monday, january 6–wednesday, january 8

blomkvist kept reading until the small hours and did not get up until late on epiphany day. a navy blue, late-model volvo was parked outside vanger’s house. even as he reached for the door handle, the door was opened by a man on his way out. they almost collided. the man seemed to be in a hurry.

“yes? can i help you?”

“i’m here to see henrik vanger,” blomkvist said.

the man’s eyes brightened. he smiled and stuck out his hand. “you must be mikael blomkvist, the one who’s going to help henrik with the family chronicle, right?”

they shook hands. vanger had apparently begun spreading blomkvist’s cover story. the man was overweight—the result, no doubt, of too many years of negotiating in offices and conference rooms—but blomkvist noticed at once the likeness, the similarity between his face and harriet vanger’s.

“i’m martin vanger,” the man said. “welcome to hedestad.”

“thank you.”

“i saw you on tv a while ago.”

“everybody seems to have seen me on tv.”

“wennerstr?m is…not very popular in this house.”

“henrik mentioned that. i’m waiting to hear the rest of the story.”

“he told me a few days ago that he’d hired you.” martin vanger laughed. “he said it was probably because of wennerstr?m that you took the job up here.”

blomkvist hesitated before deciding to tell the truth. “that was one important reason. but to be honest, i needed to get away from stockholm, and hedestad cropped up at the right moment. at least i think so. i can’t pretend that the court case never happened. and anyway, i’m going to have to go to prison.”

martin vanger nodded, suddenly serious. “can you appeal?”

“it won’t do any good.”

vanger glanced at his watch.

“i have to be in stockholm tonight, so i must hurry away. i’ll be back in a few days. come over and have dinner. i’d really like to hear what actually went on during that trial. henrik is upstairs. go right in.”

vanger was sitting on a sofa in his office where he had the hedestad courier, dagens industri, svenska dagbladet, and both national evening papers on the coffee table.

“i ran into martin outside.”

“rushing off to save the empire,” vanger said. “coffee?”

“yes, please.” blomkvist sat down, wondering why vanger looked so amused.

“you’re mentioned in the paper.”

vanger shoved across one of the evening papers, open at a page with the headline “media short circuit.” the article was written by a columnist who had previously worked for monopoly financial magazine, making a name for himself as one who cheerfully ridiculed everyone who felt passionate about any issue or who stuck their neck out. feminists, antiracists, and environmental activists could all reckon on receiving their share. the writer was not known for espousing a single conviction of his own. now, several weeks after the trial in the wennerstr?m affair, he was bringing his fire to bear on mikael blomkvist, whom he described as a complete idiot. erika berger was portrayed as an incompetent media bimbo:

a rumour is circulating that millennium is on the verge of collapse in spite of the fact that the editor in chief is a feminist who wears mini-skirts and pouts her lips on tv. for several years the magazine has survived on the image that has been successfully marketed by the editors—young reporters who undertake investigative journalism and expose the scoundrels of the business world. this advertising trick may work with young anarchists who want to hear just such a message, but it doesn’t wash in the district court. as kalle blomkvist recently found out.

blomkvist switched on his mobile and checked to see if he had any calls from berger. there were no messages. vanger waited without saying anything. blomkvist realised that the old man was allowing him to break the silence.

“he’s a moron,” blomkvist said.

vanger laughed, but he said: “that may be. but he’s not the one who was sentenced by the court.”

“that’s true. and he never will be. he never says anything original; he always just jumps on the bandwagon and casts the final stone in the most damaging terms he can get away with.”

“i’ve had many enemies over the years. if there’s one thing i’ve learned, it’s never engage in a fight you’re sure to lose. on the other hand, never let anyone who has insulted you get away with it. bide your time and strike back when you’re in a position of strength—even if you no longer need to strike back.”

“thank you for your wisdom, henrik. now i’d like you to tell me about your family.” he set the tape recorder between them on the table and pressed the record button.

“what do you want to know?”

