Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The - Stieg Larsson [184]
“Bullshit,” Salander said, her voice as hard as flint.
Blomkvist stared at her in astonishment. She had a stubborn look in her eyes. There was not an ounce of sympathy in it.
“Martin had exactly the same opportunity as anyone else to strike back. He killed and he raped because he liked doing it.”
“I’m not saying otherwise. But Martin was a repressed boy and under the influence of his father, just as Gottfried was cowed by his father, the Nazi.”
“So you’re assuming that Martin had no will of his own and that people become whatever they’ve been brought up to be.”
Blomkvist smiled cautiously. “Is this a sensitive issue?”
Salander’s eyes blazed with fury. Blomkvist quickly went on.
“I’m only saying that I think that a person’s upbringing does play a role. Gottfried’s father beat him mercilessly for years. That leaves its mark.”
“Bullshit,” Salander said again. “Gottfried isn’t the only kid who was ever mistreated. That doesn’t give him the right to murder women. He made that choice himself. And the same is true of Martin.”
Blomkvist held up his hand.
“Can we not argue?”
“I’m not arguing. I just think that it’s pathetic that creeps always have to have someone else to blame.”
“They have a personal responsibility. We’ll work it all out later. What matters is that Martin was seventeen when Gottfried died, and he didn’t have anyone to guide him. He tried to continue in his father’s footsteps. In February 1966, in Uppsala.”
Blomkvist reached for one of Salander’s cigarettes.
“I won’t speculate about what impulses Gottfried was trying to satisfy or how he himself interpreted what he was doing. There’s some sort of Biblical gibberish that a psychiatrist might be able to figure out, something to do with punishment and purification in a figurative sense. It doesn’t matter what it was. He was a cut and dried serial killer.
“Gottfried wanted to kill women and clothe his actions in some sort of pseudo-religious clap-trap. Martin didn’t even pretend to have an excuse. He was organised and did his killing systematically. He also had money to put into his hobby. And he was shrewder than his father. Every time Gottfried left a body behind, it led to a police investigation and the risk that someone might track him down, or at least link together the various murders.”
“Martin Vanger built his house in the seventies,” Salander said pensively.
“I think Henrik mentioned it was in 1978. Presumably he ordered a safe room put in for important files or some such purpose. He got a soundproofed, windowless room with a steel door.”
“He’s had that room for twenty-five years.”
They fell silent for a while as Blomkvist thought about what atrocities must have taken place there for a quarter of a century. Salander did not need to think about the matter; she had seen the videotapes. She noticed that Blomkvist was unconsciously touching his neck.
“Gottfried hated women and taught his son to hate women at the same time as he was raping him. But there’s also some sort of undertone…I think Gottfried fantasised that his children would share his, to put it mildly, perverted world view. When I asked about Harriet, his own sister, Martin said: ‘We tried to talk to her. But she was just an ordinary cunt. She was planning to tell Henrik.’”
“I heard him. That was about when I got down to the basement. And that means that we know what her aborted conversation with Henrik was to have been about.”
Blomkvist frowned. “Not really. Think of the chronology. We don’t know when Gottfried first raped his son, but he took Martin with him when he murdered Lea Persson in Uddevalla in 1962. He drowned in 1965. Before that, he and Martin tried to talk to Harriet. Where does that lead us?”
“Martin wasn’t the only one that Gottfried assaulted. He also assaulted Harriet.”
“Gottfried was the teacher. Martin was the pupil. Harriet was what? Their plaything?”
“Gottfried taught Martin to screw his sister.” Salander pointed at the Polaroid prints. “It’s hard to determine her attitude from these two pictures because we can’t see her face,