tried in vain to find out who it was. Blomkvist had a photograph on his screen that
must have been taken at exactly the moment the window was opened. There were
a figure and a face, albeit out of focus. He decided that a detailed analysis could
wait until he had first scanned all the images.
Then he examined the images of the Children’s Day celebrations. Nylund had put in
six rolls, around two hundred shots. There was an endless stream of children with
balloons, grown-ups, street life with hot dog vendors, the parade itself, an artist on
a stage, and an award presentation of some sort.
Blomkvist decided to scan in the entire collection. Six hours later he had a portfolio
of ninety images, but he was going to have to come back.
At 9:00 he called Blomberg, thanked her, and took the bus home to Hedeby Island.
He was back at 9:00 on Sunday morning. The offices were still empty when
Blomberg let him in. He had not realised that it was the Whitsuntide holiday
weekend, and that there would not be a newspaper until Tuesday. He spent the
entire day scanning images. At 6:00 in the evening there were still forty shots left of
Children’s Day. Blomkvist had inspected the negatives and decided that close-ups
of cute children’s faces or pictures of a painter appearing on stage were simply not
germane to his objective. What he had scanned in was the street life and crowds.
Blomkvist spent the Whitsuntide holiday going over the new material. He made
two discoveries. The first filled him with dismay. The second made his pulse beat
faster.
The first was the face in Harriet Vanger’s window. The photograph had a slight
motion blur and was thus excluded from the original set. The photographer had
stood on the church hill and sighted towards the bridge. The buildings were in the
background. Mikael cropped the image to include the window alone, and then he
experimented with adjusting the contrast and increasing the sharpness until he
achieved what he thought was the best quality he could get.