The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium #1)

She had planned to meet him at his office, exactly like last time. Now she was forced to see him in unfamiliar territory. The meeting was set for Friday evening. She had been given the building code, and she rang his doorbell at 8:30, half an hour later than agreed. That was how much time she had needed in the darkness of the building's stairwell to run through her plan one last time, consider alternatives, steel herself, and mobilise the courage she would need.

At 8:00 Blomkvist switched off his computer and put on his outdoor clothing. He left the lights on in his office. Outside the sky was bright with stars and the night was freezing. He walked briskly up the hill, past Vanger's house, taking the road to ostergarden. Beyond Vanger's house he turned off to the left, following an uglier path along the shore. The lighted buoys flickered out on the water, and the lights from Hedestad gleamed prettily in the dark. He needed fresh air, but above all he wanted to avoid the spying eyes of Isabella Vanger. Not far from Martin Vanger's house he rejoined the road and arrived at Cecilia Vanger's door just after 8:30. They went straight to her bedroom.

They met once or twice a week. Cecilia had not only become his lover out here in his place of exile, she had also become the person he had begun to confide in. It was significantly more rewarding discussing Harriet Vanger with her than with her uncle.

The plan began to go wrong almost from the start.

Bjurman was wearing a bathrobe when he opened the door to his apartment. He was cross at her arriving late and motioned her brusquely inside. She was wearing black jeans, a black T-shirt, and the obligatory leather jacket. She wore black boots and a small rucksack with a strap across her chest.

"Haven't you even learned to tell the time?" Bjurman said. Salander did not reply. She looked around. The apartment looked much as she had expected after studying the building plans in the archives of the City Zoning Office. The light-coloured furniture was birch and beech-wood.

"Come on," Bjurman said in a friendlier tone. He put his arm around her shoulders and led her down a hall into the apartment's interior. No small talk. He opened the door to the bedroom. There was no doubt as to what services Salander was expected to perform.

She took a quick look around. Bachelor furnishings. A double bed with a high bedstead of stainless steel. A low chest of drawers that also functioned as a bedside table. Bedside lamps with muted lighting. A wardrobe with a mirror along one side. A cane chair and a small desk in the corner next to the door. He took her by the hand and led her to the bed.

"Tell me what you need money for this time. More computer accessories?"

"Food," she said.

"Of course. How stupid of me. You missed our last meeting." He placed his hand under her chin and lifted her face so their eyes met. "How are you?"

She shrugged.

"Have you thought about what I said last time?"

"About what?"

"Lisbeth, don't act any more stupid than you are. I want us to be good friends and to help each other out."

She said nothing. Advokat Bjurman resisted an impulse to give her a slap - to put some life into her.

"Did you like our grown-up game from last time?"

"No."

He raised his eyebrows.

"Lisbeth, don't be foolish."

"I need money to buy food."

"But that's what we talked about last time. If you're nice to me, I'll be nice to you. But if you're just going to cause trouble..." His grip on her chin tightened and she twisted away.

"I want my money. What do you want me to do?"

"You know what I want." He grabbed her shoulder and pulled her towards the bed.

"Wait," Salander said hastily. She gave him a resigned look and then nodded curtly. She took off her rucksack and leather jacket with the rivets and looked around. She put her jacket on the chair, set her rucksack on the round table, and took several hesitant steps to the bed. Then she stopped, as if she had cold feet. Bjurman came closer.

"Wait," she said once more, in a tone as if to say that she was trying to talk sense into him. "I don't want to have to suck your dick every time I need money."

The expression on Bjurman's face suddenly changed. He slapped her hard. Salander opened her eyes wide, but before she could react, he grabbed her by the shoulder and threw her on to the bed. The violence caught her by surprise. When she tried to turn over, he pressed her down on the bed and straddled her.

Like the time before, she was no match for him in terms of physical strength. Her only chance of fighting back was if she could hurt him by scratching his eyes or using some sort of weapon. But her planned scenario had already gone to hell. Shit, she thought when he ripped off her T-shirt. She realised with terrifying clarity that she was out of her depth.