“i’ve read through the first binder, about the disappearance and the searches, but there are so many vangers mentioned that i need your help identifying them all.”

for nearly ten minutes salander stood in the empty hall with her eyes fixed on the brass plaque that said “advokat n. e. bjurman” before she rang the bell. the lock on the entry door clicked.

it was tuesday. it was their second meeting, and she had a bad feeling about it.

she was not afraid of bjurman—salander was rarely afraid of anyone or anything. on the other hand, she felt uncomfortable with this new guardian. his predecessor, advokat holger palmgren, had been of an entirely different ilk: courteous and kind. but three months ago palmgren had had a stroke, and nils erik bjurman had inherited her in accordance with some bureaucratic pecking order.

in the twelve years that salander had been under social and psychiatric guardianship, two of those years in a children’s clinic, she had never once given the same answer to the simple question: “so, how are you today?”

when she turned thirteen, the court had decided, under laws governing the guardianship of minors, that she should be entrusted to the locked ward at st. stefan’s psychiatric clinic for children in uppsala. the decision was primarily based on the fact that she was deemed to be emotionally disturbed and dangerously violent towards her classmates and possibly towards herself.

all attempts by a teacher or any authority figure to initiate a conversation with the girl about her feelings, emotional life, or the state of her health were met, to their great frustration, with a sullen silence and a great deal of intense staring at the floor, ceiling, and walls. she would fold her arms and refuse to participate in any psychological tests. her resistance to all attempts to measure, weigh, chart, analyse, or educate her applied also to her school work—the authorities could have her carried to a classroom and could chain her to the bench, but they could not stop her from closing her ears and refusing to lift a pen to write anything. she completed the nine years of compulsory schooling without a certificate.

this had consequently become associated with the great difficulty of even diagnosing her mental deficiencies. in short, lisbeth salander was anything but easy to handle.

by the time she was thirteen, it was also decided that a trustee should be assigned to take care of her interests and assets until she came of age. this trustee was advokat palmgren who, in spite of a rather difficult start, had succeeded where psychiatrists and doctors had failed. gradually he won not only a certain amount of trust but also a modest amount of warmth from the girl.

when she turned fifteen, the doctors had more or less agreed that she was not, after all, dangerously violent, nor did she represent any immediate danger to herself. her family had been categorised as dysfunctional, and she had no relatives who could look after her welfare, so it was decided that lisbeth salander should be released from the psychiatric clinic for children in uppsala and eased back into society by way of a foster family.

that had not been an easy journey. she ran away from the first foster family after only two weeks. the second and third foster families fell by the wayside in quick succession. at that point palmgren had a serious discussion with her, explaining bluntly that if she persisted on this path she would be institutionalised again. this threat had the effect that she accepted foster family number four—an elderly couple who lived in midsommarkransen.

but it did not mean, however, that she behaved herself. at the age of seventeen, salander was arrested by the police on four occasions; twice she was so intoxicated that she ended up in the emergency room, and once she was plainly under the influence of narcotics. on one of these occasions she was found dead drunk, with her clothes in disarray, in the back seat of a car parked at s?der m?larstrand. she was with an equally drunk and much older man.

the last arrest occurred three weeks before her eighteenth birthday, when she, perfectly sober, kicked a male passenger in the head inside the gates of the gamla stan tunnelbana station. she was charged with assault and battery. salander claimed that the man had groped her, and her testimony was supported by witnesses. the prosecutor dismissed the case. but her background was such that the district court ordered a psychiatric evaluation. since she refused, as was her custom, to answer any questions or to participate in the examinations, the doctors consulted by the national board of health and welfare handed down an opinion based on “observations of the patient.” it was unclear precisely what could be observed when it was a matter of a silent young woman sitting on a chair with her arms folded and her lower lip stuck out. the only determination made was that she must suffer from some kind of emotional disturbance, whose nature was of the sort that could not be left untreated. the medical/legal report recommended care in a closed psychiatric institution. an assistant head of the social welfare board wrote an opinion in support of the conclusions of the psychiatric experts.

with regard to her personal record, the opinion concluded that there was grave risk of alcohol and drug abuse, and that she lacked self-awareness. by then her casebook was filled with terms such as introverted, socially inhibited, lacking in empathy, ego-fixated, psychopathic and asocial behaviour, difficulty in cooperating, and incapable of assimilating learning. anyone who read her casebook might be tempted to conclude that salander was seriously retarded. another mark against her was that the social services street patrol had on several occasions observed her “with various men” in the area around mariatorget. she was once stopped and frisked in tantolunden, again with a much older man. it was feared that salander was possibly operating as, or ran the risk of becoming, a prostitute.

