The Girl who Played with Fire - Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

Friday, December 17

Advokat Nils Erik Bjurman set down his coffee cup and watched the flow of people
outside the window of Café Hedon on Stureplan. He saw everyone passing in an
unbroken stream, but observed none of them.
He was thinking of Lisbeth Salander. He thought often about Salander.
What he was thinking made him boil with rage.
Salander had crushed him. He was never going to forget it. She had taken
command and humiliated him. She had abused him in a way that had left indelible
marks on his body. On an area the size of a book below his navel. She had
handcuffed him to his bed, abused him, and tattooed him with I AM A SADISTIC
PIG, A PERVERT, AND A RAPIST.
Stockholm’s district court had declared Salander legally incompetent. He had been
assigned to be her guardian, which made her inescapably dependent on him. From
the first time he met her he had fantasized about her. He could not explain it, but
she seemed to invite that response.
What he had done—he, a fifty-five-year-old lawyer—was reprehensible, indefensible
by any standard. He knew that, of course. But from the moment he’d laid eyes on
Salander in December two years earlier, he had not been able to resist her. The
laws, the most basic moral code, and his responsibility as her guardian—none of it
mattered at all.
She was a strange girl—fully grown but with an appearance that made her easily
mistaken for a child. He had control over her life; she was his to command.
She had a record that robbed her of credibility if she ever had a mind to protest.
Nor was it a rape of some innocent—her file confirmed that she had had many
sexual encounters, could even be regarded as promiscuous. One social worker’s
report had raised the possibility that Salander had solicited sexual services for
payment when she was seventeen. A police patrol had observed a drunken older
man sitting with a young girl on a park bench in Tantolunden. The police had
confronted the pair; the girl had refused to answer their questions, and the man
was too intoxicated to give them any sensible information.
In Bjurman’s eyes the conclusion was straightforward: Salander was a whore at the
bottom of the social scale. It was risk-free. If she dared to protest to the
Guardianship Agency, no-one was going to believe her word against his.
She was the ideal plaything—grown-up, promiscuous, socially incompetent, and at
his mercy.
It was the first time he had exploited one of his clients. Previously it had never
occurred to him to make advances to anyone with whom he had a professional
relationship. To satisfy his sexual needs, he had always turned to prostitutes. He
had been discreet and he paid well; the problem was that prostitutes were not
serious, they were only pretending. It was a service he bought from a woman who
moaned and rolled her eyes; she played her part, but it was as phony as street
theatre.
He had tried to dominate his wife in the years that he was married, but she had
merely gone along with it, and that too was a game.
Salander had been the perfect solution. She was defenceless. She had no family, no
friends: a true victim, ripe for plundering. The opportunity makes the thief.
And then out of the blue she had destroyed him. She had struck back with a power
and determination that he had not dreamed she possessed. She had humiliated him.
She had tortured him. She had all but demolished him.
During the almost two years since then, Bjurman’s life had changed dramatically.
After Salander’s nighttime visit to his apartment he had felt paralyzed—virtually
incapable of clear thought or decisive action. He had locked himself in, did not
answer the telephone, and was unable even to keep up contact with his regular
clients. After two weeks he went on sick leave. His secretary was deputized to deal
with his correspondence at the office, cancelling all his meetings and trying to keep
irritated clients at bay.
Every day he was confronted by the tattoo on his body. Finally he took down the
mirror from the bathroom door.
He returned to his office at the beginning of summer. He had handed over most of
his clients to his colleagues. The only ones he kept for himself were companies for
whom he dealt with legal business correspondence without being involved in
meetings. His only active client now was Salander—each month he wrote up a
balance sheet and a report for the Guardianship Agency. He did very precisely what
she had demanded: the reports had not a grain of truth in them and made plain
that she no longer needed a guardian. Each report was an excruciating reminder of
her existence, but he had no choice.
Bjurman had spent the summer and the autumn in helpless, furious brooding. And
then, in December, he pulled himself together and went on a vacation to France.
While there, he consulted a specialist at a clinic for cosmetic surgery outside
Marseilles about how best to remove the tattoo.
The specialist had examined his abdomen with ill-concealed astonishment. At last
he recommended a course of action. One way would be laser treatment, he said,
but the tattoo was so extensive and the needle had penetrated so deeply that he
was afraid the only realistic solution was a series of skin grafts. It would be
expensive and would take time.
In the past two years Bjurman had seen Salander on only one occasion.
On the night she attacked him and established control over his life, she had taken
the spare set of keys to his office and apartment. She would be watching him, she
had told him, and when he least expected it she would drop in. He had almost
begun to believe it was an empty threat, but he had not dared to change the locks.
Her warning had been unmistakable—if she ever found him in bed with a woman,
Salander would make public the ninety-minute video that documented how he had
raped her.
In January a year ago he had woken at 3:00 a.m., not sure why. He turned on his
bedside light and almost howled in fright when he saw her standing at the foot of
his bed. She was like a ghost suddenly there. Her face was pale and expressionless.
In her hand she held her fucking Taser.
“Good morning, Mr. Advokat Bjurman,” she said. “So sorry for waking you this
time.”
Good God, has she been here before? While I slept?
He could not tell whether she was bluffing. Bjurman cleared his throat and was
about to speak. She cut him off with a gesture.
“I woke you for one reason only. I’m going to be away for a long time quite soon.
Keep writing your reports every month, but don’t post copies to me. Send them to
this hotmail address.”
She took a folded paper from her jacket pocket and dropped it on the bed.
“If the Guardianship Agency wants to get in touch with me, or anything else comes
up that might require my being here, write me an email at this address. Is that
understood?”
He nodded. “I understand …”
“Don’t speak. I don’t want to hear your voice.”
He clenched his teeth. He had not dared to try to reach her, since she had
threatened to send the video to the authorities if he did. Instead he had thought for
months what he would say to her when eventually she contacted him. He really
had nothing he could say in his defence. All he could do was appeal to her
humanity. He would try to convince her—if she would only give him a chance to
speak—that he had done it in a fit of insanity, that he was utterly sorry for it and
wanted to make amends. He would grovel if that would convince her, if he could
only somehow defuse the threat that she posed.
“I have something to say,” he said in a pitiful voice. “I want to ask your
forgiveness…”
She listened in silence to his plea. Then she put one foot on the bottom of the bed
and stared at him in disgust.
“Now you listen, Bjurman: you’re a pervert. I have no reason to forgive you. But if
you keep yourself clean, I’ll let you off the hook the day my declaration of
incompetence is rescinded.”
She waited until he lowered his gaze. She’s going to make me crawl.
“There’s no change to what I said a year ago. You fail, and the video goes to the
agency. You contact me in any way other than I tell you to, then I make the video
public. I die in an accident, the video will be made public. You ever touch me again,
I will kill you.”
He believed her.
“One more thing. The day I set you free, you can do as you like. But until that day
you will not set foot again in that clinic in Marseilles. If you begin treatment, I will
tattoo you again, and this time I’ll do it on your forehead.”
How the fucking hell did she find out about the clinic?
The next moment she was gone. He heard a faint click as she turned the front-door
key. It was as if a ghost had paid him a visit.
At that instant he began to loathe Lisbeth Salander with an intensity that blazed
like red-hot steel in his brain and transformed his life into an obsession to crush
her. He fantasized about killing her. He toyed with fantasies of having her crawl at
his feet and beg him for mercy. But he would be merciless. He would put his hands
around her throat and strangle her until she gasped for air. He wanted to tear her
eyes from their sockets and her heart from her chest. He wanted to erase her from
the earth.
Paradoxically, it was at this same moment that he felt as though he had begun to
function again, and he discovered in himself a surprising emotional balance. He was
obsessed with the woman and she was on his mind every waking minute. But he
had begun to think rationally again. If he was going to find a way of destroying her,
he would have to get his head in order. His life settled on a new objective.
He stopped fantasizing about her death and began planning for it.
Blomkvist passed less than six feet behind Advokat Bjurman’s back as he navigated
with two scalding glasses of caffè latte to editor in chief Erika Berger’s table at Café
Hedon. Neither he nor Berger had ever heard of Nils Bjurman, so neither was aware
of his being there.
Berger frowned and moved an ashtray aside to make room for her glass. Blomkvist
hung his jacket over the back of his chair, slid the ashtray over to his side of the
table, and lit a cigarette. Berger detested cigarette smoke and gave him a furious
look. He turned his head to blow the smoke away from her.
“I thought you gave up.”
“Temporary backsliding.”
“I’m going to stop having sex with guys who smell of smoke,” she said, smiling
sweetly.
“No problem. There are plenty of girls who aren’t so particular,” Blomkvist said,
smiling back.
Berger rolled her eyes. “So what’s the problem? I’m meeting Charlie at the theatre
in twenty minutes.” Charlie was Charlotta Rosenberg, a childhood friend.
“Our intern bothers me,” Blomkvist said. “I don’t mind her being the daughter of
one of your girlfriends, but she’s supposed to be in editorial for another eight
weeks and I don’t think I can put up with her that long.”
