CHAPTER 9
Wednesday, May 4

Three days after Berger started as acting editor in chief of SMP, current Editor in Chief Håkan Morander died at lunchtime. He had been in the glass cage all morning, while Berger and assistant editor Peter Fredriksson met the sports editors so that she could get to know her colleagues and find out how they worked. Fredriksson was forty-five years old and also relatively new to the paper. He was taciturn but pleasant, with broad experience. Berger had already decided that she would be able to depend on Fredriksson’s insights when she took command of the ship. She was spending a good part of her time evaluating the people she might be able to count on and could then make part of her new regime. Fredriksson was definitely a candidate.

When they got back to the news desk they saw Morander get up and come over to the door of the glass cage. He looked startled.

Then he leaned forward, grabbed the back of a chair, and held on to it for a few seconds before he collapsed to the floor.

He was dead before the ambulance arrived.

There was a confused atmosphere in the newsroom throughout the afternoon. CEO Borgsjö arrived at 2:00 and gathered the employees for a brief memorial to Morander. He spoke of how Morander had dedicated more than a decade of his life to the newspaper, and the price that the work of a newspaperman can sometimes exact. Finally he called for a minute’s silence.

Berger realized that several of her new colleagues were looking at her. The unknown quantity.

She cleared her throat, and without being invited to, without knowing what she would say, took half a step forward and spoke in a firm voice: “I knew Håkan Morander for all of three days. That’s too short a time, but from even the little I managed to know of him, I can honestly say that I would have wanted very much to know him better.”

She paused when she saw out of the corner of her eye that Borgsjö was staring at her. He seemed surprised that she was saying anything at all. She took another pace forward.

“Your editor in chief’s untimely departure will create problems in the newsroom. I was supposed to take over from him in two months, and I was counting on having the time to learn from his experience.”

She saw that Borgsjö had opened his mouth as if to say something himself.

“That won’t happen now, and we’re going to go through a period of adjustment. But Morander was editor in chief of a daily newspaper, and this paper will come out tomorrow too. There are now nine hours left before we go to press and four before the front page has to be resolved. May I ask . . . who among you was Morander’s closest confidant?”

A brief silence followed as the staff looked at one another. Finally Berger heard a voice from the left side of the room.

“That would probably be me.”

It was Gunnar Magnusson, assistant editor of the front page, who had worked on the paper for thirty-five years.

“Somebody has to write an obit. I can’t do it . . . that would be presumptuous of me. Could you possibly write it?”

Magnusson hesitated a moment but then said, “I’ll do it.”

“We’ll use the whole front page and move everything else back.”

Magnusson nodded.

“We need images.” She glanced to her right and met the eye of the photo editor, Lennart Torkelsson. He nodded.

“We have to get busy on this. Things might be a bit rocky at first. When I need help making a decision, I’ll ask your advice and I’ll depend on your skill and experience. You know how the paper is made, and I still have a lot to learn.”

She turned to Fredriksson.

“Peter, Morander put a great deal of trust in you. You will have to be something of a mentor to me for the time being, and carry a heavier load than usual. I’m asking you to be my adviser.”

He nodded. What else could he do?

She returned to the subject of the front page.

“One more thing. Morander was writing his editorial this morning. Gunnar, could you get into his computer and see whether he finished it? Even if it’s not quite rounded out, we’ll publish it. It was his last editorial, and it would be a crying shame not to print it. The paper we’re making today is still Håkan Morander’s paper.”

Silence.

“If any of you need a little personal time, or want to take a break to think for a while, do it, please. You all know our deadlines.”

Silence. She noticed that some people were nodding their approval.

“Go to work, boys and girls,” she said in English in a low voice.

Holmberg threw up his hands in a helpless gesture. Bublanski and Modig looked dubious. Andersson’s expression was neutral. They were scrutinizing the results of the preliminary investigation that Holmberg had completed that morning.

“Nothing?” Modig said. She sounded surprised.

“Nothing,” Holmberg said, shaking his head. “The pathologist’s final report arrived this morning. Nothing to indicate anything but suicide by hanging.”

They looked once more at the photographs taken in the living room of the summer cabin in Smådalarö. Everything pointed to the conclusion that Gunnar Björck, assistant chief of the immigration division of the Security Police, had climbed onto a stool, tied a rope to the lamp hook, placed it around his neck, and then with great resolve kicked the stool across the room. The pathologist was unable to supply the exact time of death, but he had established that it occurred on the afternoon of April 12. The body had been discovered on April 19 by none other than Inspector Andersson. This happened because Bublanski had repeatedly tried to get ahold of Björck. Annoyed, he finally sent Andersson to bring him in.

