According to the neighbours, Blomkvist had arrived at the apartment less than two minutes after the second shot was fired.

Calculating that he and Annika had had a view of the street for half a minute while she found the right building, parked, and exchanged a few words before he crossed the street and went up the stairs, Blomkvist figured there was a window of thirty to forty seconds. During which time the killer had left the apartment, gone down three flights of stairs-dropping the weapon on the way-left the building, and disappeared before Annika turned into the street. They had just missed him.

For a dizzying moment Blomkvist realized that Inspector Nyberg was toying with the possibility that he himself could have been the killer, that he had only run down one flight and pretended to arrive on the scene after the neighbours had gathered. But he had an alibi in the form of his sister. His whole evening, including the telephone conversation with Svensson, could be vouched for by a dozen members of the Giannini family.

Eventually Annika put her foot down. Blomkvist had given all reasonable and conceivable help. He was visibly tired and he was not feeling well. She told the inspector that she was not only Blomkvist’s sister but also his lawyer. It was time to bring all this to a close and let him go home.

When they got out to the street they stood for a time next to Annika’s car. “Go home and get some sleep,” she said.

Blomkvist shook his head.

“I have to go to Erika’s,” he said. “She knew them too. I can’t just call and tell her, and I don’t want her to wake up and hear it on the news.”

Annika hesitated, but she knew that her brother was right.

“So, off to Saltsjöbaden,” she said.

“Can you take me?”

“What are little sisters for?”

“If you give me a lift out to Nacka I can take a taxi from there or wait for a bus.”

“Nonsense. Jump in and I’ll drive you.”

∗Olof Palme was the prime minister of Sweden from 1969 to 1976 and 1982 to 1986. He was assassinated in 1986, shot twice in a street ambush in central Stockholm. His murder remains unsolved.

Annika Giannini was exhausted too, and Blomkvist managed to persuade her to save herself the hour-long detour round the Lännersta Sound and drop him off in Nacka. He kissed her on the cheek, thanked her for all her help, and waited until she had turned the car and driven off before he called a taxi.

It was two years since Blomkvist had been to Saltsjöbaden. He had only been to Berger’s house a few times. He supposed that was a sign of immaturity.

Exactly how her marriage with Greger Beckman functioned, he had no idea. He had known Berger since the early eighties. He planned to go on having a relationship with her until he was too old to get out of his wheelchair. They had broken it off in the late eighties when both he and Berger had met and married other people. The hiatus had lasted little more than a year.

In Blomkvist’s case the consequence of his infidelity was a divorce. For Berger it led to Beckman’s conceding that their long-term sexual passion was evidently so strong that it would be unreasonable to believe that mere convention could keep them apart. Nor did he propose to lose Berger the way that Blomkvist had lost his wife.

When Berger admitted having an affair, Beckman knocked on Blomkvist’s door. Blomkvist had been dreading his visit, but instead of punching him in the face, Beckman had suggested they go out for a drink. They hit three bars in Södermalm before they were sufficiently tipsy to have a serious conversation, which took place on a park bench in Mariatorget around sunrise.

At first Blomkvist was sceptical, but Beckman eventually convinced him that if he tried to sabotage his marriage to Berger, he could expect to see Beckman come back sober with a baseball bat, but if it was simply physical desire and the soul’s inability to rein itself in, that was OK as far as he was concerned.

So Blomkvist and Berger had taken up again, with Beckman’s blessing and without trying to hide anything from him. All Berger had to do was pick up the telephone and tell him she was spending the night with Blomkvist when the spirit moved her, which it did with some regularity.

Beckman had never uttered a word of criticism against Blomkvist. On the contrary, he seemed to regard his relationship with his wife as beneficial; and his love for her was deepened because he knew he could never take her for granted.

Blomkvist, on the other hand, had never felt entirely at ease in Beckman’s company-a dreary reminder that even liberated relationships had a price. Accordingly, he had been to Saltsjöbaden only on the few occasions when Berger had hosted parties where his absence would have been remarked on.

Now he stood at the door of their substantial villa. Despite his uneasiness about bringing bad news, he resolutely put his finger on the doorbell and held it there for about forty seconds until he heard footsteps. Beckman opened the door with a towel wrapped around his waist and his face full of bleary anger that changed to astonishment when he saw his wife’s lover.

“Hi, Greger,” Blomkvist said.

“Good morning, Blomkvist. What the hell time is it?”

Beckman was blond and thin. He had a lot of hair on his chest and hardly any on his head. He had a week’s growth of beard and a prominent scar over his right eyebrow, the result of a sailing accident some years before.

“Just after 5:00,” Blomkvist said. “Could you wake Erika? I have to talk to her.”

Beckman took it that since Blomkvist had all of a sudden overcome his reluctance to visit Saltsjöbaden-and at that hour-something out of the ordinary must have happened. Besides, the man looked as if he badly needed a drink, or at least a bed so that he could sleep off whatever it was. Beckman held the door open and let him in.

“What happened?”

Before Blomkvist could reply, Berger appeared at the top of the stairs, tying the sash of a white terry-cloth bathrobe. She stopped halfway down when she saw Blomkvist in the hall.

“What?”

“Dag and Mia,” Blomkvist said.

His face instantly revealed the news he had come to give her.

“No.” She put a hand to her mouth.

“They were murdered last night. I just came from the police station.”

“Murdered?” Berger and Beckman said at the same time.

“Somebody got into their apartment in Enskede and shot them. I was the one who found them.”

Berger sat down on the stairs.

“I didn’t want you to have to hear it on the morning news,” Blomkvist said.

It was 6:59 a.m. on Maundy Thursday as Blomkvist and Berger let themselves into the 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 Björneborgsvägen 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.