when the district court—the institution that would determine her future—met to decide on the matter, the outcome seemed a foregone conclusion. she was obviously a problem child, and it was unlikely that the court would come to any decision other than to accept the recommendations of both the psychiatric and the social inquiries.

on the morning the court hearing was to take place, salander was brought from the psychiatric clinic for children where she had been confined since the incident in gamla stan. she felt like a prisoner from a concentration camp: she had no hope of surviving the day. the first person she saw in the courtroom was palmgren, and it took a while for her to realise that he was not there in the role of a trustee but rather as her legal representative.

to her surprise, he was firmly in her corner, and he made a powerful appeal against institutionalisation. she did not betray with so much as a raised eyebrow that she was surprised, but she listened intently to every word that was said. palmgren was brilliant during the two hours in which he cross-examined the physician, a dr. jesper h. l?derman, who had signed his name to the recommendation that salander be locked away in an institution. every detail of the opinion was scrutinised, and the doctor was required to explain the scientific basis for each statement. eventually it became clear that since the patient had refused to complete a single test, the basis for the doctor’s conclusions was in fact nothing more than guesswork.

at the end of the hearing, palmgren intimated that compulsory institutionalisation was in all probability not only contrary to parliament’s decisions in similar situations, but in this particular case it might in addition be the subject of political and media reprisals. so it was in everyone’s interest to find an appropriate alternative solution. such language was unusual for negotiations in this type of situation, and the members of the court had squirmed nervously.

the solution was also a compromise. the court concluded that lisbeth salander was indeed emotionally disturbed, but that her condition did not necessarily warrant internment. on the other hand, the social welfare director’s recommendation of guardianship was taken under consideration. the chairman of the court turned, with a venomous smile, to holger palmgren, who up until then had been her trustee, and inquired whether he might be willing to take on the guardianship. the chairman obviously thought that palmgren would back away and try to push the responsibility on to someone else. on the contrary, palmgren declared that he would be happy to take on the job of serving as fr?ken salander’s guardian—but on one condition: “that fr?ken salander must be willing to trust me and accept me as her guardian.”

he turned to face her. lisbeth salander was somewhat bewildered by the exchange that had gone back and forth over her head all day. until now no-one had asked for her opinion. she looked at holger palmgren for a long time and then nodded once.

palmgren was a peculiar mixture of jurist and social worker, of the old school. at first he had been a politically appointed member of the social welfare board, and he had spent nearly all his life dealing with problem youths. a reluctant sense of respect, almost bordering on friendship, had in time formed between palmgren and his ward, who was unquestionably the most difficult he had ever had to deal with.

their relationship had lasted eleven years, from her thirteenth birthday until the previous year, when a few weeks before christmas she had gone to see palmgren at home after he missed one of their scheduled monthly meetings.

when he did not open the door even though she could hear sounds coming from his apartment, she broke in by climbing up a drainpipe to the balcony on the fourth floor. she found him lying on the floor in the hall, conscious but unable to speak or move. she called for an ambulance and accompanied him to s?der hospital with a growing feeling of panic in her stomach. for three days she hardly left the corridor outside the intensive care unit. like a faithful watchdog, she kept an eye on every doctor and nurse who went in or out of the door. she wandered up and down the corridor like a lost soul, fixing her eyes on every doctor who came near. finally a doctor whose name she never discovered took her into a room to explain the gravity of the situation. herr palmgren was in critical condition following a severe cerebral haemorrhage. he was not expected to regain consciousness. he was only sixty-four years old. she neither wept nor changed her expression. she stood up, left the hospital, and did not return.

five weeks later the guardianship agency summoned salander to the first meeting with her new guardian. her initial impulse was to ignore the summons, but palmgren had imprinted in her consciousness that every action has its consequences. she had learned to analyse the consequences and so she had come to the conclusion that the easiest way out of this present dilemma was to satisfy the guardianship agency by behaving as if she cared about what they had to say.

thus, in december—taking a break from her research on mikael blomkvist—she arrived at bjurman’s office on st. eriksplan, where an elderly woman representing the board had handed over salander’s extensive file to advokat bjurman. the woman had kindly asked salander how things were going, and she seemed satisfied with the stifled silence she received in reply. after about half an hour she left salander in the care of advokat bjurman.