Sometime during that week, the lamp hook in the ceiling came away and Björck’s body fell to the floor. Andersson had seen the body through a window and called in the alarm. Bublanski and the others who arrived at the summer house had treated it as a crime scene from the word go, taking it for granted that Björck had been garrotted by someone. Later that day the forensic team found the lamp hook. Holmberg had been assigned to work out how Björck had died.

“There’s nothing whatsoever to suggest a crime, or that Björck was not alone at the time,” Holmberg said.

“The lamp?”

“The ceiling lamp has fingerprints from the owner of the cabin—who put it up two years ago—and Björck himself. Which indicates that he took the lamp down.”

“Where did the rope come from?”

“From the flagpole in the garden. Someone cut off about six feet of rope. There was a Mora sheath knife on the windowsill outside the back door. According to the owner of the house, it’s his knife. He normally keeps it in a tool drawer under the kitchen counter. Björck’s prints were on the handle and the blade, as well as on the tool drawer.”

“Hmm,” Modig said.

“What sort of knots?” Andersson said.

“Granny knots. Even the noose was just a loop. It’s probably the only thing that’s a bit odd. Björck was a sailor; he would have known how to tie proper knots. But who knows how much attention a person contemplating suicide would pay to the knots on his own noose?”

“What about drugs?”

“According to the toxicology report, Björck had traces of a strong painkiller in his blood. That medication had been prescribed for him. He also had traces of alcohol, but the percentage was negligible. In other words, he was more or less sober.”

“The pathologist wrote that there were graze wounds.”

“A graze over an inch long on the outside of his left knee. A scratch, really. I’ve thought about it, but it could have come about in a dozen different ways . . . for instance, if he walked into the corner of a table or a bench.”

Modig held up a photograph of Björck’s distorted face. The noose had cut so deeply into his flesh that the rope itself was hidden in the skin of his neck. The face was grotesquely swollen.

“He hung there for something like twenty-four hours before the hook gave way. All the blood was either in his head—the noose having prevented it from running into his body—or in the lower extremities. When the hook came out and his body fell, his chest hit the coffee table, causing deep bruising there. But this injury happened long after the time of death.”

“Hell of a way to die,” said Andersson.

“I don’t know. The noose was so thin that it pinched deep and stopped the blood flow. He was probably unconscious within a few seconds, and dead in one or two minutes.”

Bublanski closed the preliminary report with distaste. He did not like this. He absolutely did not like the fact that Zalachenko and Björck had, so far as they could tell, both died on the same day. But no amount of speculating could change the fact that the crime scene investigation offered no grain of support to the theory that a third party had helped Björck on his way.

“He was under a lot of pressure,” Bublanski said. “He knew that the whole Zalachenko affair was in danger of being exposed and that he risked a prison sentence for sex-trade crimes, plus being hung out to dry in the media. I wonder which scared him more. He was sick, had been suffering chronic pain for a long time. . . . I don’t know. I wish he had left a letter.”

“Many suicides don’t.”

“I know. OK. We’ll put Björck to one side for now. We have no choice.”

Berger could not bring herself to sit at Morander’s desk right away, or to move his belongings aside. She arranged for Magnusson to talk to Morander’s family so that the widow could come herself when it was convenient, or send someone to sort out his things.

Instead she had an area cleared off the central desk in the heart of the newsroom, and there she set up her laptop and took command. It was chaotic. But three hours after she had taken the helm of SMP in such appalling circumstances, the front page went to press. Magnusson had put together a four-column article about Morander’s life and career. The page was designed around a black-bordered portrait, almost all of it above the fold, with his unfinished editorial to the left and a frieze of photographs along the bottom edge. The layout was not perfect, but it had a strong emotional impact.

Just before 6:00, as Berger was going through the headlines on page two and discussing the text with the head of copyediting, Borgsjö approached and touched her shoulder. She looked up.

“Could I have a word?”

They went together to the coffee machine in the cafeteria.

“I just wanted to say that I’m really very pleased with the way you took control today. I think you surprised us all.”

“I didn’t have much choice. But I may stumble a bit before I really get going.”

“We understand that.”

“We?”

“I mean the staff and the board. The board especially. But after what happened today, I’m more than ever persuaded that you were the ideal choice. You came here in the nick of time, and you took charge in a very difficult situation.”

Berger almost blushed. But she had not done that since she was fourteen.

“Could I give you a piece of advice?”

“Of course.”

“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 were 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 think 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.”

“I see.”

“So I do need access to her to do a first-hand evaluation of her condition.”

