Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The - Stieg Larsson [192]
“Harriet, your father was a rapist and a murderer. It wasn’t your fault.”
“I know that. My father molested me for a year. I did everything to avoid…but he was my father and I couldn’t refuse to have anything to do with him without giving him some explanation. So I lied and played a role and tried to pretend that everything was OK. And I made sure that someone else was always around when I saw him. My mother knew what he was doing, of course, but she didn’t care.”
“Isabella knew?”
Harriet’s voice took on a new harshness.
“Of course she knew. Nothing ever happened in our family without Isabella knowing. But she ignored everything that was unpleasant or showed her in a bad light. My father could have raped me in the middle of the living room right before her eyes and she wouldn’t have noticed. She was incapable of acknowledging that anything was wrong in her life or mine.”
“I’ve met her. She’s not my favourite in the family.”
“She’s been like that her whole life. I’ve often wondered about my parents’ relationship. I realised that they rarely or maybe never had sex with each other after I was born. My father had women, but for some strange reason he was afraid of Isabella. He stayed away from her, but he couldn’t get a divorce.”
“No-one does in the Vanger family.”
She laughed for the first time.
“No, they don’t. But the point is that I couldn’t bring myself to say anything. The whole world would have found out. My schoolmates, all my relatives…”
“Harriet, I’m so sorry.”
“I was fourteen when he raped me the first time. And during the next year he would take me out to his cabin. Many times Martin came along. He forced both me and Martin to do things with him. And he held my arms while Martin…had his way with me. When my father died, Martin was ready to take over his role. He expected me to become his lover and he thought it was perfectly natural for me to submit to him. At that time I no longer had any choice. I was forced to do what Martin said. I was rid of one tormentor only to land in the clutches of another, and the only thing I could do was to make sure there was never an occasion when I was alone with him…”
“Henrik would have…”
“You still don’t understand.”
She raised her voice. Blomkvist saw that several of the men at the next tent were looking at him. She lowered her voice again and leaned towards him.
“All the cards are on the table. You’ll have to work out the rest.”
She stood up and got two more beers. When she came back, Mikael said a single word to her.
“Gottfried.”
She nodded.
“On August 7, 1965, my father forced me to go out to his cabin. Henrik was away. My father was drinking, and he tried to force himself on me. But he couldn’t get it up and he flew into a drunken rage. He was always…rough and violent towards me when we were alone, but this time he crossed the line. He urinated on me. Then he started telling me what he was going to do to me. That night he told me about the women he had killed. He was bragging about it. He quoted from the Bible. This went on for an hour. I didn’t understand half of what he was saying, but I realised that he was totally, absolutely sick.”
She took a gulp of her beer.
“Sometime around midnight he had a fit. He was totally insane. We were up in the sleeping loft. He put a T-shirt around my neck and pulled it as tight as he could. I blacked out. I don’t have the slightest doubt that he really was trying to kill me, and for the first time that night he managed to complete the rape.”
Harriet looked at Blomkvist. Her eyes entreated him to understand.
“But he was so