Blomkvist put the photograph in his shoulder bag and walked to the park by the
station. There he sat in a pavement café and ordered a latte. He suddenly felt
shaken.
In English they call it “new evidence,” which has a very different sound from the
Swedish term, “new proof material.” He had seen something entirely new,
something no-one else had noticed in an investigation that had been marking time
for thirty-seven years.
The problem was that he wasn’t sure what value his new information had, if indeed
it could have any at all. And yet he felt it was going to prove significant.
The September day when Harriet disappeared had been dramatic in a number of
ways. It had been a day of celebration in Hedestad with crowds of several thousand
in the streets, young and old. It had been the family’s annual assembly on Hedeby
Island. These two events alone represented departures from the daily routine of the
area. The crash on the bridge had overshadowed everything else.
Inspector Morell, Henrik Vanger, and everyone else who had brooded about
Harriet’s disappearance had focused on the events at Hedeby Island. Morell had
even written that he could not rid himself of the suspicion that the accident and
Harriet’s disappearance were related. Blomkvist was now convinced that this
notion was wrong.
The chain of events had started not on Hedeby Island but in Hedestad several
hours earlier. Harriet Vanger had seen something or someone to frighten her and
prompt her to go home, go straight to her uncle, who unhappily did not have time
to listen to her. Then the accident on the bridge happened. Then the murderer
struck.
Blomkvist paused. It was the first time he had consciously formulated the
assumption that Harriet had been murdered. He accepted Vanger’s belief. Harriet
was dead and he was hunting for a killer.
He went back to the police report. Among all the thousands of pages only a
fraction dealt with the events in Hedestad. Harriet had been with three of her
classmates, all of whom had been interviewed. They had met at the park by the
station at 9:00. One of the girls was going to buy some jeans, and her friends went
with her. They had coffee in the EPA department store cafeteria and then went up
to the sports field and strolled around among the carnival booths and fishing