The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Trilogy Bundle

by Stieg Larsson

  “I heard that you had a disagreement about a headline with Anders Holm.”

  “We didn’t agree on the angle in the article about the government’s tax proposal. He inserted an opinion into the headline in the news section, which is supposed to be neutral. Opinions should be reserved for the editorial page. And while I’m on this topic … I’ll be writing editorials from time to time, but as I told you, I’m not active in any political party, so we have to solve the problem of who’s going to be in charge of the editorial section.”

  “Magnusson can take over for the time being,” said Borgsjö.

  Erika shrugged. “It makes no difference to me whom you appoint. But it should be somebody who clearly stands for the newspaper’s views. That’s where they should be aired, not in the news section.”

  “Quite right. What I wanted to say was that you’ll probably have to give Holm some concessions. He’s worked at SMP a long time, and he’s been news chief for fifteen years. He knows what he’s doing. He can be surly sometimes, but he’s irreplaceable.”

  “I know. Morander told me. But when it comes to policy he’s going to have to toe the line. I’m the one you hired to run the paper.”

  Borgsjö thought for a moment and said: “We’re going to have to solve these problems as they come up.”

  Giannini was both tired and irritated on Wednesday evening as she boarded the X2000 at Göteborg Central Station. She felt as if she had been living on the X2000 for a month. She bought a coffee in the restaurant car, went to her seat, and opened the folder of notes from her last conversation with Salander. Who was also the reason why she was feeling tired and irritated.

  She’s hiding something. That little fool is not telling me the truth. And Micke is hiding something too. God knows what they’re playing at.

  She also decided that since her brother and her client had not so far communicated with each other, the conspiracy—if it was one—had to be a tacit agreement that had developed naturally. She did not understand what it was about, but it had to be something that her brother considered important enough to conceal.

  She was afraid that it was a moral issue, because that was one of his weaknesses. He was Salander’s friend. She knew her brother. She knew that he was loyal to the point of foolhardiness once he had made someone a friend, even if the friend was impossible and obviously flawed. She also knew that he could accept any number of idiocies from his friends, but that there was a boundary and it could not be overstepped. Where exactly this boundary was seemed to vary from one person to another, but she knew he had broken completely with people who had previously been close friends because they had done something that he regarded as beyond the pale. And he was inflexible. The break was forever.

  Giannini understood what went on in her brother’s head. But she had no idea what Salander was up to. Sometimes she thought that there was nothing going on in there at all.

  She had gathered that Salander could be moody and withdrawn. Until she met her in person, Giannini had supposed it must be some phase, and that it was a question of gaining her trust. But after a month of conversations—ignoring the fact that the first two weeks had been wasted time because Salander was hardly able to speak—their communication was still distinctly one-sided.

  Salander seemed at times to be in a deep depression and had not the slightest interest in dealing with her situation or her future. She simply did not grasp or did not care that the only way Giannini could provide her with an effective defence would be if she had access to all the facts. There was no way she was going to be able to work in the dark.

  Salander was sulky, and often just silent. When she did say something, she took a long time to think, and she chose her words carefully. Often she did not reply at all, and sometimes she would answer a question that Giannini had asked several days earlier. During the police interviews, Salander had sat in utter silence, staring straight ahead. With rare exceptions, she had refused to say a single word to the police. The exceptions were on those occasions when Inspector Erlander had asked her what she knew about Niedermann. Then she looked up at him and answered every question in a perfectly matter-of-fact way. As soon as he changed the subject, she lost interest.

  On principle, she knew, Salander never talked to the authorities. In this case, that was an advantage. Despite the fact that she kept urging her client to answer questions from the police, deep inside she was pleased with Salander’s silence. The reason was simple. It was a consistent silence. It contained no lies that could entangle her, no contradictory reasoning that would look bad in court.

  But she was astonished at how imperturbable Salander was. When they were alone she had asked her why she so provocatively refused to talk to the police.

  “They’ll twist what I say and use it against me.”

  “But if you don’t explain yourself, you risk being convicted anyway.”

  “Then that’s how it’ll have to be. I didn’t make all this mess. And if they want to convict me, it’s not my problem.”

  Salander had in the end described to her lawyer almost everything that had happened at Stallarholmen. All except for one thing. She would not explain how Magge Lundin had ended up with a bullet in his foot. No matter how much she asked and nagged, Salander would just stare at her and smile her crooked smile.

  She had also told Giannini what had happened in Gosseberga. But she had not said anything about why she had confronted her father. Had she gone there expressly to murder him—as the prosecutor claimed—or was it to make him listen to reason?

  When Giannini raised the subject of her former guardian, Nils Bjurman, Salander said only that she was not the one who shot him. That particular murder was no longer one of the charges against her. And when Giannini reached the very crux of the whole chain of events, the role of Dr. Teleborian in the psychiatric clinic in 1991, Salander lapsed into such inexhaustible silence that it seemed she might never utter a word again.

  This is getting us nowhere, Giannini decided. If she won’t trust me, we’re going to lose the case.

