The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (20 page)

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 Söder, 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 Wennerström 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, 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?