“I’ve noticed the hungry glances she’s been casting your way. Naturally I expect you
to behave like a gentleman.”
“Erika, the girl’s seventeen and has a mental age of ten, and I may be erring on the
generous side.”
“She’s just impressed. Probably a little hero worship.”
“At 10:30 last night she rang the entry phone on my building and wanted to come
up with a bottle of wine.”
“Oops,” Berger said.
“Oops is right. If I were twenty years younger I might not have even hesitated. I’m
going to be forty-five any day now.”
“Don’t remind me. We’re the same age.”
The Wennerström affair had given Blomkvist a certain celebrity. Over the past year
he had received invitations to the most improbable places, parties, and events. He
was greeted with air kisses from all sorts of people he had hardly shaken hands
with before. They were not primarily media people—he knew all of them already
and was on either good or bad terms with them—but so-called cultural figures and
B-list celebrities now wanted to appear as though they were his close friends. Now
it was the thing to have Mikael Blomkvist as your guest at a launch party or a
private dinner. “Sounds lovely, but unfortunately I’m already booked up,” was
becoming a routine response.
One downside of his star status was an increasing rash of rumours. An
acquaintance had mentioned with concern that he heard a rumour claiming that
Blomkvist had been seen at a rehab clinic. In fact Blomkvist’s total drug intake since
his teens consisted of half a dozen joints and one experiment with cocaine fifteen
years earlier with a female singer in a Dutch rock band. As to alcohol, he was only
ever seriously intoxicated at private dinners or parties. In a bar he would seldom
have more than one large, strong beer. He also liked to drink medium-strong beer.
His drinks cabinet at home had vodka and a few bottles of single malt Scotch, all
presents. It was absurd how rarely he indulged in them.
Blomkvist was single. The fact that he had occasional affairs was known both inside
and outside his circle of friends, and that had led to further rumours. His long-lasting affair with Erika Berger was frequently the subject of speculation. Lately it
had been bandied about that he picked up any number of women, and was
exploiting his new celebrity status to screw his way through the clientele of
Stockholm’s nightspots. An obscure journalist had once even urged him to seek
help for his sex addiction.
Blomkvist had indeed had many brief relationships. He knew he was reasonably
good-looking, but he had never considered himself exceptionally attractive. But he
had often been told that he had something that made women interested in him.
Berger had told him that he radiated self-confidence and security at the same time,
that he had an ability to make women feel at ease. Going to bed with him was not
threatening or complicated, but it might be erotically enjoyable. And that,
according to Blomkvist, was as it should be.
Blomkvist’s best relationships had been with women he knew well and whom he
liked a lot, so it was no accident that he had begun an affair with Berger twenty
years earlier, when she was a young journalist.
His present renown, however, had increased women’s interest in him to a point
that he found bizarre. Most astonishing were the young women who made
impulsive advances in unexpected circumstances.
But Blomkvist was not turned on by teenagers with miniskirts and perfect bodies.
When he was younger his women friends had often been older than he—in some
cases considerably older—and more experienced. Over time the age difference had
evened out. Salander had definitely been a step in the other direction.
And this was the reason for his hastily called meeting with Berger.
Millennium had taken on a media school graduate for work experience, as a favour
to one of Berger’s friends. This was nothing unusual; they had several interns each
year. Blomkvist had said a polite hello to the girl and rapidly discovered that she
had only the vaguest interest in journalism beyond that she “wanted to be seen on
TV” and that—Blomkvist suspected—at present it was quite a coup to work at
Millennium.
She did not miss an opportunity to be in close contact with him. He pretended not
to notice her blatant advances, but that only induced her to redouble her efforts.
Quite simply, it was becoming tiresome.
Berger burst out laughing. “Good Lord, you’re being sexually harassed at work.”
“Ricky, this is a drag. There’s no way I want to hurt or embarrass her. But she’s no
more subtle than a mare in heat. I’m worried what she might come up with next.”
“She’s got a crush on you and she’s too young to know how to express herself.”
“You’re wrong. She knows damned well how to express herself. There’s something
warped about how far she goes, and she’s getting annoyed that I’m not taking the
bait. I don’t need a new wave of rumours making me out to be some lecherous
rock-star type on the hunt for a nice lay.”
“OK, but let me get to the nub of the problem. She rang your doorbell last night—is
that the extent of it?”
“With a bottle of wine. She said she’d been to a party at a friend’s house close by
and tried to make it look like pure chance that she found herself in my building.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I didn’t let her in, obviously. I said that she’d come at an awkward time, that I had
a friend there.”
“How did she take that?”
“She was really upset, but she did leave.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Get her off my back. I’m thinking of having a serious talk with her on Monday.
Either she lays off or I’ll kick her out of the office.”
Berger thought for a moment. “Let me have a talk with her. She’s looking for a
friend, not a lover.”
“I don’t know what she’s looking for, but…”
“Mikael. I’ve been through what she’s going through. I’ll talk to her.”
Like everyone else who had watched TV or read an evening paper in the past year,
Bjurman had heard of Mikael Blomkvist. But he did not recognize him in Café
Hedon, and in any case he had no idea that there was a connection between
Salander and Millennium.
Besides, he was too wrapped up in his own thoughts to pay attention to his
surroundings.
Ever since the lifting of his mental paralysis, he had been continuously circling
round and round the same conundrum.
Salander had in her possession a video of his assault on her which she had recorded
with a hidden camera. She had made him watch the video. There was no room for
favourable interpretations. If it ever got to the Guardianship Agency, or, God forbid,
if it ended up in the hands of the media, his career, his freedom, and his life would
be over. He knew the penalties for aggravated rape, exploitation of a person in a
subordinate position, abuse and aggravated abuse; he reckoned he would get at
least six years in prison. A zealous prosecutor might use one section of the video as
the basis for a charge of attempted murder.
He had all but asphyxiated her during the rape when he had excitedly pressed a
pillow over her face. He devoutly wished he had finished the job.
They would not accept that she was the whole time playing a game. She had
enticed him with her cute little-girl eyes, had seduced him with a body that looked
like a twelve-year-old’s. She had provoked him to rape her. They would never see
that she had in fact put on a performance. She had planned…
The first thing he would have to do was to gain possession of the video and make
sure somehow that there were no copies. That was the crux of the problem.
There was no doubt in his mind that a witch like Salander would have made
enemies over the years. Here Bjurman had an advantage. Unlike anyone else who
might try to get at her, he had access to all her medical records, welfare reports,
and psychiatric assessments. He was one of the very few people in Sweden who
knew her secrets.
The personal file that the agency had copied to him when he agreed to serve as her
guardian had been a mere fifteen pages that mainly presented a picture of her
adult life, a summary of the assessment made by the court-appointed psychiatrists,
the district court’s ruling to place her under guardianship, and her bank statements
for the preceding year.
He had read the file over and over. Then he had begun systematically to gather
information on Salander’s life.
As a lawyer he was well practiced in extracting information from the records of
public authorities. As her guardian he was able to penetrate the layers of
confidentiality surrounding her medical records. He could get hold of every
document he wanted that dealt with Salander.
It had nevertheless taken months to put together her life, detail by detail, from her
first elementary school reports to social workers’ reports to police reports and
transcripts from the district court. He had discussed her condition with Dr. Jesper
H. Löderman, the psychiatrist who on her eighteenth birthday had recommended
that she be institutionalized. Löderman gave him a rundown of the case. Everyone
was helpful. A woman at the welfare agency had even praised him for showing
such determination to understand every aspect of Salander’s life.
He found a real gold mine of information in the form of two notebooks in a box
gathering dust in the archive of the Guardianship Agency. The notebooks had been
compiled by Bjurman’s predecessor, the lawyer Holger Palmgren, who had
apparently come to know Salander as well as or better than anyone. Palmgren had
conscientiously submitted a report each year to the agency, and Bjurman supposed
Salander had probably not known that Palmgren also made meticulous notes for
himself. Palmgren’s notebooks had ended up with the Guardianship Agency, where
it seemed no-one had read their contents since he had suffered a stroke two years
earlier.
They were the originals. There was no indication that copies had ever been made.
Perfect.
Palmgren’s picture of Salander was completely different from what could be
deduced from the welfare agency’s report. He had been able to follow her laborious
progress from unruly teenager to young woman to employee at Milton Security—a
job she had obtained through Palmgren’s own contacts. Bjurman learned from
these notes that Salander was by no means a slow-witted office junior who did the
photocopying and made coffee. On the contrary, she had a real job, carrying out
real investigations for Dragan Armansky, Milton’s CEO. Palmgren and Armansky
obviously knew each other well and exchanged information about their protégée
from time to time.
Salander seemed to have only two friends in her life. Palmgren was out of the
picture now. Armansky remained, and could possibly be a threat. Bjurman decided
to steer clear of Armansky.
