Girl Who Played with Fire, The - Stieg Larsson [222]
“Sit down before you wear out your shoes,” he said.
Blomkvist sat down.
“All these secrets,” Palmgren said. “I never understood the connection until you explained Zalachenko’s background. All I’ve seen are the assessments of Lisbeth claiming that she’s mentally disturbed.”
“Peter Teleborian.”
“He must have some sort of deal with Björck. They have to have been working together somehow.”
Blomkvist nodded pensively. Whatever happened, Teleborian was going to be the object of journalistic scrutiny.
“Lisbeth said that I should stay away from him. That he was evil.”
Palmgren looked at him sharply. “When did she say that?”
Blomkvist said nothing for some moments. Then he smiled and looked at Palmgren.
“More secrets, damn it. I’ve been in touch with her while she’s been in hiding. By computer. Only short, cryptic messages on her part, but she has always led me in the right direction.”
Palmgren sighed. “And of course you didn’t tell the police.”
“No. Not exactly.”
“Then you haven’t told me either. She’s quite good with computers.”
You have no idea how good.
“I have a great belief in her ability to land on her feet. She may be hard up, but she’s a survivor.”
Not that hard up. She stole almost three billion kronor. She’s not going to starve. She has a bag full of gold, just like Pippi Longstocking.
“What I don’t quite understand,” Blomkvist said, “is why you didn’t take up her case in all those years.”
Palmgren sighed again. He felt infinitely sad.
“I failed her,” he said. “When I became her trustee she was only one in a series of difficult young people with problems. I’ve dealt with dozens of others. I was given the assignment by Stefan Brådhensjö when he was minister of welfare. By then she was already at St. Stefan’s, and I didn’t even see her that first year. I talked to Teleborian a couple of times and he explained that she was psychotic and that she was getting the best possible care. I believed him—and why not? But I also talked to Jonas Beringer, who was senior clinician at that time. I don’t think he had anything to do with her case. He made an assessment at my request, and we agreed to try and get her back into society again by way of a foster family. That was when she was fifteen.”
“And you backed her up over the years.”
“Not enough. I took her side after the episode in the tunnelbana. By then I had gotten to know her and I liked her a lot. She was feisty. I stopped them from putting her back in an institution. The price of that was that she was declared incompetent and I became her guardian.”
“Presumably Björck wasn’t running around telling the court what to decide. It would have attracted attention. He wanted her locked up, and he counted on painting a bleak picture of her through psychiatric assessments from Teleborian and others, assuming that the court would come to the logical conclusion. But instead they followed your recommendation.”
“I’ve never thought that she ought to be under guardianship. But to be honest, I didn’t do much to get the ruling reversed. I should have acted sooner and more forcefully. But I was quite enchanted by Lisbeth and … I always put it off. I had too many irons in the fire. And then I got sick.”
“I don’t think you should blame yourself. No-one else looked after her interests better over the years.”
“The problem was always that I didn’t know enough. Lisbeth was my client, but she never uttered a word about Zalachenko. When she got out of St. Stefan’s it was years before she manifested the slightest trust in me. It was only after the hearing that I sensed she was very slowly starting to communicate with me beyond the necessary formalities.”
“How did she happen to start telling you about Zalachenko?”
“I suppose that in spite of everything she had begun to trust me. Besides, on a number of occasions I’d raised the subject of having the incompetency declaration rescinded. Apparently, she thought it over and then one day she called and wanted to meet. And she told me the whole story about Zalachenko and how she viewed what had happened. You