“Yes?”

“I know it’s a running sore for you and I realise that Henrik has been obsessed with it for many years.”

“Just between the two of us-I do love Henrik and he is my mentor-but when it comes to Harriet, he’s almost off his rocker.”

“When I started this job I couldn’t help thinking that it was a waste of time. But I think we’re on the verge of a breakthrough and that it might now be possible to know what really happened.”

Blomkvist read doubt in Martin Vanger’s eyes. At last he made a decision.

“OK, in that case the best thing we can do is to solve the mystery of Harriet as quickly as possible. I’ll give you all the support I can so that you finish the work to your satisfaction-and, of course, Henrik’s-and then return to Millennium.”

“Good. So I won’t have to fight with you too.”

“No, you won’t. You can ask for my help whenever you run into a problem. I’ll make damn sure that Birger won’t put any sort of obstacles in your way. And I’ll try to talk to Cecilia, to calm her down.”

“Thank you. I need to ask her some questions, and she’s been resisting my attempts at conversation for a month now.”

Martin Vanger laughed. “Perhaps you have other issues to iron out. But I won’t get involved in that.”

They shook hands.

Salander had listened to the conversation. When Martin Vanger left she reached for the Hedestad Courier and scanned the article. She put the paper down without making any comment.

Blomkvist sat in silence, thinking. Gunnar Karlman was born in 1948 and would have been eighteen in 1966. He was one of the people on the island when Harriet disappeared.

After breakfast he asked his research assistant to read through the police report. He gave her all the photographs of the accident, as well as the long summary of Vanger’s own investigations.

Blomkvist then drove to Frode’s house and asked him kindly to draw up an agreement for Salander as a research assistant for the next month.

By the time he returned to the cottage, Salander had decamped to the garden and was immersed in the police report. Blomkvist went in to heat up the coffee. He watched her through the kitchen window. She seemed to be skimming, spending no more than ten or fifteen seconds on each page. She turned the pages mechanically, and Blomkvist was amazed at her lack of concentration; it made no sense, since her own report was so meticulous. He took two cups of coffee and joined her at the garden table.

“Your notes were done before you knew we were looking for a serial killer.”

“That’s true. I simply wrote down questions I wanted to ask Henrik, and some other things. It was quite unstructured. Up until now I’ve really been struggling in the dark, trying to write a story-a chapter in the autobiography of Henrik Vanger.”

“And now?”

“In the past all the investigations focused on Hedeby Island. Now I’m sure that the story, the sequence of events that ended in her disappearance, started in Hedestad. That shifts the perspective.”

Salander said: “It was amazing what you discovered with the pictures.”

Blomkvist was surprised. Salander did not seem the type to throw compliments around, and he felt flattered. On the other hand-from a purely journalistic point of view-it was quite an achievement.

“It’s your turn to fill in the details. How did it go with that picture you were chasing up in Norsjö?”

“You mean you didn’t check the images in my computer?”

“There wasn’t time. I needed to read the résumés, your situation reports to yourself.”

Blomkvist started his iBook and clicked on the photograph folder.

“It’s fascinating. The visit to Norsjö was a sort of progress, but it was also a disappointment. I found the picture, but it doesn’t tell us much.

“That woman, Mildred Berggren, had saved all her holiday pictures in albums. The picture I was looking for was one of them. It was taken on cheap colour film and after thirty-seven years the print was incredibly faded-with a strong yellow tinge. But, would you believe, she still had the negative in a shoebox. She let me borrow all the negatives from Hedestad and I’ve scanned them in. This is what Harriet saw.”

He clicked on an image which now had the filename HARRIET/bd-19.eps.

Salander immediately understood his dismay. She saw an unfocused image that showed clowns in the foreground of the Children’s Day parade. In the background could be seen the corner of Sundström’s Haberdashery. About ten people were standing on the pavement in front of Sundström’s.

“I think this is the person she saw. Partly because I tried to triangulate what she was looking at, judging by the angle that her face was turned-I made a drawing of the crossroads there-and partly because this is the only person who seems to be looking straight into the camera. Meaning that-perhaps-he was staring at Harriet.”

What Salander saw was a blurry figure standing a little bit behind the spectators, almost in the side street. He had on a dark padded jacket with a red patch on the shoulders and dark trousers, possibly jeans. Blomkvist zoomed in so that the figure from the waist up filled the screen. The photograph became instantly fuzzier still.

“It’s a man. He’s about five-foot eleven, normal build. He has dark-blond, semi-long hair and is clean-shaven. But it’s impossible to make out his facial features or even estimate his age. He could be anywhere between his teens and middle age.

“You could manipulate the image…”

“I have manipulated the image, dammit. I even sent a copy to the image processing wizard at Millennium.” Blomkvist clicked up a new shot. “This is the absolute best I can get out of it. The camera is simply too lousy and the distance too far.”

“Have you shown the picture to anyone? Someone might recognise the man’s bearing or…”

“I showed it to Frode. He has no idea who the man is.”

“Herr Frode probably isn’t the most observant person in Hedestad.”

“No, but I’m working for him and Henrik Vanger. I want to show the picture to Henrik before I cast the net wider.”

“Perhaps he’s nothing more than a spectator.”

“That’s possible. But he managed to trigger a strange response from Harriet.”

During the next several days Blomkvist and Salander worked on the Harriet case virtually every waking moment. Salander went on reading the police report, rattling off one question after another. There could only be one truth, and each vague answer or uncertainty led to more intense interrogation. They spent one whole day examining timetables for the cast of characters at the scene of the accident on the bridge.

Salander became more and more of an enigma to him. Despite the fact that she only skimmed the documents in the report, she always seemed to settle on the most obscure and contradictory details.

They took a break in the afternoons, when the heat made it unbearable out in the garden. They would swim in the channel or walk up to the terrace at Susanne’s Bridge Café. Susanne now treated Blomkvist with an undisguised coolness. He realised that Salander looked barely legal and she was obviously living at his cottage, and that-in Susanne’s eyes-made him a dirty old middle-aged man. It was not pleasant.

Blomkvist went out every evening for a run. Salander made no comment when he returned out of breath to the cottage. Running was obviously not her thing.

“I’m over forty,” he said. “I have to exercise to keep from getting too fat around the middle.”

“I see.”

“Don’t you ever exercise?”

“I box once in a while.”

“You box?”

“Yeah, you know, with gloves.”

“What weight do you box in?” he said, when he emerged from the shower.