Blomkvist's mother was obviously pregnant - his sister was on the way. He looked at the photograph with mixed feelings as Vanger poured coffee and pushed over the plate of rolls.

"Your father is dead, I know. Is your mother still alive?"

"She died three years ago," Blomkvist said.

"She was a nice woman. I remember her very well."

"But I'm sure you didn't ask me to come here to talk about old times you had with my parents."

"You're right. I've been working on what I wanted to say to you for several days, but now that you're actually here I don't quite know where to begin. I suppose you did some research, so you know that I once wielded some influence in Swedish industry and the job market. Today I'm an old man who will probably die fairly soon, and death perhaps is an excellent starting point for our conversation."

Blomkvist took a swallow of black coffee - plainly boiled in a pan in true Norrland style - and wondered where this was going to lead.

"I have pain in my hip and long walks are a thing of the past. One day you'll discover for yourself how strength seeps away, but I'm neither morbid nor senile. I'm not obsessed by death, but I'm at an age when I have to accept that my time is about up. You want to close the accounts and take care of unfinished business. Do you understand what I mean?"

Blomkvist nodded. Vanger spoke in a steady voice, and Blomkvist had already decided that the old man was neither senile nor irrational. "I'm mostly curious about why I'm here," he said again.

"Because I want to ask for your help with this closing of accounts."

"Why me? What makes you think I'd be able to help you?"

"Because as I was thinking about hiring someone, your name cropped up in the news. I knew who you were, of course. And maybe it's because you sat on my knee when you were a little fellow. Don't misunderstand me." He waved the thought away. "I don't look to you to help me for sentimental reasons. It was just that I had the impulse to contact you specifically."

Mikael gave a friendly laugh. "Well, I don't remember being perched on your knee. But how could you make the connection? That was in the early sixties."

"You misunderstood me. Your family moved to Stockholm when your father got the job as the workshop foreman at Zarinder's Mechanical. I was the one who got him the job. I knew he was a good worker. I used to see him over the years when I had business with Zarinder's. We weren't close friends, but we would chat for a while. The last time I saw him was the year before he died, and he told me then that you had got into journalism school. He was extremely proud. Then you became famous with the story of the bank robber gang. I've followed your career and read many of your articles over the years. As a matter of fact, I read Millennium quite often."

"OK, I'm with you, but what is it exactly that you want me to do?"

Vanger looked down at his hands, then sipped his coffee, as if he needed a pause before he could at last begin to broach what he wanted.

"Before I get started, Mikael, I'd like to make an agreement with you. I want you to do two things for me. One is a pretext and the other is my real objective."

"What form of agreement?"

"I'm going to tell you a story in two parts. The first is about the Vanger family. That's the pretext. It's a long, dark story, and I'll try to stick to the unvarnished truth. The second part of the story deals with my actual objective. You'll probably think some of the story is... crazy. What I want is for you to hear me out - about what I want you to do and also what I am offering - before you make up your mind whether to take on the job or not."

Blomkvist sighed. Obviously Vanger was not going to let him go in time to catch the afternoon train. He was sure that if he called Frode to ask for a lift to the station, the car would somehow refuse to start in the cold.

The old man must have thought long and hard how he was going to hook him. Blomkvist had the feeling that every last thing that had happened since he arrived was staged: the introductory surprise that as a child he had met his host, the picture of his parents in the album, and the emphasis on the fact that his father and Vanger had been friends, along with the flattery that the old man knew who Mikael Blomkvist was and that he had been following his career for years from a distance... No doubt it had a core of truth, but it was also pretty elementary psychology. Vanger was a practised manipulator - how else had he become one of Sweden's leading industrialists?

Blomkvist decided that Vanger wanted him to do something that he was not going to have the slightest desire to do. He had only to wrest from him what this was and then say no thank you. And just possibly be in time to catch the afternoon train.

"Forgive me, Herr Vanger," he said, "I've been here already for twenty minutes. I'll give you exactly thirty minutes more to tell me what you want. Then I'm calling a taxi and going home."

For a moment the mask of the good-natured patriarch slipped, and Blomkvist could detect the ruthless captain of industry from his days of power confronted by a setback. His mouth curled in a grim smile.

"I understand."

"You don't have to beat around the bush with me. Tell me what you want me to do, so that I can decide whether I want to do it or not."

"So if I can't convince you in half an hour then I wouldn't be able to do it in a month either - that's what you think."

"Something along that line."

"But my story is long and complicated."

"Shorten and simplify it. That's what we do in journalism. Twenty-nine minutes."

Vanger held up a hand. "Enough. I get your point. But it's never good psychology to exaggerate. I need somebody who can do research and think critically, but who also has integrity. I think you have it, and that's not flattery. A good journalist ought to possess these qualities, and I read your book The Knights Templar with great interest. It's true that I picked you because I knew your father and because I know who you are. If I understood the matter correctly, you left your magazine as a result of the Wennerstrom affair. Which means that you have no job at the moment, and probably you're in a tight financial spot."

"So you might be able to exploit my predicament, is that it?"

"Perhaps. But Mikael - if I may call you Mikael? - I won't lie to you. I'm too old for that. If you don't like what I say, you can tell me to jump in the lake. Then I'll have to find someone else to work with me."

"OK, tell me what this job involves."

"How much do you know about the Vanger family?"

"Well, only what I managed to read on the Net since Frode called me on Monday. In your day the Vanger Corporation was one of the most important industrial firms in Sweden; today it's somewhat diminished. Martin Vanger runs it. I know quite a bit more, but what are you getting at?"