The notebooks had explained a lot. Bjurman understood how Salander had
discovered so much about him. He could not for the life of him see how she had
found out about his visit to the plastic surgery clinic in France, but much of the
mystery surrounding her had vanished. She made her living burrowing into other
people’s lives. He at once took fresh precautions with his own investigations and
decided that since Salander had access to his apartment, it was not a good idea to
keep any papers there that dealt with her case. He gathered all the documentation
and filled a cardboard box to take to his summer cabin near Stallarholmen, where
he was spending more and more of his time in solitary brooding.
The more he read about Salander, the more convinced he became that she was
pathologically unwell. He shuddered to remember how she had handcuffed him to
his bed. He had been totally under her control then, and he did not doubt that she
would make good her threat to kill him if he provoked her.
She lacked social inhibitions, one of her reports stated. Well, he could conclude a
stage or two further: she was a sick, murderous, insane fucking person. A loose
cannon. A whore.
• • •
Palmgren’s notebooks had provided Bjurman with the final key. On several
occasions he had recorded very personal diary-type accounts of conversations that
he had had with Salander. A crazy old man. In two of these conversations he had
used the expression “when ‘All The Evil’ happened.” Presumably Palmgren had
borrowed the expression directly from Salander, but it was not clear what event it
referred to.
Bjurman wrote down the words All The Evil. The years in foster homes? Some
particular attack? The explanation ought to be there in the documentation to
which he already had access.
He opened the psychiatric assessment of Salander as an eighteen-year-old and read
it through for the fifth or sixth time. There had to be a gap in his knowledge.
He had excerpts from journal entries from elementary school, an affidavit to the
effect that Salander’s mother was incapable of taking care of her, and reports from
various foster homes during her teens.
Something had set off the madness when she was twelve.
There were other gaps in her biography.
He discovered to his great surprise that Salander had a twin sister who had not
been referred to in any of the material to which he had previously had access. My
God, there are two of them. But he could not find any reference to what had
happened to the sister.
The father was unknown, and there was no explanation as to why her mother
could not take care of her. Bjurman had supposed that she had become ill and that
as a result the whole process had begun, including the spells in the children’s
psychiatric unit. But now he was sure that something had happened to Salander
when she was twelve or thirteen. All The Evil. A trauma of some kind. But there
was no indication in Palmgren’s notes as to what “All The Evil” could have been.
In the psychiatric assessment he finally found a reference to an attachment that
was missing—the number of a police report dated March 12, 1991. It was
handwritten in the margin of the copy from the social welfare agency archive.
When he put in a request for the report he was told that it was stamped “TOP
SECRET by Order of His Royal Highness,” but that he could file an appeal with the
relevant government department.
Bjurman was stymied. The fact that a police report dealing with a twelve-year-old
girl was classified was not in itself surprising—there could be all manner of reasons
for the protection of privacy. But he was Salander’s guardian and had the right to
study any document at all which concerned her. He could not understand why
gaining access to such a report should require an appeal to a government
department.
He submitted his application. Two months passed before he was informed that his
request had been denied. What could there be in a police report almost fourteen
years old about so young a girl to classify it as top secret? What possible threat
could it contain to Sweden’s government?
He returned to Palmgren’s diary, trying to tease out what might be meant by “All
The Evil.” But he found no clue. It had to have been discussed between Palmgren
and his ward but never written down. The references to “All The Evil” came at the
end of the second notebook. Perhaps Palmgren had never had time to write up his
own conclusions about this apparently crucial series of events before he had his
stroke.
Palmgren had been Salander’s trustee from her thirteenth birthday and her
guardian from the day she turned eighteen. So he had been involved shortly after
“All The Evil” had taken place and Salander was put away in the children’s
psychiatric unit. Chances were that he knew about everything that had happened.
Bjurman went back to the archive of the Guardianship Agency, this time to find the
detailed brief of Palmgren’s assignment, drawn up by the social welfare agency. At
first glance the description was disappointing: two pages of background
information. Salander’s mother was now incapable of bringing up her daughter; the
two children had to be separated; Camilla Salander was placed through the social
welfare agency in a foster family; Lisbeth Salander was confined at St. Stefan’s
children’s psychiatric clinic. No alternative was discussed.
Why? Only a cryptic formulation: “In view of the events of 3/12/91 the social welfare
agency has determined that…” Then again a reference to the classified police report.
But here there was the name of the policeman who wrote the report.
Bjurman registered the name with shock. He knew it well. Indeed he knew it very
well, and this discovery put matters in a wholly new light. It still took him two
more months to get the report, this time via completely different methods. It
consisted of forty-seven pages of A4, with a dozen or so pages of notes that were
added over a six-year period. And finally the photographs. And the name.
My God… it can’t be possible.
Now he realized why the report had been stamped top secret.
There was one other person who had reason to hate Salander with the same
passion as he did.
He had an ally, the most improbable ally he could have imagined.
Bjurman was roused from his reverie by a shadow falling across the table at Café
Hedon. He looked up and saw a blond … giant was the only word for him. For a few
seconds he recoiled before he regained his composure.
The man looking down at him stood more than six foot six and had an
exceptionally powerful build. A bodybuilder without a doubt. Bjurman could not see
a hint of fat. The man made a terrifying impression. His blond hair was cropped
close at the sides with a short shock left on top. He had an oval, oddly soft, almost
childlike face. His ice-blue eyes, however, were not remotely gentle. He was dressed
in a midlength black leather jacket, blue shirt, black tie, and black trousers. The last
thing Bjurman noticed was his hands. If all of the rest of him was large, his hands
were enormous.
“Advokat Bjurman?”
He spoke with some European accent, but his voice was so peculiarly high-pitched
that Bjurman was tempted to smile. With difficulty he kept his expression neutral
and nodded.
“We got your letter.”
“Who are you? I wanted to meet…”
The man with the enormous hands was already sitting opposite Bjurman and cut
him off.
“You’ll have to meet me instead. Tell me what you want.”
Bjurman hesitated. He disliked intensely the idea of having to be at the mercy of a
stranger. But it was a necessity. He reminded himself that he was not alone in
having a grudge against Salander. It was a question of recruiting allies. In a low
voice he explained his business. CHAPTER 2
Friday, December 17
Advokat Nils Erik Bjurman set down his coffee cup and watched the flow of people
outside the window of Café Hedon on Stureplan. He saw everyone passing in an
unbroken stream, but observed none of them.
He was thinking of Lisbeth Salander. He thought often about Salander.
What he was thinking made him boil with rage.
Salander had crushed him. He was never going to forget it. She had taken
command and humiliated him. She had abused him in a way that had left indelible
marks on his body. On an area the size of a book below his navel. She had
handcuffed him to his bed, abused him, and tattooed him with I AM A SADISTIC
PIG, A PERVERT, AND A RAPIST.
Stockholm’s district court had declared Salander legally incompetent. He had been
assigned to be her guardian, which made her inescapably dependent on him. From
the first time he met her he had fantasized about her. He could not explain it, but
she seemed to invite that response.
What he had done—he, a fifty-five-year-old lawyer—was reprehensible, indefensible
by any standard. He knew that, of course. But from the moment he’d laid eyes on
Salander in December two years earlier, he had not been able to resist her. The
laws, the most basic moral code, and his responsibility as her guardian—none of it
mattered at all.
She was a strange girl—fully grown but with an appearance that made her easily
mistaken for a child. He had control over her life; she was his to command.
She had a record that robbed her of credibility if she ever had a mind to protest.
Nor was it a rape of some innocent—her file confirmed that she had had many
sexual encounters, could even be regarded as promiscuous. One social worker’s
report had raised the possibility that Salander had solicited sexual services for
payment when she was seventeen. A police patrol had observed a drunken older
man sitting with a young girl on a park bench in Tantolunden. The police had
confronted the pair; the girl had refused to answer their questions, and the man
was too intoxicated to give them any sensible information.
In Bjurman’s eyes the conclusion was straightforward: Salander was a whore at the
bottom of the social scale. It was risk-free. If she dared to protest to the
Guardianship Agency, no-one was going to believe her word against his.
She was the ideal plaything—grown-up, promiscuous, socially incompetent, and at
his mercy.
It was the first time he had exploited one of his clients. Previously it had never
occurred to him to make advances to anyone with whom he had a professional
relationship. To satisfy his sexual needs, he had always turned to prostitutes. He
had been discreet and he paid well; the problem was that prostitutes were not
serious, they were only pretending. It was a service he bought from a woman who
moaned and rolled her eyes; she played her part, but it was as phony as street
theatre.
He had tried to dominate his wife in the years that he was married, but she had
merely gone along with it, and that too was a game.
Salander had been the perfect solution. She was defenceless. She had no family, no
friends: a true victim, ripe for plundering. The opportunity makes the thief.
And then out of the blue she had destroyed him. She had struck back with a power
and determination that he had not dreamed she possessed. She had humiliated him.
She had tortured him. She had all but demolished him.
During the almost two years since then, Bjurman’s life had changed dramatically.
