Karl Evert Norgren in the face. She didn't think it was worth trying to explain anything to uniformed authorities. She refused on principle to respond when psychiatrists tried to determine her mental state. As luck would have it, several other passengers had observed the whole course of events, including a persistent woman from Harnosand who happened to be a member of parliament for the Centre Party. The woman testified that Norgren had assaulted Salander before the violence broke out. When it later turned out that Norgren had been convicted for sexual offences twice before, the prosecutor decided to drop the case. But that did not mean that the social welfare report on Salander was set aside. Not long afterwards the district court declared her incompetent, and she ended up under the guardianship of Holger Palmgren, and later Nils Bjurman.
Now all of these intimate and confidential details were on the Net for public consumption. Her personal record was supplemented with colourful descriptions of how she had come into conflict with people around her since elementary school, and how she spent her early teens in a children's psychiatric clinic.
***
The diagnoses of Salander in the press varied depending on which edition and which newspaper was doing the reporting. Sometimes she was described as psychotic and sometimes as schizophrenic or paranoid. All the papers subscribed to the view that she was mentally handicapped - after all, she hadn't been able to finish school. The public should have no doubt that she was unbalanced and inclined to violence.
When it was discovered that Salander was friends with the lesbian Miriam Wu, a frenzy broke out in certain papers. Wu had appeared in Benita Costa's show at the Gay Pride Festival, a provocative performance in which she was photographed topless wearing leather chaps with suspenders and high-heeled patent-leather boots. She had also written articles for a gay newspaper that were widely quoted, as were the interviews she had given in connection with her appearance in various shows. The combination of mass murder and titillating S&M sex was evidently doing wonders for circulation figures.
Since Wu hadn't surfaced during that first dramatic week, there was speculation that she too might have fallen victim to Salander's violence or that she could have been an accomplice. These speculations, however, were restricted for the most part to the unsophisticated Internet chat room "Exile." On the other hand, several newspapers floated the theory that since Mia Johansson's thesis dealt with the sex trade, this might be Salander's motive for the murders, on the grounds that - according to the social welfare agency - she was a prostitute.
At the end of the week the media discovered that Salander also had connections to a group of young women who flirted with Satanism. They called themselves Evil Fingers, and this caused an older male cultural columnist to write about the rootlessness of youth and the dangers that lurk in everything from skinhead culture to hip-hop.
When all the media assertions were put together, the police appeared to be hunting for a psychotic lesbian who had joined a cult of Satanists that propagandized for S&M sex and hated society in general and men in particular. Because Salander had been abroad for the past year, there might be international connections too.
***
In only one case did Salander react with any great emotion to the media uproar:
"WE WERE SCARED OF HER"
She threatened to kill us,
say teacher and schoolmates
The person making this statement was a former teacher, now a textile artist, named Birgitta Miåås.
Salander had been eleven on the occasion in question. She remembered Miåås as an unpleasant substitute math teacher who time after time had tried to get her to answer a question that she'd already answered correctly, even though the answer key in the textbook said she was wrong. In fact, the textbook was wrong, and as far as Salander was concerned that should have been obvious to everyone. But Miåås had grown more and more obstinate, and Salander became less and less willing to discuss the matter. She sat there pouting until Miåås, out of sheer frustration, grabbed her by the shoulder and shook her to get her attention. Lisbeth responded by throwing the textbook at Miåås' head, which started a big hullabaloo. She spat and hissed and kicked when her classmates tried to hold on to her.
The article ran as a feature in an evening paper, and allowed space for a sidebar with some quotes and a photograph of a former classmate posing in front of the entrance