They were photographs that had been taken on the day Harriet disappeared. The
first of them was the last photograph of Harriet, at the Children’s Day parade in
Hedestad. Then there were some 180 crystal-clear pictures of the scene of the
accident on the bridge. He had examined the images one by one with a magnifying
glass on several occasions previously. Now he turned the pages almost absent-
mindedly; he knew he was not going to find anything he had not seen before. In
fact he felt all of a sudden fed up with the unexplainable disappearance of Harriet
Vanger and slammed the album shut.
Restlessly he went to the kitchen window and peered out into the darkness.
Then he turned his gaze back to the album. He could not have explained the
feeling, but a thought flitted through his head, as though he were reacting to
something he had just seen. It was as though an invisible creature had whispered
in his ear, making the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.
He opened the album again. He went through it page by page, looking at all the
pictures of the bridge. He looked at the younger version of an oil-soaked Henrik
Vanger and a younger Harald, a man whom he had still not met. The broken railing,
the buildings, the windows and the vehicles visible in the pictures. He could not fail
to identify a twenty-year-old Cecilia in the midst of the onlookers. She had on a
light-coloured dress and a dark jacket and was in at least twenty of the
photographs.
He felt a fresh excitement, and over the years Blomkvist had learned to trust his
instincts. These instincts were reacting to something in the album, but he could not
yet say what it was.
He was still at the kitchen table at 11:00, staring one by one again at the
photographs when he heard the door open.
“May I come in?” It was Cecilia Vanger. Without waiting for an answer she sat down
across from him at the table. Blomkvist had a strange feeling of déjà vu. She was
dressed in a thin, loose, light-coloured dress and a greyish-blue jacket, clothes
almost identical to those she was wearing in the photographs from 1966.
“You’re the one who’s the problem,” she said.
Blomkvist raised his eyebrows.