Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest, The - Stieg Larsson [219]
“Fru Giannini,” Ekström said at last, “I believe that your client ought to be spared this trial. She is not well. I have a psychiatric report from a highly qualified doctor to fall back on. She should be given the psychiatric care that for so many years she has badly needed.”
“I take it that you will be presenting this recommendation to the district court.”
“That’s exactly what I’ll be doing. It’s not my business to tell you how to conduct her defence. But if this is the line you seriously intend to take, then the situation is, quite frankly, absurd. This statement contains wild and unsubstantiated accusations against a number of people … in particular against her guardian, Advokat Bjurman, and Dr Peter Teleborian. I hope you do not in all seriousness believe that the court will accept an account that casts suspicion on Dr Teleborian without offering a single shred of evidence. This document is going to be the final nail in your client’s coffin, if you’ll pardon the metaphor.”
“I hear what you’re saying.”
“In the course of the trial you may claim that she is not ill and request a supplementary psychiatric assessment, and then the matter can be submitted to the medical board. But to be honest her statement leaves me in very little doubt that every other forensic psychiatrist will come to the same conclusion as Dr Teleborian. Its very existence confirms all documentary evidence that she is a paranoid schizophrenic.”
Giannini smiled politely. “There is an alternative view,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“That her account is in every detail true and that the court will elect to believe it.”
Ekström looked bewildered by the notion. Then he smiled and stroked his goatee.
Clinton was sitting at the little side table by the window in his office. He listened attentively to Nyström and Sandberg. His face was furrowed, but his peppercorn eyes were focused and alert.
“We’ve been monitoring the telephone and email traffic of Millennium’s key employees since April,” Clinton said. “We’ve confirmed that Blomkvist and Eriksson and this Cortez fellow are pretty downcast on the whole. We’ve read the outline version of the next issue. It seems that even Blomkvist has reversed his position and is now of the view that Salander is mentally unstable after all. There is a socially linked defence for her – he’s claiming that society let her down, and that as a result it’s somehow not her fault that she tried to murder her father. But that’s hardly an argument. There isn’t one word about the break-in at his apartment or the fact that his sister was attacked in Göteborg, and there’s no mention of the missing reports. He knows he can’t prove anything.”
“That is precisely the problem,” Sandberg said. “Blomkvist must know that someone has their eye on him. But he seems to be completely ignoring his suspicions. Forgive me, but that isn’t Millennium’s style. Besides, Erika Berger is back in editorial and yet this whole issue is so bland and devoid of substance that it seems like a joke.”
“What are you saying? That it’s a decoy?”
Sandberg nodded. “The summer issue should have come out in the last week of June. According to one of Malin Eriksson’s emails, it’s being printed by a company in Södertälje, but when I rang them this morning, they told me they hadn’t even got the C.R.C. All they’d had was a request for a quote about a month ago.”
“Where have they printed before?” Clinton said.
“At a place called Hallvigs in Morgongåva. I called to ask how far they had got with the printing – I said I was calling from Millennium. The manager wouldn’t tell me a thing. I thought I’d drive up there this evening and take a look.”
“Makes sense. Georg?”
“I’ve reviewed all