“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?”