Girl Who Played with Fire, The - Stieg Larsson [14]
He had tried to dominate his wife in the years that he was married, but she had merely gone along with it, and that too was a game.
Salander had been the perfect solution. She was defenceless. She had no family, no friends: a true victim, ripe for plundering. The opportunity makes the thief.
And then out of the blue she had destroyed him. She had struck back with a power and determination that he had not dreamed she possessed. She had humiliated him. She had tortured him. She had all but demolished him.
During the almost two years since then, Bjurman’s life had changed dramatically. After Salander’s nighttime visit to his apartment he had felt paralyzed—virtually incapable of clear thought or decisive action. He had locked himself in, did not answer the telephone, and was unable even to keep up contact with his regular clients. After two weeks he went on sick leave. His secretary was deputized to deal with his correspondence at the office, cancelling all his meetings and trying to keep irritated clients at bay.
Every day he was confronted by the tattoo on his body. Finally he took down the mirror from the bathroom door.
He returned to his office at the beginning of summer. He had handed over most of his clients to his colleagues. The only ones he kept for himself were companies for whom he dealt with legal business correspondence without being involved in meetings. His only active client now was Salander—each month he wrote up a balance sheet and a report for the Guardianship Agency. He did very precisely what she had demanded: the reports had not a grain of truth in them and made plain that she no longer needed a guardian. Each report was an excruciating reminder of her existence, but he had no choice.
Bjurman had spent the summer and the autumn in helpless, furious brooding. And then, in December, he pulled himself together and went on a vacation to France. While there, he consulted a specialist at a clinic for cosmetic surgery outside Marseilles about how best to remove the tattoo.
The specialist had examined his abdomen with ill-concealed astonishment. At last he recommended a course of action. One way would be laser treatment, he said, but the tattoo was so extensive and the needle had penetrated so deeply that he was afraid the only realistic solution was a series of skin grafts. It would be expensive and would take time.
In the past two years Bjurman had seen Salander on only one occasion.
On the night she attacked him and established control over his life, she had taken the spare set of keys to his office and apartment. She would be watching him, she had told him, and when he least expected it she would drop in. He had almost begun to believe it was an empty threat, but he had not dared to change the locks. Her warning had been unmistakable—if she ever found him in bed with a woman, Salander would make public the ninety-minute video that documented how he had raped her.
In January a year ago he had woken at 3:00 a.m., not sure why. He turned on his bedside light and almost howled in fright when he saw her standing at the foot of his bed. She was like a ghost suddenly there. Her face was pale and expressionless. In her hand she held her fucking Taser.
“Good morning, Mr. Advokat Bjurman,” she said. “So sorry for waking you this time.”
Good God, has she been here before? While I slept?
He could not tell whether she was bluffing. Bjurman cleared his throat and was about to speak. She cut him off with a gesture.
“I woke you for one reason only. I’m going to be away for a long time quite soon. Keep writing your reports every month, but don’t post copies to me. Send them to this hotmail address.”
She took a folded paper from her jacket pocket and dropped it on the bed.
“If the Guardianship Agency wants to get in touch with me, or anything else comes up that might require my being here, write