hands on. She investigated his circle of relatives and friends. She looked at his
finances and mapped out every detail of his upbringing and career.
The results were discouraging.
He was a lawyer, member of the Bar Association, and author of a respectably long-
winded but exceptionally tedious dissertation on finance law. His reputation was
spotless. Advokat Bjurman had never been censured. On only one occasion was he
reported to the Bar Association—he was accused nearly ten years ago of being the
middleman in an under-the-table property deal, but he had been able to prove his
innocence. His finances were in good order; Bjurman was well-to-do, with at least
10 million kronor in assets. He paid more taxes than he owed, was a member of
Greenpeace and Amnesty International, and he donated money to the Heart and
Lung Association. He had rarely appeared in the mass media, although on several
occasions he had signed his name to public appeals for political prisoners in the
third world. He lived in a five-room apartment on Upplandsgatan near Odenplan,
and he was the secretary of his co-op apartment association. He was divorced and
had no children.
Salander focused on his ex-wife, whose name was Elena. She was born in Poland
but had lived all her life in Sweden. She worked at a rehabilitation centre and was
apparently happily remarried to one of Bjurman’s former colleagues. Nothing
useful there. The Bjurman marriage had lasted fourteen years, and the divorce went
through without disputes.
Advokat Bjurman regularly acted as a supervisor for youths who got into trouble
with the law. He had been trustee for four youths before he became Salander’s
guardian. All of these cases involved minors, and the assignments came to an end
with a court decision when they came of age. One of these clients still consulted
Bjurman in his role as advokat, so there did not seem to be any animosity there
either. If Bjurman had been systematically exploiting his wards, there was no sign
of it, and no matter how deeply Salander probed, she could find no trace of
wrongdoing. All four had established lives for themselves with a boyfriend or
girlfriend; they all had jobs, places to live, and Co-op debit cards.
She called each of the four clients, introducing herself as a social welfare secretary
working on a study about how children hitherto under the care of a trustee fared
later in life compared to other children. Yes, naturally, everyone will be anonymous.
She had put together a questionnaire with ten questions, which she asked on the
telephone. Several of the questions were designed to get the respondents to give