After Salander’s nighttime visit to his apartment he had felt paralyzed—virtually
incapable of clear thought or decisive action. He had locked himself in, did not
answer the telephone, and was unable even to keep up contact with his regular
clients. After two weeks he went on sick leave. His secretary was deputized to deal
with his correspondence at the office, cancelling all his meetings and trying to keep
irritated clients at bay.
Every day he was confronted by the tattoo on his body. Finally he took down the
mirror from the bathroom door.
He returned to his office at the beginning of summer. He had handed over most of
his clients to his colleagues. The only ones he kept for himself were companies for
whom he dealt with legal business correspondence without being involved in
meetings. His only active client now was Salander—each month he wrote up a
balance sheet and a report for the Guardianship Agency. He did very precisely what
she had demanded: the reports had not a grain of truth in them and made plain
that she no longer needed a guardian. Each report was an excruciating reminder of
her existence, but he had no choice.
Bjurman had spent the summer and the autumn in helpless, furious brooding. And
then, in December, he pulled himself together and went on a vacation to France.
While there, he consulted a specialist at a clinic for cosmetic surgery outside
Marseilles about how best to remove the tattoo.
The specialist had examined his abdomen with ill-concealed astonishment. At last
he recommended a course of action. One way would be laser treatment, he said,
but the tattoo was so extensive and the needle had penetrated so deeply that he
was afraid the only realistic solution was a series of skin grafts. It would be
expensive and would take time.
In the past two years Bjurman had seen Salander on only one occasion.
On the night she attacked him and established control over his life, she had taken
the spare set of keys to his office and apartment. She would be watching him, she
had told him, and when he least expected it she would drop in. He had almost
begun to believe it was an empty threat, but he had not dared to change the locks.
Her warning had been unmistakable—if she ever found him in bed with a woman,
Salander would make public the ninety-minute video that documented how he had
raped her.
In January a year ago he had woken at 3:00 a.m., not sure why. He turned on his
bedside light and almost howled in fright when he saw her standing at the foot of
his bed. She was like a ghost suddenly there. Her face was pale and expressionless.
In her hand she held her fucking Taser.
“Good morning, Mr. Advokat Bjurman,” she said. “So sorry for waking you this
time.”
Good God, has she been here before? While I slept?
He could not tell whether she was bluffing. Bjurman cleared his throat and was
about to speak. She cut him off with a gesture.
“I woke you for one reason only. I’m going to be away for a long time quite soon.
Keep writing your reports every month, but don’t post copies to me. Send them to
this hotmail address.”
She took a folded paper from her jacket pocket and dropped it on the bed.
“If the Guardianship Agency wants to get in touch with me, or anything else comes
up that might require my being here, write me an email at this address. Is that
understood?”
He nodded. “I understand …”
“Don’t speak. I don’t want to hear your voice.”
He clenched his teeth. He had not dared to try to reach her, since she had
threatened to send the video to the authorities if he did. Instead he had thought for
months what he would say to her when eventually she contacted him. He really
had nothing he could say in his defence. All he could do was appeal to her
humanity. He would try to convince her—if she would only give him a chance to
speak—that he had done it in a fit of insanity, that he was utterly sorry for it and
wanted to make amends. He would grovel if that would convince her, if he could
only somehow defuse the threat that she posed.
“I have something to say,” he said in a pitiful voice. “I want to ask your
forgiveness…”
She listened in silence to his plea. Then she put one foot on the bottom of the bed
and stared at him in disgust.
“Now you listen, Bjurman: you’re a pervert. I have no reason to forgive you. But if
you keep yourself clean, I’ll let you off the hook the day my declaration of
incompetence is rescinded.”
She waited until he lowered his gaze. She’s going to make me crawl.
“There’s no change to what I said a year ago. You fail, and the video goes to the
agency. You contact me in any way other than I tell you to, then I make the video
public. I die in an accident, the video will be made public. You ever touch me again,
I will kill you.”
He believed her.
“One more thing. The day I set you free, you can do as you like. But until that day
you will not set foot again in that clinic in Marseilles. If you begin treatment, I will
tattoo you again, and this time I’ll do it on your forehead.”
How the fucking hell did she find out about the clinic?
The next moment she was gone. He heard a faint click as she turned the front-door
key. It was as if a ghost had paid him a visit.
At that instant he began to loathe Lisbeth Salander with an intensity that blazed
like red-hot steel in his brain and transformed his life into an obsession to crush
her. He fantasized about killing her. He toyed with fantasies of having her crawl at
his feet and beg him for mercy. But he would be merciless. He would put his hands
around her throat and strangle her until she gasped for air. He wanted to tear her
eyes from their sockets and her heart from her chest. He wanted to erase her from
the earth.
Paradoxically, it was at this same moment that he felt as though he had begun to
function again, and he discovered in himself a surprising emotional balance. He was
obsessed with the woman and she was on his mind every waking minute. But he
had begun to think rationally again. If he was going to find a way of destroying her,
he would have to get his head in order. His life settled on a new objective.
He stopped fantasizing about her death and began planning for it.
Blomkvist passed less than six feet behind Advokat Bjurman’s back as he navigated
with two scalding glasses of caffè latte to editor in chief Erika Berger’s table at Café
Hedon. Neither he nor Berger had ever heard of Nils Bjurman, so neither was aware
of his being there.
Berger frowned and moved an ashtray aside to make room for her glass. Blomkvist
hung his jacket over the back of his chair, slid the ashtray over to his side of the
table, and lit a cigarette. Berger detested cigarette smoke and gave him a furious
look. He turned his head to blow the smoke away from her.
“I thought you gave up.”
“Temporary backsliding.”
“I’m going to stop having sex with guys who smell of smoke,” she said, smiling
sweetly.
“No problem. There are plenty of girls who aren’t so particular,” Blomkvist said,
smiling back.
Berger rolled her eyes. “So what’s the problem? I’m meeting Charlie at the theatre
in twenty minutes.” Charlie was Charlotta Rosenberg, a childhood friend.
“Our intern bothers me,” Blomkvist said. “I don’t mind her being the daughter of
one of your girlfriends, but she’s supposed to be in editorial for another eight
weeks and I don’t think I can put up with her that long.”
“I’ve noticed the hungry glances she’s been casting your way. Naturally I expect you
to behave like a gentleman.”
“Erika, the girl’s seventeen and has a mental age of ten, and I may be erring on the
generous side.”
“She’s just impressed. Probably a little hero worship.”
“At 10:30 last night she rang the entry phone on my building and wanted to come
up with a bottle of wine.”
“Oops,” Berger said.
“Oops is right. If I were twenty years younger I might not have even hesitated. I’m
going to be forty-five any day now.”
“Don’t remind me. We’re the same age.”
The Wennerström affair had given Blomkvist a certain celebrity. Over the past year
he had received invitations to the most improbable places, parties, and events. He
was greeted with air kisses from all sorts of people he had hardly shaken hands
with before. They were not primarily media people—he knew all of them already
and was on either good or bad terms with them—but so-called cultural figures and
B-list celebrities now wanted to appear as though they were his close friends. Now
it was the thing to have Mikael Blomkvist as your guest at a launch party or a
private dinner. “Sounds lovely, but unfortunately I’m already booked up,” was
becoming a routine response.
One downside of his star status was an increasing rash of rumours. An
acquaintance had mentioned with concern that he heard a rumour claiming that
Blomkvist had been seen at a rehab clinic. In fact Blomkvist’s total drug intake since
his teens consisted of half a dozen joints and one experiment with cocaine fifteen
years earlier with a female singer in a Dutch rock band. As to alcohol, he was only
ever seriously intoxicated at private dinners or parties. In a bar he would seldom
have more than one large, strong beer. He also liked to drink medium-strong beer.
His drinks cabinet at home had vodka and a few bottles of single malt Scotch, all
presents. It was absurd how rarely he indulged in them.
Blomkvist was single. The fact that he had occasional affairs was known both inside
and outside his circle of friends, and that had led to further rumours. His long-lasting affair with Erika Berger was frequently the subject of speculation. Lately it
had been bandied about that he picked up any number of women, and was
exploiting his new celebrity status to screw his way through the clientele of
Stockholm’s nightspots. An obscure journalist had once even urged him to seek
help for his sex addiction.
Blomkvist had indeed had many brief relationships. He knew he was reasonably
good-looking, but he had never considered himself exceptionally attractive. But he
had often been told that he had something that made women interested in him.
Berger had told him that he radiated self-confidence and security at the same time,
that he had an ability to make women feel at ease. Going to bed with him was not
threatening or complicated, but it might be erotically enjoyable. And that,
according to Blomkvist, was as it should be.
Blomkvist’s best relationships had been with women he knew well and whom he
liked a lot, so it was no accident that he had begun an affair with Berger twenty
years earlier, when she was a young journalist.
His present renown, however, had increased women’s interest in him to a point
that he found bizarre. Most astonishing were the young women who made
impulsive advances in unexpected circumstances.
But Blomkvist was not turned on by teenagers with miniskirts and perfect bodies.
When he was younger his women friends had often been older than he—in some
cases considerably older—and more experienced. Over time the age difference had
evened out. Salander had definitely been a step in the other direction.
