The Man Who Left Too Soon: The Life and Works of Stieg Larsson (13 page)

Blomkvist replies that he doesn’t, and is told that the photograph is that of Harriet Vanger, the granddaughter of his host’s brother Richard. She looked after him when he was two years old and she was 13. Blomkvist admits to having no idea whether this is the truth or not. But more photographs are produced, showing Blomkvist’s parents (he is struck by the fact that his mother is clearly pregnant – with his sister). It becomes clear that Vanger knows much about Blomkvist and his family and has followed his career as a journalist on
Millennium
, which he claims to read. Blomkvist decides that it is time to ask him what it is that he requires.

This is the moment where the novel most resembles one of the authors that Stieg Larsson read (and who so impressed him) – the American master of the detective novel, Raymond Chandler. This meeting with an elderly client is reminiscent of (among other books)
The Big Sleep
, and if Larsson lacks Chandler’s nonpareil skills at evoking character, there is no question that he has the reader comprehensively engaged at this point. Vanger points out that he would like to make an agreement with Blomkvist. He says that he will tell him a story in two parts, the first about the Vanger family and the second part will address his objective. Blomkvist will be surprised at what he hears and may even doubt the sanity of what he is being told. But by this point the journalist is thoroughly engaged. What he says, however, is designed to expedite matters. He points out that he has been in the house for 20 minutes and says that he will allow 30 minutes more before calling a taxi and going home.

Vanger is not fooled; he is aware that the journalist is without a job and undoubtedly in dire financial straits. He talks about Martin Vanger, who currently runs the Vanger Corporation – and sums him up in relatively unenthusiastic terms. It’s a family company, but the 30 family members are (as Vanger perceives it) both the strength and the weakness of the organisation. He makes it clear that he particularly despises most of the members of his family – and regards them as crooks, bullies and incompetents.

Then Vanger gets to the main issue: the assignment he wants Blomkvist to take on. Vanger tells Blomkvist that he wants to commission him to write a biography of the Vanger family (which may be called his own auto-biography, that is to say Henrik Vanger’s), and for this he will put all his journals and archives at Blomkvist’s disposal. He also makes it clear that there is to be no whitewash. All skeletons in closets may be dragged into the light. Blomkvist is intrigued by the fact that his host is not concerned with ultimate publication. He says that his motive is a simple one: revenge. Vanger explains that his name is synonymous with honour. He is a man who is true to his word, and he is particularly disgusted by the behaviour of his relatives, which is, as he perceives it, one of the reasons the company is experiencing such difficulties in the present. Blomkvist says he is not interested, pointing out that it would take many months and that he lacks either the impetus or the physical resources, but Vanger is not prepared to give up and suggests that he approaches the assignment with the unforgiving eyes of a journalist. But then he drops the bombshell.

Vanger’s clandestine agenda is the solving of a mystery, which is Blomkvist’s real mission. This particular plot point has been reserved by Larsson till nearly a sixth of the way into the book, and is rather similar to the sleight of hand displayed by such detective story masters as Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett: that is to say, introduce what appears to be the principal plot of the novel, but withhold the revelation of the real plot until somewhat later. Larsson is a master of this, and uses the tactic repeatedly throughout the three books of the
Millennium Trilogy
.

Vanger talks about his brother, the unpleasant Richard, who – at the age of 17 – was a fervent nationalist and an anti-Semite. He joined the Swedish National Socialist Freedom League, which was one of the first attempts in Sweden to move into neo-Nazi territory. For those who read this book unaware of Stieg Larsson’s background, presumably this would have come across as simply a way of establishing a character’s negative aspects, but as many of Larsson’s readers are by now familiar with his days as an anti-Nazi journalist, it’s not hard to see the personal impulse behind this particular authorial choice.

