The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Trilogy Bundle (18 page)

Vanger resumed the history:

“Gottfried Vanger died childless in 1901. Or rather, may I be forgiven, he was the father of four daughters, but in those days women didn't really count. They owned shares, but it was the men in the family who constituted the ownership interest. It wasn't until women won the right to vote, well into the twentieth century, that they were even allowed to attend the shareholders' meetings.”

“Very liberal.”

“No need to be sarcastic. Those were different times. At any rate—Gottfried's brother, Birger Vanger, had three sons: Johan, Fredrik, and Gideon Vanger. They were all born towards the end of the nineteenth century. We can ignore Gideon; he sold his shares and emigrated to America. There is still a branch of the family over there. But Johan and Fredrik Vanger made the company the modern Vanger Corporation.”

Vanger took out a photograph album and showed Blomkvist pictures from the gallery of characters as he talked. The photographs from the early 1900s showed two men with sturdy chins and plastered-down hair who stared into the camera lens without a hint of a smile.

“Johan Vanger was the genius of the family. He trained as an engineer, and he developed the manufacturing industry with several new inventions, which he patented. Steel and iron became the basis of the firm, but the business also expanded into other areas, including textiles. Johan Vanger died in 1956 and had three daughters: Sofia, Märit, and Ingrid, who were the first women automatically to win admittance to the company's shareholders' meetings.

“The other brother, Fredrik Vanger, was my father. He was a businessman and industry leader who transformed Johan's inventions into income. My father lived until 1964. He was active in company management right up until his death, although he had turned over daily operations to me in the fifties.

“It was exactly like the preceding generation—but in reverse. Johan had only daughters.” Vanger showed Blomkvist pictures of big-busted women with wide-brimmed hats and carrying parasols. “And Fredrik—my father—had only sons. We were five brothers: Richard, Harald, Greger, Gustav, and myself.”

         

Blomkvist had drawn up a family tree on several sheets of A4 paper taped together. He underlined the names of all those on Hedeby Island for the family meeting in 1966 and thus, at least theoretically, who could have had something to do with Harriet Vanger's disappearance.

He left out children under the age of twelve—he had to draw the line somewhere. After some pondering, he also left out Henrik Vanger. If the patriarch had had anything to do with the disappearance of his brother's granddaughter, his actions over the past thirty-six years would fall into the psychopathic arena. Vanger's mother, who in 1966 was already eighty-one, could reasonably also be eliminated. Remaining were twenty-three family members who, according to Vanger, had to be included in the group of “suspects.” Seven of these were now dead, and several had now reached a respectable old age.

Blomkvist was not willing to share Vanger's conviction that a family member was behind Harriet's disappearance. A number of others had to be added to the list of suspects.

Dirch Frode began working for Vanger as his lawyer in the spring of 1962. And aside from the family, who were the servants when Harriet vanished? Gunnar Nilsson—alibi or not—was nineteen years old, and his father, Magnus, was in all likelihood present on Hedeby Island, as were the artist Norman and the pastor Falk. Was Falk married? The Östergården farmer Aronsson, as well as his son Jerker Aronsson, lived on the island, close enough to Harriet Vanger while she was growing up—what sort of relationship did they have? Was Aronsson still married? Did other people live at that time on the farm?

As Blomkvist wrote down all the names, the list had grown to forty people. It was 3:30 in the morning and the thermometer read -6°F. He longed for his own bed on Bellmansgatan.

         

He was awoken by the workman from Telia. By 11:00 he was hooked up and no longer felt quite as professionally handicapped. On the other hand, his own telephone remained stubbornly silent. He was starting to feel quite pig-headed and would not call the office.

He switched on his email programme and looked rapidly through the nearly 350 messages sent to him over the past week. He saved a dozen; the rest were spam or mailing lists that he subscribed to. The first email was from : I HOPE YOU SUCK COCK IN THE SLAMMER YOU FUCKING COMMIE PIG. He filed it in the “
INTELLIGENT CRITICISM
” folder.

He wrote to : “Hi Ricky. Just to tell you that I've got the Net working and can be reached when you can forgive me. Hedeby is a rustic place, well worth a visit. M.” When it felt like lunchtime he put his iBook in his bag and walked to Susanne's Bridge Café. He parked himself at his usual corner table. Susanne brought him coffee and sandwiches, casting an inquisitive glance at his computer. She asked him what he was working on. For the first time Blomkvist used his cover story. They exchanged pleasantries. Susanne urged him to check with her when he was ready for the real revelations.

“I've been serving Vangers for thirty-five years, and I know most of the gossip about that family,” she said, and sashayed off to the kitchen. With children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren—whom he had not bothered to include—the brothers Fredrik and Johan Vanger had approximately fifty living offspring today. The family had a tendency to live to a ripe old age. Fredrik Vanger lived to be seventy-eight, and his brother Johan to seventy-two. Of Fredrik's sons who were yet alive, Harald was ninety-two and Henrik was eighty-two.

The only exception was Gustav, who died of lung disease at the age of thirty-seven. Vanger had explained that Gustav had always been sickly and had gone his own way, never really fitting in with the rest of the family. He never married and had no children.

The others who had died young had succumbed to other factors than illness. Richard Vanger was killed in the Winter War, only thirty-three years old. Gottfried Vanger, Harriet's father, had drowned the year before she disappeared. And Harriet herself was only sixteen. Mikael made note of the strange symmetry in that particular branch of the family—grandfather, father, and daughter had all been struck by misfortune. Richard's only remaining descendant was Martin Vanger who, at fifty-four, was still unmarried. But Vanger had explained that his nephew was a veritable hermit with a woman who lived in Hedestad.

