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cosmetic surgery outside Marseilles about how best to remove the tattoo.
    The specialist had examined his abdomen with ill-concealed astonishment. At last he recommended a course of action. One way would be laser treatment, he said, but the tattoo was so extensive and the needle had penetrated so deeply that he was afraid the only realistic solution was a series of skin grafts. It would be expensive and would take time.
    In the past two years Bjurman had seen Salander on only one occasion.
    On the night she attacked him and established control over his life, she had taken the spare set of keys to his office and apartment. She would be watching him, she had told him, and when he least expected it she would drop in. He had almost begun to believe it was an empty threat, but he had not dared to change the locks. Her warning had been unmistakable—if she ever found him in bed with a woman, Salander would make public the ninety-minute video that documented how he had raped her.
    In January a year ago he had woken at 3:00 a.m., not sure why. He turned on his bedside light and almost howled in fright when he saw her standing at the foot of his bed. She was like a ghost suddenly there. Her face was pale and expressionless. In her hand she held her fucking Taser.
    “Good morning, Mr. Advokat Bjurman,” she said. “So sorry for waking you this time.”
    Good God, has she been here before? While I slept?
    He could not tell whether she was bluffing. Bjurman cleared his throat and was about to speak. She cut him off with a gesture.
    “I woke you for one reason only. I’m going to be away for a long time quite soon. Keep writing your reports every month, but don’t post copies to me. Send them to this hotmail address.”
    She took a folded paper from her jacket pocket and dropped it on the bed.
    “If the Guardianship Agency wants to get in touch with me, or anything else comes up that might require my being here, write me an email at this address. Is that understood?”
    He nodded. “I understand …”
    “Don’t speak. I don’t want to hear your voice.”
    He clenched his teeth. He had not dared to try to reach her, since she had threatened to send the video to the authorities if he did. Instead he had thought for months what he would say to her when eventually she contacted him. He really had nothing he could say in his defence. All he could do was appeal to her humanity. He would try to convince her—if she would only give him a chance to speak—that he had done it in a fit of insanity, that he was utterly sorry for it and wanted to make amends. He would grovel if that would convince her, if he could only somehow defuse the threat that she posed.
    “I have something to say,” he said in a pitiful voice. “I want to ask your forgiveness…”
    She listened in silence to his plea. Then she put one foot on the bottom of the bed and stared at him in disgust.
    “Now you listen, Bjurman: you’re a pervert. I have no reason to forgive you. But if you keep yourself clean, I’ll let you off the hook the day my declaration of incompetence is rescinded.”
    She waited until he lowered his gaze.
She’s going to make me crawl
.
    “There’s no change to what I said a year ago. You fail, and the video goes to the agency. You contact me in any way other than I tell you to, then I make the video public. I die in an accident, the video will be made public. You ever touch me again, I will kill you.”
    He believed her.
    “One more thing. The day I set you free, you can do as you like. But until that day you will not set foot again in that clinic in Marseilles. If you begin treatment, I will tattoo you again, and this time I’ll do it on your forehead.”
    How the fucking hell did she find out about the clinic?
    The next moment she was gone. He heard a faint click as she turned the front-door key. It was as if a ghost had paid him a visit.
    At that instant he began to loathe Lisbeth Salander with an intensitythat blazed like red-hot