Girl Who Played with Fire, The - Stieg Larsson [123]
“I know, and I’ve worried myself sick over it. But I can imagine one scenario, at least, where an outside person might murder Dag and Mia as well as Lisbeth’s guardian.”
“And what’s that?”
“Let’s say that Dag and Mia were murdered because they were rooting around in the sex trade and Lisbeth had somehow gotten involved as a third party. If Bjurman was Lisbeth’s guardian, then there’s a chance that she confided in him and he thereby became a witness to or obtained knowledge of something that subsequently led to his murder.”
“I see what you mean,” Eriksson said. “But you don’t have a grain of evidence for that theory.”
“No, not one grain.”
“So what do you think? Is she guilty or not?”
Blomkvist thought for a long time.
“You’re asking me if she is capable of murder? The answer is yes. Salander has a violent streak. I’ve seen her in action when …”
“When she saved your life?”
Blomkvist looked at her, then said, “I can’t tell you the circumstances. But there was a man who was going to kill me and he was just about to succeed. She stepped in and beat him senseless with a golf club.”
“And you haven’t told the police any of this?”
“Absolutely not. And this has to remain between you and me.” He gave her a sharp look. “Malin, I have to be able to trust you on this.”
“I won’t tell anyone about anything we discuss. You’re not just my boss—I like you too, and I don’t want to do anything that would hurt you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Stop apologizing.”
He laughed and then turned serious again. “I’m convinced that if it had been necessary, she would have killed that man to protect me. But at the same time I believe she’s quite rational. Peculiar, yes, but completely rational according to her own scheme of things. She used violence because she had to, not because she wanted to. To kill someone, she would have to be exceedingly threatened or provoked.”
He thought for a while. Eriksson watched him patiently.
“I can’t explain the lawyer. I don’t know a thing about him. But I just can’t imagine her being threatened or provoked—at all—by Dag and Mia. It’s not possible.”
They sat quietly for a long time. Eriksson looked at her watch and saw that it was 9:30.
“It’s late. I have to be getting home.”
“It’s been a long day. We can go on sifting tomorrow. No, leave the dishes. I’ll take care of it.”
On the Saturday night before Easter, Armansky lay awake, listening to Ritva sleeping. He could not make sense of the drama. In the end he got up, put on his slippers and dressing gown, and went into the living room. The air was cool and he put a few pieces of wood in the soapstone stove, opened a beer, and sat looking out at the dark waters of the Furusund channel.
What do I know?
Salander was unpredictable. No doubt about that.
Something had happened in the winter of 2003, when she stopped working for him and disappeared on her year-long sabbatical abroad. Blomkvist was somehow mixed up in her sudden departure—but he didn’t know what had happened to her either.
She came back and had come to see him. Claimed that she was “financially independent,” which presumably meant that she had enough to get by for a while.
She had been regularly to see Palmgren. She had not been in touch with Blomkvist.
She had shot three people, two apparently unknown to her.
It doesn’t make any sense.
Armansky took a gulp of his beer and lit a cigarillo. He had a guilty conscience, and that contributed to his bad mood.
When Bublanski had been to see him, Armansky had unhesitatingly given him as much information as he could so that Salander could be caught. He had no doubt that she had to be caught—and the sooner the better. Armansky was a realist. If the police told him that a person was suspected of murder, the chances were that it was true. So Salander was guilty.
But the police weren’t taking into account whether she might have felt that her actions were justified—or whether there