Millennium 02 - The Girl Who Played with Fire Read online

  He had gone on burrowing through the years of confrontation between the social welfare bureaucracy and Salander—what he called the “psychopath trail”—and he had managed to assemble quite a body of material. He cleared his throat and turned to the man on his right.

  “This is Dr. Peter Teleborian, head physician at St. Stefan’s Psychiatric Clinic in Uppsala. He has been good enough to come down to Stockholm to assist in the investigation and to tell us what he knows about Lisbeth Salander.”

  Modig studied Dr. Teleborian. He was a short man with curly brown hair, steel-rimmed glasses, and a small goatee. He was casually dressed in a beige corduroy jacket, jeans, and a light-blue striped shirt buttoned at the neck. His features were sharp and his appearance boyish. Modig had come across Dr. Teleborian on several occasions but had never spoken to him. He had given a lecture on psychiatric disturbances when she was in her last term at the police academy, and on another occasion at a course he had spoken about psychopaths and psychopathic behaviour in young people. She had also attended the trial of a serial rapist when Teleborian was called as an expert witness. Dr. Teleborian was one of the best-known psychiatrists in Sweden. He had made a name for himself with his tough criticism of the cutbacks in psychiatric care that had resulted in the closure of mental hospitals. People who were obviously in need of care had been abandoned to the streets, doomed to become homeless welfare cases. Since the assassination of Foreign Minister Anna Lindh,∗ Dr. Teleborian had been a member of the government commission that reported on the decline in psychiatric care.

  Teleborian nodded to the group and poured mineral water into his plastic cup.

  “We’ll have to see whether there’s anything I can contribute,” he began cautiously. “I hate being right in my predictions in situations like this.”

  “Your predictions?” Bublanski said.

  “Yes. It’s ironic. On the evening of the murders in Enskede, I was on a TV panel discussing the time bomb that’s ticking almost everywhere in our society. It’s terrible. I wasn’t thinking specifically of Lisbeth Salander just then, but I gave a number of examples—with pseudonyms, of course—of patients who quite simply ought to be in institutions rather than at liberty on our streets. I would surmise that during this year alone the police will have to solve half a dozen murder or manslaughter cases where the killer is among this small group of patients.”

  “And you think that Lisbeth Salander is one of these loonies?” Faste asked.

  “Loony isn’t a term we would use. Yet she is without doubt one of these frayed individuals that I would not have let out into society, were it up to me.”

  “Are you saying that she should have been locked up before she committed a crime?” Modig asked. “That doesn’t really accord with the principles of a society governed by the rule of law.”

  Faste frowned and gave her a dirty look. Modig wondered why Faste always seemed so hostile towards her.

  “You’re perfectly right,” Teleborian said, inadvertently coming to her rescue. “It’s not compatible with a society based on the rule of law, at least not in its present form. It’s a balancing act between respect for the individual and respect for the potential victims that a mentally ill person may leave in his wake. Every case is different, and each patient must be treated on an individual basis. It’s inevitable that we in the psychiatric field also make mistakes and release people who shouldn’t be out on the streets.”

  “Well, I don’t think we need to go into social politics in great depth here,” Bublanski said cautiously.

  “Of course,” Teleborian said. “We’re dealing with a specific case. But let me just say that it’s important for you all to understand that Lisbeth Salander is a sick person in need of care, just as any patient with a toothache or heart disease is in need of care. She can still get well, and she would have gotten well if she had received the care she needed when she was still treatable.”

  “So you weren’t her doctor,” Faste said.

  “I’m one of many people who was involved with Lisbeth Salander’s case. She was my patient in her early teens, and I was one of the doctors who evaluated her before it was decided to place her under guardianship when she turned eighteen.”

  “Could you give us a little background about her?” Bublanski asked. “What could have made her murder two people she didn’t know, and what could have made her murder her guardian?”

  Dr. Teleborian laughed.

  “No, I can’t tell you that. I haven’t followed her development in several years, and I don’t know what stage of psychosis she’s in at present. But I can say without a shadow of a doubt that the couple in Enskede had to have been known to her.”

  “What makes you so sure?” Faste wanted to know.

  “One of the failures in the treatment of Lisbeth Salander was that no complete diagnosis was ever established for her. That was because she was not receptive to treatment. She invariably refused to answer questions or participate in any form of therapy.”

  “So you don’t actually know if she’s sick or not,” Modig said. “I mean, if there isn’t any diagnosis.”

  “Look at it this way,” Dr. Teleborian said. “I was given Lisbeth Salander just as she was about to turn thirteen. She was psychotic, showed obsessive behaviour, and was obviously suffering from paranoia. She was my patient for two years after she was committed to St. Stefan’s. The reason for committing her was that throughout her childhood she had exhibited exceedingly violent behaviour towards schoolmates, teachers, and acquaintances. In repeated instances she was reported for assault. In every case that we know of, the violence was directed at people in her own circle, that is, against people she knew who said or did something that she perceived as an insult. There is no case of her ever having attacked a stranger. That’s why I believe there must be a link between her and the couple in Enskede.”

