The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye: Continuing Stieg Larsson's Millennium Series Read Free Page A

interesting. According to Palmgren it was more of the same old horror stories about how Salander had been strapped to her bed in the clinic and subjected to the worst kind of psychological abuse. “Nothing you need to see,” he said. Even so, something must have stood out, because when Palmgren asked about her dragon tattoo and Salander mentioned the woman with the birthmark, he said:
    “Wasn’t she from the Registry?”
    “What’s that?”
    “The Registry for the Study of Genetics and Social Environment in Uppsala? I thought I read that somewhere.”
    “The name must have been in those new documents,” she said.
    “You think so? Perhaps I’m just muddling it all up.”
    Perhaps he was. Palmgren had grown old. Yet the information stuck in Salander’s mind. It had gnawed at her while she trained on the speedball in the gym in the afternoons and worked in the ceramics workshop in the mornings. It gnawed away at her now as she stood in her cell looking down at the floor.
    Somehow the I.Q. test which lay spread across the concrete no longer seemed irrelevant, but rather a continuation of her conversation with Palmgren. For a moment Salander could not grasp why. Then she remembered that the woman with the birthmark had given her all kinds of tests in those days. They always ended in arguments and eventually with Salander, at the age of just six, escaping into the night.
    Yet what was most striking about these memories was not the tests or her running away, but the growing suspicion that there was something fundamental about her childhood she did not understand. She knew she had to find out more.
    True, she would soon be outside again and free to do as she wanted. But she also knew she had leverage with Warden Olsen. This was not the first time he had chosen to turn a blind eye to abuses, and the unit he headed, still a source of pride in the prison service, was in a state of moral decay. Salander guessed she could get Olsen to give her access to something no-one else in the prison was allowed – an internet connection.
    She listened out for sounds in the corridor. Muttered curses could be heard, along with doors being slammed, keys rattling and footsteps tapping off into the distance. Then silence fell. The only noise came from the ventilation system. It was broken – the air was stifling, unbearable – but still humming away. Salander looked at the papers on the floor and thought about Benito, Faria Kazi and Alvar Olsen – and the woman with the fiery birthmark on her throat.
    She bent to pick up the test, sat down at the desk and scribbled out some answers. Then she pressed the intercom button by the steel door. Olsen picked up after a long interval, sounding nervous. She said she needed to talk to him right away.
    “It’s important,” she said.

CHAPTER 2
12.vi
    Olsen wanted to go home. He wanted to get away. But first he had to do his shift and deal with his paperwork and call his nine-year-old daughter, Vilda, to say good night. His mother’s sister Kerstin was looking after her and, as always, he had told his aunt to lock the apartment using the extra security lock.
    Olsen had been head of the maximum security unit at Flodberga for twelve years and had long been proud of his position. As a young man he rescued his mother from alcoholism. He was a compassionate person who sided with the underdog. So it was no surprise that he joined the prison service and before long made a name for himself. But by now there was very little left of his youthful idealism.
    The first major blow came early. His wife left him – and their daughter – to move to Åre with her former boss. But in the end it was Benito who robbed him of his illusions. He used to say that there is some good in every criminal. But although boyfriends, girlfriends, lawyers, therapists, forensic psychiatrists and even a couple of priests had done their uttermost, there was no good to be found in Benito.
    She was originally called Beatrice, and later