“He was once one of the very best we had here in the Section,” Gullberg said. “He played a key role in the Zalachenko affair. What’s happened to him since I retired?”
“Bjorck is probably one of the very few internal colleagues who left the Section and went back to external operations. He was out flitting around even in your day.”
“Well, I do recall that he needed a little rest and wanted to expand his horizons. He was on leave of absence from the Section for two years in the ’80s when he worked as intelligence attache. He had worked like a fiend with Zalachenko, practically around the clock from 1976 on, and I thought that he needed a break. He was gone from 1985 to 1987, when he came back here.”
“You could say that he quit the Section in 1994 when he went over to the external organization. In 1996 he became assistant chief of the Immigration Division and ended up in a stressful position. His official duties took up a great deal of his time. Naturally he has stayed in contact with the Section throughout, and I can also say that we had conversations with him about once a month until recently.”
“So he’s ill?”
“It’s nothing serious, but very painful. He has a slipped disc. He’s had recurring trouble with it over the past few years. Two years ago he was on sick leave for four months. And then he was taken ill again in August last year. He was supposed to start work again at new year, but his sick leave was extended and now it’s a question of waiting for an operation.”
“And he spent his sick leave running around with prostitutes?” Gullberg said.
“Yes. He’s not married, and his dealings with whores appear to have been going on for many years, if I’ve understood correctly,” said Sandberg, who had been silent for almost half an hour. “I’ve read Dag Svensson’s manuscript.”
“I see. But can anyone explain to me what actually happened?”
“As far as we can tell, it was Bjorck who set this whole mess rolling. How else can we explain the report from 1991 ending up in the hands of Advokat Bjurman?”
“Another man who spends his time with prostitutes?” Gullberg said.
“Not as far as we know, and he wasn’t mentioned in Svensson’s material. He was, however, Lisbeth Salander’s guardian.”
Wadensjoo sighed. “You could say it was my fault. You and Bjorck arrested Salander in 1991, when she was sent to the psychiatric hospital. We expected her to be away for much longer, but she became acquainted with a lawyer, Advokat Palmgren, who managed to spring her loose. She was then placed with a foster family. By that time you had retired.”
“And then what happened?”
“We kept an eye on her. In the meantime her twin sister, Camilla, was placed in a foster home in Uppsala. When they were seventeen, Lisbeth started digging into her past. She was looking for Zalachenko, and she went through every public register she could find. Somehow – we’re not sure how it happened – she found out that her sister knew where Zalachenko was.”
“Was it true?”
Wadensjoo shrugged. “I have no idea. The sisters had not seen each other for several years when Lisbeth Salander ran Camilla to ground and tried to persuade her to tell her what she knew. It ended in a violent argument and a spectacular fight between the sisters.”
“Then what?”
“We kept close track of Lisbeth during those months. We had also informed Camilla that her sister was violent and mentally ill. She was the one who got in touch with us after Lisbeth’s unexpected visit, and thereafter we increased our surveillance of her.”
“So the sister was your informant?”
“Camilla was mortally afraid of her sister. Lisbeth had aroused attention in other quarters as well. She had several run-ins with people from the social welfare agency, and in our estimation she still represented a threat to Zalachenko’s anonymity. Then there was the incident in the tunnelbana.”
“She attacked a paedophile –”
“Precisely. She was obviously prone to violence and mentally disturbed. We thought that it would be best for all concerned if she disappeared into some institution again and availed herself of the opportunities there, so to speak. Clinton and von Rottinger were the ones who took the lead. They engaged the psychiatrist Teleborian again and through a representative filed a request in the district court to get her institutionalized for a second time. Palmgren stood up for Salander, and against all odds the court decided to follow his recommendation – so long as she was placed under guardianship.”
“But how did Bjurman get involved?”
“Palmgren had a stroke in the autumn of 2002. We still flag Salander for monitoring whenever she turns up in any database, and I saw to it that Bjurman became her new guardian. Bear in mind that he had no clue she was Zalachenko’s daughter. The brief was simply for Bjurman to sound the alarm if she started blabbing about Zalachenko.”
“Bjurman was an idiot. He should never have been allowed to have anything to do with Zalachenko, even less with his daughter.” Gullberg looked at Wadensjoo. “That was a serious mistake.”
“I know,” Wadensjoo said. “But he seemed the right choice at the time. I never would have dreamed that –”
“Where’s the sister today? Camilla Salander.”
“We don’t know. When she was nineteen she packed her bag and ran away from her foster family. We haven’t found hide nor hair of her since.”
“O.K., go on…”
“I have a man in the regular police who has spoken with Prosecutor Ekstrom,” Sandberg said. “The officer running the investigation, Inspector Bublanski, thinks that Bjurman raped Salander.”
Gullberg looked at Sandberg with blank astonishment.
“Raped?” he said.
“Bjurman had a tattoo across his belly which read
Sandberg put a colour photograph from the autopsy on the table. Gullberg stared at it with distaste.
“Zalachenko’s daughter is supposed to have given him that?”
“It’s hard to find another explanation. And she’s not known for being a shrinking violet. She spectacularly kicked the shit out of two complete thugs from Svavelsjo M.C.”
“Zalachenko’s daughter,” Gullberg repeated. He turned to Wadensjoo. “You know what? I think you ought to recruit her for the Section.”
Wadensjoo looked so startled that Gullberg quickly explained that he was joking.
“O.K. Let’s take it as a working hypothesis that Bjurman raped her and that she somehow took her revenge. What else?”
“The only one who could tell us exactly what happened, of course, is Bjurman, and he’s dead. But the thing is, he shouldn’t have had a clue that she was Zalachenko’s daughter; it’s not in any public records. But somehow, somewhere along the way, Bjurman discovered the connection.”
“But, Goddamnit Wadensjoo!
“I know. We… that is,
“That is unforgivably incompetent,” Gullberg said.
“I’ve kicked myself a hundred times about it. But Bjurman was one of the very few people who knew of Zalachenko’s existence and my thought was that it would be better if he discovered that she was Zalachenko’s daughter rather than some other unknown guardian. She could have told anyone at all.”
Gullberg pulled on his earlobe. “Alright… go on.”
“It’s all hypothetical,” Nystrom said. “But our supposition is that Bjurman assaulted Salander and that she struck back and did that…” He pointed at the tattoo in the autopsy photograph.
“Her father’s daughter,” Gullberg said. There was more than a trace of admiration in his voice.
“With the result that Bjurman made contact with Zalachenko, hoping to get rid of the daughter. As we know, Zalachenko had good reason to hate the girl. And he gave the contract to Svavelsjo M.C. and this
