taking care of. On a Sunday evening, after a visit of several days, Lea had hugged
her mother, said goodbye, and caught the train back to Göteborg. She was found
two days later behind a container on an industrial site no longer in use. She had
been raped, and her body had been subjected to extraordinary violence.
The Lea murder aroused a great deal of attention as a summer serial story in the
newspaper, but no killer had ever been identified. There was no Lea on Harriet
Vanger’s list. Nor did the manner of her death fit with any of Harriet’s Bible quotes.
On the other hand, there was such a bizarre coincidence that Salander’s antennae
instantly buzzed. About ten yards from where Lea’s body was found lay a flowerpot
with a pigeon inside. Someone had tied a string round the pigeon’s neck and
pulled it through the hole in the bottom of the pot. Then the pot was put on a little
fire that had been laid between two bricks. There was no certainty that this cruelty
had any connection with the Lea murder. It could have been a child playing a
horrible game, but the press dubbed the murder the Pigeon Murder.
Salander was no Bible reader—she did not even own one—but that evening she
went over to Högalid Church and with some difficulty she managed to borrow a
Bible. She sat on a park bench outside the church and read Leviticus. When she
reached Chapter 12, verse 8, her eyebrows went up. Chapter 12 dealt with the
purification of women after childbirth.
And if she cannot afford a lamb, then she shall take two turtledoves or two young
pigeons, one for a burnt offering and the other for a sin offering; and the priest shall
make atonement for her, and she shall be clean.
Lea could very well have been included in Harriet’s date book as: Lea—31208.
Salander thought that no research she had ever done before had contained even a
fraction of the scope of this assignment.