Girl Who Played with Fire, The - Stieg Larsson [202]
He had been an OK guy. He provided her with food and a place to live. She did not have to do much in return. He wanted to look at her when she was naked. He never touched her. She knew he would be considered a pedophile, but she had never felt the least threat from him. She thought him an introverted and socially handicapped person. She even came to experience a feeling of kinship when she thought about him. They were both outsiders.
Someone had finally spotted her and called the police. A social worker did her best to persuade her to report the man for sexual assault. She had obstinately refused to say that anything untoward had occurred, and in any case she was fifteen and legal. Fuck you. Then Palmgren had intervened and signed for her. He started a diary in what appeared to be a frustrated attempt to allay and resolve his own doubts. The first entries were written in December 1993:
L. increasingly appears to be the most unmanageable young person I’ve ever had to deal with. The question is whether I’m doing the right thing when I oppose her return to St. Stefan’s. She has now run away from three foster families in three months and obviously risks coming to some harm during her excursions. I have to decide soon whether I should give up the assignment and request that she be put under the care of real experts. I don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong. Today I had a serious talk with her.
Salander remembered every word of that serious talk. It was the day before Christmas Eve. Palmgren had taken her to his place and installed her in his spare room. He made spaghetti with meat sauce for supper and then put her on the living-room sofa and sat in an armchair across from her. She remembered wondering if Palmgren too wanted to see her naked. Instead he spoke to her as if she were a grown-up.
In fact it had been a two-hour monologue. She had hardly uttered a word. He had spelled out the realities, which were in effect that now she had to decide between going back to St. Stefan’s and living with a foster family. He would do what he could to find a family acceptable to her, and he insisted that she go with his choice. He had decided that she should spend the Christmas holidays with him so she would have time to think about her future. It was up to her, but on the day after Christmas he wanted a clear answer and a promise from her that if she had problems she would turn to him instead of running away. Then he had sent her to bed and apparently sat down to write the first lines in his diary.
The threat of being transported back to St. Stefan’s frightened her more than Holger Palmgren could know. She spent an unhappy Christmas suspiciously watching every move he made. The next day he still had not attempted to paw her, nor did he show any sign of wanting to sneak a look at her in the bath. On the contrary, he got really angry when she tried to provoke him by marching naked from his spare room to the bathroom. He had slammed the bathroom door hard. Later she had made him the promises he demanded. She had kept her word. Well, more or less.
In his journal Palmgren commented methodically on every meeting he had with her. Sometimes it was three lines, sometimes