Stieg Larsson - The Girl Who Kicked The Hornets’ Nest

“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 all 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 got hold 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 made 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.&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 is it 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 schoolfriend when I was fifteen, and I had a relationship with a boy who tied my hands to the bedstead 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 who 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 pupils 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. They 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’s 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, then 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 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’ve lived through it,” Salander said dryly.

“And I have your approval to show it here?”

Salander nodded. She fixed her eyes on Teleborian.

“Can you tell us when the film was made?”

“On 7 March, 2003.”

“Who shot the film?”