She heard him open the dresser drawer next to the bed and caught the clanking sound of metal. At first she did not understand what was happening; then she saw the handcuffs close around her wrist. He pulled up her arm, placed the handcuffs around one of the bedposts, and locked her other hand. It did not take him long to pull off her boots and jeans. Then he took off her knickers and held them in his hand.

"You have to learn to trust me, Lisbeth," he said. "I'm going to teach you how this grown-up game is played. If you don't treat me well, you have to be punished. When you're nice to me, we'll be friends."

He sat astride her again.

"So you don't like anal sex," he said.

Salander opened her mouth to scream. He grabbed her hair and stuffed the knickers in her mouth. She felt him putting something around her ankles, spread her legs apart and tie them so that she was lying there completely vulnerable. She heard him moving around the room but she could not see through the T-shirt around her face. It took him several minutes. She could hardly breathe. Then she felt an excruciating pain as he forced something up her anus.

Cecilia Vanger still had a rule that Blomkvist was not to stay all night. Some time after 2:00 in the morning he began to dress while she lay naked on the bed, smiling at him.

"I like you, Mikael. I like your company."

"I like you too."

She pulled him back to the bed and took off the shirt he had just put on. He stayed for one more hour.

When later he passed by Vanger's house, he was sure he saw one of the curtains shift upstairs.

Salander was allowed to put on her clothes. It was 4:00 on Saturday morning. She picked up her leather jacket and rucksack and hobbled to the front door, where he was waiting for her, showered and neatly dressed. He gave her a cheque for 2,500 kronor.

"I'll drive you home," he said, and opened the door.

She crossed the threshold, out of the apartment, and turned to face him. Her body looked fragile and her face was swollen from crying, and he almost recoiled when he met her eyes. Never in his life had he seen such naked, smouldering hatred. Salander looked just as deranged as her casebook indicated.

"No," she said, so quietly that he barely heard the word. "I can get home on my own."

He put a hand on her shoulder.

"Are you sure?"

She nodded. His grip on her shoulder tightened.

"Remember what we agreed. You'll come back here next Saturday."

She nodded again. Cowed. He let her go.

CHAPTER 14

Saturday, March 8 - Monday, March 17

Salander spent the week in bed with pain in her abdomen, bleeding from her rectum, and less visible wounds that would take longer to heal. What she had gone through was very different from the first rape in his office; it was no longer a matter of coercion and degradation. This was systematic brutality.

She realised much too late that she had utterly misjudged Bjurman.

She had assumed he was on a power trip and liked to dominate, not that he was an all-out sadist. He had kept her in handcuffs half the night. Several times she believed he meant to kill her, and at one point he had pressed a pillow over her face until she thought she was going to pass out.

She did not cry.

Apart from the tears of pure physical pain she shed not a single tear. When she left the apartment she made her way with difficulty to the taxi stand at Odenplan. With difficulty she climbed the stairs to her own apartment. She showered and wiped the blood from her genitals. Then she drank a pint of water with two Rohypnol and stumbled to her bed and pulled the duvet over her head.

She woke up at midday on Sunday, empty of thoughts and with constant pain in her head, muscles and abdomen. She got up, drank two glasses of kefir, and ate an apple. Then she took two more sleeping pills and went back to bed.

She did not feel like getting up until Tuesday. She went out and bought a big box of Billy's Pan Pizza, stuck two of them in the microwave, and filled a thermos with coffee. She spent that night on the Internet, reading articles and theses on the psychopathology of sadism.

She found one article published by a women's group in the United States in which the author claimed that the sadist chose his "relationships" with almost intuitive precision; the sadist's best victim was the one who voluntarily went to him because she did not think she had any choice. The sadist specialised in people who were in a position of dependence.

Advokat Bjurman had chosen her as a victim.

That told her something about the way she was viewed by other people.

On Friday, a week after the second rape, she walked from her apartment to a tattoo parlour in the Hornstull district. She had made an appointment, and there were no other customers in the shop. The owner nodded, recognising her.

