Girl Who Played with Fire, The - Stieg Larsson [219]
“What was it?”
“Zalachenko had been gone for several months. Lisbeth had turned twelve. She had apparently begun to think that he was gone for good. But he wasn’t, of course. One day he came back. First Agneta locked Lisbeth and her sister in their room. Then she and Zalachenko went to bed. And then he started hitting her. He enjoyed beating people. But this time it wasn’t two helpless little girls who were locked up … The twins reacted quite differently. Camilla was panic-stricken that someone would find out what was going on in their apartment. She repressed everything and made out that her mother was never beaten. When the abuse was over, Camilla would go in and hug her father and pretend that everything was fine.”
“Her way of protecting herself, no doubt.”
“Right. But Lisbeth was a whole different story. This time she interrupted the beating. She went into the kitchen and got a knife and stabbed Zalachenko in the shoulder. She stabbed him five times before he managed to take the knife away and punch her in the face. They weren’t deep wounds, it seems, but he was bleeding like a stuck pig and he ran off.”
“That sounds like Lisbeth.”
Palmgren laughed. “Yes, it does. Don’t ever fight with Lisbeth Salander. Her attitude towards the rest of the world is that if someone threatens her with a gun, she’ll get a bigger gun. That’s what frightens me about what’s going on right now.”
“So that was ‘All The Evil’?”
“No, no. Then two things happened. I can’t understand it. Zalachenko was wounded so badly that he had to go to the hospital. There should have been a police report.”
“But?”
“But as far as I could discover, there were absolutely no repercussions. Lisbeth remembers that a man came and talked with Agneta. She didn’t know what was said or who he was. And then her mother told her that Zalachenko had forgiven her everything.”
“Forgiven?”
“That was the expression she used.”
And suddenly Blomkvist understood.
Björck. Or one of Björck’s colleagues. It was about cleaning up after Zalachenko. Those fucking pigs. He closed his eyes.
“What is it?” Palmgren said.
“I think I know what happened. And someone is going to pay for this. But go on with the story.”
“Zalachenko was gone for several months. Lisbeth waited for him and made her preparations. She had played truant from school every single day to watch out for her mother. She was scared to death that Zalachenko would really hurt her. She was twelve and felt responsible for her mother, who did not dare to go to the police and couldn’t break it off with Zalachenko, or who perhaps did not understand the seriousness of the situation. But on the day Zalachenko finally turned up, Lisbeth was at school. She came home just as he was leaving the apartment. He didn’t say a word. He just laughed at her. Lisbeth went in and found her mother unconscious on the kitchen floor.”
“But Zalachenko didn’t touch Lisbeth?”
“No. She caught up with him just as he was getting into his car. He rolled down the window, possibly to say something. Lisbeth was ready. She threw a milk carton she had filled with gasoline into the car. Then she threw in a burning match.”
“Good God.”
“She tried to kill her father twice. This time there were consequences. A man sitting in a car on Lundagatan burning like a beacon could hardly go unnoticed.”
“But he survived.”
“He suffered horribly. One of his feet had to be amputated. His face and other parts of his body suffered serious burns. And Lisbeth ended up at St. Stefan’s Psychiatric Clinic