She left middle school and moved to another, without having a single friend to say goodbye to. An unloved girl with odd behaviour.

Then, as she was on the threshold of her teenage years, All The Evil happened, which she did not want to think about. The last outburst set the pattern and prompted a review of the casebook entries from elementary school. After that she was considered to be legally... well, crazy. A freak. Salander had never needed any documents to know that she was different. But it was not something that bothered her for as long as her guardian was Holger Palmgren; if the need arose, she could wrap him around her little finger.

With the appearance of Nils Bjurman, the declaration of incompetence threatened to become a troublesome burden in her life. No matter who she turned to, pitfalls would open up; and what would happen if she lost the battle? Would she be institutionalised? Locked up? There was really no option.

Later that night, when Cecilia Vanger and Blomkvist were lying peacefully with their legs intertwined and Cecilia's breasts resting against his side, she looked up at him.

"Thank you. It's been a long time. And you're not bad."

He smiled. That sort of flattery was always childishly satisfying.

"It was unexpected, but I had fun."

"I'd be happy to do it again," Cecilia said. "If you feel like it."

He looked at her.

"You don't mean that you'd like to have a lover, do you?"

"An occasional lover," Cecilia said. "But I'd like you to go home before you fall asleep. I don't want to wake up tomorrow morning and find you here before I manage to do my exercises and fix my face. And it would be good if you didn't tell the whole village what we've been up to."

"Wouldn't think of it," Blomkvist said.

"Most of all I don't want Isabella to know. She's such a bitch."

"And your closest neighbour... I've met her."

"Yes, but luckily she can't see my front door from her house. Mikael, please be discreet."

"I'll be discreet."

"Thank you. Do you drink?"

"Sometimes."

"I've got a craving for something fruity with gin in it. Want some?"

"Sure."

She wrapped a sheet around herself and went downstairs. Blomkvist was standing naked, looking at her bookshelves when she returned with a carafe of iced water and two glasses of gin and lime. They drank a toast.

"Why did you come over here?" she asked.

"No special reason. I just..."

"You were sitting at home, reading through Henrik's investigation. And then you came over here. A person doesn't need to be super intelligent to know what you're brooding about."

"Have you read the investigation?"

"Parts of it. I've lived my entire adult life with it. You can't spend time with Henrik without being affected by the mystery of Harriet."

"It's actually a fascinating case. What I believe is known in the trade as a locked-room mystery, on an island. And nothing in the investigation seems to follow normal logic. Every question remains unanswered, every clue leads to a dead end."

"It's the kind of thing people can get obsessed about."

"You were on the island that day."

"Yes. I was here, and I witnessed the whole commotion. I was living in Stockholm at the time, studying. I wish I had stayed at home that weekend."

"What was she really like? People seem to have completely different views of her."

"Is this off the record or...?"

"It's off the record."

"I haven't the least idea what was going on inside Harriet's head. You're thinking of her last year, of course. One day she was a religious crackpot. The next day she put on make-up like a whore and went to school wearing the tightest sweater she possessed. Obviously she was seriously unhappy. But, as I said, I wasn't here and just picked up the gossip."

"What triggered the problems?"

"Gottfried and Isabella, obviously. Their marriage was totally haywire. They either partied or they fought. Nothing physical - Gottfried wasn't the type to hit anyone, and he was almost afraid of Isabella. She had a horrendous temper. Sometime in the early sixties he moved more or less permanently to his cabin, where Isabella never set foot. There were periods when he would turn up in the village, looking like a vagrant. And then he'd sober up and dress neatly again and try to tend to his job."

"Wasn't there anyone who wanted to help Harriet?"

"Henrik, of course. In the end she moved into his house. But don't forget that he was preoccupied playing the role of the big industrialist. He was usually off travelling somewhere and didn't have a lot of time to spend with Harriet and Martin. I missed a lot of this because I was in Uppsala and then in Stockholm - and let me tell you, I didn't have an easy childhood myself with Harald as my father. In hindsight I've realised that the problem was that Harriet never confided in anyone. She tried hard to keep up appearances and pretend that they were one big happy family."

"Denial."

"Yes. But she changed when her father drowned. She could no longer pretend that everything was OK. Up until then she was... I don't know how to explain it: extremely gifted and precocious, but on the whole a rather ordinary teenager. During the last year she was still brilliant, getting top marks in every exam and so on, but it seemed as if she didn't have any soul."

"How did her father drown?"

"In the most prosaic way possible. He fell out of a rowing boat right below his cabin. He had his trousers open and an extremely high alcohol content in his blood, so you can just imagine how it happened. Martin was the one who found him."

"I didn't know that."

"It's funny. Martin has turned out to be a really fine person. If you had asked me thirty-five years ago, I would have said that he was the one in the family who needed psychiatric care."

"Why so?"

"Harriet wasn't the only one who suffered ill effects from the situation. For many years Martin was so quiet and introverted that he was effectively antisocial. Both children had a rough time of it. I mean, we all did. I had my own problems with my father - I assume you realise that he's stark raving mad. My sister, Anita, had the same problem, as did Alexander, my cousin. It was tough being young in the Vanger family."

"What happened to your sister?"

"She lives in London. She went there in the seventies to work in a Swedish travel agency, and she stayed. She married someone, never even introduced him to the family, and anon they separated. Today she's a senior manager of British Airways. She and I get along fine, but we are not much in contact and only see each other every other year or so. She never comes to Hedestad."

"Why not?"

