at the point and along the sound, the section of woods closest to the village, and the hill called Söderberget behind the fishing harbour. The latter was searched because someone had put forward the theory that Harriet might have gone up there to get a good view of the scene on the bridge. Patrols were also sent out to Östergården and to Gottfried’s cabin on the other side of the island, which Harriet occasionally visited.
But the search was fruitless; it was not called off until long after dark fell, at 10:00 at night. The temperature overnight dropped to freezing.
During the afternoon Inspector Morell set up his headquarters in a drawing room that Henrik Vanger had put at his disposal on the ground floor of the Vanger estate office. He had undertaken a number of measures.
In the company of Isabella Vanger, he had examined Harriet’s room and tried to ascertain whether anything was missing: clothes, a suitcase, or the like, which would indicate that Harriet had run away from home. Isabella, a note implied, had not been helpful and did not seem to be familiar with her daughter’s wardrobe. She often wore jeans, but they all look the same, don’t they? Harriet’s purse was on her desk. It contained ID, a wallet holding nine kronor and fifty öre, a comb, a mirror, and a handkerchief. After the inspection, Harriet’s room was locked.
Morell had summoned more people to be interviewed, family members and employees. All the interviews were meticulously reported.
When the participants in the first search party began returning with disheartening reports, the inspector decided that a more systematic search had to be made. That evening and night, reinforcements were called in. Morell contacted, among others, the chairman of Hedestad’s Orienteering Club and appealed for help in summoning volunteers for the search party. By midnight he was told that fifty-three members, mostly from the junior division, would be at the Vanger estate at 7:00 the next morning. Henrik Vanger called in part of the morning shift, numbering fifty men, from the paper mill. He also arranged for food and drink for them all.
Blomkvist could vividly imagine the scenes played out at the Vanger estate during those days. The accident on the bridge had certainly contributed to the confusion during the first hours—by making it difficult to bring in reinforcements, and also because people somehow thought that these two dramatic events happening at the same place and close to the same time must in some way have been connected. When the tanker truck was hoisted away, Inspector Morell went down to the bridge to be sure that Harriet Vanger had not, by some unlikely turn of events, ended up under the wreck. That was the only irrational action that Mikael could detect in the inspector’s conduct, since the missing girl had unquestionably been seen on the island after the accident had occurred.
During those first confused twenty-four hours, their hopes that the situation would come to a swift and happy resolution sank. Instead, they were gradually replaced by two theories. In spite of the obvious difficulties in leaving the island unnoticed, Morell refused to discount the possibility that she had run away. He decided that an all-points bulletin should be sent out for Harriet Vanger, and he gave instructions for the patrol officers in Hedestad to keep their eyes open for the missing girl. He also sent a colleague in the criminal division to interview bus drivers and staff at the railway station, to find out whether anyone might have seen her.
As the negative reports came in, it became increasingly likely that Harriet Vanger had fallen victim to some sort of misfortune. This theory ended up dominating the investigative work of the following days.
The big search party two days after her disappearance was apparently, as far as Blomkvist could tell, carried out effectively. Police and firefighters who had experience with similar operations had organised the search. Hedeby Island did have some parts that were almost inaccessible, but it was nevertheless a small area, and the island was searched with a fine-tooth comb in one day. A police boat and two volunteer Pettersson boats did what they could to search the waters around the island.
On the following day the search was continued with decreased manpower. Patrols were sent out to make a second sweep of the particularly rugged terrain, as well as an area known as “the fortress”—a now-abandoned bunker system that was built during the Second World War. That day they also searched cubbyholes,