Blomkvist is shown pictures of Richard with a variety of prominent Nazis, and Vanger remarks how (against the wishes of their father) he made contact with the Nazi groups in the country. Vanger enquires of Blomkvist how much he knows about the history of Swedish Nazism. The latter replies that he is not a historian but has read a few books – and what follows is a lengthy and fascinating discussion of some of the more ignoble aspects of Sweden’s involvement with Nazism (tied in, of course, to the fictional story of Richard Vanger). One of the strengths of the
Millennium Trilogy
is, of course, the way it ties in so specifically with the author’s own particular preoccupations, principally a combative engagement with the far Right, and it is intriguing to speculate how the ten-book sequence he was apparently planning might have progressed.

Certainly, within the confines of the trilogy, there is only intermittently a sense that Larsson is repeating himself in what might be described as his various hobbyhorses (the exploitation of women, extremist groups, etc), but it is probably true that had he lived, further books featuring Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist would have had to move into new territory to sustain the energy – rather in the fashion that the cult American TV series
The Wire
moved into such areas as politics and education to keep fresh for the writers and directors what had inspired them to create something innovative in the first place.

Vanger extrapolates the less pleasant aspects of his story, filling in the background of the enigmatic Harriet, before he glances at the clock and tells Blomkvist that the 30 minutes are almost up – but that he is nearing the end of his story. Needless to say, Blomkvist asks him to go on. Vanger says that unlike his brothers and other family members he was childless, and that he took in the children Martin and Harriet (thereby rescuing them from the less-than-loving care of their parents), allowing them to become, in a way, his own children. Martin, who initially appeared weak and introverted, was able to achieve sufficient strength of will after university to become CEO of the Vanger Corporation. Blomkvist enquires: ‘And Harriet?’ Vanger replies that she was his special favourite and that he looked upon her as his own daughter. She was intelligent and talented, unlike her brother or her mediocre cousins, nephews and other relatives. As yet, of course, neither the reader nor Blomkvist know what has happened to Harriet. Vanger then delivers a telling sentence: ‘I want you to find out who in the family murdered Harriet and who since then has spent almost 40 years trying to drive me insane.’

Stieg Larsson’s reading of the great crime writers from a variety of countries bore fruit in an intriguing variety of fashions. In Chapter 5 he describes a great family reunion in 1966, when Harriet was 16 and had just begun her second year at secondary school. Vanger describes the reunion as a loathsome annual dinner and a tradition which had long turned into deeply unpleasant affairs. This is perhaps one of the first times when we are reminded that among Larsson’s prodigious crime fiction reading were the novels of Agatha Christie. It’s particularly interesting to discern her shade whenever it appears, as the graphic sexuality and violence of the books is a million miles away from the discreet British queen of crime. But for those who know their genres, she is actually rarely far away, notably in the careful attention to ingenious (and surprising) plotting.

Blomkvist at this point asks about the murder of Harriet and becomes impatient with the steady parcelling out of facts. But Vanger has decided to make him (and,
inter alios
, the reader) wait. He talks about a children’s day parade arranged by the sports club at Hedestad. She has gone into town and returns to the island after 2 o’clock with dinner due later in the afternoon. At this point Vanger takes Blomkvist over to the window and points to the bridge. He tells him that at 2.15, some moments after Harriet arrived home, an accident happened on the bridge. The brother of a farmer whose name was Aronsson drove onto the bridge and collided head-on with an oil lorry. Both men were going fast; the tanker turned over and ended up lying across the bridge with its trailer dangling over the edge. Aronsson was trapped in his car, and unable to scramble out as the tanker driver managed to. As Vanger says, the accident had nothing to do with Harriet, but what happened later was highly significant.

As people scrambled to try to help, attempting to pull the farmer from the wreckage, they were all aware of the danger they were in if the oil issuing from the tanker caused an explosion. At this point, Blomkvist mentally notes that the old man is a good storyteller (pointing up for the reader that we are in the hands of a pretty capable storyteller ourselves). But Vanger concludes that what really matters about the accident is that the bridge was blocked for 24 hours – and there was no way to reach the outside world. This, of course, leads Blomkvist to conclude that something happened to Harriet on the island and that the list of suspects may be drawn from those trapped there.