salander decided that she did not like advokat bjurman. she studied him furtively as he read through her casebook. age: over fifty. trim body. tennis on tuesdays and fridays. blond. thinning hair. a slight cleft in his chin. hugo boss aftershave. blue suit. red tie with a gold tiepin and ostentatious cufflinks with the initials neb. steel-rimmed glasses. grey eyes. to judge by the magazines on the side table, his interests were hunting and shooting.

during the years she had known palmgren, he had always offered her coffee and chatted with her. not even her worst escapes from foster homes or her regular truancy from school had ever ruffled his composure. the only time palmgren had been really upset was when she had been charged with assault and battery after that scumbag had groped her in gamla stan. do you understand what you’ve done? you have harmed another human being, lisbeth. he had sounded like an old teacher, and she had patiently ignored every word of his scolding.

bjurman did not have time for small talk. he had immediately concluded that there was a discrepancy between palmgren’s obligations, according to the regulations of guardianship, and the fact that he had apparently allowed the salander girl to take charge of her own household and finances. bjurman started in on a sort of interrogation: how much do you earn? i want a copy of your financial records. who do you spend time with? do you pay your rent on time? do you drink? did palmgren approve of those rings you have on your face? are you careful about hygiene?

fuck you.

palmgren had become her trustee right after all the evil had happened. he had insisted on meetings with her at least once a month, sometimes more often. after she moved back to lundagatan, they were also practically neighbours. he lived on hornsgatan, a couple of blocks away, and they would run into each other and go for coffee at giffy’s or some other café nearby. palmgren had never tried to impose, but a few times he had visited her, bringing some little gift for her birthday. she had a standing invitation to visit him whenever she liked, a privilege that she seldom took advantage of. but when she moved to s?der, she had started spending christmas eve with him after she went to see her mother. they would eat christmas ham and play chess. she had no real interest in the game, but after she learned the rules, she never lost a match. he was a widower, and salander had seen it as her duty to take pity on him on those lonely holidays.

she considered herself in his debt, and she always paid her debts.

it was palmgren who had sublet her mother’s apartment on lundagatan for her until salander needed her own place to live. the apartment was about 500 square feet, shabby and unrenovated, but at least it was a roof over her head.

now palmgren was gone, and another tie to established society had been severed. nils bjurman was a wholly different sort of person. no way she would be spending christmas eve at his house. his first move had been to put in place new rules on the management of her account at handelsbanken. palmgren had never had any problems about bending the conditions of his guardianship so as to allow her to take care of her own finances. she paid her bills and could use her savings as she saw fit.

prior to the meeting with bjurman the week before christmas she had prepared herself; once there, she had tried to explain that his predecessor had trusted her and had never been given occasion to do otherwise. palmgren had let her take care of her own affairs and not interfered in her life.

“that’s one of the problems,” bjurman said, tapping her casebook. he then made a long speech about the rules and government regulations on guardianship.

“he let you run free, is that it? i wonder how he got away with it.”

because he was a crazy social democrat who had worked with troubled kids all his life.

“i’m not a child any more,” salander said, as if that were explanation enough.

“no, you’re not a child. but i’ve been appointed your guardian, and as long as i have that role, i am legally and financially responsible for you.”

he opened a new account in her name, and she was supposed to report it to milton’s personnel office and use it from now on. the good old days were over. in future bjurman would pay her bills, and she would be given an allowance each month. he told her that he expected her to provide receipts for all her expenses. she would receive 1,400 kronor a week—“for food, clothing, film tickets, and such like.”

salander earned more than 160,000 kronor a year. she could double that by working full-time and accepting all the assignments armansky offered her. but she had few expenses and did not need much money. the cost of her apartment was about 2,000 kronor a month, and in spite of her modest income, she had 90,000 kronor in her savings account. but she no longer had access to it.

“this has to do with the fact that i’m responsible for your money,” he said. “you have to put money aside for the future. but don’t worry; i’ll take care of all that.”

i’ve taken care of myself since i was ten, you creep!

