They had met at a party when they were both in their second year at journalism
school. Before they said goodnight they had exchanged telephone numbers. They
both knew that they would end up in bed together, and in less than a week they
realised this conviction without telling their respective partners.
Blomkvist was sure that it was not the old-fashioned kind of love that leads to a
shared home, a shared mortgage, Christmas trees, and children. During the
eighties, when they were not bound by other relationships, they had talked of
moving in together. He had wanted to, but Erika always backed out at the last
minute. It wouldn’t work, she said, they would risk what they had if they fell in love
too. Blomkvist had often wondered whether it were possible to be more possessed
by desire for any other woman. The fact was that they functioned well together,
and they had a connection as addictive as heroin.
Sometimes they were together so often that it felt as though they really were a
couple; sometimes weeks and months would go by before they saw each other.
But even as alcoholics are drawn to the state liquor store after a stint on the wagon,
they always came back to each other.
Inevitably it did not work in the long run. That kind of relationship was almost
bound to cause pain. They had both left broken promises and unhappy lovers
behind—his own marriage had collapsed because he could not stay away from
Erika Berger. He had never lied about his feelings for her to his wife, Monica, but
she had thought it would end when they married and their daughter was born.
And Berger had almost simultaneously married Greger Beckman. Blomkvist too had
thought it would end, and for the first years of his marriage he and Berger had only
seen each other professionally. Then they started Millennium and within a few
weeks all their good intentions had dissolved, and one late evening they had
furious sex on her desk. That led to a troublesome period in which Blomkvist
wanted very much to live with his family and see his daughter grow up, but at the
same time he was helplessly drawn to Berger. Just as Salander had guessed, it was
his continual infidelity that drove his wife to leave.
Strangely enough, Beckman seemed to accept their relationship. Berger had always
been open about her feelings for Mikael, and she told her husband as soon as they
started having sex again. Maybe it took the soul of an artist to handle such a
situation, someone so wrapped up in his own creativity, or possibly just wrapped
up in himself, that he did not rebel when his wife slept with another man. She even
divided up her holiday so she could spend two weeks with her lover in his summer
cabin at Sandhamn. Blomkvist did not think very highly of Beckman, and he had