Millennium offices. Berger had woken Malm and Eriksson with the news that Svensson and Johansson had been killed the night before. They lived much closer and had already arrived for the meeting. The coffeemaker was going in the kitchenette.
"What the hell is happening?" Malm wanted to know.
Eriksson shushed him and turned up the volume on the 7:00 a.m. news.
Two people, a man and a woman, were shot dead late last night in an apartment in Enskede. The police say that it was a double homicide. Neither of the deceased was previously known to the police. The motive for the murders is still unknown. Our reporter Hanna Olofsson is at the scene.
"It was just before midnight when the police received a report of shots fired in an apartment building on Bjorneborgsvagen here in Enskede. No suspect has yet been arrested. The police have cordoned off the apartment and a crime scene investigation is under way."
"That was pretty succinct," Eriksson said and turned the volume down. Then she started to cry. Berger put an arm around her shoulders. "Jesus Christ," Malm said to no-one in particular. "Sit down, everyone," Berger said in a firm voice. "Mikael... " Blomkvist told them what he knew of what had happened. He spoke in a dull monotone and sounded like the radio reporter when he described how he had found Svensson and Johansson.
"Jesus Christ," Malm said again. "This is crazy."
Eriksson was once more overwhelmed by emotion. She began weeping again and made no attempt to hide her tears.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"I feel the same way," said Malm.
Blomkvist wondered why he could not cry. He felt only a huge emptiness, almost as if he were anesthetized.
"What we know this morning doesn't amount to very much," Berger said. "We have to discuss two things: first, we're three weeks from going to press with Dag's material; should we still publish it? Can we publish it? That's one thing. The other is a question that Mikael and I discussed on the way here."
"We don't know the motive for the murders," Blomkvist said. "It could be something to do with Dag and Mia's private life, or it could be a purely senseless act, but we can't rule out that it may have had something to do with what they were working on."
A long silence settled around the table.
At last Blomkvist cleared his throat. "As I said, we're about to publish a story in which we name people who are extremely anxious not to be identified in this connection. Dag started with the confrontations several weeks ago. I'm thinking that if one of them -"
"Wait," Eriksson said. "We're exposing three policemen, at least one of whom works for Sapo and another on the vice squad. Then there are several lawyers, one prosecutor, one judge, and a couple of dirty-old-men journalists. Could one of them have killed two people to prevent the publication?"
"Well, I don't know the answer to that," Blomkvist said. "They all have a hell of a lot to lose, but they're damn stupid if they thought they could quash a story like this by murdering a journalist. But we're also exposing a number of pimps, and even if we use fictitious names it wouldn't be hard to figure out who they are. Some of them already have records for violent crimes."
"OK," Malm said. "But you're making the murders out to be executions. If I'm reading Svensson's story correctly, we're not talking about very bright people. Are they up to pulling off a double murder and getting away with it?"
"How bright do you have to be to fire two shots?" Eriksson said.
"We're speculating here about something we know practically nothing about," Berger broke in. "But we do have to ask the question. If suppressing Dag's articles - or Mia's dissertation, for that matter - was the motive for the murders, then we have to beef up security here in the office."
"And a third question," Eriksson said. "Should we go to the police with the names? What did you tell the police last night, Mikael?"
"I told them what Dag was working on, but they didn't ask for details and I didn't give any names."
"We probably should," Berger said.
"It's not quite that simple," Blomkvist said. "We could give them a list of names, but what do we do if the police start asking questions about how we got hold of them? We can't reveal any source who wants to remain anonymous. And that's certainly true of several of the girls Mia talked to."
"What