Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The - Stieg Larsson [93]
“Wasn’t there anyone who wanted to help Harriet?”
“Henrik, of course. In the end she moved into his house. But don’t forget that he was preoccupied playing the role of the big industrialist. He was usually off travelling somewhere and didn’t have a lot of time to spend with Harriet and Martin. I missed a lot of this because I was in Uppsala and then in Stockholm—and let me tell you, I didn’t have an easy childhood myself with Harald as my father. In hindsight I’ve realised that the problem was that Harriet never confided in anyone. She tried hard to keep up appearances and pretend that they were one big happy family.”
“Denial.”
“Yes. But she changed when her father drowned. She could no longer pretend that everything was OK. Up until then she was…I don’t know how to explain it: extremely gifted and precocious, but on the whole a rather ordinary teenager. During the last year she was still brilliant, getting top marks in every exam and so on, but it seemed as if she didn’t have any soul.”
“How did her father drown?”
“In the most prosaic way possible. He fell out of a rowing boat right below his cabin. He had his trousers open and an extremely high alcohol content in his blood, so you can just imagine how it happened. Martin was the one who found him.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“It’s funny. Martin has turned out to be a really fine person. If you had asked me thirty-five years ago, I would have said that he was the one in the family who needed psychiatric care.”
“Why so?”
“Harriet wasn’t the only one who suffered ill effects from the situation. For many years Martin was so quiet and introverted that he was effectively antisocial. Both children had a rough time of it. I mean, we all did. I had my own problems with my father—I assume you realise that he’s stark raving mad. My sister, Anita, had the same problem, as did Alexander, my cousin. It was tough being young in the Vanger family.”
“What happened to your sister?”
“She lives in London. She went there in the seventies to work in a Swedish travel agency, and she stayed. She married someone, never even introduced him to the family, and anon they separated. Today she’s a senior manager of British Airways. She and I get along fine, but we are not much in contact and only see each other every other year or so. She never comes to Hedestad.”
“Why not?”
“An insane father. Isn’t that explanation enough?”
“But you stayed.”
“I did. Along with Birger, my brother.”
“The politician.”
“Are you making fun of me? Birger is older than Anita and me. We’ve never been very close. In his own eyes he’s a fantastically important politician with a future in Parliament and maybe ministerial rank, if the conservatives should win. In point of fact he’s a moderately talented local councillor in a remote corner of Sweden, which will probably be both the high point and the whole extent of his career.”
“One thing that tickles me about the Vanger family is that you all have such low opinions of each other.”
“That’s not really true. I’m very fond of Martin and Henrik. And I always got on well with my sister, for all that we seldom see each other. I detest Isabella and can’t abide Alexander. And I never speak to my father. So that’s about fifty-fifty in the family. Birger is…well, more of a pompous fathead than a bad person. But I see what you mean. Look at it this way: if you’re a member of the Vanger family, you learn early on to speak your mind. We do say what we think.”
“Oh yes, I’ve noticed that you all get straight to the point.” Blomkvist stretched out his hand to touch her breast. “I wasn’t here fifteen minutes before you attacked me.”
“To be