The Girl Who Played with Fire (6 page)

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.