  “Except for the attack in the tunnelbana when she was seventeen,” Faste said.

  “Well, on that occasion she was the one who was attacked and she was defending herself,” Teleborian said. “Against, it should be said, a known sex offender. But it’s also a good example of the way she behaves. She could have walked away or sought refuge among other passengers in the carriage. Instead she responded with aggravated assault. When she feels threatened she reacts with excessive violence.”

  “What’s actually the matter with her?” Bublanski asked.

  “As I said, we don’t have a real diagnosis. I would say that she suffers from schizophrenia and is continually balancing on the brink of psychosis. She lacks empathy and in many respects can be described as a sociopath. It’s surprising, frankly, that she has managed so well since she turned eighteen. She has been functioning in society, albeit under guardianship, for eight years without doing anything that led to a police report or arrest. But her prognosis—”

  “Her prognosis?”

  “During this entire time she has not received any treatment. My guess is that the illness we might have been able to treat and cure ten years ago is now a fixed part of her personality. I predict that when she is apprehended, she will not be given a prison sentence. She needs treatment.”

  “So why the hell did the district court decide to give her a free pass into society?” Faste asked.

  “It should probably be viewed as a combination of things. She had a lawyer, an eloquent one, but it was also a manifestation of the current liberalization policies and cutbacks. It was a decision that I opposed when I was consulted by forensic medicine. But I had no say in the matter.”

  “But surely that kind of prognosis must be pretty much guesswork, don’t you think?” Modig said. “You don’t actually know what’s been going on with her since she turned eighteen.”

  “It’s more than a guess. It’s based on my professional experience.”

  “Is she self-destructive?” Modig asked.

  “You mean could I picture her committing suicide? No, I doubt that. She’s more of an egomaniacal psychopath. It’s all about
her. Everyone else around her is unimportant.”

  “You said that she might react with excessive force,” Faste said. “In other words, should we consider her to be dangerous?”

  Dr. Teleborian looked at him for a long moment. Then he leaned forward and rubbed his forehead.

  “You have no idea how difficult it is to say exactly how a person will react. I don’t want Lisbeth Salander to be harmed when you apprehend her … but yes, in her case I would try to make sure the arrest is carried out with the utmost circumspection. If she is armed, there would be a very real risk that she will use the weapon.”

  ∗Anna Lindh was one of Sweden’s most popular politicians, foreign minister under Prime Minister Goran Persson from 1998 to 2003. She was assassinated in 2003 in a stabbing attack. Her alleged murderer confessed and was sentenced to life in prison after a psychiatric evaluation. However, an appeals court overturned the sentence in 2004, and the defendant was transferred from prison to a closed psychiatric ward. Prosecutors reappealed to the Supreme Court of Sweden, which has since reinstated the life sentence.

  CHAPTER 18

  Tuesday, March 29–Wednesday, March 30

  The three parallel investigations into the murders in Enskede churned on. Officer Bubble’s investigation enjoyed the advantages of authority. On the surface, the solution seemed to lie within reach; they had a suspect and a murder weapon that was linked to the suspect. They had an ironclad connection to one victim and a possible connection via Blomkvist to the other two victims. For Bublanski it was now basically a matter of finding Salander and putting her in a cell in Kronoberg prison.

  Armansky’s investigation was formally subordinate to the police investigation, and he had his own agenda. His objective was somehow to watch out for Salander’s interests—to discover the truth, preferably a truth in the form of a persuasively mitigating circumstance.

  Millennium’s investigation was the difficult one. The magazine lacked the resources of the police, obviously, and of Armansky’s organization. Unlike the police, however, Blomkvist was not primarily interested in establishing a reasonable scenario for why Salander might have gone down to Enskede and murdered two of his friends. He had decided over the Easter weekend that he simply did not believe the story. If Salander was in some way involved in the murders, there had to be entirely different grounds from those the police were suggesting—someone else may have held the gun or something had happened that was beyond her control.

  Hedström said nothing during the taxi journey from Slussen to Kungsholmen. He was in a daze from out of the blue ending up in a real police investigation. He glanced at Bohman, who was reading Armansky’s presentation again.

  Then all at once he smiled to himself. The assignment had given him an unexpected opportunity to realize an ambition that neither Armansky nor Bohman knew anything about. He was going to have a chance to get back at Salander. He hoped that he would be able to help catch her. He hoped above all that she would be sentenced to life in prison.

  It was well known that Salander was not a popular person at Milton Security. Most of the staff who had ever had anything to do with her thought she was a pain. But no-one had any idea how profoundly Hedström loathed her.

  Life had been unfair to Hedström. He was good-looking, he was young, and he was clever too. But he was forever denied the possibility of becoming what he had always wanted to be—a policeman. His Achilles heel was a microscopic hole in his pericardium that caused a heart murmur and meant that the wall of one chamber was compromised. He had had an operation and the problem was fixed, but having a heart condition meant that he was once and for all deprived of a place on the police force. He was relegated to second-class.