Blomkvist noted two factors in the family tree. The first was that no Vanger had ever divorced or remarried, even if their spouse had died young. He wondered how common that was, in terms of statistics. Cecilia Vanger had been separated from her husband for years, but apparently, they were still married.

The other peculiarity was that whereas Fredrik Vanger's descendants, including Henrik, had played leading roles in the business and lived primarily in or near Hedestad, Johan Vanger's branch of the family, which produced only daughters, had married and dispersed to Stockholm, Malmö, and Göteborg or abroad. And they only came to Hedestad for summer holidays or the more important meetings. The single exception was Ingrid Vanger, whose son, Gunnar Karlman, lived in Hedestad. He was the editor in chief of the
Hedestad Courier.

Thinking as a private detective might, Vanger thought that the underlying motive for Harriet's murder might be found in the structure of the company—the fact that early on he had made it known that Harriet was special to him; the motive might have been to harm Vanger himself, or perhaps Harriet had discovered some sensitive information concerning the company and thereby became a threat to someone. These were mere speculations; nevertheless, in this manner he had identified a circle consisting of thirteen individuals whom he considered to be of potential interest.

Blomkvist's conversation with Vanger the day before had been illuminating on one other point. From the start the old man had talked to Blomkvist about so many members of his family in a contemptuous and denigrating manner. It struck him as odd. Blomkvist wondered whether the patriarch's suspicions about his family had warped his judgement in the matter of Harriet's disappearance, but now he was starting to realise that Vanger had made an amazingly sober assessment.

The image that was emerging revealed a family that was socially and financially successful, but in all the more ordinary aspects was quite clearly dysfunctional.

         

Henrik Vanger's father had been a cold, insensitive man who sired his children and then let his wife look after their upbringing and welfare. Until the children reached the age of sixteen they barely saw their father except at special family gatherings when they were expected to be present but also invisible. Henrik could not remember his father ever expressing any form of love, even in the smallest way. On the contrary, the son was often told that he was incompetent and was the target of devastating criticism. Corporal punishment was seldom used; it wasn't necessary. The only times he had won his father's respect came later in life, through his accomplishments within the Vanger Corporation.

The oldest brother, Richard, had rebelled. After an argument—the reason for which was never discussed in the family—the boy had moved to Uppsala to study. There had been sown the seeds of the the Nazi career which Vanger had already mentioned, and which would eventually lead to the Finnish trenches. What the old man had not mentioned previously was that two other brothers had had similar careers.

In 1930 Harald and Greger had followed in Richard's footsteps to Uppsala. The two had been close, but Vanger was not sure to what extent they had spent time with Richard. It was quite clear that the brothers all joined Per Engdahl's fascist movement, The New Sweden. Harald had loyally followed Per Engdahl over the years, first to Sweden's National Union, then to the Swedish Opposition group, and finally The New Swedish Movement after the war. Harald continued to be a member until Engdahl died in the nineties, and for certain periods he was one of the key contributors to the hibernating Swedish fascist movement.

Harald Vanger studied medicine in Uppsala and landed almost immediately in circles that were obsessed with race hygiene and race biology. For a time he worked at the Swedish Race Biology Institute, and as a physician he became a prominent campaigner for the sterilisation of undesirable elements in the population.

Quote, Henrik Vanger, tape 2, 02950:

Harald went even further. In 1937 he co-authored—under a pseudonym
,
thank God—a book entitled
The People's New Europe.
I didn't find this out until the seventies. I have a copy that you can read. It must be one of the most disgusting books ever published in the Swedish language. Harald argued not only for sterilisation but also for euthanasia—actively putting to death people who offended his aesthetic tastes and didn't fit his image of the perfect Swedish race. In other words
,
he was appealing for wholesale murder in a text that was written in impeccable academic prose and contained all the required medical arguments. Get rid of those who are handicapped. Don't allow the Saami people to spread; they have a Mongolian influence. People who are mentally ill would regard death as a form of liberation
,
wouldn't they? Loose women
,
vagrants
,
gypsies
,
and Jews—you can imagine. In my brother's fantasies
,
Auschwitz could have been located in Dalarna.

After the war Greger Vanger became a secondary-school teacher and eventually the headmaster of the Hedestad preparatory school. Vanger thought that he no longer belonged to any party after the war and had given up Nazism. He died in 1974, and it wasn't until he went through his brother's correspondence that he learned that in the fifties Greger had joined the politically ineffectual but totally crackpot sect called the Nordic National Party. He had remained a member until his death.

Quote, Henrik Vanger, tape 2, 04167:
Consequently
,
three of my brothers were politically insane. How sick were they in other respects
?

The only brother worthy of a measure of empathy in Vanger's eyes was the sickly Gustav, who died of lung disease in 1955. Gustav had never been interested in politics, and he seemed to be some sort of misanthropic artistic soul, with absolutely no interest in business or working in the Vanger Corporation.

Blomkvist asked Vanger: “Now you and Harald are the only ones left. Why did he move back to Hedeby?”

“He moved home in 1979. He owns that house.”

“It must feel strange living so close to a brother that you hate.”

“I don't hate my brother. If anything, I may pity him. He's a complete idiot, and he's the one who hates me.”

“He hates you?”

“Precisely. I think that's why he came back here. So that he could spend his last years hating me at close quarters.”