Girl Who Played with Fire, The - Stieg Larsson [128]
“I don’t either,” Armansky said. “But your work will be to assist the police in every way and to help them take her into custody in the shortest time possible.”
“Budget?” Fräklund said.
“Open. I want to be regularly updated on what this is costing, and if it gets out of hand we’ll shut it down. But assume that you’ll be on this for a week at least, starting today. And since I’m the one here who knows Salander best, I should be one of the people you interview.”
Modig hurtled down the corridor and made it into the conference room just as her colleagues had settled in their seats. She sat down next to Bublanski, who had gathered the whole investigative team for this meeting, including the preliminary investigation leader. Faste gave her an annoyed look and then took care of the introduction; he was the one who had asked for the meeting.
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