“you function well enough in social terms that you don’t need to be institutionalised, but this society is responsible for you.”

he questioned her closely about what kind of work assignments she was given at milton security. she had instinctively lied about her duties. the answer she gave him was a description of her very first weeks at milton. bjurman got the impression that she made coffee and sorted the post—suitable enough tasks for someone who was a little slow—and seemed satisfied.

she did not know why she had lied, but she was sure it was a wise decision.

blomkvist had spent five hours with vanger, and it took much of the night and all of tuesday to type up his notes and piece together the genealogy into a comprehensible whole. the family history that emerged was a dramatically different version from the one presented as the official image of the family. every family had a few skeletons in their cupboards, but the vanger family had an entire gallimaufry of them.

blomkvist had had to remind himself several times that his real assignment was not to write a biography of the vanger family but to find out what had happened to harriet vanger. the vanger biography would be no more than playing to the gallery. after a year he would receive his preposterous salary—the contract drawn up by frode had been signed. his true reward, he hoped, would be the information about wennerstr?m that vanger claimed to possess. but after listening to vanger, he began to see that the year did not have to be a waste of time. a book about the vanger family had significant value. it was, quite simply, a terrific story.

the idea that he might light upon harriet vanger’s killer never crossed his mind—assuming she had been murdered, that is, and did not just die in some freak accident. blomkvist agreed with vanger that the chances of a sixteen-year-old girl going off of her own accord and then staying hidden for thirty-six years, despite the oversight of all the government bureaucracy, were nonexistent. on the other hand, he did not exclude the possibility that harriet vanger had run away, maybe heading for stockholm, and that something had befallen her subsequently—drugs, prostitution, an assault, or an accident pure and simple.

vanger was convinced, for his part, that harriet had been murdered and that a family member was responsible—possibly in collaboration with someone else. his argument was based on the fact that harriet had disappeared during the confusion in the hours when the island was cut off and all eyes were directed at the accident.

berger had been right to say that his taking the assignment was beyond all common sense if the goal was to solve a murder mystery. but blomkvist was beginning to see that harriet’s fate had played a central role in the family, and especially for henrik vanger. no matter whether he was right or wrong, vanger’s accusation against his relatives was of great significance in the family’s history. the accusation had been aired openly for more than thirty years, and it had coloured the family gatherings and given rise to poisonous animosities that had contributed to destabilising the corporation. a study of harriet’s disappearance would consequently function as a chapter all on its own, as well as provide a red thread through the family history—and there was an abundance of source material. one starting point, whether harriet vanger was his primary assignment or whether he made do with writing a family chronicle, would be to map out the gallery of characters. that was the gist of his first long conversation that day with vanger.

the family consisted of about a hundred individuals, counting all the children of cousins and second cousins. the family was so extensive that he was forced to create a database in his ibook. he used the notepad programme (www.ibrium.se), one of those full-value products that two men at the royal technical college had created and distributed as shareware for a pittance on the internet. few programmes were as useful for an investigative journalist. each family member was given his or her own document in the database.

the family tree could be traced back to the early sixteenth century, when the name was vangeersad. according to vanger the name may have originated from the dutch van geerstat; if that was the case, the lineage could be traced as far back as the twelfth century.

in modern times, the family came from northern france, arriving in sweden with king jean baptiste bernadotte in the early nineteenth century. alexandre vangeersad was a soldier and not personally acquainted with the king, but he had distinguished himself as the capable head of a garrison. in 1818 he was given the hedeby estate as a reward for his service. alexandre vangeersad also had his own fortune, which he used to purchase considerable sections of forested land in norrland. his son, adrian, was born in france, but at his father’s request he moved to hedeby in that remote area of norrland, far from the salons of paris, to take over the administration of the estate. he took up farming and forestry, using new methods imported from europe, and he founded the pulp and paper mill around which hedestad was built.

alexandre’s grandson was named henrik, and he shortened his surname to vanger. he developed trade with russia and created a small merchant fleet of schooners that served the baltics and germany, as well as england with its steel industry during the mid-1800s. the elder henrik vanger diversified the family enterprises and founded a modest mining business, as well as several of norrland’s first metal industries. he left two sons, birger and gottfried, and they were the ones who laid the basis for the high-finance vanger clan.

“do you know anything about the old inheritance laws?” vanger had asked. “no.”

