Vanger had saved every last family photograph. Many were obviously from long
before his time. The oldest pictures dated back to the 1870s, showing gruff men
and stern women. There were pictures of Vanger’s parents. One showed his father
celebrating Midsummer with a large and cheerful group in Sandhamn in 1906.
Another Sandhamn photograph showed Fredrik Vanger and his wife, Ulrika, with
Anders Zorn and Albert Engström sitting at a table. Other photographs showed
workers on the factory floor and in offices. He found Captain Oskar Granath who
had transported Vanger and his beloved Edith Lobach to safety in Karlskrona.
Anna came upstairs with a cup of coffee. He thanked her. By then he had reached
modern times and was paging through images of Vanger in his prime, opening
factories, shaking hands with Tage Erlander, one of Vanger and Marcus
Wallenberg—the two capitalists staring grimly at each other.
In the same album he found a spread on which Vanger had written in pencil
“Family Council 1966.” Two colour photographs showed men talking and smoking
cigars. He recognised Henrik, Harald, Greger, and several of the male in-laws in
Johan Vanger’s branch of the family. Two photographs showed the formal dinner,
forty men and women seated at the table, all looking into the camera. The pictures
were taken after the drama at the bridge was over but before anyone was aware
that Harriet had disappeared. He studied their faces. This was the dinner she should
have attended. Did any of the men know that she was gone? The photographs
provided no answer.
Then suddenly he choked on his coffee. He started coughing and sat up straight in
his chair.
At the far end of the table sat Cecilia Vanger in her light-coloured dress, smiling
into the camera. Next to her sat another blonde woman with long hair and an
identical light-coloured dress. They were so alike that they could have been twins.
And suddenly the puzzle piece fell into place. Cecilia wasn’t the one in Harriet’s
window—it was her sister, Anita, two years her junior and now living in London.
What was it Salander had said? Cecilia Vanger is in a lot of the pictures. Not at all.
There were two girls, and as chance would have it—until now—they had never
been seen in the same frame. In the black-and-white photographs, from a distance,
they looked identical. Vanger had presumably always been able to tell the sisters
apart, but for Blomkvist and Salander the girls looked so alike that they had
assumed it was one person. And no-one had ever pointed out their mistake
because they had never thought to ask.