Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The - Stieg Larsson [180]
“Let the coffee cool for a while. Lie face down.”
She spent five minutes massaging his back and rubbing him with the liniment. Then she turned him over and gave him the same treatment on the front.
“You’re going to have some serious bruises for a while.”
“Lisbeth, we have to call the police.”
“No,” she replied with such vehemence that Blomkvist opened his eyes in surprise. “If you call the police, I’m leaving. I don’t want to have anything to do with them. Martin Vanger is dead. He died in a car accident. He was alone in the car. There are witnesses. Let the police or someone else discover that fucking torture chamber. You and I are just as ignorant about its existence as everyone else in this village.”
“Why?”
She ignored him and started massaging his aching thighs.
“Lisbeth, we can’t just…”
“If you go on nagging, I’ll drag you back to Martin’s grotto and chain you up again.”
As she said this, Blomkvist fell asleep, as suddenly as if he had fainted.
CHAPTER 25
Saturday, July 12–Monday, July 14
Blomkvist woke with a start at 5:00 in the morning, scrabbling at his neck to get rid of the noose. Salander came in and took hold of his hands, keeping him still. He opened his eyes and looked at her blearily.
“I didn’t know that you played golf,” he said, closing his eyes again. She sat with him for a couple of minutes until she was sure he was asleep. While he slept, Salander had gone back to Martin Vanger’s basement to examine and photograph the crime scene. In addition to the torture instruments, she had found a collection of violent pornographic magazines and a large number of Polaroid photographs pasted into albums.
There was no diary. On the other hand, she did find two A4 binders with passport photographs and handwritten notes about the women. She put the binders in a nylon bag along with Martin’s Dell PC laptop, which she found on the hall table upstairs. While Blomkvist slept she continued her examination of Martin’s computer and binders. It was after 6:00 by the time she turned off the computer. She lit a cigarette.
Together with Mikael Blomkvist she had taken up the hunt for what they thought was a serial killer from the past. They had found something appallingly different. She could hardly imagine the horrors that must have played out in Martin Vanger’s basement, in the midst of this well-ordered, idyllic spot.
She tried to understand.
Martin Vanger had been killing women since the sixties, during the past fifteen years one or two victims per year. The killing had been done so discreetly and was so well planned that no-one was even aware that a serial killer was at work. How was that possible?
The binders provided a partial answer.
His victims were often new arrivals, immigrant girls who had no friends or social contacts in Sweden. There were also prostitutes and social outcasts, with drug abuse or other problems in their background.
From her own studies of the psychology of sexual sadism, Salander had learned that this type of murderer usually collected souvenirs from his victims. These souvenirs functioned as reminders that the killer could use to re-create some of the pleasure he had experienced. Martin Vanger had developed this peculiarity by keeping a “death book.” He had catalogued and graded his victims. He had described their suffering. He had documented his killings with videotapes and photographs.
The violence and the killing were the goal, but Salander concluded that it was the hunt that was Martin Vanger’s primary interest. In his laptop he had created a database with a list of more than a hundred women. There were employees from the Vanger Corporation, waitresses in restaurants where he regularly ate, reception staff in hotels, clerks at the social security office, the secretaries of business associates, and many other women. It seemed as if Martin had pigeonholed practically every woman he had ever come into contact with.
He had killed only a fraction of these women, but every woman anywhere near him was a potential