Read Online The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye: Continuing Stieg Larsson's Millennium Series by David Lagercrantz - Free Book Online
Authors: David Lagercrantz
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Palmgren’s health. He was old and sick, in considerable pain. He needed his rest. Blomkvist decided to wait and instead kept going with his research into the Mannheimer family and Alfred Ögren. He turned up a lot.
He always found stuff when he dug deep. But there was nothing that stood out or seemed to be linked to Salander or the hacker attack. So he changed his strategy, precisely because of Palmgren and the old man’s knowledge about Salander’s childhood. Blomkvist thought it by no means impossible that Mannheimer belonged to her past in some way; she had after all been talking about old lists of names. He therefore decided to go way back in time, at least as far back as the internet and databases would allow. An article in
Uppsala Nya Tidning
caught his eye; for a short while this story had attracted a certain amount of attention because it had been picked up in a T.T. telegram which went out the same day. As far as he could tell, the incident had not been mentioned again, probably out of consideration for the people involved and because of the more indulgent approach of the media at that time – especially when it came to the elite.
The dramatic event had taken place during an elk hunt in Östhammar twenty-five years earlier. The Alfred Ögren hunting party, which Mannheimer’s father Herman belonged to, had headed back out to the woods after an extended lunch. Wine had no doubt been consumed. It seems that there was bright sunlight and for various reasons the group had dispersed. After two elk had been sighted among the trees, shots were fired. An older man by the name of Per Fält, who at the time was C.F.O. of the Rosvik group, said that he had become disorientated by the excitement and confused by the animals’ rapid movements. He fired a shot and heard a scream and a cry for help. A young psychologist called Carl Seger, one of the hunting party, had been hit in the stomach, just below the chest. He died not long after, beside a small brook.
Nothing in the ensuing police investigation suggested that it had been anything other than an accident, still less that either Alfred Ögren or Herman Mannheimer had been involved. But Blomkvist thought he might be onto something, especially after he learned that Per Fält, the man who fired the fatal shot, had died a year later, without leaving a wife or children. In an inconsequential obituary he was described as a “steadfast friend” and a dedicated and loyal colleague in the Rosvik group.
Blomkvist looked out of the window, lost in thought. The sky had darkened over Riddarfjärden. A shift in the weather was coming and once more the damned rain had started to fall. He stretched his back and massaged his shoulders. Could the psychologist who had been shot have had any connection to Leo Mannheimer?
There was no way of knowing. This could be a dead end, a meaningless tragedy. Even so, Blomkvist tried to find as much information as he could about the psychologist. There was not much. When Carl Seger died, he was thirty-two and had just got engaged. He had completed his doctorate at Stockholm University the year before, his thesis had been on the impact of hearing on self-perception. An “empirical study”, it was called.
It was not available online and he could not discover exactly what the findings were, even though Seger had touched briefly on the same topic in other essays Blomkvist managed to find on Google Scholar. In one, the psychologist described a classic experiment which demonstrated how subjects identify a picture of themselves more quickly, among hundreds of others, if the picture has been embellished to make them appear more attractive. It is an evolutionary advantage to over-estimate ourselves when we need to mate or seek leadership in our group, but this also entails a risk:
“Having too much faith in our capabilities can hinder development. Self-doubt plays a decisive role in our intellectual maturity,” Seger wrote. Not exactly
He always found stuff when he dug deep. But there was nothing that stood out or seemed to be linked to Salander or the hacker attack. So he changed his strategy, precisely because of Palmgren and the old man’s knowledge about Salander’s childhood. Blomkvist thought it by no means impossible that Mannheimer belonged to her past in some way; she had after all been talking about old lists of names. He therefore decided to go way back in time, at least as far back as the internet and databases would allow. An article in
Uppsala Nya Tidning
caught his eye; for a short while this story had attracted a certain amount of attention because it had been picked up in a T.T. telegram which went out the same day. As far as he could tell, the incident had not been mentioned again, probably out of consideration for the people involved and because of the more indulgent approach of the media at that time – especially when it came to the elite.
The dramatic event had taken place during an elk hunt in Östhammar twenty-five years earlier. The Alfred Ögren hunting party, which Mannheimer’s father Herman belonged to, had headed back out to the woods after an extended lunch. Wine had no doubt been consumed. It seems that there was bright sunlight and for various reasons the group had dispersed. After two elk had been sighted among the trees, shots were fired. An older man by the name of Per Fält, who at the time was C.F.O. of the Rosvik group, said that he had become disorientated by the excitement and confused by the animals’ rapid movements. He fired a shot and heard a scream and a cry for help. A young psychologist called Carl Seger, one of the hunting party, had been hit in the stomach, just below the chest. He died not long after, beside a small brook.
Nothing in the ensuing police investigation suggested that it had been anything other than an accident, still less that either Alfred Ögren or Herman Mannheimer had been involved. But Blomkvist thought he might be onto something, especially after he learned that Per Fält, the man who fired the fatal shot, had died a year later, without leaving a wife or children. In an inconsequential obituary he was described as a “steadfast friend” and a dedicated and loyal colleague in the Rosvik group.
Blomkvist looked out of the window, lost in thought. The sky had darkened over Riddarfjärden. A shift in the weather was coming and once more the damned rain had started to fall. He stretched his back and massaged his shoulders. Could the psychologist who had been shot have had any connection to Leo Mannheimer?
There was no way of knowing. This could be a dead end, a meaningless tragedy. Even so, Blomkvist tried to find as much information as he could about the psychologist. There was not much. When Carl Seger died, he was thirty-two and had just got engaged. He had completed his doctorate at Stockholm University the year before, his thesis had been on the impact of hearing on self-perception. An “empirical study”, it was called.
It was not available online and he could not discover exactly what the findings were, even though Seger had touched briefly on the same topic in other essays Blomkvist managed to find on Google Scholar. In one, the psychologist described a classic experiment which demonstrated how subjects identify a picture of themselves more quickly, among hundreds of others, if the picture has been embellished to make them appear more attractive. It is an evolutionary advantage to over-estimate ourselves when we need to mate or seek leadership in our group, but this also entails a risk:
“Having too much faith in our capabilities can hinder development. Self-doubt plays a decisive role in our intellectual maturity,” Seger wrote. Not exactly
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