  Salander sat on the edge of her bed, looking out the window. She could see the building on the other side of the parking lot. She had sat undisturbed and motionless for an hour, ever since Giannini had stormed out and slammed the door behind her. She had a headache again, but it was mild and distant. Yet she felt uncomfortable.

  She was irritated with Giannini. From a practical point of view she could see why her lawyer kept going on and on about details from her past. Rationally, she understood it. Giannini needed to have all the facts. But Salander did not have the remotest wish to talk about her feelings or her actions. Her life was her own business. It was not her fault that her father had been a pathological sadist and murderer. It was not her fault that her brother was a murderer. And thank God nobody yet knew that he was her brother, which would otherwise no doubt also be held against her in the psychiatric evaluation that sooner or later would inevitably be conducted. She was not the one who had killed Svensson and Johansson. She was not responsible for appointing a guardian who turned out to be a pig and a rapist.

  And yet it was her life that was going to be turned inside out. She would be forced to explain herself and to beg for forgiveness because she had defended herself.

  She just wanted to be left in peace. When it came down to it, she was the one who would have to live with herself. She did not expect anyone to be her friend. Annika Fucking Giannini was most likely on her side, but it was the professional friendship of a professional person who was her lawyer. Kalle Fucking Blomkvist was out there somewhere—Giannini was for some reason reluctant to talk about her brother, and Salander never asked. She did not expect that he would be quite so interested now that the Svensson murder was solved and he had his story.

  She wondered what Armansky thought of her after all that had happened.

  She wondered how Holger Palmgren viewed the situation.

  According to Giannini, both of them said they would be in her corner, but those we
re words. They could not do anything to solve her private problems.

  She wondered how Miriam Wu felt about her.

  She wondered what she thought of herself, and came to the realization that she felt mostly indifference towards her entire life.

  She was interrupted when the Securitas guard put the key in the door to let in Dr. Jonasson.

  “Good evening, Fröken Salander. And how are you feeling today?”

  “OK,” she said.

  He checked her chart and saw that she was free of her fever. She had gotten used to his visits, which came a couple of times a week. Of all the people who touched her and poked at her, he was the only one in whom she had a measure of trust. She never felt that he was giving her strange looks. He visited her room, chatted for a while, and examined her to check on her progress. He did not ask any questions about Niedermann or Zalachenko, or whether she was off her rocker or why the police kept her locked up. He seemed to be interested only in how her muscles were working, how the healing in her brain was progressing, and how she felt in general.

  Besides, he had—literally—rooted around in her brain. Someone who rummaged around in your brain had to be treated with respect. To her surprise she found Dr. Jonasson’s visits pleasant, despite the fact that he poked at her and fussed over her fever chart.

  “Do you mind if I check?”

  He made his usual examination, looking at her pupils, listening to her breathing, taking her pulse and her blood pressure, and checking how she swallowed.

  “How am I doing?”

  “You’re on the road to recovery. But you have to work harder on the exercises. And you’re picking at the scab on your head. You need to stop that.” He paused. “May I ask a personal question?”

  She looked at him. He waited until she nodded.

  “That dragon tattoo … Why did you get it?”

  “You didn’t see it before?”

  He smiled all of a sudden.

  “I mean, I’ve glanced at it, but when you were uncovered I was pretty busy stopping the bleeding and extracting bullets and so on.”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Out of curiosity, nothing more.”

  Salander thought for a while. Then she looked at him.

  “I got it for reasons that I don’t want to discuss.”

  “Forget I asked.”

  “Do you want to see it?”

  He looked surprised. “Sure. Why not?”

  She turned her back and pulled the hospital gown off her shoulder. She sat so that the light from the window fell on her back. He looked at her dragon. It was beautiful and professionally done, a work of art.

  After a while she turned her head.

  “Satisfied?”

  “It’s beautiful. But it must have hurt like hell.”

  “Yes,” she said. “It hurt.”

  Jonasson left Salander’s room somewhat confused. He was satisfied with the progress of her physical rehabilitation. But he could not work out this strange girl. He did not need a master’s degree in psychology to know that she was not doing very well emotionally. The tone she used with him was polite, but filled with suspicion. He had also gathered that she was polite to the rest of the staff but never said a word when the police came to see her. She was locked up inside her shell and kept her distance from those around her.

  The police had locked her in her hospital room, and a prosecutor intended to charge her with attempted murder and aggravated assault. He was amazed that such a small, thin girl had the physical strength for this sort of violent criminality, especially when the violence was directed at full-grown men.

  He had asked about her dragon tattoo in the hope of finding a personal topic he could discuss with her. He was not particularly interested in why she had decorated herself in such a way, but he supposed that since she had chosen such a striking tattoo, it must have a special meaning for her. He thought simply that it might be a way to start a conversation.

  His visits to her were outside his schedule, since Dr. Endrin was assigned to her case. But Jonasson was head of the trauma unit, and he was proud of what had been achieved that night when Salander was brought into the ER. He had made the right decision, electing to remove the bullet. As far as he could see, she had no complications in the form of memory lapses, diminished bodily function, or other handicaps from the injury. If she continued to heal at the same pace, she would leave the hospital with a scar on her scalp, but with no other visible damage. Scars on her soul were another matter.

