“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
“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
“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“Withdrawn.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.”
CHAPTER 10
Blomkvist put his laptop case on the desk. It contained the findings of Olsson, the stringer in Goteborg. He watched the flow of people on Gotgatan. That was one of the things he liked best about his office. Gotgatan was full of life at all hours of the day and night, and when he sat by the window he never felt isolated, never alone.
He was under great pressure. He had kept working on the articles that were to go into the summer issue, but he had finally realized that there was so much material that not even an issue devoted entirely to the topic would be sufficient. He had ended up in the same situation as during the Wennerstrom affair, and he had again decided to publish all the articles as a book. He had enough text already for 150 pages, and he reckoned that the final book would run to 320 or 336 pages.
The easy part was done. He had written about the murders of Svensson and Johansson and described how he happened to be the one who came upon the scene. He had dealt with why Salander had become a suspect. He spent a chapter debunking first what the press had written about Salander, then what Prosecutor Ekstrom had claimed, and thereby indirectly the entire police investigation. After long deliberation he had toned down his criticism of Bublanski and his team. He did this after studying a video from Ekstrom’s press conference, in which it was clear that Bublanski was uncomfortable in the extreme and obviously annoyed at Ekstrom’s rapid conclusions.
After the introductory drama, he had gone back in time and described Zalachenko’s arrival in Sweden, Salander’s childhood, and the events that led to her being locked away in St Stefan’s in Uppsala. He was careful to annihilate both Teleborian and the now dead Bjorck. He rehearsed the psychiatric report of 1991 and explained why Salander had become a threat to certain unknown civil servants who had taken it upon themselves to protect the Russian defector. He quoted from the correspondence between Teleborian and Bjorck.
He then described Zalachenko’s new identity and his criminal operations. He described his assistant Niedermann, the kidnapping of Miriam Wu, and Paolo Roberto’s intervention. Finally, he summed up the denouement in Gosseberga which led to Salander being shot and buried alive, and explained how a policeman’s death was a needless catastrophe because Niedermann had already been shackled.
Thereafter the story became more sluggish. Blomkvist’s problem was that the account still had gaping holes in it. Bjorck had not acted alone. Behind this chain of events there had to be a larger group with resources and political influence. Anything else did not make sense. But he had eventually come to the conclusion that the unlawful treatment of Salander would not have been sanctioned by the government or the bosses of the Security Police. Behind this conclusion lay no exaggerated trust in government, but rather his faith in human nature. An operation of that type could never have been kept secret if it were politically motivated. Someone would have called in a favour and got someone to talk, and the press would have uncovered the Salander affair several years earlier.
He thought of the Zalachenko club as small and anonymous. He could not identify any one of them, except possibly Martensson, a policeman with a secret appointment who devoted himself to shadowing the publisher of
It was now clear that Salander would definitely go to trial.
Ekstrom had brought a charge for grievous bodily harm in the case of Magge Lundin, and grievous bodily harm or attempted murder in the case of Karl Axel Bodin.
No date had yet been set, but his colleagues had learned that Ekstrom was planning for a trial in July, depending on the state of Salander’s health. Blomkvist understood the reasoning. A trial during the peak holiday season would attract less attention than one at any other time of the year.
Blomkvist’s plan was to have the book printed and ready to distribute on the first day of the trial. He and Malm had thought of a paperback edition, shrink-wrapped and sent out with the special summer issue. Various assignments had been given to Cortez and Eriksson, who were to produce articles on the history of the Security Police, the IB affair,[4] and the like.
He frowned as he stared out of the window.
But he had no evidence.
Together with Eriksson and Malm, he had decided that Millennium Publishing would publish Svensson’s text
