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, Malmö, and Göteborg or abroad. And