Girl Who Played with Fire, The - Stieg Larsson [159]
“SHE’S BISEXUAL,”
SAYS CHILDHOOD FRIEND
The 26-year-old woman sought in connection with three murders is described as an introverted eccentric who had great difficulties adjusting to school. Despite many attempts to include her in the group, she remained an outsider.
“She obviously had problems with her sexual identity,” recalls Johanna, one of her few close friends at school.
“It was clear early on that she was different and that she was bisexual. We were very concerned about her.”
The article went on to describe some episodes that this Johanna remembered. Salander frowned. She could remember neither the episodes nor that she’d had a close friend named Johanna. In fact, she could not recall ever knowing anyone who could be described as a close friend or who tried to draw her into a group at school.
The article did not specify when these episodes were supposed to have taken place, but she had left school when she was twelve. This meant that her concerned childhood friend must have discovered Salander’s bisexuality when she was ten, maybe eleven.
Among the flood of ridiculous articles over the past week, the one quoting Johanna hit her hardest. It was so obviously fabricated. Either the reporter had run across a mythomaniac or he had made up the story himself. She memorized the reporter’s name and added him to the list of subjects for future research.
Not even the more positive reports, ones that criticized society with headlines such as SOCIETY FAILS or SHE NEVER GOT THE HELP SHE NEEDED, could dilute her standing as public enemy number one—a mass murderer who in one fit of insanity had executed three honourable citizens.
Salander read these interpretations of her life with a certain fascination and noted an obvious hole in the public knowledge. Despite apparently unlimited access to the most classified details of her life, the media had completely missed “All The Evil,” which had happened just before her thirteenth birthday. The published information ranged from kindergarten to the age of eleven, and was taken up again when, at the age of fifteen, she was released from the psychiatric clinic.
Somebody within the police investigation must be providing the media with information, but for reasons unknown to Salander, the source had decided to cover up “All The Evil.” This surprised her. If the police wanted to emphasize her penchant for vicious behaviour, then that report in her file would have been the most damning by far. It was the very reason that she was sent to St. Stefan’s.
On Easter Sunday Salander began to follow the police investigation more closely. From what she culled from the media she built a picture of its participants. Prosecutor Richard Ekström was the leader of the preliminary investigation and usually the spokesman at press conferences. The actual investigation was headed by Criminal Inspector Jan Bublanski, a somewhat overweight man in an ill-fitting suit who flanked Ekström when they were speaking to the press.
After a few days she had identified Sonja Modig as the team’s only female detective and the person who had found Bjurman. She noted the names Hans Faste and Curt Andersson, but she missed Jerker Holmberg altogether, as his name was not mentioned in any of the articles. She created a file on her computer for each person on the team and began to fill them with information.
Naturally, information about how the police investigation was proceeding was kept on the computers used by the investigating detectives, and their databases were stored on the server at police headquarters. Salander knew that it would be exceptionally hard to hack into the police intranet, but it was by no means impossible. She had done it before.
When working on an assignment for Armansky several years earlier, she had plotted the structure