Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest, The - Stieg Larsson [89]
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 in the world 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 happened in Gosseberga. But she had not said anything about why she had run her father to ground. Did she go 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. And 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 of the window. She could see the building on the other side of the car park. 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 it was 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 she 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,