And this was the reason for his hastily called meeting with Berger.
Millennium had taken on a media school graduate for work experience, as a favour
to one of Berger’s friends. This was nothing unusual; they had several interns each
year. Blomkvist had said a polite hello to the girl and rapidly discovered that she
had only the vaguest interest in journalism beyond that she “wanted to be seen on
TV” and that—Blomkvist suspected—at present it was quite a coup to work at
Millennium.
She did not miss an opportunity to be in close contact with him. He pretended not
to notice her blatant advances, but that only induced her to redouble her efforts.
Quite simply, it was becoming tiresome.
Berger burst out laughing. “Good Lord, you’re being sexually harassed at work.”
“Ricky, this is a drag. There’s no way I want to hurt or embarrass her. But she’s no
more subtle than a mare in heat. I’m worried what she might come up with next.”
“She’s got a crush on you and she’s too young to know how to express herself.”
“You’re wrong. She knows damned well how to express herself. There’s something
warped about how far she goes, and she’s getting annoyed that I’m not taking the
bait. I don’t need a new wave of rumours making me out to be some lecherous
rock-star type on the hunt for a nice lay.”
“OK, but let me get to the nub of the problem. She rang your doorbell last night—is
that the extent of it?”
“With a bottle of wine. She said she’d been to a party at a friend’s house close by
and tried to make it look like pure chance that she found herself in my building.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I didn’t let her in, obviously. I said that she’d come at an awkward time, that I had
a friend there.”
“How did she take that?”
“She was really upset, but she did leave.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Get her off my back. I’m thinking of having a serious talk with her on Monday.
Either she lays off or I’ll kick her out of the office.”
Berger thought for a moment. “Let me have a talk with her. She’s looking for a
friend, not a lover.”
“I don’t know what she’s looking for, but…”
“Mikael. I’ve been through what she’s going through. I’ll talk to her.”
Like everyone else who had watched TV or read an evening paper in the past year,
Bjurman had heard of Mikael Blomkvist. But he did not recognize him in Café
Hedon, and in any case he had no idea that there was a connection between
Salander and Millennium.
Besides, he was too wrapped up in his own thoughts to pay attention to his
surroundings.
Ever since the lifting of his mental paralysis, he had been continuously circling
round and round the same conundrum.
Salander had in her possession a video of his assault on her which she had recorded
with a hidden camera. She had made him watch the video. There was no room for
favourable interpretations. If it ever got to the Guardianship Agency, or, God forbid,
if it ended up in the hands of the media, his career, his freedom, and his life would
be over. He knew the penalties for aggravated rape, exploitation of a person in a
subordinate position, abuse and aggravated abuse; he reckoned he would get at
least six years in prison. A zealous prosecutor might use one section of the video as
the basis for a charge of attempted murder.
He had all but asphyxiated her during the rape when he had excitedly pressed a
pillow over her face. He devoutly wished he had finished the job.
They would not accept that she was the whole time playing a game. She had
enticed him with her cute little-girl eyes, had seduced him with a body that looked
like a twelve-year-old’s. She had provoked him to rape her. They would never see
that she had in fact put on a performance. She had planned…
The first thing he would have to do was to gain possession of the video and make
sure somehow that there were no copies. That was the crux of the problem.
There was no doubt in his mind that a witch like Salander would have made
enemies over the years. Here Bjurman had an advantage. Unlike anyone else who
might try to get at her, he had access to all her medical records, welfare reports,
and psychiatric assessments. He was one of the very few people in Sweden who
knew her secrets.
The personal file that the agency had copied to him when he agreed to serve as her
guardian had been a mere fifteen pages that mainly presented a picture of her
adult life, a summary of the assessment made by the court-appointed psychiatrists,
the district court’s ruling to place her under guardianship, and her bank statements
for the preceding year.
He had read the file over and over. Then he had begun systematically to gather
information on Salander’s life.
As a lawyer he was well practiced in extracting information from the records of
public authorities. As her guardian he was able to penetrate the layers of
confidentiality surrounding her medical records. He could get hold of every
document he wanted that dealt with Salander.
It had nevertheless taken months to put together her life, detail by detail, from her
first elementary school reports to social workers’ reports to police reports and
transcripts from the district court. He had discussed her condition with Dr. Jesper
H. Löderman, the psychiatrist who on her eighteenth birthday had recommended
that she be institutionalized. Löderman gave him a rundown of the case. Everyone
was helpful. A woman at the welfare agency had even praised him for showing
such determination to understand every aspect of Salander’s life.
He found a real gold mine of information in the form of two notebooks in a box
gathering dust in the archive of the Guardianship Agency. The notebooks had been
compiled by Bjurman’s predecessor, the lawyer Holger Palmgren, who had
apparently come to know Salander as well as or better than anyone. Palmgren had
conscientiously submitted a report each year to the agency, and Bjurman supposed
Salander had probably not known that Palmgren also made meticulous notes for
himself. Palmgren’s notebooks had ended up with the Guardianship Agency, where
it seemed no-one had read their contents since he had suffered a stroke two years
earlier.
They were the originals. There was no indication that copies had ever been made.
Perfect.
Palmgren’s picture of Salander was completely different from what could be
deduced from the welfare agency’s report. He had been able to follow her laborious
progress from unruly teenager to young woman to employee at Milton Security—a
job she had obtained through Palmgren’s own contacts. Bjurman learned from
these notes that Salander was by no means a slow-witted office junior who did the
photocopying and made coffee. On the contrary, she had a real job, carrying out
real investigations for Dragan Armansky, Milton’s CEO. Palmgren and Armansky
obviously knew each other well and exchanged information about their protégée
from time to time.
Salander seemed to have only two friends in her life. Palmgren was out of the
picture now. Armansky remained, and could possibly be a threat. Bjurman decided
to steer clear of Armansky.
The notebooks had explained a lot. Bjurman understood how Salander had
discovered so much about him. He could not for the life of him see how she had
found out about his visit to the plastic surgery clinic in France, but much of the
mystery surrounding her had vanished. She made her living burrowing into other
people’s lives. He at once took fresh precautions with his own investigations and
decided that since Salander had access to his apartment, it was not a good idea to
keep any papers there that dealt with her case. He gathered all the documentation
and filled a cardboard box to take to his summer cabin near Stallarholmen, where
he was spending more and more of his time in solitary brooding.
The more he read about Salander, the more convinced he became that she was
pathologically unwell. He shuddered to remember how she had handcuffed him to
his bed. He had been totally under her control then, and he did not doubt that she
would make good her threat to kill him if he provoked her.
She lacked social inhibitions, one of her reports stated. Well, he could conclude a
stage or two further: she was a sick, murderous, insane fucking person. A loose
cannon. A whore.
• • •
Palmgren’s notebooks had provided Bjurman with the final key. On several
occasions he had recorded very personal diary-type accounts of conversations that
he had had with Salander. A crazy old man. In two of these conversations he had
used the expression “when ‘All The Evil’ happened.” Presumably Palmgren had
borrowed the expression directly from Salander, but it was not clear what event it
referred to.
Bjurman wrote down the words All The Evil. The years in foster homes? Some
particular attack? The explanation ought to be there in the documentation to
which he already had access.
He opened the psychiatric assessment of Salander as an eighteen-year-old and read
it through for the fifth or sixth time. There had to be a gap in his knowledge.
He had excerpts from journal entries from elementary school, an affidavit to the
effect that Salander’s mother was incapable of taking care of her, and reports from
various foster homes during her teens.
Something had set off the madness when she was twelve.
There were other gaps in her biography.
He discovered to his great surprise that Salander had a twin sister who had not
been referred to in any of the material to which he had previously had access. My
God, there are two of them. But he could not find any reference to what had
happened to the sister.
The father was unknown, and there was no explanation as to why her mother
could not take care of her. Bjurman had supposed that she had become ill and that
as a result the whole process had begun, including the spells in the children’s
psychiatric unit. But now he was sure that something had happened to Salander
when she was twelve or thirteen. All The Evil. A trauma of some kind. But there
was no indication in Palmgren’s notes as to what “All The Evil” could have been.
In the psychiatric assessment he finally found a reference to an attachment that
was missing—the number of a police report dated March 12, 1991. It was
handwritten in the margin of the copy from the social welfare agency archive.
When he put in a request for the report he was told that it was stamped “TOP
SECRET by Order of His Royal Highness,” but that he could file an appeal with the
relevant government department.
Bjurman was stymied. The fact that a police report dealing with a twelve-year-old
girl was classified was not in itself surprising—there could be all manner of reasons
for the protection of privacy. But he was Salander’s guardian and had the right to
study any document at all which concerned her. He could not understand why
gaining access to such a report should require an appeal to a government
department.
He submitted his application. Two months passed before he was informed that his
request had been denied. What could there be in a police report almost fourteen
years old about so young a girl to classify it as top secret? What possible threat
could it contain to Sweden’s government?