  When he was given the chance to work for Milton Security he accepted, but without the slightest enthusiasm. Milton was a dump for has-beens—police officers who were too old and couldn’t cut it anymore. He too had been turned down by the police—but in his case through no fault of his own.

  When he started at Milton one of his first assignments had been to work with the operations unit on a personal protection analysis for a famous female singer. She had been frightened by an over-enthusiastic admirer, who also happened to be a mental patient on the run. The singer lived alone in a villa in Södertörn, and Milton had installed surveillance equipment and alarms and provided an on-site bodyguard.

  Over a two-week period Hedström had regularly visited the villa in Södertörn along with other Milton employees. He thought the singer was a snobbish and standoffish old bitch. She gave him only a bewildered look when he turned on the charm, but she ought to have been grateful that any fan remembered her at all.

  He hated the way Milton’s staff sprang to do her bidding. But of course he didn’t say a word about how he felt.

  One afternoon, the singer and two of the Milton staff were by her pool while he was in the house taking photographs of windows and doors that might need reinforcing. He had gone from room to room, and when he came to her bedroom he could not resist the temptation to open her desk. He found a dozen photograph albums from when she was a big star in the seventies and eighties and had toured the world. He also found a box with some very private pictures of the singer. The pictures were relatively innocent, but with a little imagination they might be viewed as “erotic studies.” God, what a stupid cow she was. He stole five of the most risqué images, which had obviously been taken by some lover.

  He photographed the images there and then and put the originals back. He waited several months before he sold them to a British tabloid. He was paid 9,000 pounds for the photographs and they gave rise to sensational headlines.

  He still did not know how Salander had managed it, but after the photographs were published, he had a visit from her. She knew that he was the one who had sold them. She was going to expose him to Armansky if he ever did anything like that again. She would have exposed him immediately if she could have proved it—but she obviously could not. From that day on he had felt her watching him. He had seen her little piggy eyes every time he turned around.

  He felt stressed and frustrated. The only way to get back at her was to undermine her credibility by adding his contributions to the gossip about her in the canteen. But not even that had been very successful. He did not dare draw attention to himself, since for some unknown reason she was under Armansky’s protection. He wondered what sort of hold she had over Milton’s CEO, or if it was possible that the old bastard was fucking her in secret. But even though nobody at Milton was especially enamoured of Salander, the staff had great respect for Armansky and so they accepted her peculiar presence. It was a monumental relief to him when she began to play less of a role and finally stopped working at Milton altogether.

  Now an opportunity had presented itself for him to get even. And it was risk-free. She could accuse him of anything she liked—nobody would believe her. Not even Armansky would take the word of a pathologically sick murderer.

  Bublanski saw Faste coming out of the elevator with Bohman and Hedström from Milton. He had been sent down to bring these new colleagues through security. Bublanski was not entirely enchanted with the idea of giving outsiders access to a murder investigation, but the decision had been made way over his head and … what the hell, Bohman was a real police officer with a lot of miles on him. Hedström had graduated from the police academy and so could not be an outright idiot. Bublanski pointed towards the conference room.

  The hunt for Salander was in its sixth day and it was time for a major evaluation. Prosecutor Ekström did not take part in the meeting. The group consisted of criminal inspectors Modig, Faste, Andersson, and Holmberg, reinforced by four officers from the search unit of the National Criminal Police. Bublanski began by introducing their new colleagues from Milton Security and asking if either of them wanted to say a few words. Bohman cleared his throat.

  “It’s been a while since I was last in this building, but some of you know me and know that I was a police officer for many years before I swit
ched to the private sector. The reason we’re here is that Salander worked for Milton over several years and we feel a measure of responsibility. Our job is to try and assist in her arrest. We can contribute some personal knowledge of her, but we’re not here in any way to mess up the investigation or to try to trip you up.”

  “Tell us what she was like to work with,” Faste said.

  “She wasn’t exactly a person you warmed to,” Hedström said. He stopped when Bublanski held up his hand.

  “We’ll have a chance to talk in detail during the meeting. But let’s take things one by one and get a grip on where we stand. After this meeting, you two will have to go to Prosecutor Ekström and sign a confidentiality statement. Let’s begin with Sonja.”

  “It’s frustrating. We had a breakthrough just a few hours after the murders and were able to identify Salander. We found where she lived—or at least where we thought she lived. After that, not a trace. We’ve received around thirty calls from people who think they’ve seen her, but so far they’ve all been false alarms. She seems to have gone up in smoke.”

  “That’s a little hard to believe,” Andersson said. “She looks unusual and has tattoos and shouldn’t be that hard to find.”

  “The police in Uppsala went in with their weapons drawn yesterday after receiving a tip. They surrounded and scared the hell out of a fourteen-year-old boy who did look a lot like Salander. The parents were quite upset.”

  “It’s a handicap that we’re searching for someone who looks like a fourteen-year-old. She could melt into any crowd of teenagers.”

  “But with the attention she’s been getting in the media, someone should have seen something,” Andersson said. “They’re running her picture on Sweden’s Most Wanted this week, so maybe that will lead to something new.”

  “I doubt it, considering that she’s already been on the front page of every newspaper in the country,” Faste said.