had managed to assemble quite a body of material. He cleared his throat and turned to the man on his right.
"This is Dr. Peter Teleborian, head physician at St.Stefan's Psychiatric Clinic in Uppsala. He has been good enough to come down to Stockholm to assist in the investigation and to tell us what he knows about Lisbeth Salander."
Modig studied Dr. Teleborian. He was a short man with curly brown hair, steel-rimmed glasses, and a small goatee. He was casually dressed in a beige corduroy jacket, jeans, and a light-blue striped shirt buttoned at the neck. His features were sharp and his appearance boyish. Modig had come across Dr. Teleborian on several occasions but had never spoken to him. He had given a lecture on psychiatric disturbances when she was in her last term at the police academy, and on another occasion at a course he had spoken about psychopaths and psychopathic behaviour in young people. She had also attended the trial of a serial rapist when Teleborian was called as an expert witness. Dr. Teleborian was one of the best-known psychiatrists in Sweden. He had made a name for himself with his tough criticism of the cutbacks in psychiatric care that had resulted in the closure of mental hospitals. People who were obviously in need of care had been abandoned to the streets, doomed to become homeless welfare cases. Since the assassination of Foreign Minister Anna Lindh[2], Dr. Teleborian had been a member of the government commission that reported on the decline in psychiatric care.
Teleborian nodded to the group and poured mineral water into his plastic cup.
"We'll have to see whether there's anything I can contribute," he began cautiously. "I hate being right in my predictions in situations like this."
"Your predictions?" Bublanski said.
"Yes. It's ironic. On the evening of the murders in Enskede, I was on a TV panel discussing the time bomb that's ticking almost everywhere in our society. It's terrible. I wasn't thinking specifically of Lisbeth Salander just then, but I gave a number of examples - with pseudonyms, of course - of patients who quite simply ought to be in institutions rather than at liberty on our streets. I would surmise that during this year alone the police will have to solve half a dozen murder or manslaughter cases where the killer is among this small group of patients."
"And you think that Lisbeth Salander is one of these loonies?" Faste asked.
"Loony isn't a term we would use. Yet she is without doubt one of these frayed individuals that I would not have let out into society, were it up to me."
"Are you saying that she should have been locked up before she committed a crime?" Modig asked. "That doesn't really accord with the principles of a society governed by the rule of law."
Faste frowned and gave her a dirty look. Modig wondered why Faste always seemed so hostile towards her.
"You're perfectly right," Teleborian said, inadvertently coming to her rescue. "It's not compatible with a society based on the rule of law, at least not in its present form. It's a balancing act between respect for the individual and respect for the potential victims that a mentally ill person may leave in his wake. Every case is different, and each patient must be treated on an individual basis. It's inevitable that we in the psychiatric field also make mistakes and release people who shouldn't be out on the streets."
"Well, I don't think we need to go into social politics in great depth here," Bublanski said cautiously.
"Of course," Teleborian said. "We're dealing with a specific case. But let me just say that it's important for you all to understand that Lisbeth Salander is a sick person in need of care, just as any patient with a toothache or heart disease is in need of care. She can still get well, and she would have gotten well if she had received the care she needed when she was still treatable."
"So you weren't her doctor," Faste said.
"I'm one of many people who was involved with Lisbeth Salander's case. She was my patient in her early teens, and I was one of the doctors who evaluated her before it was decided to place her under guardianship when she turned eighteen."
"Could you give us a little background about her?" Bublanski asked. "What could have made her murder two people she didn't know, and what could have made her murder her guardian?"
Dr. Teleborian laughed.
"No, I can't tell you that. I haven't followed her development