He returned to Palmgren’s diary, trying to tease out what might be meant by “All
The Evil.” But he found no clue. It had to have been discussed between Palmgren
and his ward but never written down. The references to “All The Evil” came at the
end of the second notebook. Perhaps Palmgren had never had time to write up his
own conclusions about this apparently crucial series of events before he had his
stroke.
Palmgren had been Salander’s trustee from her thirteenth birthday and her
guardian from the day she turned eighteen. So he had been involved shortly after
“All The Evil” had taken place and Salander was put away in the children’s
psychiatric unit. Chances were that he knew about everything that had happened.
Bjurman went back to the archive of the Guardianship Agency, this time to find the
detailed brief of Palmgren’s assignment, drawn up by the social welfare agency. At
first glance the description was disappointing: two pages of background
information. Salander’s mother was now incapable of bringing up her daughter; the
two children had to be separated; Camilla Salander was placed through the social
welfare agency in a foster family; Lisbeth Salander was confined at St. Stefan’s
children’s psychiatric clinic. No alternative was discussed.
Why? Only a cryptic formulation: “In view of the events of 3/12/91 the social welfare
agency has determined that…” Then again a reference to the classified police report.
But here there was the name of the policeman who wrote the report.
Bjurman registered the name with shock. He knew it well. Indeed he knew it very
well, and this discovery put matters in a wholly new light. It still took him two
more months to get the report, this time via completely different methods. It
consisted of forty-seven pages of A4, with a dozen or so pages of notes that were
added over a six-year period. And finally the photographs. And the name.
My God… it can’t be possible.
Now he realized why the report had been stamped top secret.
There was one other person who had reason to hate Salander with the same
passion as he did.
He had an ally, the most improbable ally he could have imagined.
Bjurman was roused from his reverie by a shadow falling across the table at Café
Hedon. He looked up and saw a blond … giant was the only word for him. For a few
seconds he recoiled before he regained his composure.
The man looking down at him stood more than six foot six and had an
exceptionally powerful build. A bodybuilder without a doubt. Bjurman could not see
a hint of fat. The man made a terrifying impression. His blond hair was cropped
close at the sides with a short shock left on top. He had an oval, oddly soft, almost
childlike face. His ice-blue eyes, however, were not remotely gentle. He was dressed
in a midlength black leather jacket, blue shirt, black tie, and black trousers. The last
thing Bjurman noticed was his hands. If all of the rest of him was large, his hands
were enormous.
“Advokat Bjurman?”
He spoke with some European accent, but his voice was so peculiarly high-pitched
that Bjurman was tempted to smile. With difficulty he kept his expression neutral
and nodded.
“We got your letter.”
“Who are you? I wanted to meet…”
The man with the enormous hands was already sitting opposite Bjurman and cut
him off.
“You’ll have to meet me instead. Tell me what you want.”
Bjurman hesitated. He disliked intensely the idea of having to be at the mercy of a
stranger. But it was a necessity. He reminded himself that he was not alone in
having a grudge against Salander. It was a question of recruiting allies. In a low
voice he explained his business. CHAPTER 2
Friday, December 17
Advokat Nils Erik Bjurman set down his coffee cup and watched the flow of people
outside the window of Café Hedon on Stureplan. He saw everyone passing in an
unbroken stream, but observed none of them.
He was thinking of Lisbeth Salander. He thought often about Salander.
What he was thinking made him boil with rage.
Salander had crushed him. He was never going to forget it. She had taken
command and humiliated him. She had abused him in a way that had left indelible
marks on his body. On an area the size of a book below his navel. She had
handcuffed him to his bed, abused him, and tattooed him with I AM A SADISTIC
PIG, A PERVERT, AND A RAPIST.
Stockholm’s district court had declared Salander legally incompetent. He had been
assigned to be her guardian, which made her inescapably dependent on him. From
the first time he met her he had fantasized about her. He could not explain it, but
she seemed to invite that response.
What he had done—he, a fifty-five-year-old lawyer—was reprehensible, indefensible
by any standard. He knew that, of course. But from the moment he’d laid eyes on
Salander in December two years earlier, he had not been able to resist her. The
laws, the most basic moral code, and his responsibility as her guardian—none of it
mattered at all.
She was a strange girl—fully grown but with an appearance that made her easily
mistaken for a child. He had control over her life; she was his to command.
She had a record that robbed her of credibility if she ever had a mind to protest.
Nor was it a rape of some innocent—her file confirmed that she had had many
sexual encounters, could even be regarded as promiscuous. One social worker’s
report had raised the possibility that Salander had solicited sexual services for
payment when she was seventeen. A police patrol had observed a drunken older
man sitting with a young girl on a park bench in Tantolunden. The police had
confronted the pair; the girl had refused to answer their questions, and the man
was too intoxicated to give them any sensible information.
In Bjurman’s eyes the conclusion was straightforward: Salander was a whore at the
bottom of the social scale. It was risk-free. If she dared to protest to the
Guardianship Agency, no-one was going to believe her word against his.
She was the ideal plaything—grown-up, promiscuous, socially incompetent, and at
his mercy.
It was the first time he had exploited one of his clients. Previously it had never
occurred to him to make advances to anyone with whom he had a professional
relationship. To satisfy his sexual needs, he had always turned to prostitutes. He
had been discreet and he paid well; the problem was that prostitutes were not
serious, they were only pretending. It was a service he bought from a woman who
moaned and rolled her eyes; she played her part, but it was as phony as street
theatre.
He had tried to dominate his wife in the years that he was married, but she had
merely gone along with it, and that too was a game.
Salander had been the perfect solution. She was defenceless. She had no family, no
friends: a true victim, ripe for plundering. The opportunity makes the thief.
And then out of the blue she had destroyed him. She had struck back with a power
and determination that he had not dreamed she possessed. She had humiliated him.
She had tortured him. She had all but demolished him.
During the almost two years since then, Bjurman’s life had changed dramatically.
After Salander’s nighttime visit to his apartment he had felt paralyzed—virtually
incapable of clear thought or decisive action. He had locked himself in, did not
answer the telephone, and was unable even to keep up contact with his regular
clients. After two weeks he went on sick leave. His secretary was deputized to deal
with his correspondence at the office, cancelling all his meetings and trying to keep
irritated clients at bay.
Every day he was confronted by the tattoo on his body. Finally he took down the
mirror from the bathroom door.
He returned to his office at the beginning of summer. He had handed over most of
his clients to his colleagues. The only ones he kept for himself were companies for
whom he dealt with legal business correspondence without being involved in
meetings. His only active client now was Salander—each month he wrote up a
balance sheet and a report for the Guardianship Agency. He did very precisely what
she had demanded: the reports had not a grain of truth in them and made plain
that she no longer needed a guardian. Each report was an excruciating reminder of
her existence, but he had no choice.
Bjurman had spent the summer and the autumn in helpless, furious brooding. And
then, in December, he pulled himself together and went on a vacation to France.
While there, he consulted a specialist at a clinic for cosmetic surgery outside
Marseilles about how best to remove the tattoo.
The specialist had examined his abdomen with ill-concealed astonishment. At last
he recommended a course of action. One way would be laser treatment, he said,
but the tattoo was so extensive and the needle had penetrated so deeply that he
was afraid the only realistic solution was a series of skin grafts. It would be
expensive and would take time.
In the past two years Bjurman had seen Salander on only one occasion.
On the night she attacked him and established control over his life, she had taken
the spare set of keys to his office and apartment. She would be watching him, she
had told him, and when he least expected it she would drop in. He had almost
begun to believe it was an empty threat, but he had not dared to change the locks.
Her warning had been unmistakable—if she ever found him in bed with a woman,
Salander would make public the ninety-minute video that documented how he had
raped her.
In January a year ago he had woken at 3:00 a.m., not sure why. He turned on his
bedside light and almost howled in fright when he saw her standing at the foot of
his bed. She was like a ghost suddenly there. Her face was pale and expressionless.
In her hand she held her fucking Taser.
“Good morning, Mr. Advokat Bjurman,” she said. “So sorry for waking you this
time.”
Good God, has she been here before? While I slept?
He could not tell whether she was bluffing. Bjurman cleared his throat and was
about to speak. She cut him off with a gesture.
“I woke you for one reason only. I’m going to be away for a long time quite soon.
Keep writing your reports every month, but don’t post copies to me. Send them to
this hotmail address.”
She took a folded paper from her jacket pocket and dropped it on the bed.
“If the Guardianship Agency wants to get in touch with me, or anything else comes
up that might require my being here, write me an email at this address. Is that
understood?”
He nodded. “I understand …”
“Don’t speak. I don’t want to hear your voice.”
He clenched his teeth. He had not dared to try to reach her, since she had
threatened to send the video to the authorities if he did. Instead he had thought for
months what he would say to her when eventually she contacted him. He really
had nothing he could say in his defence. All he could do was appeal to her
humanity. He would try to convince her—if she would only give him a chance to
speak—that he had done it in a fit of insanity, that he was utterly sorry for it and
wanted to make amends. He would grovel if that would convince her, if he could
only somehow defuse the threat that she posed.
