“Then there’s Sjöberg in Ranmo outside Karlstad. She’s the one Harriet listed as
Magda. Her full name was Magda Lovisa, but people called her Lovisa.”
Blomkvist listened while Salander recounted the bizarre details of the Karlstad
murder. When she lit a cigarette he pointed at the pack, and she pushed it over to
him.
“So the killer attacked the animal too?”
“The Leviticus verse says that if a woman has sex with an animal, both must be
killed.”
“The likelihood of this woman having sex with a cow must be...well, non-existent.”
“The verse can be read literally. It’s enough that she ‘approaches’ the animal, which
a farmer’s wife would undeniably do every day.”
“Understood.”
“The next case on Harriet’s list is Sara. I’ve identified her as Sara Witt, thirty-seven,
living in Ronneby. She was murdered in January 1964, found tied to her bed,
subjected to aggravated sexual assault, but the cause of death was asphyxiation;
she was strangled. The killer also started a fire, with the probable intention of
burning the whole house down to the ground, but part of the fire went out by
itself, and the rest was taken care of by the fire service, who were there in a very
short time.”
“And the connection?”
“Listen to this. Sara Witt was both the daughter of a pastor and married to a pastor.
Her husband was away that weekend.”
“And the daughter of any priest, if she profanes herself by playing the harlot, profanes
her father; she shall be burned with fire. OK. That fits on the list. You said you’d found
more cases.”
“I’ve found three other women who were murdered under such similarly strange
circumstances and they could have been on Harriet’s list. The first is a young
woman named Liv Gustavsson. She was twenty-two and lived in Farsta. She was a
horse-loving girl—she rode in competitions and was quite a promising talent. She
also owned a small pet shop with her sister. She was found in the shop. She had