Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The - Stieg Larsson [168]
“What am I looking for?” Salander said when they were on their way back to the island.
“Press clippings and staff newsletters. I want you to read through everything around the dates when the murders in the fifties and sixties were committed. Make a note of anything that strikes you. Better if you do this part of the job. It seems that your memory…”
She punched him in the side.
Five minutes later her Kawasaki was clattering across the bridge.
Blomkvist shook hands with Alexander Vanger. He had been away for most of the time that Blomkvist had been in Hedeby. He was twenty when Harriet disappeared.
“Dirch said that you wanted to look at old photographs.”
“Your father had a Hasselblad, I believe.”
“That’s right. It’s still here, but no-one uses it.”
“I expect you know that Henrik has asked me to study again what happened to Harriet.”
“That’s what I understand. And there are plenty of people who aren’t happy about that.”
“Apparently so, and of course you don’t have to show me anything.”
“Please…What would you like to see?”
“If your father took any pictures on the day of the accident, the day that Harriet disappeared.”
They went up to the attic. It took several minutes before Alexander was able to identify a box of unsorted photographs.
“Take home the whole box,” he said. “If there are any at all, they’ll be in there.”
As illustrations for the family chronicle, Greger Vanger’s box held some real gems, including a number of Greger together with Sven Olof Lindholm, the big Swedish Nazi leader in the forties. Those he set aside.
He found envelopes of pictures that Greger had taken of family gatherings as well as many typical holiday photographs—fishing in the mountains and a journey in Italy.
He found four pictures of the bridge accident. In spite of his exceptional camera, Greger was a wretched photographer. Two pictures were close-ups of the tanker truck itself, two were of spectators, taken from behind. He found only one in which Cecilia Vanger was visible in semi-profile.
He scanned in the pictures, even though he knew that they would tell him nothing new. He put everything back in the box and had a sandwich lunch as he thought things over. Then he went to see Anna.
“Do you think Henrik had any photograph albums other than the ones he assembled for his investigation about Harriet?”
“Yes, Henrik has always been interested in photography—ever since he was young, I’ve been told. He has lots of albums in his office.”
“Could you show me?”
Her reluctance was plain to see. It was one thing to lend Blomkvist the key to the family crypt—God was in charge there, after all—but it was another matter to let him into Henrik Vanger’s office. God’s writ did not extend there. Blomkvist suggested that Anna should call Frode. Finally she agreed to allow him in. Almost three feet of the very bottom shelf was taken up with photograph albums. He sat at the desk and opened the first album.
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