blomkvist was staying.

The fall of the Bear Gang gave him the star billing that launched him as a immature journalist. The downside of his glory was that the other evening newspaper could not resist using the headline "Kalle Blomkvist solves the case. " The tongue-in-cheek story was written by an older female person columnist and contained references to the young detective in Astrid Lindgren'south books for children. To make matters worse, the paper had run the story with a grainy photo of Blomkvist with his oral fissure half open even every bit he raised an index finger to point.

It made no divergence that Blomkvist had never in life used the name Carl. From that moment on, to his dismay, he was nicknamed Kalle Blomkvist by his peers - an epithet employed with taunting provocation, not unfriendly but not really friendly either. In spite of his respect for Astrid Lindgren - whose books he loved - he detested the nickname. It took him several years and far weightier journalistic successes before the nickname began to fade, but he even so cringed if ever the name was used in his hearing.

Right at present he achieved a placid smile and said to the reporter from the evening paper: "Oh come on, think of something yourself. You usually do. "

His tone was not unpleasant. They all knew each other, more or less, and Blomkvist'south most barbarous critics had not come that morning time. 1 of the journalists there had at once worked with him. And at a political party some years ago he had most succeeded in picking up ane of the reporters - the adult female from She on TV4.

"You took a real striking in in that location today," said the one from Dagens Nyheter, clearly a young part-timer. "How does it feel?"

Despite the seriousness of the situation, neither Blomkvist nor the older journalists could assist smiling. He exchanged glances with TV4. How does it feel? The half-witted sports reporter shoves his microphone in the face up of the Breathless Athlete on the finishing line.

"I can only regret that the courtroom did non come up to a unlike decision," he said a bit stuffily.

"Three months in gaol and 150,000 kronor damages. That's pretty severe," said She from TV4.

"I'll survive. "

"Are you going to apologise to Wennerstrom? Shake his mitt?"

"I recollect not. "

"So you however would say that he's a crook?" Dagens Nyheter.

The court had just ruled that Blomkvist had libelled and defamed the financier Hans-Erik Wennerstrom. The trial was over and he had no plans to entreatment. Then what would happen if he repeated his claim on the courthouse steps? Blomkvist decided that he did non want to find out.

"I thought I had practiced reason to publish the data that was in my possession. The court has ruled otherwise, and I must accept that the judicial process has taken its course. Those of united states on the editorial staff will have to talk over the judgement before we determine what nosotros're going to do. I have no more to add together. "

"But how did you come up to forget that journalists actually have to support their assertions?" She from TV4. Her expression was neutral, but Blomkvist thought he saw a hint of disappointed repudiation in her optics.

The reporters on site, autonomously from the boy from Dagens Nyheter, were all veterans in the business organisation. For them the respond to that question was beyond the conceivable. "I have nothing to add," he repeated, but when the others had accepted this TV4 stood him against the doors to the courthouse and asked her questions in front of the camera. She was kinder than he deserved, and there were plenty clear answers to satisfy all the reporters nonetheless continuing behind her. The story would be in the headlines but he reminded himself that they were non dealing with the media event of the year here. The reporters had what they needed and headed dorsum to their respective newsrooms.

He considered walking, simply information technology was a blustery Dec day and he was already cold after the interview. As he walked down the courtroom steps, he saw William Borg getting out of his car. He must take been sitting in that location during the interview. Their eyes met, and then Borg smiled.

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