When he did not open the door even though she could hear sounds coming from
his apartment, she broke in by climbing up a drainpipe to the balcony on the fourth
floor. She found him lying on the floor in the hall, conscious but unable to speak or
move. She called for an ambulance and accompanied him to Söder Hospital with a
growing feeling of panic in her stomach. For three days she hardly left the corridor
outside the intensive care unit. Like a faithful watchdog, she kept an eye on every
doctor and nurse who went in or out of the door. She wandered up and down the
corridor like a lost soul, fixing her eyes on every doctor who came near. Finally a
doctor whose name she never discovered took her into a room to explain the
gravity of the situation. Herr Palmgren was in critical condition following a severe
cerebral haemorrhage. He was not expected to regain consciousness. He was only
sixty-four years old. She neither wept nor changed her expression. She stood up,
left the hospital, and did not return.
Five weeks later the Guardianship Agency summoned Salander to the first meeting
with her new guardian. Her initial impulse was to ignore the summons, but
Palmgren had imprinted in her consciousness that every action has its
consequences. She had learned to analyse the consequences and so she had come
to the conclusion that the easiest way out of this present dilemma was to satisfy
the Guardianship Agency by behaving as if she cared about what they had to say.
Thus, in December—taking a break from her research on Mikael Blomkvist—she
arrived at Bjurman’s office on St. Eriksplan, where an elderly woman representing
the board had handed over Salander’s extensive file to Advokat Bjurman. The
woman had kindly asked Salander how things were going, and she seemed
satisfied with the stifled silence she received in reply. After about half an hour she
left Salander in the care of Advokat Bjurman.
Salander decided that she did not like Advokat Bjurman. She studied him furtively
as he read through her casebook. Age: over fifty. Trim body. Tennis on Tuesdays
and Fridays. Blond. Thinning hair. A slight cleft in his chin. Hugo Boss aftershave.
Blue suit. Red tie with a gold tiepin and ostentatious cufflinks with the initials NEB.
Steel-rimmed glasses. Grey eyes. To judge by the magazines on the side table, his
interests were hunting and shooting.
During the years she had known Palmgren, he had always offered her coffee and
chatted with her. Not even her worst escapes from foster homes or her regular
truancy from school had ever ruffled his composure. The only time Palmgren had
been really upset was when she had been charged with assault and battery after
that scumbag had groped her in Gamla Stan. Do you understand what you’ve done?