control then, and he did not doubt that she would make good her threat to kill him if he provoked her.
She lacked social inhibitions, one of her reports stated. Well, he could conclude a stage or two further: she was a sick, murderous, insane fucking person. A loose cannon. A whore.
***
Palmgren's notebooks had provided Bjurman with the final key. On several occasions he had recorded very personal diary-type accounts of conversations that he had had with Salander. A crazy old man. In two of these conversations he had used the expression "when 'All The Evil' happened." Presumably Palmgren had borrowed the expression directly from Salander, but it was not clear what event it referred to.
Bjurman wrote down the words All The Evil. The years in foster homes? Some particular attack? The explanation ought to be there in the documentation to which he already had access.
He opened the psychiatric assessment of Salander as an eighteen-year-old and read it through for the fifth or sixth time. There had to be a gap in his knowledge.
He had excerpts from journal entries from elementary school, an affidavit to the effect that Salander's mother was incapable of taking care of her, and reports from various foster homes during her teens.
Something had set off the madness when she was twelve.
There were other gaps in her biography.
He discovered to his great surprise that Salander had a twin sister who had not been referred to in any of the material to which he had previously had access. My God, there are two of them. But he could not find any reference to what had happened to the sister.
The father was unknown, and there was no explanation as to why her mother could not take care of her. Bjurman had supposed that she had become ill and that as a result the whole process had begun, including the spells in the children's psychiatric unit. But now he was sure that something had happened to Salander when she was twelve or thirteen. All The Evil. A trauma of some kind. But there was no indication in Palmgren's notes as to what "All The Evil" could have been.
In the psychiatric assessment he finally found a reference to an attachment that was missing - the number of a police report dated March 12, 1991. It was handwritten in the margin of the copy from the social welfare agency archive. When he put in a request for the report he was told that it was stamped "TOP SECRET by Order of His Royal Highness," but that he could file an appeal with the relevant government department.
Bjurman was stymied. The fact that a police report dealing with a twelve-year-old girl was classified was not in itself surprising - there could be all manner of reasons for the protection of privacy. But he was Salander's guardian and had the right to study any document at all which concerned her. He could not understand why gaining access to such a report should require an appeal to a government department.
He submitted his application. Two months passed before he was informed that his request had been denied. What could there be in a police report almost fourteen years old about so young a girl to classify it as top secret? What possible threat could it contain to Sweden's government?
He returned to Palmgren's diary, trying to tease out what might be meant by "All The Evil." But he found no clue. It had to have been discussed between Palmgren and his ward but never written down. The references to "All The Evil" came at the end of the second notebook. Perhaps Palmgren had never had time to write up his own conclusions about this apparently crucial series of events before he had his stroke.
Palmgren had been Salander's trustee from her thirteenth birthday and her guardian from the day she turned eighteen. So he had been involved shortly after "All The Evil" had taken place and Salander was put away in the children's psychiatric unit. Chances were that he knew about everything that had happened.
Bjurman went back to the archive of the Guardianship Agency, this time to find the detailed brief of Palmgren's assignment, drawn up by the social welfare agency. At first glance the description was disappointing: two pages of background information. Salander's mother was now incapable of bringing up her daughter; the two children had to be separated; Camilla Salander was placed through the social welfare agency in a foster family; Lisbeth Salander was confined at St.Stefan's children's