  Returning to his office, he discovered a man in a dark suit leaning against the wall outside his door. He had a thick head of hair and a well-groomed goatee.

  “Dr. Jonasson?”

  “Yes?”

  “My name is Peter Teleborian. I’m the head physician at St. Stefan’s psychiatric clinic in Uppsala.”

  “Yes, I recognize you.”

  “Good. I’d like to have a word in private with you if you have a moment.”

  Jonasson unlocked the door and ushered the visitor in. “How can I help you?”

  “It’s about one of your patients, Lisbeth Salander. I need to visit her.”

  “You’ll have to get permission from the prosecutor. She’s under arrest, and all visitors are prohibited. Any applications for visits must also be referred in advance to Salander’s lawyer.”

  “Yes, yes, I know. I thought we might be able to cut through all the red tape in this case. I’m a physician, so you could let me have the opportunity to visit her on medical grounds.”

  “Yes, there might be a case for that, but I can’t see what your objective is.”

  “For several years I was Lisbeth Salander’s psychiatrist, when she was institutionalized at St. Stefan’s. I followed up with her until she turned eighteen, when the district court released her back into society, albeit under guardianship. I should perhaps mention that I opposed that action. Since then she has been allowed to drift aimlessly, and the consequences are there for all to see today.”

  “Indeed?”

  “I feel a great responsibility towards her still, and would value the chance to gauge how much deterioration has occurred over the past decade.”

  “Deterioration?”

  “Compared to when she was receiving qualified care as a teenager. I thought we might be able to come to an understanding here, as one doctor to another.”

  “While I have it fresh in my mind, perhaps you could help me with a matter I don’t quite understand … as one doctor to another, that is. When Lisbeth Salander was admitted to Sahlgrenska hospital I performed a comprehensive medical examination on her. A colleague sent for the forensic report on the patient. It was signed by a Dr. Jesper H. Löderman.”

  “That’s correct. I was Dr. Löderman’s assistant when he was in practice.”

  “I see. But I noticed that the report was vague in the extreme.”

  “Really?”

  “It contains no diagnosis. It almost seems to be an academic study of a patient who refuses to speak.”

  Teleborian laughed. “Yes, she certainly isn’t easy to deal with. As it says in the report, she consistently refused to participate in conversations with Dr. Löderman. With the result that he was bound to express himself rather imprecisely. Which was entirely correct on his part.”

  “And yet the recommendation was that she should be institutionalized?”

  “That was based on her prior history. We had experience with her pathology compiled over many years.”

  “That’s exactly what I don’t understand. When she was admitted here, we sent for a copy of her file from St. Stefan’s. But we still haven’t received it.”

  “I’m sorry about that. But it’s been classified top secret by order of the district court.”

  “And how are we supposed to give her the proper care here if we can’t have access to her records? The medical responsibility for her right now is ours, no-one else’s.”

  “I’ve taken care of her since she was twelve, and I don’t thi
nk there is any other doctor in Sweden with the same insight into her clinical condition.”

  “Which is what?”

  “Lisbeth Salander suffers from a serious mental disorder. Psychiatry, as you know, is not an exact science. I would hesitate to confine myself to an exact diagnosis, but she has obvious delusions with distinct paranoid schizophrenic characteristics. Her clinical status also includes periods of manic depression, and she lacks empathy.”

  Jonasson looked intently at Dr. Teleborian for ten seconds before he said: “I won’t argue a diagnosis with you, Dr. Teleborian, but have you ever considered a significantly simpler diagnosis?”

  “Such as?”

  “For example, Asperger’s syndrome. Of course, I haven’t done a psychiatric evaluation of her, but if I had to hazard a guess, I would consider some form of autism. That would explain her inability to relate to social conventions.”

  “I’m sorry, but Asperger’s patients do not generally set fire to their parents. Believe me, I’ve never met such a clearly defined sociopath.”

  “I consider her to be withdrawn, but not a paranoid sociopath.”

  “She is extremely manipulative,” Teleborian said. “She acts the way she thinks you would expect her to act.”

  Jonasson frowned. Teleborian was contradicting his own reading of Salander. If there was one thing Jonasson felt sure of about her, it was that she was not manipulative. On the contrary, she was a person who stubbornly kept her distance from those around her and showed no emotion at all. He tried to reconcile the picture that Teleborian was painting with his own image of Salander.

  “And you’ve seen her only for a short period, when she has been forced to be passive because of her injuries. I have witnessed her violent outbursts and unreasoning hatred. I have spent years trying to help Lisbeth Salander. That’s why I’m here. I propose a cooperation between Sahlgrenska hospital and St. Stefan’s.”

  “What sort of cooperation are you talking about?”

  “You’re responsible for her medical condition, and I’m convinced that it’s the best care she could receive. But I’m extremely worried about her mental state, and I would like to be included at an early stage. I’m ready to offer all the help I can.”