Girl Who Played with Fire, The - Stieg Larsson [198]
She nodded.
“You will not take the rest of the week off as Ekström said. I want you to go to Millennium’s offices and have another talk with Blomkvist. Ask him for help in guiding you through Dag Svensson’s hard drive. They have a copy there. We can save a lot of time if we have somebody who’s already familiar with the material picking out the things that might be important.”
Modig breathed more easily.
“I didn’t say anything to Hedström.”
“I’ll take care of him. He can help Andersson. Have you seen Faste?”
“No. He left right after the meeting.”
Bublanski sighed.
Blomkvist had arrived home from the hospital at 8:00 a.m. He had had too little sleep and he had to be at his best for an afternoon meeting with Björck in Smådalarö. He undressed, set the alarm for 10:30, and got two more hours of much-needed sleep. He shaved, showered, and put on a clean shirt. As he was driving past Gullmarsplan, Modig called his mobile. Blomkvist explained that he would not be able to meet her. She told him what she needed, and he referred her to Berger.
When she arrived at Millennium’s offices, Modig found that she liked the self-confident and slightly domineering woman with the dimples and shock of short blond hair. She vaguely wondered whether Berger was a dyke too, since all the women in this investigation, according to Faste, seemed to have that inclination. But then she remembered that she had read somewhere that Berger was married to the artist Greger Beckman.
“There’s a problem here,” Berger said, after listening to her request.
“What’s that?”
“It’s not that we don’t want to solve the murders or help the police. Besides, you already have all the material in the computer you took from here. The dilemma is an ethical one. The media and the police don’t work very well together.”
“Believe me, I found that out this morning,” Modig said with a smile.
“How so?”
“Nothing. Just a personal reflection.”
“OK. To maintain their credibility, the media have to keep a clear distance from the authorities. Journalists who run to the police station and cooperate with police investigations will end up being errand boys for the police.”
“I’ve met some of those,” Modig said. “But the opposite can also be true. And the police end up running errands for certain newspapers.”
Berger laughed. “That’s right. I’m afraid to say that at Millennium we simply can’t afford to be associated with that sort of mercenary journalism. This isn’t about you wanting to question any of Millennium’s staff—which we would allow without hesitation—but about a formal request for us to assist actively in a police investigation by placing our journalistic material at your disposal.”
Modig nodded.
“There are two points of view on that,” Berger said. “First, one of our journalists has been murdered. So we will help out all we can. But the second point is that there are some things we cannot and will not give to the police. And that has to do with our sources.”
“I can be flexible. I can pledge to protect your sources.”
“It’s not a matter of your intent or our trust in you. It is that we never reveal a source, no matter what the circumstances.”
“Understood.”
“Then there’s the fact that at Millennium we’re conducting our own investigation into the murders, which should be viewed as a journalistic assignment. In this case I’m prepared to hand over information to the police when we have something finished that we are ready to publish—but not before.” Berger frowned as she paused to think. “I also have to be able to live with myself. Let’s do this … You can work with Malin Eriksson. She’s familiar with the material and competent to decide where the boundaries lie. She’ll guide you through Dag’s book—with the objective of compiling a list of all those who might be suspects.”
As she caught the shuttle train from Södra station to Södertälje, Irene Nesser was unaware of the drama that had occurred the night before. She was