"If she's alone and things look good, we'll pick her up. This girl is as crazy as hell and obviously on a killing spree. There may be more weapons in the apartment."
Blomkvist was dead tired when he laid the pile of manuscript pages on Berger's desk and slumped into the chair by the window overlooking Gotgatan. He had spent the whole afternoon trying to make up his mind what they ought to do with Svensson's unfinished book.
Svensson had been dead only a few hours, and already his publisher was debating what to do with the work he had left behind. An outsider might think it cynical and coldhearted, but Blomkvist did not see it that way. He felt as if he were in an almost weightless state. It was a sensation that every reporter or newspaper editor knew well, and it kicked in at moments of direst crisis.
When other people are grieving, the newspaperman turns efficient. And despite the numbing shock that afflicted the members of the Millennium team who were there that Maundy Thursday morning, professionalism took over and was rigorously channelled into work.
For Blomkvist this went without saying. He and Svensson were two of a kind, and Svensson would have done the same himself if their roles had been reversed. He would have asked himself what he could do for Blomkvist. Svensson had left a legacy in the form of a manuscript with an explosive story. He had worked on it for four years; he had put his soul into a task which he would now never complete.
And he had chosen to work at Millennium.
The murders of Dag Svensson and Mia Johansson were not a national trauma on the scale of the murder of Olof Palme, and the investigation would not be minutely followed by a grieving nation. But for employees of Millennium the shock was perhaps greater - they were affected personally - and Svensson had a broad network of contacts in the media who were going to demand answers to their questions.
But now it was Blomkvist's and Berger's duty to finish Svensson's book, and to answer the questions Who killed them? And why?
"I can reconstruct the unfinished text," Blomkvist said. "Malin and I have to go through the unedited chapters line by line and see where more work still needs to be done. For most of it, all we have to do is follow Dag's notes, but we do have a problem in chapters four and five, which are largely based on Mia's interviews. Dag didn't fill in who the sources were, but with one or two exceptions I think we can use the references in her thesis as a primary source."
"What about the last chapter?"
"I have Dag's outline, and we talked it through so many times that I know more or less exactly what he wanted to say. I propose that we lift the summary and use it as an afterword, where I can also explain his reasoning."
"Fair enough, but I want to approve it. We can't be putting words in his mouth."
"No danger of that. I'll write the chapter as my personal reflection and sign it. I'll describe how he came to write and research the book and say what sort of person he was. I'll conclude by recapping what he said in at least a dozen conversations over the past few months. There's plenty in his draft that I can quote. I think I can make it sound dignified."
"I want this book published more than ever," Berger said.
Blomkvist understood exactly what she meant.
Berger put her reading glasses on the desk and shook her head. She got up and poured two cups of coffee from the thermos and sat down opposite Blomkvist.
"Christer and I have a layout for the replacement issue. We've taken two articles earmarked for the issue after this one and we're going to fill the gaps with freelance material. But it'll be a bit of this and a bit of that, an issue without any real focus."
They sat quietly for a moment.
"Have you listened to the news?" Berger asked.
"No. I know what they're going to say."
"It's the top story on every radio station. The second-place story is a political move by the Centre Party."
"Which means that absolutely nothing else is happening in the country."
"The police haven't released their names yet. They're being described as a 'conscientious couple.' No-one's mentioned that it was you who found them."