"Martin is... he's a good man but basically he's a fair-weather sailor. He's unsuited to be the managing director of a company in crisis. He wants to modernise and specialise - which is good thinking - but he can't push through his ideas and his financial management is weak too. Twenty-five years ago the Vanger concern was a serious competitor to the Wallenberg Group. We had forty thousand employees in Sweden. Today many of these jobs are in Korea or Brazil. We are down to about ten thousand employees and in a year or two - if Martin doesn't get some wind into his sails - we'll have five thousand, primarily in small manufacturing industries, and the Vanger companies will be consigned to the scrap heap of history."

Blomkvist nodded. He had come to roughly this conclusion on the basis of the pieces he had downloaded.

"The Vanger companies are still among the few family-held firms in the country. Thirty family members are minority shareholders. This has always been the strength of the corporation, but also our greatest weakness." Vanger paused and then said in a tone of mounting urgency, "Mikael, you can ask questions later, but I want you to take me at my word when I say that I detest most of the members of my family. They are for the most part thieves, misers, bullies, and incompetents. I ran the company for thirty-five years - almost all the time in the midst of relentless bickering. They were my worst enemies, far worse than competing companies or the government.

"I said that I wanted to commission you to do two things. First, I want you to write a history or biography of the Vanger family. For simplicity's sake, we can call it my autobiography. I will put my journals and archives at your disposal. You will have access to my innermost thoughts and you can publish all the dirt you dig up. I think this story will make Shakespeare's tragedies read like light family entertainment."

"Why?"

"Why do I want to publish a scandalous history of the Vanger family? Or why do I ask you to write it?"

"Both, I suppose."

"To tell you the truth, I don't care whether the book is ever published. But I do think that the story should be written, if only in a single copy that you deliver directly to the Royal Library. I want this story to be there for posterity when I die. My motive is the simplest imaginable: revenge."

"What do you want to revenge?"

"I'm proud that my name is a byword for a man who keeps his word and remembers his promises. I've never played political games. I've never had problems negotiating with trade unions. Even Prime Minister Erlander had respect for me in his day. For me it was a matter of ethics; I was responsible for the livelihoods of thousands of people, and I cared about my employees. Oddly enough, Martin has the same attitude, even though he's a very different person. He too has tried to do the right thing. Sadly Martin and I are rare exceptions in our family. There are many reasons why the Vanger Corporation is on the ropes today, but one of the key ones is the short-termism and greed of my relatives. If you accept the assignment, I'll explain how my family went about torpedoing the firm."

"I won't lie to you either," Blomkvist said. "Researching and writing a book like this would take months. I don't have the motivation or the energy to do it."

"I believe I can talk you into it."

"I doubt it. But you said there were two things. The book is the pretext. What is the real objective?"

Vanger stood up, laboriously again, and took the photograph of Harriet Vanger from the desk. He set it down in front of Blomkvist.

"While you write the biography I want you to scrutinise the family with the eyes of a journalist. It will also give you an alibi for poking around in the family history. What I want is for you to solve a mystery. That's your real assignment."

"What mystery?"

"Harriet was the granddaughter of my brother Richard. There were five brothers. Richard was the eldest, born in 1907. I was the youngest, born in 1920. I don't understand how God could create this flock of children who..." For several seconds Vanger lost the thread, immersed in his thoughts. Then he went on with new decisiveness. "Let me tell you about my brother Richard. Think of this as a small sample from the family chronicle I want you to write."

He poured more coffee for himself.

"In 1924, now seventeen, Richard was a fanatical nationalist and anti Semite. He joined the Swedish National Socialist Freedom League, one of the first Nazi groups in Sweden. Isn't it fascinating that Nazis always manage to adopt the word freedom?"

Vanger pulled out another album and leafed through it until he found the page he was looking for. "Here's Richard with the veterinarian Birger Furugard, soon to become the leader of the so-called Furugard movement, the big Nazi movement of the early thirties. But Richard did not stay with him. He joined, a few years later, the Swedish Fascist Battle Organisation, the SFBO, and there he got to know Per Engdahl and others who would be the disgrace of the nation."

He turned the page in the album: Richard Vanger in uniform.

"He enlisted - against our father's wishes - and during the thirties he made his way through most of the Nazi groups in the country. Any sick conspiratorial association that existed, you can be sure his name was on their roster. In 1933 the Lindholm movement was formed, that is, the National Socialist Workers' Party. How well do you know the history of Swedish Nazism?"

"I'm no historian, but I've read a few books."

"In 1939 the Second World War began, and in 1940 the Winter War in Finland. A large number of the Lindholm movement joined as Finland volunteers. Richard was one of them and by then a captain in the Swedish army. He was killed in February 1940 - just before the peace treaty with the Soviet Union - and thereby became a martyr in the Nazi movement and had a battle group named after him. Even now a handful of idiots gather at a cemetery in Stockholm on the anniversary of his death to honour him."

"I understand."

"In 1926, when he was nineteen, he was going out with a woman called Margareta, the daughter of a teacher in Falun. They met in some political context and had a relationship which resulted in a son, Gottfried, who was born in 1927. The couple married when the boy was born. During the first half of the thirties, my brother sent his wife and child here to Hedestad while he was stationed with his regiment in Gavle. In his free time he travelled around and did proselytising for Nazism. In 1936 he had a huge fight with my father which resulted in my father cutting him off. After that Richard had to make his own living. He moved with his family to Stockholm and lived in relative poverty."

"He had no money of his own?"

"The inheritance he had in the firm was tied up. He couldn't sell outside the family. Worse than their straitened circumstances, Richard was a brutal domestic. He beat his wife and abused his son. Gottfried grew up cowed and bullied. He was thirteen when Richard was killed. I suspect it was the happiest day of his life up to that point. My father took pity on the widow and child and brought them here to Hedestad, where he found an apartment for Margareta and saw to it that she had a decent life.