It’s at this point that Stieg Larsson decides to pull what might be described as a post-modern literary trick. He is drawing our attention to something that readers of Agatha Christie and co. [as noted earlier] will have noticed: we have the set-up for a ‘locked room mystery’ format, set on an island. Vanger smiles at the observation and says that the journalist is correct, adding, ‘Even I have read my Dorothy Sayers.’

There were 64 people on the island. Harriet had lived in a house across the road but had moved into Vanger’s house – an arrangement that was perfectly acceptable to her irresponsible mother Isabella. It is known that Harriet came home that day and met and had a conversation in the courtyard before coming upstairs to say hello to Vanger. She had told him that she wished to talk to him about a certain matter, but he was too busy at the time. At this point Blomkvist enquires how the girl died, but again Vanger will not be hurried and points out that the story must be told in chronological fashion.

Several people have remarked on seeing Harriet on the bridge during the confusion that followed the accident, but the possibility of an explosion had obliged Vanger to clear everyone from the area, apart from five people working to rescue the trapped man (one of whom was Vanger’s brother Harald). Just before 3 o’clock she was seen crossing the courtyard by her mother and she was known to have spoken to Otto Falk, the local pastor. He, it appears, was the last person to see her alive. Nobody knew how she died. When the injured man was pulled from the car at 5 o’clock, the threat of a fire had been contained. It was 8 o’clock in the evening before it was discovered that Harriet was missing. And from that day onward she has never been seen again.

Blomkvist points out that there is no way of knowing from these facts that she was murdered, but Vanger has a reason for thinking that someone took her life – it is, he says, the only reasonable conclusion. She has vanished so comprehensively, without a social security card or any other means of surviving. And then Vanger makes a striking observation. He considers that her body must be somewhere in the limited area of the island, even though the most thorough of searches had been conducted. Blomkvist suggests that she might have drowned (either accidentally or on purpose) but Vanger regards this as not a real probability. All the areas where she might have been drowned have been dragged and have revealed no trace. He is convinced that she was murdered and that her body was somehow mysteriously disposed of.

We are now nearly 100 pages into the book and it appears that Larsson has set up (in leisurely fashion) for us what will be the basic premise of the plot: the missing girl, the elderly industrialist with the unpleasant family, the compromised hero who (by solving the mystery) will possibly have reclaimed his former position in society. But this is not quite Stieg Larsson’s strategy, and when we are reintroduced to Lisbeth Salander on page 90 – she is spending Christmas morning reading Blomkvist’s book about financial journalism,
The Knights Templar: A Cautionary Tale for Financial Reporters
– we are forcibly reminded that Blomkvist is not the only protagonist here and that another assignment has already been handed out: Lisbeth is to investigate
him
.

Taking time out to look at Blomkvist’s character, we can see that he is a journalist of rigorous ethics, intolerant of those who are not able to approach their assignments with either true objectivity or incisiveness. He is, it seems, particularly disposed to be impatient with those who take the facts they are given at face value, something that he will never do, and is keen to establish that he is different from all these other reporters. Once again we are reminded that Blomkvist is something of an identification figure for Larsson himself, possibly in the way that James Bond was for Ian Fleming. It was much more likely, however, that Larsson could lead the same life as his journalist hero, acted out on a slightly more realistic stage than the globe-hopping antics of 007, although Blomkvist’s sexual attractiveness to a variety of women still ties in with the wish fulfilment of the author’s theme.

Salander finishes Blomkvist’s book and demonstrates her own intelligence by completely – and effortlessly – assimilating its tactics and findings. But (not for the last time) she maintains a distance from the man with whom she is soon to have a close relationship by saying to herself: ‘Hello Kalle Blomkvist, you are pretty pleased with yourself, aren’t you?’ The reader might perhaps think that in Blomkvist and Salander we have an emblematic version of Freud’s ego and super ego, the two being in fruitful symbiosis with each other to achieve a particular end – although as neither has met at this point of the book, such a thesis might be a bit premature. (The two also shift in ‘controlling’ terms, so this metaphor is a loose one.)