They fell silent for a while as Blomkvist thought about what atrocities must have
taken place there for a quarter of a century. Salander did not need to think about
the matter; she had seen the videotapes. She noticed that Blomkvist was
unconsciously touching his neck.
“Gottfried hated women and taught his son to hate women at the same time as he
was raping him. But there’s also some sort of undertone...I think Gottfried
fantasised that his children would share his, to put it mildly, perverted world view.
When I asked about Harriet, his own sister, Martin said: ‘We tried to talk to her. But
she was just an ordinary cunt. She was planning to tell Henrik.’”
“I heard him. That was about when I got down to the basement. And that means
that we know what her aborted conversation with Henrik was to have been about.”
Blomkvist frowned. “Not really. Think of the chronology. We don’t know when
Gottfried first raped his son, but he took Martin with him when he murdered Lea
Persson in Uddevalla in 1962. He drowned in 1965. Before that, he and Martin tried
to talk to Harriet. Where does that lead us?”
“Martin wasn’t the only one that Gottfried assaulted. He also assaulted Harriet.”
“Gottfried was the teacher. Martin was the pupil. Harriet was what? Their
plaything?”
“Gottfried taught Martin to screw his sister.” Salander pointed at the Polaroid
prints. “It’s hard to determine her attitude from these two pictures because we
can’t see her face, but she’s trying to hide from the camera.”
“Let’s say that it started when she was fourteen, in 1964. She defended herself—
couldn’t accept it, as Martin put it. That was what she was threatening to tell Henrik
about. Martin undoubtedly had nothing to say in this connection; he just did what
his father told him. But he and Gott fried had formed some sort of...pact, and they
tried to initiate Harriet into it too.”
Salander said: “In your notes you wrote that Henrik had let Harriet move into his
house in the winter of 1964.”
“Henrik could see there was something wrong in her family. He thought it was the
bickering and friction between Gottfried and Isabella that was the cause, and he
took her in so that she could have some peace and quiet and concentrate on her
studies.”