“I have something to say,” he said in a pitiful voice. “I want to ask your
forgiveness…”
She listened in silence to his plea. Then she put one foot on the bottom of the bed
and stared at him in disgust.
“Now you listen, Bjurman: you’re a pervert. I have no reason to forgive you. But if
you keep yourself clean, I’ll let you off the hook the day my declaration of
incompetence is rescinded.”
She waited until he lowered his gaze. She’s going to make me crawl.
“There’s no change to what I said a year ago. You fail, and the video goes to the
agency. You contact me in any way other than I tell you to, then I make the video
public. I die in an accident, the video will be made public. You ever touch me again,
I will kill you.”
He believed her.
“One more thing. The day I set you free, you can do as you like. But until that day
you will not set foot again in that clinic in Marseilles. If you begin treatment, I will
tattoo you again, and this time I’ll do it on your forehead.”
How the fucking hell did she find out about the clinic?
The next moment she was gone. He heard a faint click as she turned the front-door
key. It was as if a ghost had paid him a visit.
At that instant he began to loathe Lisbeth Salander with an intensity that blazed
like red-hot steel in his brain and transformed his life into an obsession to crush
her. He fantasized about killing her. He toyed with fantasies of having her crawl at
his feet and beg him for mercy. But he would be merciless. He would put his hands
around her throat and strangle her until she gasped for air. He wanted to tear her
eyes from their sockets and her heart from her chest. He wanted to erase her from
the earth.
Paradoxically, it was at this same moment that he felt as though he had begun to
function again, and he discovered in himself a surprising emotional balance. He was
obsessed with the woman and she was on his mind every waking minute. But he
had begun to think rationally again. If he was going to find a way of destroying her,
he would have to get his head in order. His life settled on a new objective.
He stopped fantasizing about her death and began planning for it.
Blomkvist passed less than six feet behind Advokat Bjurman’s back as he navigated
with two scalding glasses of caffè latte to editor in chief Erika Berger’s table at Café
Hedon. Neither he nor Berger had ever heard of Nils Bjurman, so neither was aware
of his being there.
Berger frowned and moved an ashtray aside to make room for her glass. Blomkvist
hung his jacket over the back of his chair, slid the ashtray over to his side of the
table, and lit a cigarette. Berger detested cigarette smoke and gave him a furious
look. He turned his head to blow the smoke away from her.
“I thought you gave up.”
“Temporary backsliding.”
“I’m going to stop having sex with guys who smell of smoke,” she said, smiling
sweetly.
“No problem. There are plenty of girls who aren’t so particular,” Blomkvist said,
smiling back.
Berger rolled her eyes. “So what’s the problem? I’m meeting Charlie at the theatre
in twenty minutes.” Charlie was Charlotta Rosenberg, a childhood friend.
“Our intern bothers me,” Blomkvist said. “I don’t mind her being the daughter of
one of your girlfriends, but she’s supposed to be in editorial for another eight
weeks and I don’t think I can put up with her that long.”
“I’ve noticed the hungry glances she’s been casting your way. Naturally I expect you
to behave like a gentleman.”
“Erika, the girl’s seventeen and has a mental age of ten, and I may be erring on the
generous side.”
“She’s just impressed. Probably a little hero worship.”
“At 10:30 last night she rang the entry phone on my building and wanted to come
up with a bottle of wine.”
“Oops,” Berger said.
“Oops is right. If I were twenty years younger I might not have even hesitated. I’m
going to be forty-five any day now.”
“Don’t remind me. We’re the same age.”
The Wennerström affair had given Blomkvist a certain celebrity. Over the past year
he had received invitations to the most improbable places, parties, and events. He
was greeted with air kisses from all sorts of people he had hardly shaken hands
with before. They were not primarily media people—he knew all of them already
and was on either good or bad terms with them—but so-called cultural figures and
B-list celebrities now wanted to appear as though they were his close friends. Now
it was the thing to have Mikael Blomkvist as your guest at a launch party or a
private dinner. “Sounds lovely, but unfortunately I’m already booked up,” was
becoming a routine response.
One downside of his star status was an increasing rash of rumours. An
acquaintance had mentioned with concern that he heard a rumour claiming that
Blomkvist had been seen at a rehab clinic. In fact Blomkvist’s total drug intake since
his teens consisted of half a dozen joints and one experiment with cocaine fifteen
years earlier with a female singer in a Dutch rock band. As to alcohol, he was only
ever seriously intoxicated at private dinners or parties. In a bar he would seldom
have more than one large, strong beer. He also liked to drink medium-strong beer.
His drinks cabinet at home had vodka and a few bottles of single malt Scotch, all
presents. It was absurd how rarely he indulged in them.
Blomkvist was single. The fact that he had occasional affairs was known both inside
and outside his circle of friends, and that had led to further rumours. His long-lasting affair with Erika Berger was frequently the subject of speculation. Lately it
had been bandied about that he picked up any number of women, and was
exploiting his new celebrity status to screw his way through the clientele of
Stockholm’s nightspots. An obscure journalist had once even urged him to seek
help for his sex addiction.
Blomkvist had indeed had many brief relationships. He knew he was reasonably
good-looking, but he had never considered himself exceptionally attractive. But he
had often been told that he had something that made women interested in him.
Berger had told him that he radiated self-confidence and security at the same time,
that he had an ability to make women feel at ease. Going to bed with him was not
threatening or complicated, but it might be erotically enjoyable. And that,
according to Blomkvist, was as it should be.
Blomkvist’s best relationships had been with women he knew well and whom he
liked a lot, so it was no accident that he had begun an affair with Berger twenty
years earlier, when she was a young journalist.
His present renown, however, had increased women’s interest in him to a point
that he found bizarre. Most astonishing were the young women who made
impulsive advances in unexpected circumstances.
But Blomkvist was not turned on by teenagers with miniskirts and perfect bodies.
When he was younger his women friends had often been older than he—in some
cases considerably older—and more experienced. Over time the age difference had
evened out. Salander had definitely been a step in the other direction.
And this was the reason for his hastily called meeting with Berger.
Millennium had taken on a media school graduate for work experience, as a favour
to one of Berger’s friends. This was nothing unusual; they had several interns each
year. Blomkvist had said a polite hello to the girl and rapidly discovered that she
had only the vaguest interest in journalism beyond that she “wanted to be seen on
TV” and that—Blomkvist suspected—at present it was quite a coup to work at
Millennium.
She did not miss an opportunity to be in close contact with him. He pretended not
to notice her blatant advances, but that only induced her to redouble her efforts.
Quite simply, it was becoming tiresome.
Berger burst out laughing. “Good Lord, you’re being sexually harassed at work.”
“Ricky, this is a drag. There’s no way I want to hurt or embarrass her. But she’s no
more subtle than a mare in heat. I’m worried what she might come up with next.”
“She’s got a crush on you and she’s too young to know how to express herself.”
“You’re wrong. She knows damned well how to express herself. There’s something
warped about how far she goes, and she’s getting annoyed that I’m not taking the
bait. I don’t need a new wave of rumours making me out to be some lecherous
rock-star type on the hunt for a nice lay.”
“OK, but let me get to the nub of the problem. She rang your doorbell last night—is
that the extent of it?”
“With a bottle of wine. She said she’d been to a party at a friend’s house close by
and tried to make it look like pure chance that she found herself in my building.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I didn’t let her in, obviously. I said that she’d come at an awkward time, that I had
a friend there.”
“How did she take that?”
“She was really upset, but she did leave.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Get her off my back. I’m thinking of having a serious talk with her on Monday.
Either she lays off or I’ll kick her out of the office.”
Berger thought for a moment. “Let me have a talk with her. She’s looking for a
friend, not a lover.”
“I don’t know what she’s looking for, but…”
“Mikael. I’ve been through what she’s going through. I’ll talk to her.”
Like everyone else who had watched TV or read an evening paper in the past year,
Bjurman had heard of Mikael Blomkvist. But he did not recognize him in Café
Hedon, and in any case he had no idea that there was a connection between
Salander and Millennium.
Besides, he was too wrapped up in his own thoughts to pay attention to his
surroundings.
Ever since the lifting of his mental paralysis, he had been continuously circling
round and round the same conundrum.
Salander had in her possession a video of his assault on her which she had recorded
with a hidden camera. She had made him watch the video. There was no room for
favourable interpretations. If it ever got to the Guardianship Agency, or, God forbid,
if it ended up in the hands of the media, his career, his freedom, and his life would
be over. He knew the penalties for aggravated rape, exploitation of a person in a
subordinate position, abuse and aggravated abuse; he reckoned he would get at
least six years in prison. A zealous prosecutor might use one section of the video as
the basis for a charge of attempted murder.
He had all but asphyxiated her during the rape when he had excitedly pressed a
pillow over her face. He devoutly wished he had finished the job.
