him…he wasn’t a good-for-nothing, but he was not the least bit reliable and he often disappointed me deeply. Over the years he turned into an alcoholic, and in 1965 he died—the victim of an accidental drowning. That happened at the other end of Hedeby Island, where he’d had a cabin built, and where he used to hide away to drink.”
“So he’s the father of Harriet and Martin?” Blomkvist said, pointing at the portrait on the coffee table. Reluctantly he had to admit that the old man’s story was intriguing.
“Correct. In the late forties Gottfried met a German woman by the name of Isabella Koenig, who had come to Sweden after the war. She was quite a beauty—I mean that she had a lovely radiance like Garbo or Ingrid Bergman. Harriet probably got more of her genes from her mother rather than from Gottfried. As you can see from the photograph, she was pretty even at fourteen.”
Blomkvist and Vanger contemplated the picture.
“But let me continue. Isabella was born in 1928 and is still alive. She was eleven when the war began, and you can imagine what it was like to be a teenager in Berlin during the aerial bombardments. It must have felt as if she had arrived in paradise on earth when she landed in Sweden. Regrettably she shared many of Gottfried’s vices; she was lazy and partied incessantly. She travelled a great deal in Sweden and abroad, and lacked all sense of responsibility. Obviously this affected the children. Martin was born in 1948 and Harriet in 1950. Their childhood was chaotic, with a mother who was forever leaving them and a father who was virtually an alcoholic.
“In 1958 I’d had enough and decided to try to break the vicious cycle. At the time, Gottfried and Isabella were living in Hedestad—I insisted that they move out here. Martin and Harriet were more or less left to fend for themselves.”
Vanger glanced at the clock.
“My thirty minutes are almost up, but I’m close to the end of the story. Will you give me a reprieve?”
“Go on,” Blomkvist said.
“In short, then. I was childless—in striking contrast to my brothers and other family members, who seemed obsessed with the need to propagate the house of Vanger. Gottfried and Isabella did move here, but their marriage was on the rocks. After only a year Gottfried moved out to his cabin. He lived there alone for long periods and went back to Isabella when it got too cold. I took care of Martin and Harriet, and they became in many ways the children I never had.
“Martin was…to tell the truth, there was a time in his youth when I was afraid he was going to follow in his father’s footsteps. He was weak and introverted and melancholy, but he could also be delightful and enthusiastic. He had some troubled years in his teens, but he straightened himself out when he started at the university. He is…well, in spite of everything he is CEO of what’s left of the Vanger Corporation, which I suppose is to his credit.”
“And Harriet?”
“Harriet was the apple of my eye. I tried to give her a sense of security and develop her self-confidence, and we took a liking to each other. I looked on her as my own daughter, and she ended up being closer to me than to her parents. You see, Harriet was very special. She was introverted—like her brother—and as a teenager she became wrapped up in religion, unlike anyone else in the family. But she had a clear talent and she was tremendously intelligent. She had both morals and backbone. When she was fourteen or fifteen I was convinced that she was the one—and not her brother or any of the mediocre cousins, nephews, and nieces around me—who was destined to run the Vanger business one day, or at least play a central role in it.”
“So what happened?”
“Now we come to the real reason I want to hire you. I want you to find out who in the family murdered Harriet, and who since then has spent almost forty years trying to drive me insane.”
CHAPTER 5
Thursday, December 26
For the first time since he began his monologue, the old man had managed to take Blomkvist by surprise. He had to ask him to repeat it to be sure he had heard correctly. Nothing in the cuttings had hinted at a murder.
“It was September 24, 1966. Harriet was sixteen and had just begun her second year at prep school. It