Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The - Stieg Larsson [143]
The oldest case to be recounted was from the sixties, and none of the murders matched the list that Salander had been given by Blomkvist. But one case did attract her attention.
In June 1962 a prostitute by the name of Lea Persson from Göteborg had gone to Uddevalla to visit her mother and her nine-year-old son, whom her mother was taking care of. On a Sunday evening, after a visit of several days, Lea had hugged her mother, said goodbye, and caught the train back to Göteborg. She was found two days later behind a container on an industrial site no longer in use. She had been raped, and her body had been subjected to extraordinary violence.
The Lea murder aroused a great deal of attention as a summer serial story in the newspaper, but no killer had ever been identified. There was no Lea on Harriet Vanger’s list. Nor did the manner of her death fit with any of Harriet’s Bible quotes.
On the other hand, there was such a bizarre coincidence that Salander’s antennae instantly buzzed. About ten yards from where Lea’s body was found lay a flowerpot with a pigeon inside. Someone had tied a string round the pigeon’s neck and pulled it through the hole in the bottom of the pot. Then the pot was put on a little fire that had been laid between two bricks. There was no certainty that this cruelty had any connection with the Lea murder. It could have been a child playing a horrible game, but the press dubbed the murder the Pigeon Murder.
Salander was no Bible reader—she did not even own one—but that evening she went over to Högalid Church and with some difficulty she managed to borrow a Bible. She sat on a park bench outside the church and read Leviticus. When she reached Chapter 12, verse 8, her eyebrows went up. Chapter 12 dealt with the purification of women after childbirth.
And if she cannot afford a lamb, then she shall take two turtledoves or two young pigeons, one for a burnt offering and the other for a sin offering; and the priest shall make atonement for her, and she shall be clean.
Lea could very well have been included in Harriet’s date book as: Lea—31208.
Salander thought that no research she had ever done before had contained even a fraction of the scope of this assignment.
Mildred Brännlund, remarried and now Mildred Berggren, opened the door when Blomkvist knocked around 10:00 on Sunday morning. The woman was much older, of course, and had by now filled out a good deal, but he recognised her at once.
“Hi, my name is Mikael Blomkvist. You must be Mildred Berggren.”
“That’s right.”
“I’m sorry for knocking on your door like this, but I’ve been trying to find you, and it’s rather complicated to explain.” He smiled at her. “I wonder if I could come in and take up a small amount of your time.”
Mildred’s husband and a son who was about thirty-five were home, and without much hesitation she invited Blomkvist to come and sit in their kitchen. He shook hands with each of them. He had drunk more coffee during the past twenty-four hours than at any time in his life, but by now he had learned that in Norrland it was rude to say no. When the coffee cups were on the table, Mildred sat down and asked with some curiosity how she could help him. It was obvious that he did not easily understand her Norsjö dialect, so she switched to standard Swedish.
Blomkvist took a deep breath. “This is a long and peculiar story,” he said. “In September 1966 you were in Hedestad with your then husband, Gunnar Brännlund.”
She looked surprised. He waited for her to nod before he laid the photograph from Järnvägsgatan on the table in front of her.
“When was this picture taken? Do you remember the occasion?”
“Oh, my goodness,” Mildred Berggren said. “That was a lifetime ago.”
Her present husband and son came to stand next to her to look at the