They would not accept that she was the whole time playing a game. She had
enticed him with her cute little-girl eyes, had seduced him with a body that looked
like a twelve-year-old’s. She had provoked him to rape her. They would never see
that she had in fact put on a performance. She had planned…
The first thing he would have to do was to gain possession of the video and make
sure somehow that there were no copies. That was the crux of the problem.
There was no doubt in his mind that a witch like Salander would have made
enemies over the years. Here Bjurman had an advantage. Unlike anyone else who
might try to get at her, he had access to all her medical records, welfare reports,
and psychiatric assessments. He was one of the very few people in Sweden who
knew her secrets.
The personal file that the agency had copied to him when he agreed to serve as her
guardian had been a mere fifteen pages that mainly presented a picture of her
adult life, a summary of the assessment made by the court-appointed psychiatrists,
the district court’s ruling to place her under guardianship, and her bank statements
for the preceding year.
He had read the file over and over. Then he had begun systematically to gather
information on Salander’s life.
As a lawyer he was well practiced in extracting information from the records of
public authorities. As her guardian he was able to penetrate the layers of
confidentiality surrounding her medical records. He could get hold of every
document he wanted that dealt with Salander.
It had nevertheless taken months to put together her life, detail by detail, from her
first elementary school reports to social workers’ reports to police reports and
transcripts from the district court. He had discussed her condition with Dr. Jesper
H. Löderman, the psychiatrist who on her eighteenth birthday had recommended
that she be institutionalized. Löderman gave him a rundown of the case. Everyone
was helpful. A woman at the welfare agency had even praised him for showing
such determination to understand every aspect of Salander’s life.
He found a real gold mine of information in the form of two notebooks in a box
gathering dust in the archive of the Guardianship Agency. The notebooks had been
compiled by Bjurman’s predecessor, the lawyer Holger Palmgren, who had
apparently come to know Salander as well as or better than anyone. Palmgren had
conscientiously submitted a report each year to the agency, and Bjurman supposed
Salander had probably not known that Palmgren also made meticulous notes for
himself. Palmgren’s notebooks had ended up with the Guardianship Agency, where
it seemed no-one had read their contents since he had suffered a stroke two years
earlier.
They were the originals. There was no indication that copies had ever been made.
Perfect.
Palmgren’s picture of Salander was completely different from what could be
deduced from the welfare agency’s report. He had been able to follow her laborious
progress from unruly teenager to young woman to employee at Milton Security—a
job she had obtained through Palmgren’s own contacts. Bjurman learned from
these notes that Salander was by no means a slow-witted office junior who did the
photocopying and made coffee. On the contrary, she had a real job, carrying out
real investigations for Dragan Armansky, Milton’s CEO. Palmgren and Armansky
obviously knew each other well and exchanged information about their protégée
from time to time.
Salander seemed to have only two friends in her life. Palmgren was out of the
picture now. Armansky remained, and could possibly be a threat. Bjurman decided
to steer clear of Armansky.
The notebooks had explained a lot. Bjurman understood how Salander had
discovered so much about him. He could not for the life of him see how she had
found out about his visit to the plastic surgery clinic in France, but much of the
mystery surrounding her had vanished. She made her living burrowing into other
people’s lives. He at once took fresh precautions with his own investigations and
decided that since Salander had access to his apartment, it was not a good idea to
keep any papers there that dealt with her case. He gathered all the documentation
and filled a cardboard box to take to his summer cabin near Stallarholmen, where
he was spending more and more of his time in solitary brooding.
The more he read about Salander, the more convinced he became that she was
pathologically unwell. He shuddered to remember how she had handcuffed him to
his bed. He had been totally under her control then, and he did not doubt that she
would make good her threat to kill him if he provoked her.
She lacked social inhibitions, one of her reports stated. Well, he could conclude a
stage or two further: she was a sick, murderous, insane fucking person. A loose
cannon. A whore.
• • •
Palmgren’s notebooks had provided Bjurman with the final key. On several
occasions he had recorded very personal diary-type accounts of conversations that
he had had with Salander. A crazy old man. In two of these conversations he had
used the expression “when ‘All The Evil’ happened.” Presumably Palmgren had
borrowed the expression directly from Salander, but it was not clear what event it
referred to.
Bjurman wrote down the words All The Evil. The years in foster homes? Some
particular attack? The explanation ought to be there in the documentation to
which he already had access.
He opened the psychiatric assessment of Salander as an eighteen-year-old and read
it through for the fifth or sixth time. There had to be a gap in his knowledge.
He had excerpts from journal entries from elementary school, an affidavit to the
effect that Salander’s mother was incapable of taking care of her, and reports from
various foster homes during her teens.
Something had set off the madness when she was twelve.
There were other gaps in her biography.
He discovered to his great surprise that Salander had a twin sister who had not
been referred to in any of the material to which he had previously had access. My
God, there are two of them. But he could not find any reference to what had
happened to the sister.
The father was unknown, and there was no explanation as to why her mother
could not take care of her. Bjurman had supposed that she had become ill and that
as a result the whole process had begun, including the spells in the children’s
psychiatric unit. But now he was sure that something had happened to Salander
when she was twelve or thirteen. All The Evil. A trauma of some kind. But there
was no indication in Palmgren’s notes as to what “All The Evil” could have been.
In the psychiatric assessment he finally found a reference to an attachment that
was missing—the number of a police report dated March 12, 1991. It was
handwritten in the margin of the copy from the social welfare agency archive.
When he put in a request for the report he was told that it was stamped “TOP
SECRET by Order of His Royal Highness,” but that he could file an appeal with the
relevant government department.
Bjurman was stymied. The fact that a police report dealing with a twelve-year-old
girl was classified was not in itself surprising—there could be all manner of reasons
for the protection of privacy. But he was Salander’s guardian and had the right to
study any document at all which concerned her. He could not understand why
gaining access to such a report should require an appeal to a government
department.
He submitted his application. Two months passed before he was informed that his
request had been denied. What could there be in a police report almost fourteen
years old about so young a girl to classify it as top secret? What possible threat
could it contain to Sweden’s government?
He returned to Palmgren’s diary, trying to tease out what might be meant by “All
The Evil.” But he found no clue. It had to have been discussed between Palmgren
and his ward but never written down. The references to “All The Evil” came at the
end of the second notebook. Perhaps Palmgren had never had time to write up his
own conclusions about this apparently crucial series of events before he had his
stroke.
Palmgren had been Salander’s trustee from her thirteenth birthday and her
guardian from the day she turned eighteen. So he had been involved shortly after
“All The Evil” had taken place and Salander was put away in the children’s
psychiatric unit. Chances were that he knew about everything that had happened.
Bjurman went back to the archive of the Guardianship Agency, this time to find the
detailed brief of Palmgren’s assignment, drawn up by the social welfare agency. At
first glance the description was disappointing: two pages of background
information. Salander’s mother was now incapable of bringing up her daughter; the
two children had to be separated; Camilla Salander was placed through the social
welfare agency in a foster family; Lisbeth Salander was confined at St. Stefan’s
children’s psychiatric clinic. No alternative was discussed.
Why? Only a cryptic formulation: “In view of the events of 3/12/91 the social welfare
agency has determined that…” Then again a reference to the classified police report.
But here there was the name of the policeman who wrote the report.
Bjurman registered the name with shock. He knew it well. Indeed he knew it very
well, and this discovery put matters in a wholly new light. It still took him two
more months to get the report, this time via completely different methods. It
consisted of forty-seven pages of A4, with a dozen or so pages of notes that were
added over a six-year period. And finally the photographs. And the name.
My God… it can’t be possible.
Now he realized why the report had been stamped top secret.
There was one other person who had reason to hate Salander with the same
passion as he did.
He had an ally, the most improbable ally he could have imagined.
Bjurman was roused from his reverie by a shadow falling across the table at Café
Hedon. He looked up and saw a blond … giant was the only word for him. For a few
seconds he recoiled before he regained his composure.
The man looking down at him stood more than six foot six and had an
exceptionally powerful build. A bodybuilder without a doubt. Bjurman could not see
a hint of fat. The man made a terrifying impression. His blond hair was cropped
close at the sides with a short shock left on top. He had an oval, oddly soft, almost
childlike face. His ice-blue eyes, however, were not remotely gentle. He was dressed
in a midlength black leather jacket, blue shirt, black tie, and black trousers. The last
thing Bjurman noticed was his hands. If all of the rest of him was large, his hands
were enormous.
“Advokat Bjurman?”
He spoke with some European accent, but his voice was so peculiarly high-pitched
that Bjurman was tempted to smile. With difficulty he kept his expression neutral
and nodded.
“We got your letter.”
“Who are you? I wanted to meet…”
The man with the enormous hands was already sitting opposite Bjurman and cut
him off.
“You’ll have to meet me instead. Tell me what you want.”
Bjurman hesitated. He disliked intensely the idea of having to be at the mercy of a
stranger. But it was a necessity. He reminded himself that he was not alone in
having a grudge against Salander. It was a question of recruiting allies. In a low
voice he explained his business.

Categories: The Girl who Played with Fire