"An insane father. Isn't that explanation enough?"

"But you stayed."

"I did. Along with Birger, my brother."

"The politician."

"Are you making fun of me? Birger is older than Anita and me. We've never been very close. In his own eyes he's a fantastically important politician with a future in Parliament and maybe ministerial rank, if the conservatives should win. In point of fact he's a moderately talented local councillor in a remote corner of Sweden, which will probably be both the high point and the whole extent of his career."

"One thing that tickles me about the Vanger family is that you all have such low opinions of each other."

"That's not really true. I'm very fond of Martin and Henrik. And I always got on well with my sister, for all that we seldom see each other. I detest Isabella and can't abide Alexander. And I never speak to my father. So that's about fifty-fifty in the family. Birger is... well, more of a pompous fathead than a bad person. But I see what you mean. Look at it this way: if you're a member of the Vanger family, you learn early on to speak your mind. We do say what we think."

"Oh yes, I've noticed that you all get straight to the point." Blomkvist stretched out his hand to touch her breast. "I wasn't here fifteen minutes before you attacked me."

"To be honest, I've been wondering how you would be in bed ever since I first saw you. And it felt right to try it out."

For the first time in her life Salander felt a strong need to ask someone for advice. The problem was that asking for advice meant that she would have to confide in someone, which in turn would mean revealing her secrets. Who should she tell? She was simply not very good at establishing contact with other people.

After going through her address book in her mind, she had, strictly speaking, ten people who might be considered her circle of acquaintances.

She could talk to Plague, who was more or less a steady presence in her life. But he was definitely not a friend, and he was the last person on earth who would be able to help solve her problem. Not an option.

Salander's sex life wasn't quite as modest as she had led Advokat Bjurman to believe. On the other hand, sex had always (or at least most often) occurred on her conditions and at her initiative. She had had over fifty partners since the age of fifteen. That translated into approximately five partners per year, which was OK for a single girl who had come to regard sex as an enjoyable pastime. But she had had most of these casual partners during a two-year period. Those were the tumultuous years in her late teens when she should have come of age.

There was a time when Salander had stood at a crossroads and did not really have control over her own life - when her future could have taken the form of another series of casebook entries about drugs, alcohol, and custody in various institutions. After she turned twenty and started working at Milton Security, she had calmed down appreciably and - she thought - had got a grip on her life.

She no longer felt the need to please anyone who bought her three beers in a pub, and she did not experience the slightest degree of self-fulfilment by going home with some drunk whose name she could not remember. During the past year she had had only one regular sex partner - hardly promiscuous, as her casebook entries during her late teens had designated her.

For her, sex had most often been with one of a loose group of friends; she was not really a member, but she was accepted because she knew Cilla Noren. She met Cilla in her late teens when, at Palmgren's insistence, she was trying to get the school certificate she had failed to complete at Komvux. Cilla had plum-red hair streaked with black, black leather trousers, a ring in her nose, and as many rivets on her belt as Salander. They had glared suspiciously at each other during the first class.

For some reason Salander did not understand, they had started hanging out together. Salander was not the easiest person to be friends with, and especially not during those years, but Cilla ignored her silences and took her along to the bar. Through Cilla, she had become a member of "Evil Fingers," which had started as a suburban band consisting of four teenage girls in Enskede who were into hard rock. Ten years later, they were a group of friends who met at Kvarnen on Tuesday nights to talk trash about boys and discuss feminism, the pentagram, music, and politics while they drank large quantities of beer. They also lived up to their name.

Salander found herself on the fringe of the group and rarely contributed to the talk, but she was accepted for who she was. She could come and go as she pleased and was allowed to sit in silence over her beer all evening. She was also invited to birthday parties and Christmas glogg celebrations, though she usually didn't go.

During the five years she hung out with "Evil Fingers," the girls began to change. Their hair colour became less extreme, and the clothing came more often from the H&M boutiques rather than from funky Myrorna. They studied or worked, and one of the girls became a mother. Salander felt as if she were the only one who had not changed a bit, which could also be interpreted as that she was simply marking time and going nowhere.

But they still had fun. If there was one place where she felt any sort of group solidarity, it was in the company of the "Evil Fingers" and, by extension, with the guys who were friends with the girls.

"Evil Fingers" would listen. They would also stand up for her. But they had no clue that Salander had a district court order declaring her non compos mentis. She didn't want them to be eyeing her the wrong way, too. Not an option.

Apart from that, she did not have a single ex-classmate in her address book. She had no network or support group or political contacts of any kind. So who could she turn to and tell about her problems?

There might be one person. She deliberated for a long time about whether she should confide in Dragan Armansky. He had told her that if she needed help with anything, she should not hesitate to come to him. And she was sure that he meant it.

Armansky had groped her one time too, but it had been a friendly groping, no ill intentions, and not a demonstration of power. But to ask him for help went against the grain. He was her boss, and it would put her in his debt. Salander toyed with the idea of how her life would take shape if Armansky were her guardian instead of Bjurman. She smiled. The idea was not unpleasant, but Armansky might take the assignment so seriously that he would smother her with attention. That was... well, possibly an option.

Even though she was well aware of what a women's crisis centre was for, it never occurred to her to turn to one herself. Crisis centres existed, in her eyes, for victims, and she had never regarded herself as a victim. Consequently, her only remaining option was to do what she had always done - take matters in her own hands and solve her problems on her own. That was definitely an option.

And it did not bode well for Herr Advokat Nils Bjurman.

CHAPTER 13