The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Trilogy Bundle (208 page)

“Later this afternoon I will call upon another psychiatrist. His name is Svante Brandén, and he's senior physician at the Institute of Forensic Medicine and a specialist in forensic psychiatry. Do you know him?”

Teleborian felt confident again. He had expected Giannini to call upon another psychiatrist to question his own conclusions. It was a situation for which he was ready, and in which he would be able to dismiss every objection without difficulty. Indeed, it would be easier to handle an academic colleague in a friendly debate than someone like Advokat Giannini, who had no inhibitions and was bent on distorting his words. He smiled.

“He is a highly respected and skilled forensic psychiatrist. But you must understand, Fru Giannini, that producing a report of this type is an academic
and scientific process. You may disagree with my conclusions, and another psychiatrist may interpret an action or an event in a different way. You may have dissimilar points of view, or perhaps it would be a question purely of how well one doctor or another knows the patient. He might arrive at a very different conclusion about Lisbeth Salander. That is not at all unusual in psychiatry.”

“That's not why I'm calling him. He has not met or examined Lisbeth Salander, and he will not be making any evaluations about her mental condition.”

“Oh, is that so?”

“I have asked him to read your report and all the documentation you have produced on Lisbeth Salander and to look at her medical records from St. Stefan's. I have asked him to make an assessment, not about the state of my client's health, but about whether, from a purely scientific point of view, there is adequate foundation for your conclusions in the material you recorded.”

Teleborian shrugged.

“With all due respect, I think I have a better understanding of Lisbeth Salander than any other psychiatrist in the country. I have followed her development since she was twelve, and regrettably my conclusions were always confirmed by her actions.”

“Very well,” Giannini said. “Then we'll take a look at your conclusions. In your statement you write that her treatment was interrupted when she was placed with a foster family at the age of fifteen.”

“That's correct. It was a serious mistake. If we had been allowed to complete the treatment we might not be here in this courtroom today.”

“You mean that if you had had the opportunity to keep her in restraints for another year she might have become more tractable?”

“That is unfair.”

“I do beg your pardon. You cite extensively the report that your doctoral candidate Jesper Löderman put together when Lisbeth Salander was about to turn eighteen. You write that, quote, ‘Her self-destructive and antisocial behaviour is confirmed by drug abuse and the promiscuity which she has exhibited since she was discharged from St. Stefan's,' unquote. What did you mean by this statement?”

Teleborian sat in silence for several seconds.

“Well … now I'll have to go back a bit. After Lisbeth Salander was discharged from St. Stefan's she developed, as I had predicted, problems with alcohol and drug abuse. She was repeatedly arrested by the police.
A social welfare report also determined that she had had profligate sexual relations with older men and that she was very probably involved in prostitution.”

“Let's analyse this. You say that she abused alcohol. How often was she intoxicated?”

“I'm sorry?”

“Was she drunk every day from when she was released until she turned eighteen? Was she drunk once a week?”

“Naturally, I can't answer that.”

“But you have just stated that she had problems with alcohol abuse.”

“She was a minor and arrested repeatedly by the police for drunkenness.”

“That's the second time you have said that she was arrested repeatedly. How often did this occur? Was it once a week or once every other week?”

“It's not a matter of so many individual occasions …”

“Lisbeth Salander was arrested on two occasions for drunkenness when she was seventeen. She was so blind drunk that she was taken to the hospital. These are the ‘repeated arrests' you refer to. Was she intoxicated on more than these occasions?”

“I don't know, but one might fear that her behaviour was—”

“Excuse me, did I hear you correctly? You
do not know
whether she was intoxicated on more than two occasions during her teenage years, but you
fear
that this was the case. And yet you write reports maintaining that Lisbeth Salander was engaged in repeated alcohol and drug abuse?”

“That is the social service's information, not mine. It has to do with Lisbeth Salander's whole lifestyle. Not surprisingly, her prognosis was dismal after her treatment was interrupted, and her life became a round of alcohol abuse, police intervention, and uncontrolled promiscuity.”

“You say ‘uncontrolled promiscuity.' ”

“Yes. That's a term which indicates that she had no control over her own life. She had sexual relations with older men.”

“That's not against the law.”

“No, but it's abnormal behaviour for a seventeen-year-old girl. The question might be asked as to whether she participated in such encounters of her own free will or whether she was in a situation of uncontrollable compulsion.”

“But you said that she was very probably a prostitute.”

“That may have been a natural consequence of the fact that she lacked education, was incapable of completing school or continuing on to higher education, and therefore could not get a job. It's possible that she viewed
older men as father figures and that financial remuneration for sexual favours was simply a convenient bonus. In which case I perceive it as neurotic behaviour.”

“So you think that a seventeen-year-old girl who has sex is neurotic?”

“You're twisting my words.”

“But you do not know whether she ever took money for sexual favours.”

“She was never arrested for prostitution.”

“And she hardly could be, since prostitution is not a crime in our country.”

“Well, yes, that's right. In her case this has to do with compulsive neurotic behaviour.”

“And you did not hesitate to conclude that Lisbeth Salander is mentally ill based on these unverifiable assumptions? When I was sixteen years old, I drank myself silly on half a bottle of vodka which I stole from my father. Do you think that makes me mentally ill?”

“No, of course not.”

“If I may be so bold, is it not a fact that when you were seventeen you went to a party and got so drunk that you and your friends went out on the town and smashed the windows around the square in Uppsala? You were arrested by the police, detained until you were sober, and then let off with a fine.”

Teleborian looked shocked.

“Is that not a fact, Dr. Teleborian?”