“Unfortunately, I cannot help you.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“As I said, she’s under arrest. If you want to initiate any psychiatric treatment of her, you’ll have to apply to Prosecutor Jervas here in Göteborg. She’s the one who makes the decisions on these things. And it would have to be done, I repeat, in cooperation with Salander’s lawyer, Annika Giannini. If it’s a matter of a forensic psychiatric report, then the district court would have to issue you a warrant.”

“It was just that sort of bureaucratic procedure I wanted to avoid.”

“Understood, but I’m responsible for Salander, and if she’s going to be taken to court in the near future, we need to have clear documentation of all the measures we have taken. So we’re bound to observe the bureaucratic procedures.”

“All right. Then I might as well tell you that I’ve already received a formal commission from Prosecutor Ekström in Stockholm to do a forensic psychiatric report. It will be needed in connection with the trial.”

“Then you can also obtain formal access to visit her through the appropriate channels without sidestepping regulations.”

“But while we’re discussing bureaucracy, there is a risk that her condition may continue to deteriorate. I’m only interested in her well-being.”

“So am I,” Jonasson said. “And between us, I can tell you that I see no sign of mental illness. She has been badly treated and is under a lot of pressure. But I see no evidence whatsoever that she is schizophrenic or suffering from paranoid delusions.”

When at long last he realized that it was fruitless trying to persuade Jonasson to change his mind, Teleborian got up abruptly and took his leave.

Jonasson sat for a while, staring at the chair Teleborian had been sitting in. It was not unusual for other doctors to contact him with advice or opinions on treatment. But that usually happened only with patients whose doctors were already managing their treatment. He had never before seen a psychiatrist land like a flying saucer, ignore all the protocols, and more or less demand to be given access to a patient—a patient whom he obviously had not been treating for several years. After a while Jonasson glanced at his watch and saw that it was almost 7:00. He picked up the phone and called Martina Karlgren, the psychologist at Sahlgrenska who had been made available to trauma patients.

“Hello. I’m assuming you’ve already left for the day. Am I disturbing you?”

“No problem. I’m at home, but just puttering.”

“I’m curious about something. You’ve spoken to our notorious patient, Lisbeth Salander. Could you give me your impression of her?”

“Well, I’ve visited her three times and offered to talk with her. Every time she declined in a friendly but firm way.”

“What’s your impression of her?”

“What do you mean?”

“Martina, I know that you’re not a psychiatrist, but you’re an intelligent and sensible person. What general impression did you get of her nature, her state of mind?”

After a while Karlgren said: “I’m not sure how I should answer that question. I saw her twice soon after she was admitted, but she was in such wretched shape that I didn’t make any real contact with her. Then I visited her about a week ago, at the request of Helena Endrin.”

“Why did Helena ask you to visit her?”

“Salander is starting to recover. She mainly just lies there staring at the ceiling. Dr. Endrin wanted me to look in on her.”

“And what happened?”

“I introduced myself. We chatted for a couple of minutes. I asked how she was feeling and whether she felt the need to have someone to talk to. She said that she didn’t. I asked if I could help her with anything. She asked me to smuggle in a pack of cigarettes.”

“Was she angry, or hostile?”

“No, I wouldn’t say that. She was calm, but she kept her distance. I considered her request for cigarettes more of a joke than a serious need. I asked if she wanted something to read, whether I could bring her books of any sort. At first she said no, but later she asked if I had any scientific journals that dealt with genetics and brain research.”

“With what?”

“Genetics.”

“Genetics?”

“Yes. I told her that there were some popular science books on the subject in our library. She wasn’t interested in those. She said she’d read books on the subject before, and she named some standard works that I’d never heard of. She was more interested in pure research in the field.”

“Good grief.”

“I said that we probably didn’t have any more advanced books in the patient library—we have more Philip Marlowe than scientific literature—but that I’d see what I could dig up.”

“And did you?”

“I went upstairs and borrowed some copies of Nature magazine and the New England Journal of Medicine. She was pleased and thanked me for taking the trouble.”

“But those journals contain mostly scholarly papers and pure research.”

“She reads them with obvious interest.”

Jonasson sat speechless for a moment.

“And how would you rate her mental state?”

“Withdrawn. She hasn’t discussed anything of a personal nature with me.”

“Do you have the sense that she’s mentally ill? Manic-depressive or paranoid?”

“No, no, not at all. If I thought that, I’d have sounded the alarm. She’s strange, no doubt about it, and she has big problems and is under stress. But she’s calm and matter-of-fact and seems to be able to cope with her situation. Why do you ask? Has something happened?”

“No, nothing’s happened. I’m just trying to take stock of her.”