“i’m confused about it too. according to family tradition, birger and gottfried fought like cats—they were legendary competitors for power and influence over the family business. in many respects the power struggle threatened the very survival of the company. for that reason their father decided—shortly before he died—to create a system whereby all members of the family would receive a portion of the inheritance—a share—in the business. it was no doubt well-intentioned, but it led to a situation in which instead of being able to bring in skilled people and possible partners from the outside, we had a board of directors consisting only of family members.”

“and that applies today?”

“precisely. if a family member wishes to sell his shares, they have to stay within the family. today the annual shareholders’ meeting consists of 50 percent family members. martin holds more than 10 percent of the shares; i have 5 percent after selling some of my shares, to martin among others. my brother harald owns 7 percent, but most of the people who come to the shareholders’ meeting have only one or half a percent.”

“it sounds medieval in some ways.”

“it’s ludicrous. it means that today, if martin wants to implement some policy, he has to waste time on a lobbying operation to ensure support from at least 20 percent to 25 percent of the shareholders. it’s a patchwork quilt of alliances, factions, and intrigues.”

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, m?rit, 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 ?sterg?rden 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 <[email protected]>: i hope you suck cock in the slammer you fucking commie pig. he filed it in the “intelligent criticism” folder.

he wrote to <[email protected]>: “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, malm?, and g?teborg 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.”

“why does he hate you?”

“because i got married.”

“i think you’re going to have to explain that.”

vanger had lost contact with his older brothers early on. he was the only brother to show an aptitude for business—he was his father’s last hope. he had no interest in politics and steered clear of uppsala. instead he studied economics in stockholm. after he turned eighteen he spent every break and summer holiday working at one of the offices within the vanger corporation or working with the management of one of its companies. he became familiar with all the labyrinths of the family business.

on 10 june, 1941—in the midst of an all-out war—vanger was sent to germany for a six-week visit at the vanger corporation business offices in hamburg. he was only twenty-one and the vanger’s german agent, a company veteran by the name of hermann lobach, was his chaperone and mentor.

“i won’t tire you with all the details, but when i went there, hitler and stalin were still good friends and there wasn’t yet an eastern front. everyone still believed that hitler was invincible. there was a feeling of…both optimism and desperation. i think those are the right words. more than half a century later, it’s still difficult to put words to the mood. don’t get me wrong—i was not a nazi, and in my eyes hitler seemed like some absurd character in an operetta. but it would have been almost impossible not to be infected by the optimism about the future, which was rife among ordinary people in hamburg. despite the fact that the war was getting closer, and several bombing raids were carried out against hamburg during the time i was there, the people seemed to think it was mostly a temporary annoyance—that soon there would be peace and hitler would establish his neuropa. people wanted to believe that hitler was god. that’s what it sounded like in the propaganda.”

vanger opened one of his many photograph albums.

“this is lobach. he disappeared in 1944, presumably lost in some bombing raid. we never knew what his fate was. during my weeks in hamburg i became close to him. i was staying with him and his family in an elegant apartment in a well-to-do neighbourhood of hamburg. we spent time together every day. he was no more a nazi than i was, but for convenience he was a member of the party. his membership card opened doors and facilitated opportunities for the vanger corporation—and business was precisely what we did. we built freight wagons for their trains—i’ve always wondered whether any of our wagons were destined for poland. we sold fabric for their uniforms and tubes for their radio sets—although officially we didn’t know what they were using the goods for. and lobach knew how to land a contract; he was entertaining and good-natured. the perfect nazi. gradually i began to see that he was also a man who was desperately trying to hide a secret.

“in the early hours of june 22 in 1941, lobach knocked on the door of my bedroom. my room was next to his wife’s bedroom, and he signalled me to be quiet, get dressed, and come with him. we went downstairs and sat in the smoking salon. lobach had been up all night. he had the radio on, and i realised that something serious had happened. operation barbarossa had begun. germany had invaded the soviet union on midsummer eve.” vanger gestured in resignation. “lobach took out two glasses and poured a generous aquavit for each of us. he was obviously shaken. when i asked him what it all meant, he replied with foresight that it meant the end for germany and nazism. i only half believed him—hitler seemed undefeatable, after all—but lobach and i drank a toast to the fall of germany. then he turned his attention to practical matters.”

blomkvist nodded to signal that he was still following the story.