“Well, yes. People do so many stupid things when they're seventeen. But—”

“But that doesn't lead you—or anyone else—to believe that you have a serious mental illness?”

Teleborian was angry. That infernal lawyer kept twisting his words and homing in on details. She refused to see the larger picture. And his own childish escapade … How the hell had she gotten ahold of that information?

He cleared his throat and spoke in a raised voice.

“The reports from social services were unequivocal. They confirmed that Lisbeth Salander had a lifestyle that revolved around alcohol, drugs, and promiscuity. Social services also said that she was a prostitute.”

“No, social services never said that she was a prostitute.”

“She was arrested at—”

“No. She was not arrested,” Giannini said. “She was searched in Tantolunden
at the age of seventeen when she was in the company of a much older man. That same year she was arrested for drunkenness, also in the company of a much older man. Social services
feared
that she
might
be engaged in prostitution. But no
evidence
was ever presented.”

“She had very loose sexual relations with a large number of individuals, both male and female.”

“In your own report, you dwell on my client's sexual habits. You claim that her relationship with her friend Miriam Wu ‘confirms the misgivings about a sexual psychopathy.' Why does it
confirm
any such thing?”

Teleborian gave no answer.

“I sincerely hope that you are not thinking of claiming that homosexuality is a mental illness,” Giannini said. “That might even be an illegal statement.”

“No, of course not. I'm alluding to the elements of sexual sadism in the relationship.”

“You think that she's a sadist?”

“I—”

“We have Miriam Wu's statement here. There was, it says, no violence in their relationship.”

“They engaged in S and M sex and—”

“Now I'm beginning to think you've been reading too many evening newspapers. Lisbeth Salander and her friend Miriam Wu engaged in sexual games on some occasions which involved Miriam Wu tying up my client and giving her sexual satisfaction. That is neither especially unusual nor against the law. Is that why you want to lock up my client?”

Teleborian waved a hand in a dismissive gesture.

“When I was sixteen and still at school I was intoxicated on a good many occasions. I have tried drugs. I have smoked marijuana, and I even tried cocaine on one occasion about twenty years ago. I had my first sexual experience with a school friend when I was fifteen, and I had a relationship with a boy who tied my hands to the bedposts when I was twenty. When I was twenty-two I had a relationship with a man who was forty-seven that lasted several months. Am I, in your view, mentally ill?”

“Fru Giannini, you joke about this, but your sexual experiences are irrelevant in this case.”

“Why is that? When I read your so-called psychiatric assessment of Lisbeth Salander, I find point after point which, taken out of context, would apply to myself. Why am I healthy and sound while Lisbeth Salander is considered a dangerous sadist?”

“These are not the details that are relevant. You didn't twice try to murder your father—”

“Dr. Teleborian, the reality is that it's none of your business whom Lisbeth Salander wants to have sex with. It's none of your business which gender her partner is or how they conduct their sexual relations. And yet in her case you pluck out details from her life and use them as the basis for saying that she is sick.”

“Lisbeth Salander's whole life—from the time she was in junior school—is a document of unprovoked and violent outbursts of anger against teachers and other pupils.”

“Just a moment.” Giannini's voice was suddenly like an ice scraper on a car window. “Look at my client.”

Everyone looked at Salander.

“My client grew up in abominable family circumstances. Over a period of years her father persistently abused her mother.”

“That's—”

“Let me finish. Lisbeth Salander's mother was mortally afraid of Alexander Zalachenko. She did not dare to protest. She did not dare to go to a doctor. She did not dare to go to a women's crisis centre. She was ground down and eventually beaten so badly that she suffered irreversible brain damage. The person who had to take responsibility, the only person who tried to take responsibility for the family long before she reached her teens even, was Lisbeth Salander. She had to shoulder that burden all by herself, since Zalachenko the spy was more important to the state and its social services than Lisbeth's mother.”

“I cannot—”

“The result, excuse me, was a situation in which society abandoned Lisbeth's mother and her two children. Are you surprised that Lisbeth had problems at school? Look at her. She's small and skinny. She has always been the smallest girl in her class. She was introverted and eccentric, and she had no friends. Do you know how children tend to treat fellow students who are
different
?”

Teleborian sighed.

Giannini continued. “I can go back to her school records and examine one situation after another in which Lisbeth turned violent. The incidents were always preceded by some kind of provocation. I can easily recognize the signs of bullying. Let me tell you something.”

“What?”

“I admire Lisbeth Salander. She's tougher than I am. If I had been strapped down for a year when I was thirteen, I would probably have broken
down altogether. She fought back with the only weapon she had available—her contempt for you.”

Her nervousness was long gone. She felt that she was in control.

“In your testimony this morning you spoke a great deal about fantasies. You stated, for instance, that Lisbeth Salander's account of her rape by Advokat Bjurman is a fantasy.”

“That's correct.”

“On what do you base your conclusion?”

“On my experience of the way she usually fantasizes.”

“On your experience of the way she usually fantasizes? How do you decide when she is fantasizing? When she says that she was strapped to a bed for 380 days and nights, in your opinion it's a fantasy, despite the fact that your very own records tell us that this was indeed the case.”

“This is something entirely different. There is not a shred of evidence that Bjurman committed rape against Lisbeth Salander. I mean, needles through her nipples and such gross violence that she unquestionably should have been taken by ambulance to the hospital? It's obvious that this could not have taken place.”

Giannini turned to Judge Iversen. “I asked to have a projector available today …”

“It's in place,” the judge said.

“Could we close the curtains, please?”

Giannini opened her PowerBook and plugged in the cables to the projector. She turned to her client.

“Lisbeth. We're going to look at the film. Are you ready for this?”

“I lived through it,” Salander said dryly.