The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo Chapter 12 Summary

How It All Goes Down

Wednesday, February 19

  • Salander has had nothing but a bad time with the police and other authorities, so she doesn't report the assault, even though she has bruises on her neck and semen on her clothes as proof.
  • Still, Bjurman will have to be punished. In grade school, she always eventually brutalized her brutalizers. That's part of what got her institutionalized in the first place.
  • That and "All The Evil" (12.127) when she was twelve. (You have to read The Girl Who Played With Fire to find out what that is.)
  • When Palmgren was her guardian, guardianship wasn't a problem for her. Now it is.
  • That night, Blomkvist and Cecilia are talking about Harriet after making love.
  • She tells him that Harriet's parents, Isabella and Gottfried, had a volatile marriage.
  • Isabella had a temper, and Gottfried had a drinking problem.
  • Some time in the early 1960s Gottfried moved to his cabin here in Hedeby, near the lake.
  • After he drowned in the lake, drunk and with his pants unzipped, Harriet became withdrawn.
  • Martin, who found the body, was quiet for a time, too, but recovered and is a great person.
  • Cecilia's sister, Anita, couldn't cope with being part of this family. She moved to London, never returning to Hedeby. She doesn't want to risk running into her crazy Nazi dad, Harald.
  • Salander feels the urge to ask somebody to help her with Bjurman.
  • Plague isn't really a friend. Her friends from the Evil Fingers would help, but they don't know she's under guardianship and she doesn't want to tell them.
  • Dragan Armansky is nice, but she doesn't want to owe him anything.
  • So, she decides to plan a surprise for Nils Bjurman, all on her own.