She chose a simple little tattoo depicting a narrow band and asked to have it put on her ankle. She pointed.

"The skin is very thin there. It's going to hurt a lot," said the tattoo artist.

"That's OK," Salander said, taking off her jeans and putting her leg up.

"OK, a band. You already have loads of tattoos. Are you sure you want another one?"

"It's a reminder."

Blomkvist left the cafe when Susanne closed at 2:00 on Saturday afternoon. He had spent the morning typing up his notes in his iBook. He walked to Konsum and bought some food and cigarettes before he went home. He had discovered fried sausage with potatoes and beets - a dish he had never been fond of but for some reason it seemed perfectly suited to a cabin in the country.

At around 7:00 in the evening he stood by the kitchen window, thinking. Cecilia Vanger had not called. He had run into her that afternoon when she was buying bread at the cafe, but she had been lost in her own thoughts. It did not seem likely that she would call this evening. He glanced at the little TV that he almost never used. Instead he sat at the kitchen bench and opened a mystery by Sue Grafton.

***

Salander returned at the agreed-upon time to Bjurman's apartment near Odenplan. He let her in with a polite, welcoming smile.

"And how are you doing today, dear Lisbeth?"

She did not reply. He put an arm around her shoulder.

"I suppose it was a bit rough last time," he said. "You looked a little subdued."

She gave him a crooked smile and he felt a sudden pang of uncertainty. This girl is not all there. I have to remember that. He wondered if she would come around.

"Shall we go into the bedroom?" Salander said.

On the other hand, she may be with it... Today I'll take it easy on her. Build up her trust. He had already put out the handcuffs on the chest of drawers. It was not until they reached the bed that Bjurman realised that something was amiss.

She was the one leading him to the bed, not the other way around. He stopped and gave her a puzzled look when she pulled something out of her jacket pocket which he thought was a mobile telephone. Then he saw her eyes.

"Say goodnight," she said.

She shoved the taser into his left armpit and fired off 75,000 volts. When his legs began to give way she put her shoulder against him and used all her strength to push him down on to the bed.

Cecilia Vanger felt a little tipsy. She had decided not to telephone Blomkvist. Their relationship had developed into a ridiculous bedroom farce, in which Blomkvist had to tiptoe around trying to get to her house unnoticed. She in turn played a lovesick teenage girl who could not control herself. Her behaviour the past few weeks had been reckless.

The problem is that I like him too much, she thought. He's going to end up hurting me. She sat for a long time wishing that Mikael Blomkvist had never come to Hedeby.

She had opened a bottle of wine and drunk two glasses in her loneliness. She turned on the TV to watch Rapport and tried to follow the world situation but very soon tired of the reasoned commentary on why President Bush had to bomb Iraq to smithereens. Instead she sat on the living-room sofa and picked up Gellert Tamas' book The Laser Man. She read only a few pages before she had to put the book down. That made her instantly think of her father. What kind of fantasies did he have?

The last time they really saw each other was in 1984, when she went with him and Birger, hare-hunting north of Hedestad. Birger was trying out a new hunting dog - a Swedish foxhound which he had just acquired. Harald Vanger was seventy-three at the time, and she had done her very best to accept his lunacy, which had made her childhood a nightmare and affected her entire adult life.

Cecilia had never before been as fragile as she was then. Her marriage had ended three months earlier. Domestic violence... the term was so banal. For her it had taken the form of unceasing abuse. Blows to the head, violent shoving, moody threats, and being knocked to the kitchen floor. Her husband's outbursts were inexplicable and the attacks were not often so severe that she was actually injured. She had become used to it.

Until the day when she struck back and he completely lost control. It ended with him flinging some scissors at her which lodged in her shoulder blade.

He had been remorseful and panicky and drove her to the hospital, making up a story about a bizarre accident which all the staff in the emergency room saw through at once. She had felt ashamed. They gave her twelve stitches and kept her in the hospital for two days. Then her uncle picked her up and drove her to his house. She never spoke to her husband again.