“first, he had no possibility of contacting my father for instructions, but on his own initiative he had decided to cut short my visit to germany and send me home. second, he asked me to do something for him.”

vanger pointed to a yellowed portrait of a dark-haired woman, in three-quarter view.

“lobach had been married for forty years, but in 1919 he met a wildly beautiful woman half his age, and he fell hopelessly in love with her. she was a poor, simple seamstress. lobach courted her, and like so many other wealthy men, he could afford to install her in an apartment a convenient distance from his office. she became his mistress. in 1921 she had a daughter, who was christened edith.”

“rich older man, poor young woman, and a love child—that can’t have caused much of a scandal in the forties,” blomkvist said.

“absolutely right. if it hadn’t been for one thing. the woman was jewish, and consequently lobach was the father of a jew in the midst of nazi germany. he was what they called a ‘traitor to his race.’”

“ah…that does change the situation. what happened?”

“edith’s mother had been picked up in 1939. she disappeared, and we can only guess what her fate was. it was known, of course, that she had a daughter who was not yet included on any transport list, and who was now being sought by the department of the gestapo whose job it was to track down fugitive jews. in the summer of 1941, the week that i arrived in hamburg, edith’s mother was somehow linked to lobach, and he was summoned for an interview. he acknowledged the relationship and his paternity, but he stated that he had no idea where his daughter might be, and he had not had any contact with her in ten years.”

“so where was the daughter?”

“i had seen her every day in the lobachs’ home. a sweet and quiet twenty-year-old girl who cleaned my room and helped serve dinner. by 1937 the persecution of the jews had been going on for several years, and edith’s mother had begged lobach for help. and he did help—lobach loved his illegitimate child just as much as his legitimate children. he hid her in the most unlikely place he could think of—right in front of everyone’s nose. he had arranged for counterfeit documents, and he had taken her in as their housekeeper.”

“did his wife know who she was?”

“no, it seemed she had no idea. it had worked for four years, but now lobach felt the noose tightening. it was only a matter of time before the gestapo would come knocking on the door. then he went to get his daughter and introduced her to me as such. she was very shy and didn’t even dare look me in the eye. she must have been up half the night waiting to be called. lobach begged me to save her life.”

“how?”

“he had arranged the whole thing. i was supposed to be staying another three weeks and then to take the night train to copenhagen and continue by ferry across the sound—a relatively safe trip, even in wartime. but two days after our conversation a freighter owned by the vanger corporation was to leave hamburg headed for sweden. lobach wanted to send me with the freighter instead, to leave germany without delay. the change in my travel plans had to be approved by the security service; it was a formality, but not a problem. but lobach wanted me on board that freighter.”

“together with edith, i presume.”

“edith was smuggled on board, hidden inside one of three hundred crates containing machinery. my job was to protect her if she should be discovered while we were still in german territorial waters, and to prevent the captain of the ship from doing anything stupid. otherwise i was supposed to wait until we were a good distance from germany before i let her out.”

“it sounds terrifying.”

“it sounded simple to me, but it turned into a nightmare journey. the captain was called oskar granath, and he was far from pleased to be made responsible for his employer’s snotty little heir. we left hamburg around 9:00 in the evening in late june. we were just making our way out of the inner harbour when the air-raid sirens went off. a british bombing raid—the heaviest i had then experienced, and the harbour was, of course, the main target. but somehow we got through, and after an engine breakdown and a miserably stormy night in mine-filled waters we arrived the following afternoon at karlskrona. you’re probably going to ask me what happened to the girl.”

“i think i know.”

“my father was understandably furious. i had put everything at risk with my idiotic venture. and the girl could have been deported from sweden at any time. but i was already just as hopelessly in love with her as lobach had been with her mother. i proposed to her and gave my father an ultimatum—either he accepted our marriage or he’d have to look for another fatted calf for the family business. he gave in.”

“but she died?”

“yes, far too young, in 1958. she had a congenital heart defect. and it turned out that i couldn’t have children. and that’s why my brother hates me.”

“because you married her.”

“because—to use his own words—i married a filthy jewish whore.”

“but he’s insane.”

“i couldn’t have put it better myself.”