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.